Yours to Keep (13 page)

“Just another minute,” he murmured into her hair.

“Mmm.” She didn’t have words yet, but if she did she’d tell him she didn’t want him to move. She was content just the way they were.

He got up after a minute to go into the bathroom and on his way back, he grabbed her pillow off the couch and tossed it onto the bed. “Get over. You’re on my side of the bed.”

“It’s my bed,” she muttered, already half-asleep. “You don’t have a side.”

“Get over.”

She got over, but only because she didn’t want to ruin the glow with bickering. And once he’d gotten in on
his
side of her bed and pulled her close again, she didn’t really care.

“That was amazing,” he whispered.

“Magic.”

She yelped when he slapped her ass, but he was chuckling when he wrapped his arm around her and nuzzled his face in her hair. She was still smiling as she fell asleep.

Sean woke to the sound of a phone going off. For a few seconds he was confused because it was Sunday, so Emma’s alarm shouldn’t go off. Then he realized his cell phone was ringing on the nightstand.

At the same time he also realized Emma had rolled to face him during the night and the blankets had slipped down and damn, she had nice breasts. But she was stirring, probably because his phone was ringing, so he stopped staring and answered it.

“What?”

“I’d say I hope I didn’t wake you, but I’m guessing I did.” It was Mitch and he didn’t sound too sorry about it.

“It’s seven o’clock on a Sunday, asshole. Of course you woke me up.”

And he’d also woken Emma up and Sean sighed in disappointment when she slid out of bed, grabbed her clothes and went into the bathroom. Not the way he’d envisioned their waking up when he’d been drifting off to sleep last night.

“I need a favor,” Mitch said.

“Call Triple-A.”

“You’re my brother.”

Sean swung his feet to the floor and scrubbed at his face. “What’s up?”

“My rental car has a dead battery and they can’t do anything about it until midafternoon. And April doesn’t have a car.”

“April. Oh wait…is that the blonde’s name?”

“Yeah. I need you to come get me and bring me to the airport.”

“Call a cab.”

“I tried. This ain’t Boston, dude. The soonest I can get a taxi here that’ll take me to Manchester is ten minutes after I have to
be
in Manchester. I just need a ride. The rental company’s going to come get their shitbox.”

“Fine. How do I get to April’s house?”

By the time he’d scrawled directions on a sticky note and promised his brother he was as good as on his way, Emma was on her way out of the bedroom, leaving flower-scented shower steam in her wake. He thought about calling her back but he didn’t have a clue what he’d say, so he went into the bathroom to see if she’d left him any hot water.

Before he went downstairs, he pulled out his Sharpie and stuck a fresh sticky note on the mirror.
Btw, THAT was my favorite sexual position.
He almost added a happy face to it, but decided just in time that would be lame. It was a slippery slope that led nowhere but to dotting his
i
’s with hearts.

When he went into the kitchen and found a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon at his seat, he looked at the clock and decided Mitch could cool his heels for a few more minutes.

Emma was an unusual flurry of activity, all of it seeming to require she not look at him. She buttered toast and put the juice away and spent a few minutes wiping up an invisible coffee spill, from what he could tell. Maybe it was the fact her grandmother was in the room, but she seemed a little embarrassed by the fact they’d had sex last night.

Great sex. Sex he wasn’t embarrassed about at all and hoped to do again as soon as bedtime rolled around. Only an extended version, this time, like a director’s cut. He could add back in all the parts of his performance he’d had to cut to fit the time slot his long-neglected sex drive had given him.

For now, he had to deal with Mitch. After shoveling down his breakfast in record time, he rinsed his plate and kissed Cat’s cheek. “I hate to eat and run, but my brother needs a ride to the airport.”

When he went to kiss Emma goodbye, as he always did because that’s what a fiancé would do, he half expected her to shy away. Instead, when his mouth met hers, she flicked her tongue over his bottom lip and gave him a look that promised they’d be putting his imagination to good use later.

He found April’s house with no problem and sat in his truck while Mitch kissed her goodbye in the doorway. And then kissed her goodbye again, and so thoroughly Sean finally tapped on the horn to break up the party.

The blonde was smiling and waving as they pulled out of sight, and Sean shook his head. Not only would she never see Mitch Kowalski again, but she knew she wouldn’t. His oldest brother had an amazing ability to love and leave women without them bearing him any ill will at all.

