Incredulous, she snatched the phone back and held it to her ear again. “You are not my boyfriend, Leo! I have tried to explain the concept of Just Friends to you a dozen times, but it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall.”
“C’mon, don’t you remember how good we were together?”
“Uh, no, I really don’t,” she said with a snort. “And the position of Emilie’s Boyfriend is sort of filled now, so you need to start looking for another girl to cheat on Clarissa with because it is never gonna happen with me. Ever. Seriously, Taylor Swift wrote a whole song about this, man.”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Leo snapped. “But you don’t have to lie to me. I know for a fact that you’re not seeing anyone else. You’ve stayed at home, all alone, every night for the last few weeks.”
Her mouth opened to voice her concern over both his arrogance and his fledgling career as a stalker, but she refrained. She had neither the time nor the inclination for a fight right now, at least not with this doof.
“Clarissa is staying with her parents tonight,” Leo said slyly. “You could come over.”
“Absolutely not,” Emilie said in an exasperated voice. “I’ve told you before – you and I are not a couple. We have not been a couple since I realized that you were engaged to another woman. And I have no intention of sleeping with you. Ever.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
Emilie slammed the back seat of her car shut and scowled at the phone. Just as she moved to slide into the driver’s seat, she felt a hand stroke the back of her head. She yelped and whirled around, popping Leo square in the nose with the edge of her phone in the process.
“Hey!” he shouted as he doubled over, clutching his nose.
“What is wrong with you?” Emilie gasped, trying to calm her rapid heartbeat. “How many times do I have to tell you not to sneak up on me like that?”
“I missed you.”
She crossed her arms and glared.
“I was just trying to surprise you!”
Not bothering to respond, Emilie turned to get in her car with every intention of leaving the sniveling fool crouched on the gravel. Leo, however, managed to perform an alarming ju-jitsu trick, lurching to his feet, grabbing her arm and pulling her away from the door before slamming it firmly shut all in one seemingly fluid move.
Her eyes glanced heavenward for a moment, as if to say “Seriously?” before she surreptitiously checked her watch. She was due at the rehearsal in less than an hour and she did not have time for this nonsense.
For a split second, Emilie imagined how wonderful it would be to sic Ethan on Leo again and watch as he turned Leo’s face into an exceptionally punch-able punching bag. Then she sighed with regret. Though the idea definitely had merit, she would just as soon not spend her evening bailing Ethan out of county jail. Thus, she was going to have to deal with this situation herself.
Emilie took in Leo’s drawn features and noted with apprehension that he was looking slightly unbalanced again.
Well, that was just great.
Shaking her head in disgust, Emilie attempted to pull her arm from his grasp but the frantic gleam in Leo’s eyes increased and he tightened his grip on her hands to pull her closer to him. She was about to kick him when he collapsed to his knees again and pressed his scruffy cheek against her stomach while she stood stiffly in his embrace.
Taken slightly aback, she tentatively patted his head as she would a stray puppy that had crossed her path. Since rabid puppies could easily turn on you, she’d swiftly decided that a gentle approach was probably best.
“Leo…” Emilie leaned away from him and settled back against her car while he continued to clutch her hand like a lifeline. “We talked about this,” she reminded him.
“But I need you,” he said with a sniff. Observing his red eyes and quivering lower lip helped Emilie get a pretty good picture of what Leo must have looked like as a stubborn six year old in a candy store, mulishly insisting on one more lollipop despite the fact that the previous three had made him ill.
“Leo, you have two minutes, but then I’m out of here.”
He squeezed her hand firmly. “I think you’re being unfair.” Before she could thump him over the head with her shoe, he muttered, “I never wanted to hurt anyone. Your problem is that you’re determined to blame me for everything without even hearing my side of the story.”
Emilie rolled her eyes. She was this close to losing the fragile hold she had on her temper, so she valiantly attempted to think happy thoughts before responding calmly. “Leo, your side of the story is quite clear to me. For lack of a better cliché, you want to have your cake and eat it too, and you want me to be the jerk that supplies you with a fork.”
“You always do that!” he cried. “You oversimplify everyone’s life into this little box and then you never let them get out of it!”
He was shouting now and, since he had yet to release her hand from his death grip, Emilie was starting to lose all sensation in her right arm. Super.
“Everyone expects me to go through with this wedding to Clarissa,” he informed the waistband of her jeans. “My family, her family — she’ll be devastated if I leave her. And I’ve had to deal with all of this pressure from you on top of all that!”
What a jackass, she thought with growing antipathy. As Leo complained about how tormented he was, lamenting his inability to make her understand him and bemoaning his inability to make the world at large understand him, Emilie desperately tried to squelch the urge to kick him in the nuts and call the police. They arrest people for being annoying, right? As he continued to on his knees in the middle of a parking lot, his behavior bringing new meaning to the word pathetic, she could barely stifle the urge to slap him very hard and say “Snap out of it!” in her best Cher impersonation.
Emilie realized she must have drifted off into that particular daydream when she became aware of Leo’s expectant face peering up at her with tears in his eyes. “Um,” she said awkwardly. “Could you say that last part again?”
