Chapter Forty-Two #2
I stand up. Also naked. Also dealing with a, uh, logistical problem that is going to take a minute to resolve on its own, and I don’t have a minute.
Cold thoughts. Think cold thoughts. Alaska. Transfer paperwork. Lieutenant Daniels in a swimsuit.
That last one does the trick. Horrifying, but effective.
Emmie is tearing through the dresser, pulling out clothes at random. “Where are my—I can’t find—Crew, where is my bra?”
“You weren’t wearing one.”
“Exactly! I need one now because my mother will absolutely notice if I’m not wearing—” She stops mid-sentence, yanks open another drawer, and pulls out a sports bra. “This’ll do.”
She shimmies into it, then drags on leggings and a flannel over my t-shirt—the Bureau one she stole, which she apparently considers hers now. She’s buttoning the flannel wrong but there’s no time to mention it.
I pull on sweatpants and grab a clean shirt from the closet. Yank it over my head.
“The hickey,” she says, freezing.
“What hickey?”
She points at my neck. I touch the spot and wince—it’s tender. I cross to the mirror over the dresser. There it is. Purple and damning, just above my collar line.
“When did you—”
“Last night. Second round. You weren’t complaining at the time.”
“I’m not complaining now, I’m just—your father is going to see this.”
“It’s a bug bite.”
“Em.” I lift one brow.
“It could be.” She nods. “From a very aggressive Oklahoma bug.”
“Right.” Oklahoma bugs. Very different from Texas bugs.
Through the window, I hear Linda’s voice drift up from the driveway, bright and unmistakable, “Oh, Robert, look at it! It’s even cuter than the pictures! The porch—he built that porch himself, you know.”
Robert, unloading the trunk: “You’ve told me.”
“And the woodwork! Emmie said he did all of it by hand. By hand, Robert. Our future son-in-law.”
“Linda. Maybe we should’ve called first.”
“Why would we call? It’s a surprise!”
Emmie closes her eyes. Takes a breath through her nose like she’s accessing a deeper reserve of patience.
“Okay. The bedroom.” She turns and surveys the damage. The sheets are tangled. A pillow’s on the floor. It also probably smells like sex. My shirt from last night is draped over the footboard, and her underwear is hanging off the nightstand lamp in a way that I’d normally find amusing.
“We don’t have time to deal with all this,” I say. “Just close the door.”
“If my mother opens the door—”
“I’ll block it with my body.”
“My hero.” She grabs the pillow off the floor, chucks it onto the bed, kicks my shirt under the frame, and pulls the door shut like she’s sealing a crime scene.
We move to the main room. I do a quick scan—the living area looks fine. Kitchen is clean, that’s a plus. I grab the coffee maker and start a pot because if there’s one thing that reads normal Saturday morning and not you just interrupted your daughter mid-orgasm, it’s coffee.
Three knocks on the front door. Then Linda’s voice, sweet as honey. “Emmieeee! Surprise, sweetheart! We brought brunch!”
Emmie looks at me. I look at her. She’s flushed, hair wild, flannel buttoned wrong, still slightly out of breath from either the sex or the panic. Probably both.
I probably don’t look much better. My shirt feels like it might be inside out. I check. It is.
I yank it off and flip it. Emmie watches me, and for a split second her eyes track down my chest and her expression goes somewhere that is not helpful right now.
“Stop it,” I say.
“Stop what?”
“Looking at me like that while your parents are on the porch. If I didn’t have a visible hickey and your father outside my door, we’d be back in that bedroom in about three seconds.”
Her cheeks go darker. She bites her lip, and I have to physically turn away from her.
“Get the door,” I say. “Before I do something that gets me killed by a retired football coach.”
She takes a breath, smooths the flannel, and opens the door.
Linda Marshall enters our cabin the way a hurricane enters a coastline.
“OH, look at this place!” She makes a beeline straight for Emmie, casserole balanced in one hand.
She grabs Emmie’s left hand, yanking it toward her face like she’s appraising a diamond at auction. She tilts it in the light, makes a sound that’s somewhere between a gasp and a squeal. ”Oh, sweetheart.” Then she looks at me with glassy eyes—and nods once. “Good job, honey. You did good.”
She continues past Emmie, taking it all in. “The beams! Robert, look at the beams. And the floors—Emmie, honey, why didn’t you tell me about these floors? Is this reclaimed wood? It’s reclaimed wood, isn’t it? Crew, did you do the floors yourself?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Beautiful. Just beautiful.” She sets the casserole on the counter and pulls me into a hug that lasts long enough for me to wonder if she’s checking my neck.
She is. She’s absolutely checking my neck.
When she pulls back, her eyes flick to the hickey. One beat. Two. A smile spreads across her face—the kind of smile that contains multitudes, none of them innocent.
“It was a bug,” I mutter, heat crawling up my neck.
She doesn’t say anything. Not yet. She just pats my cheek and turns back to the kitchen.
Robert comes through the door behind her, cooler in hand. He sets it down, shakes my hand. Firm grip, warm eyes. If he notices the hickey or my slightly wild expression, he has the grace not to mention it.
Robert Marshall: the patron saint of minding his own business.
“Is there coffee?” he asks.
“I can make a pot.”
We stand in the kitchen in comfortable silence while Linda tours the cabin like she’s filing a report for Architectural Digest and Emmie trails behind her trying to steer her away from the bedroom.
Turns out Robert told Linda about the proposal, and Linda Marshall is physically incapable of waiting more than twenty-four hours to see a ring on her daughter’s finger.
“And down here must be the—” Linda reaches for the bedroom door.
“Mom!” Emmie materializes between Linda and the door handle like a Secret Service agent intercepting a threat. “That’s, um—that room’s a mess right now. We haven’t made the bed yet.”
“Sweetheart, I’ve seen an unmade bed before.”
“Not this one.”
Linda studies her daughter. Eyes moving over the wrong-buttoned flannel. The flush that hasn’t fully faded. The slightly disheveled hair.
Then she looks at me across the room. At my neck.
Then back at the closed bedroom door.
The smile returns. Bigger this time.
“Robert,” she says, sweet as pecan pie. “Why don’t we set up brunch on the porch? It’s such a gorgeous morning. Let these two finish getting… settled.”
The pause before settled could fill a courtroom.
Robert picks up the cooler. “Porch sounds good.” He catches my eye on the way out and gives me a look that says, very clearly: I know. I don’t want to know. Let’s never discuss it.
I give him the smallest nod. An understanding forged in silence.
Linda pauses at the screen door. Turns back. And delivers the kill shot.
“Also, Emmie?”
“Please don’t.”
“Your flannel’s buttoned wrong, sweetheart.” A beat. “And that’s not a bug bite on your fiancé’s neck.”
She pushes through the screen door, casserole in hand, already calling to Robert about where to set up the chairs.
The door swings shut.
Emmie turns to me.
I look back at her.
And she just… loses it.
The laugh starts low—a wheeze, really—and then it cracks open into something full and helpless and so contagious I feel my mouth twitch against my will. She bends at the waist, one hand braced on the counter, the other pressed over her mouth, and her whole body shakes with it.
“She knew,” Emmie manages between gasps. “She took one look at us and she absolutely—”
“To be fair, your flannel was buttoned wrong. And there’s the hickey.”
“There’s the hickey.” She wipes her eyes, still grinning. “Oh my gosh. My mother drove three hours to surprise us and we were—” She gestures vaguely at the bedroom. “—and I didn’t even get to—”
She cuts herself off. Looks at me. Her expression shifts from amused to something darker, more focused.
“I didn’t finish,” she says.
“I’m aware.”
“That’s going to bother me all through brunch.”