Emergency Attraction (Love Emergency)

by Samanthe Beck

  “You and Dad wouldn’t have approved. You would have put a stop to it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Really? His brother was in jail, he’d just gotten in trouble for punching Ricky, and he was leaving for boot camp at the start of summer. What part of that would you have liked?”

  “The part where I knew what was going on with my daughter,” she retorted, color rising in her cheeks. “I would have liked the chance to talk to you about the decisions you were making, and…” She broke off and smoothed a hand over her curls, taming them as she tamed her temper. As a rule, her mom didn’t choose to belabor things that couldn’t be changed.

  Sinclair couldn’t agree more. “Don’t tell Dad. Please.”

  Her mother dropped her hand to her hip. “What your father knows or doesn’t know isn’t an issue anymore. You’re an adult, not a teenager he feels like he failed to protect. The issue is whether Shane knows he almost—”

  “Shhh!” She cast a glance toward the door. “Keep your voice down.”

  Pursed lips and crossed arms greeted her request. “He doesn’t know. Oh, Sinclair…”

  “Sinclair what? It happened a long time ago.” Restless energy propelled her. She paced the short distance until she stood in front of her mother. “It’s over. Nothing came of it.”

  “Not nothing.” The calm evaporated. “Don’t you dare tell me about nothings. Your father and I rushed to a hospital a continent away, in a dead panic.”

  “I’m sorry.” Guilt swamped her, again, as an image of her pale-faced parents flanking her bedside swam into her mind.

  “Goddammit.” Her mother rarely cursed. A rarer thing, still, for her to rub her eyes and let her shoulders slump. She blew out a breath and looked up. “I’m not trying to make you sorry. I’m trying to make you see it wasn’t nothing.” She made air quotes around the word. “It impacted you, and you’ve born the burden on your own.”

  Surprise had her straightening her spine. Did her family see her as some kind of broken wing? She wasn’t. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “You keep a part of yourself closed off. It’s like you have a perimeter and nobody’s allowed too close.”

  “Mom…”

  “The barn? That’s isolationism, right there. And the men. Oh, yes,” she went on, when Sinclair opened her mouth to disclaim them. “I know there are men in your life, but you keep them far away.”

  Heat crept into her face. “There’s been no reason to bring any of them around. They’re not…important.” Jesus. What an awful thing to admit to a parent. Feeling dirty, she automatically took a step back.

  “Honey…” Her mom took hold of her shoulders to keep her in place. “You don’t give anyone a chance to be important.” Then, in her mother’s trademark way of cutting to the heart of the matter, she asked, “Did you love him?”

  A lump lodged in her throat. Oversize and jagged. She actually had to swallow hard to get past it. “Mom, I was a kid. It was ten years ago…”

  “Fine. It was the past, but it’s his past, too. What happened involved him, and he ought to know—”

  Panic kicked in, cold, desperate, and not in a listening mood. “No, it happened to me. It’s my past. Mine. And I shouldn’t have to share it if I don’t want to—”

  The sound of a throat clearing cut her off. She looked up to find Shane filling the kitchen entryway, a carefully neutral expression on his face and plates balanced in his hands. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  One question filtered through her mind—How much did he hear?—before her brain cells locked up. Luckily, her mother suffered no such affliction. She swept forward. “No apology necessary.” With the deftness of a born hostess, she took the plates from him and flashed him a charming smile. “We were rudely sidetracked. We don’t usually make our guests clear the table.”

  He offered up his own, equally effective version of a charming smile. “Sorry, ma’am. You can take the man out of the Marines, but you can’t take the Marines out of the man. I clean up after myself. And, unfortunately, I have to go. I have a client in Australia who discovered a data breach, and I need to jump on a call in thirty minutes.”

  Her mom transferred the dishes to the counter and wiped her hands on a lemon-yellow towel. “Oh, mercy. That’s a shame. Sinclair, the key lime pie is in the fridge. Fix him up a slice to take with him.”

