CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Damn, we’re good,” Emma sighed, taking in the transformed first level of the barn. Usually used for organizing Pierce Acres CSA shares, she, Summer, Gia, and Eva had turned the space into a decadent, feminine hideaway.
Sheer fabrics draped from the rafters and pooled on the floor behind cushions and borrowed furniture. Salt lamps and strings of lights bathed the room in a soft glow. The music was soft and spa-like. Separated from the main space by thick gold curtains, a massage table and candles waited with the shirtless masseuse, Corban, Summer had tempted in from the city. On the opposite end of the room was a mani-pedi station manned by Corban’s cousin Helga, who was not shirtless. White linen tables held bottles of champagne and wine and a heavenly array of snacks and desserts. Monogrammed robes in silky shades of pink hung from a clothesline strung from the rafters.
“If goddesses hung out, they’d hang out here,” Gia said with a satisfied nod of her head.
Summer clasped her hands under her chin. “I hope Phoebe loves it!”
“Do we have to wait for Phoebe before we try the Shirtless Hunk over there?” Eva asked. Her gaze locked on Corban’s perfect pecs.
“Phoebe gets dibs,” Emma said, giving her sister the eye.
“Secondsies,” Eva raised her hand.
Gia slipped her arms around their shoulders. “Both sisters in the same place! I’m so glad you could come up for this, Eva.”
Eva squeezed back. “I miss you ladies. I’m glad Dad’s giving us an excuse to get together off-holiday.”
A car pulled up outside, and Emma peeped through the window.
“Poker person, or Joey with the guest of honor?” Summer hissed.
“It’s Joey!”
They scattered to take their places, and when Phoebe was escorted in—with Elvira Eustace at her side—Emma was ready for her with a glass of chilled champagne. Summer draped a Bride sash over Phoebe’s shoulder and Gia settled a sparkly circlet crown on her head.
“Welcome to your bachelorette party,” Emma said, dropping a kiss on Phoebe’s cheek.
“Oh, girls! This is just spectacular!”
Joey bee-lined for the food table and started loading up a plate, which Summer slapped out of her hand. “Guest of honor first!”
Joey pouted until she spotted Corban and then admired him like she would a piece of horseflesh. “Not bad, ladies. Not bad.”
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The party was a hit, Emma thought with satisfaction.
Phoebe, in her ivory robe and glittering crown, peeped out from under the cucumber slices on her eyes to reach for her glass of champagne while Helga applied a candy pink polish to her toes.
Seated on a bejeweled meditation cushion, Joey shoved pie in her face. She’d refused a manicure but had relented on the toes, letting Helga slather a sexy deep purple on the nails. Summer and Gia were enjoying their childless night out with glasses of wine and plates of Joey’s sinful cheesecake brownies. Gia and Elvira—who was piling her salt and pepper curls on her head in preparation for her turn on Corban’s table—chatted about town business both chamber- and gossip-related.
“I heard a rumor about our Emma here.” Elvira’s gossipy smile drew a collective “oooooh” from the group.
Emma downed her glass of champagne in one gulp and reached for another. “Niko and I are just friends,” she said firmly.
“And I was just interviewing Carter,” Summer supplied.
“And I was just Beckett’s tenant,” Gia said with a shrug.
“And I could never get past my hate of Jax,” Joey snickered smugly.
Emma was not impressed.
“Oh, no dear! You misunderstand.” Elvira shook her head making her ringlets dance. “Of course you’re not dating Nikolai. I was referring to the rumor that you’ve decided to make your move to Blue Moon permanent.”
Emma felt a swift rush of conflicting feelings. What exactly did Elvira mean by “of course” she wasn’t dating Nikolai?
“Are you really staying?” Gia demanded. “Please say yes!”
“I gave myself a year to decide whether or not Blue Moon was a good fit for me, but honestly I can’t imagine leaving.”
Gia’s fist rose victoriously. “Yes!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, dear,” Elvira clasped her hands together. “Now you can start looking for a place of your own.”
