And why don’t I trust that? Emma thought. Why don’t I trust you?
“Well, I imagine you all have lots to do, so I’m going to let you go.” Tiffany smiled again and sashayed—rather jubilantly, Emma noted—back in the direction of her car.
Emma turned to Joe, who was just standing there, looking a little dumbfounded, videocassette in hand. “What was that all about?” Emma asked suspiciously, her every feminine instinct on full alert.
Joe shook his head. He looked every bit as wary as Emma felt. Grimacing, he said slowly, “I wish to hell I knew.”
“WHY DON’T YOU WANT TO WATCH IT?” Emma asked curiously after they arrived home. She was ready to put the interview-tape in the VCR. Joe had other ideas.
Joe reached for the zipper on Emma’s dress. “Because there are other things I’d much rather do,” he murmured, nuzzling his way down her neck.
Emma put up a hand to stop him.
She didn’t know why it was so important she do this right now. Especially when she had already had such a long day and faced an even longer and more problem-fraught one tomorrow. She just knew she was desperate to keep Joe from getting hurt. And her gut told her that despite the show of smug civility that Tiffany Lamour was still out to hurt Joe, and perhaps, Emma, too. “I want to see it,” she said quietly.
She wanted to know firsthand just how rough a time Tiffany had given Joe during the interview, and she wanted to discover why Joe was suddenly looking so stressed out. As if he just wanted the world to go away, so he could be alone with Emma and make love to her without dealing with all the complications in their lives that weren’t going to go away, no matter how they wished otherwise.
“You heard her,” Joe said, not bothering to mask his frustration as he tossed his beautiful sport coat onto the back of the sofa. “It’s two and a half hours long.”
Wanting to get more comfortable, too, Emma slipped off her heels. “Is there something on it you don’t want me to see?”
Joe jerked off his tie and unbuttoned the first two buttons on his shirt. “There’s nothing in the interview conducted tonight.”
Interesting response. And too cagey for her taste. Emma forced her pulse to slow. “You think the videotape she gave us tonight contains something other than the interview, don’t you?” Emma mused after a moment. And if so, what? she wondered uneasily. Had Joe once been caught with his pants down somewhere? Was this a videotape of him and another woman? Or something else equally incriminating?
Joe hedged in a way that made Emma all the more determined to find out what Tiffany was up to now. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “It shouldn’t.”
But that didn’t mean it didn’t.
“All the more reason for us to watch it now,” Emma said.
“It’s already close to midnight,” Joe said.
“I won’t sleep until I know what is on it. And my guess is neither will you.”
His lips tightening, Joe stared down at her. Probably wishing, Emma thought, that she weren’t quite so curious. Finally, he said, “You’re not going to rest until you’ve looked at that, are you?”
“If she is up to something, don’t you think we should know what as soon as possible?”
Sighing, Joe popped in the cassette and hit the play button.
An hour into it, Emma turned to him, even more perplexed. “I don’t get it, Joe.”
Joe stopped the tape.
“These are all softball questions—about hockey. Where’s the stuff about your—our—personal life?” Emma asked.
Joe looked edgy again. “She didn’t ask anything.”
Emma took a moment to consider that. “Nothing?”
“Nada,” Joe confirmed flatly.
“Why not?”
His eyes were chilly. “Maybe because I took my sports attorney, Ross Dempsey, with me and specifically asked her not to do so in his presence.”
“You think she was intimidated?” One could hope, anyway.
Joe paused a long time and chose his words carefully before answering. “I think I’ve got the situation under control,” he said finally.
“That being the case…” Emma caressed his jaw, deciding as long as they were discussing things Joe did not want to talk about they might as well touch on one more thing that had been nagging at her. “How come you didn’t get rid of this—” she stroked his week’s worth of beard with the flat of her hand “—for the TV interview?”
Joe’s lips took on a roguish tilt and his eyes began to sparkle. “I admit it probably would have looked better had I done so. And my mom will be the first to lodge a complaint when she sees the interview.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Emma persisted, climbing onto his lap.
Joe switched off the TV, via the remote, and didn’t answer. “Come on, you.” He shifted her off his lap and onto her feet. “Time for bed. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
Emma dug in her feet, even as he took her by the hand and began propelling her down the hall. “Tell me why you passed on the razor first.”
He paused here and there to switch off the downstairs lights. “Because like most professional athletes I’m superstitious,” he admitted as he walked with her through the foyer to the stairs.
A little disappointed he wasn’t carrying her or putting the moves on her when desire had clearly been simmering between the two of them all day, Emma followed him up the treads. “So you’ve been growing this beard ever since you signed with the Storm last Friday night, for luck.”
“Actually—” Joe grinned with boyish mischief, lacing an arm about her waist as they headed down the upstairs hall “—I started growing it because I thought it would annoy you.”
Emma could believe that, given how they’d acted after initially seeing each other again, and then being forced into renewing their abruptly abandoned marriage vows.
She slanted him a challenging look. “And hence, push me away,” she said, recalling at the same time she had wanted nothing more than that, too.
But that was then. This was now.
