I Still Do (4 page)

E
mily decided she had to get away. She needed some peace, some time, some distance to process what she'd just learned.

He's been waiting all this time to finally become a bachelor.

She backed away without any of those gathered around the TV noticing, and only turned as she heard clattering from the kitchen. With a quick movement, she ducked around the corner to find Jamie putting away leftovers.

“I wanted to say thank you,” Emily said, sketching a wave. “I should probably be heading home.”

“We're going to have dancing. And I haven't set out dessert yet,” Jamie protested. “Your cake looks delicious.”

“I hope you enjoy it. But I…I have an early day at the library tomorrow.”

The other woman made a face. “We scared you away.”

“No!” Will's family hadn't scared her. “You're all very nice.”

“We're loud.”

“But in a nice way.” Emily smiled. “Really. But I do have work tomorrow.”

A child's cry warbled into the room, and Jamie cast a glance at the baby monitor on the counter. “Uh-oh. Polly wasn't quite ready to go down.”

“You check on her and I'll let myself out,” Emily said. “Thanks again.”

After another hug, Jamie disappeared and Emily had her chance to make a getaway. When she saw that Will was still absorbed in the video, she decided to make it a silent, unannounced retreat by letting herself out through the side gate in the backyard.

The dancing had already started on the large deck. Dusk was descending, and the railing was strung with lights in the shape of hula dancers. As she passed one of the other women—Chelsea? Ann?—the small dancing partner that was propped on her hip held out his chubby arms to Emily.

“You now,” little Todd said.

She halted. “What?”

He repeated the words, his body angling toward Emily. “You now.”

Her eyes met those of his spurned partner. The other woman grinned. “He likes to spread his love around. What can I say? That's a guy for you, isn't it?”

And what could Emily do but take hold of the toddler? As she swayed to the slow beat of a country song, the boy's smile could have melted steel. She shook her head. “Did your Uncle Will teach you your way with women?”

But before he could answer, his Uncle Will was there, lifting his nephew away from her to set him on his feet. “Your mom's looking for you.”

The boy scowled. “Unc—”

Will held up a hand, halting further protest. “Cake.”

Short legs churned in their hurry to get to the kitchen.

Emily had to laugh. “You're good at that.”

“Practice.”

She nodded. “Right.” And that reminded her she'd been on her way out because the bachelor before her had earned his freedom. She took a step back.

“You wouldn't happen to be running away from me again, would you?”

“Of course not,” she lied, even as she edged back some more.

“You sure about that?” He pulled her into his arms as the song coming through the speakers slid into Bonnie Raitt's “I Can't Make You Love Me.” Will gathered Emily nearer as Raitt's bluesy voice petitioned a man to just hold her close.

Emily's eyes shut as Will's big hands led her into moving with the beat of the slow and sultry song. It was Las Vegas all over again, the smell of his skin, the beat of his heart against hers, the notion that it was Will, her Will, who was holding her that pushed away all other concerns.

His hand moved up to tangle in her hair, and she nestled closer, tucking her cheek in the cup created where his shoulder met his chest. He felt so solid. So strong. Like he could hold up the weight of the world.

The weight of a family. He'd been doing that for the past thirteen years.

He's been waiting all this time to finally become a bachelor.

And yet she was hanging on to him as if he belonged to her. Forcing herself to move back a few inches, she looked up at him. “Will, you never told me about your parents. I'm so sorry.”

His movement hitched a moment, and then he returned to that soothing, back-and-forth rock. “It took me a long time to believe what happened.”

“What
did
happen?”

He gave a shrug. “Car accident. I'd just turned eighteen. Betsy was eight. Everyone else was in between.”

“And they became your responsibility.”

That same cool shrug. “Yeah. I'd been planning on college, but after…after the accident, my dad had a friend who could get me on as a firefighter once I made it through the academy after finishing high school. Which I did, a semester early. The hours were long, but it was a way to keep us together. So I went for it, and everyone pitched in.”

With Will bearing the brunt of the duties and the worry, she guessed. “You should have written me. Called.”

He was already shaking his head. “What were you going to do, Em? You were hundreds of miles away and all of what…seventeen?”

“But—”

“I handled it, Emily. I handled it just fine on my own.”

She swallowed her next words, though it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she would have liked to have known, if only to have winged a few good thoughts his way. But he, apparently, hadn't wanted anything from her then.

He was right, she supposed. She'd been a teenager, and they'd been…What had they really been to each other then? Teenage crush? Summer fling?

Still, her heart ached a little that he hadn't turned to her all those years ago. Ignoring the hurt, she pasted on a smile. “Well, in any case, it looks like you did a great job. They're nice people, Will, your brothers and sisters. Everyone here.”

“Including my competition, right?”

“Your competition?” She hadn't noticed another man that night besides Will. “What are you talking about?
Who
are you talking about?”

“About two feet tall? Towhead? You've already forgotten the guy in whose arms I caught you not ten minutes ago?”

She laughed. “Oh, yeah. He's nice people, too. Though short. I like them a little taller and a little older than that.”

“Really?” He drew out the word as he drew her close again. “Why don't you tell me exactly how you like them.”

