Benjamin inclined his head toward the Inn. “Michelle inside?” he asked eagerly.
Emma nodded. “She’s on the second-floor balcony overlooking the back lawn.”
And with that, Emma headed toward Benjamin’s car.
She drove the five minutes to the tailor shop where the tuxes had been custom-made, picked them up as previously agreed, and then opened up the trunk to lay them inside. To her dismay, it was completely empty except for one thing. Near the back corner was a plain black hockey puck with no insignia, no writing, no identification of any kind.
“YOU WANT TO TELL ME WHAT’S going on with you, or am I going to have to kiss it out of you?” Joe asked as he emerged from the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist.
Emma tried but couldn’t quite suppress a smile at the sexily expressed threat. Struggling hard not to notice how good he looked and smelled, she continued to smooth skin lotion on her legs. “I don’t know what you mean,” Emma fibbed.
Joe scooted around her and went to the mirror above his bathroom sink. He started to reach for his razor, then pulled away. He swung around so his back was to the mirror, his hips resting on the marble sink. He clamped his arms across his rock-hard chest and studied her towel-clad form, his heated gaze lingering on the swell of her breasts, peeking out of the décolletage formed by the tucked-in corner. His gaze then roamed to her bare thighs and calves, before returning ever so slowly to her eyes. “For starters, why did you send me off on that fool’s errand when I arrived at the Inn?”
Emma took one foot down from the rim of the tub, propped her other one up there. Embarrassed at the results of her wild-goose chase, she ducked her head and continued to smooth lotion on her just-shaved legs. “I said it was my mistake.”
Abruptly, his eyes glimmered with a cynicism that stung. “And a deliberate one, at that,” he said softly, a hint of accusation in his voice. He cocked his head and gave her yet another thorough once-over. “You knew darn well my mother was not looking for me.”
She couldn’t exactly argue that, so she straightened and said nothing.
She was about to scoot past, when Joe sauntered closer and put his hands on her shoulders, holding her deliberately in place. “And why did you borrow Posen’s car, when you could have asked me to go and pick up those tuxes with you?” he persisted.
Emma tried not to think about the warmth of his callused palms on her skin, or the sensual feelings and desires his touch was evoking. She bit her lip as she answered his question, and tension flooded her anew. “It wasn’t your responsibility.” And that was the truth.
She stepped back; her shoulders grazed the open bathroom door. The next thing she knew, Joe had leaned forward, bracing a hand on the wood on either side of her.
“Keep going,” he murmured encouragingly.
Aware her heart was pounding and she was tingling all over, Emma leaned back slightly. She told herself it was nerves causing her body to go haywire and not his proximity. She glowered up at Joe. She could feel the heat rushing to her cheeks, even as she struggled to get a handle on her soaring emotions. “That’s it.” Emma shrugged, aware the tuck in her towel was beginning to slip. She pressed a hand between her breasts, holding the towel in place. “That’s all I have to say.”
She could practically see the wheels turning in Joe’s head as he weighed her testimony. “I don’t think so.” His eyes connected with hers and held for several breath-stealing moments. “I had a car there. So did my mother.”
Why did he have to be so darn persistent? Why didn’t he just walk away from her, as he had at crucial junctures in the past? “Yeah. So?” Emma folded her arms in front of her, being careful not to brush the hands he still had braced on either side of her.
Joe’s eyes radiated unchecked interest but no anger. “So why didn’t you borrow one of our vehicles?” he persisted.
With a bantering smile meant to disguise the embarrassment she felt, Emma shrugged and said, “Benjamin Posen was handy, and I knew he wasn’t going to go anywhere at that moment, and the tuxes were for his wedding. It made sense.” Sort of. For a person behaving like an utter, lovesick fool, out to protect the interests of her mate.
“Mmm-hmm.” Joe grinned as he lifted a hand to gently trace the contours of her face. “Did you know when you’re not telling the truth you have a little pleat right here—” he delicately painted the area he meant with the tip of his fingertip “—between your eyebrows?”
