All I Need (Hearts of the South) (20 page)

He closed and locked the door behind him with quiet, controlled movements. A familiar engine purred to a stop behind him, and he gathered a breath before turning, keys in hand.

Still wearing dark blue scrubs, Savannah met him on the walkway, her pretty features tight with unhappy tension that highlighted the small grooves by her mouth. “Emmett, we need to talk.”

“Hell, why not? You can pile on too.” He took her hand and dropped his keys in her palm. “You can drive, but fair warning, Savannah, I am not in the mood for your shit tonight.”

A surprised smile crept over her face, lightening the stress in her eyes, and he sucked in a breath, frowning.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just…you’re cute when you’re angry.” She held up the keys. “You trust me to drive?”

He glared. “Not funny.”

In the passenger seat of his truck, he forced himself into a boneless slump and made himself calm down. He wasn’t going to beat the shit out of Frank, because Savannah wouldn’t drive him to Tallahassee and because it would cost him his job, his self-respect, everything. He wasn’t going to be mad at his mother or Landra for long, because damn it, they loved him and had his best interests at heart, even if they couldn’t see past the fact he was no longer sixteen. He wasn’t going to track Clark down and find out what he knew, because, well, Clark was Clark and they were always good. He was going to calm down, forgive Landra for lying by omission, and maybe later he wouldn’t see those bruises when he tried to close his eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Savannah’s quiet voice interrupted the whirling thoughts.

“You know. You treated her.” He turned his head to look at her, her gaze darting from the road to the rearview mirror and back again. “Hell, you’re the only one I’m not pissed at because at least you have an ethical reason not to tell me the truth.”

Her brows drawn together into a slight frown, she glanced sideways at him. “You’re really way more intense than you look.”

“Only when I’m angry.” He straightened in the seat and rubbed his palms down his thighs. “Usually, I keep it under control. Tonight, I’m mad at the whole damn world.”

She braked for the last stoplight before the edge of town. “So what do you want to do?”

“Pull in up here.” He pointed at the brightly lit Cue Club set off the road a quarter mile ahead of them. “We’ll grab beers and burgers and go to the lime mine.”

The place wasn’t incredibly busy, and their order didn’t take long. Shanna worked the bar tonight and tried to engage him in conversation, but gave up after his repeated monosyllabic replies. She was a great person and he liked her—any other night, he would’ve felt bad about rebuffing the friendly overtures, but not tonight.

He wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

In the truck, he set the sack of burgers on the seat between them and the brown paper bag holding their beers between his feet. He flicked a hand to the right. “About five minutes that way.”

The abandoned lime mine lay miles outside of town, and he directed her down the red dirt road leading to the upper rim. The road narrowed to a grass track, cedar limbs swiping at the sides of his truck before the vegetation opened up along the rim of the man-made canyon.

Savannah laughed. “This is the middle of nowhere.”

“Yeah.” He made a grab for the steering wheel and shoved it to the left as she braked hard. “Don’t get too close to the edge.”

She killed the engine and leaned forward over the steering wheel. He knew what she was seeing—the wide pit yawning darker than the night around them. She shivered. “This cannot be safe.”

“Oh, it’s not.” He grabbed the sack holding their dinner and shoved the door open. “Come on.”

“Emmett.” Nervousness invaded her voice. She hovered near the cab as he let the tailgate down.

“Honey, walk to the back of the truck. It’s away from the pit. And we’re at least thirty feet from the dropoff. Just don’t go beyond the front of the truck.” He sat on the edge of the tailgate. “Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t let you fall?”

“I didn’t think you meant literally.” She perched beside him, and he passed her a burger from the bag. Night sounds wrapped around them—crickets, an owl, something creeping through the underbrush, and with the city lights gone, stars shone brightly around a glowing moon. The night air was warm and damp against his bare arms, and he inhaled sharply. God, he’d needed this.

She moved the sack and edged closer, her thigh brushing his. “I need to tell you something.”

