Tethered (40 page)

“This ain’t funny!” she whined.

“I’m not trying to be funny,” I argued. “I haven’t been drinking. Do I look like I’ve been drinking?”

She pointed the spoon at Emmet next. “How much drinking did you do before you put yourself and your sisters in harm’s way and got behind the wheel? How much?”

Emmet’s face reddened, and he actually looked guilty. “Two or three,” he answered sheepishly.

Sam stepped towards him with the spoon, but I stepped between them with my hands up. I don’t know how I would have felt watching my guy get a spanking from his mommy.

“Psycho child abuser,” Emmy muttered.

“Oh, honey, you ain’t seen child abuse just yet,” Sam said, trying to go after her.

“Can we just go to bed?” I asked with a long sigh. “Can we deal with this in the morning?”

Sam sighed heavily and then pointed her spoon at Emmet.

“I am very disappointed in you, Emmet Grayne,” she said. “It’s one thing for you to have a couple of beers, but you got in a car and drove.”

“I’m sorry, mom,” Emmet said with sincerity. “You’re right and it won’t happen again.”

“What the hell is going on down there?” Fred called from upstairs.

We all looked at each other. Fred was usually pretty level headed, but if he knew about Emmet and had seen Emmy, it would be like an atomic bomb going off inside the house.

“Everything is fine, honey,” Sam called. “I’ll be up there in just a minute.”

“Why are you yelling?”

“You know how Emmy and me get,” she forced a laugh. “Go back to bed, Frederick. I’ll be right there.”

I heard a grumble and a moment later the bedroom door closed. Sam turned her eyes back on Emmet and Emmy.

“Emmy, you’re punished until you’re twenty-one years old,” she hissed. “Emmet, you get your shit together or I will yank you out of that school so fast your head will spin.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said respectfully.

She looked at me but said nothing before she finally put the spoon down on the counter and walked out of the room. There was a collective sigh of relief.

“Come on, Emmy,” I said, taking her arm. “Let’s go to bed.”

“I can walk by myself,” she snapped and snatched her arm away.

She walked unsteadily down the hallway and began to stumble up the stairs.

Emmet leaned against the counter with his arms crossed, looking angry. I walked up to him and wrapped my arms around his waist, but he didn’t reciprocate.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

It took him a few moments to answer me.

“My mom was right for a change,” he said tightly, just above a whisper. “I was drinking and I shouldn’t have driven you guys. What if we got into an accident? What if I hurt you or Emmy, or something worse? I’d never forgive myself. I was so stupid.”

“If you were twenty-one, this wouldn’t even be an issue,” I said to him.

“If you wouldn’t have come to get me, I would have kept drinking,” he said roughly. “And I would have still driven. It’s not about my age, it’s about my limitations. Clearly, Emmy doesn’t have any, and I’m not sure that I do either.”

“You can’t change the past, Emmet,” I said, taking his face into my hands. “We didn’t get hurt, no one died. Let’s move past it. Learn from it, don’t do it again, know your limitations.”

“I keep trying to take care of you and failing,” he said, looking at me sadly.

“I’m standing here in one piece, touching you,” I smiled at him. “You took care of me, okay?”

He rolled his eyes. “You took care of yourself, like you always do.”

Finally, he opened his arms and pulled me into them.

“I love you,” I whispered, my lips close to his. “I know when I really need you, you’ll be there to take care of me, and I’ll be there to take care of you when you really need me.”

“Okay,” he said. “I can handle that.”

“Now quit whining and kiss me.”

Emmet grinned. “Oh, this is certainly a way I can take care of you.”

And take care of me he did.

Chapter Thirty-One

As the months slipped by, my career picked up to an insane pace. I was working sometimes six or seven days a week, from early morning until late at night. I took my first overseas trip to Milan, but couldn’t stay to play because I had to immediately fly back to New York for another job. I picked up more acting gigs, more commercials, and landed the cover of a widely viewed teen magazine. I became friendly with certain designers and other big names in the modeling world. I met various celebrities and was often invited to parties in mansions, on yachts, and in high end clubs. Despite all of that, I tended to fly under the radar, mostly graciously declining. I loved seeing my photographs on magazines or seeing my face on television or previews for the movie I did with Felix, but I didn’t really feel like I had to constantly be seen hanging with the cool kids.

