Always & Forever: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection, Books 1 - 4)

by Brenna Jacobs

  Emma clasped her hands in front of her and drew a breath before nodding.

  “What book was it?”

  That startled her gaze back to his. It wasn’t the question she’d expected, and it turned her cheeks warm. “Um, I don’t really remember.”

  He leaned forward a little, his eyes scanning her face. “Objection, your honor. I don’t think that’s true.”

  “That’s not a real objection.” But he didn’t answer, so she sighed. “It was a Nora Roberts novel.” She waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t.

  “Which one?”

  She thought back. “Something about Northern lights.”

  “I remember that one. I thought it was pretty good,” he said.

  “You read it?”

  “Yeah. It came out when I was working one of my first cases in the DAs office. A low level petty theft thing. But I remember waiting for my case to be called and glancing around the courtroom and no less than six women had that book in their hands. I was curious, so I got it and read it.”

  “And you liked it?”

  He shrugged. “A big city cop pulled into a small town murder mystery? What’s not to like?”

  “But it was a romance?”

  “I thought it was a pretty good trick that I kept wanting to turn the pages just to find out what was going to happen next. Also,” he added softly, “I like romance.”

  Heat suddenly curled in her stomach, and she cleared her throat. “Yeah, well, Arianna Lindsor didn’t have the same opinion.”

  “How could Arianna Lindsor have an opinion if she hadn’t read the book?”

  “Because it’s the same opinion she had for all genre fiction. She felt it flinched too much from real life to be real art. When I was in middle school and my friends were all reading the Series of Unfortunate Events for their independent reading assignments, she made sure I had a classic in my hands. Great Expectations. Far from the Madding Crowd.”

  His nose crinkled. It was distractingly attractive. “Not just classics but the most boring classics.”

  “I grew to love them,” she said. “When you consider what they were saying and the time they were saying it in, I think they’re fresh and interesting. But also timeless.”

  “And I think those were just the genre fiction of their time. Especially Great Expectations.”

  She didn’t want to argue about it. “Anyway, it worked out. It gave me a strong foundation going into my prep school and kept me competitive for the colleges I wanted to go to. It even helped me land my job at Standish College.”

  “But isn’t it possible that it stifled your love of reading just a little?”

  She stared at him, wondering if he’d heard a word she’d said. “I just described how it led to my whole professional life being in literature.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I meant . . .” He scrubbed his hand through his hair, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them and dropping his hand. His hair stood up in a few places now, and she wanted to lean over and smooth them. “Take that crime novel you were reading the other day. Or any book I’ve heard you talk about, including mine. You always talk in terms of taking them apart, trying to figure out their place among the greats, holding them up to the dead classics that formed your tastes, trying to see where they fit. When was the last time you read a story purely for the pleasure of it?”

  He hadn’t given the word “pleasure” any particular emphasis but hearing it from him sent a small spark of electricity dancing down her spine. “I like reading. All the time. Even your book.”

  He grinned. “But when was the last time you got lost in a book?”

  “It’s been a long time,” she admitted.

  “I’m not trying to judge your mom because I don’t even know her. I’m sure her intentions were good when she steered you away from genre fiction, but to me, it’s like someone telling a child not to dance because there are chores to do. There’s room for both things.”

  “She was doing her best,” Emma said, stung into defending her. “You may not mean to judge her, but that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  “Not her as a person. Just her decision to impose her tastes on you.”

  “Isn’t that what all parents do? Teach their values to their children?”

  “Sure, but I loved baseball, and my dad’s an engineer who would much rather talk about metal ductility than sports. And he still drove me to every practice and showed up for every game, even when we both knew that I was never going to be better than barely making my high school team. He didn’t care; if I loved doing it, that’s all it took for him to support it.”

  Emma’s mother hadn’t really been like that. Hadn’t been like that at all. Her support had been unequivocal so long as Emma chose pursuits that followed a trajectory pleasing to Arianna. “My mom wanted the best for me.”

  “Of course she did. But did she understand you well enough to know what that was? Or did she assume that what was best for her was also best for you?”

  The conversation was wearing her out. “I don’t want to talk about my mother.”

  “I don’t blame you. But from where I’m sitting, after reading this memoir and knowing you, I think maybe you’re still . . .” He trailed off, looking uneasy.

  “Still what?” she asked through her suddenly tight jaw.

  “I think it’s okay to step out of what Arianna Lindsor wants and decide what Emerson Lindsor wants.”

  “I see where you’re trying to go with this. And I’ll admit that my mother has strong opinions, but you’re acting like I need to be saved from her. And I don’t. At all.”

  “Can I just ask a couple more questions?”

  “No.” Being psychoanalyzed by a master cross-examiner felt about as fun as her last dental cleaning. And yet . . . “Yes.” There was a flutter of satisfaction deep down inside of her that she couldn’t ignore, a satisfaction that once again, he was daring to praise Arianna Lindsor as anything less than brilliant and perfect.

