The Night Before Christian (12 page)

“Emory is a part of my life. A huge
part of my life. I hope you will accept this. I need you to accept this. But if
you can’t…” He shrugged, turned, and moved away, leaving her there to fill in
the blank.

Emory answered the door
on the second chime. When she saw Christian standing there, it wasn’t joy or
pain she felt. It was defeat. She just couldn’t take any more.

“Hey. Can I come in?”

After a long,
tense-filled moment, she stepped aside.

Once in, he turned to face
her. “I’m not marrying—”

Emory flashed a
cautionary palm. “I know. Jordyn told me.” She’d also mentioned that she’d
probably ruined Christian’s chances of ever fathering kids.

“I don’t care what
happened in the past, Em. I don’t care about the money. I just want to be with
you.”

“You do care,
Christian. If you didn’t, you would have been here before now. And you have the
right to care and to hear the truth. Your grandmother—” She stopped abruptly,
staring deep into his eyes. Pain still lingered in them. As much as she wanted
to reveal every cruel and hateful word his grandmother had spewed at her to
cause Emory to end their relationship, she couldn’t. She refused to hurt this
man any more than she already had.

“My grandmother, what,
Emory?”

Though Mrs. St. Claire
was as lethal as a king cobra, Emory knew she loved Christian in her own
twisted way. In good conscious, she couldn’t do anything to destroy their
relationship. The truth would most certainly do that. If he were okay with the
past being the past, so was she. “Loves you. Your grandmother loves you.”

Before Christian could
respond, the doorbell rang.

Emory rested a hand on
the side of her neck, still not believing she’d protected Amelia St. Claire.
The woman who’d made her life a living hell. “It’s Jordyn. We were going out to
dinner.”

“Make sure you pat her
down for any sharp objects. You may not know this, but your sister’s a little
crazy.”

Emory chuckled at the
expression of genuine concern on his face. The second she pulled the door open
and saw her visitor, she gasped. “Mrs. St. Claire?” Emory refused to go another
round with her. What was she doing there anyway? Hadn’t she done enough damage?

“Gran?” Christian
inched Emory away from the door as if he expected his grandmother to tackle
her. “What are you doing here?”

“May I come in?”

The woman’s tone was
soft and kind, but from experience, Emory knew this was simply the gentle breeze
before the hurricane. Christian glanced to Emory for approval. When she nodded,
he stepped aside.

The usually callous
woman didn’t regard Emory’s house with the same disdain she had the shop. In
fact, she didn’t take a single glance around. Emory was eager to learn why the matriarch
had gotten down off her high horse to stand in her living room.

Mrs. St. Claire eyed
Christian. “I owe you an apology. And you, as well,” she said, facing Emory.
“Especially you.”

Mrs. St. Claire
apologize? Emory waited for the cameraman and crew to jump out, because she was
sure she was being pranked.

“Admittedly, I’m not
the easiest person to like or love. And sometimes, I need to be put in my
place. Earlier, my grandson did just that.” She refocused on Christian. “He
called me out. He asked what’d happened to me.” She paused a moment. “After
your grandfather died…I abandoned all memories of love, including how it felt
to truly give and receive it. Instead, I welcomed grief, loneliness, despair.
It slowly turned me into a bitter woman.”

Amelia St. Claire
showing vulnerability?
Any minute now
, Emory thought. This had to be
some kind of prank.

“Today you reminded me
so much of your grandfather. A great, great man. He would have been proud of
you, but appalled and ashamed of me.”

When Mrs. St. Claire
smiled, it stunned Emory. She’d actually smiled, and her face hadn’t cracked.

“Your great-grandmother
did not care for me to be in your grandfather’s life. The daughter of a maid
and a field hand wasn’t good enough for her son. I was beneath him, she’d once
told me.”

Emory bit at the corner
of her lip, reliving the moment Mrs. St. Claire had said something similar to
her.

Mrs. St. Claire continued,
“But your grandfather and I were determined to be together. He sacrificed
everything to be with me. I saw that determination in you today. You were
willing to sacrifice for the woman you love.”

What had Christian
done? What kind of sacrifice had he attempted to make?