The work was very often arduous and frustrating. There were many nights when I returned to the apartment and crashed in whatever I had been wearing at the time. Some of the designers and photographers were not the nicest people. Working with them took an enormous amount of patience. I had learned to not take every terrible thing they said to heart, but sometimes it was hard to ignore the insults about my skin color or my ‘black’ hair, or some other feature of my body, especially when I was hungry, tired, and sore. The glamorous part of the industry only appeared in pictures. In reality, it wasn’t that glamorous, but I loved it anyway and I wouldn’t have been happy doing anything else.

I got to see Emmet every other weekend. Between his internship and my unpredictable schedule, we struggled to find time to spend together, even when he was in New York. My career especially put a strain on us, but we were determined to prove my mom wrong. More than that, we were determined to prove to ourselves that we could withstand anything. We still hadn’t told Emmy, Fred and Sam about us, but then with the distance between us and the few times that either of us was able to be home in New Jersey, it was easy to hide.

My mom hadn’t relaxed on her rules about Emmet staying the night in our apartment, so he stayed in one of Felix’s penthouse rooms when he visited, whether Felix was around or not, and Felix wasn’t around often. He was very busy filming and promoting.
One Chance
, the movie I had a part in, came out at the end of summer. Emmy came to New York to attend the premiere with me and finally got a chance to meet Felix. I was amazed that she was well behaved and didn’t once throw her underwear or bra at him.

My mom’s health deteriorated so quickly, if I sat and watched her long enough, I would have literally seen her withering away. She grew weaker as the cancer ravaged her body, and she could no longer hide her pain like she used to. Before Felix went back to California, he hired a housekeeper and a nurse to help out while I was working, but my mom always managed to chase them away, saying she didn’t need anyone to take care of her. When there were more days spent in bed than not, I fought with her until I convinced her to go back home to New Jersey, to the comfort of her own home. She was less than thrilled about leaving me to my own devices, so just for show, to ease her dying mind, I asked my cousin Kera to stay with me in New York and to travel with me if I had to go somewhere. She was only a few years older than me and had just graduated from college. She hadn’t found a job yet, so she was more than willing to spend some time in Felix Hunter’s apartment and follow around her somewhat famous cousin.

I had Kera’s mother, one of my dad’s sisters, track down and call my mom’s siblings. She had been so stubborn about calling them just because she was dying, and I thought that was stupid. To my surprise, her sister Candy that she had been estranged from all of those years dropped everything and flew to New Jersey to be with her. My uncle Roger was a little bit slower at getting to the states, but when he arrived, he arrived with his wife and their three children. I forced the issue and made time to be there with them all for a few days. Even my dad’s sisters who hadn’t been helpful or very kind at all the years before had a change of heart and everyone came together.

I managed to make it to Louisiana for a few days at the very end of the summer. One of Emmet’s southern cousins was getting married. I had been working nearly nonstop, and it was never a good idea to turn down work in this industry for something as unimportant as a wedding, but I hadn’t been down south in over a year, and that big home in the hot swamps of Louisiana was my comfort place.

Emmet and I flew down together out of New York. On the plane we shared entirely too much time with public displays of affection, but we knew that the opportunities for alone time would be very few while we were with the family. We still weren’t ready to tell them about us – well mainly
I
wasn’t ready. Emmy was still making well placed statements about how gross it would be, and on more than one occasion Fred reiterated Emmet’s place as my big brother. Point taken.

I sat between Emmet and Emmy at the wedding. Very discreetly, Emmet held my hand between the seats and stroked my ring finger throughout the ceremony. You might wonder why, after his proposal in California, he had not made it official and given me a ring, but I didn’t wonder at all. I had Emmet’s word that he wanted to marry me, and I had no doubts. I never even considered getting an engagement ring. I wore my charm bracelet every day, and anytime I could get away with wearing it in a shoot, I did. That was confirmation enough for me, but day after the wedding, hours before we were supposed to board a plane back to New York, Emmet surprised me.

