The Davis Years (Indigo) (10 page)

He held his hands out to her as she moved closer. “You okay?”

She nodded, taking his hands.

“Even with what happened out there, I’m glad I was here with you.”

She smiled, pulling him close. “Me, too.” Her mind went back to prom and the perfect couple. Prom queen Tara and lacrosse jock Davis. High school royalty. And then there was Jemma.

Davis’s face came close to hers, bringing her back to the present. “For now can we pretend you’re not leaving and that this mess of a rehearsal dinner didn’t just happen?” Davis whispered against her lips.

She nodded, resting her hands on his shoulders.

He started to speak again.

She placed her fingers over his lips. “No talking.”

Davis nodded, moving her fingers aside and placing his lips over hers.

His fingers found hers and he brought their hands to rest on his hips. She sighed, pressing her lips closer to his. Squeezing his fingers, she moved herself closer to him until there was no space between them. He turned their bodies so that she was pressed between him and the car. She wanted to stay right there forever. From her ankles to her knees and upward, her body craved Davis Hill.

“I like kissing you,” he whispered when their lips finally parted. “I missed it. A lot.”

She grinned into his shoulder. “I like that you like kissing me.”

“Good.” He stroked her hair.

When she was able to think again, something occurred to her. “That had to be weird for you. Seeing Tara like that.”

His fingers stopped moving through her braids.

“Just out of the blue like that. And it’s probably been a while since you saw her last?”

He nodded, staring down the street into dusk and streetlights.

She brushed her fingertips along the backs of his hands. “If you want to talk about her or anything, I—”

“No. I don’t,” Davis said, kissing the tip of her nose. “For now, it’s only us, remember? Your rule. Only us.”

Always a wedding guest and never a bride. That was how she wanted it. Jemma had no plans to become anyone’s bride. Definitely not soon and maybe not ever. She wasn’t sure people like her were meant to be wives. People who weren’t able to put a lot of faith into the word “love.”

Saturday morning, she sat sideways on the bathroom sink so that she could face the mirror and concentrate on applying eye shadow. She didn’t wear it often—usually she went with only eye liner and mascara for eye makeup—so the task was a challenging one. Yet it still gave her too much time to think about Davis and being pressed between his car and his body.

He was coming to pick her up soon to go to the wedding. She needed to finish getting ready. At least she didn’t have to worry about her hair. Her braids hung free over her back. Still, she needed to get done with the makeup so she could throw on her dress. She’d decided on a strappy pale-mint-colored sundress with eyelets. She paired it with white sandals and a matching jade earring and necklace set.

Not a moment sooner than she’d slipped on her sandals and checked the mirror to make sure everything worked together, she heard a knock at the front door. When she answered it, Davis’s eyes moved appreciatively over her. She returned the appraisal. He wore a light-colored sports coat with matching slacks and a white shirt unbuttoned at the throat. They draped a little on his lanky form, but he still made them look good. He pulled a bouquet from behind his back and he had to speak first because the simple gesture tied her tongue.

He ran a hand through his hair, briefly lifting it off his forehead, and gave her an awkward yet adorable smile. “Uh, dahlias. Because you don’t like roses—especially red ones—and because if I remember right, dahlias are your favorite.”

A shaky grin stretched across her face. “I only said that to you once and it was years ago. I didn’t think you were listening.”

He put the flowers into her trembling hands. “I bet you’d be surprised at what I’ve heard when you think I’m not listening.”

“I guess these need some water.” She stepped back so he could come inside. After closing the door behind him, she stepped back a little. She wanted to at least try to resist temptation.

He kissed her cheek. “You’re gorgeous.”

The flowers almost slipped through her fingers. “Ready for our first date?” Jemma asked with a nervous laugh.

Davis looked at her with a mixture of regret and desire in his eyes. “This is how it should have been at prom. Not me with Tara trying not to watch you across the room. And you looking so sad and—it wasn’t right.”

