by Amanda Tru
Her ornaments had been stolen with her car, and to her, the loss of the ornaments presented the greater tragedy. Her orders still needed to be filled regardless of her sudden lack of inventory. Her only option was to hurriedly make what ornaments she could to fill the shipments and mail them as soon as possible. While she normally purchased a majority of her supplies online, she no longer had time for that. Instead, she needed to go to a craft store in Brighton Falls to restock and hurry back home to get to work. However, she now had no car in which to get to Brighton Falls, and the only person who could drive her there lay asleep on her couch downstairs.
Emma dressed quickly while saying a few quick prayers that God would help Leo be agreeable and help her complete the ornaments.
Maybe she could even offer to pay Leo to take her. After all, it was Saturday. Since he shouldn’t be working, he probably didn’t have anything better to do.
At least, those were the things Emma told herself during her quick self-directed pep talk.
Emma stomped her feet on the way down the stairs, purposely making as much noise as she dared and hoping that, if Leo still slept, the sounds would awaken him enough to warn him of her coming. Orion padded after her with his tail wagging in good morning happiness.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work. She soon stood directly in front of the couch looking down at a very much asleep Leo Jacobs. Emma studied him, thinking about how he didn’t appear nearly so intimidating in his sleep. His features seemed relaxed and innocent, with the way his hair lay across his forehead almost lending him a touch of vulnerability.
Her gaze slid down his body, noticing that he must have retrieved a blanket from the closet after all. The blue fleece wrapped around his legs and was pulled halfway up his bare chest.
Emma’s eyes flew wide, and her gaze hurried back up to his face. Where was the white shirt he wore last night? The sight of his muscles stretching through the shirt had thrown her off enough, but that didn’t even compare to seeing his upper torso in its full glory.
With a deep breath and a mighty attempt to clear her head, Emma focused resolutely on Leo’s face, not permitting even a wandering of her peripheral vision. She had never encountered such a creature as Leo, and as strangely alluring as she found him wide awake, he was disturbingly irresistible in the softening of sleep.
Emma mentally debated whether or not to go make her morning coffee. Unlike most people, coffee had a relaxing effect on Emma, calming her overactive senses. Looking at Leo, she knew she definitely could use some coffee, and the noise of her preparations might wake him anyway. However, taking that route would mean many more seconds of knowing that Leo lay on her couch sleeping, shirtless and disturbingly handsome. She couldn’t handle that.
The man needed to wake up. Now.
With a deep, determined breath, Emma cleared her throat, waiting for those long-lashed eyelids to flutter open.
To her surprise, they remained still and resting against his cheek.
She tried again, this time louder.
Still no response.
Frustrated, she wondered what to try next. Short of hacking up a lung, she didn’t think she had much more volume to give in the throat-clearing attempt.
She scowled. Police officers were supposed to be light sleepers, right? Wasn’t his plan to keep watch and protect her? With these reflexes, the three men from yesterday could break into the house and make a full confession right in front of the couch. Meanwhile, Leo Jacobs would be none the wiser.
Emma looked at Orion expectantly, hoping he’d take the hint and bark. Orion rarely barked, however, so it wasn’t too surprising that he just smiled up at her as if enjoying her predicament.
Realizing she’d get no help from that corner, Emma turned back to Leo, wondering how she should go about waking the sleeping giant. She kind of liked him like this, all nice and peaceful, yet the other part of her was thoroughly scandalized at such admissions. Despite her shock at her own reaction, her heart continued on with its wayward longings while completely ignoring her rational brain.
She watched the soft rise and fall of his body breathing and was gripped by a strange urge to reach out and caress the wayward hair on his forehead back into place. Startled, she stepped back.
What was she thinking? No, no, no! She didn’t actually want to touch him!
Tapping her fingers together, she sorted through various options of how to wake him without physically touching him. Zeroing in on an idea, she hurried upstairs to her craft studio and searched through a box of odds and ends until she found a long pink feather, such as what might be found on a hat. Returning to the couch, she stood back and slowly extended the feather to tickle the left side of his face.
