Chapter 27

Blake

Blake had never believed in destiny, but he was a big believer in coincidences, and an even bigger believer in taking advantage of situations that fell into his lap. And right now this storm was a perfect situation. He reached for Emmy’s glass and filled it up again. She already had that cute pink tinge in her cheeks, and her eyes had softened from the laser beams about to cut him in half when she first saw him in the limo.

Okay, he wasn’t supposed to be looking at her like that. Or thinking about her out of that stunning green dress. He knew it. She’d agreed to go with him tonight only because it was a means to an end. But he couldn’t help it.

“Here.” He held out her glass.

But she shook her head. “Not without something in my stomach.”

He chuckled and set the glass aside, then arranged the cheese and berries on a plate for them to share. One glance outside and he saw nothing but sheets of rain. He didn’t mind being trapped in here. Truth be told, it was a lot better than being trapped inside the god-awful ballroom, listening to his father and the other speakers go on and on about business and the economy and who knew what else.

Emmy, on the other hand, looked like she was facing certain torture. He offered her the plate, and she snatched up three crackers and a handful of blackberries.

“Didn’t eat lunch?”

She narrowed her gaze and didn’t answer.

“Sorry. I didn’t order the storm, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

She took two more crackers and then reached for her champagne. “Don’t worry. I wasn’t. You might be an overachiever, but even changing the weather is a little out of your wheelhouse. Isn’t it?”

“It is.” He traded his champagne for a light beer. “So have you thought about what you’re going to say when you see this guy?”

“Bryan?”

Blake nodded. He didn’t like even saying the asshole’s name, or thinking about Emmy sleeping with him. He couldn’t make any promises about what he’d do if he actually ran up against him tonight.

“No. I guess I should. My friend Liza said I should just hire some thugs to break his legs, but –”

“Do you know any thugs in Drake Isle?”

“What do you think?”

“Want me to do it?”

“Break his legs?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of confronting him for you.”

“That’s nice of you to offer, but I think I need to fight my own battle.”

Her perfume lingered in the air, and it took all his self-control not to touch her arm or trace the pattern of freckles on her shoulder. I would do it, though. I would fight your battles, all of them, if you’d let me. If it were the days of Camelot, he’d find himself a steed and carry her silk scarf into tournament. Blake rubbed the back of his neck. Even after all this time, Emmy made him want to be a different man. A better man.

“Why are you doing all this, anyway?” she asked. “The invitation to the ball, telling me about Bryan, offering to help...I mean, if this works, I get my money back. Eastefire won’t be able to buy my business. This isn’t a win-win situation for you.”

“I know.” This morning he’d convinced himself that his sole motive was to do everything he could to convince her to sell. Even if she recovered her money from this guy, the place was too big for her, too much of an expense to keep. She’d constantly have to worry about increased taxes, finding renters, sustaining her business through island recessions. If anything, she should downsize now that her mother had passed. He’d planned on telling her all this, on being rational and reasonable and laying all out the reasons that selling to someone she knew was better than stubbornly resisting the inevitable.

But sitting next to Emmy, his head a little fuzzy from the alcohol and the memories and the few inches between them, that original motive had gotten warped in the last half-hour. Blake ran the back of one hand over hers in a gentle gesture that held the ache of a college boy with his heart half-healed. The rain drowned out every other sound except his pulse, and every other thought except his wish to rewind time. In that moment, he fell all the way back into memory, all the way down that long slide into Blake-who-used-to-be. He couldn’t help it.

“Because I still love you.”

The words were out before he even knew he’d said them. The look on Emmy’s face went from confusion to shock in less than a second, and because he didn’t know what else to do, Blake cupped her cheek in his hand and kissed her.

Emmy

She didn’t even try to fight it this time. She didn’t see the point, when her body had been thrumming with want since the moment she stepped inside the limousine. Some small, brief voice whispered a warning in her mind, but it was gone before she could heed it. Blake’s tongue slipped across hers as the kiss deepened, and she tasted champagne and blackberries.

Yes.

No.

I’ve missed you so much.

He slid his lips across her neck in perfect, agonizing slowness, pausing against her ear. “Want me to stop?”

She shook her head and pulled his mouth to hers again, and despite the familiarity of his kiss, there was a newness to it as well, a thrill she didn’t remember from college.

Or maybe that was just the champagne.

“Oh, Em.” He brushed one hand down her neck, stopping to caress her collarbone and then coming to rest on the curve of her hip. “I haven’t been able to think straight since I saw you again.”

