Instant Gratification

Serena looked down at her hand in hers. “And me? Are you happy for me, too?”

Emma smiled and went with her trademark honesty. It was all she had at the moment. “No. You, I’m jealous of.”

“Because I’m going after what I want, which is Spencer, and you don’t have the guts to go after Stone?”

“Actually,” Emma said dryly. “I meant because Stone isn’t likely to follow me across the country.”

“You could follow him,” her father said.

“And stay here,” Serena finished for him, nodding.

“My life is in New York.”

“Yeah.” Serena took back her envelope. “Well, if Stone hands you an envelope that says DON’T OPEN UNTIL YOU’RE READY, don’t open it, cuz you’re not ready.” Without giving Emma a chance to respond to that, she turned to Doc. “So it’s a done deal?”

He took another brownie. “Done deal.”

“Too bad Stone couldn’t talk her out of it, huh?”

Emma looked at her dad in disbelief. “What?”

Serena winced in Doc’s direction. “Sorry. That slipped out. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Her father stuffed a brownie in his mouth.

Emma didn’t blink. “You wanted Stone to talk me out of selling?” she pressed.

Her father grimaced. “Not exactly.”

Oh, boy. She set down her second brownie, her heart kicking hard. “Then what exactly?”

With a sigh, he set down his brownie and faced her. “It’s not a big deal. I just thought maybe, if things worked out between the two of you, that you’d want to stick around.”

“So you wouldn’t have to sell.”

“So I wouldn’t have to sell.”

Oh, God. “Dad, I asked you a hundred times if you really wanted this. A thousand. I asked and asked, and you never-”

“I wanted you to want to stay. To want to not sell. To want to run the clinic.” His smile was solemn and heartbreaking. “I wasn’t going to ever ask it of you.”

Oh, no. He didn’t get to pull the martyr card. “You weren’t going to ask it of me directly, you mean. Instead, you were going to have Stone talk me out of it, a nonmember of the family, a virtual stranger-”

“Is he?” her father interrupted softly. “A stranger?”

He hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her the truth. “I can’t believe this. You sold your own business, and you didn’t want to. Do you have any idea how…frustrating this is?”

“Really? You want to know frustrating?” Her father stood up. “Frustrating is your livelihood being taken away from you by the turning of time and bad genes. Or watching your child choose a world that is slowly sucking the life and joy and heart and soul right out of her, three thousand miles away so that you can’t help. That’s frustrating.”

She shook her head, devastated for him, wracked with guilt. “I’ve got to go.”

“Emma, wait.”

She turned back, unable to keep the tears out of her voice. “I’m sorry, Dad. So damned sorry you sold when you didn’t want to. I’m sorry you felt you could tell Stone the truth when you couldn’t tell me.”

“Don’t leave, Emma. Not like this.”

“That’s my point. I always was going to leave, always. I thought you knew that.”

“Yeah. I knew it.” He sighed. “I just didn’t want to.”

Stone and TJ took a group up Rockbound Summit. When they got back, dirty and exhausted, Stone headed straight to his cabin, planning to shower, then head straight to Emma and get her naked.

And somehow make her want to stay.

Instead, he stopped short on the trail in front of his cabin, surprised to find her on his porch, waiting for him. His entire body reacted at the sight of her, even his knees went weak. A dead giveaway, in his book, about how he truly felt about her. “Emma.” He moved in to touch her but she stood up and held him off with a hand.

Okaaaay. “Something wrong?”

“My dad didn’t want to sell and you knew it. In fact, he asked you to talk me out of selling the clinic.”

He blinked at the last thing he expected to hear come out of her mouth. “What?”

“You heard me. So when did he ask you? Before or after we’d slept together?”

Okay, this wasn’t going to go well, he could tell, and he stepped toward her. “Emma-”

“Don’t.” She pointed at him, her own voice a little shaky. “Don’t ‘Emma’ me in that soft, sexy voice of yours, the one that can talk me into or out of anything.”

“Out of?”

“You know damn well you’ve talked me out of my clothes on several occasions now. When, Stone. When did he ask you?”

He looked into her eyes and found not temper, but hurt. And it killed him. “In the very beginning, but it’s not like you think-”

She made a soft sound that might as well have been a knife to his gut. “In the very beginning,” he repeated, “he told me he wasn’t going to tell you about the severity of his heart attack because he didn’t want to guilt you into coming. I told him that was a bad plan, that no matter what he should be honest with you.”

“Which he wasn’t. And neither were you.”

“I told you, it wasn’t my story to tell. When it became clear he wasn’t going to bounce right back, and when you were still so unhappy here, he knew you weren’t going to stay.”

She stared up at him, so many things in her eyes it hurt to look at her.

Or maybe that was his own hurt.

“He couldn’t ask you to stay,” he said quietly. “Whatever you think you know about this, I’d never ask that of you. Never. I know what your life in New York means to you. The sale of his place just came…quick. Quicker than he thought it would.”

She stared at him, and then deflated, sank back to the porch bench. “Dammit.” She covered her face. “Dammit.”

With a sigh, Stone sat next to her. “This isn’t your fault, Emma. You know that. Just as you know that if you want something, you have to go out and get it. If things haven’t worked out the way you hoped, then change them. You of all people know you can do or get anything you damn well want if you want it bad enough.”

She lifted her face and studied his. “Except that I don’t know what I want,” she whispered.

“Well, then, that’s a problem.”

“Do you know what you want?”

“Yes. I want to keep running Wilder, leading treks, volunteering with Search and Rescue, hanging out with my brothers, and until very recently, that list also included whatever sweet smiling woman came my way. Until a not- so-sweet smiling woman came my way, one who threw everything in my life upside down, proving that life isn’t easy at all, and shouldn’t necessarily be.”

She sighed. “Oh, Stone.”

He smiled solemnly. “Is this good-bye, Emma?”

She paused, not taking her eyes off him. “I once told you that we’d be a mistake.”

His heart took a good hard knock. “Yes.”

She surprised him by cupping his face and kissing him, a warm, heart-wrenching kiss, because he knew what it meant.

It was good-bye.

“I was wrong,” she whispered against his lips, holding still for a heartbeat, breathing him in.

Destroying him.

“Being with you was the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she murmured, and with one last touch of her lips to his, walked away.

He watched her go, rubbing his aching chest, knowing she was the best thing that had ever happened to him as well, given that he was head over heels crazy in love with her.

It took her a lot longer to pack up than it had to unpack, Emma thought putting her clothes into her bags. First, she had to keep stopping to blow her nose because her eyes kept watering.