Best of Three (Counting on Love) (4 page)

He was serious. Part of her admired how strongly he felt about his role and how protective he was. Part of her thought he was in need of a prescription or two from his friendly neighborhood psychiatrist.

“You’re not going to be able to figure out where they are,” she said, feigning cockiness.

“Shannon didn’t text you about how to get to the Washburn Theater downtown?” he asked.

Dammit.

“That might be for something else.”

“I wish you could come with us tomorrow night. You’d love the band,” Nate read from her screen. He looked at her. “She sent it yesterday. Which makes tomorrow night tonight.”

Emma sighed. “Michael’s taking her to see this band she loves. She was amazed they were coming through Omaha. It’s a one-night show.”

“What’s the Washburn Theater?” Nate asked.

“An old building down on Tenth Street,” she said. “It used to be a restaurant or a club back in the twenties. They have a stage and this big open area with room for tables and dancing and stuff. They produce little plays and have comedians and live music and stuff.” She shrugged. “It’s harmless, Nate. They card at the door. The kids can get in underage but they’re given a different colored wristband so they can’t get served at the bar. The band plays for a couple of hours in front of an audience of like two hundred. This is small-time stuff.”

“Thank you.” He handed her the phone and started for the front door.

Oh, no. No way. She ran after him, slipping around him and blocking his path. “You’re not going down there.”

“You’re moving fast for a chick who uses a cane.”

Dammit. She frowned. “I don’t need it all the time.” She didn’t. It was for long distances and for when she got tired. Her hip was sore today, but her concern for Shannon had easily overridden her achiness. Of course it had to happen in front of Nate.

“Clearly.” He moved to open the door.

“You’re not going down there,” she repeated firmly.

“I am.”

“You can’t seriously want to hear this band play for two hours. You’ll hate it.”

“Not as much as I’ll hate being a grandfather already.”

Emma felt her mouth drop open.

He scowled at her. “What?”

“Overreact much?” she asked.

“Get out of my way.”

“No.”

He put both hands on her upper arms and started to move her. “There’s no way you can physically keep me from going down there.”

Emma thought fast. He was going down there. This had disaster written all over it. She shrugged off his grasp. “Fine.”

He let her go and stepped around her.

She headed for the kitchen, grabbed her purse and cane, called, “I’ll text you” to Dena and was out the door, down the steps and beside Nate before he got to the truck.

He looked at her as he reached for the door. “What are you doing?”

“If you think I’m going to let you go after Shannon by yourself, you’re nuts.”

Nate sighed, that familiar put-upon expression on his face as he regarded her. He didn’t seem particularly surprised. He seemed annoyed.

She could live with that. Nate was pretty much perpetually annoyed with her and she’d survived this long.

“Besides,” she said, opening the passenger side door. “You’re going to make an ass out of yourself and I
must
have a front row seat for that.”

Chapter Two

He should have lied to her.

The thought wouldn’t leave Nate alone as they drove toward downtown Omaha. Emma was little and his truck was big, but she seemed to take up a lot of space.

“Nice truck,” she commented, settling into the seat as if she was getting comfortable in her favorite easy chair. She leaned back and stretched her legs out, propping her feet on the dash and causing the short cotton skirt she wore to hike to mid-thigh. One shoulder of the nearly see-through T-shirt she wore kept slipping down, exposing the strap of the fitted tank underneath that molded to her breasts and flat stomach. “Ah,” she sighed, as the cool air from the vent hit her skin. “I love getting sweaty, but I’m a big fan of the AC too.”

Jesus.

The smooth, tanned skin drew Nate’s attention and he couldn’t look away. She had to use a tanning bed. It was early June and hot today, but it hadn’t been warm enough to lie by the pool and get a tan like that. Besides, she had to be naturally pale. All four of the Dixon girls were blond and fair. Emma’s skin was much more golden than any of the others.

She shifted again, crossing one ankle over the other, and toeing off her ridiculously high-heeled sandals. Her feet were beautifully arched, with sexy crimson toenails.

Beautifully arched? Sexy toenails? Nate rubbed a hand over his face. He needed to get a grip. He’d never noticed a woman’s feet before and had definitely not found them particularly sexy. Nor had he made note of the color of their toenail polish.

“What’s wrong with you?” Emma asked.

They’d been alone in close proximity for more than five minutes today. That was what was wrong with him. That didn’t happen. On purpose.

“Tanning beds are bad for you.”

She gave him a funny look then said, “One of my friends owns a massage and tanning place. I let her take free yoga classes in exchange for free massages and
spray
tans.”

He focused on the road instead of on the woman beside him. He shouldn’t have played with her in the kitchen. He’d wanted her phone, but getting that close, smelling her, putting his hand on her ass? Not the brightest move if he wanted to
stop
feeling like he’d very much love to grip that ass while thrusting into her against the nearest wall.

She wiggled again and her scent filled the air around him.

Dammit. He shifted and thought about rolling down a window to dispel the teasing aroma.

“I walked into the convenience store after school one day to buy a pack of gum and there was a new girl working. She was sitting behind the counter with a little girl on her lap, reading her a book.”

Nate looked at Emma. She looked like she was making herself right at home. She held a water bottle and a bag of M&M’s, presumably that she’d taken from her purse, and was reclining as if she’d never been more comfortable.

“What are you doing?”

“Telling you a story.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to,” she said.

“Because you’re completely incapable of being
quiet
for a few minutes?”

“Based on past experience, I’m pretty sure
you
don’t have anything to say that
I
will find interesting, so I might as well be the one talking.” She held her bag of M&M’s out.