“That’s in the past now.” Jemma looked down at his loafers.

“I wanted . . . things should have been different. I wish they had been.” He caressed her chin. “Different.”

“You were so beautiful that night,” he whispered, tilting her chin up so that she was forced to look at him. The pad of his thumb was smooth and warm against her skin.

She tried to laugh off his words so they wouldn’t drown her. “When you say I’m beautiful now, I can understand it better. Then? I was a joke.”

“You’ve always been beautiful to me. Just because I was being a jerk back then doesn’t mean I couldn’t see it.” His eyes searched her face as if looking for answers her words couldn’t provide.

Davis reached out and slid his hands up her arms. He leaned in close, grazing his lips against her throat, murmuring into her skin about how it should have been her at prom. That it should have always been her. Heat blazed under every inch of her skin his lips touched.

She backed away a little. “I’ll put these away. We have to get going.” She pulled him into the living room by his jacket sleeve, careful to put as much distance between them as possible. That plan didn’t work so well. He closed the distance between them and put his hands on the back of her arms.

She breathed in the familiar scent of his cologne. By itself, it wasn’t anything special—available at any department store in the country. What made the scent special was the fact that it was on his skin. It brought back so many good memories. Funny how selective her memory could be. At that moment, with her back pressed to his chest, her mind was definitely working against her. She could only associate good things with the clean scent on his skin. Things she missed so much, her heart ached when she thought about them.

“Davis . . .” She trailed off as he led her to the couch. He sat and pulled her onto his lap. She tossed the flowers on the coffee table and then pressed her body to his.

He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry for the jerk I’ve been. I am.”

“Don’t,” she whispered over his lips. She was too distracted by need for him to finish her thought, but thankfully he didn’t take her single word to mean he should stop kissing her. Because that wasn’t what she’d meant by it. At that moment, she didn’t know what she’d meant by it. He trailed a series of lazy kisses down her throat and across the rise of her breasts, his lips pressing across the boundary between dress and flesh.

She caressed his cheeks as he continued to give her those gentle kisses.

She pushed his blazer away from his shoulders and he shrugged out of it. She traced her hands over the area between his shoulder blades, massaging it through his shirt.

He pressed his hand into her thigh and she kissed him again, wrapping herself up in the taste, the feel of the kisses she’d missed so much.

“Always wanted you,” he whispered before running his lips over the side of her neck. She threw her head back.

She locked her fingers behind his head. “Show me how much.”

Davis hesitated for a moment and then she felt his hand on her inner thigh. “You make it so hard for me to be good.”

Her teeth nipped at his earlobe. “Maybe you shouldn’t try so hard.” She moved down to his neck. “Please don’t try so hard.”

And then she heard her phone vibrating on the coffee table. She stared over her shoulder at it for a moment, knowing she needed to answer it, but not wanting to move.

“You better get that, I guess,” Davis said, but he seemed reluctant to let her move far enough to grab the phone. She gave him another longing kiss and then reached for her buzzing phone. Emily Rose’s number was displayed on the screen. “Hey, I know. I’m about to leave right now.”

“Jemma, she’s really freaking out,” Carolina said, throwing Jemma off for a moment since she’d called from Emily Rose’s phone.

“What’s going on?” Jemma turned her attention away from Davis and his kisses.

“The bruise—her face—she’s threatening not to get married today,” Carolina said. Jemma could hear Emily Rose shrieking in the background. “No one here can calm her down. She won’t listen to any of us.”

“We’re on the way,” Jemma said.

“Emily Rose?” Davis got to his feet while helping her to hers.

Jemma nodded. “We, uh . . . need to get going.”

“That is very unfortunate,” Davis said as he handed her purse to her.

Jemma agreed while thinking of the touches and kisses he’d given her a few moments earlier. But she knew Emily Rose needed her, and despite all else, there was nowhere else in the world she would be but at the church.

