“I do quality work.”
“I know you build a quality deck, but stairs are tricky.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I had to double-check.”
“It’s all done but the seating now and it’s good work, even though I practically had to duct tape you to a tree in order to work in peace.”
She might have taken offense at his words if not for the fact he was playing footsies with her under the table. And when he nudged her foot to get her to look at him, he winked in that way that—along with the grin—made it almost impossible for her to be mad at him.
“It’s Sean’s turn to wash tonight. Emma, you dry and I’ll put away.”
“I’ll wash, Gram. Sean can dry.”
“I can wash,” Sean told her. “The world won’t come to an end if I wash the silverware before the cups.”
“It makes me twitch.”
“I know it does. That’s why I do it.” He leaned over and kissed her before she could protest.
“That new undercover cop show I like is on tonight,” Gram said as they cleared the table. “Maybe Sean won’t snort his way through this episode.”
He laughed and started filling the sink with hot, soapy water. “I’m sorry, but if he keeps shoving his gun in his waistband like that, he’s going to shoot his…he’s going to shoot himself in a place men don’t want to be shot.”
Emma watched him dump the plates and silverware into the water—while three coffee mugs sat on the counter waiting to be washed—but forced herself to ignore it. “Can’t be worse than the movie the other night.”
“That was just stupid,” Sean said while Gram laughed.
They’d try to watch a military action movie and by the time they were fifteen minutes in, she thought they were going to have to medicate Sean if they wanted to see the end. After a particularly heated lecture about what helicopters could and couldn’t do, Emma had hushed him, but he’d still snorted so often in derision she was surprised he hadn’t done permanent damage to his sinuses.
“I don’t want you to think that’s real life,” he told them.
“I promise,” Gram said, “if I ever want to use a tank to break somebody out of a federal prison, I’ll ask you how to do it correctly first.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Thanks, Cat. At least you appreciate me, unlike Emma, who just tells me to shut up.”
“I’d appreciate you more if there wasn’t salad dressing floating in the dishwater you’re about to wash my coffee cup in.”
“According to the official guy’s handbook, if I keep doing it wrong, you’re supposed to let me watch SportsCenter while you do it yourself.”
“Did the official guy’s handbook also tell you that if that happens, you’ll also be free to watch the late-night sports shows while I do other things myself?”
The tips of his ears turned pink as he cast a sideways glance at her grandmother, but Gram just laughed.
Emma couldn’t put her finger on exactly when it happened, but at some point the time she spent with just Sean and Gram had become her new normal. And she liked her new normal.
Laughter over the dinner table. Banter during the cleaning up. Then Gram in her chair, knitting while they watched television. Sean stretched out on the couch with his head in her lap. She could stroke his hair or give him a kiss in the kitchen and not feel like a fraud. And without the Kowalskis stirring up trouble, they’d fallen into a comfortable evening routine that felt a little more real every day.
It was a tourism commercial for Florida that popped her bubble. It was a too-cheerful reminder that in less than a week, Gram would be flying back to North Fort Meyers. And that meant Sean would be leaving, too.
She’d be alone again. She hadn’t minded it before—had enjoyed having the big house all to herself—but now she couldn’t imagine sitting alone and watching TV. Or heating up a microwave meal. Not having anybody to talk to or to laugh with.
It wasn’t only Gram she couldn’t imagine her life without. It was Sean, and that scared her so badly she nudged him and told him she wanted to get up.
“You okay?” He touched her face, clearly concerned.
“Fine. I just need to…I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She went upstairs to their bedroom—her bedroom—and then locked herself in the little bathroom. Once there, she discovered a possible culprit for her emotional state, but she knew it was far worse than hormones on their monthly rollercoaster ride.
Despite his warnings, she’d gone and gotten ideas about Sean. She was afraid she’d fallen in love with him and there was nothing she could do to talk herself out of it now.
Just great, she thought, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes in an effort to stem the tears. Now she had to pretend not to the love the man she was pretending to love while pretending she wasn’t sleeping with him.
Sean gave Emma twenty minutes before he decided to go after her. Something had obviously upset her, and he suspected it was the Florida commercial. Now that she was in her last week with Gram, it had probably hit her she’d be going home soon.
“Do you want to pause this?” Cat asked him when he got up off the couch.
“No, go ahead and watch it. I’m going to check on Emma. I think…I think maybe she doesn’t feel good, so I’m not sure if we’ll be back down or not.”
She gave him a warm smile and went back to her knitting, so he went up the stairs and into their room. Emma was curled up on the couch, wrapped up in the blanket, and she’d brought her pillow.
“What happened?” he asked, crouching down next to her and pushing her hair back from her face. She wasn’t crying, but she had recently.
“Nothing.”
“Was it the commercial? The one about Florida?” She hesitated a few seconds, then nodded. “I’ll miss her, too. She’s a great lady.”
A tear spilled onto Emma’s cheek and he wiped it away. “Is that all that’s bothering you?”
She lifted one shoulder in a half-ass shrug. “I’m just tired.”
