Best of Three (Counting on Love) (19 page)

“You’re going to have to get up if we’re going to move the couch,” Isabelle said.

“If you can’t move it with me on it, then you’re not moving it,” Emma said, grumpily. And bit into another pretzel.

Amanda sat next to her on the couch. “What is that, your fourth bag in three days?”

“Fifth,” Olivia said.

Emma glared at her. “We’re going to have to review the Roommate Alliance. What happens in this condo stays in this condo, little sister.”

“You’re moping. And eating your feelings,” Amanda pointed out.

“No shit.”

“What’s going on? You never mope,” Isabelle said, sitting down on the coffee table.

“And you only eat your feelings when it has to do with a guy,” Olivia added from where she was dusting Emma’s bookshelf.

“Do you mind?”

“You’re attached to this dust?” Olivia asked.

“We’ve been together a long time now.”

Olivia kept dusting. Emma slumped back against the end of the couch.

“Who’s the guy?”

“No one important.”

“Hey, what were you doing out with Nate the other night?” Olivia asked.

Isabelle and Amanda both sat up straighter. “Nate?” Isabelle asked.

Emma threw a pretzel at Olivia. “How did you know about Nate?”

“Dena told me. She said he came over to yell at her and you jumped in and the next thing she knew you were leaving with him.”

Dena. Dammit. Dena had asked Olivia to teach her to bake, so the two had been spending Saturday mornings together.

“Nate? Sullivan? As in the bane of your existence?” Amanda asked.

“Yes. Definitely. That’s him,” Emma said.

“You and Nate went out?” Isabelle asked.

“I went
along
with him when he went after Michael and Shannon. He’s trying to break them up and keep them from eloping and getting pregnant and…” She sighed. “He’s nuts, so I went along to be sure he didn’t make it on the evening news.”

“And now you’re mad at him because of something that happened with Shannon?” Isabelle guessed.

“No, he mostly behaved where she was concerned.”

“How about where
you’re
concerned?” Isabelle asked. “Did he say or do something?”

Had he ever. The bastard. Emma reached for another pretzel. Only two left. That was so not going to be enough.

“What did he do?” Amanda asked, looking concerned.

Emma had no doubt that given half a reason, Amanda would go find Nate and chew his ass. She almost smiled at that image. “He was his typical asshole self,” Emma said. “He said and did a lot of things.”

Isabelle frowned. “I do not get why the two of you drive each other so crazy.”

Emma would have said sexual tension a week ago. But apparently that was just her.

Fuck.

She dug for a pretzel and pulled the last one from the bag. Damn. She was going to need to go to the store.

“You must have had a big fight,” Amanda said. “Ryan mentioned that Nate was acting weird in practice on Sunday.”

Isabelle nodded. “Shane said the same thing.”

“Weird how?” Emma asked.

“Distracted and pissed at the world was what Shane said.”

Distracted and pissed off? What did he have to be pissed off about? He’d won.

The guy made her insane. Emma pushed up off the couch. “Do we have any ice cream?” she asked Olivia.

“Stop right there,” Amanda said in her best big-sister voice.

Emma turned, an eyebrow up.

“What happened with Nate? You two have been making each other nuts for three years but you’ve never reacted like this. Tell me what he did.”

Isabelle grabbed Amanda’s arm. “I told you it’s nothing. If she needed help with something, she’d tell us. Or Conner.”

Emma’s eyes went wide as she looked at her older sister. Amanda was the protector in the family. Yes, Conner was protective, but Amanda had long ago taken on the role of defender. She’d handled more than one guy for her sisters over the years.

Emma flashed to a not-so-long-ago memory at Trudy’s where she’d teased a guy a little too much and he wasn’t taking no for an answer. Amanda had physically removed the guy’s hand from Emma. And she’d ended up with a bloody nose because of it.

Emma couldn’t let her think that Nate had done something to truly hurt her. It was just part of this stupid game they seemed to be playing and she’d let herself take it too seriously.

“He kissed me,” she said simply. “And now hasn’t called me and my ego’s bruised.”

All three of her sisters stood staring at her, mouths open.

Then Isabelle’s lips stretched into a huge grin and she gave a loud, “
Yes!
” She swung to face Amanda. “I told you. I told you it was something like that.”

Amanda still looked concerned. A little shocked, but concerned. “You said they’d slept together.”

“You thought we
slept together
?” Emma asked Isabelle. Though it was close.

Isabelle knew Emma. They’d lived together and were the closest of the sisters. Isabelle had been her sidekick since Emma was five and Isabelle was four. If Emma was going to get into trouble, Isabelle was going to be there beside her.

“I figured if you and Nate were together for more than twenty minutes alone that, yes, clothes would be coming off.” Isabelle grinned unapologetically. “There is a heat between the two of you that everyone within a few feet feels.”

Emma’s stomach flipped at that. So it wasn’t her imagination? It wasn’t wishful thinking?

Then she frowned and turned to stomp to the freezer. “Well, Nate’s not aware of that.”

“Of what?” Olivia said, watching Emma grab the carton of Chunky Monkey and a spoon.

“That our clothes are supposed to be coming off.”

She dug into the ice cream, then froze. Dammit. She’d admitted that…

“You wanted your clothes to come off and he didn’t?” Isabelle demanded from the doorway.

Emma turned. All three sisters were now crowded into the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

There was no escape.

She sighed. “Yes. I mean, the kiss was…amazing. Both of them.” She waited for her sisters’ reactions.

They all grinned.

“But he didn’t want to go any further.”

“And you told him you wanted to?” Isabelle asked.

Emma nodded, her cheeks heating.

