“This whole coffee thing will taste a lot better if we had some actual coffee grinds,” she said. There. That wasn't exactly asking for help.
She heard James push off the wall and walk over, walking behind her and stopping several cabinets over. He reached in, grabbed the bag, and turned toward her. Holding it. Not handing it over.
Emily shut her eyes for the barest of seconds. Trying to steel her nerves. Trying to forget about their past. Their very recent past. She turned, reaching out for the bag, but he held it tighter.
When she looked up into his face, he was smiling. Boyish. Charming. “Say please.”
“Give me the damn coffee,” she said instead, grabbing it from him and turning to add it to the machine. She turned it on and stood there for a second listening to it drip, taking a deep breath. He was still standing there. Right there. Two feet away. “What?” she asked, turning, unable to stop herself.
“Getting all dressed up for me?” he asked, smirking. Liking the thought of getting her riled up. “That's... sweet.”
“Don't flatter yourself,” she shot back. “I had no idea you would be here.”
“And yet you bought a new dress just in case.”
“It's not new,” she lied. “You don't know my wardrobe. This is how I dress when I am not working.” Lies. Lies.
“Sure it is,” he said, stepping closer. Too close. Reaching out and grabbing the hem of her skirt, his fingers brushing against her thigh.
Emily swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Article five,” she said as his hand started to stroke down the side of her leg. “Line ten,” she added, hated how turned on she was already. His hand slid across, moving toward the inner side of her thigh. “Lines fifteen and twenty-two.”
James' fingers dug into her leg, ducking his head slightly to look in her eyes. “I'm the boss,” he said. “those rules don't apply to me.”
Emily lifted her chin. She knew she was weak. With regard to him and his hands on her body, she was helpless. She needed to get control of the situation before it got out of hand. “Got something to prove, huh?” she asked, watching his eyes for a reaction. “That threatened by Dane are you?” And there it was, the lowering of the brows, the blue eyes shooting daggers.
But she wasn't prepared for his reaction. There was no way she could have been prepared.
He reached out, grabbing the back of her neck with his hand and turning her away from him, slamming her hips up against the sink. Her arms flew out to to the sides of the cool stainless steel to steady herself. His hands slid up the backs of her thighs, moving the material of her dress up until it was bunched around her waist. His fingers grabbed the top of her tights, quickly dragging them and her panties downward.
Her fingers gripped the sides of the sink, her whole body tense, waiting. She hated it for betraying her. She was hot and ready, every inch of her aware of his body behind her.
She heard him pull his zipper and then his knee was pushing between her thighs, pushing them wider. His hand slid up her inner thigh, stroking her slick heat for the barest of seconds before pulling away. Then both his hands were on her hips, hard, sinking in painfully as he shoved deep inside her.
Emily's hand slammed down on the sink as her hips slammed into the counter, letting out a strangled whimper. One of his hands went up toward the base of her neck, slipping into her hair, making a fist in it, then twisting it painfully, pulling her head to the side. His other hand went to her mouth, his palm covering it, his fingers digging into her cheekbone.
And then he was slamming into her, deliberate, deep thrusts. All the way in, pushing against her back wall, making her feel him as deeply as possible before pulling almost all the way out. Pausing. Then shoving deep back in.
It was nothing like the other two times. The first time that had been wild and needy, long overdue. The second time that had been slow and soft and full of some kind of deeper meaning than just bodies touching. This was rough. Punishing. This was pure, animalistic hatefucking.
And damn if her body wasn't enjoying every last second of it. She could feel herself tightening around his hard cock, begging for more, rushing fast toward a climax. His thrusts became harder, the hand in her hair pulling roughly.
He leaned forward, his breath hot on her neck as he bit into her earlobe. “I'm not jealous of anyone,” he growled out as he slammed inside of her wildly, each thrust making her go up on her toes. “because I can have you any time I want.”
Emily felt her body contract around his cock right at that moment, as if proving his point. She let out a cry, muffled against his hand as he thrust even harder. With one last thrust, he had her feet coming completely off the ground, making her hips push forward, lifting up into the sink with it's fierceness, her hands slipping and slamming up against the window to keep herself from falling into it, she heard his breath catch, his hand jerk against her face as he came hard and fast.
Seconds later, he was pulling out of her. Her feet fell back onto the ground as she heard him zip back up and walk away. In the hall, his voice light and unaffected he called. “Allie baby, how do you take your coffee?”
Emily reached down and hauled her panties and tights back up, settling her dress into place, before putting her shaky hands back onto the counter, trying to pretend she wasn't affected. Trying to put herself back together as easily as he had.
She took deep breaths, moving away from the counter, reaching and grabbing coffee cups.
“Listen,” Hananh's voice said, coming into the room. “my lady bits are all kinds of messed up and it hurts to even walk,” she said, coming up beside her “So you better be ready to tell me what the hell is going on with you and James.”
Emily's chin fell toward her chest, shaking her head. She turned her face slightly toward Hannah, knowing there were tears fighting to stay in her eyes.
