“Em, let me check this,” he said, already reaching for the play button. He gestured toward his wine rack. “Why don’t you open a bottle of wine?”
“Sure,” she said. “Red or white?”
“You choose,” he said distractedly, listening to a couple of annoying calls before a familiar voice came on in the third message.
“Boone,” his former mother-in-law said, an indignant huff in her voice. “I just got off the phone with Caroline Watson. She was at your restaurant tonight and called me to tell me you were there with that woman.”
Boone muttered a curse under his breath. Behind him, he sensed Emily going perfectly still. He was about to shut off the machine, but Emily stepped up and put her hand on his.
“You might as well listen to all of it,” she said quietly.
“I don’t need to,” he said, cutting off the message. “Jodie’s just in one of her impossible moods. You certainly don’t need to hear what she has to say. I should have known when we stopped to say hello to Caroline that she’d be on the phone to Jodie before we hit the parking lot. There’s not a lot I do that doesn’t make its way to Jodie. Some people seem to enjoy feeding the animosity she feels toward me. I’m used to it.”
“But this is a first for me,” Emily said quietly. “I’ve never thought of myself as the other woman.”
“Because you’re not,” Boone said, thoroughly frustrated. “And Jodie has no right to make you feel that way. It’s not even about you. It’s about me. She never thought I was good enough for Jenny. She hated that we got married and made no pretense about her belief that I’d wind up hurting her daughter.”
“Why would she feel that way?” Emily asked. “You weren’t exactly some disreputable bum.”
Boone smiled at that. “By her standards, anyone who looked twice at her precious daughter was a disreputable bum.”
“But in your case, it was worse because of me somehow,” Emily guessed.
Boone saw no point in denying it. “Everyone around here knew how I felt about you. It was hardly a secret that I was devastated when you dumped me. Jenny and I had always been friends in a casual kind of way. We started hanging out after you left. I knew she was crazy about me. I probably should have kept her at arm’s length, but she made it almost impossible to do that. And, I’ll admit, I needed someone like her, someone uncomplicated and undemanding.”
“So, Jodie thinks you took advantage of Jenny’s vulnerability?”
He nodded. “And I did. She’s not wrong about that.”
Emily gave him a long look. “Did you ever stop to consider that maybe Jenny took advantage of you?”
Boone frowned. “What? Of course not.”
“Why? Because she was a sweet woman and you’re the devious guy?”
“That sums it up, yeah.”
Emily shook her head. “Boone, women know what they’re doing, too. They can recognize when a man’s in pain, when he needs someone around who’s easy and uncomplicated. I’m not saying Jenny wasn’t a wonderful woman, because she was. At least the girl I remember was. I’m just saying she knew exactly what she was getting into when she came after you. If anyone took advantage of the situation, I’d say she did.”
Though what she said made a crazy kind of sense, Boone wasn’t buying it. “It wasn’t like that.”
“In what way?”
“Jenny was...”
“A woman in love?” Emily suggested. “We’ve been known to do some crazy things in the name of love, probably even crazier than most men would ever consider. Look, I’m just saying that Jodie’s being unfair to lay all this guilt on you. You and Jenny were two consenting adults. Whatever happened was as much Jenny’s responsibility as it was yours.”
She regarded him with a narrowed gaze obviously intended to warn him to give careful thought to his response. “Unless you somehow believe women don’t know their own minds and can’t be held accountable for their own actions?”
Boone saw that for the trap it was. “Okay, point taken.”
She gestured toward the answering machine. “Do you need to call her back?”
“And listen to more of the same?” he asked. “I’ll pass for tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough. At least now you know firsthand what we’re up against.”
“Duly warned,” she said and took a step closer. “Can we get back to our original plans now, please?”
Boone slid one spaghetti strap of her dress off of her shoulder, then kissed her bare skin. “Looking forward to it,” he murmured.
“Me, too,” she said, swaying into him.
He scooped her into his arms and headed for the master bedroom, hesitating only for a heartbeat in the doorway as a tide of misgivings about the past washed through him. Then he drew in a deep breath and stepped into what he hoped like crazy would be his future.
14
On Sunday morning, Emily made a call to B.J. to say goodbye, knowing that this time he needed to know her plans in advance. Then she sought out her grandmother before leaving for the airport. She found her in the kitchen at Castle’s helping Jerry keep up with the breakfast orders. Cora Jane glanced up from the eggs she was scrambling.
“You about ready to take off?” she asked, her disapproval plain.
“In a few minutes,” Emily said. “Could we talk before I go?”
“Cora Jane, I’ve got it covered,” Jerry said at once. “Go on. Spend a little time with Emily.”
Cora Jane nodded, then led the way to a booth in the back corner that was usually reserved for staff breaks unless the restaurant was mobbed.
“How does Boone feel about you running off again?” Cora Jane asked directly.
“He understands,” Emily said. “And I’ll be back by next weekend at the latest.”
Cora Jane’s eyes lit up at the news. “Nobody mentioned that to me.”
“Maybe because Gabi and Samantha