The fun, flirtatious tone was exactly how he'd played her last week. In Las Vegas, his warm, free and easy manner had completely disarmed her, evaporating her normal caution and innate common sense. It had been so darn attractive and so darn seductive that she'd never imagined there were deeper, colder currents running beneath all that surface charm and smoldering sexuality.

“You should have told me in Las Vegas, Will,” she murmured.

“What?”

“You should have told me about your parents, your family, what you've gone through.”

His feet stopped moving. Dusk had turned to night, and he'd danced them into the shadows of the eaves. “Why the hell would I tell you any of that?”

“I don't know,” she answered, moving back so her shoulder blades bumped the wall of the house. “It's a pretty big thing about a person.”

“So you think I should go around spilling my guts to every pretty lady I meet?” There was a trace of irritation in his voice. “You think that I need their pity to get their interest?”

“No.” Every pretty lady? How about just the ones he married? “That's not what I said. But when you want to get to know a woman, build a relationship—”

“I'm not interested in ‘getting to know' women. I don't want ‘relationships.' Not in the way that you mean. Do you realize that when other guys my age were hitting on chicks and heading out to parties that I was at home
giving
parties, and showing little kids how to hit piñatas?” His voice was low, rough. Obviously she'd poked a sore spot.

“Okay, but there'll come a time—”

“Now's the time, Emily.
My
time. I don't need a relationship that will tie me up or tie me down. God, I've been there, done that, and washed all the freakin' T-shirts. And the sheets, and the towels and three-thousand pairs of socks. Do you know how many socks a family of six goes through in a week?”

She might have laughed, if he didn't sound so serious. “Okay, okay. I understand.”

He made a disgusted sound and turned away. “You understand nothing.” Then he spun back, and yanked her close again. “Or if you do, explain it to me. Because I don't understand
this.
”

His mouth slammed into hers.

Her heart jumped, her lips parted, and as his tongue slid into her mouth she rose to her tiptoes to get even closer to him. One of her arms wrapped his neck, one of his scooped around her hips and pulled her against his pelvis.

His body was hot, the part of him pressing against her stomach was hard and insistent and she pushed herself harder against it, wanting friction. Closeness. Wanting Will.

His hand slid up her side and his mouth angled for a tighter fit just as his fingers closed over her breast. The pleasure of it made her gasp, and then that little bit of fresh oxygen reached her brain and made her wake up to where they were.

What they were doing.

Why they shouldn't be doing it. He'd been waiting thirteen years to be a bachelor, to have
his
time, to be heading out to parties and picking up women other than the one who was—just for the moment—his wife.

Making a sound of distress, she broke the kiss. His arms dropped instantly, but Emily ran anyway.

Too late, she worried. She'd run from him too late.

 

The small house was a beige stucco, cottage-styled, with the door painted a mossy green. Will stared into the grated, hand-sized, eye-level window cut into the wood that served as a peephole. No bright blue eyes stared back, despite the fact that he'd rung the bell, knocked, then rang the bell a second time.

He drummed his fingers on his thigh with frustration. After Jamie and Ty's party, he'd kicked himself for forgetting to get her cell phone number. That had him heading back to the library only to discover that Emily had deserted her post. According to her boss, she'd called in sick. It had taken two days and all the charm at his disposal—not to mention showing up in his firefighter's uniform—for the older lady to give in and give him Emily's address so he could “check up on her.”

But she was either ill enough to suffer hearing loss, or she was avoiding him.

Was it the latter? Was there a reason she wouldn't be as eager as he to sever that impulsive knot they'd tied in Las Vegas? He hoped to hell that wasn't the case, because it was his plan to task her with finding out what steps were necessary for them to get a divorce or an annulment or whatever. She was the reference librarian, after all.

And he was a bachelor on a mission, he reminded himself as he once again banged his fist against the door. A bachelor on a mission to live like a single man should. His rash action in Las Vegas had already made him break his vow to keep clear of his family. Now he needed his connection with Emily separated before it caused other unintended consequences.

When his next knock came and went unanswered, he felt an uneasy chill creep down his spine. This was the right address. That was her car in the driveway, he'd bet on it, because the sticker on the back bumper was a plain giveaway:
Reading Is Sexy.

Grateful he was still in his Paxton FD uniform, he stepped over the low fence that corralled her side yard and made his way around to the stamp-sized back garden. The rear door to the house was open, only the screen across the opening, and when he peered inside what looked to be a narrow den, he saw a figure curled on a loveseat.

“Em?” he called. “Emily?”

The figure twitched, then stilled. He supposed it was Emily, it was Emily-colored hair that was hanging over the place where the body should have a face, so he pulled open the screen and stepped inside.

“Em,” he said again. Crouching down beside the loveseat, he palmed the hair away to expose her features. Emily's pale features. So pale, that her brown lashes were a startling contrast to her white cheeks. “Emily.”

Her eyes slowly opened. They were a dull version of their usual blue. “Oh. This isn't heaven.”

“What? I look like the devil?”

“No.” She drifted off again, her words a mumble. “But I was hoping to move on to a better place.”

He settled onto the rag rug covering the hardwood, and stroked her hair to rouse her again. “You really are sick, huh?”

Her eyes stayed closed. “Do firefighters like Dalmatians and posing half-naked for charity calendars?”

“
What?
”