The muscles in his face twitched at the sensation, but he didn’t wake.
Warming to her task, she stepped closer and tried again, trailing the feather down his cheekbone and then along his nose. At the touch, his nose twitched, reminding Emma of a little bunny whose nose hopped up and down.
Unable to stop herself, she giggled at the sight, immediately clamping her hand over her mouth to silence herself. Orion panted and brushed against her leg eagerly, as if wanting a piece of the action.
However, Leo remained oblivious.
When the unexpected sound of her laughter didn’t wake him either, Emma gave up all effort at trying to gently woo him awake and leaned in. “Leo,” she said, right into those closed eyes. “I need you to wake up and take me to the craft store. Leo… “
She tried the feather one last time, giving his entire face a good once over with the thing. Deciding it simply wasn’t providing enough pressure to elicit anything but compulsive twitching, she dropped the feather and, unthinkingly reached out with the tips of his fingers.
The warmth from his jaw flowed through her fingers at her touch and spread up her entire arm. The sensation didn’t cause the discomfort she expected and was, instead, exhilarating and mesmerizing in a way she’d never experienced. She gently followed his jawline, feeling the short stubble of whiskers and studying his handsome profile with an artist’s eye.
It was like taking a sip of something that had long been forbidden. It was a refreshing, exotic flavor for which she never knew she longed, and now that she’d tasted it, she didn’t know that she could ever do without.
Leo leaned into her touch, causing the feather she had dropped to brush past the end of his nose. At the tickle, his nose started its bunny twitching, which caused Emma’s giggles to bubble to the surface again.
This time the merriment was just too much for Orion to stand, and he leaped right in the middle of it, which happened to be on top of Leo.
While sound, a feather, and Emma’s touch hadn’t succeeded, an 80-pound dog landing in his lap more than accomplished the task.
On impact, Leo startled, his arms and legs shooting out spread eagle, dislodging Orion before he’d ever maintained balance. Instead of simply jumping off, Orion tried to maintain his hold, tap dancing on Leo’s torso as the man writhed and hollered.
Emma made a swipe at Orion right as Leo gained enough traction to roll and get Orion off. His movement carried too much momentum, and with the sudden absence of weight, the force flung him up and off of the couch where his widespread arms effectively tackled Emma before landing face down on top of her.
“Oomph!” the wind knocked out of Emma on impact, leaving her unable to say a word with Leo’s face only inches above her own.
“Emma, are you ok?” Leo, wide awake and frantic now, sent his fingers probing her head and gently touching her face, searching for an injury.
His touch sent tingles through her body, and somehow, they helped calm the urgent, unfulfilled gasps for air.
“I’m ok,” she finally managed in a whisper that carried no actual sound.
“Are you sure? Did you hit your head? If you did, we need to get you right to the…” His words trailed off, and his eyes changed. Emma watched as the dark parts of his eyes seemed to get larger. The fingers
searching for injury slowed and softened as they gently trailed along her forehead, caressing her hair back off her face.
The transformation fascinated Emma, and strangely, her heart picked up its tempo.
What is he thinking? she thought, wondering what his expression meant. She didn’t recognize it as one she’d ever seen before.
With a sharp click of the key turning, the front door opened.
Leo gasped, awkwardly scrambling to get off Emma. Lurching to his feet, his wild gaze met the eyes of Robert Sheldon, Emma’s father. Strangled sounds escaped his throat at the sight of Emma’s mother, Cindy, peering around from behind her husband.
Emma had yet to move off the floor before Leo gulped, swung his gaze back to Robert and desperately cried, “Sir, this isn’t what it looks like!”
Robert Sheldon’s loud guffaw broke the breathless moment of silence.
“Son, nothing is ever how it seems with Emma. Trust me, it would be far more shocking and much more entertaining for me if this scene were exactly how it looked!”