“Yeah?” He was starting to calm down, the anger and hurt receding under the peace of being out at night and having her next to him, even if nothing was settled between them.

“A couple of years ago, I was engaged and…” Her voice caught on a pained breath. “And he died.”

He closed his eyes against the pain in the simple words. This was it, then, the wall that stood between them, all wrapped up in three little words. He joined their hands, fingers entwined with hers. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” She pulled in an audible little inhale that was close to a sob. “It was bad. There’d been an accident, and they brought him into my ER, into my exam room, and I didn’t even realize it was him…not until after I pronounced him and we realized he and his partner had been mixed up…”

He released her hand and wrapped his arm hard around her shoulders, pulling her into him. A shudder moved through her strong body, and he tightened his hold on her. “I’m so damned sorry.”

She turned her face into his neck and linked her arm around his nape. Tears dampened his skin. “It’s not you, Emmett, it’s not. It’s me, and I don’t know how to…I know I keep saying that, but it’s true and I don’t
want
to hurt you.”

“I know.” He tossed his half-eaten burger behind them and folded both arms around her, rocking her into him at an awkward angle. She moved her head, seeking his mouth, and he let her kiss him, let her mesh their lips. The desperation in her kiss wasn’t for him, and he eased his hands up to cradle her head, gentling the contact to a soft halt. He brushed his mouth across hers once and pulled back.

He shifted to retrieve his burger and linked his free hand with hers. Confusion radiated off her in palpable waves. He squeezed her fingers. “When you asked me if I trusted you and I said no, that wasn’t a fair answer. I don’t really trust anyone.”

“Anyone?”

“Well, Landra, when she’s not hiding shit from me,” he conceded. “Clark, mostly because we’ve been running together forever, and Troy Lee because I don’t think he could lie to save his life. Other than that? Yeah, I have trust issues.”

She was silent and he laced their fingers together.

“My dad is an asshole and has cheated on my mom since day one. He’s not the marrying type, but she was pregnant with Landra so they got married. I was supposed to be the thing that saved their marriage a few years later.” He exhaled sharply. “It didn’t work. In this town, everybody knows everything, and what they don’t know, they make up. So Mama had to live with that every day. She kept saying she wasn’t going to take him back, but she did. Every single time.”

“And you had to live with that.” Her quiet sympathy washed over him.

“Yeah, and I didn’t make it easier on her.” He splayed his palm against hers, measuring the length of their fingers. “I only made it worse.”

She brushed his cheek with the back of her other hand. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Anyway, I try not to have anything to do with him, and he makes that pretty easy.” He cleared his throat against a rough tightening. “He didn’t show up at all when I got shot, and I was good with that.”

“It was hard on Landra.”

“Oh, yeah. She’s a total control freak. Mackey couldn’t take it anymore, and they broke up right after the shooting. She quit her job, went to work in Tallahassee and married Frank on the rebound.” He shook his head. “I tried to tell her it wasn’t a good idea, but she wasn’t listening. She hasn’t talked to me in almost a year, but I’m pretty sure that was more about Frank and less about me. So yeah, my family is totally fucked up and I’ve never wanted a real relationship with any woman, and now I’m in this…this
thing
with you and I want it so bad it scares me and I know that’s the last thing you want.”

“It’s hard.” She rubbed her palm along his, a rueful note in her voice. “I’m afraid to open up again, and it was so easy with Gates—”

“Gates Melbourne?” The name clicked in his brain, and he groaned. He really couldn’t win.

“Yes.” The word wobbled, and he cringed. “Why?”

“He was a good guy. I met him a few times when he was working swing. He and Clark got on like a house on fire.” Melbourne had patched him up in the back of a rig after he and Troy Lee had busted up a bar fight and some drunk asshole had laid him upside the head with a beer bottle. Emmett hadn’t wanted to waste half his shift in the ER…or listen to Landra gripe about how dangerous his job was. A couple of weekends later, Melbourne had been dead after a semi plowed into his ambulance on a run.