He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Then we’ll go to bed. Why are you on the couch?”
“Because…” She sniffled and her cheeks turned pink. “It’s, um…that time.”
“Oh.” Plumbing issues, as his uncle so delicately referred to that time, explained a lot. “You’ll be more comfortable in the bed.”
She shook her head and pulled the blanket up over her face, so he stood and considered his options. He could go back downstairs and finish watching the show with Cat, but he didn’t really like leaving Emma alone, not that there was anything he could do to ease her misery. And he couldn’t stand next to the couch all night watching her, so he went into the bathroom and got ready for bed.
After turning off the light and punching his pillow into shape, Sean sprawled on the bed and tried to force himself to sleep. He had the whole bed to himself and he didn’t have to share the covers, so it should have been all good.
But he was too aware of her across the room and he didn’t want her there. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep with her there. He wanted her next to him, where she was supposed to be.
His eyes flew open and he flopped onto his back, staring at the ceiling. That was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be sleeping next to him. She was supposed to be sleeping on the couch, which was exactly where she was. What they had between them wasn’t real, so he should be able to do something as simple as fall asleep without her in his arms, dammit.
He’d be leaving in less than a week. He’d probably go back to the apartment over Jasper’s Bar & Grille. Or, screw it, maybe he’d go back to Maine and stay at the Northern Star until he figured out what he wanted to do. Or hop in his truck and drive to New Mexico to check on his sister.
No matter what he did or where he went, there’d be no more Emma for him.
When she sniffled and then shifted for what seemed like the tenth time in two minutes, Sean had had enough. She wasn’t on the couch because she was more comfortable there. She was ther
e because she didn’t think he’d share the bed if there was no sex in it for him. He got up and walked across the bedroom. Then he threw the blanket across the back of the couch and scooped her up, pillow and all, to carry her to the bed.
The look she gave him, all sleepy and questioning, as he crawled in beside her squeezed something inside of him. “I can’t sleep with you tossing and turning on the couch, that’s all.”
Only when she’d snuggled against him and drifted off to sleep did Sean close his eyes. He still didn’t sleep, though, because that wasn’t all. There was also the fact having the rest of his life in front of him like an open road, with no obligations or strings just made him feel empty inside.
He must have slept at some point because her alarm clock startled him awake. Emma was curled up on her side, facing him, and he smiled when she opened her eyes.
“How you feeling this morning?”
“I’d feel better if you get up and shut my alarm off.” She’d plugged it in next to the couch, like she had in the beginning of their non-relationship.
“Now you’re just taking advantage,” he said, but he got up and killed the phone.
He turned back to the bed and froze. She was watching him, her eyes sleepy and her hair tumbled across the pillow. A smile curved her lips and he found himself smiling in response.
God, she was gorgeous, bedhead and ratty T-shirt and all.
“I’m starving,” she said and then she stretched, which made him turn away so he didn’t have to go down to breakfast walking funny.
“Do you want me to bring you up a tray of food?”
“Like room service?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if you were up to going downstairs. Or working.”
“I’m okay, and you have two days to get that deck done. You can have dibs on the bathroom and then I’ll get dressed.”
Cat was flipping the first batch of banana pancakes when Sean hit the kitchen. “Morning, Cat.”
“Good morning. How’s Emma today?”
“Better. She’s, uh…it’s that time,” he said, going with Emma’s terminology.
“Huh. It doesn’t usually affect her much.”
“I think she also realized you’re not going to be here much longer.” And neither would he.
Emma would probably be relieved to have him out from underfoot. She could go back to driving her truck and sleeping on her side of the bed and washing her dishes in the proper order.
“I’m going to miss her, too,” Cat said. “Both of you.”
“I’m going to miss your cooking, that’s for sure,” he said, sitting down in front of the pancakes she set down for him. “You sure we can’t talk you into staying?”
Then he stopped with the fork halfway to his mouth. He had to stop doing that. There was no we.
“I miss Emma when I’m there, but I really enjoy Florida.”
He was on his second pancake when Emma came downstairs, looking a hell of a lot better than she had the night before. She kissed her grandmother’s cheek and picked at a pancake before disappearing into her office to make a phone call.
“What are you going to do today, Cat?” Sean asked when the woman just stood there staring after Emma, concern in her eyes.
“Oh, I’ll probably go into town and see if I can sweet-talk Russell into buying me lunch.”
He wondered how that budding romance was going to turn out, since she was leaving in a few days, but it wasn’t his place to ask. “I should get my boots on. If I’m not ready to leave before her, she might get the truck keys first.”
She touched his shoulder for a moment as she leaned in to take his empty plate, and he felt a pang of…something. Maybe guilt. But also affection and sorrow that she’d be flying out of his life soon and she didn’t know it would be for the last time.
On his way to the foyer, he paused to kiss her cheek. “Say hi to Russell for me.”
“Try not to let Emma drive you crazy today.”
“Fat chance of that,” he said, grinning. Then he went off to get to Emma’s key ring before she got off the phone.
