Emerson switched feet, nodding. “You might be right.”
“I’m slacking off, too, these days. I should be job hunting,” she moaned, closing her eyes and wriggling down until she could rest her head on the arm of the sofa. “I can’t keep sponging off the Reeds forever. And I don’t want to be Ward’s nanny, either. I need a real income.”
“Do you want a job?”
She opened one eye. “What’s the alternative?”
“Marry me.”
Here they went again. “Look—”
He waved off her complaint. “I’m just asking, Wye. I need to know things about you. If you don’t want a job, and you want to marry me, I’d do my best to make it so you didn’t need one, but if you do want one, I’m not going to stand in your way. I want you to know that.”
He kept offering her so much. Wye wished life would slow down long enough for her to get to know him so she could decide how to proceed. She had too many decisions to make these days, and she didn’t feel capable of making another one.
“I like working. The thing is—you can’t tell Cass about this, by the way.”
Emerson pretended to zip his mouth closed, then went back to work on her feet. He had the most amazing technique, Wye decided, but she forced her thoughts back to the present when they slipped to wondering what he could do with those hands on other parts of her body.
“The thing is, there aren’t any jobs for a paralegal around here. All the openings are in Billings or Bozeman, and as nice as she’s been about putting me up, I’m probably going to have to move.”
“Or marry me.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “Fine. You’re right. My other alternative is I could marry you.”
He stopped massaging her feet and instead gripped her ankles. “Would it really be so bad?”
“I don’t know. I know nothing about you.”
“What do you want to know?” Emerson asked, not letting himself slide his hands up her legs, the way he wanted to. If he had his way, he’d explore every inch of Wye’s body, but that had to wait until she felt the same way about him.
Meanwhile, he waited as patiently as he could for her to answer. He knew he shouldn’t promise to support her until he found his own full-time job and that he’d be lucky to find something in town. He, too, might need to move to Billings or Bozeman.
“Everything. Start at the beginning.” Wye took another draw on her beer.
The beginning. He didn’t like that part.
“I was born outside Spokane, but my parents died in an accident when I was seven.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. That’s very young to lose your folks.”
Emerson kept going. He’d learned long ago not to dwell on that time. The wound was as fresh now as it had been back then. He’d never forget the moment his principal had come to fetch him from class, sat him down in her office and explained in short, clear sentences that his mother and father were dead and never coming back.
“Not ever? Not even if I’m really good?” he’d asked. He didn’t know where that idea had come from. It was just something to say to fill the awful gap left by her words, but sometimes he thought he’d been trying to be really good ever since, on the off-chance…
He cleared his throat. “My aunt and uncle took me in. They lived on a farm in southern Illinois and were quite religious,” he explained. “Quite conservative, too. Believed in leaving the size of their family up to God, so I have a lot of cousins, who have a lot of kids themselves.”
“Is that what you believe? That God should determine the size of your family?”
Was she afraid he’d make her have eleven kids? “No,” he said. “I’m all about free will and planning ahead.”
She smiled. “So it was like having siblings when you moved in with them.”
“To an extent.” He wasn’t sure how to explain it so she’d understand how crowded the house was—and how lonely sometimes. “It wasn’t like they mentioned my parents or the difference between me and their own children, but that difference was there all the time no matter what I did. I think my cousins would have accepted me fully if it wasn’t for the distinction my aunt and uncle made. As we grew older, it got more pronounced, but it wasn’t just me who bore the brunt of their behavior,” he added, hating how self-pitying he sounded. “My aunt and uncle were strict with all of us. Their motto was ‘everyone contributes,’ but it wasn’t a ‘we’re all in this together’ sort of thing as much as a ‘what have you done for me lately?’ type of situation. I think we all were a little worried we might get taken for a ride in the family car and dropped off on the side of the road like an unwanted puppy.”
“Emerson, that’s awful!”
“They were farmers, Wye. Far from wealthy. They had eleven kids. The money pressures must have been hard.”
“Even so!”
Her outrage on his behalf warmed him. When he thought back to those days, the muscles in his neck tightened. It was only later that he realized how tense he’d always been. “When I turned sixteen, my uncle took me aside and made it clear it was time for me to leave.”
“Did you graduate from high school at least before he kicked you out?”
“I got a job. Got my GED. Then I got on with my life.” Tears shone in Wye’s eyes, and Emerson’s gut twisted. He hadn’t meant to make her sad. “Hey, it wasn’t so bad,” he assured her. “The Army was the making of me. Taught me all kinds of things. Gave me a career. I would never have known the General without it—or you.”
“I just think kids deserve their childhoods,” Wye
