“Okay,” he replies, now sounding a little too amused for my taste.
“This isn’t funny! This isn’t cool!”
“Julia,” he says once, forcefully. “I’m very, very sorry. It’s definitely not funny or cool. It’s stupid and humiliating.”
I nod, heart pounding against my sternum. My whole body seems to vibrate with the weight of my fear. In fact, I’m shaking.
Even though it’s Emmett, that fight-or-flight response has taken over every limb.
“I just had to get out of there,” he says, running his fingers through his hair. “I’ve got one delusional girl crying, one miserable girl who’s mad at me for eliminating her. Like, Jules, I’ve known these people for one week, and it’s not as though I’ve spent that much time with them or gotten to know anyone on a personal level. It’s such a load of shit, and here they are, mad at me. And somehow I feel fucking awful about it. And then there’s Handsy Evelyn—”
I snort a frantic laugh and scrub my hands over my face. “Oh my god, she’s so handsy.”
I groan into my palms, thinking back on her while Emmett lets loose a heavy sigh.
I unbuckle my seat belt and turn to face him. He looks oversize in the back of my sedan, sitting in the middle seat with his legs open and his chin dropped. As I listen to him recount what led him here, it’s impossible not to put myself in his shoes. And there’s a part of me that gets it. I signed up for this experience, too, and I can’t say it’s exactly what I thought it would be. So I can only imagine how he’s feeling.
“She was heading straight to my house uninvited, I overheard her say it, and they were all just watching her, waiting for us to have some weird, fabricated moment. Then I… I saw your car sitting there and thought, you know what? Fuck this. I just had to get out.”
He peeks up at me now, with the very tip of a playful smirk on his lips. “And also, you should be more diligent about locking your car. You never know what type of riffraff could stumble in.”
“Emmett, don’t be a loser. You are the riffraff and as such you don’t get to scold me. Considering you hid in my car, let me drive around cluelessly, and then scared the shit out of me by popping up out of nowhere like a desperate jack-in-the-box. You could have said something right away.”
“I know, I know.” He lays one hand over his chest, clearly trying to look genuine and apologetic. “I just saw your car there, and I thought it looked like a hell of a getaway car. I get it. You’re mad at me right now. But I knew I could trust you to get me the fuck out of there and treat me like a person and not a boy-toy showboat for them to drag around and make a dime off of.”
My lips curve down as it hits me how he’s feeling about this whole venture. Mere days ago, I told him to go along with it, to sell it, to make the money. Guilt prickles at my scalp because I hate to think I’ve been a part of dehumanizing him in some way.
“I get it,” I say, the defeat clear in my tone. “Because I’ve gotten off pretty easy where Richard is concerned. But if I were you, I’d want to run from that set screaming. And it’s only been one week.”
“Right? It’s only been one week of this hell, and I have to do it for five more.”
I try to look reassuring when I tell him, “We have to do this for five more weeks.”
He groans, dropping back onto the seat, his body language defeated.
“So what’s your plan here?” I say, gesturing around us. “You’re going to skip town?”
He throws an arm over his face. “I don’t fucking know. My plan wasn’t fully fleshed out, really. I need a little distance. I’ll make my way back to the property at some point.”
I scoff. “Not with me you won’t. They’ve got cameras all over the place. I have no doubt they’ve already seen me going in and out of your house. I don’t know if there’s audio. Or a camera inside—”
He shakes his head. “None inside, and there’s no audio.”
“But you knew there were cameras at the cottage?” I say incredulously.
“I mean, yeah. But you were all bloody and limping and had thorns in your ass. I don’t think me being gentlemanly enough to help you out while you were injured counts as breaking a rule.”
I quirk a knowing brow at him, wondering if we can classify every moment of that interaction as simply gentlemanly.
He pushes off the back seat, inclining his torso toward me, filling the space between us with his bulk. All I can smell is him now, and I wonder how I never picked up on it before. “How are your injuries anyway?”
The right corner of his mouth tips up as he looks me over slyly. Proof that we both know not every bit of that interaction was aboveboard.
His smirk, his physical presence, the shared memory of that moment in the kitchen—it’s all making me a bit squirrely. Which is why I jump into motion and shoot out of my vehicle.
“They’re fine,” I say simply before slamming the door in his face. Desperate for fresh air and a new topic of conversation.
Actually, an entirely different partner for conversation.
Come to think of it, maybe no conversation at all would be best.
But he follows. The car door slams and his feet crunch against the grit on the parking lot. I can feel the weight of his presence pressing in behind me.
“I’m starving,” I announce. “I can’t think…” I trail off before I can say something stupid, but my inner dialogue finishes the sentence anyway.
When you’re sitting that close to me.
I shake the thought away. It’s not true.
“Yeah, I could hear that much,” he quips, still following me. His palm lands on the small of my back when we stop at the diner’s door, and he reaches over my shoulder to open it for me. His chest brushes against my back as he does.
I draw in a sharp breath and scoot through the entryway, trying to create a little distance. Part of me hopes that he’s just making sure I get in the door before heading home on his own.
But when we walk in, Martha’s head pops up, her salt-and-pepper bob swaying with the motion as she greets me from behind the cash register, “Hey, doll, table for… two?”
I’m ready to say No, he’s leaving, but Emmett beats me to the punch with another touch to my waist and a surprising, “Yes, please.”
Martha looks far too happy. Her eyes crinkle at the sides, showing at least fifty years of smiling. “A cowboy businessman, huh,” she murmurs appreciatively while looking Emmett over with an amused tilt to her lips. Like I chose to bring him here with me. Dressed like this.
Then, without another word, she holds up two menus with a quick grin before turning and waving them over her shoulder as a signal for us to follow along.
Emmett’s strong hand on my back urges me forward as he leans down and jokingly whispers, “Let’s go, doll.”
His breath fans across my neck, chasing a shiver down my spine as we proceed into the quiet diner.
Martha tosses the menus on the table of a booth next to the window and walks away. But not before tossing me a saucy wink accompanied by, “Two coffees coming right up.”
With a heavy sigh, I slide onto the red pleather bench across from Emmett.
“Coffee? At this time of night? Are we pulling an all-nighter, Baby Silva?”
“The Baby Silva thing has got to go,” I mutter, staring out the window into the night as cars flash past, barreling away from the diner. I’m almost jealous. It would be nice to escape this late-night rendezvous.