It didn’t take long for Mitch’s good mood to get on his nerves. “If you keep whistling, you’re going to walk.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you hooked up with a woman who’s only pretending to like you.”

Sean’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. It was tempting to tell Mitch Emma hadn’t been pretending last night, but he kept his mouth shut until the urge passed.

For one, there was money on the line. If he confided in Mitch, he’d tell Ryan and Josh before he even got on the plane so they could determine who’d won the pool. But that wasn’t a big deal. There were always betting pools and sometimes he won and sometimes he lost.

What was a big deal was the possibility—no, probability—that Mitch would also tell one of their cousins, who would tell the other cousins, who would then tell their spouses and…it was only a matter of time before the news reached Aunt Mary. And if Aunt Mary got it in her head he and Emma were becoming a
real
couple, she’d jump on him in a second, pushing him into settling down.

Better to keep his mouth shut because, no matter how much Emma had rocked his world last night, settling down was the last thing on his mind.

As soon as Emma and Sean left in separate trucks—Emma having been called not five minutes after Sean left by an upset customer whose new garden had been ravaged by some nocturnal creature—Cat did a victory dance in the kitchen. It couldn’t have been more obvious they’d had sex if they’d had T-shirts made to mark the occasion.

They’d barely said two words to each other and they’d avoided eye contact at all costs, but they weren’t fighting. Anger wasn’t the vibe filling the kitchen with tension. No, it was morning-after awkwardness and she couldn’t be happier about it.

By the time she was done puttering around the kitchen, it was a decent enough hour to call Mary. She brewed herself some tea and took it into the living room to get comfortable.

“You were right about Mitch making a difference,” she said after they’d exchanged hellos.

“Sean didn’t like him touching her. I swear, that kiss almost set the grass under their feet on fire.”

“Guess who
didn’t
sleep on the couch last night?”

“And the plot thickens,” Mary said, and they laughed.

“Speaking of thickening plots, I told Emma I want to give her the house as a wedding gift and I thought she was going to throw up in my lap.”

“That’s interesting.”

Cat took a sip of her tea. “I think, besides worrying about me, she was also afraid I’d sell the house.”

“So making up a relationship with Sean put your mind at ease, but also made you stop telling her the house was too much for a woman alone.”

“Exactly.”

“What did she say?”

“She kept insisting she wanted to buy it from me, not have it given to her. I know my granddaughter. I don’t think she’ll accept the house as a gift under false pretenses.”

“I’d like to think you’re right. What are you going to do?”

Cat sighed. “I’m going to leave it alone for now. If I push, she might decide to tell me the truth. Since they’ve only just…discovered each other, so to speak, I’d rather leave things as they are for a bit longer.”

“Good point.” Mary dropped her voice a little. “Speaking of discovering each other, what’s going on between you and Russell Walker?”

“We’re friends,” she said, but her friend only laughed. “Okay, friends might not be a strong enough word.”

“What
would
be a strong enough word?”

“I don’t know. It’s so silly. When I’m away from him I tell myself I’m too old to be flirting with a man. But when I’m with him, I don’t feel old at all.”

“He’s smitten with you. Anybody can see that.”

“Smitten.” Cat chuckled. “I like that word. But I’m going home in less than two weeks and his whole life is here.”

“You said his store was going out of business.”

“Yes, but he’s still a part of the community and his daughter’s here.”

“Like your granddaughter’s here?” She heard Mary’s
tsk
clearly across the line. “That’s not an obstacle.”

“Maybe not, but I’m also set in my ways. He’s charming and I enjoy his company, but I’m not sure I want to spend my remaining years unballing another man’s socks. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to do that.”

“I unball Leo’s socks. Leo rubs my feet. It works for me.”

Cat sipped more of her tea, then sighed, wondering if Russell would rub her feet. “It’s ridiculous.”

“I bet that’s what Sean and Emma said, too.”

And the conversation circled back to the kids, which was just fine with Cat. She hadn’t yet sorted out how she felt about Russell, so she didn’t want to talk about it.

Maybe it was infatuation. They’d both been alone a long time. But that didn’t mean either of them wanted to pack up and start a new life together. That was a big commitment and she wasn’t sure she had the energy or the desire for that at this point.

It was much easier to meddle in Sean’s and Emma’s lives than dwell on her own.