  “Your mom lives in New York, right? Why do you live at literally the most opposite point in the country you could possibly live from her? There’s moving to the west coast, but then you took it a step further and moved to an island that was even farther away than the edge of the continent.”

  Her lips twitched. “I did sort of want my own space. What’s the other question?”

  “How did your dad feel about what you read?”

  The question was so unexpected that it stopped her breath for a second. She drew another one to steady herself before she answered. “My mother wrote that he died after a fall from a ladder when he was trying to retrieve a book from a top shelf in our two-story library. That’s not what happened.” She’d never told anyone this before. “He was throwing a Frisbee with me in the yard. It went on the roof. He went up to get it and fell off. Traumatic brain injury. That’s how he died.”

  Aidan’s eyes softened, and he pulled his chair around the table so that he sat next to her. She angled so they were facing each other. He was close enough that she could have easily reached out to touch his knee. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs. “Do you feel like it was your fault?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’ve never felt that way. But in a way, I think my mom always blamed me that he didn’t have a more interesting death. Not even that he died. Just that he died in such an ordinary way.”

  He reached out and took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers and running his thumb lightly across the knuckles. “How much of what she says in there is made up?”

  “Either not very much or a whole lot, depending on how you look at it. A lot of the details are massaged, like the story of how my dad died. He died from a fall, all the sadness is real, but the exact nature of the fall isn’t what she said it was. She did that with a lot of things.”

  “Sounds like it’s eighty percent true and the rest is varnish.”

  “Good way to put it.”

  “Then it also sounds like she’s not jus
t asking you to live up to a high standard, it’s a high standard that even she doesn’t keep in her personal life.”

  “No, it’s not that.” The sense of frustration she always felt when words failed her was intruding now. “She doesn’t live a lie. She just lives a revised version of her actual life.”

  “And she’s been trying to revise you into something different.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with fixing a rough draft.”

  “Except haven’t you ever seen other writers get critiqued to the point where they take the input but it wipes out their natural voice?”

  “I get what you’re saying, but that’s not what happened here. My mother has just always pushed me to be my best version of myself.”

  “Or her best version of yourself.”

  She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He had a talent for picking those kinds of topics. She deflected, something she’d become an expert at with her mother. “Should we talk about your own neurotic need to do exactly what she does in your own work?”

  He straightened almost with a jolt, and she withdrew her hand from his. “After reading her memoir, I’m pretty sure I can say with one hundred percent certainty that I’m nothing like your mom.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. You take the cases that don’t go the way you wanted them to then turn them into a better version that satisfies you. How is that different?”

  “I’m writing fiction. And I’m calling it fiction, not pretending it’s the truth.”

  “You’re writing fiction based on the truth and revising real life for the ending you want.”

  He got up and walked to his cupboard for a couple of glasses, filling one at the sink. “Water?”

  She shook her head.

  He drank the whole glass, and she sensed a pent up energy, like his mind was racing independent of any of the actions he was taking. Finally he set the glass down. “How do we always end up here?”

  “In an argument?”

  He lifted one shoulder as an acknowledgment.

  “I don’t know.” She reached for her laptop, closing it in preparation to pack it up.

  “That doesn’t mean I want you to leave.”

  “I think I’m done being filleted like a fish for the evening.”

  “I’m sorry. I hate that you’re leaving. This isn’t how I imagined tonight going at all. What can I say to change your mind?”

  Two seconds before, she would have said there was nothing. But now she wondered where he had wanted the night to go instead. She had no desire to find out at the cost of having to endure more poking around in her psychological profile. But there was one thing that might change her mind . . .

  “If you spill your guts so they’re as exposed as my own fish guts are right now, I’ll consider it.”

  “I also did not expect so much talk of dead fish.”

  She reached for her laptop bag, but he held up his hands. “Don’t. Please.” And with a deep breath, he met her eyes. “Challenge accepted.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Aidan set his glass on the counter and crossed his arms. “Go ahead. Shoot.”

  “It’s not that easy.” Emma shifted in her seat, but he noticed she had let go of her computer bag. The immediate risk of her leaving had passed.

  “You think me standing here and telling you to dig around into my dustiest corners is easy?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Dust sounds dry. I want juicy stuff.”

  “You sound mercenary.”

  “I’ve had an uncomfortable thirty minutes. I’m in the mood for payback.”

  He shook his head. “The words every guy wants to hear when he’s on the verge of opening up to a woman.”

  She gave him a slight smile, but he could sense that she had shifted from teasing toward something more serious. “I do have a couple of questions.”

  He returned to his seat. They were close again, and he leaned back and stretched his legs so they rested next to her, allowing him to be even closer while still giving her space. “Go ahead.”