The bell rang as Cat walked into Walker Hardware and she smiled, anticipating the way he’d look up and see her and his face would light up with a warm smile.
He didn’t let her down. “Cat, I was just thinking about you.”
“Good thoughts, I hope.”
“Of course. I was debating on calling you and asking you to lunch, but I wasn’t sure if you’d have plans with Emma since…you’re leaving soon.”
Maybe she was imagining it, but she thought his smile might have dimmed a little when he mentioned her leaving. “They have to work today and then they’re taking tomorrow and Friday off. I came to invite you to lunch, actually.”
She met him at their usual café in town, where she ordered a salad and he told her he’d have the grilled chicken instead of the fried. “It would be a real shame if I went to hell in a handbasket now.”
They talked about the store and the liquidation sale. It wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped because the people in town weren’t too comfortable taking advantage of the bargain prices. “One of my regular customers said she felt as though she was picking at my carcass.”
Cat laughed. “That’s a horrible visual, but I think I understand what she meant by it. It’s nice that people care about how you feel in all this.”
“One of the many reasons I love this town.” He smiled at her and sipped at his water.
She smiled back, though she felt a pang of sorrow deep inside. Russell not only loved the town, but his family was here. His friends. She’d been starting to play with a foolish notion about asking him to come down to Florida. Maybe for a visit or maybe for more.
“Have you figured out what to do about Emma yet?”
Cat sighed. “No. But if I don’t do something, we’re going to part ways with this silliness between us and I don’t want that.”
“You’re still planning to give her the house?”
“Definitely. John and I both wanted her to have it, and that was before she grew up and made it her home.” She took a bite of her salad, at a loss as to what to do.
“You said she got upset at the Fourth of July barbeque when you mentioned giving it to her as a wedding gift. Have you mentioned it again?”
“No. That day I thought she was on the verge of confessing everything and we didn’t want that. We meaning Mary Kowalski and I. We wanted Sean and Emma to have a little more time together.”
He nodded as though it all made perfect sense to him. “But now the time’s running out anyway.”
“Maybe I’ll push her on the subject tomorrow. I need to see a lawyer about it anyway, so I might as well start the process before I go home.”
“And you think she’ll confess?”
“I don’t think she’ll accept the house as a wedding gift knowing it’s a lie. I know she won’t.”
He toyed with the mashed potatoes on his plate, dragging his fork through them in a grid pattern. “And what are you hoping will happen between her and Sean when that happens?”
That was a harder question to answer. “I’m hoping that, when faced with going their separate ways, they’ll both realize they don’t want to do that. And maybe they’ll go on as they are now, only they won’t be pretending.”
“They do seem like a nice couple.”
“They really are good together, though I’m not sure they see it.” She chuckled. “Leave it to my granddaughter to accidentally choose her Mr. Right to be her fake fiancé.”
Chapter Nineteen
Even with her alarm turned off, Emma was up at the crack of dawn. They weren’t working these last three days before Gram flew back to Florida, so she slid out of bed without waking Sean and threw on her boxers and T-shirt.
Not surprisingly, Gram was already up. There were no signs of breakfast yet, but she told Emma she’d brewed a pot of coffee along with making her tea, so Emma poured a cup and sat down at the table.
“I can’t believe we only have three days left,” she said after the first bracing sip.
“I know. And I’ll miss you, honey. You know I will, but I miss being there. My friends and all my activities.”
Emma smiled. “I’m glad, Gram. You know I miss you, too, but it’s great that you have all that in your life.”
“Before I go, I’m going to go into town and talk to a lawyer about giving you the house.”
The little bit of coffee she’d gotten into her stomach did a slow roll. “I told you I want to buy it from you, fair and square. We’ll get a fair market value for it and then you can sell it to me.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s a gift.”
“I don’t feel right about that. And it’ll be good for my business to build credit.”
Gram snorted. “Then you buy a new truck and lease a tractor or something. You don’t buy an old farmhouse. My mind’s made up, Emma.”
Crap. Once she said that, it was over. But there was no way she would let Gram give her the house without knowing the truth. She stared down into her coffee for a minute, and then took a deep breath. They’d almost made it, but it was time.
“It’s all a lie, Gram. All of it. There’s not going to be a wedding.”
There. Now it was done and the entire month had been for nothing. Now her grandmother would be angry and maybe sell the house to a stranger anyway. And Sean would have no reason to stay. She wasn’t sure which hurt more.
“Maybe you should explain yourself.”
“I made up a boyfriend so you’d stop being so nervous about me being alone. Sean’s name just kind of popped out. He was still in the army until a month or so ago. And I met him for the first time four days before you arrived, when I knocked on his door and asked him to pretend to be my fiancé.”
Gram actually chuckled. “That must have been an interesting conversation.”
Emma was confused. The very last reaction she expected from her grandmother was amusement. She’d been hoping and praying it wouldn’t fracture their relationship beyond repair. Laughter wasn’t something she’d anticipated.
Yours To Keep Page 19