  It took her a moment to process the instructions, but then she jumped to do her mother’s bidding as all the information filled in the bigger picture. The sooner she got his slice of pie in a Tupperware box, the sooner he’d be gone and this nerve-wracking minefield of an evening would be over.

  “Here,” she practically shoved the plastic container at him. “See you later.”

  “Sinclair, see our guest to the door, please.” Her mother used the same tone she’d used when telling a five-year-old Sinclair things like, Give your Aunt Penelope a kiss. Aunt Penny had been two hundred years old and smelled like mothballs. Shane, on the other hand…

  “Yeah, Sinclair. Walk me to the door.” His lips lifted into a grin, but his eyes didn’t join the festivities. They assessed her with something that looked a lot like concern.

  Like the diminutive bulldozer she was, her mother ushered everyone out of the kitchen. They were through the house, exchanging thank-yous and good-byes, and then she was alone on the front porch with Shane.

  He set the pie container on the porch rail. “Anything you’d like to tell me?” His eyes found hers.

  “Well played, with the conference call. I’ll have to remember that one.” Sarcasm was her superpower, thankfully, because the last thing she wanted to do on her parents’ doorstep was have an honest conversation with him about the past. “Good-night.” She turned and reached for the doorknob.

  The next thing she knew, she was locked tight against a solid barrier of muscle while a brutally effective tongue swept the sarcasm right out of her mouth. The only things left were raw, and honest, and utterly impossible to deny. The present expanded to blot out past and future. Time condensed into this single instant, and she clung to it, ready to abandon caution and pride for the chance to wallow in want so strong it hurt, need now infused with some new, dangerously addictive promise she couldn’t resist, along with a sweet aftertaste of the past. She’d learned the hard way not to put much stock in his promises. When he finally raised his head, she went onto her tiptoes to give chase, sinking her teeth into his lower lip to punish him for…everything. Coming back. Stirring up old memories and new feelings.

  A groan—more pain than pleasure—rumbled from deep in his chest, but he cupped her cheeks and used his thumbs to wipe away tears she hadn’t realized had gathered at the corners of her eyes. Appalled, she drew back, only to be brought up short by his arms. Her defense mechanisms took control of her vocal cords.

  “Go away.”

  He could have interpreted the rude instruction to apply just to the here and now, and the fact that he had a call to attend to, but the set of his jaw and the determined look in his eyes told he knew damn well what she’d meant. He kissed her again, brushing his lips over hers. “No.”

  Oh, but he would. Eventually. She sniffed inelegantly and shoved the heel of her hand against his immovable shoulder. “If you knew what was good for you, you’d get in that fancy rental of yours and drive straight out of town.”

  “Uh-uh. I only just got here.” His lips skimmed her eyelid with heart-stopping gentleness. “You still owe me four tours. Next one is tomorrow morning. Be ready at nine.”

  He stepped away without waiting for her reply and made his way down the front walkway.

  “Shane—”

  “Tell you mother thanks for dinner,” he called from the street. The slam of his car door punctuated the comment.

  Suddenly exhausted, she leaned against the porch rail and watched him pull away from the curb. When his taillights disappeared from view, she scrubbed her hands under her eyes and inhaled the cool night air. Oh, yeah. She’d be thanking her
mother, all right.

  Chapter Eight

  Shane made a right turn onto Sawmill Road and glanced at his rearview mirror to ensure the Tahoe behind him followed.

  Annoyance simmered under his skin. He’d lost the car battle again. Sinclair had met him at her door this morning and announced she’d drive herself because she planned to run errands after their tour. More like she planned to keep him at a distance.

  He planned to keep her guessing. When she’d asked where they were going, he’d simply told her to follow him into town and park at the public lot the city had installed a few years ago to accommodate visitors and employees of the shops and businesses downtown. Disclosing their destination would have been the mature thing to do, but after a shitty night spent stewing over the scene he’d stumbled into yesterday evening in the Smiths’ kitchen, he’d bypassed mature. She was keeping a secret from him, and he was just petty enough to give her a taste of her own medicine.