  “Why does it bother you so much that my mother’s opinion matters to me? Don’t most people feel that way about their parents?”

  “Sure. I do. Except I’m not sure most parents make their kids work as hard to earn their approval as your mother does.”

  “She has high standards, not a cruel streak. But either way, you’re still not answering why my mother’s opinion of me matters so much to you.”

  He clasped his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling for a while before returning his gaze to hers. He wasn’t trying to avoid the question. In fact, he was poking around in his mind looking for an answer. “It’s a great question. I don’t know.”

  Her eyebrow went up. “I didn’t realize that was an option when I was being interrogated or I wouldn’t have known anything either. Try harder.”

  That won a reluctant smile from him. “You’d have made an excellent prosecutor.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  His smile grew wider. “And you’re making my point. All right,” he said, sitting up a little straighter. “Why does it bother me that you care about your mother’s opinion? I think it’s because you care about her opinion in the same way you care about Luther Van Dijk’s opinion. It’s like you write everything with them in mind and delete it as soon as you write it because you think it’s falling short of what they think is good.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. But I still don’t get why it would upset you even if it was. How does it have anything to do with you at all?”

  “I think . . . it’s because I want you to like my work.” He said it quickly because much like jumping from a cliff, he had to do it full-speed or lose his nerve.

  She blinked at him. “Okaaaay. But I can want their good opinion of my work and have my own opinion of your work.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think those are the voices in your head—the literary writers and critics—who shape how you feel about books. And they would hate what I write. And so you’ll hate what I write.”

  “That matters to you?”

  “Yeah.” He thrust his hands through his hair. He hadn’t thought this was going to be a fish gut moment for him the way it had been for her, but he could sense it coming now. “My ex-wife hated that I wrote. She hated that I wasn’t as driven or ambitious as she was, and she thought my writing was embarrassing.”

  Emma leaned forward to touch his knee for a second. He was glad it was only a slight brush. It was taking all he had not to jump from the chair and escape to the deck and a cool evening breeze. And silence.

  “Is that why you divorced her?” Emma asked.

  He looked somewhere past her shoulder, not really seeing. “No. It’s why she divorced me. She wanted someone who would change the world with her. She said all I did was change real life endings.”

  He felt more than saw her flinch. “That sounds a lot like what I’ve said.”

  He only nodded. It was true.

  “Is that what this is about?” She pointed between them. “Getting me to like your work like I’m a proxy for your ex-wife?”

  “No. I mean, maybe at first. Not even that. It was more like it felt like you hated what I did for the same reasons she did. And I get so tired of people telling me that my work doesn’t have value. My ex. My critics. I think I’ve somehow gotten into my head that if you like what I do then I’m proving them all wrong.”

  “Then what?” He wasn’t sure what she was asking him, and she must have read his confusion because she elaborated. “Then what happens if I like your work? You move on, satisfied with an achievement unlocked?”

  “Maybe before. But now it’s something different. I feel like I have some things to learn from you. I don’t think this story, this bad guy, this situation is going to tolerate being fixed the way it has in books past. I don’t know how to be okay with that. But this is what you did in your book. Your character just accepts things as they are, n
o neat bow at the end. How could you be okay with that?”

  “That’s like asking how I can be okay with real life. Do I have a choice? That’s how it is. I lost my person when my dad died. He’s the one who ‘got’ me while my mother lived this brilliant and far removed life. We were homebodies, content to orbit around her any time she returned from living her life as a famous writer. My dad was a professor too, but in accounting. So when I lost him, suddenly it’s just me and my glittery, fierce but not nurturing mother, no siblings, no anybody. Was I supposed to say, ‘No, I don’t like this. I refuse to play?’ I guess people do that, but they’re usually the ones running away from life or maybe being institutionalized. Living real life isn’t a choice. You just do it.”

  “Do your books make you happy?”

  “There’s no plural. I’ve only written one.”

  “With another one trying to find its way out. Do they make you happy?”

  “Only hacks are ever content with their work. There’s always a way to make a book better.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I understand the temptation of living in permanent revisions, tweaking and re-tweaking. I mean do you go on this journey with your characters and feel happy about where they end up?”

  “Those aren’t the kinds of books I write, remember?”

  “So that’s a no.”

  She dropped her head as if she were exhausted by the conversation and mumbled to her lap, “Once again, mine are more like real life.”

  “And you think real life isn’t happy.” She was just about the most uncooperative witness he’d ever had.

  “I think it’s never as uncomplicated as people try to make it.”

  He reached over and touched her chin, gently lifting it so she would meet his eyes. “For years my career dealt with the ugliest parts of real life you can imagine. I get it.”

  She reached up and touched his hand then drew it down but laced her fingers through his, letting their joined hands rest on her knee. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to minimize that.”

  “I refuse to believe that it always has to go that way. There are decision points where we have a chance to turn things around. We can figure out how to give other people those opportunities.”