Protecting Emma

by ML Michaels

“Your father,” said Edmund, strolling into the room. “Because he’s a helluva lot smarter than you, kid.”

  He patted Hannah on the back and winked at Valerie, who rolled her eyes at him.

  “You’re such a suck up, dad.”

  “It’s called surviving marriage.” He gave her a very grim look. “And I do mean the most basic form of survival.”

  Valerie laughed, and her mother hit Edmund on the arm. “You rascal!” Hannah said, though her eyes were bright and full of life.

  Valerie wanted that more than anything. She loved how her parents were with each other. She loved that she got to see them in love. It made her sad, though, at the same time. Julia would never grow up watching her parents play fight with each other in the kitchen. She’d never share a bottle of wine with them and learn what they were like as people, as a couple.

  Thankfully, at that moment she heard the door open and Steven heralded his arrival with, “Hello family!”

  Valerie raced toward the hall to see him, not in the least because her parents chose that time to start making out in the kitchen. When she got there, though, her heart dropped in her chest.

  Steven had brought Justin.

  Her palms grew sweaty, and she stopped dead in her tracks. All she could do was stare.

  “Oh, you brought Justin!” her mother cooed from behind her, pushing around Valerie’s still form in order to greet her son.

  “I texted to let you know, but I assume you didn’t get it,” Steven said.

  Hannah waved him off. “Oh, you know I don’t do technology very well. Anyway, we’ve got more than enough food.”

  Though Hannah was addressing him too, Justin only had eyes for one person in the room.

  Valerie.

  Steven walked past his mom and pulled his sister into a hug. “Good to see you now that I’ve had some sleep,” he said.

  “Uh, yeah,” Valerie said. “Lookin’...sharp.”

  Steven chuckled and walked past her to the kitchen, handing the bottle of wine he’d brought to his dad. Valerie continued standing in the hall, watching her mother fuss over Justin.

  “We’ve been following you for the past couple of seasons,” she said. “We don’t really watch much hockey, but you know how Edmund is with sports. I swear he’s got the whole NHL roster in his head and can pull out facts on a dime.”

  Justin broke eye contact with Valerie and smiled down at Hannah. “That’s so sweet of you,” he said. “Always appreciate a fan.”

  Hannah pulled him toward the kitchen. “You remember Valerie, right? She was a bit younger when you saw her last. I think she had bangs.”

  Justin nodded, his sea green eyes landing on Valerie once more. “Oh yes, I remember.”

  Had he always been so tall? He must be like six-foot-four or something like that. And damn, did he look good with his messy brown hair and the beginnings of what looked like it would be a ginger beard.

  “Nice to see you,” Valerie said tightly, trying not to visibly shake.

  “You as well,” he said. “Looks like we ended up having dinner after all.”

  By then Hannah had already returned to the kitchen to start getting the meat on the barbecue, so she missed the look that passed between them. Valerie was about to turn and go back to the kitchen, too, and probably down all of the wine that Steven had brought, when a little brown haired bullet darted out from the living room and tackled Justin.

  “Uncle Steven!” she said. “You got bigger!”

  I turned red. “Oh, Jelly Bean,” I said, pulling Julia back. “That’s not uncle Steven. That’s his friend Justin. And adults don’t get taller, honey.”

  Steven was around the same height as Valerie. A little short for a guy, but positively dwarfed by Justin.

  “Who’s this?” asked Justin, squatting down to Julia’s level.

  “I’m Julia, and I’m three and a half,” she said proudly. “Are you uncle Steven’s boyfriend?”

  Justin let out a bark of laughter. “No, just his friend,” he said. “I used to live here but I don’t anymore. Your uncle invited me for dinner so I wouldn’t be lonely.”

  “I’ll show you my trucks later if you get bored,” she replied.

  “Deal.” He flashed her a grin of perfectly straight teeth, and came back up to his full height.

  Julia ran off into the kitchen to see Steven, and Justin turned his gaze to Valerie.

