“But why?” It seemed like he genuinely wanted to know.
She felt a little shaky, but she smiled at him, determined not to let him see that she wasn’t as confident and matter-of-fact as she pretended. “Just to do it. So I can cross it off my list.”
He cleared his throat. “So it’s not…it’s not me. You’re not—”
“Nursing some sort of secret passion for you?” Emily finished for him, embarrassed that he’d even had that thought and determined to eliminate the possibility from his mind completely. “Of course not. You just happen to be available.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “How flattering.”
“I like you. I mean, of course, I like you, Paul. You’re a decent guy, and you’re obviously a great catch in terms of what most women are looking for in a husband. But none of that matters to me at this point. It’s not about the money at all. I’ll sign a pre-nup or whatever you want. I don’t have anyone to leave money to anyway, and I definitely wouldn’t expect anything from you financially.”
“I know that. I never thought that’s what this is about.” He released a long breath. “You’re only seventeen, Emily.”
“What’s your point?”
“There are laws about marriageable age. In most states, it’s eighteen.”
“Yeah, I thought about that. I even looked it up on the internet. You can get married younger with parental consent, so I figured you could get your lawyer on it, since I don’t have any parents to give consent. I’ll be eighteen next month, and I’m officially emancipated anyway, so maybe that would help sway a judge.”
Paul tightened his lips as he thought. “We could probably get a license with judicial consent, given your situation.”
Emily straightened up. “So you’ll do it?”
“I don’t know. It’s…it feels wrong.”
“It’s not wrong. You wouldn’t be taking advantage of me. In fact, it would be more that I’m taking advantage of you. I really do want to cross this off my list. I know it’s a lot to ask, but it would just be for a couple of months. Unless, maybe, you’re already seeing someone…”
She hadn’t heard about his having a girlfriend, but it certainly wasn’t impossible.
“I’m not seeing anyone right now, but—”
“I know you don’t want to live like a monk for three months or anything.” She stared emphatically at her hands, unable to meet Paul’s eyes. “I’d understand if you need to…to see someone else, as long as….” She trailed off, unable to complete the sentence.
“Emily,” he began, “I wouldn—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupted, wanting to get through with the whole cringe-worthy topic. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. It’s just about being married for me. I wouldn’t expect you to act like a husband.”
“Emily,” Paul said again, reaching out and putting one hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot in the last couple months, and I’m not sure you’re thinking clearly.”
“Don’t treat me like a child or an idiot. I am thinking clearly. I only have a few months to live, and I want to get through my list.” She picked the list up from the desk, where Paul had placed it. She stared down at the page, hating herself when her eyes blurred over with tears.
She blinked them back and was relieved when her voice didn’t waver. “If you do this for me, and then maybe help me do a few other things on my list—they’re all straightforward like going skydiving and seeing the Pyramids—then I’ll still testify against your father at trial and you can have the satisfaction of helping a dying girl get her last wish.”
Paul sat back in his chair, covering his mouth with his hand and then slowly rubbing his chin. He must have shaved that morning, but his bristles still made a faint scratching sound. He was looking vaguely in her direction, but she knew he wasn’t seeing her.
“Paul, please,” she said, her voice wobbling for the first time. “My aunt was the only family I had left, and now I’ve lost her too. I don’t really have…anything. This list is all I have left.”
It was true. There was a shadow lurking in her mind, threatening to swallow her up at any moment. She wasn’t going to give into it, though, not while there was some way to control the last days of her life.
“Okay.”
“Really?” she asked, brushing a couple of stray tears away. “You’ll do it?”
He nodded and smiled back at her, reaching over to catch her last tear with his thumb and flick it away from her cheek. “I still think it’s not the sanest of plans, and I’ll most likely regret it. But I’ll do it.”
Acting on impulse, she threw herself forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” she said into his shoulder.
Paul seemed a little stiff, like he wasn’t used to getting hugs, but he squeezed her lightly with one arm before he pulled away. “You’re welcome.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“If you’re still able and willing to testify, that’s all I need.”
“So we can get married right away? As soon as possible?”
Paul stood up from his desk. “I’ll start working on it. It’s going to take a little time for my lawyer to get judicial consent for the license, but I’ll see if we can rush it.”
For the last several months, it had felt like Emily’s life—her entire existence—was falling apart, bit by bit.
There wasn’t anything left to fall apart.
In some ways, it was freeing.
Emily’s world wasn’t big, frightening, and confusing anymore. It had narrowed down to a series of tasks she could count on her fingers and toes.
Fourteen items on a sheet of paper. Three months.
One list.
***
Emily could tell her conversation with Paul was about to veer off in an annoying direction.
He’d been nothing but kind and helpful all day, after her proposal that morning—far more than she would have expected from a guy she’d always considered spoiled and entitled.