Emma flushed, wishing once again he didn’t have the ability to read her quite so accurately. Wishing he would stop watching and weighing everything she said and did. Because if he kept it up, he was going to find out what a fool she had been today. And then he might figure out what she wasn’t sure she was quite ready for him to know just yet, that she was head over heels, foolishly, recklessly in love with him. “And do you know,” she countered in frustration, her lower lip sliding out into a resentful pout, “that when you’re at your bossiest and most demanding—like right now—that I…”
Joe’s sexy grin widened. “You what?”
I want to give you everything you want. And more. And what sense did that make? It wasn’t as if anything had really changed between them. Or that their marriage was a true and lasting one. They had made love. Reestablished a casual friendship. That was all. Joe hadn’t said he loved her yet, hadn’t even come close. The fact his kisses and caresses made her feel loved was irrelevant.
“I hate that you won’t confide in me.” He wrapped both his arms around her waist.
Despite her efforts to keep a protective wall around her heart, Emma found herself leaning into the reassuring solace of his touch, taking comfort in the steady beat of his heart. “I’ll tell you everything eventually, I promise.” If and when you ever tell me you love me, too, that is. She wrapped one arm around his waist and with the tip of her index finger impulsively traced the velvety soft stubble on his dimpled chin. “But right now I’ve got a lot on my mind.” She needed Joe to give her space to figure things out.
Seeming willing to do just that, Joe stroked a hand through her hair and brushed a kiss across her temple. “About the Snow-Posen wedding?”
Emma nodded. With a determined breath, she stepped back. “As well as the dinner this evening.” She looked at Joe seriously, ready to lay all her cards on the table about this much. “I really don’t want to be late. Nothing sets my father off like tardiness.” And she had the feeling this command performance they were about to put in was condemnation enough on her parents’ part. Her father wouldn’t have ordered them to appear the way he had, through a third party and another Storm employee, if he didn’t intend it to be some sort of a decimating power play on his part.
And Emma sensed Joe knew it, too.
“YOU’RE LOOKING WELL,” Saul Donovan noted as Emma and Joe joined her father and mother for a glass of wine before going into dinner.
“Thank you,” Emma said, aware it was all very civil as her mother graciously passed around a plate of hors d’oeuvres. And very tense. She couldn’t believe her dad was pulling this overprotective father routine with Joe, but he was. And Joe, poor guy, didn’t seem to know whether to react as his son-in-law or a player on Saul’s team.
Saul looked at Joe, his company manners on display. Then said, almost too formally, “I understand from Coach Lantz that your off-season, physical-conditioning sessions have gotten off to a good start, as well.”
Joe nodded and continued to meet her father’s gaze, man to man. “I take the workouts seriously.”
Workouts? Emma thought, gnawing at her lower lip. Try his whole career. Which, of course, was what made this little prearranged tête-à-tête so excruciatingly difficult.
Saul nodded and continued cautiously, “I believe you want to be a fine addition to our team.”
Uh-oh. Here it comes, Emma thought. The punishment for having the gall to get involved with me.
Saul looked at Joe sternly. “Which is why I’m puzzled about your refusal to be a gue
st on Tiffany Lamour’s CSN TV show.”
Beside her, Emma felt Joe stiffen with what had to be resentment but he continued in the same frank vein, “Ms. Lamour doesn’t want to talk about hockey. She wants to talk about my personal life.”
Saul lifted a brow and continued to play it cool. “And that surprises you.”
“It just doesn’t interest us,” Emma interjected testily, deciding this third degree had gone on long enough.
Her father gave her a long, quelling look and continued in a voice of steel, “Let your husband speak for himself, Emma.”
Emma started to rise, figuring if this was the way the evening was going to go then she had no reason to stay. Joe caught her hand before her hips cleared the sofa cushion and pulled her gently but firmly down beside him.
“I was trying to spare Emma the embarrassment,” Joe said, planting a firm hand on her knee.
