Boone glanced over at Emily. “Nothing like a little frustration to keep things interesting, huh?”
She gave him an innocent look. “Frustration? I have no idea what you mean.”
“Then you’re a stronger person than I am,” he commented.
Either that, or she was getting a kick out of knowing that he was regretting all those blasted rules he’d insisted they abide by.
* * *
“And then I had two slices of pizza and a beef taco,” B.J. was telling Cora Jane excitedly. “And a large soda.” He frowned. “That might have been a bad idea, because Dad had to stop twice on the way home so I could pee.”
Cora Jane chuckled, then glanced pointedly at Boone. “Don’t you need to go over and check on things at your restaurant?” she inquired innocently.
Boone nodded at once. “I do like to make sure things are under control on the weekends when it’s especially busy,” he confirmed.
“Maybe Emily could ride along,” Cora Jane said. “B.J. can stay here with me and show me everything he bought today for school.”
“Are you sure?” Boone asked, though she’d just offered him the chance he’d been dying for all day to be alone with Emily.
“Absolutely,” Cora Jane said. “And after all this excitement, I imagine he’s pretty tired. If he falls asleep, he might as well spend the night. Jerry’s coming by later, so I’ll have plenty of backup.”
Boone grinned at her, then bent down and kissed her cheek. “You are an angel.”
“She’s a meddling matchmaker,” Emily muttered under her breath, but she was smiling. She certainly didn’t argue with her grandmother.
“Watch your tongue,” Cora Jane told her. “I could take back my offer.”
“No, please,” Boone pleaded. “Come on, Emily. Let’s get over to the restaurant so I can see if everything’s under control.”
“We won’t be too late,” she told her grandmother.
“Don’t count on that,” Boone said, nudging her in the direction of the door. “Son, listen to Ms. Cora Jane. Do what she tells you.”
“You don’t need to worry about B.J.,” Cora Jane said. “He and I will get along just fine. No need to call if you’re running late. You’ll just wake us up.”
Boone grinned at her. “Thanks.”
Outside, he pulled Emily across the lawn, and all but shoved her into his car.
“Trying to make a quick getaway?” she asked, laughing.
“I don’t want her changing her mind or B.J. asking questions about why you’re coming with me. This is a gift horse, and I’m not questioning it. You shouldn’t be, either.”
He drove to the end of the driveway until they were out of view from the house, then stopped the car. “Come here,” he commanded softly.
Emily swayed toward him.
Boone cupped her face in his hands, looked deep into her eyes, then sighed. “I hope to heaven we left those shoes you bought in the trunk. I’ve had that image in my head all afternoon.”
“I have to admit, I couldn’t envision how you were going to pull off any time alone tonight, but they’re there,” Emily assured him. “I should have known Cora Jane would conspire to give you what you want.”
He kissed her long and deep, then smiled. “I never said a word to Cora Jane. Didn’t have to plant the idea, beg, nothing.”
“Because she’s a sneaky woman,” Emily concluded.
“And you disapprove of that?”
A slow grin spread across her face. “Right this second? Can’t say that I do. Hit the gas, Dorsett. We’re wasting time.”
“Now you’re getting into the spirit of this,” he said, pulling onto the road and turning toward his place. He figured he could cut the fifteen minute drive down to ten minutes. There were plenty of interesting things he could do with an extra five minutes, especially once he had Emily out of her clothes.
* * *
It was after midnight by the time they grew hungry for something other than each other. Boone led the way so they could raid the refrigerator.
“For a man who owns three restaurants, your refrigerator sure isn’t stocked very well,” Emily commented as she surveyed the contents.
“I haven’t had time to shop this week. Besides, other than breakfast, B.J. and I have had most of our meals out. Last night he and Alex ordered pizza, made popcorn and topped it off with ice cream.” He poked around in a cupboard and triumphantly retrieved a package of popcorn. “I thought there might be some of this left.”
Emily lifted a brow. “You expect popcorn to give us enough energy to make it through a couple more rounds upstairs?” she asked skeptically. “Personally I need protein.”
“How about a couple of omelets? There are eggs and cheese and...” He peered into the vegetable drawer and emerged with an onion and a green pepper. “What do you think?”
“That should do it,” she agreed. “Any of that ice cream left from last night?”
Boone checked the freezer, pulled out the half-empty container of rocky road and held it up. “Dessert,” he announced.
Emily was already shaking her head and wiggling her fingers. “Gimme,” she said. “Spoons?”
Boone gestured. “That drawer right there. While you’re in there, grab a couple of forks and knives, okay?”
“After dessert,” she said, grinning as she spooned a healthy serving of rocky road into her mouth, closing her eyes in apparent ecstasy.
Boone chuckled. “I’m not sure you looked that thrilled when I was making love to you.”
She grinned at him. “Believe me, I was,” she assured him. “But this is pretty heavenly. Want some?”
