“Sorry to barge in,” he said in the most unapologetic tone Emilie had ever heard. If anything, he sounded quite pleased with himself. “But you wouldn’t return any of my calls, and you ignored all the flowers I sent. I was at my wits end, so I was forced to run a complete background check on you, starting with Aunt Lauren.”
“Always an excellent source of gossip and/or information that a normal person would realize is private,” Emilie noted with a scowl.
He grinned. “Yep. But it’s no use getting mad at her now — I asked her for the info about four years ago just in case I ever found myself in a situation where I was forced to wear down your defenses in order to overcome your stubbornness.”
Emilie’s mouth fell open and a look of consternation crossed her face before she masked it with a frown. Before she could make a cutting remark about his high-handedness, Ethan added, “Kate told me which ones were you’re favorite flowers, though — she just made me promise I would eventually leave you alone if you told me to.”
“And you agreed?”
“Yep.”
“So you lied to her.”
He grinned unrepentantly. “Yep.”
Emilie glared at him over her shoulder, but the smile tugging at her lips negated most of its power. “Clearly, if I had wanted to see you, I would have invited you over myself.” Her voice became distinctly sarcastic. “Maybe you should rethink the whole security analyst career. Your powers of observation appear to be somewhat lacking.”
Not offended in the slightest, he merely threw his head back and laughed heartily, as if she was the funniest person on the planet and hanging out in her kitchen was the most wonderful, natural thing in the world. He was such an ass.
An adorable, amusing, annoying ass.
She hastily turned her back to him and transferred the cookies onto a plate. “If Kate didn’t have enough problems already, I’d kick her butt for being so meddlesome.”
Emilie was making a valiant effort to ignore the way he was staring at her butt, which was encased in alarmingly thin cotton. She involuntarily shivered at the predatory gleam she’d glimpsed in his eye. “But I guess I’ll let this one slide,” she muttered under her breath.
“Yeah, she’s pretty nosy.” Ethan shrugged. “But it worked in my favor this time, so I can’t complain.”
Ethan reluctantly dragged his gaze from Emilie’s heart-shaped rear to the faded t-shirt currently sliding off her creamy left shoulder. His eyes narrowed. The shirt looked vaguely familiar — he could have sworn he had lost one just like it when he had hastily packed his bags the last summer he’d spent on Lake Michigan.
He was grinning again when Emilie turned from her unnecessary study of the cooling cookies and leaned stiffly against her counter while she toyed with the ends of her shirt. His nostrils flared at the fetching picture of casual domesticity she made. He loved everything about her place because it looked exactly the way he’d always had imagined Emmy’s home would look: cozy, feminine without being overpoweringly girly, books stacked everywhere, and smelling of fresh-baked cookies. Basically, it was his own personal version of heaven, and he couldn’t wait for her to move all her stuff out of here and into their house.
Noting her slight twitchiness, he sighed wistfully. It seemed she might need some more convincing before he rented a moving van.
Instead, he tried to focus on her earlier comment. “Kate’s problems—you mean her fiancé right?” She nodded and relaxed marginally against the side of the counter. Encouraged, Ethan mirrored her movements. “Something about that guy is off,” he said emphatically. “He’s really—”
“Creepy,” they agreed in unison.
Ethan laughed, realizing for maybe the hundredth time how right things could be between them. The way things were always meant to be.
“You know,” he said softly. “I forgot how often we used to do that. Finish each other’s sentences, I mean.”
Her expression became closed, and he could tell that she hadn’t forgotten at all. Smart move, Drake, he silently berated himself.
He decided to bite the bullet and get to the point. “Kate says that guy who tried to assault you broke your heart and made you afraid to trust me.”
His teeth clenched with frustration. Just thinking about that guy made Ethan want to smash something, and even contemplating the thought of Emilie having actual feelings for another guy —especially that guy— made him sick.
Emilie seemed surprised by his mention of Leo, which made him feel marginally better.
“You made me afraid to trust you, Ethan,” she said softly. When he winced and rubbed the back of his neck, she sighed. “Leo hurt my pride more than anything. I didn’t love him, I know that now.” She hesitated before admitting, “But I wanted to love him. I think I probably could have, eventually.”
Ethan snorted in disbelief as he moved closer to her, stopping only when the tips of his worn cowboy boots were nudging her bare toes, which were, he noted with a grin, painted the color of strawberries.
“That guy was all wrong for you, Emmy.” He kept his voice deceptively low as he placed his hands on the sides of the counter, using his arms and body to cage her in. He could see by her tell-tale shiver that she didn’t mind it nearly as much as she would have liked for him to believe. “You need a real man.”
“Wherever shall I find such a treasure?” she said acerbically.
He bent down and whispered conspiratorially in her ear. “I’m right here, sweetheart. But try to keep it between us; I wouldn’t want you to have to fight off all the mobs of girls that might start following me around if it ever got out.”
She tried to prevent a smile from forming, but her lips curved up anyway. “Afraid someone might try to tie you down?” she asked in a slightly breathless voice.
“Honey, I’m happy to let you tie me down anytime you get the urge,” he drawled. “So long as you’re willing to return the favor.”