He nodded soberly.
“But it didn’t push me away,” Emma remembered, still regarding him closely.
“Right,” Joe said, his voice holding a surprising note of tenderness as well as the expected mischief. “And now that our marriage is going better than anyone ever could have imagined, well—” he stopped and brought her to him for a sexy kiss that ended much too soon “—I guess I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep things status quo.”
Sometimes a woman had to do what a woman had to do. “Even if it means never shaving again?” Emma teased in the same lighthearted manner, taking him by the hand and leading him toward their bed.
“Even that,” Joe affirmed.
“Well,” Emma sighed, prepared to do whatever it was a woman had to do to get things started in the direction she wanted them to go.
As it happened, it didn’t take much.
“EMMA, I need to talk to you.”
Emma knew that look on her mother’s face. Aware they were at the stage where every second counted, she put up a staying hand. “Mom, please, we’re putting on the Snow-Posen wedding here today. I really don’t have time—”
“Then you will make time,” Margaret Donovan insisted in tried and true steel-magnolia fashion. “Your father and I saw the tape of Joe’s interview for CSN last night. Tiffany Lamour brought one over for us.”
Emma’s stomach knotted. She and Joe never had watched the rest of the tape. Instead, they had made love. Rather wonderful love, as it happened…
But her mother didn’t know about that. And not about to tell her, Emma decided it best to keep the conversation strictly on the matter that had her mother so upset. “Tiffany was a regular delivery girl, wasn’t she?” Emma murmured, as she pointed where she wanted the additional tent and the dance floor to go.
Margaret knotted her hands at her sides as raindrops threatened overhead. She stepped back under the covered portico that faced the Inn’s
back lawn. “I want to know what happened! Joe was supposed to use that interview for damage control. Instead there wasn’t one word about his early secret marriage to you.”
“Thank goodness,” Emma said. It was hard enough for her to think about that awful night, without having every hockey fan in America in on the juicy details, too.
Margaret lowered her voice with effort, as uniformed staff pushed a cart loaded with white folding chairs onto the lawn. “This was supposed to explain your relationship with Joe, quieten gossip.”
“I don’t think anything is going to be able to do that except a whole lot of silence on our part.” And our continued marriage…
Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “I beg to differ,” she said, savvy as ever. “As long as there is no reasonable explanation, there will continue to be speculation.”
Emma knew she and Joe were a public relations person’s nightmare. She didn’t care. “Then let people speculate all they wish.” Emma watched as florist Lily Madsen decorated the aisle where chairs had already been set up.
Margaret moved so Emma had no choice but to look at her. “I called Tiffany this morning. She’s willing to add another section of tape to the interview, if Joe is willing.”
Emma shrugged. “You can ask him.”
Margaret paused, cell phone in hand. “But?”
Emma figured she might as well be honest. “I don’t imagine he is going to want to get into it now any more than he did last night,” she said sagely.
Margaret took Emma by the arm and guided her back against the building, well out of earshot of staff scurrying in and out of the service doors. “What exactly happened at the hotel, where Joe and Tiffany did the interview?” she demanded.
Something about her usually unflappable mother’s hysteria had Emma on edge. “What do you mean?”
Margaret’s eyes were grim. “Tiffany left our home the other night determined to dig until she uncovered the whole story. Then, less than twenty-four hours later, she’s acting as if she never really wanted to know why you and Joe did what you did, anyway.” Margaret’s lips thinned disapprovingly. “Something doesn’t make sense here, Emma.”
Emma’s stomach took another dive. “What exactly are you implying?”
Margaret searched Emma’s eyes. “Joe didn’t pay her off or something, did he?”
Emma blinked, too distressed for words. “Mother!”
“Well, what other explanation is there?” Margaret demanded, upset.
Emma knew of one. But she couldn’t believe. Wouldn’t…
“Oh, no.” Margaret pressed a hand to her heart. Her face turned white as a sheet.
Emma studied the way her mother suddenly couldn’t look her in the eye. And abruptly it all became clear as a bell. She edged closer, fury clawing at her heart. She marched forward. “You know what people say about Tiffany’s methods for extracting cooperation from her subjects, don’t you? You knew that and sent him to the lion’s den, anyway. What is this—some kind of morality test?”
Margaret ignored the question and her eyes gave nothing away. But then her mother didn’t have to put it all out in the open, Emma thought, because the answer was clear, anyway. Her parents were testing Joe, trying to find out for themselves exactly what kind of man he was.
“First of all, Emma, for all we know the rumors about Tiffany Lamour are just that—baseless innuendo. Similar to what you and Joe are facing, brought about by entirely innocent—though highly unusual—circumstances. Second, and more important,” Margaret continued coolly, lifting one elegantly sculpted brow, “how do you know about any of this?” Margaret knew Emma had never followed the inner workings of the hockey world, not since her relationship with Joe had ended years ago. In fact, at least publicly, she had tried to stay as far away from it as possible. Privately, well, Emma admitted to watching a little of the sport on TV, especially when whatever team Joe had happened to be on at the time was involved in a televised game.
