The Enchantment of Emma Fletcher

by L. D. Crichton

  If I were a good boyfriend, I’d cover her with a blanket, but I’m selfish and I want to look at her. Admire her.

  To see her lying here in front of me causes pieces inside of me to stir. There is something inherently innocent about Emma. Something that makes me want to protect that innocence with everything I have.

  I sit on the edge of the bed. Her chest rises and falls almost in sync with the rain outside the window and the answer hits me like a lightning strike.

  I reach into my pocket for my phone and dial Mateo’s number.

  “I cannot adequately explain how much this needs to be important,” he says instead of hello. “I was sleeping and I’m not alone, amigo.”

  “Good for you,” I reply, sure to keep my voice low. “Neither am I. I need your help.”

  “With what?

  “With Emma. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, you can start by taking her clothes off, then you remove yours . . .”

  “Shut up,” I tell him. “I’m serious.”

  Mat yawns. “Fine. What?”

  “I need you to teach Emma how to take down a guy at least your size.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because. The only way I can save her is to teach her how to save herself.”

  Emma

  No nightmares come. It’s as if every bad memory, every haunting thought, has been pushed out of my mind to make room for the new memories of him and me. I’m no longer confined—a prisoner of what-might-have-beens, scared of my own shadow.

  I wake up without my clothes as he enters the room with a take-out tray of coffee and a paper bag in hand. I use the sheet as a shield to hide myself, a moot point given that I’ve exposed myself to him in more ways than one.

  A smile plays on his lips when he realizes I’m awake. “I had this crazy dream last night where this stunning brunette who was light-years out of my league was naked in my bed.”

  I playfully roll my eyes. “Dreams can come true when you least expect it.” I should know. My dream is standing in front of me, delivering coffee.

  He makes his way to the bed, sitting down beside me before he extends the hand with the take-out tray to offer me one. I take it and he digs into the brown bag to hand me a croissant.

  “They had Danishes and doughnuts, but I wasn’t sure you would like sugar for breakfast, even with your love of fairground foods.”

  “This is perfect,” I say, taking the pastry from him. “I couldn’t think of a better start to the day.”

  A devilish grin forms across his face. “Oh, I can think of far better ways to start the morning, but it’s almost nine and my dad will have a conniption if I don’t make it to work soon.”

  “Oh my God.” I set my coffee down on the bedside table and run through all the various ways I can stand up without flashing him. My perfect sleep has made him late. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Because you’re beautiful when you sleep.”

  “Is your father going to be angry?”

  Tristan shakes his head. He brings my hand to his lips and kisses the top of it. “I’ve never seen my dad so much as raise his voice. Stop worrying so much, Peaches. Sit back and enjoy your coffee and croissant while I enjoy the idea that you’re underneath a flimsy sheet with nothing on.”

  I finish the food and stand, carefully draping the sheet across my body. Tristan stands too. This close to him, I realize we may be almost the same height, but he squares his shoulders more than I do and holds his head higher, and his workouts with Mateo obviously do him some good because he’s a lot broader than me. I love this about him, having previously never been with a guy who had enough physical stature to make me feel protected.

  “Let me start a shower for you,” he says. “The handle is old and sticks sometimes.”

  Seriously? Coffee and breakfast in bed and now he’s going to start a shower for me? I nod, debating on whether or not I should ask him to join me. “Yes, please.”

  He stalks off, leaving me alone in his bedroom and giving me the opportunity to readjust my sheet coverage once more.

  The shower temperature is spot-on and as I take it all in, I wish this were my life. Banished or not to Stonefall, I could get used to this, to him, to lazy mornings spent with each other.

  Finishing up, I towel-dry my hair, securing it in a topknot, and change into the clothes I wore the night before. I’m willing to suffer the indignity brought on by wearing something twice, a sure sign I hadn’t been home, until Tristan offers to swing by my place so I can change. I do and by the time I get back in the car, it’s nearly ten thirty in the morning and I’m feeling pretty guilty about the delay.

  When he passes the turn to the garage, I crane my neck.

  “The turn,” I say, “you drove right past it.”

  “You’re not workin’ today.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Forced vacation.”

  “I don’t want a vacation.”

  “I wouldn’t use those words so freely if I were you,” he says. “It’s more like work than it is an actual holiday.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not me,” he says. “You have an appointment.”

  “No, I don’t.” I turn in the seat, my stomach clenching with dread. I don’t do surprises. “I can’t miss work.”

  “Don’t worry—I cleared it with the old man.”

  “Cleared what?”

  Tristan’s eyes shift to his right so he can see me. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Then don’t worry about it.”

  Despite his instructions, I do worry about it until Tristan pulls up to Mateo’s gym and cuts the engine.

  Wordlessly, he exits the truck and I follow, unsure of what he’s just signed me up for.

  Tristan

  This morning when I first woke up, I stared at Emma asleep in my bed. She was intoxicating. Each breath she took, I found myself holding mine as if my existence depended on her own.

