He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry for the jerk I’ve been. I am.”
“Don’t,” she whispered over his lips. She was too distracted by need for him to finish her thought, but thankfully he didn’t take her single word to mean he should stop kissing her. Because that wasn’t what she’d meant by it. At that moment, she didn’t know what she’d meant by it. He trailed a series of lazy kisses down her throat and across the rise of her breasts, his lips pressing across the boundary between dress and flesh.
She caressed his cheeks as he continued to give her those gentle kisses.
She pushed his blazer away from his shoulders and he shrugged out of it. She traced her hands over the area between his shoulder blades, massaging it through his shirt.
He pressed his hand into her thigh and she kissed him again, wrapping herself up in the taste, the feel of the kisses she’d missed so much.
“Always wanted you,” he whispered before running his lips over the side of her neck. She threw her head back.
She locked her fingers behind his head. “Show me how much.”
Davis hesitated for a moment and then she felt his hand on her inner thigh. “You make it so hard for me to be good.”
Her teeth nipped at his earlobe. “Maybe you shouldn’t try so hard.” She moved down to his neck. “Please don’t try so hard.”
And then she heard her phone vibrating on the coffee table. She stared over her shoulder at it for a moment, knowing she needed to answer it, but not wanting to move.
“You better get that, I guess,” Davis said, but he seemed reluctant to let her move far enough to grab the phone. She gave him another longing kiss and then reached for her buzzing phone. Emily Rose’s number was displayed on the screen. “Hey, I know. I’m about to leave right now.”
“Jemma, she’s really freaking out,” Carolina said, throwing Jemma off for a moment since she’d called from Emily Rose’s phone.
“What’s going on?” Jemma turned her attention away from Davis and his kisses.
“The bruise—her face—she’s threatening not to get married today,” Carolina said. Jemma could hear Emily Rose shrieking in the background. “No one here can calm her down. She won’t listen to any of us.”
“We’re on the way,” Jemma said.
“Emily Rose?” Davis got to his feet while helping her to hers.
Jemma nodded. “We, uh . . . need to get going.”
“That is very unfortunate,” Davis said as he handed her purse to her.
Jemma agreed while thinking of the touches and kisses he’d given her a few moments earlier. But she knew Emily Rose needed her, and despite all else, there was nowhere else in the world she would be but at the church.
***
Emily Rose was practically in hysterics. She flew around the small room, screeching about Tara and concealer and bad omens and cold feet. Apparently, Michael had made the bad move of telling Emily Rose it was okay if she wanted to postpone the wedding until her face healed. She blew that out of proportion, saying that Michael didn’t want to marry her. Plastic shopping bags, clothes, and garment bags were all over the place, as were other things like giant makeup cases. As in more than one.
Carolina chased Emily Rose around the room with a makeup pad and a bottle of foundation. Meg sat in the corner on a bench between two racks of choir robes, calling soothing words out to her and begging her to calm down. Emily Rose yelled at both of them that they weren’t helping while swiping at tears. That was the overwhelming and slightly chaotic scene Jemma walked into.
“How late do you want this wedding to be? Your makeup isn’t started yet. Would you please sit your butt down?” Carolina slammed the bottle of foundation down on a nearby table and picked up a tube of concealer. “You’ve ruined the little bit of progress I made. Now I’m going to have to start all over.”
Carolina and Meg looked beautiful, if angry and worried. Carolina had been right about the dresses. They wore strapless, silky peach dresses with tight bodices and flowing skirts and matching peach pumps. Meg’s black hair was swept up into a French roll and accented with sprigs of baby’s breath. Her bangs, which were cut to lay straight across her forehead normally, must have been bobby-pinned back into the rest of her hair. Carolina’s hair fell over her shoulders and back in glossy hairspray-secured curls. She had baby’s breath and Ms. Fletcher’s gardenias woven into a thin, almost invisible band that she wore like a headband.
