Double Dare (24 page)

“If she’s not, I will,” Tobias said, now at the stairs of the platform.

“I think I want to do it too. Looks fun,” Josh said.

“No.” There was steel in the single word.

Emma picked up on it and put out her hand to Tobias. “I’m a little nervous.” She gestured for Sasha and Abigail to go ahead, but she squeezed his hand. His palm was clammy in hers.

Josh squeezed past them and muttered, “I’m dealing with bats.”

She moved into Tobias’ warmth. “Hey, it’s all right. We do this stuff all the time. It’s how we met, remember?”

“I’d rather have you running around naked right now.”

If he’d meant it in a sexual way she would have laughed, but he didn’t. Only a blind woman would mistake the fear in his gaze for anything else. She placed both hands on his face and kissed him.

“Ok?” she said after pulling back.

“I know this is important to you. I know your friends are your everything.”

Emma looked at the man she’d been falling in love with from the beginning and saw what she’d been missing. What was the difference between a man being your entire world and two women? Both were creepy and a little sad. His life had started to intermingle with hers. Even at this point could she cut him out without bleeding?

“How about you jump with me?” Emma said.

“What?” He jerked back in shock.

There, the humor was back. “You’ll stop worrying about me, because you’ll be seeing your own death coming at you.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not laughing. When was the last time you did something absolutely reckless and crazy?” Something flickered behind his gaze. It made her heart quicken. Instead of asking what it was she said, “And you being tied next to me will keep me from wetting my pants.”

“Not funny,” Tobias said, and the fear was still there in his gaze.

“That time I was laughing.”

His lip twitched and the fear stayed but was no longer filling the silence between them. He let out a breath and glanced up the steps. Tobias took her hand from his face and squeezed it. They went up the rest of the stairs and her friends didn’t look impatient at having to wait. Josh chatted with one of the workers.

Emma’s stomach filled with nerves. “Quick amendment to the rules. If one of us is too scared to see straight we can do a dare with someone else.”

Abigail narrowed her gaze. “They have to be part of the group.”

“Honorary members?” Sasha suggested.

“Criteria,” Emma said.

Tobias glared at his brother. “They have to be over twenty-five.”

And they all looked at Josh, who snorted, “Bats.”

“Must be of a different sex,” Sasha added and winked at Emma.

“Must hurry up because they’re going to kick us off the platform.” Abigail gestured her head at the three workers.

“Agreed,” everyone said.

Minutes later Tobias muttered, “This is crazy.” He winced when one of the workers hooked up the equipment between his legs.

“You’re stuck on repeat,” Emma pointed out.

“Can’t think of something else to say,” Tobias said.

She grinned at him and laughed when he scowled. “Hey, that’s good though.”

“You guys ready?” the second worker asked. He’d been securing her equipment all the while throwing instructions at her.

“Yeah,” Emma said. Tobias made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

“Wuss,” Abigail yelled from the safety zone. Of course she would, given her position.

The fear receded again in his gaze and he looked like he wanted to laugh. “You wouldn’t have the balls,” Tobias shot back.

Emma swallowed when guy number two motioned them to the platform. “Would you still like me in the morning if I throw up right now?”

Tobias’ eyes glinted. “This moment is why I wear black.”

“That is not why you wear black.” All the bravery she’d shored up ran for the hills as she looked down over the side. Hard, impacted earth greeted her.

“Stop stalling,” guy number three said.

Tobias looked down over the side of the platform and just that action made Emma close her eyes. “This is stupid,” she finally managed to say. “We’re grown-ups. We don’t have to do this.”

“You’re breaking tradition.” Tobias wrapped his arms around her.

Given the circumstances, it amazed Emma how safe she felt in the embrace. “Not even you can piss me off into a different mood.”

“On the count of three.” One of the workers yelled.

“Oh, God. Oh, God!” Emma said.

And then Tobias mouth was covering hers. The sounds turned to a buzz, a rushing in her ears and everything blurred. It wasn’t until the rope jerked them up, keeping them from going splat, that she realized they had fallen. Emma laughed against his mouth.

