by Noelle Adams
He relaxed back against the sofa and smiled at her, feeling inordinately fond despite the woeful injustice of her earlier claims. “I just want you to know that you can, if you want.”
“I know that, but I don’t want.” She scowled at him until she couldn’t hold the expression any longer and broke into a smile instead.
“I know it makes it awkward for you here,” he murmured. “That everyone knows who you are because of all the stories in the news, that you can’t feel like a normal student.”
She shrugged. “I’m not a normal student. I mean, I just don’t feel like the rest of them. I feel ancient or something.” She sighed and stared down at her ice cream. “I’m the same age or younger as everyone else in my classes, but I still feel…I don’t know.”
He understood exactly what she meant, and he understood why. What she’d lived through in the last months had changed her, and there was no going back from that.
He wasn’t the same either. A lot of his friends were still playing video games until late at night and getting drunk every weekend. He felt miles away from all that now.
He wanted to encourage her, so he said, “Give it a little time. You’ll start to feel more yourself eventually.”
She shook her head and slanted him a different kind of smile. “I feel like myself. Just like I’ve been through a war. Plus, most girls my age aren’t married to such a demanding, unreasonable man who constantly tries to spoil my fun.”
He chuckled. “That’s their loss.”
Her expression changed again, softened. She leaned into him until she was sprawled against his chest. “It certainly is their loss.”
He put his arms around her and held her against him. She felt clingier than normal somehow. “You all right, baby?” he asked, after a few minutes.
“Yeah. I’m good.” Her cheek rested against his chest, which rose and fell with his breathing.
“I mean it, Emily,” he murmured. “It won’t take you long to feel like you fit in at college. It won't matter who you're married to. People always like you…if you let them.”
She snorted against his shirt. “I guess.” She lifted her head and met his eyes. “I know it’ll be fine, Paul. I was just feeling kind of weird and lonely in class today.”
“I know.” He stroked her hair when she leaned her head back on this chest.
They sat together in silence for several minutes, Paul holding her as the voices on the television babbled on incomprehensibly.
After a while, she lifted her head and kissed him on the lips.
“What was that for?” he asked, since it had felt more like a gesture than a sexual advance.
She frowned. “Why do I need a reason to kiss you?”
“You don’t. It just seemed like there was a reason.”
“Just because I love you.”
“That’s a good enough reason for me.” He pulled her into his lap so he could kiss her more deeply.
The kiss was very nice, and his body was getting some definite ideas. So when he tore his lips away, he asked, “Are you still sore?”
“Yes,” she admitted, stroking his neck with her fingers in a way that made him want to howl. “A little. But maybe if you’re gentle, we could…”
“I can be gentle.” He leaned his forehead against hers and tried not to let the building tension in his groin cause him to buck up against her weight.
She paused on her way into another kiss. Her voice broke as she whispered, “I know how gentle you can be.”
He kissed her hungrily and was just getting into it when she suddenly broke away. “Oh! I have a great idea!”
“For sex?” he asked, confused and disoriented as she scrambled off his lap.
“No, this is something else. But it’s a great idea.”
“I thought sex was a great idea.” His body was definitely feeling her loss.
“That can wait for a minute.” She stood up and ran over to a desk on the other side of the room. Her worn jeans emphasized the lush curve of her ass. Her blonde hair was rumpled, and her neckline was askew. And she was completely absorbed in whatever she was looking for in the drawer.
He loved her more than anything in the world.
“Ah ha!” she exclaimed, straightening up and holding a pad of paper and pen victoriously.
“What are we going to do with that?” Try as he might, he couldn’t figure out how paper and pen would be a good accessory for any kind of sex he wanted to engage in.
She ran back over to sit beside him. “We’re going to make a new list. One for both of us. What we want to do. For the rest of our lives.” She beamed at him.
Despite the pulsing of his arousal, he couldn’t help but smile at her fondly.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” she asked, peering at him closely.
“Yes. It’s a good idea.” He let out a breath, trying to will his arousal down. “I thought sex was a good idea too, but…”
Emily laughed and pulled him into a hug, accidentally poking him in the back with the pen. “How about sex first. Then we make a new list for us.”
Paul thought—and told her—that this was an excellent plan.
EPILOGUE
The last time Emily had felt so miserable she’d been sure she was going to die.
Now, she was slammed with a wave of heat, pain, and intensity. She closed her eyes to breathe through it, her hand tightening on the arm rest in the backseat of the chauffeured car. She tried desperately to keep Paul from seeing how horrible it was.
When the wave finally subsided, she peeked out through her lashes.
Paul was glaring at her.
He looked stunningly handsome in his tailored tux, with the bow tie slightly loosened from where he must have run a restless hand along his collar. His face was a little pale though, and his gray eyes were narrowed over what she knew was intense anxiety.
“I’m fine,” she gritted out, partly because she was annoyed by his silent reproach and partly because she wanted to ease his worry.