“Too late for that,” Margaret Donovan murmured, her own background as a public relations whiz coming into play.
Everyone turned to her in surprise.
Margaret shrugged and continued matter-of-factly. “Emma’s reputation as a proper young woman went out the window the moment the two of you were caught on camera, sans clothing. Your decision to become a proper husband to her helped, Joe. But it’s not enough. There are questions to be answered. If not on Tiffany’s show, then in some venue.”
“The more improbably romantic the back story, the better,” Emma guessed, having some idea where her mother was headed with this.
Margaret looked at Emma steadily. “You’re a very levelheaded woman, Emma. For you to get yourself in the predicaments you have with Joe tells me that there is something special between the two of you. All your father and I are asking is for you two to accept the fact that like it or not you both are very much in the public eye. Joe is a celebrity and a well-known sports figure. And you’re married to him. That means you are role models to a lot of young people.”
Emma felt her temper snap. “Does that mean we are not entitled to a private life?” she cried. Did it mean that now the sanctity of her marriage had to be sacrificed for the benefit of the darn hockey team?
“Of course you are!” her mother soothed.
“Good.” Emma sat back against the cushions. She relaxed only slightly as Joe took her hand in his and gave it a warning squeeze.
“However that doesn’t change the way the world works,” Margaret continued in a voice of steel. “The simple fact of the matter is that the rather prurient interest in you is not going to die down until some rather difficult questions are asked and answered.”
Emma rolled her eyes. Back to that again. “And you think Tiffany is the one to ask them?” she retorted sarcastically.
“I think she’ll be merciless, when compared to other sports reporters, yes,” Saul Donovan conceded, as unremittingly frank as his wife had been. “But merciless is what you need. When Tiffany is finished, there won’t be anything left to ask. Hence, the story will be out there in the sports world where it counts the most.”
And in the process, Emma thought resentfully, Joe would’ve had to put himself in a position where he was vulnerable to the whims of a vindictive, scandal-hungry heiress.
“Once it’s out there for a couple of news cycles, it will be over,” Margaret promised, as if it were just that simple. “By the time the new season starts, it’ll be such distant history it will never even be mentioned.”
“And hence won’t hurt the team,” Emma said, guessing where this was going.
“Or Joe,” Margaret added optimistically. “Or you.”
That’s what Joe had said about their getting married, Emma thought uneasily. He had said it would end the curiosity, and the gossip. But it hadn’t exactly worked out that way, Emma thought. Because Tiffany Lamour was still sniffing around. And her interest in Joe seemed a lot more than simply professional….
“All we are asking is that you let the world in on a little of the excitement or happiness or whatever it is you find with each other,” Margaret said softly. She reached over and took her husband’s hand.
“And that,” Saul concluded firmly, “is not too much to ask.”
“TIFFANY LAMOUR WILL BE contacting you in the morning,” Saul Donovan told Joe as he and his wife walked Joe and Emma to the door, after a dinner filled with what had been—for Emma, anyway—excruciatingly dull small talk about the previous Stanley Cup play-offs, and the prospects of various NHL teams in the upcoming hockey season.
Joe, on the other hand, had really seemed to enjoy himself as long as the subject was hockey. And only hockey. Not that Emma was surprised about that. His sport was, and always had been, the real love of his life. Not even she could compete with that.
“Ms. Lamour wants to tape the interview at her hotel in Raleigh tomorrow evening,” Margaret Donovan continued instructing Joe, picking up where her husband had left off. “She will contact you personally about the time you need to be there, what you need to wear, and so on.”
Joe nodded. He did not look happy, but to Emma’s relief he wasn’t about to argue the point with them, either.
Joe was grimly silent, brooding the entire way as he drove them back to their place. Emma couldn’t help but wonder if he was already regretting his decision to stay married to her, instead of cutting his losses and leaving her and the Carolina Storm for another team, and a future elsewhere. Given the suspicion and overprotectiveness Joe was facing from her father, she could hardly blame him if he did decide to ask to be released from his contract so he could move on, to a place where none of this would be an issue. It would probably be a relief not to constantly have to worry about making a marital misstep that would get him benched or sent down to the minors.
