Emma blushed at her brother’s words. She was only twenty-five. Far too young to be a mother hen, wasn’t she? She stood to greet David and his father as they came in but Thorne’s words still stung.
“Is everything okay,” David asked, looking from Emma to his mother. “I don’t think she really needed more onions,” he whispered. “I think she wanted to get to know you better.”
The bell rang and this time Amy, Brooke and Tabitha joined the party.
“Did you invite Spence and Honor, too?”
David snorted a short laugh. “And put them where? I didn’t even think we’d fit the ten of us in here.”
Emma greeted her sisters with the usual rounds of hugs before the Evans family forgot they were guests and rummaged through the kitchen looking for drinks and snacks.
“Can you get me a beer?” Thorne called.
Brenda frowned at him. “You shouldn’t drink on all those pain medications.”
Dao muttered something in Vietnamese that sounded to David’s rusty ear like “sons” before going on about the time her son broke his leg and had been a grumpy patient.
“That’s terrible,” Brenda said as she sipped on a cup of rosebud tea. “This is amazing by the way. Emma, honey, we need to order this.”
“Yes, Mom,” Emma said.
“Emma, Mom said you or Amy needs to take me on a college tour. That after the last one, she won’t do it again. Please say you’ll go.”
“I told you I’ll take you,” Amy said with a cross frown at her sister.
Emma looked at Amy for a minute before taking her hand. “Let’s talk,” she said, inviting her out onto the patio.
“Am I missing something?” Emma asked. “Did you and Brooke have a fight?”
Amy remained silent, looking out over the dried-out cornfields. “I feel like everyone is leaving me,” Amy said, tears filling her eyes. “First Violet gets married. Now you’re working things out with David. Now Brooke is going to college.” Amy wiped at the tears. “I don’t even do anything important at the diner.”
Shame washed over Emma like an ocean’s wave. “I was such a bitch that day,” she said. “I don’t think I can ever apologize enough to you. You’d had a vision and I was facing losing mine.”
“But you were right, too,” Amy said. “I haven’t launched. I haven’t found my path yet.” She turned into her sister’s offered hug. “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” she wailed.
Emma hid a small smile in the cloud of her sister’s hair. “Sweetie, you’re still young.”
“How about if we rule out a few things you don’t want to do?”
“I know I don’t want to work at the diner forever,” Amy began. “I mean, I can see how it suits you. You get to be mother hen to the entire town and that’s you. And Thorne? Well, he loves fixing stuff. So, you’re a good fit there. But anyone could do what I do.”
Emma soothed her sister’s hair away from her face. “That’s not true,” she said, kissing her brow. “You are very important to me. To us. When Thorne was shot, all I kept thinking was how much I need you all. How vital everyone is to me. It scared me to think about losing any of you. Ever.”
Amy sniffled and stood up straight. She giggled a little and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Yeah, that was tough. I don’t ever want to be there again, either,” Amy agreed.
“But you’re a little jealous that Brooke knows what she wants to do?”
Amy nodded. “And I don’t mind taking her on these college tours. I know everyone else is busy, but I just —” She stuttered as she struggled to convey her thoughts. “I feel like it’s rubbing it in my face, you know? That it’s all ‘see Amy, this is what you should have done’ and I hate it.”
“Are you sure that’s the case?” Emma asked with sly smile. “Remember, you are dealing with our mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you sure our mother would rub it in your face? Or, is it possibly more likely that she wants you to go on college tours yourself? Find your calling.”
Amy turned to look at her sister. Her jaw dropped and a smile began to flit around the outskirts of her lips. “That is so Mom,” she said.
Emma nodded. “It is. You’d better get an idea on what you want to do so she can send you to different colleges.”
Amy twirled a curl and looked down at her sneakers. “I actually had an idea. You remember the stories of Great-grandma Kitty?”
“That she followed her heart and married a pilot in the middle of World War Two?”
Amy laughed. “Well, yeah, that, too. But they say she was really good with herbal remedies. I was looking into a massage therapist program. Maybe use aromatherapy as part of it.”
Emma hugged her sister. “I think you’d be amazing at anything you put your mind to, Ames.”
Brenda knocked on the back door and opened it. “Hey, girls. Everything okay out here?”
Emma and Amy shared a look and nodded. “We’re great Mom,” Emma said.
“Couldn’t be better,” Amy agreed.
~~~~~~
“David, do you have any chocolate?” Tabitha whispered, tugging on his shirt.
“You might find some in my office,” he said. “Cookie jar by the printer.”
“No chocolate,” Brenda shouted. David wondered how Brenda could possibly have heard Tabitha. He briefly wondered if the woman had super hearing or her own gift of telepathy where her children were concerned.
“Mom! That’s not fair. David said I could have some chocolate.”
“And I’m your mother,” Brenda said.
“Oooh,” Brooke said. “She played the Mom Card.”
“Shut up, Brooke,” Tabitha said.
“You shut up,” Brooke said.
“Aren’t you turning eighteen soon?” Brenda said, casting a stern eye on Brooke.
David hid a grin when Tabitha stuck her tongue out at her sister and the two girls went their separate ways.