Heat spread beneath his palm, from the seam of her hip down her leg and then back up again. Her breath hitched as she imagined less fabric between them and a lot more skin. The plate of berries went sliding onto the floor as he moved closer, and she wriggled on the seat, trying to make room for him. One of her heels caught on the door, and she laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Remember when we went parking in your father’s Jeep? At the lake that summer?”

“Uh huh. Thank God for my parents’ business trips to Rome.” He drew lazy circles around her ankle bone, and everything from her waist to her pinky toe went limp with desire. “What about it?”

But she couldn’t remember what she’d wanted to say. Fuzzy edges of that night came back to her, like the smell of pine trees and her head pressed so tightly against the door she’d had a neck ache the next day, but she realized she didn’t care about what had come before. She only cared about the now. The right damn now. Raelynn would be proud of me, living in the moment and all.

Then Emmy stopped thinking about everything except Blake touching her. He slipped one hand under her skirt as the rain pummeled the windows and the limousine rocked in the wind. He kept his gaze locked with hers as his hand moved up her calf and toward her knee. She tried to steady her breath and failed.

Yes.

No.

She wanted.

She couldn’t.

Suddenly she was a teenager again, with hormones racing in her blood and thoughts jack-hammering inside her head. This was probably wrong. This was most definitely wrong. But then why did it feel oh so perfectly, exquisitely right?

The limo started moving, and Emmy sat up with a jerk. “I can’t. We can’t.” God, she’d almost given in. She wriggled away from Blake’s hand and straightened her dress.

“We could.”

“We’ll be there soon.” Her face turned to fire.

He leaned over to look out the window. “I don’t know. I think we probably still have a good half-hour. Plenty of time for some fun.”

“That’s not the kind of fun I need to have tonight. I need to stay focused.”

“That kind of relaxing might make your focus a lot better.”

“Blake, we can’t –” She waved her hand to try and cover all the bases. “You know. Just because we used to.” She couldn’t look at him. Instead she looked at the rain-streaked window, the crushed berries on the floor of the limo, her own hands in her lap.

“Why not?”

Why didn’t he understand? “Because everything’s changed. We’re not college kids anymore.” She didn’t add the other obvious factors, that A, they weren’t even dating, and B, they were still on opposite sides of the bargaining table when it came to the fate of her building.

“Em.” He put one finger under her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Please don’t get all broody on me.”

“I’m not.” Of course she was. But she wouldn’t lie. Part of her wanted to get naked and down and dirty and see how much they really could do in the next thirty minutes. She could see the bulge in his tuxedo pants, needing release. Wanting her touch. God knew she needed it. That was one thing they’d never had any problem with back in school. The sex had always, without exception, been amazing.

But.

If she let him think she was putty in his hands, what happened at the end of the night? How did she stand up to him? How did they separate business from pleasure? She had intended to use Blake and his invitation to get what she needed, which was a one-way path straight to her cheating, thieving ex-boyfriend. That plan didn’t include a long overdue orgasm that left her a boneless mass in Blake’s arms.

She might as well just hand him the keys to Inner Sanctum and be done with it.

Emmy bit her lip. “That thing you said before.”

“Which thing?” Then he nodded. “Oh. About still being in love with you?”

“Yes. Did you mean it?”

He didn’t answer right away. He went to take her hand, but the limo picked up speed and merged into traffic, and Emmy took the opportunity to readjust herself on the seat and put a good few inches between them. She kept her gaze away from his lap, his hands, his mouth, anything that had the tiniest chance of pulling her in again. Because the chemistry between them was stronger than she remembered. Maybe it was a build-up of ten years without him. Maybe it was the oddly erotic circumstance of being trapped with him inside a limo in a rainstorm.

Or maybe it was just the fact that she hadn’t had a mind-blowing orgasm since the last time she slept with Blake.

For a long five minutes, neither one spoke. The limo cruised smoothly along. Finally he turned to her.

“I was engaged a while back.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better or worse?”

“Her name was – is – Hailey Benjamin.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place why. Then she did. “Of the W.W. Benjamin clothing line?”

He nodded.

“Well, that would’ve been a perfect match. Two old-money families marrying and carrying on the tradition of making millions.” She stared into the growing darkness. The rain hadn’t let up. If anything, it grew heavier with every mile that passed. “So what happened?”

“She accused me one night of not being over you.”

At that, Emmy did look at him. His face was drawn in the shadows, the lines at the corners of his eyes more apparent than in daylight.

“She was right. I wasn’t.”

A lump rose in her throat. She thought she’d wanted to hear this, to know that Blake still loved her and pined for her and hadn’t ever gotten over her, but now that the conversation had started, she wasn’t sure she wanted it to continue.