Once he’d dumped his brother off at the airport, Sean had nothing to do but kill time until it was time to get Emma back in his bed. Or
her
bed, actually. He tried out the sound of
their
bed, but his mind shied away from it. Made them sound too much like a real couple.

As long as Emma was naked in it, he didn’t really care whose bed it was. He’d been quick on the trigger last night and, while he didn’t have anything to prove, he intended to take his time with her tonight. If tonight ever came. The only time he’d ever seen clocks move so slowly was during his flight back to the States.

Emma’s truck wasn’t in the driveway when he pulled in and, at first, he thought the house was empty. But then he heard laughter and looked out the window to find Cat in the backyard swing, the cordless house phone pressed to her ear. Since he wasn’t about to interrupt her conversation to ask her where Emma had taken off to, he grabbed his book and stretched out on the couch to read.

He must have dozed off because the next thing he knew, the sun had shifted and he could hear Emma’s voice coming from the direction of the kitchen. He stretched and sat up to set his book on the coffee table. That wasn’t a bad way to kill some time. After a detour upstairs to take a leak and kill the nap breath, he went looking for the women. They were on the deck, but they had the windows and the back door open to let in the light breeze, so he could hear them clearly as he opened the fridge to grab a beer.

“So Lisa as your matron of honor and Stephanie as bridesmaid,” Cat was saying. “Do you know who Sean wants as best man?”

“No. We haven’t gotten that far yet.” He didn’t hear any tension in Emma’s voice, but he guessed she was feeling it. Planning a wedding that wasn’t going to happen was weird, to say the least.

“Maybe he could ask Mike’s oldest son—Joey, right?—to be a groomsman so he can escort Stephanie.”

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “I don’t think it’s very fair to ask one of the boys and not the others.”

“True. Maybe they could be ushers and then join their parents once everybody’s seated.”

Sean had just decided to beat a fast retreat back to the living room when he heard a chair scrape back. “We can talk about that later, Gram. Right now I should go wake Sean so he’s not still groggy when we ask him to fire up the grill.”

He didn’t have time to escape, so he leaned against the counter and twisted the top of his beer. Emma paused when she saw him, and then grabbed his hand and dragged him down the hall to the living room.

“Where did you disappear to?” he asked.

“What? Oh, a client had an emergency. But—”

“There are gardening emergencies?”

She blew out an exasperated breath. “Yes. When you’re rich, everything’s an emergency. But did you hear what Gram was saying?”

“Yeah. How the hell are guys supposed to pick a best man, anyway? I’ve got three brothers and I like them all. And what about Mikey? Or Kevin or Joe? It seems easier to pick a stranger off the street so you don’t have to play favorites. I guess maybe I’d ask Mitch. He’s the oldest, so most of what the rest of us know about catching a woman we learned from him.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, you haven’t actually caught a woman yet. And it doesn’t really matter who you choose, because there
is
no wedding.”

She was wound up like an eight-day clock, so he didn’t dare laugh at her. Her cheeks were bright and she kept spinning her ring around and around on her finger. Since there was nothing he could say to make her feel better about Cat wanting to plan their fake wedding, he slid the hand not holding his beer around her waist and hauled her close.

“You worry too much,” he told her.

“And you—”

He kissed her to shut her up. And because all he’d been able to think about since the last time he’d had his hands on her was getting his hands on her again. And, most of all, because he liked kissing her. A lot. Maybe too much, if he thought about it.

So he didn’t think about it. Instead, he lost himself in the taste of her mouth and the softness of her lips and the way her hands slid over his lower back, holding him close.

“Oh,” Cat said from behind him. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No,” Emma said. “We were just…talking.”

“I can see that.”

Since it was going to be at least a couple of minutes before he was fit to turn around and face anybody, never mind her grandmother, Sean sidestepped around Emma and grabbed the television remote. “I’m going to see if I can catch tomorrow’s weather and then I’ll start the grill.”

Fortunately, they made it through the evening without any more talk of bridesmaids and ushers thanks to Emma and him steering the conversation toward Florida and television and anything else they could think of that didn’t involve weddings. But if he’d thought the minutes were slow to tick away before, the seemingly endless time between dinner and bedtime was excruciating.

Finally the time came for him to crawl naked between the sheets and wait for Emma to come out of the bathroom. He didn’t really care if she was naked or not. It would only take a few seconds to get her out of what she wore to bed.