She had always told herself at the time she was just doing it to prove Joe wasn’t super human or super handsome or super talented. That she was over him. Now, of course, Emma knew, it had simply been because she couldn’t get enough of him.
Not then. And not now. “Joe told me what she is really like,” Emma said when she realized her mother was still waiting for an explanation.
Margaret folded her arms in front of her. “Then Tiffany did make a pass at him?”
Emma saw no reason to hide it, now the scandal was out in the open. “Years ago, if you must know. Which is why Tiffany Lamour has never had a nice thing to say about him—or his play—since.”
“Except for last night,” Margaret observed. “In last night’s interview she couldn’t say enough sweet things.”
Okay, so Emma had noticed that, too. Which had been another reason she’d had no interest in watching the rest of the taped interview, and instead had preferred to go on to bed with Joe and make mad, passionate love to him all over again.
But Emma’s mother did not know that. Her mother thought…
“He did not sleep with her to get her to back off, Mom,” Emma stated harshly, annoyed she had to defend him. “He would not do that. He is not that kind of guy.”
Margaret Donovan bit her lip uncertainly.
Gathering steam, Emma dropped her voice a confidential notch and charged on, “Joe did, however, threaten Tiffany with his lawyer and even took Ross Dempsey to the interview last night, so maybe that’s what did it, Joe’s determination not to be a victim plus the extra legal scrutiny.”
At the additional information, Margaret relaxed, but only slightly. “I hope that’s all it is,” Margaret said worriedly. “That Tiffany did change her mind, and that this isn’t just some sort of temporary ploy on her part to make us think she is doing right by you and Joe, before she actually does an about-face and goes on the attack.”
Emma hoped so, too.
“But the fact remains you and Joe have to talk to someone about your marriage. So if not CSN or Personalities magazine, maybe we could get W-MOL to do a fluffball interview with you. Since it’s a local TV station and we advertise for Storm games on their airwaves, we do have some influence there. Who knows? Maybe if they do a sophisticated-enough job, the network will pick it up, perhaps some of the other cable news channels, as well….”
Here they went again. “No, Mother.”
“What?” Margaret stopped, flabbergasted.
Emma knew it was now or never. She had to stand up to her parents some time, draw that proverbial line in the sand. “Joe and I are not changing our minds,” she stated emotionally. “Our marriage, and everything else about our relationship, is staying between him and me. End of story. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Emma finished, aware she had never felt so simultaneously strong and relieved, “I’ve got work to do.”
JOE WAS HELPING HIS SISTER, Janey, unload the wedding and groom’s cakes for the Snow-Posen wedding from her bakery delivery van to the Wedding Inn dining room, where they would be on display. It was no easy task. The cake for five hundred was an enormous, seven-layer confection. The groom’s cake was smaller, but because of its sand-trap shape, no less awkward and cumbersome.
“Thanks for helping me with this,” Janey said as they centered the heavy metal tray on the rolling cart that would take it to the display table.
“No problem.” Joe made sure it was stable, then returned to the van to shut and lock the doors.
“Usually Christopher assists me with deliveries, but he had a chance to get in some extra time at the Polar Bear ice skating rink this morning—before they open for customers at one—provided he help with the cleanup from last night’s birthday parties, so…”
“Still unhappy about him liking hockey so much?” Joe asked as they rolled the wedding cake toward the side entrance service doors.
Janey paused and wedged open the doors, so they could get the cart through. “I wish he’d focus more on his schoolwork.”
Joe steered the rolling cart
inside.
“Like his father,” Janey continued, scowling, “all Christopher can think about is sports.”
Joe shrugged. “I’m the same way.”
“You’re successful. It’s a whole different world for wannabes.”
“And that’s what you think Christopher is going to grow up to be?” An Olympic hopeful, like his father, who never made it, and who became bitter and reckless and resentful ever after.
Janey hesitated. “Maybe we shouldn’t discuss this.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Silence fell between them. Joe tried not to think about it, but he couldn’t help it. His older sister’s diatribe had brought back shades of Joe’s youth, the lack of faith in him, the bitterness and hurt he still felt….
“So how are things going with you and Emma?” Janey helped lift the cake onto the table.
Joe helped center it. “Prying, sis?”
Janey shrugged, not about to apologize for the interest. “She looks happier every time I see her.”
To his surprise, Joe felt that way, too. “I don’t think Emma was particularly excited about today’s wedding, though.”
“Tell me about it,” Janey muttered as they took the cart back out to get the groom’s cake. “That Gigi Snow is one royal pill. She’s already called me three times this morning to make sure I get the details right on the cake. And I’m sure as soon as she sees the cakes on display, she’ll have even more criticisms to lodge. I only have the cakes, though. Poor Emma. She’s got it worse than me. She’s going to be exhausted by the time it’s all over.”
Joe knew that was true. It had been a grueling week for his wife. Joe knew he had tried to help her get through it. He still had the feeling he hadn’t done nearly enough to make them a real “team.” But that could change easily enough. Knowing the power of a simple gesture, Joe looked at Janey thoughtfully. “Emma said the reception will be over around ten.”
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