Loving the Best Man (Friends & Lovers Book 2) (18 page)

“Sounds good.” He began loosening his tie. He was still in his work clothes. “Is there enough time for me to take a shower before dinner?”

“Yeah,” She said, glancing over her shoulder at him. “It’s almost done but I can keep it on low and it will be just fine.”

He smiled, feeling too distracted by the domesticity of her in his kitchen making dinner for them both, along with all the thoughts he had about what definitely had to be discussed.

He soon found himself standing under the shower spray, not even moving, focused on what strategy he’d use so that he wouldn’t hurt her feelings or get her guard up. But she seemed to always have her guard up anyway so he was kidding himself. His best bet was to just be honest and patient with her.

It was ironic that he was now in the shoes of several women that he’d been with. Wanting to get close to someone that has no intention of getting close to you. He supposed that’s what he got for being so wild.

After he dressed in a plain black T-shirt and pajama bottoms he walked down the hall to the living room. Emerald was curled up on the couch, staring down at her phone.

“Your mother friended me,” She said, grinning up at him.

“What? Since when is my mother interested in using social media?”

“I guess she realized it’s a cool way to keep in touch with some people.”

“Or an easy way to keep tabs on people without even having to leave home.” Once his mother and Emerald had cleared up their misunderstanding, they’d been like old friends laughing at jokes and talking about him as if he were a silly teenager.

“Maybe,” Emerald said, putting the phone down. She stood up. “Let’s eat. I’m so hungry.”

They went to the kitchen together and quickly served their food, taking it back to the living room. It had become their routine to eat on the couch and it now felt like their own cozy tradition.

“Delicious,” He complimented when he tasted the stew. He’d only eaten Emerald’s cooking a few times over the years but it had been very good each time. Although she was obviously good in the kitchen he knew that she rarely cooked, even just for herself.

“Thanks,” She said.  “I thought we both needed a break from takeout.”

He nodded and went on eating. They finished their meal in a comfortable silence as a movie played on the television. When they finished eating, he took their plates to the kitchen and poured them both a glass of wine.

She accepted her glass with a smile and leaned back against the plump cushions. A bittersweet pang pierced his heart and he thought that it would be wonderful to see her like that every day. He was determined to somehow convince her. One step at a time.

“Emerald, we need to talk.” He put his glass down without sipping any and turned on the couch so that he was facing her. Regretfully, he saw that she instantly tensed up, the smile wiped clean from her face.

“What’s wrong?” She demanded as she sat her own wineglass on the table.

“Nothing’s wrong.” He leaned forward. “I spoke to the PI today. He had some news about the investigation.”

“Let me guess,” She said sarcastically, “Evan Marley skipped town?”

“No. His alibi is a woman named Larissa…do you know her?”

“Yeah, the bitch worked with me. She was part-time until I left. Then she replaced me.” She shook her head angrily. “And she’s claiming to be his alibi? Yeah right.”

“The cops are still investigating. But yeah, she’s his alibi. They live together.”

“What!”

“And she says that they go to work together, stay at work together and then go home together. She claims they’re never apart.”

“No. I don’t believe that.” She closed her eyes and used her finger tips to massage them.

“Wilson said that the cops are skeptical but they have to take her at her word for now. They’re still investigating.”

“There were no fingerprints on any of those notes,” Emerald complained. “I couldn’t believe it when the detectives told me. I can’t believe he’s that smart. I’ve always thought he was stupid as hell.”

“I guess he’s smarter than anybody thought. There’s no evidence so far and he’s got an alibi.”

“She’s young and dumb. She’ll learn her lesson.” Emerald dropped her hands onto her lap, opened her eyes, and nodded grimly. “It’s okay. She can be his alibi. But they know the police are onto them now. Seriously onto them. Maybe that’s enough to put an end to this mess.”

He seriously doubted it but he nodded. It would be good if the police involvement scared Marley into backing down. But he wasn’t going to hold his breath.

“Wilson said he’s been interviewing your neighbors but no one saw anything suspicious.”

“That’s no surprise.” In the hood, even when people saw things they sometimes pretended that they hadn’t.

“There’s something you need to know,” Linc said slowly, watching her closely.

She didn’t say anything. Although he could clearly see the worry in her eyes, her face was completely expressionless. He was starting to get to know all of her mannerisms and defense mechanisms.

“I hired a security guard to protect you.”

“No, Lincoln. That’s not necessary.”

“It is. Marley’s escalating.”

“But that was before the cops went to speak to him,” She explained slowly as if talking to child. “Now that he knows the cops are looking into everything he’s doing, I think he’ll stop.”

“There’s no guarantee that he’ll stop, Em.”

“I can’t even imagine how much this guy is going to cost. I don’t want you paying for that!”

“Let me worry about the cost,” He said sternly. There was no way he was going to call off the security guard, not until Marley was behind bars.  “Paying him is a small price to pay to know that you’re safe.”

He expected another protest but she surprised him by giving him a small smile.

“Thank you,” She whispered. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled back and a small weight was lifted from him.

She picked up her glass and drained it before quickly standing.

“I need a refill. Be right back.”

He watched her walk out of the room and allowed himself to relax on the couch. That had gone better than expected. Now that that was over his nerves began to set in. They still had so much to talk about and he didn’t have a clue about how she’d react to what he had to say. No matter. It was time to get it all out and deal with the consequences, whatever they may be.

She’d gone to the kitchen to pour herself another glass of wine but she decided to bring the entire bottle back to the living room with her. He’d leaned back, nearly reclining, and she felt like jumping on top of him. Not to seduce him. But just to snuggle against him. And that felt so odd and so new and so alarming that she couldn’t even look him in the eye as she sat down on the couch again.

