I Still Do (6 page)

“It was a little disconcerting to discover that the boy I remembered from those summers spent his school year sneaking into girls' bedrooms.”

“Whoa.” Noting a familiar turn-off just ahead, Will clamped down on taking the conversation further until he'd steered the truck to the right. A dirt-and-gravel road took him to a stand of cottonwood trees growing beside the silvery remains of a disintegrating barn. It was commonly known as a Lover's Lane type of spot, not that now seemed the time to tell Emily that.

When he'd braked and shut off the headlights, he turned to face her. “Now, what's all this about me sneaking into girls' bedrooms?”

The meager moonlight didn't illuminate Emily's face, but he'd seen it clearly during the football game. She'd changed so little over the years—time only honing the delicate edge of her jawbone. She still had the same long eyes, feathery brows and that puffy lower lip that only looked one cross thought away from a pout. He couldn't tell if it was pushed out now, but he did detect her shrug.

“Never mind,” she said. “I don't have any real reason to be bothered by your little black book.”

“Black book?” Will had to laugh. “I don't have any little black book.”

“Not even in high school? With the home alarm passcodes of your eager and willing teen harem?”

“Good God,” Will said, half-amused and half-bothered. “Is that the kind of tall tale that Pat's spouting these days? Next thing you know I'll have a big blue ox, too.”

“No, just a date with a pair of twins to the junior prom.”

“Oh.”

“Ha!” Emily pivoted on the seat and he could feel the heat of her gaze. “So you did take
two
girls to the dance.”

Will rubbed his hand over his mouth to hide his grimace. “Would you believe they're my cousins?”

“No.”

“Oh,” he said again.

After a moment, she surprised the hell out of him by releasing a little bubble of laughter. “Will, did you really take a pair of twins to the prom?”

“I did it for us, honey.”

She laughed again, and swung her leg up onto the bench seat between them. “Go ahead, my friend, pull the other one.”

He wrapped his hand around her ankle, even as she tried to tug free of his grip. “Really. Of course I wanted to go to the big dance, but I figured by taking the Wilson twins that I wasn't going to get into a compromising position or succumb to temptation when it was just a couple of weeks before we'd be together again. Danita and Danica watched each other like hawks eye snakes. Neither one could make a move without the other one ready to pounce on her.”

“They sound charming,” Emily replied, still trying to reclaim the limb he'd captured.

“Yeah, you're right,” Will admitted. “Charm wasn't one of their, uh, charms. Still, I left the dance unkissed—or close enough, anyway. Can you say the same?”

“My high school didn't have a junior prom.” Her latest yank broke his hold and she retreated to a prim pose—knees and ankles pressed together, arms folded over her chest.

“You know what I mean, Em.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We didn't make promises to each other about what would or wouldn't happen during the school year. I admit I spent time with other girls, as I'm sure you did with other guys.”

There was a conspicuous quiet from her side of the cab. “Em?”

“So you
were
a player,” she said. “A senior girl before you could drive? The twins, not to mention the yearbook editor?”

“Emily—”

“Oh, forget about it,” she waved a hand in his direction and then laughed a little again. “I don't know why I even brought it up. That was years ago. Who cares what you did during the school year…or what I thought you didn't do.”

“Well, it wasn't as if you spent every September through June sitting at home and pining—” He broke off as her stiff body language finally sank in. “Oh. Oh, Emily.”

She waved her hand again. “Don't flatter yourself. I probably was just looking for an excuse to stay home and read. I was bookish even then. More than half the reason my parents sent me to summer camp was to get my nose out of novels and into a little sunshine.”

And in said sunshine her creamy skin turned a pale golden shade. It would bring out a splash of freckles on said nose, too.

She sighed. “What a sappy girl I was.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Sappy?”

“Silly. Sentimental. Foolish. While you were out dating cheerleaders and twins, I was sitting at home believing we had something really special.”

“We did have something really special.”

“Thanks, but I'm all grown up now. It's no big deal to realize that while I was drowning in the sea of teenage love, you were skating across its waters.”

“Emily.” Will shifted from underneath the steering wheel to move toward her. “I wasn't skating. I was right there with you, the water dangerously close to going over my head. You don't know how much I thought about you—how much I wanted you.”

Though he couldn't read her expression in the darkness, he could feel her disbelief. “You never once seemed…out of control, or even interested in pushing for more,” she said.