Gia tapped a finger to her chin. “Hmm, if you move out, that means Beckett and I could have a sex cottage instead of getting it on in all the hiding places in the house.”
“You know what I find interesting is that your mind went straight to Nikolai,” Phoebe told Emma, admiring her newly painted nails.
“He is gorgeous,” Summer agreed. “I’ve never met a model who wasn’t awestruck just by looking at him.”
Emma pointed triumphantly. “And that is exactly the reason we’re just friends. He’s a womanizer. A charming one, but I’m in the market for forever, not an incredibly gratifying one-night stand.”
“People change,” Gia said innocently.
“No they don’t,” Emma argued. “I’m not going to change my mind, and Niko isn’t going to suddenly become the settling down type. And I don’t care what the Beautification Committee is cooking up. It’s not going to happen.”
Elvira gave a dainty shrug. “I haven’t heard a peep out of them on the matter. I don’t think you’re even on their radar.”
Emma frowned into her champagne. Not on their radar? Was it because they recognized a terrible match when they saw one?
“Don’t worry, Emma. I’m sure once you’re a permanent resident the BC will find some poor schmuck to hook you up with,” Joey said, helping herself to a fresh glass of wine.
Elvira frowned at Joey and Joey shrugged. “What?” she asked, all innocence.
Emma pointed with her wine glass. “What’s going on with you two?” she demanded.
Elvira reached for her bag and pulled out her phone and reading glasses. “Nothing at all, dear. I’m just going to send a quick text.”
“Sucker,” Joey mouthed at Emma.
Emma was beyond thankful when everyone moved on from her as a topic. She tried to settle back into the festivity of the night but couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone else knew something that she didn’t. She wondered what the Beautification Committee’s reaction would have been if they had spotted Niko and Emma and their almost-kiss in the barn.
Annoyed with everyone, including herself, Emma shook it off and decided to forget about it all for the night. She plopped down on a cushion next to Phoebe and Eva followed suit.
“Phoebe, since you’re about to become our wicked stepmother, I feel like we should know how you and our dad fell in love,” Eva said.
“Yes, do tell,” Emma agreed, tucking her feet under her.
Phoebe’s face lit up. She snuggled into her robe, settling in for the story. “Girls, before I begin, I hope you’re not as prudish as my boys are when it comes to my love story.”
“They don’t approve?” Eva was appropriately horrified.
“They had a hard time accepting it in the beginning,” Summer said diplomatically. “But to be fair, they didn’t know anything about Franklin until they caught him shimmying off of Phoebe’s porch roof at six o’clock in the morning in his bathrobe.”
“No!” Emma gasped in disbelief.
“My boys can be a little…”
“Overprotective?”
“Opinionated?”
“Ridiculous?”
Phoebe’s daughters-in-law all chimed in with suggestions.
“I was going to go with insane,” Phoebe laughed.
“Our father was caught sneaking out of your bedroom?” Eva asked, her glee barely contained.
“His legs were dangling off the roof, and they pulled him down,” Summer recalled.
Emma tried to imagine her father, the man who’d grounded her when she’d slunk in four minutes after curfew, sneaking half naked out of his lover’s bedroom. Summer and Phoebe gave the blow-by-blow of the event and put them all in tears.
“I’m never going to let him live that down,” Emma announced, wiping a tear from her eye. “And just look at you two now.”
Phoebe pinked up. “I never thought I’d have a second time around, let alone one so wonderful.”
Emma felt her throat tighten with emotion. Seeing her father devastated by her mother’s abandonment had added another layer to the grief and anger she’d felt toward her mother. But watching Phoebe glow as she talked about him as one of the two great loves of her life pulled the pieces of her heart back together just a little tighter. “I’ve never seen my dad so happy,” she offered.
Phoebe took her hand and squeezed.
“Your father is a wonderful man.”
“He’s one of a kind,” Emma agreed.