“You should have told me,” he said, not for the first time that evening. His voice was slightly thick.
Emily fidgeted with her emerald necklace—the one Paul had given her on their wedding day six years ago. She wore an evening gown of silvery silk that draped flatteringly over her curves, but she wasn’t comfortable in it at the moment. She really wanted to get it off. “If I’d told you earlier, then we wouldn’t have gone to the banquet. And there was no way I was going to miss a banquet in my husband’s honor. It’s not every day your husband is appointed CEO of a company before he’s even thirty.” She stuck out her chin, so he would know she was serious.
“The damned banquet wasn’t that big a deal, and it certainly wasn’t worth—” He broke off his words when Emily was hit by another wave of heat and pain. He reached over and took her hand, letting her cling desperately to his as she tried to breathe.
The chauffeur was driving much faster than usual, since Paul had emphasized how important it was that they reach the hospital as soon as possible. Emily tried not to look out the window at the way they were weaving through traffic, since she was afraid it would make her feel nauseous.
She already felt bad enough.
When she was able to speak again, she gasped, “How long did that one last?”
“Sixty-five seconds,” Paul replied. She hadn’t noticed him looking at his watch, but he must have been doing so. “And they’re less than three minutes apart. We should have been at the hospital at least an hour ago.”
“I didn’t want to go then. I wanted to finish your banquet.”
“Who cares about the silly banquet?” Paul grumbled, gently brushing some stray pieces of hair away from her damp face. She’d put it in a French twist earlier than evening, but her elegant hairdo was starting to fall down now.
“I do,” she said, shifting uncomfortably in the backseat of the limo. “I’m so proud of you.” She suddenly felt ridiculously emotional and was afraid she might cry.
It was absolutely horrible, but it wasn’t like what she’d suffered six years ago. The sensations now were full, heavy, with a knowable pattern, rather than the empty, endless agony of being burned alive from a fever.
And she wasn’t going to die at the end of this.
When she could speak again, she turned to Paul and asked weakly, “Can you help me get my jewelry off? It's bothering me.”
Without comment, Paul gently helped her take off her necklace, the emerald earrings he’d bought her shortly after their marriage, and the bracelet he’d given her on her eighteenth birthday.
She held her heavily rounded belly and prayed she hadn’t waited too long to tell Paul she was in labor. She’d felt the contractions begin that afternoon, but she hadn’t said anything, thinking maybe they were Braxton-Hicks. When it was time to get ready for the banquet, she was pretty sure she was in labor for real, but the contractions weren’t very painful, and they were still fairly far apart. She'd been determined not to get to the hospital too early, since she didn't want to stay there for hours or be told it was too soon and that she needed to go back home.
The contractions intensified dramatically during the banquet, however, and she’d had a hard time disguising them during the last half-hour when Paul was giving his speech.
She’d seen him watching her, even as he was standing at the podium in front of a huge ballroom full of guests, and she wasn’t surprised when the first thing he’d done afterwards was put his hand on her forehead to check for fever.
That was when she’d told him they needed to go to the hospital since she was going into labor two weeks early.
“I thought first babies were supposed to come late rather than early,” she muttered, trying to relax and prepare for the next contraction, which she knew would come at any moment.
“We always did defy expectations,” Paul said, smiling at her with a tender look she knew he only gave to her.
She returned the look, but only for a few seconds, since another contraction hit just then. When it was over, Emily was uncomfortably aware that either her water had broken or she’d just peed all over herself. All over the backseat of the fancy car.
She gave a little sob. “Maybe I waited too long. I’m sorry.”
“We’re almost there, baby,” Paul murmured. “Just hold on.”
They were almost there. When they arrived at the hospital, they discovered she was well into the transition phase and dilated almost nine centimeters.
Less than an hour later, she gave birth to their son.
***
“I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you,” Emily said, feeling weak and kind of giddy. “I should have told you earlier.”
Paul was sitting next to her bed in the quiet hospital room. He was still wearing the trousers and dress shirt from his tux, but his collar was hanging open and he’d pushed up the sleeves to the elbow.
She could see that he’d been wearing the cufflinks she’d given him on their wedding day—the Spanish Damoscene cufflinks with the horse and rider in black and gold. The sight, even now, gave her a warm, silly feeling of possession. Like they branded Paul as hers.
He shook his head. “Do you really think I care about that now?” His eyes strayed to the door of the room, through which their baby had disappeared a little while ago for a short trip to the nursery.
“I thought the labor would last a lot longer,” she explained. “That's what everyone had told me. I didn’t expect everything to happen so quickly.”
“Emily,” Paul said, his eyes narrowing in the way they did when he was exerting authority, “Stop stressing about it.”
“Okay.” She smiled at him fatuously. “I love you.”
Paul gave a huff of amusement, but his eyes were soft as he said, “I love you too.”