Crafty man, she thought and sighed, because the moment before the fall was always the scariest part.

Chapter Nineteen

The fine hairs on Tobias’ arms stood up, and his gaze whipped to the door of the coffee shop. Why did he think fifty miles would be far enough to separate him from his past? Since it wasn’t, he smiled and it became genuine when Tina beamed at him as she came to the counter. George, as usual, refused to meet his gaze.

“We got the numbers from last week. Congratulations! We’d like to personally thank Emmaline Sharp.”

His smile slipped. Emma knew them as his backers. They knew her as the owner of Sweet Tooth, and it felt wrong to not alert them of the non-professional side. And if he did, what would he call them? He could no longer say they were only lovers. That would be a lie he tried to convince himself to believe.

The truth hit again, just as hard as it did the first time and his breath hitched. Tobias wanted Emmaline to be his forever. God, he’d been scared down to his soul on Friday, just a week ago. She’d agreed to do a dare that put her life in jeopardy, and he stood there not able to bring himself to talk her out of it. Those dares were who she was.

Emmaline was loyal, and it sometimes meant reckless. She did her best to project the square peg, but that wasn’t her. Last week she’d been torn between soothing him and making her friends happy. He knew if he asked, she would have broken tradition and not jumped. Actions, her actions told him he could be her forever. If and when she ever got the balls to want him, leaving behind her ideal man.

For the past week, and at that moment,
he
didn’t have the balls to ask her to make the decision. Instead, he forced his lips into a curve.

“That could be arranged.” He glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes to closing.

Tina waved him away. “We’ll have some coffee until you’re done.”

He got together their order and cursed the momentary spineless man taking over his body. For the next twenty minutes Tobias tried to figure out a way to explain his relationship with Tina and George to Emma. Before, what he and Emma had didn’t matter.

But now…he tested different angles that wouldn’t blind side Emma when Tina and George waltzed into Sweet Tooth. Tina, probably, bubbling with excitement while George would frown in disapproval.
Emmaline, these are my backers. They aren’t just the face of the company. They’re the parents of my deceased fiancée
.

Emma knew loyalty, but to two women she’d been friends with in college. Nothing complicated in that. She wouldn’t understand his loyalty to Tina and George, or why he kept this one connection to his past. No matter how he framed it that would be the sticking point. She wouldn’t understand why he hadn’t said anything. But, she would be hurt and disgusted. Tobias stomach filled with lead when time ran out and he still didn’t have a decent way of explaining Tina and George—or Emma to them.

Not completely a coward, he led them across the street just as the sign’s lights went out. He knocked and she double-checked through the blinds before opening the door. Her brows creased in confusion, but she greeted everyone warmly.

“You remember Tina and George,” Tobias finally said. “The face of the company and also the not-so-silent partners.”

George sent him a look that would have withered any fruit on the vine, but it was Tina who spoke. “Don’t mind him. We’re family.”

“Oh, his…?”

Tina bit her lip for a moment, and when the emotions were back under her cheery control said, “He’s our adopted-son-in-law, you can say.”

“Oh.” Emma’s voice went up an octave. “How about I give you a taste of what I make? We can get to know each other better.”

Emmaline didn’t even look at him as she charmed a smile out of Tina and George. She gave them a tour of the store. Josh washed dishes in the kitchen.

“I see you’ve put Joshua to work,” George said.

Emma snorted. “He conned me.” She looked at his brother, still not at him. “Came in with a portfolio and puppy dog eyes, asking for a job.”

“But she’s worked me to the bone since.” Josh slid a glance Tobias’ way that only solidified the screw up. Like the first night he was in her kitchen, Emmaline orchestrated a miracle, giving Tina Late Night and George a slice of Pig Lickin’ Cake, and then Lemon Ice Box pie to take with them. By the time she finished walking them through her business and the past few weeks working with Tobias as the owner of Caff-aholic, they had a batch of Hello Dollies and Cappuccino muffins. Josh had the sense to escape.

“If you don’t mind, I would like a recipe,” Tina said, rubbing Emmaline’s back in a maternal way.

“No secret. I’d be glad to.”