“Still want kids?” Amy said to Emma.
“At least Mom and Dao are getting along even if Brooke and Tabby aren’t.”
“Did David ever have the chicken pox?” Brenda asked.
“Oh, he was miserable with them,” Dao said with a wave of her hand. Despite the madness, dish by dish was assembled without any discernable effort.
“But at least I’ve never been shot,” David said. And then immediately ducked the pillow Thorne threw at him.
He laughed and accepted the cup of rosebud tea that Amy handed him. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing getting involved with our family,” she teased before being pulled away into another argument with Brooke over something.
David stood back for a moment, watching the scene unfold. His mother was giving Vietnamese lessons to Brenda. Clayton had his father out on the deck, beers in hand, as they discussed something that had his father tilt his head back in one of his rare laughs.
He had been searching for this his entire life. A mixed-bag family. A sense of belonging that went deeper than blood. Deeper than name. He was still missing Spence and Honor, but this collection of laughing people currently eating everything in his kitchen had become his tribe.
Emma snuck next to him, touching him. He smiled down at her and loped one arm around her shoulders. His girl was a toucher. “Amy says I’m crazy to get involved with the Evans family.”
“She has a point. There are like a zillion of us scattered every which way.”
“And you tend to eat all my food.”
“I’ll take care of you at the diner this week.”
“I don’t care about the food,” David said, nuzzling Emma’s hair. “But this feels good. Feels right. All of us here together.”
“Even if we give you a hard time?”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve been raised on your own. Away from your people,” he said quietly. “It was just us. My dad’s cousin and his daughter Heather. It was lonely.” He didn’t want to ruin the moment but did wan
t to stress to Emma how important family was.
“I know,” Emma said, brushing a kiss against his jaw that soothed his raw emotions, like an ambrosia for the soul. “I was only teasing a little bit.”
“Did you and my mom have a good visit?”
“Everything is good,” Emma assured him. She burrowed into the warmth of his chest and David felt the emotional release only she could give him. “Better than good,” she clarified. “I like your mom and I think she approves of me. Of us.”
A weight he hadn’t known existed lifted from his shoulders. A happiness he didn’t know could exist for him was within his grasp.
All he had to do was take it.
Chapter Nine
Autumn was a distant memory and the barren trees were stark against the bright blue New Jersey sky. David inhaled the fresh, clean scent of winter as he exited his truck. His boots crunched on the traces of snow with a fat happy, satisfied sound. Work was over for the week and the next several days spent in his lover’s arms stretched before him like a banquet.
And a small velvet box that was burning a hole in his pocket with its desire to be on Emma’s finger.
David strode up Emma’s driveway, his lean legs eating up the distance with ease. She waved through her window and opened the door. “You’re here,” she said and leapt into his arms as though she hadn’t seen him for months.
Throwing his head back with laughter, he spun her around in a small circle before setting her gently back on her feet. “Now that is the kind of welcome a man likes to get,” he said, bending her back and kissing her until they were both breathless.
It was a greeting he hoped she never outgrew because he knew, deep down, he would never tire of it. He kissed her, a warm homecoming for a cold afternoon before setting her down in order to take his boots off
She dug her fingers through his thick coal black hair and gently massaged his scalp. “I wonder if this is how they judged mink pelts?”
“I have no idea.” David groaned as her fingers released stress he didn’t even know he had. Warmth and pleasure spread down his spine and settled in his low back. “But I’ll give you a month to stop it,” he mumbled against her petal soft lips.
She kissed him and her fingers dropped to his neck and shoulders. “A month, huh?”
“You’re right,” he said on a soft groan. His muscles relaxed under her tutelage. “A month wouldn’t be enough, either.”
He parted with a light nose rub against her forehead. “Now, how can I help with dinner?”
“We got some great local talent coming in this month,” David said as he joined her in the kitchen. The steamy aromatics of pot roast hit him and had his mouth watering for dinner. “Everything smells delicious.” He helped her set the table as he told her about the upcoming concert planned for Roy’s Hall.
“Oh?”
“Apparently, a couple of the Harper girls can sing.”
Emma snorted. “Harpers can pretty much do anything they want. Of all the gifts handed out by the O’Donnell sisters, that’s the one I would have chosen.”
David frowned. “And which one wouldn’t you want?”
“I think the Simpsons got the worst of it,” she said after thinking for a minute. “Well, maybe not in the beginning. Eden has some of the old diaries, the ones we haven’t shared with the historic society. From what we can tell, their original gift was to love one person unconditionally. But then something happened around the 1860s or so and they became unable to love.”
“That’s weird. I wonder what happened. Maybe related to the Civil War?”
“Could be. We talked about researching it but the Simpson men have grown weird over the last couple of generations. “Duncan is okay but Honor’s mom was living with Steve Simpson and he turned out to be a total creeper.”
“I’m sure they’d want to know, don’t you?”
Emma looked out the window at something he couldn’t see or touch. She focused for a moment before frowning. “I don’t think they’d appreciate my help,” she finally said.
“Your gift is pretty amazing” David said.
She shrugged. “I always just accepted it until I lost it for a while. I know it sounds vain of me but I’d never want to go back to that.”