He ignored the candy. “And being
quiet
is out of the question.”

“If I’m quiet, you won’t hear this story.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly.” She poured four of the M&M’s into her palm and went on. “I asked the girl her name and she said Dena and that her daughter’s name was Shannon. Then something out the window caught her eye and she swore. She looked like she was about to be sick. She handed Shannon over to me just as this guy got out of his car. It was her boss and if he found out she had her kid at the store while she was working she was going to get fired. When he walked in, I pretended that Shannon was my little sister and I kept her occupied while Dena talked to her boss. We looked around the store, I bought a package of cookies and then we went outside and around the corner of the building. We sat there and ate cookies and I told her stories and we sang songs until the guy left and Dena came out to get her.”

Nate couldn’t help it. He was intrigued. Dammit.

It wasn’t the story of Dena and Shannon as much as it was the look on Emma’s face as she told it. She had a small smile on her face and her voice held an obvious affection. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Emma so…soft. She was sexy, she was fun, she was flirtatious. She was energetic and in-your-face and loved the spotlight. And with him she was sarcastic and annoying. But when she talked about meeting her friend and her daughter, she looked almost sweet.

“She gave me a free root beer float after he left as a thank you.” Emma shot him a smile and wink. “I was twelve, so that was a big deal.”

That wink.

Nate scowled.

That wink made him want to kiss her.

The story she was telling made him want to sink his fingers into her hair, tip her head and hold her in his control while he possessed her mouth.

God, that mouth. He’d heard her say the sassiest things at the bar, swear like a sailor at football games, and laugh a laugh that always hit him deep in the gut. But it was this story about how she’d met her best friend that made him want to do very dirty things to that mouth.

Maybe there was something wrong with him.

He propped his elbow on the edge of the window next to him and resigned himself to hearing this. There was enough traffic that they couldn’t pick up much speed and the stoplights seemed to sense him coming, making sure he hit every red. If he couldn’t shut her up, he figured he could enjoy watching her—her
mouth
—as she kept talking.

Emma was always talking.

“The next day I showed up and Shannon was with her again. She had toys and was playing behind the counter. She was being good and quiet, but I felt sorry for her. I mean, she was two. She needed to run and play and be loud.”

“And you told Dena that, I would guess.”

Emma told everyone what she thought all the time. It wouldn’t surprise him at all to find out she’d done so even at age twelve.

“Sure.” Emma shrugged. “I told her I thought she should let me babysit while she worked. We lived about four blocks away.”

“And Dena went for that? A little girl she’d met the day before, basically off the street?”

Emma frowned at him. “No. She turned me down. But then I went home and got my mom and she came back with me to talk to Dena. Mom felt bad for Dena too. Mom told her that she should talk to the other family I’d babysat for as a reference. And Mom told her that we would provide food, snacks, diapers, whatever Shannon needed during the time she was with us. And
then
she told her I would do it for free. I wasn’t so crazy about that part.”

Emma gave a little laugh and Nate had to grit his teeth. That laugh—why did it always make him want to grab her?

“But Mom could tell Dena needed help, so Mom wore her down. Mom’s good at that. She can always get everyone to do things her way eventually.”

Clearly Emma took after her mother in that regard, Nate thought.

“Dena finally agreed, and I started watching Shannon after school five days a week. We’d feed her and play and read, and we’d give her a bath and she’d go to sleep in my bed with me. Dena would pick her up at midnight and take her home.”

“How old was Dena?” Nate heard himself ask. Why was he engaging in this conversation? He wanted some quiet where he could think about Michael and what he was going to do about this new relationship that was screwing with his son’s head.

“She was eighteen when we met. She had Shannon when she was sixteen.”

“And you became friends?”

Emma nodded. “Slowly. I mean, she was six years older than me and I spent most of the time with Shannon, not Dena. But she wore makeup and had her own car and had her ears pierced—
three times
.”

She said it with an emphasis that made Nate smile in spite of himself. “That was cool?”

Emma widened her eyes. “Very. I thought she was awesome. I looked up to her, I guess. We started hanging out some too. Like, she’d take me along when she took Shannon to the zoo, and she took me along when she drove to see her grandparents in Kansas City for a weekend. That kind of stuff. Then as I got older, she’d go shopping with me and I’d talk to her about boys and about drama with my sisters and my friends and my parents.” She gave another soft laugh. “I had a lot of drama.”

“Hard to imagine.”

Emma was all about drama.

She nodded, looking at the M&M bag instead of him. “I guess we really first became friends when my dad died. I was thirteen and our house was incredibly sad. I could go to Dena’s house and get away.”

Nate stared at her. But thankfully, Emma kept talking—and when had he ever thought
that
was a good thing?—because he had no idea what to say.

“She let me watch movies my mother never would have approved of and let me listen to hard rock with swear words and she talked to me about
her
boyfriends and…looking back, I’m not sure that our friendship was all that appropriate. She was the one who pierced my ears the first time, the one to let me try smoking, and who gave me my first taste of liquor—tequila, by the way—and who was honest with me about sex.”

Emma shifted to sit sideways in the seat, the movement pulling her skirt higher and making Nate swallow hard. A minute ago he’d been on the verge of reaching over to hold her hand and in a blink he was thinking about running his hand up her leg and wondering about the panties she was wearing.

Letting her come along tonight was a bad idea.

“I mean, I knew the basics,” she went on. “Mom had that talk with us, and we’d watched the film in school.”