  Seeing Sinclair and her mother standing close, arguing in rapid whispers, had told him there was an elephant in the room. The caged look on her face when he’d cleared his throat had told him plainly enough the elephant was him.

  She didn’t want to talk about it. That much was clear. But the defensiveness she’d thrown at him from day one was starting to piss him off. If she had something to say, she could say it to his face. He deserved that much. No, things hadn’t gone the way they’d planned ten years ago, and yes, he’d fumbled the ball. But she’d ended the game. That call had been all hers. No discussion. No dialogue of any kind. She’d imposed the forfeit with a wall of silence he’d been in no position to break through—then. The USMC had owned his ass, and they hadn’t been inclined to give him time off to go confront the underage girl dodging his calls and sending his letters back unopened.

  Consider her the one that got away and move on.

  Screw that. Things were different now. He was here, and they were on a level playing field. She could use silence, or sarcasm, or plain old evasion, but none of those tricks would work on him. He was going to shatter her precious wall.

  He signaled and slowed to make the turn into public parking. Unwilling to provide her with any clue of their specific destination, he slid into a slot in the dead center of the lot.

  She pulled in next to him.

  Brace yourself, baby girl, he thought and turned away to gather up his phone, keys, and wallet from the caddy between the front seats. A few seconds later he approached her Tahoe.

  She sat still and straight in the driver’s seat, her long hair spilling like ink over the shoulders of a snuggly, off-white poncho-type thing, her chin flirting with the folded edge of the turtleneck. She stared out the window, ostensibly taking in the dichotomy of downtown Magnolia Grove, where buildings put up over a century ago served as a backdrop to the ebbing rush hour bustle of laptop-toting commuters fixated on their phone screens. In reality, he sensed she was a million miles away from all of it—the bustle, the buildings. Him.

  A little flinch from her as he opened her door announced she’d dialed back into the here and now. “Where are we going?”

  The question sounded casual enough, but Sinclair’s pale cheeks and the tight press of her lips suggested more than idle curiosity. She hid her eyes behind dark sunglasses, even though the morning clouds crowding the skyline promised rain.

  “You’ll see.” He offered her a hand as she slid out of the car, and kept the light hold on her arm as he steered them toward the west end of the lot and the two-level, brick building with rounded front edges and other deco flourishes proclaiming it a landmark of late 1930s architecture.

  She dug in her heels and turned to him, eyebrows so high they showed above the rims of her sunglasses. “The bus depot?”

  “A very important entry and exit point in the event of certain emergencies.” Also a risky choice, considering the last time they’d been here together, they’d been teenagers, pledging their love to each other and promising no amount of time or distance would tear them apart. Then—big surprise—it had, leaving a sting of regret ten years had never completely erased. Maybe the breakup had been inevitable, given their ages, and everything else, but if he hoped to put the past behind them, they needed to have the conversation she’d been ducking for over a week. Assign blame, if that’s what it took. He’d shoulder his share, but he would damn well know exactly what failings she was holding him accountable for, because at this point, he wasn’t sure of anything except there was something she wasn’t telling him.

  Everything he knew with a certainty about them ended here, at this depot, which made it the obvious place to start the what-happened-after discussion. The one that took them places she didn’t want to go. He gave her arm a little tug. “Come on.”

  She fell into step beside him but took her arm back and hid both beneath the folds of her poncho. For warmth? Or to discourage him?

  Yeah, sorry. Not that easily discouraged. He moved in close enough her shoulder brushed his arm as they walked. Memories swept in, more sensory than visual. Last time they’d taken this walk together, he’d had her nestled against him, anxious to soak up every touch until the last possible second. She’d rested her head on his shoulder, face pressed against his neck, hands clinging to his waist, relying on him to guide them. Together they’d woven themselves into a private cocoon of exquisite misery.