“Robert is right,” Cindy Sheldon said, sighing dramatically. “Our Emma isn’t one to hold hands with a boy, let alone be locked in a romantic embrace with a shirtless demi-god. I’m guessing that beast over there had something to do with the mishap.”
She pointed to where Orion sat calmly, his head still half-covered with a blanket that had landed on him during the struggle.
“Absolutely,” Robert said, setting the suitcases down inside the door and warming up to his tale. “My guess is that the little monster decided he wanted to be a lap dog again and leaped onto our good Chief Jacobs. Emma rushed to the rescue right as the chief tried to buck the unwanted rider off. The effort threw him off balance, landing him right atop the would-be heroine, Emma.”
“That’s amazingly accurate,” Leo said with a rueful grin as he hurried and slipped on the previously missing white t-shirt over his head. “As you seem to already know, I’m Leo Jacobs, and I didn’t intend to tackle your daughter just now.”
Looking back at Emma, he reached his hand out to steady her while she struggled to her feet.
Cindy rushed forward on the other side of her. “Oh, honey, are you okay? Should you even be out of bed?”
“I’m okay.”
“Don’t believe her,” Leo countered promptly. “I landed hard. She just got the wind knocked out of her. She is also overdue for her pain medication. I gave her some in the middle of the night but not since then. “
“Where is her medication?” Cindy asked. “I’ll get it for her right now.”
“It’s on the counter in the kitchen with the instructions right beside it,” Leo readily replied. “The pain medicine needs to be taken with food.”
“Right,” Cindy said, not even looking at him as she bustled to the kitchen. “What would you like for breakfast, Emma? Eggs? Bacon? Maybe I’ll make you waffles. Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll take care of it.”
Emma never bothered responding, knowing that it would do no good. Her mother just liked to make conversation when asking for her opinion. It didn’t necessarily, or usually, have any bearing on the end result. Emma would get a plate of whatever her mother wanted her to eat.
“I’m making enough for you, too, Chief Jacobs!” Cindy called, her voice carrying from the kitchen.
“Oh no, I can’t stay,” Leo protested, grabbing his uniform shirt and swinging his arms into it. “I need to get down to work at the station.”
“On a Saturday?” Emma asked in confusion. She thought he would be off work, which was the reason she had anticipated him taking her to the craft store.
Leo nodded swiftly. “Of course. I’m the chief and work needs to be done. My job doesn’t carry the perk of a regular shift. Today I have an assault and a string of car thefts to investigate.”
“No worries, Chief Jacobs,” Robert said cheerfully, extending his hand to shake the now fully-uniformed officer. “We’ll keep an eye on Emma and make sure she takes it easy. We sure appreciate you watching out for her last night, and we would also be extremely grateful if you found out who attacked her.”
Leo nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
“Let me run these suitcases upstairs while you say goodbye to Emma, and then I’ll walk you out,” Robert said, snatching the two suitcases back up and heading for the stairs. “You two behave yourselves,” he winked teasingly.
Emma’s cheeks felt suddenly hot. Embarrassment. It was an emotion that often seemed her constant companion. While she struggled with feeling and expressing some emotions, embarrassment was the one that seemed to eclipse all others. For someone who constantly felt different, like she was the only one wearing a red hat at a white-hat only event, the social challenge with embarrassment was not that she didn’t feel enough. She felt too much, exaggerating the slight twinge someone else may feel and morphing it into a devouring little creature.
Not everyone feels the way you do! She told herself, sneaking her gaze to Leo. He calmly sat on the couch putting his shoes on with not even a tinge of pink edging his face.
Emma swallowed, trying to match the attitude she saw in Leo. “My dad likes to tease,” she explained, her strained voice not quite pulling off the light tone she strived for.
Leo shot a quick grin up at her. “So I gather,” he replied easily.
Turning his attention back down to his shoes, he suddenly stopped, reached down, and picked something up off the carpet.
“A feather?” he asked, holding up a pink feather that was so long it curled at the tip with fancy flair. “Emma, did you try to wake me up with a feather?”