His expression brightened, and he gave her that annoyingly indulgent look he sometimes got when he thought he had won an argument. This look, coincidentally, never failed to piss her off.
“I want to be with you. I want us to get married. I even want us to have kids, maybe, someday, a long time from now. You just have to wait a little while longer for me to figure out how to let Clarissa down easy, okay?”
As she stared down at him, a man she had tried very hard to convince herself was “the one,” Emilie struggled to feel something other than aggravated and a little sad for Leo, who seemed to honestly believe she would agree to his absurd plan for a future with the two of them skipping merrily through some daisies. Clearly, he needed psychiatric help.
“Leo, that’s just not going to happen,” she said firmly, removing hand from his suddenly limp grasp.
Given the convulsive twitch of his fingers and face, that was not the answer he had been expecting from her.
“I’m sorry about all of this.” Emilie paused to consider his increasingly angry expression. “Well, that’s not entirely true, but I am sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings.”
Leo stood and Emilie took a startled step back, wondering for the hundredth time why she had ever thought his anger management issues were in any way indicative of how much he loved her.
“Do not play games with me, Emilie,” he all but shouted in her face. “You know I don’t like it.”
Deeply regretting her decision to let him whine for so long, since it had only seemed to wind him up, Emilie sighed. When she spoke it was with the unwaveringly patient tone one might employ when addressing an unbalanced mountain lion, “I’m not playing games with you, Leo. I’m leaving now; you’re going to let me go.”
When he stepped back enough to allow her to slowly open her car door, he had a look of stark confusion written all over his face. “C’mon, Emilie, let’s talk about this.”
“I’m done talking to you, Leo. P
lease stay away from me.”
Cautiously, Emilie slipped into the driver’s seat and, though Leo made no further move to stop her, she swiftly locked her doors just to be on the safe side. She glanced up to see him standing stock-still, with that baffled look on his face.
Without a backward glance, she turned the ignition and peeled out of the parking lot so fast it would have impressed the Dukes of Hazard. As she drove away, leaving Leo alone and forlorn in the empty lot, Emilie considered how she felt about what had just transpired. All in all, her most predominant emotion was relief that she had stood up to him entirely on her own.
She was going to have to race to her apartment to shower, change, print up the wedding schedules, and still get to the rehearsal on time, but she wasn’t worried. She was sure Kate could manage without her for a few minutes. Emilie turned up the radio as she sped down the road and began belting out a classic song about respect.
Where in the world is Emilie? Kate was nervous enough about this wedding debacle without having to worry about her wedding planner/maid of honor ditching her at the last minute. Lana hurried back into the sanctuary, where everyone was aimlessly waiting for direction, and threw her hands out in a helpless shrug. The action caused her red sweater to slip down one side of her black halter dress, revealing the massive fairy tattoo on her right shoulder. Kate saw Stupid Will’s judgmental witch of a mother sharpen her gaze on the tattoo and frown sourly.
Ignoring that old crab, Kate refocused on Lana, who was mouthing “no luck” at the other end of the aisle. She had gone outside to call Emilie’s cell again, but it was apparently still turned off.
Neither of them had heard from Emilie since early afternoon, when she had calmly assured them she would arrive at the church in plenty of time for Lana to run through her song and for Kate to practice enough to feel completely confident that she would not trip on the steps leading up to the altar.
Since then she seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth, which worried Kate for reasons both selfish and decent. Emilie was one of her best friends and if anything unpleasant had befallen her, Kate would naturally be incredibly upset. On the other hand, if she was simply jerking Kate’s chain to punish her for marrying The Incredible Cheese, then Emilie was simply going to have to die.
The minister looked down at his watch again and gave Kate another frown of censure. Will was huddled in the corner with his only friend, Gene, whispering about a new video game that featured a hive of mutant killer bees. Ethan, who had graciously agreed to fill in the wedding party when it became painfully obvious that Will was not going to produce another friend out of thin air, leaned against the organ looking bored.
He hadn’t been exactly thrilled when he arrived at the church fresh off a plane only to learn that Emilie was missing. Kate had lied through her teeth, assuring him that Emilie was merely running late. She wasn’t sure Ethan had believed her, though, and as the minutes ticked by with Emilie still nowhere to be found, Kate could see his frustration mounting.
She sent him another apologetic shrug, to which he gave her a tolerant, tight-lipped smile before turning his attention back to the church door. If, as Kate suspected, Ethan was under the illusion that Emilie was going to make time for him at any point over the next two days, then he was sadly mistaken. She had already laid claim to Emilie’s organizational skills and time, and Ethan was going to have to get in back of the line.
A slamming door in the back of the church caught everyone’s attention as Emilie rushed into the sanctuary with her hair streaming behind her in a bright red cloud. She was carrying her wedding binder under one arm and a huge black purse was hanging from the other as she scurried down the aisle towards the wedding party. Kate noted that, for some reason, she was also dressed to the nines in an emerald green mini dress and killer black stilettos.
Glancing down at the button down shirt and wrinkled khaki pants she was wearing, Kate grimaced. She had thought Emilie was kidding when she told her to dress nicely for this rehearsal thing.