  This shit was crazy fast, too fast maybe, but she did something to me. Emma Fletcher wormed her way into my heart, injecting it with a warmth I hadn’t felt in what seemed like forever. Since before everything with Katie unraveled.

  This only confirmed my thoughts about needing to do this. Needing to teach her to defend herself so she can truly break free from the chains of her past.

  As usual, Mat has the music cranked so loud I can feel my eardrums vibrate. I pull out a twenty from my pocket, along with the truck keys, and lean over, practically yelling in Emma’s ear.

  “Hey, I forgot to stop for coffee. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “We just had coffee.”

  “Mateo hasn’t. We should have brought him one. I wasn’t thinking. You mess with my head. I was too busy thinking about you, naked. He likes black coffee, like you.”

  She grins, snatches the money and keys from my hand, and spins on her heel to head out the door.

  I shout after her, “Thanks, Peaches.”

  Mateo is pummeling a punching bag when I approach. He sees me and reaches two gloved hands up to stop the bag from swinging.

  I walk right past him to the stereo and turn the volume dial down several notches so I can hear my thoughts and his words.

  “Hola, brother,” Mat says.

  “Hey. Emma went to get coffee.”

  Mateo swipes at his brow with his forearm. He ditches the boxing gloves and starts removing the tape from his hands with his teeth. “What’s going on?”

  “First things first,” I say. “Last night you said you weren’t alone.”

  His grin takes up the entire bottom half of his face.

  “Sí. That’s ’cause I wasn’t.”

  “Marley?”

  He nods.

  “
Right on. So, is she your girl now?”

  “Well,” he says, “we didn’t really clarify that in words but it’s a solid bet. Enough about me. Tell me about your cryptic balls a.m. phone call.”

  I sigh, not sure of how much is too much when I tell a secret that doesn’t belong to me. “Without getting into it, she was attacked. I want her to learn how to defend herself.”

  His eyebrows pinch together. “Attacked? You asked me to teach her to take down a guy my size.”

  “I did.”

  “She was attacked by some douchebag guy?”

  I nod and brace myself for his storm. I don’t think Mateo hates anything more than a man who doesn’t treat a woman with the utmost respect. Once they cross over that line into abusive assholes, or downright criminals, they’d best stay away from him. He’s both lethal and unforgiving.

  His features darken, his smile vanishes, and he’s immediately inflated with that irrational, testosterone-fueled desire to make things right in the world. “What the fuck?”

  I level with him. “Look. I can’t give you the gory details; it would be an invasion of her privacy. But I need you to make her into a scrapper. She needs to be able to hold her own.”

  Mateo nods and thank God, he doesn’t press for more, willing to accept my explanation as it stands. One of the things I admire most about him is his sixth sense about when to leave well enough alone.

  Emma returns about five minutes later, a large coffee in hand for Mat. He takes it gratefully before removing the lid to drink it. I turn to face Emma.

  “I’m going to go to work. I’ll pick you up this afternoon, okay? Mateo is going to show you some cool stuff—you know, so you can take a prick down.”

  She frowns. “I don’t understand.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and lean forward to whisper, “You have to understand, Emma. After what you told me, I need you to do this. Please.”

  Her body goes rigid.

  “Please,” I say quietly.

  “I can’t fight. And besides—I need to work. I need the money.”

  “You can do anything, Emma. And as of this morning you’re on salary. Work can wait. My dad is fine with it. I promise.”

  She pulls away, her gaze falling on Mateo and then back to me. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “It’s a great idea, querida. A fan-fucking-tastic idea. Now let the man go so we can get down to business.”

  “Let me leave,” I whisper to her, “but never let me go.”

  Mateo grimaces. “I heard that and for the record, I think I threw up a little in my mouth.”

  I kiss Emma on the forehead before spinning around and flipping Mateo the bird, then I walk out the door. Hopefully when I come back, Emma will feel like she’s in control of her own fate.

  Emma

  What was he thinking? Me, fight? I’m not a fighter! By nature, when faced with a compromising or horrible situation, I freeze. I am the epitome of a deer-caught-in-headlights sort of person.

  I look at Mateo. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I beg to differ. This is the smartest idea Tristan has ever had.”

  Oh God! How much does Mateo know? “What did he tell you?”

  “He told me nothing, sweetheart. Just that I need to teach you to take me down.”

  I size Mateo up. From a distance, there is no doubt about it—he’s a big guy—but up close, he’s the size of a skyscraper.

  “I don’t think it’ll work.”

  “It’ll work,” he says.

  “I have no hand-eye coordination.”

  “It’ll come,” he replies.

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to take you down.”

  He crosses his arms over his chest and narrows his gaze. “You done with the excuses?”

  I root around inside my head for something, anything, that will provide a valid argument. I foresee massive doses of humiliation and a lot of falling on my ass.

  Mateo arches his brow skyward and I sweep my gaze to my feet before looking at him again. “I’m wearing jeans.”

