18. Liam
Emerson’s gaze sweeps over me as she emerges from the guest room. “I guess I won’t explain why I’m not wearing the children’s shorts you gave me since you’re wearing less.”
So she’s not wearing much of anything, or anything at all, under that sweatshirt. Against my better instincts, I imagine how easy it would be to drop my towel, to close the distance between us. To shove that sweatshirt over her hips, lift her onto the table…
Fuck my life. This is not the time for thoughts like that.
“I just realized I left my phone out here,” I reply. “I was worried JP might call.”
She slides her fingers along the hem of the sweatshirt. “It’s interesting that you explain why you’re wandering around in no clothes but not why you have children’s shorts in your home.”
I laugh as I reach for my phone. “They were my niece’s. I found them in the laundry room. I’ll be out in a sec.”
I’m trying not to act like a teenage boy who’s somehow gotten the hottest girl in school alone, though it’s how I feel. Mostly because, like that hypothetical teenage boy, I have no idea what to do with Emerson now that she’s here.
In an ideal world, I’d take her over my knee for driving downtown in the first place. I flinch. Let’s avoid thinking about Emerson’s bare ass in your face for the next hour or so. You can think about it at your leisure once she’s gone.
She impressed me today. She worked her tail off on behalf of people she thinks the worst of, people who seem to have hurt her in the past. It’s dangerous to start letting myself think there’s something good inside her, something more than she wants the world to see.
I seem to be thinking it anyway.
When I get back to the living room, she’s setting her pile of wet clothes by the front door.
Even from here I can spy a pair of red lace panties in that pile. Yep. Nothing on under the sweatshirt. Outstanding. “You can throw that stuff in the dryer if you want,” I say gruffly. “It’s in the kitchen.”
She nods, bending over to retrieve her clothes, and I’m looking before I can stop myself. The sweatshirt rides up high enough that I glimpse the curve of her ass before she tugs it down.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.I walk into the kitchen and stab the button on the coffeemaker almost violently.
Think of something else.
Grandma’s funeral. The tsunami in Thailand. My other grandma’s funeral.
She passes me to throw her stuff in the dryer. I hand her the first cup of coffee as she emerges. “I assume you take it black.”
“Why would you assume that?” There’s something soft, almost sweet about her face in the kitchen’s dim golden light. The lush curves of her bare mouth beg to be kissed.
Tsunami. Grandma.
“Because you don’t seem to let yourself enjoy a lot of things,” I reply. Her face dims a little, so I’m compelled to clarify. “I’d just assume you think of coffee as, I don’t know, a device to encourage greater efficiency at work.”
She takes the mug from my hand, suddenly somber. “I’m not a robot. I enjoy things.”
“Then you’d like some milk and sugar for that, I assume?”
She hesitates. I suspect she wants to say yes just to prove me wrong. “Just a little milk, please.”
I turn to the refrigerator and she moves away, walking across to the living room, looking at my pictures. Since the day she walked into the theater with her high heels and her perma-scowl, I’ve fantasized about her. I’ve pictured her bent over the tailgate of my truck or on the table in the back of the theater with her heels still on, one of those short skirts she wears bunched around her waist.
I’m pretty sure the fantasy will now involve her in my living room with her hair wet, wearing nothing but a damn sweatshirt.
“So what’s the deal?” she asks. “Are you taking me home?”
“Yeah. JP said he’ll be here within the hour. Are you hungry?”
She pauses, as if the question is a trick. With what I’ve heard about her life in high school, I guess I know why. “I’m okay.”
“Bullshit,” I reply, opening the refrigerator and grabbing the chicken. “You got down to Main Street just after four this morning and it’s nearly lunch. You like stir-fry?”
“Yeah, though I’m not sure it’s a good idea to accept food made by my competition.”
“If I decide to kill you off, I’ve got enough sense to do it in a way that can’t be traced. But you can come over here and watch me if you’re still suspicious.”
She takes a seat at the counter while I chop the chicken. “Do you need help?”
“Do you know how to make stir-fry?”
“I know how to order stir-fry. And I’m capable of taking direction.”
I throw the chicken in the pan and return to the freezer for rice. “Somehow I doubt that,” I say, and she laughs. The chicken begins to fizzle and pop in the oil, Emerson’s still smiling and I wish I could capture this moment somehow, the coziness of it. “So I suppose living in the city you just order in all your meals?”
“I wouldn’t have time to cook even if I cared to,” she says just as her phone rings with an incoming video call.
The name on the screen says Donovan Arling, and even though she rejects the call and turns the phone face down on the counter, that name registers like a hard pinch, though I don’t even know why he’s calling her yet.
“Donovan Arling?” I ask. “As in the Olympic swimmer, Donovan Arling?”
She grins. “Names don’t mean much. You’re in my phone as Yard Boy.”
“So, who’s in your phone as Olympic swimmer Donovan Arling?”
Her mouth twitches. “Olympic swimmer Donovan Arling. He’s a friend.”
I already know exactly what sort of friend he is, and I’m jealous as hell though I’ve got no right to be.
“How do you have a relationship with anyone if you’re working so much?”
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t bother with relationships. The last thing I need is someone crying about how much I work or insisting that I skip an important trip because he feels neglected.”
So she’s simply fucking Arling. That doesn’t make me feel any better.