“Oh, boy,” Olivia muttered.

Emma nodded again. “I know.”

“And you think he was messing with you,” Isabelle concluded.

Emma dug her spoon into the ice cream. “Yep. We’ve been doing this dance for three years. And he finally…dipped me and ended it.”

No one said anything for a moment. Emma took a huge bite of ice cream.

A phone rang in the living room. Olivia was closest. She disappeared around the corner. When she reappeared she was holding Emma’s phone. “It’s Nate.”

Even that made her heart trip. Dammit. “So what?”

“He’s calling,” Amanda said. “Don’t you want to hear what he has to say?”

Emma put a big bite of ice cream in her mouth. “
No
.”

“Maybe there’s a good reason for him to not call the last few days.”

“Don’t care.”

Amanda narrowed her eyes. “Yes, you do.”

“Fine.” Emma set the ice cream down. “I do. And that’s dangerous, considering I’m into him more than he’s into me. So…I don’t want to talk to him.”

Her cell phone rang again. Then her text message notification chimed. Then her home phone started ringing.

She crossed her arms and waited. The answering machine kicked on and the next thing they heard was, “Dammit, Emma, I told you to keep your phone on and close. Call me immediately.”

He hung up and Emma looked at her sisters. “He and I would never work out.”

Isabelle was the first to start laughing, then Olivia, then Amanda. Finally Emma grinned.

“He seriously talks to you like that? Call me immediately? And he thinks that will work?” Isabelle asked.

Emma had to swallow before she replied. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff he said.” She was still having a hard time believing some of it. But she sure kept replaying it in her head. That and the way she’d responded to it.

There were definitely things her sisters didn’t need to know.

Her cell phone started ringing again.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Emma muttered. She did
not
want to talk to him. He’d be able to wear her down and that pissed her off as much as her falling for his let-me-be-in-charge-of-you-for-a-week bullshit. “I’m going to the store.”

She headed for her room for a change of clothes and some makeup. Yes, she was making a store run for junk food, but she had a sudden urge to wash her hair, put on some lip gloss—at least—and change into clothes she was
sure
were clean.

Forty-five minutes later, she grabbed her purse and slipped on her sandals. “Anyone need anything?” she asked her sisters.

They had rearranged the couch, the bookshelf, the armchair and were now working on the computer desk.

“Wine.”

“Strawberry daiquiri mix.”

“Kahlua.”

She grinned. “Glad the unpacking is going so well.” This was for Olivia’s knick knacks. They hadn’t sweated and gotten dirty and needed liquor after moving her furniture in. Of course, Conner, Shane, Ryan, Cody and Nate had helped with that.

Emma stubbornly ignored the memory of Nate in faded blue jeans that clung lovingly to his ass and a dark red T-shirt that clung lovingly to his shoulders, chest and stomach.

Ten minutes later she was pushing a cart through the liquor section of Carl-Mart. Carl-Mart was a slightly smaller, slightly more expensive version of the big, nationwide chain of stores it rhymed with. Emma thought it was funny. The bigwigs at the nationwide chain of stores it rhymed with did not. But there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Of course the press around their
attempts
to do something about it had resulted in a ton of free advertising for Carl-Mart and they were doing very well.

She set a jug of margarita mix in her cart next to the bottle of wine as her phone rang again.

She pulled it out, determined to hang up on Nate, but realized it was Shannon before she pushed the dismiss button. She accepted the call. “Hey.”

“You have to come down here.” Shannon sounded panicky.

“Where are you?”

“Carl-Mart.”

Emma stopped in the middle of the aisle. “Seriously? Why?”

“We’re doing the scavenger hunt for Jane and Matt’s couples’ shower. Michael and I decided to hit Carl-Mart.”

Jane was a friend of Shannon’s from high school. She was two years older than Shannon but they’d hit it off in choir and had stayed close. Jane was marrying her high school sweetheart in a month or so. Shannon was one of the bridesmaids and they were having a couples’ shower that evening. The main event was a scavenger hunt where the guests broke up into couples and had to find the five things on the list in two hours and not spend more than fifty dollars. All items were to be gifts for the bride and groom and could be anything from sentimental to silly, as long as they fit the criteria on the list.

“I’m here. What’s the problem?” Emma asked, quickly grabbing a bottle of Kahlua and starting toward the chocolate-covered pretzel section of the store. No matter what Shannon’s emergency was, Emma had to have those pretzels.

“You’re here?” Shannon immediately sounded relieved. “Thank god.”

“What is going on?”

“Nate’s here.”

Emma stopped dead in the middle of the cookie aisle. “What?”

“Nate’s here. Like the other night. Michael is skipping out on some dinner thing and Nate’s pissed so he came down here to find him. We’re hiding from him in the women’s dressing room right now.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “How did he know you were here?” She grabbed the pretzels and started for the dressing rooms. Then she circled back and grabbed another bag.
Then
headed for the dressing rooms.

“He found Michael’s copy of the shower invitation. Michael had written
Carl-Mart
on the bottom.”

Emma shook her head. She wound her cart through the racks of clothing. “Where is he now?”

“Sitting on a bench up front waiting for us to come up to pay for our stuff.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Emma muttered, turning her cart toward the front of the store.

Chapter Seven

“Fine. I’ll go talk to him,” Emma said. “But you guys can’t avoid him and
hide
from him. That’s not going to help him trust you.”

“I know.” Shannon sounded sheepish. “We saw him and ducked in here without thinking.”

Emma started to lecture her further, but changed her mind. She could do that later. She had someone else to lecture about their behavior right now. “Have fun. Be good. See you soon,” she told Shannon before hanging up.