“Can I ask you a question?” He asked, sitting up so that they could face each other again.

He looked so intense that it made her feel a little nervous.

“Sure,” She said hesitantly, using two hands to pour wine into her glass.

“Can you tell me a little about your childhood?”

She didn’t know what she’d expected him to ask but it certainly hadn’t been that. She couldn’t hide her surprise.

“Why?” She asked. Her childhood and her past were her least favorite subjects and only Robyn knew the horrible details. There were even certain things that Robyn didn’t know.

“I want to know about you.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Is that so wrong?”

“No…” She stared at him suspiciously. He’d been distracted ever since he’d come in from the bar and after he’d confessed about the guard he’d hired, she’d assumed that’s what had had him so preoccupied. But now she wondered what else was going on with him.

“I’ll tell you something about me that you don’t know, and you can tell me something about you. How’s that?” He was trying to look and sound casual but she wasn’t fooled. His foot was tapping the floor in an uneasy cadence and he would only make eye contact for a second at a time.

“Okay,” She hesitantly agreed.

“My mother’s very overprotective of Ally and me because she had two miscarriages before we were born.”

“Oh,” She couldn’t help but feel sympathetic when she thought about his mother joyously expecting a baby and then unexpectedly having to grieve over the loss of the child. And Audrey had been through it twice. “That’s so sad for your parents.”

“They’d given up getting pregnant after that. Mom said she couldn’t take anymore loss.”

“And then she got pregnant with twins. Wow.” She couldn’t help but smile.

“She was on bedrest the entire time she was pregnant with us. And of course we were so spoiled.”

“I bet,” She said, thinking of the few pictures she’d seen of Lincoln as a child. He’d always been gorgeous, from infancy to toddlerhood to high school. From the pictures, it was clear that he’d gotten to enjoy the best of everything.

“Tell me about your mom,” He prompted after a moment. “I know she passed away when you were a baby.”

A part of her felt like lashing out. She wanted to tell him to mind his business. She didn’t want to discuss her mother. There was a reason she and her father never mentioned the woman.

But that seemed so wrong. If he was her friend before anything else, she shouldn’t feel like he was crossing a line just trying to find out about her and her family. Once they decided it was no longer a good idea to be lovers, she’d like if they could go back to being friends.

It was time to confide in him, at least a little. Ignoring the pinch of alarm that the thought of breaking up with Lincoln brought to her, she sipped her wine and tried to be as casual as possible.

“I don’t know much about her,” She said, shrugging as if it didn’t matter. But of course it had always mattered too much. “All I have are a couple of pictures my father gave me. He got rid of all of her stuff when I was too small to know what was going on.”

She hadn’t understood why there were no traces of her mother anywhere to be found, no matter where they lived. Shawn had finally confessed, when she was eleven or twelve, that he’d thrown all of her mother’s belongings into the trash when Emerald was still a baby.

“She liked to party,” Emerald said. “She was into drugs. All I know is that she died of a drug overdose.”

She heard a harsh breath escape him but she didn’t look at him. She stared down into her wine glass, trying to keep a lid on her emotions. Supposedly people couldn’t miss something they’d never had but she’d missed having a mother and in so many ways, she still did.

“My father used drugs too,” Emerald said, hoping that Lincoln wouldn’t judge her father too severely but suddenly wanting to get the whole story out now that she’d started. “He said that when my mother got pregnant with me, they both promised that they’d stop using. But they didn’t. He didn’t even stop using until about ten years ago.”

Lincoln suddenly pulled her onto his lap and kissed her cheek.

“I had no idea,” He said, his voice very low.

“I didn’t want anyone to know. When I found out, I was depressed for a long time.”

“Of course you were.”

“I didn’t think that my mother was a saint,” She said, barely hearing him, caught up in her memories. “But I’d spun this stupid little fantasy in my head of her dying of some disease or something, not wanting to leave me but having no choice. And asking God to protect me. In reality she was barely home long enough to feed me and was already pregnant by somebody else when she died in some crack house.”

“Fuck,” He breathed and she felt him stroke a hand down her back.

“Her family blamed my father for getting her hooked on drugs but he swears that it was the other way around. I’ll never know. Anyway, he said I met a few of them when I was born but once my mother died, they wanted nothing to do with me.”

If it hadn’t been for Robyn, Emerald knew that she’d probably be dead. She might have fallen victim to the streets that had taken her mother. She might have turned to drugs herself.

“We moved around New Jersey and New York a lot and we always lived in the worst parts. It was all we could afford. My father could never keep a job for very long. That’s why he’s so proud of himself now, with his promotion and all. But back then, he didn’t last three months at a job.”

“How did you get by when he didn’t work?”

“Sometimes we stayed with friends of his or sometimes he’d have a girlfriend who gave him money. We went on and off welfare.” She swallowed several times, feeling a lump forming in her throat. “There were a couple of times that he only had money to pay the rent and it was enough just to have a roof over our heads even though we didn’t have food or electricity.”

If she hadn’t been so caught up remembering the nights she’d been unable to sleep because it was as cold inside as outside, or because her stomach was so painfully empty, she might have felt Lincoln tense beneath her.

“I didn’t have many clothes to wear. I got bullied so bad. I had no choice but to learn how to fight. And that sure shut them up.” She nodded to herself. “I almost got left back because I’d missed so many days due to school suspensions. But there was always some principal or teacher who felt sorry for me and passed me along anyway.”