***

Emily Rose was practically in hysterics. She flew around the small room, screeching about Tara and concealer and bad omens and cold feet. Apparently, Michael had made the bad move of telling Emily Rose it was okay if she wanted to postpone the wedding until her face healed. She blew that out of proportion, saying that Michael didn’t want to marry her. Plastic shopping bags, clothes, and garment bags were all over the place, as were other things like giant makeup cases. As in more than one.

Carolina chased Emily Rose around the room with a makeup pad and a bottle of foundation. Meg sat in the corner on a bench between two racks of choir robes, calling soothing words out to her and begging her to calm down. Emily Rose yelled at both of them that they weren’t helping while swiping at tears. That was the overwhelming and slightly chaotic scene Jemma walked into.

“How late do you want this wedding to be? Your makeup isn’t started yet. Would you please sit your butt down?” Carolina slammed the bottle of foundation down on a nearby table and picked up a tube of concealer. “You’ve ruined the little bit of progress I made. Now I’m going to have to start all over.”

Carolina and Meg looked beautiful, if angry and worried. Carolina had been right about the dresses. They wore strapless, silky peach dresses with tight bodices and flowing skirts and matching peach pumps. Meg’s black hair was swept up into a French roll and accented with sprigs of baby’s breath. Her bangs, which were cut to lay straight across her forehead normally, must have been bobby-pinned back into the rest of her hair. Carolina’s hair fell over her shoulders and back in glossy hairspray-secured curls. She had baby’s breath and Ms. Fletcher’s gardenias woven into a thin, almost invisible band that she wore like a headband.

Emily Rose glared at Carolina, the angry bruise on her right cheek making the expression more menacing than it normally would have been. With her wheat blonde hair piled on top of her head and gentle tendrils of curls falling into her face, she would have looked angelic if not for that expression and the accompanying bruise. She wore a gray zip-up hoodie emblazoned with her alma mater’s name and white cotton shorts along with purple flip-flops. Jemma spied a tiara sitting on the table behind her.

Emily Rose snatched the tube of concealer from Carolina and waved it in the air. “Concealer. What good is concealer going to do? There might not be any wedding. My face is monstrous and Michael may as well have said he didn’t want to marry me. He’s been acting weird all week. He just wants a way out of this.” She slammed the tube onto the table next to the tiara. Jemma walked further into the room. Nobody had noticed her arrival yet. That wasn’t surprising with all the commotion going on in there.

Carolina put her hands on Emily Rose’s shoulders. “Calm down, honey. Michael loves you, okay? You know that man wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to be. He was only trying to help, even if he’s really bad at it.”

Emily Rose burst out laughing before she could regain her scowl. “That’s not funny. Stop trying to make me laugh when my life is falling apart.”

Carolina shrugged, smoothing concealer across Emily Rose’s cheek. “It got you to stop moving long enough for me to apply this stuff. Goal accomplished.”

“I have the most awful mother-in-law ever breathing down my neck, a giant bruise on my face thanks to my trashy sister, who finally left this morning, and these ugly flowers thanks to that same fire-breathing mother-in-law,” Emily Rose muttered as Carolina worked away with the foundation. She’d put down the concealer for the moment.

“Tara’s gone?” Jemma asked.

“Yeah. She’s ruined my life again. Made sure that everything continues to go to crap for me. Mission accomplished, so what does she need to stick around for?” Emily Rose said.

Carolina stood back, admiring her handiwork. “You know, you really can’t see it now unless you’re like—this close.” Carolina leaned in so that her nose was very near Emily Rose’s. They laughed.

“Yeah, I guess you done good,” Emily Rose said with an exaggerated drawl, holding up the mirror that Carolina handed her.

Carolina and Meg talked her down enough to get her through the rest of her makeup and started on the six thousand steps that went into successfully getting her into her dress. While they worked, Jemma tried to keep Emily Rose thinking happy thoughts by telling her how great everything looked. But once the corset and the underskirt were in place, Emily Rose backed away, shaking her head.