“What a week, hmm?” Emma said as they got out of the car and walked inside the house.
“No kidding,” Joe muttered with feeling. He walked into the family room, switching on lights as he went.
Emma dropped her purse on a chair and kicked off her evening sandals. “He wouldn’t be forcing you to go on the show if it weren’t for me, if I weren’t his daughter.”
Joe tore his glance from the empty display case to the floor where the boxes of memorabilia had been. Briefly, sadness flashed in his eyes before he directed his attention to the matter at hand. “Your father is right,” Joe said grimly. As his pique faded, he swung around and regarded her with his usual can-do attitude. “As your husband, it’s my job to protect you. If I achieve that by getting out there and taking a little heat for what happened between us years ago, as well as last weekend—” he gestured as if it didn’t matter to him one way or another “—so be it.”
Emma didn’t like feeling she was a burden he had to bear. “I just don’t see why it has to be Tiffany Lamour’s TV show,” Emma groused.
Joe’s lips thinned despite the fact he was reluctantly resigned to what had to be done. “She’s the Barbara Walters of the sports world. She has the most in-depth interviews, the highest ratings.” He paused and gave her the stony look he used on his on-ice opponents. “Your mother is right. If I go on Tiffany’s show, I won’t have to go on anything else. It’ll be a one-shot deal that will be recapped lots of other places, way before the season starts, so that when I do start playing for the Storm it’ll be such old news it will no longer be an issue.”
She hated he had to go through this, when she was just as much—if not more—at fault than he was for the situation they were now in. “Then let me appear with you,” she pleaded. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she could feel they were doing this together.
He shook his head at her and scoffed, “Get real, Emma. Players don’t take their wives on Tiffany’s show.”
She swallowed, watching as he raked his hands through his hair. “So we’d be different.”
He clenched his jaw as he leveled the full impact of his amber gaze on her. “I’m not hiding behind your skirt.”
Emma frowned as Joe slowly, implacably closed the distance between
them.
“Although speaking of skirts,” he murmured in a sexy whisper as he wrapped his hands around her waist and turned that perceptive gaze of his to the slope of her neck. “I wouldn’t mind taking off the one you have on right now.”
Emma splayed her hands across his chest and did her best to hold him at bay, even as his lips forged a burning path to the sensitive area behind her ear. “I’m serious, Joe.” Emma pulled away and headed for the kitchen, well away from the temptation of the comfortable leather sofa.
She straightened up unnecessarily, putting a glass in the dishwasher, wiping a spot off the counter. Unable—unwilling—to look Joe in the eye, she felt so guilty, she continued practically, “You’ve told me what Tiffany is like. I don’t want you put in that position, especially because of me.” She didn’t want Tiffany coming on to Joe because that would mean Joe would have to turn Tiffany down, and the TV personality would inevitably become more vindictive than she already was.
She especially didn’t want Tiffany coming on to Joe again.
Joe plucked the sponge from her hand and tossed it into the sink. Hands on her shoulders, he turned her around to face him, using his body to keep her prisoner against the waist-high cabinets. Planting a hand on either side of her, he looked down at her soberly. “I can handle her and the interview, Emma. Your father is right. She’s not going to go away. If she keeps digging, the controversy could hurt the team.”
So it was the team—and his place on it—that he was really worried about, Emma thought, trying not to feel hurt. She swallowed and stared at the knot of his tie and the strong suntanned column of his throat. “So you’re going to do what has to be done.”
Joe waited until she looked at him again. “And then move on,” he said.
With or without me? Emma wondered as a bubble of completely uncalled-for hysteria welled up inside her.
Knowing she should have done a lot more to protect her heart in this situation, she dropped her forehead to his shoulder.
Joe tucked a hand beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. He looked deep into her eyes. “It will be all right. I’ll make sure of it,” Joe promised her, his determination to come out the winner stronger than ever.
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