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Eli opened his eyes to find Emma up on her elbows, staring at him with a sort of appalled fascination, as though he were a new and disgusting breed of insect that she was inexplicably attracted to.
“So,” he said. “Pancakes?”
“Is that an offer or a demand? Because if it’s a demand, then don’t let the door hit you on the way out. But if it’s an offer, then...maybe.”
“I was thinking we could make them together.”
Her head tilted, causing her hair to spell over her still-naked shoulder in a somewhat mussed curtain of gold. He twisted a lock of it around his index finger and examined it. She didn’t stop him. It seemed like a small miracle that she didn’t stop him. Even before the mess was made, when they had been the best of friends, he wouldn’t have dared to touch her like this. Of course, back then he wouldn’t have woken up naked in her bed after a night that included two rounds of mind-bogglingly good sex, either.
He wouldn’t go so far as to say the eight-year Emma drought was worth it, but his cock in her mouth and her hair twisted around his finger were certainly important points to consider.
“Pancakes sound amazing, especially since I don’t recall ever getting around to dinner last night, but I probably shouldn’t,” she said.
He could hear the regret in her voice. She wasn’t just trying to get rid of him nicely. Though, that could have been because she really wanted those pancakes.
He released her hair and it unspiraled from his finger like a pinwheel. “Why is that?”
“Oh, you know. That fun little thing called work?” She bumped her shoulder playfully against his. Another small miracle. “What about you? Aren’t you on duty today?”
“It’s my day off.”
“Oh,” she said wistfully.
It wasn’t his place to tell her how to run her life. They weren’t friends. They were...well, it didn’t matter what they were, because it still wasn’t his place—
“Take the day off,” he blurted, because apparently his brain wasn’t in charge of his mouth anymore.
She gave a shocked laugh. “I can’t take the day off.”
He wasn’t going to argue with her. She knew her own life better than he did. Except, of course he was.
“Why not?” he asked. “Does Cesar need you at the food truck?”
She shook her head. “Not today. He has his grandson helping him out. Marcus is taking my hours three days a week so I can get the bed and breakfast ready.” Her eyebrows pushed together, causing a worry line to form between them. He could guess her thoughts. Fewer hours worked meant fewer dollars earned. “So, no, I’m not making burritos today, but that doesn’t mean I’m not working. I have the whole upstairs to paint.”
He thought about that. There was no doubt in his mind that Emma was exhausted, mentally and physically, from having what amounted to three jobs. And this wasn’t anything new for her. In high school, it was school and taking care of her mom. In college it was school and waiting tables at Dreamer’s Cafe. She probably hadn’t had a day off—really and truly off, without care or worry—since she was fifteen.
She deserved a day to relax, and someday he was going to make sure she got it, come hell or high water. But today was not that day. Still, he could help.
“Okay,” he said. “So we’ll make pancakes and then we’ll paint.”
“We?” she echoed. “You’re going to help me paint? It’s four bedrooms, plus the hallway. Just so we’re clear on what you’re signing up for.”
“I remember.” He gave her bare hip a light smack. “Get dressed, Ms. Andrews. We have work to do.”
“Why is that so hot?” she complained. She pushed back the covers and stood, apparently unconcerned with her nudity. He liked that, that she was comfortable enough with herself, and with him, to let him see her fully. “I’m supposed to hate it when you call me Ms. Andrews and boss me around. It shouldn’t be hot.”
He shrugged. “I’m only telling you what you want to hear.” He watched her shimmy into a clean pair of underwear. “I might be giving the orders, but you’re the one calling the shots. You’re in control, when it comes to me. You always have been.”
She froze in the act of rifling through her dresser for clean clothes. Her eyes met his in the mirror. For a fleeting moment, she looked lost. Fear skated across her features, there and gone again before he could fully decipher it. She looked away.
“Or maybe it’s Pavlovian,” he suggested. “I’ve called you Ms. Andrews with my mouth between your legs enough that now you’re trained. I say Ms. Andrews, and you get wet.”
“Hey!” she yelled. “Did you just compare me to a dog?”
She grabbed a T-shirt from the drawer, twisted it, and whipped it at him, hitting him right in the gut. “I am not a dog, Eli. You can’t train me.”
She snapped the shirt at him again. He was laughing too hard to adequately defend himself, but it didn’t hurt anyway.
“Are you sure about that? Let’s find out.” He dodged her next attack and, before she could try again, grabbed her wrists, holding her captive. He kept his grip light at first, then slowly tightened his hold, watching her reaction closely. Her eyes flared with heat. She liked it. Interesting. “Underwear off, Ms. Andrews.”
