Chapter 13
Ryan stepped into the kitchen and eyed the Chinese takeout. The bag had been sitting on his counter since he got home. He hadn’t been hungry at that point. Not after seeing Emily. He’d thought a shower might help.
It hadn’t.
Why he’d thought telling Emily about her mother’s call, in public, on a fucking sidewalk downtown, was a good idea, he had no damn clue. But after the dream, it had just shot right out of him.
His phone vibrated with a text.
Nora: I have a surprise for you.
Ryan: Good. I need a distraction right now. What is it?
Nora: Oh, I’m not telling you right now.
Ryan: Then why the fuck mention it?
Nora: First of all, you owe a dollar to the curse jar. Second, because I like to tease you. What’s wrong?
Ryan: What do you think?
Nora: Emi? Did you kiss again? No, then you’d be in a good mood. Did you try to kiss her and she turned you down?
Ryan: I’ll call tomorrow.
Nora: Why not now?
Ryan: Why not tell me your surprise now?
Nora: Touche, my friend.
A sudden ringing of his doorbell had Ryan straightening. Who the hell was that? He wasn’t expecting anyone.
He crossed to the door and looked through the peephole.
Shit.
He tugged the door open. “Jesus, Emily! You’re soaking.” He gripped her arm and pulled her inside, not missing the limp as she walked. The second the door closed, he gripped her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“No.”
“What happened? Are you hurt?” If someone had put their hands on her, that fucker would die tonight.
She shook her head.
“Did you walk here?” Either that, or she’d stood in the rain for the last hour.
She nodded.
He cursed beneath his breath before setting a hand on the small of her back. She took a step toward the stairs, but her knee hitched.
Goddammit. He slipped his arms behind her back and legs, then lifted her against his chest.
Upstairs, he didn’t go to the hall bathroom. He went straight to the one in his room, because he knew it was fully stocked.
Inside, he set her on her feet beside the shower, only leaving her for a second to grab one of his oversized sweatshirts. “Once you’re warm and dry, put this on.”
She nodded.
He stepped closer, cupping her ice-cold cheek. “Are you going to be all right if I leave?”
“I won’t drown, if that’s what you mean.”
What the hell had happened?
Without a second thought, he pulled her close. At first she was rigid, her body stiff in his arms. Then, slowly, she melted into him. Her arms curled around his waist, her cheek pressing to his chest. And then he was holding her.
He wasn’t sure how long they stood like that. Maybe seconds. Maybe minutes. Whatever it was, it wasn’t long enough.
She stepped back, and he forced himself to let her go. To turn. To step out of the bathroom and listen as the door clicked behind him.
Quickly, he changed out of his wet T-shirt and into a dry one.
Once he was downstairs again, he tidied the living room. It wasn’t really dirty, but for some damn reason, it didn’t feel clean enough for Emily.
He’d just finished putting the Chinese onto two plates when soft footsteps padded down the stairs.
He looked up—and Jesus fucking Christ, but the sight of her in his sweatshirt…in only his sweatshirt, wet hair falling around her shoulders, cheeks pink from the shower…it all felt like a physical blow.
She looked down. “It’s a bit big.”
“It’s perfect.”
Her eyes peeked up at him, and when she looked at the plates, there was the smallest wrinkle of her nose before her expression cleared.
“Not hungry?” he asked.
“Not really. I ate at the restaurant.”
“What about ice cream?”
She stopped at the kitchen island and curled her fingers over the edge. “What kind of ice cream?”
“Rocky road.”
“You don’t have rocky road. You hate that flavor.”
He crossed to the freezer and took out the tub.
Her eyes widened. “You do have that flavor. How?”
“Maybe it grew on me over the years.” Or maybe he’d bought the pint and stashed it in his freezer, simply because it reminded him of her.
Fuck, he was a sad bastard.
He removed the lid, stuck a spoon inside, and handed it over. “It’s better straight from the tub, right?”
Her lips twitched, and she took the tub. “Thank you. And thank you for letting me shower and…just be here. But if I’m going to stay and eat ice cream on your couch, I need to request something.”
“Anything.” It wasn’t a lie. Having the only woman he’d ever loved standing in his home, wearing his sweatshirt? He would agree to anything.
“I don’t want to talk about the past. Not the day we broke up, or my mother, or my car crash. I just want to not think about any of that right now.”
They had so much shit to work through. But, yeah…one night of not thinking about any of that shit? He could do it. “Deal.”
Emily traced the flecks of black in Ryan’s chocolate-brown eyes.
She was smiling. A real, rare smile that actually reached her eyes and made the corners crinkle. “You’re telling me that Joel, big bad former SEAL who’s dispatched more bad guys than most Secret Service agents, couldn’t rehome this cat?” she asked, from her side of the couch.
“He claims it couldn’t be done. We all know he’s just a closet softie.”
She chuckled. “I mean, you’re a closet gardener, so I’d argue you’re just as bad.”
His brow wrinkled. “A closet gardener?”
“Don’t pretend you’re not. I saw fresh fertilizer on that lawn, and those flowers look too healthy to be neglected.”
For the first time since sitting on the couch, some of the ease left his eyes. “I couldn’t let your favorite flowers die.”
Her favorite flower…he remembered. That should not make her heart thump the way it did. “A month ago, you didn’t know I’d ever be here to see it.”
An odd expression passed over his face. One she couldn’t quite work out.
She forced her gaze to the melting tub of ice cream on the coffee table. Then to the framed photo of his team on the wall.
“I’m impressed,” she said quietly.
“By what?”
“That you ended up here, in a small mountain town, still working with men you consider family. It must feel like a dream come true.”
“Almost.”
Her attention shot back to him. Was he talking about her? Was she the part of the dream that hadn’t quite worked out?