“Can you go find him and bring him back?” she asked, her eyes focused on the door to the room as well. She’d held their baby for almost an hour and even started to breastfeed him, but it still didn’t seem fair that they’d taken him away to the nursery for exams so soon after she’d gotten him.
Paul stood up. She had a feeling he wanted their baby back too. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She had to wait less than ten minutes before Paul returned to the room with their son.
“Everything’s good,” he said, reaching out to put the baby in Emily’s arms, “Jonathan’s perfectly healthy.”
Emily felt like an absolute sap, but she didn’t even care at the moment. She cooed over Jonathan for a long time, trying to resist the impulse to wake him up so she could see his pretty eyes.
He was her father’s namesake, and Emily wished little Jonathan could have known his grandfather. His other grandfather was still in prison and was likely to remain there the rest of his life.
Paul went to visit him regularly now. They weren’t close, but they were almost like family.
Prompted by that thought, she looked over at Paul. He was staring down at Jonathan with a look she’d never seen on his face before—a mingling of joy, bewilderment, and awe.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Paul nodded. It took him a minute to get the words said, but he finally managed. “You were my miracle. I didn’t think I would get two.”
Emily insisted later that the only reason she cried was because she was so exhausted after labor and delivery. If Paul believed otherwise, he didn't try to contradict her.
When she’d wiped the tears away, she gave Paul a wry look and asked, “Do you have our list?”
Always prepared, Paul went to retrieve a folded piece of paper on which were written twenty items, only three of which were crossed off.
He spread out the paper in front of her and put a pen down next to it. Then he took Jonathan out of her arms and held the baby so she could sit up and grip the pen.
She grinned at Paul, who smiled back, looking incongruously natural with a baby in his arms.
And, together, they crossed off another item from their list.
DELETED SCENES
The following scenes are from an early draft of Chapter One. I’d originally started the book earlier than the marriage proposal, but the scenes ended up being too disorienting and so I moved the information in them into exposition in the marriage proposal scene. But I still liked the scenes, and I thought some of you might be interested in reading them—as they flesh out some of the earlier encounters between Emily and Paul.
Some of the information and dialogue I moved into later scenes, so it may sound familiar.
When Emily King saw Paul open the front door of Joe’s Bakery, she straightened up from where she’d been leaning on the counter and went to pour out his large cup of dark roast.
He’d stopped in the doorway, talking over his shoulder to someone on the street. He was grinning when he turned back into the shop—the heart-stopping smile that caused even Emily’s cynical heart to flutter just a little—but his expression sobered as he scanned the shop, eyeing each customer in turn.
If their South Philadelphia neighborhood could be said to have royalty, Paul Marino was it.
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.
Emily had his regular coffee order ready when he approached the counter.
“Is that uniform out there all the protection you have?” Paul’s steel gray eyes narrowed as he looked out the glass storefront to the white car with distinct blue police markings parked on the curb.
Even before he’d gone to New England for college, Paul hadn’t looked or sounded like he was from South Philly—yet another reason he was set apart from the rest of them.
“Hello to you too.” Emily accepted t
he bills he’d handed her and dropped the change into the tip jar. She’d been working at Joe’s part-time for almost two years, so she knew the routine for all the regulars., Since she’d graduated from high school a few weeks ago, she’d started working full-time, trying to save up enough money for living expenses at college in the fall.
He ignored her sarcasm, still frowning out at the street. “You’re a witness in a federal trial and that’s all the protection they give you? Anyone could just walk in here and—”
“Cut my throat as I make coffee? Garrote me in front of the doughnut-eating public?”
Paul had tensed when he turned back to her, holding her eyes in that hypnotizing way he had. “How can you not take it seriously?”
“Your dad isn’t going to kill me.”
“How the hell do you know what he’ll do? He’s dangerous.”
She shrugged, trying to hide the way her stomach churned with the low-grade anxiety she’d suffered for the last five months.
Her father had worked for decades as a security guard in a research facility owned by Vincent Marino. Emily used to stop by to visit and bring him snacks when he worked the nightshift. One night, she’d gotten nosy and had overheard a conversation she shouldn’t have heard, making herself a target of Marino.
Not a good position to be in.
Marino was born into a long-standing organized crime family, but he’d used his ambition and business acumen to catapult his family’s crime business to the international level, setting up well-hidden trafficking networks in drugs, arms, women—anything that could be sold for a high profit margin. He posed himself as a corporate mogul now, but everyone in the neighborhood knew he was a criminal. The feds knew it too, which was why they’d jumped on the testimony Emily offered them.
Paul was Vincent Marino’s only child.
“What about Witness Protection?” Paul asked. He had dark hair—now ruffled from the wind outside—with classic, well-chiseled features and a lean, athletic body.
She’d had the biggest crush on him when she was thirteen years old and he’d been back from college for the summer to visit his mother. All the girls in the neighborhood had been crazy about Paul with his slick cars, sexy rebelliousness, and obsession with extreme sports.