Emily Rose glared at Carolina, the angry bruise on her right cheek making the expression more menacing than it normally would have been. With her wheat blonde hair piled on top of her head and gentle tendrils of curls falling into her face, she would have looked angelic if not for that expression and the accompanying bruise. She wore a gray zip-up hoodie emblazoned with her alma mater’s name and white cotton shorts along with purple flip-flops. Jemma spied a tiara sitting on the table behind her.
Emily Rose snatched the tube of concealer from Carolina and waved it in the air. “Concealer. What good is concealer going to do? There might not be any wedding. My face is monstrous and Michael may as well have said he didn’t want to marry me. He’s been acting weird all week. He just wants a way out of this.” She slammed the tube onto the table next to the tiara. Jemma walked further into the room. Nobody had noticed her arrival yet. That wasn’t surprising with all the commotion going on in there.
Carolina put her hands on Emily Rose’s shoulders. “Calm down, honey. Michael loves you, okay? You know that man wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to be. He was only trying to help, even if he’s really bad at it.”
Emily Rose burst out laughing before she could regain her scowl. “That’s not funny. Stop trying to make me laugh when my life is falling apart.”
Carolina shrugged, smoothing concealer across Emily Rose’s cheek. “It got you to stop moving long enough for me to apply this stuff. Goal accomplished.”
“I have the most awful mother-in-law ever breathing down my neck, a giant bruise on my face thanks to my trashy sister, who finally left this morning, and these ugly flowers thanks to that same fire-breathing mother-in-law,” Emily Rose muttered as Carolina worked away with the foundation. She’d put down the concealer for the moment.
“Tara’s gone?” Jemma asked.
“Yeah. She’s ruined my life again. Made sure that everything continues to go to crap for me. Mission accomplished, so what does she need to stick around for?” Emily Rose said.
Carolina stood back, admiring her handiwork. “You know, you really can’t see it now unless you’re like—this close.” Carolina leaned in so that her nose was very near Emily Rose’s. They laughed.
“Yeah, I guess you done good,” Emily Rose said with an exaggerated drawl, holding up the mirror that Carolina handed her.
Carolina and Meg talked her down enough to get her through the rest of her makeup and started on the six thousand steps that went into successfully getting her into her dress. While they worked, Jemma tried to keep Emily Rose thinking happy thoughts by telling her how great everything looked. But once the corset and the underskirt were in place, Emily Rose backed away, shaking her head.
“Em Rose,” Carolina said, eyeing the dress still under its plastic cover and then looking down at her watch.
“I can’t do it. I can’t. I’m sure Michael will be ecstatic to find out he’s free.” Emily Rose wrung her hands.
“You’ve been planning this for over a year. And you and Michael can’t get enough of each other,” Meg said, putting a hand on her shoulder. Emily Rose pushed it off and started pacing the room.
“Tara ruined it, like she ruins everything. I can’t get married with a swollen face, makeup or not. Nothing’s the way it’s supposed to be, and it’s all falling apart. They’re probably all out there talking about me and what a joke this day is. I know his mother is.” Emily Rose threw a water bottle across the room, followed by a plastic bag containing something that sounded breakable once it hit the opposite wall.
&
nbsp; “Emily Rose, calm down. Sit down for a minute,” Meg said.
“No, there’s nothing that can fix this, especially not sitting down.” Emily Rose’s scarlet face was hidden behind her shaking hands. Jemma went over to her. Past high school and college, Tara still had the ability to make Emily Rose crazy. Only one person could fix this. Unfortunately, that was the way it’d always been.
Emily Rose sunk down on the floor, sobbing. Jemma sank down with her and held her. She knew what she had to do. Finally, she felt like there was something that she could.
“What if we postpone the wedding? For a few hours,” Jemma said.
Three faces turned to Jemma, their expressions asking if she’d lost it.
“I’ll go to Hampton. Talk to Tara. And try to make her understand what she’s done. You guys . . . I dunno—stall. Somehow. Tell people to leave and come back? It’ll be an evening ceremony and we’ll party into the night.”
“What if the preacher can’t come back?”