“I don’t think it sounds vain at all. It would be like not wanting to lose your hearing or sense of smell. I get it.” David hooked his finger in the loop of her jeans and tugged her towards him. “You’re perfect just the way you are, Em. With your gift of without it. Please don’t ever think otherwise.”
She nodded and kept her face hidden from him. “It’s hard, you know. Being a precog.”
“How so?”
“People are afraid of me. I can see it in their eyes, like I’ll find out their secrets. See if they’re cheating on their wives or lying on their taxes. Like, somehow, I’ll know if their dog will die or something. And instead of accepting the future was always going to be the future whether I saw it or not, they act like I caused it. Like it was my choice that they cheated on their wife or that their dog died.”
“Will you?”
“I don’t know. The visions don’t announce themselves. I mean, I’ve never seen any of my birthday or Christmas gifts, but I know when people lie to me.”
“Look at me,” David commanded.
She hesitated for a second before lifting her eyes to meet his.
“Are you looking?”
She closed her eyes for a moment and then looked with her deeper gaze. With her Evans Eyes. And Saw.
“Emma, I love you just the way you are. Precog, glowing blue eyes, and all. I wouldn’t change a thing about you except maybe to have met you earlier so I could spend more of my life with you.”
Her eyes filled with tears but she held the intensity and integrity of his gaze.
“I’m sorry I caused us to waste so much time,” she said, tears forming, trembling before trailing down her cheeks. “I wish I had trusted us sooner.”
“No regrets,” David said, kissing her forehead. “It went the way it went because that’s the way it was supposed to go.”
“That’s awfully zen of you,” she said. Her fingers ached to touch the lock of hair that fell over his eyes and she clenched them before giving into the temptation.
He bent his head to kiss her, his mouth a breath away as the tension between them swelled like a crescendo. Emma arched her back, anxious for deeper contact. Aching to feel something more than the heat of his body emanating from him.
Teasing them.
“I love—” she began as the timer went off, alerting them that her rolls were finished. She startled away from him, shaking her head from the cobwebby haze of desire. “I love you,” she said. “And I wouldn’t change a thing either.” She touched him one last time before taking the rolls out of the oven.
He couldn’t help but watch with heated eyes as the love of his life bent over and pulled the tray of rolls out of the oven. The sweet inverted heart of her ass was too much temptation and he patted her gently on her rounded bottom.
She grinned at him over one shoulder and wiggled her hips to tempt him further.
David snatched a steaming hot roll from the cookie sheet and began juggling it in an effort to cool it.
“Serves you right if you burn your fingers,” Emma teased. She pulled out a small basket and lined it with a paper towel before arranging the rolls in it.
“Cruel heartless woman,” David said, breaking off a piece of the light flakey dough. He moaned with pleasure at the taste of the soft buttery goodness.
“Don’t burn your mouth. I have plans for it later.”
“Sounds like fun,” he said, eyes lighting with a mix of humor and raw lust. “Please tell me there will be naked time included, too.”
“Hah,” she said, throwing a towel at him and giggling as he chased her around the kitchen. “That’s for me to know and you to find out later.”
“Can you give me a hint?”
Emma sauntered towards him,
blue eyes gleaming with mischief. She picked up his hands and kissed the palm before slowly, oh, so very slowly, licked his finger. David’s eyes grew heavy with desire and she smiled up at him. “Would a cruel heartless woman kiss away your hurts?”
“Well, if you’re looking to kiss away hurts, I have one that suddenly decided it needed attention.”
She laughed at his antics and handed him the basket of rolls. “Later. I’m hungry and I’m sure you are, too.”
“I am,” he agreed. “But I think we might have different opinions on just what I’m hungry for.”
“Eat,” she bargained “I can handle the other hunger later.”
He kissed her. A soft slow toe curling kiss that had her vaguely wondering if food was really all that important anyway. She blinked softly up at him, her mouth slightly agape. His grin was one part smug male and one part happy lover as he pulled out her chair and she settled in.
“How is your newest employee settling in?”
“Well, if Thorne can ever leave the poor girl alone, she’ll be fine. Piper is a good waitress but he hovers over her worse than a —” It was on her mind to say “mother hen” but another image popped in her head.
“Like a jealous lover,” David supplied.
“Yes. How did you know? I was going to say mother hen but there doesn’t appear to be anything maternal in his eyes.”
David snorted and took a tentative taste of his dinner before humming in appreciation. “You are such a great cook, Em. You should open a restaurant.” She smiled at his joke. “But for Thorne? He’s guarding her like a dog with his last bone. It won’t take him long to make her his.”
“You think? Because I don’t see her staying at the diner for much longer. She likes to sew and design clothes. I hooked her up with an interview at the high school. The drama department needs someone like her to help with costumes. I’m not sure it would be full time but I’d like to see her doing something other than waitressing.”
“You’d work with her hours for that?”
“If I could, yeah. I have a feeling I’m going to need to put an ad in the Press looking for staff. I have a feeling Amy is going to leave me, too.”
Honeysuckle and Roses (Harper's Mill Book 5) Page 8