  “No problem. This is a gym. We have swag.” He holds up his pointer finger, indicating that I should wait where I am while he disappears through a door. When he returns with a pair of sweatpants and a shirt, both emblazoned with the words K.O. Elite Training, he points to the other side of the gym. “Ladies’ room is right there. Go put these on and get ready to rumble.”

  “Thanks,” I say, taking the clothes from him, “but I don’t rumble.”

  As I head to the restroom, Mateo’s voice hollers behind me, “You do now.”

  I have to cinch the waist of the sweatpants so tight, I’m not sure I can breathe. They have to be a men’s large, maybe extra large, and I am swimming in them. By contrast, the shirt is skintight.

  When I emerge, Mateo is standing in the boxing ring without any kind of protective gear.

  I point to his gloves, discarded on a bench against the wall of the gym. “Don’t we need gloves?”

  He shakes his head back and forth. “No. I’m not teaching you to box, I’m teaching you to take control.”

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. “Okay.”

  “You ready?”

  I pull down one of the ropes and step through it. “As I’ll ever be, I guess.”

  “Some ground rules first, yes?”

  I nod.

  “If at any point I’m freaking you out, you say the word and I will stop everything. No questions asked, yes?”

  “Okay.”

  “Also, you can hit me all you want, but try not to mess up my face. I think Marley likes it this way,” he says with a grin.

  “What? Marley? Did you?” I’m completely derailed from my original objective. God, I hope they solidified this thing between them.

  “Ah, I will never kiss and tell,” he says. “I will never disrespect her in that way.”

  “Shut up,” I say, jokingly. “I might fall in love with you if you keep talking like that.”

  “Tristan would have my head on a silver platter—besides, he’d never talk about you that way either.”

  “Marley is going to blab it all to me later anyway.”

  “If she wants to do that, it is completely within her power to do so,” he says. “Enough dancing around the real reason you’re here.”

  My heart wants to rip through my rib cage.

  I don’t like the thought that Mateo may have an idea of what happened to me, but he does. He must. And now he’s with Marley. I look at him, issuing a very real plea. “Marley doesn’t know,” I say as loud as I can.

  “Doesn’t know about what?”

  “She doesn’t know the reason I am here.”

  He nods. “You have my word she will never hear it from my mouth. It’s not my story. It’s part of yours.” He shrugs. “It’s the part of yours that is going to end with the princess being able to kick some major ass.”

  Despite my nervousness, I smile.

  Mateo steps forward tentatively and then he strikes. Fast. Before I even realize what’s happening, his hand is gripping my wrist. Instinctively I turn my body away and he only tightens his grasp.

  “Make me let go,” he orders.

  I shake my head. “I can’t.”

  “You can. Turn your wrist so your hand is on the inside of my forearm, then grab it and twist.”

  I do as he says and to my surprise, it forces him to let go.

  “Good. Now show me how to punch.”

  I hit him.

  He laughs. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

  “No,” I say.

  “No.”

  Mateo takes my hand and makes a fist, making sure my thumb is on the outside. “First you line up your target. On a man,” he says, “a few spots are gonna hurt the fucker more
than others. The groin, obviously, but also the stomach.” He puts my fist to his stomach. I’m pretty sure Marley must have died if she’s touched it. Mateo moves my hand up farther. “The solar plexus; and this may come as a surprise, but if you can deliver a solid uppercut to his chin, it’s gonna send him stumbling back.”

  “An uppercut?”

  Mat takes my hand and makes a motion that reminds me of pitching an underhanded baseball until it connects with his chin. “Give him one of these. When he falls back,” he demonstrates with his body, “get him in the solar plexus, which might make him hunch over. If he does,” again, he slumps his own body forward to give me the most realistic lesson, “you knee him in the face and you run. Think you can do that?”

  I nod, even though I’m not sure.

  “Good,” Mateo says. “We’re going to practice that a thousand more times today until you can do it the same way you run, without thinking. Fair enough?”

  I nod.

  He stops and looks at me. “Are you sure?”

  I nod.

  “Why do I feel there’s something you’re not sayin’?”

  “It’s nothing.” I offer a fake smile. “Really.”

  “Okay,” he says, grabbing my wrist again. “So show me.”

  I must have given Mateo a thousand punches to his chin and chest before pretending to knee him in the face. It is like aerobics, and by the time Tristan returns with tacos, I am in a full-out sweat.

  “You look hot,” he tells me.

  I don’t feel hot. I feel like I need another shower.

  “How’d she do?” he asks Mateo.

  Mateo reaches for a bottle of water, unscrews the cap, and drinks the whole thing before speaking. “You better not piss her off so you won’t have to find out.” He takes the taco from Tristan before turning to me.

  “There’s a lot more to it than that, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  “You should come back,” he says. “Every day.”

  “I-I can’t,” I say. “I am grateful, I really am, but I can’t miss that much work.”

  “To hell you can’t,” Tristan says. “You will. You will until you aren’t afraid.”