“Then we’ll think of something. Shouldn’t we at least try?”
“I don’t want to see her,” Emily Rose said, but she didn’t sound convincing in the least.
Carolina helped Jemma to her feet, put an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her away from Emily Rose. Speaking in a low voice, she said, “So, you want to go to Hampton, get Tara, and come back. Which will take at least three hours. In the meantime, you want us to do something with all these people?”
Jemma looked Carolina straight in the eye and nodded. “Sure. Unless you have a better idea.”
“What makes you think she’s not going to come here and act a fool again?”
“Tara does this kind of thing because she knows how much her opinion matters to Emily Rose, no matter how Emily Rose tries to pretend that isn’t the case. She does it just to get to her. I think that maybe if I can talk to her one-on-one, I can get through to her. I owe it to Emily Rose to at least try.”
Carolina stared at her for a moment before laughing and shaking her head. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever been a part of, and that’s saying a lot. But why not? Nothing else seems to be working.”
“Okay. I’m going to get Davis. You guys talk her down and patch things up the best you can. If you need me, call me.”
Carolina nodded, although she still looked pretty shaky about the plan. Jemma told them everything was going to be fine and then she went to find Davis in the sanctuary. Maybe she couldn’t face her problems with Smooth, and she might not have been able to decide how she really felt about Davis. Still, she could try to do something for the friend she’d neglected for so long out of her own selfishness.
Jemma spotted Davis in the fourth row, talking to some of Michael’s friends. She smiled and, for a moment, all the bad melted away. His smile. Large hands on the back of the pew in front of him. His laugh. The small rash of acne scars on his cheeks didn’t take away from his pretty face.
She put her hand on his back. He looked up at her and despite the stress of the moment, she felt lighter. “I need to talk to you. Over there.” Jemma pointed to the doors at the back of the church.
He nodded, told the guys he’d been sitting with that he’d see them later, and then followed her to the back doors.
“So what’s up?” He put a hand on her waist. “You look worried. Is Emily Rose okay?”
Jemma shook her head. “Not really. I kind of . . . need you to take me to see Tara.”
Davis’s light blue eyes widened. “Huh?”
Jemma explained the crisis and her theory that if she could get Tara to apologize, Emily Rose might calm down and get back to normal.
“So will you do it?” She grabbed one of his hands between hers.
“Yeah. If you think it’ll help, sure. Anything for you, Jemma. Always.”
She smiled and threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you.”
She followed Davis to his car, wondering what things would be like once the wedding was finally over—if it ever began. Bad things awaited her on the other side of that wedding. Her interview with the parole board representative, for one. Whether she decided to go see Smooth or not, there was still the interview. After that, she had to face saying goodbye to Davis forever. She didn’t want to think about how hard saying that goodbye would be, so instead she thought about what she would say to Tara.
Chapter 11
The drive to Hampton was a mostly silent one. Jemma was trying to prepare herself for the tornado that was Tara, and Davis seemed busy with his own thoughts. She kept glancing at his profile, but he looked straight ahead most of the time. She caught his eye a couple of times, but he just smiled at her and turned his attention back to the road when she did.
She wanted to know what was going on with him, but she was preoccupied with her own worries. Including whether or not Tara would let her through the door. She did have Davis with her, so maybe if Tara didn’t open the door for her, she would open it for Jemma plus Davis.
She didn’t have a plan for when she saw Tara. She just knew she had to get to Hampton. Tara had created the problem, and she could and would solve it. As much as Emily Rose hated to admit it, she still looked to Tara for approval. Not having Tara at her wedding, and on top of that having Tara show up to try and sabotage it, had likely hurt Emily Rose more than she’d ever say. And there was a good chance there really wouldn’t be a wedding if Tara didn’t fix the damage she’d done.
Tara had always been the perfect sister when the two of them were growing up. She was thinner, more popular, and Emily Rose thought their parents liked Tara better. Emily Rose had tried to deny she looked up to Tara, but everything Tara did mattered to her. All she’d ever wanted was Tara’s love and respect. Tara was never generous with either of those when it came to Emily Rose.