  “She’s cute,” he said. “I didn’t know you…”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is your...hus...boy...here?”

  She cringed. This was exactly what Valerie had been dreading, and what she had hoped she could avoid. “Uh, no,” was all she said.

  Whether he meant ‘here’ as in at the house, or as in just around in general, wasn’t clear to Valerie. Her answer was a lie either way, so she didn’t ask him to specify. The details of Julia’s parentage were something she did not want to get into.

  “Come in,” Valerie said, turning and walking toward the kitchen. She hoped that he would become trapped in conversation with her mother and father, and that she could get through the dinner without him asking any questions. Or thinking them.

  Unfortunately, by that point the rest of Valerie’s family was outside huddled around the barbecue, supervising Edmund as he put the chicken on the grill. That left Valerie on entertaining duty for a little while longer.

  “Do you want something to drink?” she asked.

  “Please,” he replied. His eyes settled on Valerie in an appraising way, a faint smile at the edges of his lips.

  She quickly turned to the fridge to hide her blush. “Water? Apple juice? Beer?”

  “A beer will be fine thanks.”

  His voice was a lot closer to her now, and she spun around in alarm. He was standing only a couple of feet away.

  Justin put up his hands in a placating gesture, laughing. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Valerie turned back to the fridge and fumbled trying to pull a can of beer out of the plastic packaging. She turned and handed it to him, breezing past afterward. His scent wafted to her nose, causing a stab of ache in her gut. He smelled exactly the same, like heaven. With his smell, all the memories came rushing back—the looks shared across the dinner table, the times he drove her home and they laughed for what felt like hours, the time they finally came together...one night that lasted a lifetime.

  But not long enough.

  Valerie hurriedly abandoned Justin to go check on Julia outside, even though that would make it obvious just how much his presence affected her. It was hard enough worrying about the rejection she feared her daughter would face from him if he ever found out.

  She didn’t realize how much she feared him rejecting her as well.

  Justin had thought that Valerie was just being curt with him because she was at work. Sure, her coldness had been a bit off putting, but he had thought she might warm right up when he saw her in person.

  That wasn’t the case.

  It was a shame, too, because damn she looked good. She was wearing little jean shorts and a pale pink tank top, her hair piled high on her head. When he walked in the door, he followed the line of her tanned legs right down to her toes, painted bright pink. He could see by her face that she clearly hadn’t expected to see him so soon; worse, she was horrified by it.

  He wondered why.

  Her daughter was charming, albeit a surprise all of her own. Selfishly—very selfishly—Justin hoped the reason she had stayed in Sherwood was because the dad was out of the picture. He hadn’t seen her in years, but suddenly the thought of her being with someone rubbed him the wrong way. Since that summer before his parents had moved, she had always been his. A little time and distance had kept them apart, but it hit him now how much he still wanted her.

  Justin followed Valerie into the kitchen and accepted a beer from her. When she went out to where her family was on the patio, clearly avoiding talking to him, he thought back again to every
thing that had happened that summer. She had seemed okay, at the time, with them cutting ties the way they did. It hadn’t even really been a cutting of ties so much as an open ended farewell. It had been her, in the end, who had stopped communicating with Justin.

  He had just assumed that she’d met someone else. By the looks of things, she had. So why so skittish around him? Was she afraid that he was going to embarrass her in front of her family by revealing their little affair? He had gone four years without saying anything to anybody. It wasn’t because he was ashamed. Not even slightly. She, at the time, hadn't wanted her brother to know. Justin had been okay with that.

  But since then? He’d kept it a secret because he liked the idea that those moments belonged only to them. It was sappy and sentimental, but he dealt with it. There were only so many girls in his life that he had shared a true connection with. And when you cut out the girls who had seemed to be great at first meeting but turned out to be something completely different, that only left Valerie.

  Justin sipped his beer and mulled everything over. They had gone to a little seaside town the day before he left, a little daytrip to help ease the pain. They had kissed under the dock and said they couldn’t wait to see each other again.