Depositing her bag and binder on the front pew, Emilie paused for only a second to give Kate’s outfit and scuffed shoes a disapproving glance before she started herding everyone into their proper places.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said breathlessly as she passed Kate on the altar steps. She pointedly refused to glance in Ethan’s direction. “Okay everyone, let’s get started. Here’s how this is going to go…”
Chapter 22
In less than thirty minutes, Emilie had managed to calmly steer everyone into their places for three run-throughs. Things went smoothly by the second one, but she insisted on the third for perfecting purposes. Ethan had grinned at her need for perfection, but Emilie did her best to continue ignoring him. They could talk about their pseudo-relationship or whatever he wanted to call it later, but she was too busy to deal with more of their inevitable drama tonight. Surely he realized that and wasn’t planning to cause a scene.
She caught a glimpse of his steady gaze fixed intently on her legs and heaved a resigned sigh. Or, maybe he was simply planning on tossing her over his shoulder and carrying her off to his cave. Emilie shivered and gave herself a mental slap for finding such a scenario in any way appealing. She was still miffed about his disappearing act for the last two weeks, and she did not appreciate what the stress of all these unanswered questions whirling around in her head was doing to her nerves.
After the final run-through went off without a hitch, Emilie began passing out the schedules for the next day to a tolerant minister, a complacent Kate and Lana, and a surly Will, who smelled even cheesier than usual tonight. She briefly wondered if he bathed in the stuff, then she pushed that disturbing image aside and smiled cheerfully when he took the paper from her and glared at it.
When he fixed his blank stare on her and smiled his creepy smile, she barely refrained from gagging. “This is nice,” he said in what passed for a pleasant tone. “I don’t have to do anything but show up tomorrow.”
Emilie’s face showed slight skepticism at his unusual civility. “Happy to help,” she said politely.
“Too bad you didn’t make it to the altar before Kate, huh?” he said. Emilie frowned at his snarky tone. “All this attention to detail for someone else’s wedding; I bet you’re so jealous you can taste it.” He gave her a malicious sneer and Emilie immediately determined that it was high time she walloped him in the nose.
Her fingers were curling into a fist when her display of temper was halted by a chuckle to her right. She glanced over to see that Ethan had materialized at her side. Without pause, he grasped her elbow, steering her across the room and far away from Will. When they stopped, she turned to face him and he made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue.
Emilie was determined to keep her cool with him — no more of that sighing and kissing and then waiting for him to call nonsense. Instead, she said lightly, “Why must you always behave like such an autocratic? You know I don’t like to be told what to do.”
His eyes narrowed. “Baby, I hate to break it to you, but you haven’t seen autocratic yet — though I guarantee you will should you ever decide to give a floorshow to a roomful of drunken men again.”
She allowed a half-smile to curve her lips. “What if I want to give a private floorshow, just for you?”
Before she knew what he was about, Ethan had grasped her hips and efficiently maneuvered her into a relatively private corner behind the organ. The twinkle in his eyes made Emilie immediately nervous. The raspy quality of his voice when he finally spoke did nothing to calm her.
“Sweetheart, you know what it does to me when you start talking naughty,” Her eyes widened at the decidedly wicked gleam in his eye. “You’d best be careful, or you may tempt me to take you over my knee right here in the Lord’s house.” He gave her a roguish grin and winked. “Let’s save that for when we’re alone.”
The moment his comment registered in her sluggish brain, her heart went into overdrive and her breath seemed to catch in her th
roat. I really love him. For some reason, she’d thought she had a handle on that. But until this moment her stubborn mind hadn’t fully appreciated just how powerful her love for him was. So powerful, in fact, that she would never have a handle on it. For better or worse, she never had and she never would be able to control the way she loved him — if anything, that love controlled her. Completely.
Emilie shook herself out of her disconcerting a-ha moment with a blink and tried to focus on what he was saying whilst remembering that she was supposed to be irritated with him.
Ethan had taken advantage of her momentary distraction to pluck her master schedule, which contained detailed instructions and reminders regarding the tasks Emilie needed to get done before the ceremony tomorrow, from her limp grasp. He was now scrutinizing it.
A line appeared between his brows and he scratched his jaw, the mischievous look on his face doing nothing for her sense of emotional balance. “This seems pretty intense, Emmy.”
She reached for the paper. “Ah-ah-ah,” he said with a grin, holding the paper above his head, well out of her reach.
A bit shaken by what she had just realized about herself and not wanting to play games with yet another willful man-child today, Emilie simply held out her hand for the schedule and gave him a withering glare. When he let out a gusty laugh, she placed her hand over his lips. “Shh!”
His eyes sparked with desire the second she touched his mouth, and his lips curved under her fingertips. Emilie quickly withdrew her hand and checked to make sure no one had noticed their exchange. Thankfully, everyone was on the other side of the sanctuary, chatting and gathering their belongings to move to the banquet room down the hall for the rehearsal dinner.
When her gaze returned to Ethan, he cocked his head and watched her under hooded eyes. “Baby, you need to lighten up. Have some fun,” he suggested with a far too attractive smirk.
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