Mrs. St. Claire turned
her focus to Emory. “I’ve said some horrible things to you. Have done even
worse. I’ve lied and manipulated you both.”

Emory cradled herself
in her arms and willed her tears not to fall. In a thousand years, she’d have
never imagined this callous, never yielding woman exposing herself like this.
“It’s okay.”

Mrs. St. Claire shook
her head. “No, it’s not.”

To Christian, Mrs. St.
Claire said, “I’m the reason your relationship ended. I did to this young lady
exactly what your great-grandmother did to me. The only difference, she loved
you enough to keep it from you. I imagined she knew it would ruin our
relationship.”

Christian eyed Emory. “Tell
me this is not true.”

When she remained
silent, he turned away from them both.

“Jesus,” he said.

As much as Emory wanted
to run to him, wrap him in her arms, she held back.

“I know I’ve hurt you,
grandson. At the time, I believed I was doing what was best for you. When I forced
the money on her, I’d learned—”

Emory intervened. “Mrs.
St. Claire, you don’t have—”

“Yes, dear, I do.”

Christian slowly turned
to face them. “When you
forced
the money on her?”

“Yes. She never asked
for the money as I stated. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I’d learned of her
mother’s diagnoses of Alzheimer’s. I told her if she loved you, she wouldn’t
burden you with it. That you were doing great things and this would only be a
distraction. I told her how expensive it would be to care for her mother on a secretary’s
salary and that I could help. I bent her until she broke.”

“
Jesus
,”
Christian repeated.

“I could have said no,”
Emory said, surprising herself by coming to Mrs. St. Claire’s defense.

“No one can says no to
my grandmother. She doesn’t process the word.” Christian rested his hands on either
side of his neck, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “You could do that to
me, Gran? You could do that to your own grandson? You knew how much Emory meant
to me. You knew—” He choked with emotion. “You knew and you did it anyway.”
Opening his eyes, he said, “Who are you?”

Tears glistened in the
broken woman’s eyes. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to lose you. I
can’t lose you. You and your brother are all I have. I’d die if…”

Tears streamed freely
down Emory’s face. To watch this unfold was both heartbreaking and beautiful.
Beautiful because she was seeing a side of Mrs. St. Claire many would never get
to see, or believe existed.

“How can I forgive you
for this, Gran?”

“The same way you were
willing to forgive me,” Emory said. “When you came here tonight, you were
prepared to forgive and forget the past for me. You have to do the same for
your grandmother.” Emory turned to Mrs. St. Claire. “I forgive you. I never
wanted to come between the two of you. All I ever wanted to do was love him.”

Mrs. St. Claire nodded,
clearly struggling to keep her tears at bay. “Looks like we do have something
in common. Our love for my grandson. I’m sorry I made your life a living hell.
Hopefully, in time, you’ll discover I’m not the wicked witch I appear to be.”

Emory wasn’t sure
anyone on earth had enough time to debunk that theory.

After a moment, Christian
took his grandmother in his arms and held her tight. “I love you.” Kissing the
top of her head, he said, “We’ll talk later.”

Mrs. St. Claire smiled.
“I’d like that.” To Emory, she said, “Thank you.”

Emory smiled and
nodded. It felt good to take the highroad.

When Christian returned
from walking his grandmother to the waiting town car, he cradled Emory’s face
between his hands. “How could you ever believe I wouldn’t have loved and
supported you through your mother’s diagnoses? Why didn’t you tell me what my
grandmother had done? Why—?”

Emory placed her index
finger over his lips. “Kiss me. Kiss me like it’s the first time you’ve ever
touched my lips.”

“I spent two years
without you, Emory. Two years that—”

“Kiss me like you’re
making up for the twenty-four months we were apart.”

Christian chuckled—a
smooth, sexy sound that caressed the deepest part of her soul.

“Is this your way of
shutting me up?”

She rested her warm
hands on his cheeks. “Yes, it is.”

Christian wrapped his
large hand around her neck, but he didn’t apply pressure. Something about the
move warmed her entire body like a shot of fine whiskey. His hand coiled to the
back of her neck, then glided upward until his fingers tangled with her hair. Fisting
her locks, he guided her head back gently. His mouth dipped low and hovered
over hers. The heat escaping from his mouth aroused her like a gentle touch to
her most sensitive areas.