In the dark hours of the morning, I met Emmet outside by Fred’s truck. I was excited because we were going to squeeze in a couple of hours of fishing at our old fishing spot. Though I was disappointed Fred was sleeping in instead of coming with us, I was happy that I’d have some time alone with Emmet in one of our favorite spots. Often when I daydreamed about Emmet and I sharing a romantic moment, the fantasy took place there at the water’s edge, surrounded by the swampy woods.

“Try not to fall and hit your head, baby,” Emmet teased as we walked from the truck to our spot.

“Hardy har har,” I said dryly. Visions of Emmet finding me and pushing my hair off of my forehead while he held my hand swarmed my mind and made me smile. “Did you love me back then?” I asked him.

“I think that’s when I began to understand what was wrong with my brothers when they were around certain girls,” he said with a chuckle. “I was too young to really formulate into words what I felt for you, but I know now that it was love. You made me feel weird and it pissed me off.”

“Clearly. You teased me mercilessly,” I reminded him. “What about when we were younger?”

I remembered one of many incidents when Benny had pushed me down. Later that day Emmet had walked me home and he had told me I was special to him and I remembered how good that made me feel to hear that from him of all people.

“Again, I was too young to understand what I was feeling, but I guess you could say that it was love,” he said as we reached the fishing spot.

He put everything down carefully, and took a few steps to close the distance between us. He pushed my hair off of my cheek and dragged his knuckles over my skin.

“Donya,” he said my name with such intensity that my breath hitched. I stared up into his eyes, mesmerized. “I’ve always loved you. I think I loved you the moment you were born into this world even though I didn’t know who you were yet. The moment you were born, our bond formed. We were meant to be together. The force holding us together is bigger than us; it’s bigger than the entire universe. No matter what, baby, I was meant to be yours and you were meant to be mine.”

He reached into his pocket and produced a small black velvet box. My eyes grew so wide that it hurt. When my beautiful Emmet dropped to one knee, my breathing went haywire. My lungs forgot how to function. My heart pumped and stopped and pumped and stopped and stopped and stopped. I was light headed and I was crying. I had said that Emmet’s word had been enough, but as he opened the black box and presented me with a beautiful cushion cut diamond ring, set on white gold, I was moved beyond words. This was the perfect proposal in the most perfect place by the most perfect man.

“Donya Elisabeth Stewart, will you marry me?”

I managed a half laugh, half sob and a bit of a snort as I nodded frantically, totally unable to find my words. Emmet smiled warmly and pushed the ring onto my finger. It fit perfectly, like Emmet. He fit me perfectly, too.

Before he could stand up, I dropped to my knees, threw my arms around his neck and kissed him hard. He chuckled against my mouth as his arms snaked around me and he held me close.

“I love you,” I whispered to him when our kiss finally broke.

He pushed my hair off of my forehead again and kissed it. “I love you,” he said tenderly.

He grabbed the back of my head and dipped his tongue into my mouth. He tasted sweet and fresh and like…Emmet. I met his strokes with my own, tasting him as my tongue slid over his. His teeth grazed over my tongue before he pulled my bottom lip between his lips and dragged his tongue over it. His teeth sunk in and I moaned at the sharp but pleasurable pain.

“I’m going to make love to you, right here,” Emmet said hoarsely as he kissed across my jawline. “Right now.”

I groaned when he nipped at the sensitive skin just below my ear.

“You always smell so good,” he whispered. “Like wild flowers after a rain storm.” His nose ran over my clavicle. “And vanilla.”

Gently, he pushed me backward until I was lying in the soft grass a few feet away from the shoreline. His knee pushed between my legs as he leaned over me. He held himself up on one forearm so he wouldn’t crush me as his other hand began to slip the straps of my tank top and bra off of my arm. He kissed me across my sternum until he reached my other arm and pulled the straps down that arm, too.

“You’re everything I want,” he said, pulling my shirt and bra down, freeing my breasts. As if he couldn’t wait another second, he dropped his head and pulled a perk nipple between his lips. My hips automatically lifted off of the ground as I moaned his name. When his tongue flicked over the hard peak, fire ignited there and raced through my veins and ended in a near explosion between my thighs.