“He was the best.” Wistfulness colored the words, and he winced, feeling like a selfish bastard. He couldn’t compete with that.

“And I don’t make it easy.” The words hurt his throat. He wanted to throw something because he didn’t know how to function in this.

“I don’t expect it to be that way with you.” Again, she slid their palms together, a warm point of contact between them. “I’m not the same person I was. I can’t do this the way I did that.”

“Makes sense.” He released her hand, crumpled his hamburger wrapper, and shoved it in the bag with the unopened beers.

“I think you had it right when you said we do today, then tomorrow, then figure out where we are.” A small sigh vibrated through her body. “Although I really hate that idea.”

He made a sound in his throat. As far as conversations went, this one was about as hopeless as he’d ever seen. They were a sad pair.

“And it’s probably not fair for me to stay connected to you like this.” She shoved her own wrapper in the bag and pulled her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them. “You sister and Clark and Rob all seem to think I should let you go.”

“What?” His anger surged so hard that lights danced against the night before him. Landra he got—she was always trying to mess with his life. He didn’t give a damn about Bennett, not really, but Clark? “What the hell?”

“They’re probably all right.”

This was unbelievable. Did no one get the concept of
his
personal life? Hell, he stayed out of theirs unless they invited him in. But everyone wanted a say in his.

He lifted his phone. “Hey, let’s text Troy Lee and get his opinion. Maybe your sister and, why the hell not, my boss too. Better yet, my mama and your parents, since everybody seems to get a voice but me.”

She laughed. She honest-to-God laughed, and the clear, gorgeous sound defused his ire.

“What?” he asked around a chuckle. Damn it, he didn’t want to find this funny.

“Put that away.” She took the phone and laid it aside. “You really are adorable when you’re pissed off.”

Adorable wasn’t the effect he wanted to have on her. She reached for him, arms around his neck, and pressed to him.

“I don’t want to let you go.” She whispered the words near his mouth, and he looped his arms about her waist, unable to resist the contact. “I don’t like the idea of doing life day-to-day, but I can’t see doing those days without you in them.”

“Then don’t let me go.” He took her lips, and this time he was the desperate one, pressing her as close as he could get. She opened beneath him, and he tasted as deeply as he could get. He wanted to devour her, to make her forget where she ended and he began. He wanted to make her forget a lot more, and the part of his brain still working knew how dangerous and stupid that was, like getting too close to the edge of the pit behind them.

On a small moan of pure need, she shifted in his embrace, straddling his thighs with one leg, lifting higher against him so her face was above his. He let his hand drift down to cup the inside of that thigh over his, tugging her into him, and taking them backward to lie almost face-to-face. The ridges of the truck bed dug into his arm and hip, but he ignored the discomfort and pulled her nearer. Letting his tongue mimic what he wanted to do with his body, he ground his growing erection into the softness between her thighs and stroked his fingers across the heat he found there.

She made a sound that was half-moan, half-laugh. “Emmett, I love what you do to me, but this is really uncomfortable.”

“Yeah.” He leaned up on an elbow, mingled light from the moon and stars letting him glimpse the desire in her face. “There are sleeping bags behind the truck seat. Want me to get them?”

“Um, yeah.” She slid off the tailgate as he did. He opened the cab and rummaged behind the seat. “Why do you have sleeping bags in your truck?”

“Hiking and camping with Clark. They’ve been in there forever. Can’t remember the last time we used them. At least a month before the shooting.” He climbed up and unfolded the first bag and spread it across the truck bed. “There’s a couple of one-person tents back there too, but I’m not trying to put one of those together in the dark.”

She perched on the tailgate and kicked off her shoes, then tugged her scrub top over her head. He froze, the first bag stretched across the bed and the second folded to create a pillow at the top. He’d not anticipated this would involve getting naked, but what the hell? He was good with that.