“Because I was so damn afraid of scaring you off,” he answered. “Yeah, apparently I had a little more experience than you when it came to kissing, but emotionally I was in a thousand knots when I was near you.”

“Really?” This time he could hear a smile in her voice. “Me, too. You'd touch my hand and my stomach would cramp.”

“My heart pounded so hard sometimes that I thought you might see it expanding out of my chest like something from a cartoon.” Will rubbed his sternum in sympathy for the lovesick kid he'd been. “And for the record, I regarded my, um, experiments with other girls something I did for us, Em.”

“You said that before.” Her voice was dry. “Excuse me for having a little trouble swallowing it down.”

“Really. Remember when I taught you to French kiss? I didn't just pick that up from the Boy Scout manual, you know. That yearbook editor was one smart cookie and my learning experience with her made
your
learning experience just that much more pleasant.”

She made a sound of stifled amusement. “Tell me you didn't actually think that…not then and certainly not now.”

But the fact was, he sort of
had
thought that. Fine, maybe that made him sound like an arrogant piece of work, but he'd never forget the first time he'd held Emily's sweet face in the cup of his palms and whispered against her lips, “Open. Open your mouth.”

And then, without forethought, he slid down the truck's seat and was doing it again, cradling her jaw in his palms, his long fingers caging the soft warmth of her cheeks. Her lashes fluttered and he felt the butterfly flicker against the pads of his index fingers.

His heart started that slamming pound against his ribs as he leaned closer. Her perfume floated in the air, dizzying him with its sweetness, as his lips touched hers.

“Open.” He echoed that old lesson. “Open your mouth.”

When she did, warm air puffed out, and then he slid inside, just the smallest distance, just enough so that he could touch the tip of his tongue to hers. Her breath hitched, his stomach knotted, and it was like he was a kid again, eager, afraid, breathless, burning up with heat.

Only with Emily had it ever been like this.

Special, sweet fire.

It engulfed him, taking over his common sense, his caution, all those promises about his future he'd made to himself.

It was so damn hard to think of that future he could start living when the past was so easily preoccupying him.

T
he local home improvement store had everything Emily needed, she supposed, if she actually knew everything that she needed. There were butcher-aproned helpers here and there, but every time she tried to catch one's attention, she lost him or her to a more assertive home-improver. Seemed like Sunday afternoon was a popular time for shopping at the place.

She consulted the do-it-yourself manual she'd checked out of the library and then stood staring at the miles of unfamiliar objects and products stretched before her. There was no need to indulge in self-pity, she told herself. This confusion was probably no more than what the latest HGTV cute carpenter would feel if he suddenly found himself in the aisles of beauty products at a Sephora.

But at least Sephora smelled nice.

Emily craned her neck to see if any of the salesclerks were now free, her gaze hop-skipping around the other browsers in her row. There were two dusty, work-booted guys who looked like they were here to pick up a missing item for their current construction job. Three couples—husbands and wives she guessed—perusing the shelves shoulder-to-shoulder. And over there was a handsome young dad, his toddler son riding his shoulders as he shopped.

It struck her heart with a sudden pang that everybody—even at a place that sold wrenches and windows—seemed to have somebody.

The sting behind her eyes sent Emily's gaze back to her borrowed book. She blinked a few times and breathed deep, trying to hold back the unexpected sense of loss. And loneliness.

Left without family and in a place far from all that was familiar, there wasn't a soul who cared whether she made it home today—not to mention about any repair job she might want to make
to
the little cottage house. Pushing the thought away, she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, and focused on the page in front of her.

Should she get patching compound or spackle? Sheetrock and drywall paper tape?

“Emily?”

The masculine voice and its familiar timbre sent her whirling around. “Will?”

But it wasn't the man who'd kissed her with such tenderness the other night. Just that one kiss, before he'd cleared his throat, slid back to his side of the seat, and then drove her home. Just that one kiss—and ever since, she'd been telling herself to forget about it and the man who'd given it to her.

So she should be glad that it wasn't Will who had called her name, and instead was merely two young men who looked very like him. His brothers. With a smile, she took a stab at their names. “Hi, Max and, um, Alex?”

“Tom,” the leaner one said. “I'm Tom, but you're right about Max.”

“Sorry.” She lifted her book to show them what she'd been reading. “I'm a little preoccupied by the differences between drywall and plaster and the holes in them.”