Her jaw dropped at the wicked twinkle in his eye. She was trying desperately to get her bearings, but it was surprisingly difficult to do when over six feet of solid male was looming over you and grinning in an unfairly sexy manner. He winked roguishly, causing Emilie to blush as she attempted to duck under his arms.
“I think I’ll pass. I’m not keen on becoming one of the many.”
Ethan gently grabbed her around her waist before she could escape and held her fast. “You’re the only one, Emmy.” She felt herself being drawn in by the sincerity in his eyes. “Whatever else you may think of me, know that I would never hurt you like that.”
She wanted to laugh in his face at that promise, but she could see that he was serious. He really believed what he was saying. And she really hated herself for wanting to believe it too.
Retreating to the safety of sarcasm, she gave him an arch look. “So you’ve been saving yourself for me, Ethan? I’m flattered.”
He gritted his teeth, but refused to budge an inch or let her walk away. Instead, he drew her closer until her body was flush against his. “Look, Emmy, I’ve done a lot of things in the last twelve years that I’m not exactly proud of, and hurting you is at the top of the list. I never should have walked away from you the way I did. I know I was an idiot.”
“Self-awareness is a priceless gift,” she said scathingly.
His hands had slipped down to grip her hips and they tightened at the undisguised scorn in her voice. “I was seventeen years old, Emmy, and the girl I’d always thought of as my sweet little sister suddenly morphed into a hot girl. To be perfectly honest, baby, after that most of the time I wanted nothing more than to toss you on your back. Then I actually had you on your back, and whatever fantasies I might have had paled in comparison to the real thing. It was downright terrifying, and I freely admit I didn’t handle it well.”
She bit her lip to prevent a cutting remark from slipping out, and he seemed to take it as a good sign that she hadn’t tried to slap him yet. He had no idea how much restraint she was using not to do it, too.
With a grim expression on his face, he continued quietly. “I saw all my freedom —all your freedom— slipping away before either of us knew what hit us.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he quickly silenced her. “You and I both know that if I’d stuck around and let it all play out, you would have ended up pregnant or hating me, possibly both, before we reached our twenties. I was a selfish ass, and I didn’t want to risk ruining both our lives because of some vague hunch I had that maybe we were supposed to be together.”
Emilie used her fist to jab him hard in the stomach and ignored his startled grunt. “That is such bull, and you know it.” She glared at him. “You never said a word to me about any of that. You just ran away, thinking Stupid Emilie wouldn’t mind at all if you took a time-out and whored around for a few years until — what exactly? Until you decided you were finally ready to man up? Did you honestly think that you could come back whenever the mood to grow up struck you, and I would welcome you back with open arms?”
She shook her head incredulously and tried again to move away from him, but his arms tightened around her until she stilled. His hand reached up to cup the back of her head, forcing her to look at him. “I’m not going to lie to you, Emmy. I don’t regret leaving. We were too damned young and I was too damned scared to be the kind of man you needed. But I do regret the way I did it.”
She closed her eyes, wanting to shut out the intense, too-knowing look in his eyes.
Ethan, apparently, was having none of that. “Open your eyes, baby. I need you to open your eyes and believe me when I say I never wanted to hurt you. If I hadn’t been such a dumb kid, I would have explained it to you then.”
Her eyes snapped open and flared with anger. “And I would have thought it was just as stupid then as I do now,” she hissed. “The bottom line is that you didn’t want a ball and chain hanging around your neck. That’s all I was to you.”
Her lower lip trembled and he winced. “That’s not true and you know it,” he said softly. “I loved you. I just didn’t have a clue how to love you the way you deserved.”
She maintained a stubborn silence, watching as he gritted his teeth and forced himself to wait for her to acknowledge what he’d said. Finally, she glanced up at him and shook her head sadly, ignoring the sting of tears she felt burning behind her eyes. “Okay, you were scared,” she said quietly. “I get that. But I still find it incredibly sad that something I thought was so simple and right was nothing more than a burden to you.”
“It wasn’t a burden, Emmy,” Ethan murmured as he softly stroked the pulse thrumming in her neck with his thumb. “It was a gift, and I was too stupid to know how to be worthy of it.”
She sniffled but didn’t reply, and Ethan bent to rest his forehead against hers. “I’ll wait as long as you want,” he whispered. “Forever, if I have to. But we’ve wasted years already. I’ll take the blame for that. It’s up to you how many more we waste now.” He tilted her face up and forced her to look at him. “I’m not going anywhere, Emmy. This is it, you and me, and I’m not gonna let either of us screw it up again.”
She found him unbearably attractive in that moment. And he seemed so sweet and sincere and — No! That way led to tears and depression and all kinds of badness. It would be so easy to let him into her life again, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt how horrible it would feel if he came up with another reason to leave again.
As if he could read her mind, Ethan shook his head. “I swear I won’t bail this time, baby. You have to trust me.”
She slipped away from him with a reluctant twist, and this time he let her. She left the kitchen and wandered into the hallway, unsure of what to do next. She paused halfway to the living room and turned back, only to realize that he was right on her heels. He reached out and steadied her, then let his hands linger on her arms.