“I used to have terrible nightmares for years after college.” He traced the path of the rain down the window, one finger moving over and over again from the top to the bottom of the glass. “I didn’t think it was connected to what happened. It wasn’t like I dreamed about college or Piper or...”

Or you, Emmy filled in the blank space at the end of his sentence. She sank deeper into the seat.

“It was just random scenes, places I’d never been, dark and fucking terrifying, though I couldn’t figure out why. Hailey finally made me go to a sleep clinic to see if they could get to the root of it.”

“And did they?”

“Kind of. The thing was, I never remembered much of anything I dreamed about. I’d just wake up in a cold sweat, my heart beating a mile a minute. Hailey would tell me I was rolling around, moaning, all this stuff I didn’t believe until I saw it on video at the clinic.”

“Wow.”

“Doctors figured out there wasn’t anything physically wrong with me. So then she made me go to couples’ counseling, because she thought it was something in our relationship that was giving me the nightmares.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t what she thought. It wasn’t something in our relationship. It was something that had happened long before I ever met her.”

“Did she know about Piper? Had you ever told her?”

“No.”

Emmy hesitated with the next question. “Did she know about...me?”

“Not until the counseling. Thus the breakup. I wasn’t over you. I knew it as soon as the therapist asked me. And I knew I couldn’t marry Hailey unless I was.”

“I’m sorry.” That’s what she was supposed to say, but in actuality, Emmy wasn’t sorry in the least. Blake didn’t seem very sad about the broken engagement, and any woman who sent him to clinics and therapy to fix him didn’t sound like the right one anyway.

You never were one for taming, she thought.

“You don’t think so either?”

“Did I just say that out loud?”

“You did.” He grinned. “That’s funny. My assistant told me the other day she always thought I was a dark horse.”

Up ahead, a smudge of light appeared on the horizon. “Oh, look,” Emmy said. “I think we’re coming into the city.” That’s it, change the subject. The air rang with Blake’s confession, and she knew she’d never leave the limo or be able to think about Bryan or her money if she let him keep talking. The past needed to stay in the past. Frederick slowed as four lanes merged into three heavily congested ones. The lights outside brightened, and soon the tall buildings of Boston’s downtown surrounded them. She blew out a breath.

“Nervous?”

“A little. I’ve never been the date of a millionaire CEO before.”

“It’s not much different than being the date of a fraternity president, if that helps.”

“Hmm. In that case, do you have a joint or some cheap beer I can swig to get in the mood?”

He laughed out loud. “No, sorry. Guess I should’ve been more prepared. I should tell you, just in case you didn’t guess, my father’s going to be there tonight.”

“I figured.”

“I haven’t told him you’re my date.”

“What?” She went cold. “Blake, you’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding.” She thought they’d had a long conversation about it, maybe even a fight. She never dreamed he hadn’t even mentioned it.

“I didn’t know how to bring it up.”

“To me, or to him?”

He didn’t answer.

“Your father never liked me.”

“He liked you fine.”

“Really? Because I seem to remember he could barely have a conversation with me most of the time we were dating.”

“He’s like that with everyone he meets. I don’t think he knows how to be civil or have a conversation about anything except Eastefire.”

“He did everything in his power to avoid me after Piper died. Even when I came to the house to see you, he just sent me away.”

Blake blinked. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’m sure he didn’t tell you, which was shitty.”

“It was a shitty situation, Em. The whole thing. God knows I’m not the person to defend him most of the time, but after Piper died, he was doing the best he could. We all were. He was just trying to make sure –” His mouth clamped shut.

“What? Go ahead. Finish. He was trying to make sure what?”

“Nothing. He was trying to tie up loose ends, that’s all.”

She stared daggers at him. “You did not just refer to my best friend as a ‘loose end.’”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. You know I didn’t.”

The limo slowed, and Frederick slid open the privacy window. “Sir, we’ve arrived at the Hotel Victoria. There’s just a few cars ahead of us before I can pull up under the canopy.”

“Thank you,” Blake said. He lowered his voice. “Can we save this conversation for later?”

“Fine.” She opened the door into a gust of wind and rain.

“Emmy! Come back here. I didn’t mean for you to get out of the car.”

But she didn’t care what he meant. If Blake wanted to save the conversation for later, then she’d be more than happy to oblige. Actually, maybe they could save the conversation for never. She had nothing more to say to him, anyway. She didn’t care that she’d promised to act as his date tonight. He’d already broken the terms of their agreement, as far as she was concerned.

A loose end? Had he really said that?

Three limos waited ahead of theirs to pull up to the main entrance, and Emmy didn’t have an umbrella or even a coat, but she didn’t care. She bent her head into the rain and marched away from the limo as fast as she could.