  He hadn’t needed to dissuade family from coming down to see him off. His parents had moved the week before. He’d packed his shit, sold his truck, and sofa-surfed with friends until his ship-out date. Her parents had thought she was at the mall in Norcross doing some last-minute shopping for her summer in Europe. Instead, she’d met him behind the Presbyterian Church, and within five seconds of sliding into the shiny little Beetle she’d gotten for sweet sixteen, she’d somehow managed to straddle his lap, and he’d buried himself inside her one last time, rocking together with desperate enthusiasm right there in the shadow of the church. Later, riding on the bus to Parris Island, he’d tasted her on his tongue, smelled her on his skin, and endured a hollow ache of longing so deep it had felt like a hole in his chest.

  He held open one side of the double glass doors and ushered her inside the depot. She perched her sunglasses on the top of her head and looked around, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light. “They’ve expanded since…” Her voice drifted off.

  True. The once bare-bones facility now boasted two ticket windows, an electronic schedule board detailing a dozen arrivals and departures, a waiting area full of interlocked seats, and a concession counter complete with a couple of bistro tables lined up against the window wall facing the lot now designed to accommodate up to three buses at once. They’d hit it during a lull, after the morning rush of local and long-distance commuters but before the next wave of arrivals from regional locations, so only a few people occupied the waiting area.

  He headed in the direction of the concession counter. “Coffee?”

  “Um. Sure.”

  “I’ll get it. Have a seat.”

  With a less-than-enthusiastic nod, she headed to one of the tables. He took a moment to enjoy the way faded denim hugged her thighs and disappeared into tan sheepskin boots, and then went to the counter and ordered. The bored guy behind the register tore himself away from his phone long enough to fill Shane’s order and promptly resumed crushing candy.

  Shane made his way over to the table she’d selected, aware her guarded eyes watched his every step. When he put her coffee in front of her, he said, “Let’s talk.”

  Reading body language sometimes took keen observational skills, but not in this case. She pulled her arms off the table and crossed them. The rubber sole of one boot tapped out a soft, impatient rhythm on the black-and-white tile floor. Interpretation? Hell no.

  “About what?”

  He rested his forearms on the table, and leaned into the space she’d vacated, deliberately pursuing her. Silently telling her he wasn’t going to back off this time. “About secrets. Specifically, th
e one you’re keeping from me.”

  Her chin went up. “You’re paranoid.”

  “You’re defensive. You’re holding something against me, but I can’t fix it if I don’t know what it is.”

  “Maybe I don’t appreciate how you glide back into town after a decade and expect me to be waiting—ready and willing to pick up where we left off?”

  Not fair. He hadn’t expected a thing, and she knew it, but he also recognized someone trying to pick a fight to avoid a conversation. He refused to return the verbal body shot and instead focused on the real question buried in hers. “Where did we leave off, Sinclair? I remember standing right there”—he pointed out the window—“telling you I loved you and listening to you tell me the same. And then you never responded to my letters or answered my calls—”

  “What letters? What calls? You mean the ones that didn’t start until months after you left?” She leaned in now, too, her icy reserve burned away by a wave of genuine outrage. “You blew me off for the entire summer—longer. By the time you finally decided to give me the time of day, I—”

  “You moved on.” He lowered his voice. “It’s fine, Sinclair. I get it. You could have dropped me a line to let me know as much, but you were only sixteen, and maybe you didn’t know how to say it. You don’t have any reason to feel guilty or defensive.”

  She jerked upright as if he’d slapped her. “Fuck you, Shane Maguire. I don’t feel guilty, or defensive. I’m angry. Because—because—” She literally clamped her mouth shut, turned away, and inhaled a deep breath through her nose.

  There was the wall again. This time frustration got the better of him. “Because it took me longer to get in touch than you expected? I was in boot camp, for God’s sake, not on a vacation. We talked about this before I left. The Marines owned me during that time. Thirteen weeks of no cell phone, no texting, no computers. Limited opportunity to write, but I couldn’t do that anyway, because you were in Europe all summer. I would maybe…maybe…earn a phone call—”