Jemma looked up as Davis slowed, turning off the main road into an apartment complex. The three-story buildings with white vinyl siding looked like skinny tract houses glued together. He pulled into a visitor’s spot and gestured to his left. “Over there. Apartment twenty-four.”
She reached up and kissed his cheek. “You coming in?” She let her fingers linger on his opposite cheek.
He shook his head. He didn’t move away from her touch, but wouldn’t look at her. “I don’t have anything to say to her. If you really need me, come get me. I wouldn’t abandon you to her.”
Jemma kissed his cheek again. “Thanks for doing this.” She got out of the car and leaned back in. “You okay?”
He nodded, still not looking at her. She closed the door and headed for apartment twenty-four.
Tara came to the front door with her hair in a messy ponytail and a screaming toddler on her hip. The toddler had a bright red face and bright yellow hair and was grabbing and smacking at Tara’s face.
Tara grabbed his hand and snapped at Jemma at the same time. “What do you want?”
“To talk to you.”
“Well I don’t wanna talk to you.”
“Same here, but this is for Emily Rose.”
“That Davis’s car out there?” Tara craned her neck out of the doorway, looking toward where Davis was parked.
“Yeah.”
“That mean he’s out there?”
“Yeah.”
After a pause in which she stared at the car with something close to sadness in her eyes, Tara walked toward the living room, calling over her shoulder, “Come in.”
Jemma walked into the cramped apartment, stumbling over a brightly colored plastic toy fire engine as she entered the living room. To the right was a small kitchen. Doors led off of either side of the back wall of the living room into what Jemma assumed were two bedrooms. She inhaled a blend of overcooked pasta and trash that needed to be taken out days ago.
“Is your husband here?” Jemma asked, remembering mention of this alleged man by both Emily Rose and Davis.
“Out to sea,” Tara said flatly. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you. I’m here for Emily Rose,” she said.
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“What about her?” Tara set the toddler on the floor and he went to work throwing toys and generally destroying the living room. It seemed the only word he’d learned so far was “no”. That was the only one he cared to use, at any rate.
Jemma took a deep breath and began. “She’s threatening not to get married. And this day and her fiancé mean more to her than anything else in the world. What you did yesterday was really out of line. Even you should know that. And I think it would help a lot if you apologized and maybe talked to her a little. Without being a bitch.”
“You come into my house, cussing at me, and ask me to do something for that worthless, stuck-up cow? Thinks she’s better than everybody ’cause she went to college and she lives in New York. She only came back here to have her stupid wedding so she could show off. Good. I hope she doesn’t get married. Michael owes me one if they don’t. On top of all that, you’re dating my ex-husband. Why should I listen to anything you have to say?”
For some reason, Jemma didn’t want to correct Tara about she and Davis dating. Maybe it was wishful thinking. “Tara, you mean a lot to her even if she doesn’t want to admit it. And I think you care about her, too. You’re sisters.”
“You’re wrong. I have no family. They all forgot me a long time ago. You know they haven’t asked to see Branson for over a year?” Tara pointed to the tow-headed terror throwing CD jewel cases across the living room and laughing with glee.
Maybe they feared for their lives, Jemma thought. Aloud, she said, “I’m sure there’s a lot to the story I don’t know, but I think it hurts them as much as it hurts you. I think you need to talk to your parents, but right now Emily Rose needs you. She’d never admit it, but she does.”
“I really don’t care what you think,” Tara said, wiping mascara-caked crud from the corner of her eye. “They think I’m a druggie and a whore.”
“Have they really called you those things?”
“No, but I know it’s true. So I have a girlfriend and a few guy friends I hang out with when Thom’s out to sea. I get lonely. He’s out there a lot. People have nothing better to do than talk. And I like to have a little fun, and I don’t always like to drink. Alcohol has so many calories. I don’t see the harm in taking a few pills sometimes.”
The Davis Years (Indigo) Page 8