“So when did you know that he was the one,” Eva demanded, her eyes bright.
“Oh,” Phoebe sighed. “It wasn’t a grand gesture or some kind of a climactic finale. He was standing in my kitchen washing my dishes after dinner one night, lecturing me on proper knife care.”
Emma laughed, knowing well her father’s speech on blade maintenance.
“That’s it? He was washing dishes, and you were like ‘I can’t live without this man?’” Eva sounded disappointed.
Phoebe laughed. “It was more like a resounding ‘yes!’ I saw him standing there in my little kitchen, whistling Tosca, and I felt like a truck had hit me. I knew that, no matter what else happened in life, I wanted Franklin by my side for it. We were friends first, not looking for love, and that ended up being the best foundation we could have had.”
“I changed my mind,” Eva sighed. “That’s incredibly romantic.”
Emma’s eyes prickled with fresh tears. “I couldn’t imagine a better partner for Dad,” she whispered, wrapping Phoebe in a one-armed hug.
“Oh, sweetie,” Phoebe sniffled. “You’re going to make me blubber.”
“You’re going to make us all blubber,” Gia’s voice cracked.
“Hell. I should have gone to poker,” Joey muttered, noisily blowing her nose into a pink napkin.
The roar of an engine from outside drowned out any further comment. It revved once, then twice.
“That’s not the entertainment, is it?” Emma demanded.
“It appears to be a sexy man on a sexy motorcycle,” Gia said, peering out the door.
It was a stampede. By the time Emma made it through the door, the men and kids had poured out of the house to admire Nikolai in jeans and that damn leather jacket astride a gleaming machine.
It wasn’t the warm Sunday dinner kind of love brought on by a man washing dishes, it was a hot fist of lust that socked her right in the stomach. He caught her eye, and that crooked, cocky grin of his went straight to her core. Friends or not, she wanted him fiercely.
And he knew it.
“Sweet wheels,” Jax whistled admiring the chrome and curves of the hulking bike.
“Thanks,” Niko said. “Got it from Ernest Washington outside of town. Had to turn the rental in and needed a set of wheels. And she spoke to me.”
The men nodded and grunted in approval as they circled up to admire the machine while the women appreciatively eyed the man.
“Just how are you supposed to resist that?” Phoebe asked Emma quietly.
“I have no idea,” Emma murmured.
The women flocked down into the driveway, mingling with the Pierces.
Nikolai dismounted and stepped back, letting Jax and Carter get a closer look. He ambled over to where Emma stood on the edge of the circle with her arms crossed.
“Want to go for a ride?” he whispered in her ear. Her blood turned to molten lava as a dozen visions crashed through her imagination. Not a single one of them involved her on the back of a motorcycle. But there were plenty of her on him, under him.
“Where are the seatbelts?” she asked lightly.
“I got a helmet for you just in case you want to throw caution to the wind and embrace a little adventure,” Niko told her.
“I like seatbelts and airbags and air conditioning,” she said primly.
“I think you’d like feeling the wind race over you when we lean into a corner.” His lips brushed her ear. “All that power between your legs? It’s an experience you shouldn’t miss.”
Damn if he didn’t turn her fair skin six shades of fuchsia.
She took a self-preserving step back and glared at him when he laughed.
“Friends, remember?”
“Emma, I’m feeling awfully friendly toward you right now.” Niko’s meaning was clear. He was the wolf, and she was Little Red Riding Hood. Only there was no woodsman to save her from herself.
The women, blowing kisses to their men and children, began to meander back to the barn. But Emma couldn’t quite drag herself away from Niko’s gaze. The evening air crackled with energy between them. It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t into bad boys. Why couldn’t her body back her up on this?
“Miss Emma? Are you ready for me?” The shirtless Corban waved a champagne flute at her from the barn door.
Niko’s face went slack, and it was Emma’s turn to laugh. “Gosh. I’d better go. Duty calls,” she said with a wink and sauntered back to the barn.