“Don’t ever walk away
from me again, woman,” he said.

“I won’t,” she said,
eager to taste him.

He searched her eyes. She
hoped he found whatever he was probing for soon, because the waiting to explore
him was driving her insane. A smirk played at the corner of his mouth. Yep,
he’d found it.

He captured her mouth
and kissed her as if the world was minutes from ending and he wanted his
delicious pain to be the last thing she felt. She wrapped her arms around his
waist to keep from losing her balance—revealing just how powerful and intense the
kiss was.

Christian’s hot breath
against her cheek grew heavier and heavier, mimicking her own rugged breathing.
If by chance the world had ended, she would have gone a very satisfied woman.

In theory, this could
actually be labeled the twenty-four-month kiss because that’s how long it
appeared it would last. The deep satisfying exchange made her feel as if she
were floating. Then it hit her, she was floating. Into Christian’s arms. When
he’d lifted her off the floor, her legs wrapped instinctively around his waist.

Christian lowered to
the carpet, Emory holding tight. Finally abandoning her mouth, he lifted his
head and stared down at her. She witnessed so much strength, so much truth, so
much love in his eyes it took her breath away.

“My life restarted the
second I stepped into your shop,” he said in a whisper. “If anyone would have
ever told me I could love another human being the way I love you, I would have
called them a liar.”

A tear ran out the
corner of her eye, and Christian kissed it away. His tenderness caressed her
heart.

“Close your eyes,” he
said.

When she did, he kissed
both lids. The tender act sent a jolt of warmth through her entire body.

“What do you see?”

She laughed. “Darkness.”

“Look beyond the
darkness.”

Searching, she smiled.
“I see the first time we met. I see the first time you said ‘I love you’. I see
the first time we made love.”

He chuckled. “
Really
?”

“No. All I see is
darkness, Christian.”

“That darkness is our
clean slate. No heartbreak. No loneliness. No me without you. Just our present
and our future with no remnants of the past.”

A wide smile curled her
lips. “I see it now.”

“It’s beautiful, right?”

Emory opened her eyes.
“Gorgeous.”

“A clean slate, Em.
Nothing holding us down. Agreed?”

Emory frowned. She
couldn’t agree. Not until… “I need to share something with you.”

Before he could
question her, she’d wiggled from underneath him, got to her feet, and held out
her hand for him to take.

A look of confusion
shadowed his features. “What’s going on?”

She could show him
better than she could tell him. Leading him into her bedroom, she directed him
onto the bed. “I’ll be right back.” She entered the closet and exited a moment
later dragging a coconut-colored chest. Placing it at his feet, she said, “Open
it.”

Christian arched a brow.
“What’s in it?”

“The last piece of the
past,” she said.

With caution, he unlatched
and lifted the lid. “Wh…?”

“All fifty thousand. I
could never bring myself to spend a single dime of it.

For a moment, Christian
appeared to be at a loss for word. Finally, he eyed her. “You’ve been
struggling, Emory. This money could have really helped you. Why didn’t you use
any of it?”

“Because, in my heart,
it would have been like betraying you, betraying our love.”

Christian took another
glance at the stacks of money, then closed the chest. Pushing to his feet, he
stood directly in front of her. “Do you know how amazing you are? How truly
amazing you are, Emory Chambers?”

Emory shrugged. “Yeah,
I do.”

They shared a laugh.

Christian wrapped her
in his arms and she snuggled against his chest. “Santa gave me exactly what I
wanted for Christmas,” she said.

“Oh, yeah? And what was
that?”

She tilted her head to
eye him. “You.”

Christian pecked her
lips gently. “Looks like we both got what we wanted.”

Emory fiddled with the
scarf around his neck. “Remember when I said I’d pay you back every dime you spent
on my car.”

His eyes narrowed in
questioning. “Yeah.”

“Well, would you like
that in big or small bills?”

They shared another
laugh.

“Didn’t we establish I
wouldn’t accept a dime you offered?”

“You have to. You’ve
done so much for me. My car. Paying off my shop, mother’s mortgage. I owe you
so much, Christian. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. You are the amazing
one. And I’m eternally grateful to you and for you.”