She mentally shook her head.
Don’t. Don’t allow yourself to read into things.
She pulled at a thread on the hem of his sweatshirt. “I’m still impressed.”
“My life is hardly impressive compared to yours.” He leaned over and set his empty plate on the table. “You got everything you worked so hard for. The career. The recognition.”
Did he really think she cared about recognition? Did he think any of it meant anything after her heart had been cut in two?
“Remember those movies we used to stay up watching?” he said, oblivious to her internal turmoil. “There was always this thing in your eyes. This longing and awe…you wanted it so badly.”
“I was young.”
“You were twenty-five.”
“A baby. I hadn’t seen or experienced anything. All I’d been exposed to, all I’d ever been told I could do, was act. I think it became more an obligation than anything else. Something I had to succeed at to prove my worth to my mom.”
“But you love it, don’t you?”
How did she answer that? How did she put into words what acting meant to her now? It had become her entire world. The thing that had given her so much…and taken so much away.
“I—”
Her phone vibrated with a text, cutting off her words.
Mom: Are you at the inn? Can we talk?
“What is wrong with my mother?” she asked, more to herself than Ryan.
“She lives through you.”
She turned off her phone and looked back at Ryan.
“I think there was a part of me that felt guilty. She drilled it into me for so long that I was the reason she didn’t get to live her dream.
She couldn’t be a good mother while also starting a career, so she gave it up.
A part of me wanted to give it back to her in a way. ”
“You don’t owe her anything.”
“Ha. Imagine my mother’s face if I told her that.” She shook her head. “Remember when I bought that beat-up old Mazda?”
Ryan laughed. “I thought she was going to lose her mind.”
“I think she did.” Her mother had wanted to buy her a car.
But they’d just had this huge argument about Ryan, and for the first time in Emily’s life, she’d wanted to be rebellious.
Really stick it to her mother. So she’d bought the oldest, ugliest car she could find.
Something she could actually afford, and something she knew would give her image-obsessed mother a heart attack.
“God, I loved that car. I only had it for two months, but it was my one rebellion.”
“What did you do with it?”
Her smile slipped. Realization darkened Ryan’s eyes.
She’d driven it off a bridge, that’s what she’d done with it.
He cleared his throat, running a hand over his face. “How’s the knee?”
“It’s okay.”
“May I?”
Before she could respond, he slipped her leg out from beneath her and studied the scarring. A low growl rippled from his chest. “I hate that you were hurt because of me.”
“Not because of you. I’ve said that already.”
He ran his finger over the scars, causing a shiver to run up her thigh.
As he studied her knee, she studied his hand. The thickness of his knuckles. The veins that ran beneath his skin.
Her lower belly quivered. “Ryan—”
She wasn’t even sure what she’d been about to say when he began to massage her thigh above her knee.
Holy Jesus, that felt good. Her eyes rolled back before she closed them entirely. Then her head tilted to the side of the sofa, and she just let herself sit in the moment. With his hands on her. His evergreen scent filling the air.
“Do you want me to take you back to the inn?”
“No.” She didn’t even open her eyes as she answered.
A second passed. Then another. Eventually, she looked at him to see that deep, familiar frown between his brows again.
Would he send her away? She hoped not. In this moment, she couldn’t imagine being anywhere other than here.
Slowly, he set her leg down on the floor before standing and holding out his hand. “Come on.”
With blind trust she absolutely shouldn’t have, she set her palm in his and let him lead her up the stairs. It was only when they stepped into his bedroom that she stopped. “You’re giving me your bed?”
“I haven’t made up the spare.”
“No.” She stepped back. “I can’t—”
“You can.”
The doorbell downstairs rang.
Ryan’s brow hitched. “Expecting anyone?”
Oh no… “I think I know who it is.”
She turned and marched down the stairs, Ryan’s footsteps thumping behind her. She was just reaching for the door when he gripped her wrist. “I’ll open it.”
He looked through the peephole…and frowned.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Emily groaned. “It’s my mother, here to rain hell down on both of us.” That was it. Emily was going to give her a huge piece of her mind. She was going to tell her mother exactly where she could go and—
“No.”
“No?”
“No one’s there.”
“What?”
Ryan opened the door. Only a crack, so that he could glance outside.
“No one’s here,” he whispered under his breath.
“Oh. Has that happened before?”
“Never.”
The fine hairs on her arms stood on end. “It was probably some kids messing around.”
Right?
Ryan was just closing the door when a knock sounded from the back of the house.
Air stuttered in her chest. Was it the same person? Why would they go to the back door?
Ryan tugged her behind him before moving into the office off the hall. Her eyes widened when he pulled a gun from a safe.
Did he think the person was a threat?
He took her hand, and she followed him through the dark kitchen to the back door. Just as they reached it, he gripped her shoulder and whispered, “Don’t move.”
Move? Her heart was thumping so hard, she could barely breathe. But mostly because she didn’t want to watch Ryan step outside.
What if someone was out there, waiting? What if that someone also had a gun?
She forced herself to remain where she was as he stepped outside.
Nerves crawled through her belly, making her feel sick and dizzy at the same time. She hated the quiet. But she equally craved it. Preferred that over the sound of bullets or aggression.
After what felt like a lifetime, Ryan came back inside.
Air whooshed from her chest. “Anything?”
“Not that I could see. But there were mud prints on the driveway.”
Mud prints…like the ones in the movie?
No. That was crazy…wasn’t it?
“What is it?” Ryan asked.
“This will probably sound really stupid, but…this is a scene from the movie we’re filming.”
“What is?”
“This. My character is at home, with Preston, when someone knocks on the front door. There’s no one there, but then there’s a knock on the back door. And the only evidence left behind are footprints on the driveway.”