“Maybe you could choose someone who doesn’t cry about shit in the first place,” I grumble.
She laughs to herself. “No offense, but you all cry eventually. I’ll pass.”
There’s certainty in her voice. Perhaps this is a conversation we should have had a few months ago, before I started reading and rereading her messages, before I started going to bed each night thinking about what I’d text her next.
I’ve been enthralled with this girl for months without really knowing anything of substance about her. But the truth is that she’s not what I’m looking for—and she’s apparently not looking for me either.
A change of subject is necessary. Focus, Liam.
“How’d you even know there’d be sandbags available this morning?”
Her arms cross over her chest, as if she’s protecting herself from me or the question. “My dad and I used to come down and help with the sandbags when I was little. I honestly have no idea how I lifted them.”
I turn to look at her. “I used to come with my dad too. I don’t remember you.”
She raises a brow. “Were you still a kid when I was a kid?”
“Maybe I’m not aging as well as I’d thought. I’m probably four years older than you at most. I doubt it’s even that much.”
Her arms squeeze tighter. “I don’t remember you from high school.”
There’s something wary in her voice. I think of Pete at the bar, laughing about her weight. Is she always bracing for someone to still be an asshole, all these years later? I’d have thought it was ridiculous if I hadn’t witnessed those guys in action.
“I went to Prep,” I say softly, when what I want to say is I know what happened, and I’m so fucking sorry, and I swear to God I wouldn’t have let them treat you the way they did if I’d been there.
She smiles. Her relief is palpable. “Oooh, fancy. I wouldn’t have pegged you for a little rich boy.”
I carry the bowls to the table and slide one her way. “I wasn’t. I went on a baseball scholarship.”
Her head tilts. “Ah, a big-time athlete. That explains the overconfidence. Did you play in college too?”
“I blew out my shoulder sophomore year and left when they took away the scholarship. I could have gotten loans, I guess, but my older sister was having a hard time, so I came back to help her.”
“If I could offer you some unsolicited advice,” she says, “you should start helping people less.”
I laugh despite myself. “That’s exactly the kind of advice I’d expect you to give.”
She smiles. “At least I’m consistent.”
We finish our lunch. She helps me load the dishwasher and I guide her out to the living room, the sweatshirt riding high up her legs as she yawns and takes a seat on the couch.
I briefly imagine taking the seat beside her and rule it out, then consider it again.
When she first came into the house today, I was hungry and soaking wet and wanted nothing more than to get myself dry and fed. Now that all that’s dealt with, I’ve got only one desire left in the fucking world.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to see someone spread wide on my couch more than I do Emerson Hughes. But it’s also pretty clear that nothing is going to come of this, and that I shouldn’t try to make something come of this. She’s the kind of woman you could sleep with but never entirely possess and I think it would make me insane—the not-possessing part.
I take the chair across from her instead.
“My arms are so sore I can’t lift them high enough to cover my mouth when I yawn,” she says, laughing.
“It’ll be worse tomorrow. You might need to take a few days off from terrorizing the contractors of Elliott Springs.”
“But that’s my favorite part of the job, and Gary is in particular need of some terrorizing.”
“What’s going on?”
“The floor is slanted. He’s trying to claim it’s some kind of optical illusion that will be corrected once the fixtures are in, but once they’re in, it’ll be too late to correct the floor if he’s wrong.”
Nothing she’s saying surprises me. Gary Teller wasn’t even in construction until about three years ago. He decided his ability to use a drill made him a construction expert, when his only real skill is getting his name out there to people seeking contractors. I’ve made a lot of money cleaning up his messes since he got started, if nothing else.
“You want me to take a look?” I ask.
Her gaze grows wary. I’m not sure what people are like where she lives, but she seems to think there’s going to be a price to pay for any kindness shown to her. “Why are you being nice to me?”
The question irks me. “Why? You think this is all because I’m trying to get in your pants instead of just being a decent human being?”
She shrugs. “It crossed my mind.”
“If I was trying to get in your pants,” I reply, rising, “believe me, you’d know. I’m going to call JP and see where he is.”
I’m not sure if I’m irritated because she was wrong or if I’m irritated because she’s, in some small way, right. I’d have done the shit I did today for almost anyone. The difference is that I wanted to do it for her. I wanted to save her fucking stores; I wanted to get her in dry clothes and get her fed. I wanted JP to take his sweet time with my truck.
I’m not going to act on it, but yeah, there’s a significant part of me that would like to get in her pants, were she wearing any.
Which, goddammit, she is not.
“You almost back?” I ask JP gruffly.
“Thought I’d give you some more time with your new girlfriend,” he replies.
I roll my eyes. “Funny. Hurry up.”
He tells me he’s heading over. I turn to give Emmy an ETA and discover that she is sound asleep, sitting upright. Long lashes brush her cheeks, her full mouth relaxed and soft, free of its habitual scowl. Her body slowly drifts sideways until she is flat across the couch with the sweatshirt riding up once again. I cover her with a blanket for my own sake as much as hers, and then I text JP and tell him there’s no rush.
I don’t know why the fuck I like the fact that she’s asleep on my couch as much as I do. After years of wondering how the hell to get women out of my place, I’ve finally found one I wish would stay.
And it’s the one who can’t wait to get the hell out.