Max—she remembered now that he was the second oldest brother in the Dailey clan—glanced over at the page she had open. “You've got a hole in a wall?”

“Ceiling, actually. The fixture was missing from the dining room when I moved in and I have another to replace it, but once I install it there'll be a gap around the base. I need to fill that in.”

The young men exchanged a glance. “You're going to do some electrical work as well?”

Emily ran her finger over the bookmark she'd inserted farther back in the manual. “I think I just have to twist some wires together or something.”

“Or something,” Tom murmured. “Are you, uh, experienced with this kind of thing?”

“No. But I have the book and a set of pink-handled screwdrivers that my friend Izzy gave me one Christmas.”

“And a ladder?” Max asked.

“I was going to stand on the dining room table,” Emily admitted. “I'll put a sheet down or something, and if I'm still not tall enough, I can stack a dictionary and a thesaurus at the center and—”

“Why don't you let us help,” Max said hastily. “We can get our hands on an actual ladder.”

“And we have shiny red toolboxes that are full of tools with manly black handles,” Tom added.

Emily laughed. “I think my pink screwdrivers work just the same as your manly black ones.”

“But the idea of you perched on reference books on top of your dining room table is making me queasy,” Max said. “Plus, Will would never forgive us if something happened to you.”

“Oh, Will doesn't care what happens to me,” Emily protested, her face flushing. Will was nothing to her nor she to him…except husband and wife. Which they just hadn't quite gotten around to righting yet. “And I couldn't ask you two to—”

“It's the neighborly thing to do,” Tom said. “You're new to town. Just consider us like the welcoming committee or something like that.”

How could she turn down such a friendly offer when she'd just been lamenting her lack of friends? “You'll have to let me make you dinner afterward.”

The two younger men exchanged another glance. “Deal,” they said together.

Then they helped her choose her purchases and followed her home. As she unlocked her front door, a round of second thoughts slowed her movements. On the way over, her inner voice had been presenting reasons it was wrong to take them up on their offer. There'd been the whole feminist argument that she was perfectly capable of attending to the task herself, but she'd squashed that one by remembering the repair she'd accomplished the year before. A woman who had made a major fix to a toilet and then mopped up its overflow didn't need to prove anything to anyone.

If she
wanted
to figure out how to install the fixture and patch the ceiling, then she could install the fixture and patch the ceiling. It just so happened that Max and Tom already had the expertise and the superior tools to do the job. There was nothing shameful in acknowledging that.

Except she felt just the teensiest bit of shame knowing that she'd mostly accepted their help because she wanted the company. Company that reminded her a little too much of Will.

“Guys,” she said, glancing at them over her shoulder as they tramped up the walkway behind her. “Really. I'm sure I could handle this and I'm also sure you have more important or at least more interesting ways to spend the last of your Sunday.”

Max shook his head. “Will…”

That was the biggest problem of all. If he discovered that his brothers had been over doing her home repairs, he might think she was trying very hard to insert herself into his family. To bind herself tighter to him. Yes, they hadn't rushed into dissolving the marriage as quickly as they'd rushed into the wedding itself, but she knew Wild Will wasn't looking for anything the least bit permanent.

“I wouldn't want Will to find out about any of this,” she said. “Even that you offered to do something so nice for me.”

Her gaze caught on a truck that was rumbling down her street. A suspiciously familiar-looking truck. With a familiar-looking piece of equipment in the back, a red rag tied to the few rungs that were hanging out the back end of the bed.

“That's Will now,” she said, looking over at the two young men.

His brothers shared a guilty look, then Tom shrugged. “His was the ladder we could get our hands on. I called him on my cell during the drive here.”

“Oh, great.” Heat rushed over Emily's cheeks. How mortifying would it be if Will thought she'd connived to get him close again? She'd been doing a pretty good job putting him out of her mind and now this! “I don't want him to think it was my idea to drag him over here.”

“We made sure he understood we had to twist your arm,” Max said. “And we even offered to go and pick up the ladder. It was his idea to come over and help.”

Emily bit her bottom lip and couldn't stop herself from finger combing her hair as she watched him pull up to the curb. “Are you sure?”

“Sure—though I'll be honest and say we didn't exactly try to talk him out of it.”

Tom shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “And to be really honest, we were glad to have a reason to get him over here. He's been avoiding the family since June, with only the occasional sighting and we've all been racking our brains for excuses to see him.”