  And then, radio silence.

  He shook his head. It wouldn’t be the first time a girl had gotten upset at him over nothing. He doubted it would be the last.

  Steven came inside from the patio, Julia clinging to his leg. “Did Val leave you in here by yourself?” he said, dragging the giggling girl across the tile floor.

  Justin shrugged. “I don’t think she meant to.”

  Steven looked down at Julia. “Jelly Bean,” he said. “How am I supposed to get anything done with you hanging on to me like that?”

  “This way you can’t leave again!” she said.

  Justin could see how much it broke the little girl’s heart. Steven saw it too. He looked back up at Justin and sighed. “Every time I see this one it just makes me want one of my own. You ever feel that way?”

  Valerie came back in just as Steven was finishing his sentence. Both of them looked at Justin for an answer.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I never really thought about it. Guess I don’t know what I’d have to offer a kid.”

  Valerie immediately hustled over to the fridge, pulled out a salad, and took it back out to the patio. A moment later, Hannah came in and stirred the purple liquid on the stove.

  “I think the soup’s done,” she declared happily.

  Soup? Justin looked over at the sauce pan with trepidation. Was he going to have to eat that?

  “Is there anything I can do to help, Mrs. North?” Justin asked, hoping she’d ask him to reach for some Tupperware so that she could put the soup in the freezer. Surely that wasn't for tonight’s dinner.

  “Oh, no,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “I think we’re all set. The chicken should be done any minute now. I think we can sit down for the first course.”

  The first course, as it turned out, was the purple soup.

  “It’s purple!” Julia declared, running her spoon through it. “I love it!”

  “But does it taste good?” asked Valerie, giving her mom a cheeky grin.

  They were seated on the patio outside, around a circular glass table. The Norths had always had a beautiful garden, which Hannah tended almost every day in the spring and summer months. The air was filled with the smells of the flowers and the fresh scent of trimmed grass and topsoil.

  Julia brought a spoon of the soup to her mouth, and the whole table seemed to watch her with baited breath. After taking a minute to think, she exclaimed, “Yum!”

  Hannah broke out in a smile, and the rest of them dug in.

  Julia was a big fat liar. Justin had never tasted soup so awful. He loved it. It brought him back to the days in high school when he’d be over at Steven’s for dinner almost every week. Hannah always had some sort of creation that she foisted on the family to try. It had become a running joke in the family, even if most of Hannah’s food turned out good.

  This soup was not good. It wasn’t horrible, but it certainly wasn’t something Justin would have ever chosen to eat. Still, he ate it all up, one spoon at a time. If a three-and-a-half-year-old kid had the good sense to shut up and eat the damn soup, Justin could certainly give it a go.

  “So Justin,” Hannah said, mouth tinged a dark purple. “How’s life in Boston? Are you dating anyone?”

  Valerie nearly choked. Steven merely laughed.

  Justin smiled broadly. “Life in Boston is great, Mrs. North,” he said. “Not dating anyone, though.”

  Hannah smiled and nodded. “I didn’t think I’d seen any news about what you’d been up to.”

  “Mom,” Steven complained. “You can’t just stalk Justin like that.”

  “How else am I supposed to find out what he’s doing? He never writes, he never calls!” Her false imperiousness made the rest of the table laugh. Everyone except Valerie.

  “I’ll make sure I send updates more often,” Justin said.

  “Seems like only yesterday you were like our third child,” Edmund commented warmly. “We’re so happy that you’ve done so well for yourself.”

  “Thanks, guys. That means a lot.”

  Valerie was noticeably quiet the whole dinner, which wasn’t like her. Normally she’d be the most vocal one at the table. Though, back in the day, Justin wagered she had done it to get his attention more than anything else. It had certainly worked. She and Julia worked carefully away at their soup, and both gave up about midway and said they didn’t want to fill up too much before the main course. Edmund, Steven, and Hannah ate it all.