When she finally came out, wearing her usual sleepwear, he grinned and flipped back the covers for her.

She arched an eyebrow at him, then went over to shut off the light. “Pretty cocky, don’t you think? Just assuming I’ll sleep with you again?”

“Last night was a little quick. I think we can do better.”

By the time Emma reached the bed, she was naked, leaving behind her a trail of clothes. “Are you saying you can do better? Because you set the bar pretty high, you know.”

He didn’t waste any more time with words. Once she was in the bed, he rolled onto his side and cupped her face in his hand. Her eyes were dark pools he wanted to drown in, so he moved his gaze to her mouth. She was worrying at her bottom lip with her teeth and he kissed her to make her stop. And then he kept kissing her because even the promise of the good feelings to come didn’t intrigue him more than her mouth.

“You’re very good at that,” she said a little breathlessly when he reluctantly broke it off.

“I’m very good at many things.”

“Oh, really? And you can back that up?” When he nodded, she stretched her body like a cat’s, offering herself to him. “Take your time.”

Even though his blood was practically boiling, he flicked his tongue over her lip and smiled. “I intend to.”

He explored every inch of her, definitely taking his time as he learned where and how to touch her to make her crazy. He kept touching her, with his hands and with his mouth, until she was panting and squirming under him. Then he slid his finger into her wet heat and rubbed her clit with his thumb until her hips bucked and she pounded his shoulder with her fist because she couldn’t scream.

And then he did it all again.

He lost track of time. Lost track of everything but Emma and the way he wanted to make her feel, until she grabbed him by the hair and dragged him up her body.

“Whatever you were trying to prove, you proved,” she said between panted breaths. “I want you inside me. Now.”

He slipped on a condom in record time and settled between her legs. She lifted her head, kissing him fiercely as he entered her, and then dropped her head to the pillow. He watched her eyes, letting them drag him under as he thrust into her. They were both too far gone for finesse and it wasn’t nearly long enough before the pleasure hit him and knocked him for a loop as Emma bit her knuckle, trying to be quiet as the orgasm racked her body.

Oh yeah, that was better.
When he’d finally caught his breath, Sean disposed of the condom and then pulled the covers up over them. He tried to nudge her over a little, but she was as limp as overcooked spaghetti and, when he told her to move over, she mumbled something he couldn’t hear into the pillow.

Curling up around her, Sean grinned as he closed his eyes. Maybe tomorrow night he’d make her do all the work.

“Do you think if you stare at those trees long enough, they’ll shrivel up and disappear?”

Emma struggled to refocus her attention on Sean and away from the problem at hand. “What?”

“You’ve been staring at that spot for half an hour now.”

She was sitting on the summer cottage’s back steps, looking over a piece of property she’d been invited to bid on. “I’m not looking at the trees. It’s the exposed roots that are the problem. And the overall drainage.”

He was leaning against a tree, one hand holding a soda and the other hooked in his pocket. “And staring helps?”

“Yes, it does.” She stood and brushed off the seat of her jeans. “See those places where the dead leaves are thick and decomposing? That means, during the snow melt and spring rains, the water was collecting there. The drainage sucks, party because of these exposed tree roots, and standing water’s a problem I need to deal with
before
I get hands-on with the landscaping.”

“Does the homeowner want the shade or can you rip the trees out?”

She shook her head and slid her phone out of her pocket. She’d already taken a dozen photos of the property, but she snapped a couple more from that angle. “Can’t take the trees out. This shoreline’s more regulated than nuclear waste.”

“Even the tree roots?”

“Huge erosion factor. I have to work around them.” But there was nothing else she could do on-site. She had the photos and the measurements to plug into her software, so she’d be spending several hours with her computer to generate prints and estimates for the homeowner to consider. “We’re done here.”

“Okay, boss,” he said, winking at her as he pushed away from the tree.

“Oh, sure. Now I’m the boss. How come I’m never the boss when I want to drive my truck?”

He didn’t answer her, but she could see the smirk flirting with his lips as he disappeared around the corner of the cottage. After tucking her phone and memo book back into her pockets, she followed him and wasn’t surprised at all to find him already in the driver’s seat.

“Where to now?” he asked once she was in and buckled up.

“Take a right and then a left when we hit the main road. The Johnsons think they’ve got some tree limbs about to come down and they want me to look at it. They don’t want to pay a tree service if they don’t have to.”