Once outside Tobias shivered from the late night chill. The quick glance Emmaline sent him would have made George proud. She kept the smile and the down-home-goodness in place as she locked the door behind them all.

“We’ll clean up the coffee shop,” George said without any inflection to his words. He placed a hand on the small of Tina’s back and they crossed the street.

The silence, once they were gone, could have eaten him alive. “Emmaline,” he started, reaching for her.

“Don’t.” Her hands whipped up, and she stepped back. “Touch me.”

“I didn’t know they were coming.”

She let out a short, mirthless laugh. “You think that’s why I’m mad? All I get, all day, every day is unexpected guests in my house. I could handle unexpected guests in my store in my sleep. But they’re your silent partners. Your backers. The face of your company. Those were the people I talked to in the emails for weeks.” The tremor in her voice cut through him. “And you never mentioned your relationship to them. Not your true one.”

The anger was there, but she didn’t raise her voice. The hole in his gut widened. He didn’t know how to ease it or what to say to make it better.

“How exactly should I have broached the subject? The reason why I have a business is because their daughter died while trying to protect me. There was a bloodstain on the floor I couldn’t get out in my other store. I had to redo them.” He rubbed his hands over his face and started again. “I’m here. Their daughter isn’t. I’m moving on, and she’ll never get that chance. It’s not that I was trying to hide them from you. My relationship with them…is complicated.”

“What?” The word held a world of hurt and her jaw tightened against it. “You think I don’t know that guilt? My parents died because of me. I was some stupid twenty-year old thinking I was invincible. Me, pure little Emma would never end up like one of those girls who missed their period. But I did and I ended up pregnant.”

His heart broke for her, because he hadn’t known the details of her grief. “Emmaline, that’s not what I think I—”

But she was already talking over him. “The guy I was with was gone in the wind. I was miscarrying in the hospital. I was losing so much blood. Sasha and Abigail were there, but like a kid who skinned a knee I was crying for my mommy.”

Her chin jutted out and she shook her head, but it didn’t stop the tears. “My parents died in a car accident on their way to get to me. As their only child I got everything. Sweet Tooth wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t lost them. I wouldn’t have lost them if I hadn’t been some stupid twenty-year old thinking she was invincible.”

She scrubbed at the tears. “So, you think I don’t understand grief? Even now you still think I’m just fluff. My surface level little mind couldn’t understand that someone died for you, and in their stead you got their family. You made a family, not by blood but through grief. Is it because I smile? I can find it in me to laugh? That I sometimes run down the street naked and that makes me less? If you loving me means I have to brood and walk around half dead, then you’re just a pigheaded bastard. And I don’t want you to love me any way.”

Tobias stepped forward to close the distance between them. “Don’t touch me.” She put up her hands again as if to ward him off.

He stuffed his hands in his pocket as the darkness that had been gone for weeks crept back in. “Will you listen to me?”

“So you can tell me that I’m mistaken? I don’t know who I am, much less who you are? No, thank you. Don’t you dare call me Mallow, because that’s not all I am.”

Like a soldier she rounded on her heel and marched away. He should have followed her, but the weight of her words kept him rooted to the spot. If she wasn’t right, he could have thought of a million things to say.

A part of him had still been convinced there was no way she could see into the abyss and survive it. She’d made her world so damn sunny he couldn’t fathom darkness marring it, ever. What she’d gone through took strength to survive. It took even greater strength to live through it and still be that light. Like a dog in trash, he’d rolled around in the muck of grief, and strutted around as if it was a badge of honor.

“You’re dumber than I thought,” George’s voice broke the quiet of the night.

Tobias closed his eyes and then opened them as he turned. “God, you’re nosy.”

The older man nodded. “Let’s go for a walk.”

To his surprise, Tobias’ legs could move. The two men stayed silent as they circled the block and went farther, making it to the college campus. George sighed under the oak trees and finally spoke.

“I don’t like you, but that’s a default setting for having sex with my daughter without marrying her first.”

“That’s fair,” Tobias said.

“I like you even less because you made her think you didn’t love her while she was alive.”