“Boone, sneaking around when we were a couple of teenagers was one thing. Now, it’s not as much fun. I feel as if you don’t have a lot of respect for me or for what I thought we were trying to build here.”
Her words seemed to shake him, just as she’d intended.
“Em, you can’t believe I don’t respect you.”
“Right this second, this feels a whole lot like a casual, meaningless fling,” she countered. “The kind you wouldn’t want anyone to find out about.”
He looked genuinely upset by her words. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. You know I want us to have a future. There are just things we have to work out before we take this thing public, especially with my son. We agreed—”
“I’m reconsidering,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t like the way this makes me feel. You just hustled me out of your house as if you’d hired me for the night and didn’t want a cost overrun.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” he said, his temper obviously stirring.
“Okay, maybe that is going too far,” she conceded, “but I’m telling you how it made me feel.”
He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. “What do you want from me, Em?”
“No more sneaking around,” she said firmly. “That’s my bottom line. We don’t have to throw this in anyone’s face, but I want to be able to have a cup of coffee or a drink with you in public without seeing a look of panic on your face every time we’re spotted by someone who knows us.”
“And B.J.? How do you see this working where he’s concerned?”
Because she understood Boone’s desire to protect his son, she softened her stance in that regard. “We won’t make a big deal of seeing each other in front of him. We’ll hang out with the family, go on an occasional outing with the three of us, stuff like that. No kissing, no touching, nothing too intimate that might cause him to ask questions. How about that? It’s a fair compromise, Boone. Fair to B.J., to you and to me.”
He sighed heavily. “I can’t argue with that.”
“But can you live with it?”
“What if he does start asking questions or getting ideas about the two of us?” he asked, still clinging to his worry.
She tossed the question right back at him. “What if he does?”
“I suppose we’d have to tell him the truth then, that we’re trying to work things out as a couple,” he said as if testing an idea he wasn’t entirely happy about.
“That seems like a good way to handle it,” she agreed. “No more information than he asks for or needs to have.”
“There’s just one problem with this sane, rational plan of yours,” Boone said, an unexpected twinkle appearing in his eyes. “Suddenly I want to throw you right back into my bed and spend a couple more hours rolling around naked with you.”
Emily laughed at the unmistakable frustration in his voice. “Good. That’ll keep you highly motivated to find a way for us to have some more alone time before I leave.”
“Sweetheart, you can count on it.”
And that was exactly the response she’d been hoping for.
* * *
Boone drove B.J. to his first day of school on Monday and was back at Cora Jane’s by eight-thirty. When he walked into the kitchen, only Emily was there.
“Where is everybody?”
“Grandmother and Samantha left before dawn for Castle’s. Gabi drove back to Raleigh yesterday.” A slow smile spread across her face. “That leaves me. I got out of going to Castle’s by pleading a full day of phone calls to stay on top of the work at the shelter and at the ski lodge.”
Boone pulled her out of her chair and into his arms. “So you’re going to be tied up all day long?” he murmured, kissing her neck. “The whole day?”
“The whole day,” she confirmed, snuggling closer.
“Too bad,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“I had some interesting ideas about what we could do to keep ourselves occupied with a whole house to ourselves.”
She kissed him then, a long, slow, deep kiss that encouraged whatever plans he had in mind. “Such as?” she murmured against his lips.
“Well, this is definitely a good starting point,” he told her. “You know, Em, it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen your room.”
“You never saw my room,” she protested. “Grandmother would have shot us both.”
“Probably true,” he said. “I just imagined every detail, so I could think of you there at night. I had some very vivid fantasies back then.”
Emily smiled. “Want to come upstairs and tell me about them, maybe see if we can make one or two come true?”
“What if Cora Jane catches us?” he asked, knowing there was little likelihood of that. She’d be at Castle’s for most of the day.
“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” Emily said. “If she were here right now, she’d probably be shooing us along in that direction with a broom. She is very anxious for the two of us to figure this out. All those rules she once had have definitely been set aside in favor of reaching her latest goal.”
“I’m thinking we shouldn’t let her down,” Boone said. “How about you? Or did you really want to make all those calls?”
Emily glanced toward the clock on the wall. “It’s not even six o’clock in the morning in Los Angeles, not yet seven in Aspen. We have time.”
“Certainly enough to get started,” Boone agreed, scooping her into his arms.
She grinned at him. “Aren’t you optimistic?”
“What can I say? You inspire me.” He winked at her. “And I did have a lot of fantasies we need to get caught up on.”
Emily also made him just a little bit reckless and crazy, traits he hadn’t allowed himself to express in years. One of these days he’d have to figure out if rediscovering that side of his personality was a good thing...or dangerously bad.
* * *
Emily rolled over and groaned. “Go home,” she