“Oh, Em,” Hannah said, looking crestfallen. She glanced out toward the front room. “Go get us some half and half,” she said suddenly. “out this back door. We need half and half for the coffee,” she said at Emily's blank look.
Emily nodded tightly, moving toward the back door. As she closed it behind her, she could see Hannah inside the kitchen, grabbing the carton of cream and pouring the obviously full contents down the drain. She winked at Emily though the window.
Emily practically ran to her car, getting into the front seat and pulling down the street before parking in front of some random building and breaking down.
There was no good reason for it. She had enjoyed many hatefucking sessions in the past. Some with people she had actually hated in that moment. Dane had been involved more than once after particularly heated arguments she swore he picked just because the angry sex was so phenomenal. It wasn't the act.
It was the feeling. The feeling that he was trying to get her out of his system. That maybe if he fucked her hard enough, there would be nothing left for him to discover. That he could be done with her.
And she was pretty sure she was falling for the bastard.
She wasn't the kind of girl who was raised on unrealistic fairy tales. She wasn't the kind of woman who went searching for romance. For happily ever afters. They didn't exist. People loved people. Then betrayals set in. Dozens of small ones. Or one great, big, ugly one. And then people moved on.
So she skipped the whole middle part. She liked the meeting and the newness. And then she rushed toward the end before it went south. Which left her with mostly happy memories.
Falling for Mr. Fancypants was unacceptable. It was foolish. And it was only going to bring her unhappiness. It was better this way. It was better that he wanted to fuck his feelings out. It was good that there was that kind of closure.
She looked at the clock on her stereo, noting the time, agreeing to let herself to grieve for five minutes. Then she would wipe all the evidence away, fix her makeup, go buy some half and half and walk back into that house like nothing happened.
And that was exactly
what she did.
Twenty-Two
In the end, she spent six days there, taking the baby in the late hours of the night when Hannah and Elliott were bleary-eyed and exhausted. Hannah had insisted she stay in the guest room, half because she knew she could use the help but also half because she wanted to keep an eye on her friend. A friend she had only seen cry a handful of times in her life. And never over a guy.
Emily's ear became fine tuned. Able to know the sound of James' car engine long before he parked and rushed up the walkway to see his nephew. She always had more than enough time to run up the stairs and lock herself in the spacious spare room before he was in the front door.
He knew she was there. She knew he knew she was there. And she knew he thought he had won because she was hiding from him. But sometimes you had to sacrifice your pride to save you pain.
In the end, she drove back to Stars Landing feeling worn out and oddly disconnected from her own body.
“I'm going home,” Dev said the second she walked through the front door. At her surprised look, he held up his hands. “Yes. Hi. Welcome back. Blah blah blah. I am going home. Twelve hour shifts for six days is pushing it, woman. In fact, I am taking a long weekend.”
“Okay, sure, fine,” Emily grumbled, grabbing the mail off the desk and walking down the hallway.
She went to her room, dropping her bags onto the floor, and falling into the bed.
There was a knock half an hour later, the door opening without waiting for a reply. “How was the little squirt?” Dane asked, leaning against the doorjamb.
“Isaac,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “he's good. He has a head full of dark hair like his parents and his dad's ice blue eyes.”
“I've never seen this Elliott guy, but if that kid turns out half as attractive as Hannah, he's going to break a lot of hearts.”
“Jealous he might take some of your underwear modeling gigs?”
Dane smirked for a moment. “What's up with you?”
“Nothing,” she said, not caring how unconvincing she sounded.
“Saw him, did ya?”
“He hatefucked me in Hannah's kitchen,” she said.
“Did he?” Dane asked sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Didn't think rich guys had that kinda game.”
“I don't think money has anything to do with his dick.”
“So what now?”
“Now nothing,” Emily shrugged. “It's over over now. Time to move on.”
Dane nodded, then quickly jumped on top of her, pinning her to the bed, smiling a goofy smile she wasn't used to seeing on his face. “Well, in that case, I am willing to offer up my cock any time you need it.”
“Pity fucks?” she asked, rolling her eyes.
“I was thinking of it more as a public service. No one wants you to mope around town for a year nursing your broken heart.”
“My heart isn't broken,” she said, pushing him off of her and sitting up.
“Okay, Red,” he said, sitting next to her, bumping his shoulder against hers. “whatever you say.”
But it wasn't long before his prediction came true. She slipped easily into heartbreak, sinking deep inside herself. She slept in late. She dressed in baggy sweat clothes, sitting at the front desk eating endless bags of chips, huge piles of desserts from Lena, and multiple servings of everything that Meggie cooked.
She stopped stripping the beds for the maids. And running food for the servers. The only thing real work she continued to do was take care of the horses. She compiled all the employee hour sheets and sent them to EM Corp for them to deal with. She ripped up her own paychecks from them.
Devon seemed to step up as she stepped down, handling disputes. Taking care of all of the scheduling. Making appointments. Decorating for the holidays.
If she were paying any kind of attention, she would have been impressed.