He could feel her pulse pick up speed against his fingertips. She was turned on, but he knew she wasn’t about to concede. Emma hated to lose.
She tilted her chin so she could meet his gaze, her eyebrows arched and her eyes gleaming with laughter. “Joke’s on you,” she said triumphantly. “I can’t take off my underwear when you have my hands.”
He laughed. “True.”
He transferred both wrists to one hand, freeing his other hand. He traced the seam with his thumb. “Why don’t I just check,” he said. “For science.”
With a giggle, she tore free from his grasp and spun away, out of his reach, sending him a teasing smirk over her shoulder. “You’ll have to catch me first.”
He lunged for her, laughing, but she evaded with a girlish shriek. And this...this wasn’t a small miracle, that Emma Andrews was giggling and naked down to her underwear and most definitely wanting to be caught by him. It was a huge miracle, maybe the biggest miracle of his life. Although, his life was pretty short on miracles, so maybe that wasn’t saying much. Still, it was big enough that his chest felt like it might explode from it.
He tackled her, rolling them both onto the bed. His hand skimmed beneath her underwear, seeking answers. He grinned. “You’re wet, Ms. Andrews.”
“Shut up and kiss me, Eli.” She wound her arms around his neck, drawing him closer.
So he did.
Pancakes would have to wait.
***
Maybe it was the pancakes, but Emma couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so good. Peaceful. At one with the universe and all its inhabitants. They had opened the windows to keep the paint fumes to a minimum, and she could hear birdsong in the distance. She was this close to humming along.
She gave a happy sigh and stretched out the kinks in her back. Where had this sudden feeling of well-being come from? It must be the pancakes.
“You know what?” Eli said.
She looked at him. He stood with his hands on his hips, completely unaware that his posture emphasized the very nice muscles of his chest, and surveyed their work with a critical eye. A smudge of gray paint shimmered against his tanned cheek. Her heart did a weird flip-flop thing in her chest.
It wasn’t about the pancakes. It was never about the pancakes. The undeniable truth of it sent the room spinning around her.
“What?” she said, all casual-like, as though her entire world hadn’t been flipped on its axis.
“You were right about this color. I thought it might be too dark, but it’s actually pretty nice.” He sounded surprised, but she didn’t take it as an insult.
“Not me. It was Suzie’s idea,” she corrected. “But yeah, she wasn’t wrong. She has a good eye for stuff like this.”
Suzie had suggested a four seasons theme, with each bedroom decorated as winter, spring, summer, or autumn. They had just finished the first coat of paint in the winter room, a silvery, shimmery gray, the color of the sky before a snowstorm.
They had already done the spring room a pale green. Two rooms down, two to go. Plus the hallway. She hadn’t forgotten that. If Eli was really going to offer his services on his day off, then she was really going to let him.
“When is the furniture coming?” he asked.
“Next week. I want the painting done by then and the bathrooms spruced up a bit. They’re actually in really good shape, considering the claw-foot tubs are nearly half a century old. I’ll wait until I have the beds put together and everything arranged the way I want it before I hang the art. Millie is going to loan me a few of her photographs, matching the theme of the room, so we’ll have the Smokies and Hart Mountain in all the seasons. They’ll be available for sale to our visitors. If no one buys them in six months, I’ll buy them myself. But if they are bought, then Millie will send me replacements. Win-win.”
“You’re using the bed and breakfast to help the other businesses in Hart’s Ridge,” he said slowly. “That’s brilliant.”
“I mean, I’m helping myself, too. It’s not one hundred percent altruistic. But, yeah. That’s my plan.” She could feel his gaze on her, so she busied herself gathering up the brushes to clean so they could move on to the summer room. “That’s why I was at Luke’s the other day. I had this idea for gift baskets. One for each guest, full of coupons and samples and such. Luke is chipping in a coupon for ten percent off a meal at Goat’s Tavern. Kate is donating a small bag of candy from Sweet Things. There’s also a coupon in there for a discount on river tubing. All kinds of things—eep!”
Her sentence ended on a squeak as she found herself snatched against his hard chest, his warm mouth on hers. He released her just as quickly and she blinked in befuddlement.
“What was that for?”
“I think you’re awesome, that’s what.”
“You do?”
“Come on, Emma.” His voice was gruff as he turned away from her, obscuring his expression, which she suddenly wanted to see very badly. “You’ve always been my favorite. You know that.”
“Your favorite what?” she couldn’t resist asking.