“Ethan, I just got out of a really bad relationship.”
“With the twerp,” he qualified.
Her nostrils flared with annoyance. “Yes. And even though I’m trying to maintain a polite friendship with him, I—”
“A polite what?” he asked, his hands now clutching his head as if he was trying to prevent it from exploding. “Are you insane, Emilie? The guy tried to attack you, and if I hadn’t been there—”
“Yes, thank you,” she said with a sigh. “I was there; I remember. I didn’t say he was my new best pal, but I do work with him so I am occasionally forced to interact with him.”
“I don’t like it,” he grumbled.
Emilie closed her eyes and counted to ten. Then she counted to ten again before responding. “Ethan, what I’m trying to tell you is that I can deal with Leo on a polite, surface level without being afraid I’ll get hurt or he’ll somehow get under my skin again. I can do this because I now realize that I was never emotionally attached to him. I can’t say the same thing about you.”
With an unnervingly sinful gleam in his eye, Ethan reached up and gently tugged her hair free of its loose top knot. “Baby, I want you to be attached to me.” He ran his hands through the waves of tumbled red hair and playfully leered at her. “I want you to be so attached we can’t tell where you end and I begin.”
She slapped his hands away. “Well, I don’t! You think you’ve changed, but you haven’t. You’ll disappear again the second you find some grand adventure that you prefer to me, and I’ll hate you for making me love you again! Worse, I’ll hate myself for being too stupid to walk away right now.”
“I swear I won’t disappear, baby,” he patiently promised again. “I may have to leave at times for work, but I will always come back to you.”
“There’s no need to rush,” she muttered under her breath.
His jaw tightened with determination and he took a firmer hold of her hips. “I know about the cookies, Emmy.”
She was brought up short by the calm resolve in his voice and her eyes widened at his intense stare. Taken aback by the intent look in his eyes, Emilie stuck her chin in the air. “Is that supposed to be some kind of code?” When he remained silent, she felt her cheeks grow hot. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
His eyes narrowed, and she knew for sure that he knew what a complete sap she was. “Don’t lie to me, Emmy. The only person you’ve ever been good at lying to is yourself. You sent me all those packages, took all that time and care, and you did it because you love me. Admit it.”
She felt the color drain from her cheeks and she tried to casually shrug. “So what if I did send them? I was trying to be nice. It didn’t mean anything.”
Ethan leaned down to gently kiss the side of her mouth. “Liar.”
Emilie shook her head and looked unhappily up at him. “You can invest whatever meaning into it you want, Ethan. It doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t going to end well — we’ll only hurt each other again. We should stop this now and try, if we can, to salvage something of our old friendship.”
She pulled away from him, but she hadn’t gone two steps before he somehow managed to turn her around and sweep her up into his arms. How very Scarlett and Rhett on the Staircase, she thought dizzily. Since she didn’t have stairs, Ethan settled for stalking down the hall to her bedroom and Emilie was too stunned to offer much of a protest. She even obligingly turned the door knob when he reached her bedroom and gave her a pointed look.
At her implicit consent, he barged right in and kicked the door shut with his foot before marching over to the bed and dropping her. She bounced on the bedspread for a second before her fight or flight response kicked in. Since she leaned strongly towards flight, she tried to roll away. Ethan, however, was prepared for such a tactic and he fell on top of her to prevent her escape.
They tussled on the bed for a few minutes while Emilie struggled in his surprisingly gentle hold. She wasn’t even sure who she was struggling against —Ethan or herself.
“You love me, damn it,” he said, firmly taking hold of her wrists and holding them captive on either side of he
r head. “Now admit it!”
“No!” She pushed at him, but he was solid as a rock and refused to budge.
“Say it, Emmy. I’m not moving until you admit it to me and to yourself.”
He inhaled swiftly when she tried to knee him in the groin, but managed to evade her flailing legs by pinning her more firmly to the bed with his hips. She used her feet to kick at him, she dug her nails into his hands, she even tried to bite him, but he didn’t flinch even once.
She was frustrated, she was angry, and he was right. She really hated that.
“Fine!” Emilie finally stilled and glared up at him. “I love you. But I don’t enjoy the sensation one bit.”
His gaze became tender, and she ceased her struggling and lay silently underneath him, panting for breath and failing miserably to ignore the frantic beating of her heart. Ethan’s body was blanketing hers, his hips cradled between her thighs, and she couldn’t get past the strange new knowledge that he fit there perfectly.
Ethan stared down at her in silence for long moments before he finally spoke again. “I love you, too. I always have. And I am not interested in being your friend, Emmy. I want to be more. I am more.”
He pressed his hips more snugly against her, letting her feel how uninterested in friendship he was at the moment. She was appalled to feel a low moan work its way from her throat. Gah! The second he showed up, she turned into some kind of nympho. It would be positively embarrassing if it weren’t so positively thrilling.
Apparently pleased by her lack of willpower, he lowered his lips to her neck and began pressing butterfly kisses along her neck and collarbone. “Emmy,” he murmured softly against the curve of her jaw. “I know I deserve your doubt; I know I hurt you. But I really am sorry. I’ll say it every day for the rest of our lives if you want me to.”
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