At the moment, they were in the backseat of a chauffeured car, which was the vehicle Paul had been using since he’d started going around with bodyguards, and they were on their way back from Baltimore.
Once they got into Philadelphia, they had to take a detour to pick up Emily’s last paycheck from the coffee shop where she’d worked for the last two years.
Paul obviously thought it was stupid for her to waste her time picking up the paycheck, since her needs for the next three months wouldn’t even put a dent in the generous trust fund set up for him by his grandfather. But he hadn’t objected.
Evidently, you didn’t tell a dying girl she was being stupid.
His questions now were starting to move in a certain direction, however. A direction Emily didn’t like.
“Are you sure you don’t want to call up your stepmom—”
“Former stepmom,” Emily corrected, trying her best not to sneer.
Paul had agreed to do this incredible favor for her, so she really shouldn’t snap his head off—even though she could tell he was about to be obnoxious.
His lips tightened briefly, but he showed no other reaction to her curtness. “Former stepmom. I know you used to be close to your stepsister. What was her name?”
“Stacie. But I haven’t talked to her since her mom walked out on my dad. That’s been years.”
She would have to talk to Stacie eventually if she wanted to complete her list, but the thought of it hurt too much, so she couldn’t even think about it yet.
“Still,” Paul said, his dark eyebrows pulling together in a way that made two little vertical lines on his forehead, “If they’re as close as you have to family—”
“They’re not family,” she broke in, interrupting him for about the hundredth time that day. “I don’t have any family.”
He shifted in the plush seat and looked slightly tense. “I know. But it seems like you should be around people you know and love right now.”
>
She suddenly realized she’d never seen him look awkward before the last few days. All her life, she’d only known him as confident to the point of arrogance.
Since he’d been five years old, locals had called him Prince Paul, although always out of his hearing. He despised the appellation and had been in the habit of beating up boys in school who were foolish enough to use the nickname to his face.
She’d had the biggest crush on him when she was thirteen and he’d been back from college for the summer to visit his mother. All the girls in the neighborhood had been crazy about him with his slick cars, sexy rebelliousness, and obsession with extreme sports.
Emily wasn’t feeling particularly charmed at the moment. “And I’m telling you I don’t want to. I don’t want to live in the neighborhood at your mom’s old house. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who know me—all hanging around watching me dwindle away. I told you before. I want to live, not wait around to die.”
She wished she hadn’t said so much, after she’d fallen silent. She wasn’t the kind of person who spilled her guts, and she didn’t know why she’d felt the urge now.
“I guess I can understand that,” Paul said, glancing away, out the window.
“How nice for you—to be so understanding.” She’d intended to sound sarcastic but not quite so bitter. He’d been really great to her, after all. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to help. I’m not normally this grouchy.”
To her surprise, his lips tightened again, but this time with an entirely different emotion.
She stared at him. “What? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he managed to say with impressive sobriety, since he was obviously suppressing amusement.
“What are you laughing at? I’m really not a grouchy person. You think I’m grouchy?” She wracked her mind, trying to think of what she could have done in the past to give him that impression.
He smiled—the heart-stopping grin that made female hearts flutter.
Even Emily’s. Just a little.
“No, you’re not grouchy. In fact, I always wondered how you managed to smile so much, when you didn’t…didn’t always have an easy time of it.” His gray eyes rested on her with something akin to appreciation.
She knew it wasn’t emotional connection. More like she was a novelty that he found rather intriguing.
“But you’ve got to admit,” he continued with that same suppressed smile in his eyes. “You’ve always been kind of prickly with me.”
“I have not,” she objected automatically.
He arched his eyebrows in an ironic challenge. “A few years ago, I went into your dad’s shop to buy a drink, and you gave me a long, heated lecture on cutting in line.”
“Well, you did cut in line!”
“I did not.” He was laughing for real now. “My friends never let me hear the end of it—getting told off by a girl.”
She tried to resist, but her sense of humor was tickled. She let out a rippling laugh. “You deserved it.”
“I promise you I didn’t. I was the next person in line. You just didn’t like me, for some reason.”
She sobered, knowing he was right.
Paul stopped laughing too. “We didn’t know each other well because of the age difference. But I was part of the neighborhood too, and I don’t think I was ever rude to you or your dad. Why didn’t you like me?”
She shrugged. Told him the truth. “All the girls were crazy about you. I didn’t want anyone to think I was one of them.”
For some reason, she’d always been too irrationally proud to let anyone know the boys she’d liked, the guys she’d had crushes on, the men she was attracted to.
As if admitting it would strip her defenses.
“I don’t think anyone would be mistaken on that front.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his wry tone.
Then his expression changed, and she knew he was going to return to the obnoxious topic, as if he’d sensed her softening and was taking advantage of it. “But, seriously, Emily, I’m not sure it’s really healthy for you to isolate yourself from—”
“Oh, just shut up.” She hated how young she sounded even as she said the words. She straightened up and managed to say a bit more lucidly, “You’re on this vendetta against your dad, so I’m not sure you can lecture me about emotional health.”