“I think I’ll stick with the omelet,” he said, though he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the sight of her face as she moaned with pleasure over each bite.
“You keep that up and I’m taking you right back upstairs,” he warned. “You’re turning me on.”
“Not really. You’re just feeling oddly competitive, wondering if you can make me moan like this.”
“Sweetheart, you did your fair share of moaning upstairs. A little begging, too, as I recall.”
“Hmm. I don’t seem to remember that.”
“Trust me.”
“You might have to prove it,” she taunted.
When Boone took a step toward her, she held up a hand. “After the omelets.”
He laughed. “I swear I don’t remember you being such a tease.”
“Because we were never really together,” she said, her expression suddenly serious. “Not like this, with a whole house to ourselves and no curfew we have to meet. This is what it’s like to be together as adults.”
“And?” Boone asked, his heart in his throat.
She set down the ice cream container and stepped into his embrace, her arms circling his waist, her head resting against his shoulder. “It’s pretty darn amazing.”
Over her head, Boone allowed himself a relieved smile. It was amazing. And to think they were just getting started.
16
Boone was clearly anxious to get back over to Cora Jane’s before B.J. awoke. Even though it was barely daylight, he was pacing the whole time Emily was showering and dressing.
“I guess I was wrong last night,” she said eventually, frowning at him. “It seems we do have a curfew.”
“I just don’t want B.J. to wake up and start asking a lot of questions. He might not make anything of me not being there when he gets up, but if you’re nowhere around, either, what’s he going to think?”
“That I’ve gone for a walk?” she suggested mildly. “Or run to the store? I’m sure Cora Jane will have the perfect cover story.”
“And when you walk in wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday, don’t you
think he’ll wonder about that?”
“Not unless he’s a lot more observant that most eight-year-old boys,” Emily said, but she did her best to hurry, because Boone was clearly freaking out.
In the car, she looked over at his set jaw and knew they had to deal with this. “Wait,” she commanded before he could start the engine.
He glanced at her. “What?”
“Boone, sneaking around when we were a couple of teenagers was one thing. Now, it’s not as much fun. I feel as if you don’t have a lot of respect for me or for what I thought we were trying to build here.”
Her words seemed to shake him, just as she’d intended.
“Em, you can’t believe I don’t respect you.”
“Right this second, this feels a whole lot like a casual, meaningless fling,” she countered. “The kind you wouldn’t want anyone to find out about.”
He looked genuinely upset by her words. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. You know I want us to have a future. There are just things we have to work out before we take this thing public, especially with my son. We agreed—”
“I’m reconsidering,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t like the way this makes me feel. You just hustled me out of your house as if you’d hired me for the night and didn’t want a cost overrun.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” he said, his temper obviously stirring.
“Okay, maybe that is going too far,” she conceded, “but I’m telling you how it made me feel.”
He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. “What do you want from me, Em?”
“No more sneaking around,” she said firmly. “That’s my bottom line. We don’t have to throw this in anyone’s face, but I want to be able to have a cup of coffee or a drink with you in public without seeing a look of panic on your face every time we’re spotted by someone who knows us.”
“And B.J.? How do you see this working where he’s concerned?”
Because she understood Boone’s desire to protect his son, she softened her stance in that regard. “We won’t make a big deal of seeing each other in front of him. We’ll hang out with the family, go on an occasional outing with the three of us, stuff like that. No kissing, no touching, nothing too intimate that might cause him to ask questions. How about that? It’s a fair compromise, Boone. Fair to B.J., to you and to me.”
He sighed heavily. “I can’t argue with that.”
“But can you live with it?”
“What if he does start asking questions or getting ideas about the two of us?” he asked, still clinging to his worry.
She tossed the question right back at him. “What if he does?”
“I suppose we’d have to tell him the truth then, that we’re trying to work things out as a couple,” he said as if testing an idea he wasn’t entirely happy about.
“That seems like a good way to handle it,” she agreed. “No more information than he asks for or needs to have.”
“There’s just one problem with this sane, rational plan of yours,” Boone said, an unexpected twinkle appearing in his eyes. “Suddenly I want to throw you right back into my bed and spend a couple more hours rolling around naked with you.”
Emily laughed at the unmistakable frustration in his voice. “Good. That’ll keep you highly motivated to find a way for us to have some more alone time before I leave.”
“Sweetheart, you can count on it.”
And that was exactly the response she’d been hoping for.
* * *
Boone drove B.J. to his first day of school on Monday and was back at Cora Jane’s by eight-thirty. When he walked into the kitchen, only Emily was there.
“Where is everybody?”
“Grandmother and Samantha left before dawn for Castle’s. Gabi drove back to Raleigh yesterday.” A slow smile spread across her face. “That leaves me. I got out of going to Castle’s by pleading a full day of phone calls to stay on top of the work at the shelter and at the ski lodge.”