Hmm. So maybe that explained why Betsy needed a ride to the football game the other night. “Why don't you just call him up and ask him to go out for a beer or get some dinner?”

“Tried that,” Max said. “He says no.”

She wasn't sure quite how to put it, so she just threw out her question. “Is it so bad that he wants to leave a little distance between himself and all of you?”

Identical astonished expressions overtook the brothers' faces. “Distance? Why would he want to do that? We're family.”

Emily sighed. Will had felt stifled by all the responsibility he'd shouldered, she understood that, but clearly Max and Tom didn't.

“So we'll be owing you, Emily, for this opportunity to hang with our bro.”

And how sweet was that? Surrendering to the inevitable, she pushed the front door and held it open for the two guys to walk through. Instead of following them in, she stayed where she was and waited as Will came up her short front walk, toting the ladder under his arm.

“Hi,” she said, as their eyes met. Pretending she had a steel rod for a spine and another couple in her knees, she ignored the memory of his calloused hands around her face and the sweet hot touch of his tongue against hers. She cleared her throat and broke their gazes. “Your brothers are already inside.”

He paused as he passed her. When she took a breath, she smelled his clean manly scent and stared at the steady beat of his pulse at the notch of his strong neck. “Hi, back,” he said. “I hope my brothers haven't been any trouble for you.”

“Of course not.” She smiled. “They're very nice.”

Will was lucky to have them. And as she took another breath of his delicious smell and felt the warmth of his body brush hers as he continued inside, she thought that for a woman who was supposed to be forgetting about him and his kiss, she was feeling pretty darn lucky herself.

 

It was not that Will couldn't trust his brothers with his ladder. It was not that Will couldn't trust his brothers with his wife—they didn't even know he was married. It was not that Will couldn't trust his brothers to eat their share of a home-cooked meal by a woman who looked like Emily and then follow it up with some proper appreciation.

It was all three together: the ladder, his wife, the spaghetti and meatballs that smelled sinfully good.

“You didn't know I was cooking spaghetti and meatballs,” Emily pointed out when he tried to explain why he'd broken away from his important appointment with his couch and televised football to come over and help with the project. “You don't even know whether I can cook or not.”

“But my instincts were right, weren't they? It smells great.”

“Onions and garlic always smell great.” Emily stirred her sauce again. “Nobody can screw up sautéing onions and garlic.”

“I don't know about that,” Will answered. “Because I've never sautéed in my life.”

“Yes, you did. KP at camp. Sautéing is when we had to stir cut-up vegetables in hot oil.”

“Well, I'm certainly out of practice. After that last summer at camp, my veggie prep consisted of ripping open a warehouse store-sized bag of raw baby carrots and tossing it onto the middle of the dining room table. I told the kids we couldn't afford eyeglasses so they better eat up.” He had to smile a little, remembering their dutiful crunching.

Emily stood with the wooden spoon in her hand, studying him. “It sounds as if you were a very conscientious provider.”

He felt his smile die. “I did what I had to do.” It had been a hell of a weight at times, and he thought whole months had gone by when he didn't sleep. “But that's all over now.”

Will was getting his easy, breezy bachelorhood back.

Except here he was, in a kitchen that looked and smelled as cozy and domestic as all get out, with his
wife.

Hell. Without another word, he strode out of the kitchen and then across the hall to the dining room where Max and Tom were putting the finishing touches on the patch job on Emily's ceiling. The new light fixture was already up—a bright, homey chandelier that lit up the small room with its walls painted a soft golden color.

He watched with a little spurt of pride and approval as Tom steadied the ladder as Max climbed down. He'd taught them to be cautious like that, just as their father had taught
him.
They'd done a good repair, too, and cleaned up as they went along, another maxim that Dan Dailey had passed along to his oldest son. Clearing his throat, Will shoved his hands in his pockets. “Looks good. If you're through with the ladder, I'll take it back to my truck.”

Maybe, he thought, maybe he should load the ladder, then load himself and head on home. The delicious smells in the kitchen, the camaraderie he'd felt working with his brothers, not to mention the
woman
in the kitchen—he didn't want to get used to any of them, right? A carefree guy like himself could head out to a local watering hole for a beer or two on a Sunday night if he wanted. It wasn't like the old days when he'd be shoving laundry in the gaping maws of the jumbo washing machine and dryer all night, sweating to get the siblings' clothes clean in preparation for another school week.