He paused for so long that she started to think he wasn’t going to answer. And then, at last—
“Everything,” he said finally. “When we were kids, you were my favorite friend. When we got a little bit older, you were just my favorite person, period. Now you’re my favorite lover. And I suppose when this is all over, you will be my favorite mistake.”
Mistake. The word sat like a rock on her chest, stealing the air from her lungs. She couldn’t breathe around it. Because in all those intervening years, she had only considered what he had done to her. The betrayal.
She had never considered what she had done to him.
Had never considered if maybe hers wasn’t the only heart broken that night.
She had assumed that there were certain things friends didn’t have to say out loud. Like, don’t arrest my dad. But the truth was, she wouldn’t have had to say that to Suzie or Luke. She wouldn’t have had to say that to Cesar. Because Suzie, Luke, and Cesar didn’t have the authority to arrest her dad, even if they wanted to.
But she hadn’t told Suzie, Luke, or Cesar that her dad was cooking meth. She had told the one person who did have that authority. The one person who would need to hear those words.
And then she hadn’t said them.
Good God, what an impossible situation she had put him in. On the one hand, doing his job and keeping her safe—keeping the whole community safe. On the other, arresting a man who had treated him like family and breaking her heart. She could have made the decision for him, just by saying those words. He would have listened. He would have looked the other way, for her, if she had asked him to.
Why hadn’t she asked him to?
Maybe because deep down, she hadn’t wanted to. Maybe under all that love for her dad was fear and exhaustion. Exhaustion from taking care of other people’s problems. Fear that there were no right answers. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to bear the responsibility of such horrible decision, so she had turned to the only person who could bear it for her.
The thought scorched her chest like heartburn. Acid rose in her throat.
Had she really wanted Eli to arrest her dad? Was that why she had gone to the one person who could?
After the first rush of grief, before the prison sentence had been handed down, she had felt the tiniest bit of relief. That it was over. That the man with the gun wouldn’t be coming around anymore. That she was safe, that her dad was safe, too. The sentence had been a shock. Eight years. She had thought eighteen months, maybe. Maybe if she had realized it was eight years, she would have said those damn words.
But she hadn’t said them, and she had lost her dad and her best friend in one blow. And Eli...Eli had lost his best friend, too. He had lost her because she had shared something with him she had no business sharing, not without thinking through the repercussions.
The night he arrested her dad, he had waited for her in her home. She had screamed at him that she never wanted to see him again. And he had just nodded and left. Didn’t even try to argue. No apology. Like it was exactly what he had expected her to say.
She wasn’t the only one who left things unsaid. Eli could have told her what he meant to do, but he hadn’t. Just don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. In retrospect, maybe she ought to have understood that I’ll take care of it, coming from a police officer, meant I’ll arrest him. But she could honestly say that in that moment, she had believed he was going to have a talk with her dad. Like issue a stern warning. She had felt a little sliver of hope, that maybe if her dad knew the police were aware of his operations, that he would be forced to quit. If the man with the gun would have even let him quit.
What would her life be like now if that night had gone differently? Would her dad have avoided prison? Would he be dead, too? She would never know, but it didn’t matter. There was no use in dwelling on what might have been, if only. If only her mother hadn’t died. If only her dad had made a different choice. If only she had used her words. If only Eli had used his.
If only, if only, if only.
That kind of thinking would eat her alive. She wouldn’t indulge in it. If there was one thing Emma was good at, it was moving relentlessly, ruthlessly forward.
It didn’t matter what might have been. The only thing that mattered was what was. Eli had betrayed her that night, but maybe...maybe she had betrayed him first.
It was a terrible, terrible thing to realize that maybe she had wanted her dad arrested. That maybe a small part of her had hoped for it, so that her problems would go away. It was a hot iron pressing against her chest. She couldn’t breathe around the weight of it.
Emma had never asked why he made that choice that night. Why hadn’t mattered. Eli was a good man and he always had been. He hadn’t betrayed her for money or personal gain. His heart was in the right place, no matter how wrong his actions were. She knew that. And it had been easier to hate him for the role he had played than to face her own.
She had never asked him why he hadn’t told her he was going to arrest her dad, why he hadn’t given her an opportunity to stop him. To work it out another way. Why he hadn’t demanded she tell him what to do.
It occurred to her now that maybe she should have asked, then. And she should definitely ask now.
But she wasn’t going to do that.
Because if she did, if she asked him why he hadn’t said the hard part out loud, then he might return the favor. And she couldn’t bear that. Even now, eight years later, she couldn’t say the hard part out loud.
So she scooped up an armful of brushes and plastic sheeting and followed him to the next room.
What was one more betrayal, anyway?