Boone pulled her out of her chair and into his arms. “So you’re going to be tied up all day long?” he murmured, kissing her neck. “The whole day?”
“The whole day,” she confirmed, snuggling closer.
“Too bad,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“I had some interesting ideas about what we could do to keep ourselves occupied with a whole house to ourselves.”
She kissed him then, a long, slow, deep kiss that encouraged whatever plans he had in mind. “Such as?” she murmured against his lips.
“Well, this is definitely a good starting point,” he told her. “You know, Em, it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen your room.”
“You never saw my room,” she protested. “Grandmother would have shot us both.”
“Probably true,” he said. “I just imagined every detail, so I could think of you there at night. I had some very vivid fantasies back then.”
Emily smiled. “Want to come upstairs and tell me about them, maybe see if we can make one or two come true?”
“What if Cora Jane catches us?” he asked, knowing there was little likelihood of that. She’d be at Castle’s for most of the day.
“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” Emily said. “If she were here right now, she’d probably be shooing us along in that direction with a broom. She is very anxious for the two of us to figure this out. All those rules she once had have definitely been set aside in favor of reaching her latest goal.”
“I’m thinking we shouldn’t let her down,” Boone said. “How about you? Or did you really want to make all those calls?”
Emily glanced toward the clock on the wall. “It’s not even six o’clock in the morning in Los Angeles, not yet seven in Aspen. We have time.”
“Certainly enough to get started,” Boone agreed, scooping her into his arms.
She grinned at him. “Aren’t you optimistic?”
“What can I say? You inspire me.” He winked at her. “And I did have a lot of fantasies we need to get caught up on.”
Emily also made him just a little bit reckless and crazy, traits he hadn’t allowed himself to express in years. One of these days he’d have to figure out if rediscovering that side of his personality was a good thing...or dangerously bad.
* * *
Emily rolled over and groaned. “Go home,” she murmured emphatically, giving Boone a halfhearted shove.
He regarded her incredulously. “You’re kicking me out of your bed? After I worked so hard to make sure you were totally satisfied?”
“I am,” she confirmed. “You have to pick your son up from school. I have to make at least some of those business calls. And, despite my earlier comments, I really don’t think Grandmother should come home from Castle’s and find us in my bed. It might make her happy, but I guarantee, we’d never hear the end of it. She’ll have her calendar out and the church booked before we make it downstairs.”
“Would that be so bad?” Boone asked, glancing over his shoulder as he sat on the side of the bed.
As the offhand comment sank in, Emily stared at him. “What?”
“I asked if it would be so bad if we set a wedding date.”
She had a very hard time comprehending this sudden about-face, this desire to leap into the future. “Seriously?” she asked.
For an instant he looked as if he might take it back, but then he nodded. “Seriously.”
Stunned by the out-of-the-blue suggestion, Emily yanked the sheet up to her chin. Though she tried to choose her words carefully, the ones that came out of her mouth were anything but diplomatic.
“Boone, have you suddenly lost your mind? We’ve barely started seeing each other again. Sure, it’s been good. Excellent, in fact, but we’re not ready to go
to the next level, much less take a leap over the next five levels to marriage.”
He frowned at her quick-tempered response. “How do you see this progressing?”
“A lot more slowly than you do, apparently. Earlier today you didn’t even want the world to know we were together. This turnaround of yours is giving me whiplash.”
“It was just an idea,” he said defensively. “If this is the outcome we’re hoping for, why wait? Let’s just do it, then deal with the fallout.”
“Now that’s a romantic notion,” she said.
“Okay, if you’re so dead set against it, tell me your objections.”
“There are a lot of things we haven’t even begun to work out, like how our lives would fit together,” she reminded him. “That’s a biggie, don’t you think?”
“Maybe we’re making it too complicated, that’s all I’m saying.” He regarded her earnestly. “I love you, Em. I always have. I fought it when you first showed up, but that was about me being angry and guilty about holding back a piece of my heart from Jenny. Now it just seems as if we’re back where we used to be and we ought to grab this before a million other things get in the way again.”
“And how do you see this marriage working?” she asked, genuinely perplexed by this crazy idea of his. She could tell from the bewildered expression on his face that he had no clue how it might work.
“You’re being a total guy,” she accused lightly when he didn’t respond. “You want what you want when you want it, never mind that the other person hasn’t even climbed on this runaway bus of yours yet.”
He stared at her for a minute, then chuckled. “You think I’m a runaway bus?”
“Something like that. Maybe I didn’t want us hiding from the world, but I sure wasn’t suggesting we just throw caution to the wind. These issues we have are real. Jodie Farmer’s going to be a problem. B.J. has to get used to the idea. We have work schedules that are going to have to be coordinated. I could be tied up in California for a couple of months at least on this shelter project. The deadline for the ski lodge renovation is just as crazy. And a lot of my regular clients have little spruce-up jobs that they insist be done before the holidays. I have four queries about those on that list of calls I need to return.”
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