“You know your staff is starting to call you 'Fuck-It Emily',” Dane told her when he came in from the bar late one night to find Emily propped up at the front desk eating popcorn and watching a show on the work computer.
“Well, they're not wrong,” Emily shrugged. “This place doesn't belong to me anymore. So fuck it.”
“Is the plan for it to fail so the boss man loses?” he asked, quirking a brow up. “because the man has millions of dollars and dozens of companies. I really don't think he cares about this inn.”
“He cares because he needs to beat me. If the inn goes under, he loses his control of me.”
“And you lose the only thing you have ever cared about,” Dane added.
“Eh,” she shrugged. “pretty soon it wont even have a hint of Marion left anymore anyway. So what does it matter?”
“What would you do if you didn't work here?”
Emily shrugged a shoulder. “Doesn't matter. I could go work at the lodge. Dev and Aria would pull some strings for me.”
“So that's it?” Dane asked, sounding irritated. “You just give up? On everything? On him? On your life?”
“Look, I know you're like on a head trip because you're getting your shit together finally, but that doesn't give you the right to talk down to me because I don't have it together anymore.”
“Just... snap out of it,” Dane said, listening as the phone rang. And rang. And rang. Emily didn't even bother to reach for it. It stopped and then started up again. With a sigh, he grabbed it. “Stars Landing Inn,” he barked into the receiver, looking at Emily with something she could only describe as disgust. But then the look lifted, a smirk on his lips, a lifted brow. “Yup, hold on,” he said, holding the phone out toward her. When she shook her head, he shoved it into her hand. “Answer the fucking phone,” he said, walking toward the sitting room.
Emily sighed, an overly dramatic sound, bringing the phone up to her ear. “Yeah?”
“Did you hire a new employee without consulting me?” James' voice asked through the phone.
She almost fell out of her chair. Literally. Her body jumped backward, making the chair topple. Her arm flew out toward the desk, righting herself. Everything she had been numbing with mindless television and fattening snacks and tooth-rotting desserts, everything she had been trying to avoid came flooding back.
There was a tightening in her chest, something sharp and uncomfortable. She brought a hand up to her throat as if she could rub away the sensation like you can work out a knot in a muscle.
Too much time had passed. She needed to say something. “No.” There. At least she didn't sound like an idiot. There was silence on his end of the phone and she closed her eyes, rubbing at the headache forming behind her them. “What do you want, James?”
Another few long seconds of silence. “We're bleeding money.”
Emily's feet landed on the floor and she was standing in a matter of seconds. “What?”
“All those withdrawals. Well the amounts were tripled what they have been in previous months.”
“What?” Emily asked again, moving out from behind the desk and pacing the hall.
“Whatever you did that you think you handled the situation, was wrong.”
Alec. Through the fog of her depression, that was the first thing that came to mind. Not the fact that a different employee was stealing money. But the fact that she fired the wrong person.
She was out the front door and walking down the yard, dropping the phone on the grass. She needed to make things right. Apologize.
Alec lived further out in town and without streetlights, she was walking in the pitch dark of the night toward his place. She got to his home, a house split into a duplex, looking at the red classic car in the driveway and realizing she never even gave him a chance to explain the car. Maybe it was gift. Maybe he had been working on it since he was seventeen. There could be a rational explanation for its appearance. She had just been too quick to judge.
She pounded wildly on his door, making the neighbor's dog bark angrily. It was a long time before she he
ard movement inside. Lights flicked on and the door pulled open. Alec stood there, his hair loose around his shoulders, naked from the waist up. “Emily?” he asked, sounding half awake. “It's one in the morning.”
“I know. I'm sorry,” Emily said, pushing past him and into his house. Everything was sparse, the typical bachelor pad. Brown leather couch in front of a huge flat screen and a coffee table that, no doubt, he lounged with his feet up on. Then she saw movement out by the door that led into the small kitchen. She jumped backward for a second, banging into Alec's chest. “What the... is that...”
“It's a mini horse,” Alec supplied, like it was as normal to have one in your house as it was to have a cat or dog.
“In the house?”
“Sometimes,” he said, moving past her toward the animal in question, leading it out toward the doors to the backyard. He pulled the door closed and turned back to her. “Is everything alright with the horses?”
Emily almost laughed. Not: what are you doing here? Or: get the hell out of my house. No, he just wanted to know about the horses. It was so incredibly like him that she had to fight the urge to run into his arms and beg for forgiveness.
“They're fine. I promise I've been taking good care of them. Alec... I was wrong to fire you.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, leaning against the wall, crossing his arms over his naked chest. “Why did you fire me?”
“I thought you were stealing. Someone is sneaking money from the inn. I just... I saw that car and I thought...”
“You. Thought. Wrong,” he said through clenched teeth. She had never really seen him angry before. And he was pissed. It was disconcerting. And sexy. Good looking men shouldn't be allowed to get angry when they were half naked.
“I know. I know I did. I'm so sorry. I...” she looked around, feeling her shoulders slumping. “I know I can't undo what I did. And I... I understand if you never forgive me. But please, please come back to the inn.”
What The Heart Knows Page 18