“It’s not a vendetta.”
“Isn’t it? Aren’t you doing everything you can to get him sent away to prison for life?”
“But not for retribution.”
She raised her eyebrows. “For justice?”
“Why do you sound so dubious?” He looked almost exasperated, as if he’d forgotten he was supposed to treat her with kid gloves.
“You’ve never struck me as someone who would move heaven and earth for some sort of high-blown ideal.”
“Thanks a lot.”
He wasn’t meeting her eyes. He was looking out the car widow past her head, but she suddenly wondered if she’d offended him.
“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” she explained. “But he’s your dad, and a belief in justice isn’t really enough to…to do what you’re doing.”
“Betray him, you mean?”
She swallowed and felt her whole body flush at his frigid tone. About half of their community thought that was exactly what he was doing, and the other half believed Paul was finally stepping up and being a man.
Emily knew it was more complex than either of those things. “I didn’t mean that. I think you’re doing the right thing. But it’s got to be hard—since he’s your dad.”
“Our relationship was never anything like yours with your father.”
“I know.”
“He was never really a father to me.”
“I know.”
Neither said anything for a full minute.
Then Paul added, as if as an afterthought, “I owe it to my mom.”
“Owe what?” Even two months ago, she never would have had the boldness to question Paul Marino so directly. He’d always been a prince—too distant to really touch.
But nothing felt the same now. Not even Paul.
“I owe it to her to make something of my life. To do something…something worthwhile.”
Emily suddenly understood Paul in a way she hadn’t before.
His mother’s death last year had been a kind of turning point for him. He wasn’t in the gossip columns for partying or wild stunts nearly as much as he used to be. He’d gone to the U.S. attorney voluntarily several months ago, after Emily had overheard the conversation, and offered to add his testimony to the case. She hadn’t really thought about it much, since so much had happened to her in the meantime, but he must be trying to turn over a new leaf.
“Oh. I thought it was about winning. Beating him.”
“That too.”
His tone was dry, but she was sure he was speaking the truth.
Everyone had something that was most important to them. Getting justice for his father—for his mother’s sake—was the most important thing to Paul.
Finishing her list—living before she died—was the most important thing to Emily.
***
“Are you crazy?” Chris demanded. “You’ve seriously got to be crazy.”
Chris Mason had been a friend of hers since they’d both been four, and for a while she’d thought she was in love with him, before she’d realized that crush was going nowhere.
She did love him as a friend, but she didn’t want to talk to him right now.
She gave the counter an angry swipe with her rag. When she’d stopped by to pick up her paycheck, Jill had gotten a call about an emergency with her kids, so Emily agreed to watch the shop for an hour. “I’m not crazy,” she gritted out. “This is what I want to do, and he’s helping me.”
“But you’re just seventeen.”
“I’ll be eighteen in four weeks. I’m emancipated. I’ve graduated from high school. I know what I’m doing.
There’s no reason why I shouldn’t get married if I want to.”
“But I never thought you had fairytale dreams like that.”
She stiffened. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing bad. It’s just kind of a romantic thing to do—getting married like this. I didn’t think you were like that.”
She used to be like that. When she was a little girl. She’d had the same kind of daydreams as everyone else. She’d just quickly learned they never came true.
“I’m not romantic. This isn’t about chasing a fairytale. You know me better than that.”
“Yeah. But…”
“I’m dying. I know. That’s why I want to do this before it’s too late.”
“But why Paul?”
“Who else?”
That stumped Chris. He didn’t respond. Just looked at her in concern.
She sighed and twisted the rag in both hands. “There’s no one else, Chris. I know it’s kind of crazy, but it’s the first thing on my list. And I really want to do everything before I die.”
His face contorted briefly, and she suddenly realized this was hurting him.
With a lump in her throat, she pulled him into a hug. “I know this whole thing is terrible, but it’s either sit around here and wait to die. Or do this. I want to do this.”
Chris hugged her back, but he was frowning when he pulled away. “I get it. I really do. But do you really think you can trust Paul?”
“Why shouldn’t I? He’s always been kind of irresponsible, but he seems to be pulling it together lately.”
“Well, just be careful around him.”
“He’s not like his father. You know that. He hates him. He doesn’t want anything to do with him.”
The incident that had confirmed Paul as a prince in their neighborhood was when, during the vicious divorce battle between his mother and father, he’d sided entirely with his mother. He never accepted a dime from his father, not since he was thirteen years old.
“Yeah. I know. But you know how he is with girls. He might try to…try to…” Chris cleared his throat, adorably awkward at the topic. “Get in your pants,” he concluded lamely.
Listed: Volume I Page 2