Now Emma’s face reached a scalding temperature. “I was trying to be gentle!” she rushed to explain. “I didn’t want to startle you!”
“But a feather?” he held the thing up as if it was a foreign piece of evidence and shifted his gaze from it to Emma and back again. “So that’s what kept tickling my nose.”
“I’m sorry,” Emma said, her humiliation complete. The thought of explaining that she was trying to wake him without touching him only seemed to make it stranger. Instead, she finished lamely, “It seemed a good idea at the time.” But obviously, it wasn’t. It was a horrible idea. Something a normal person would never conceive of, let alone do.
“How was I supposed to know that you’d sleep like you were the one with a concussion?” she asked lamely.
Leo stood and, with eyes twinkling, he extended the feather to brush Emma’s nose. “I don’t normally sleep that hard. You throw me off my game.”
Emma’s brow furrowed, and she reached up to rub her nose and make a swipe at Leo’s teasing feather. “No, Orion did that. I didn’t do any throwing, I just cushioned your fall.”
Leo laughed, though Emma felt a little lost as to why. She hadn’t intended to make a joke.
“You accomplished that task very admirably. You make a nice cushion.” His merry smile suddenly sobered, and he looked her directly in the eye. “I’m sorry you got the wind knocked out of you. And I’m sorry you had a hard time waking me up. Like I said, that’s not normal for me.”
“What’s not normal?” Emma asked. “Are your reflexes usually more like a cat and less like a sloth?”
Leo busted up with laughter, this time completely unsuccessful at reigning it in at all. Though a little mystified as to why, Emma thrilled at the sound of his laughter and the sight of the huge smile stretching his handsome face in lines that she suspected hadn’t seen enough use.
She had made a joke. She was certain of it. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she felt an inkling of something that may even be termed pride bubbling up. Maybe she wasn’t quite as awkward in social conversation after all. Leo had laughed twice in what an outsider might even term “banter.”
“What’s so funny?” Robert said, coming back downstairs.
“Oh, nothing. Emma just said something witty about my sleeping habits.”
“Emma is quite witty and funny, so much so that she surprises herself sometimes
,” Robert smiled warmly at his daughter
“I like the way she thinks,” Leo returned, still smiling. “It’s different. Kind of refreshing.”
Different. There it was. That’s what he really thought of her. He wasn’t laughing because he enjoyed her. He was laughing because she fascinated him. She was different. Like a scientific specimen or an exhibit at a zoo or circus, she made for an interesting case to study.
While Emma heard the men continue talking, every sound only imprinted in her mind with more stress. She walked over to the Christmas tree and began rearranging the ornaments. Some of the reds were too close together, and a few bare spots needed balancing. She heard the men leave, but didn’t turn from her task until a wet dog nose nuzzled her hand. Orion was clearly asking Emma if she intended to let him outside or spend the whole day rearranging the Christmas tree.
Emma obliged, taking him through the kitchen to the back door only to return to studying the Christmas tree in the living room. Every time she looked, she saw more ornaments that needed rearranging.
“Why don’t you go lie down, sweetheart?” her mom suggested, following Emma back from the kitchen. “Stretch out on the couch, and I’ll call you in a few minutes when your food is ready.”
Emma looked at the couch Leo had vacated, not sure she would ever be able to lie on it again. It would now belong forever to Leo and her memories of him sleeping like a sloth.
“I have too much to do, Mom,” Emma said, shaking her head and trying to shrug off the shroud of sadness. “My ornaments were stolen, and now I don’t have a way to fulfill my outstanding orders. I need you to drive me to the craft store in Brighton Falls so I can get more supplies to make more ornaments in a rush.”
“I can do that,” Cindy readily agreed. “But don’t make more work for yourself than you need to. Why don’t I help you take inventory of the ornaments you have on hand? If you use those to partially fill the orders, you can have a better idea of what you specifically need to get your shipments out as soon as possible.”