  They cleared away the soup dishes and Hannah brought over the grilled chicken and salad for the main course. Throughout dinner they chatted away about everything new that had happened in Sherwood, and what the everyday lives of Steven and Justin were like. Throughout dinner, Justin kept waiting for an opportunity to ask Valerie a question, but she seemed content to not inject herself in the conversation, and there wasn’t any way for him to direct attention to her naturally.

  After dinner, he thought he might get a chance to chat with her, but she scurried away to do dishes, and he was still talking to Edmund on the porch so he couldn’t follow her.

  Edmund watched her go inside with a twinkle in his eye. “I think maybe Valerie still has a little crush on you,” he whispered, conspiratorially.

  Justin pretended to be surprised. “She had a crush on me?” he said.

  Edmund nodded. “I can’t believe you didn’t know. She was in bits after you left. Don’t tell her I told you though. She’ll kill me.”

  Justin chuckled. “I find it hard to believe that she’d still have a crush on me four years later,” he said. “I bet she’s been fighting off men the whole time.”

  Edmund shook his head sadly, leaning back in his chair. “Not my Val,” he said. “She’s been on a few dates, but nothing really serious over the years. She says it’s hard to find dates when you have a kid at her age. You know what I say?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think she really wants to date. Don’t think any of the guys she’s met are good enough for her.”

  “They’re probably not,” Justin said without thinking. He tried to cover it up by adding, “What about Julia’s dad? Is he not in the picture?”

  Edmund grimaced. “It’s a bit of a touchy subject,” he replied, his voice quiet. Justin had to lean in to hear him. “Valerie says it was a one-night stand, and that she never caught the guy’s last name. We were never sure if that was the real story. She wasn’t the one-night-stand kind of girl. Anyway, we all told her we would understand if she wasn’t ready to become a mother, but Valerie loved that baby girl from the moment she found out she was pregnant. There was no going back from there.”

  Justin digested that. It must have been so difficult for her to raise Julia all by herself. He imagined she’
d received a lot of help from her parents, but still. If nothing else, it must have been lonely.

  “She’s a great kid, though,” Justin said finally. “She’s just like her mom.”

  “Oh yeah,” Edmund said, nodding. He smiled broadly. “Jelly Bean's a little firecracker. Clumsy as all hell, just like Val was as a kid.”

  Justin laughed, remembering all the times growing up that he’d seen Valerie bail on the sidewalk or run into a wall accidentally. After he settled down, he asked, “But she’s happy, right?”

  “Valerie?”

  Justin nodded, looking through the patio door to where Valerie was at the sink, rinsing off dishes and talking to her mom and brother.

  Edmund sighed. “I think so. She certainly doesn’t regret any of it, I can tell you that. But I think she’s lonely. And I don’t think she’s quite fulfilled with this newspaper job.”

  Inside, Valerie was laughing, just as animated as he remembered her being. He wanted her to be like that with him. He wanted to be the one to make her laugh. Not the one to make her scowl.

  “So I’m not crazy then,” Justin said. “She is being weird around me?”

  Edmund laughed. “As the day is long,” he said. “Though I would bet my grandchild it’s because she’s still sweet on you.”

  Justin laughed humorlessly because he knew that that would have been a bet that Edmund would have probably lost.

  “It’s so great having you both around,” Hannah said, putting an arm around each of her children.

  “Mom until a couple days ago I was literally here all the time,” Valerie deadpanned.

  Hannah shrugged. “Yes but it’s not the same as having both of you.”

  Steven snickered. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of dad,” he said. “Cause I worry he might have a heart attack, but I have some news.”

  Hannah’s eyes widened and she took a step back. “Are you giving me a grandchild?”

  “Mom!” Valerie complained, splashing some water on her. “You have a grandchild!”

  Valerie waved her off, watching Steven with a hopeful expression.

  “Nothing like that,” he said. “But I’ve been steadily building up a client base, and I’m thinking about opening my own firm.”