AN INSISTENT KNOCKING WOKE me. Blinking, I sat up, clutching the sheets to my bare chest. Shaw was already up and buttoning his jeans. I paused, gawking at him. There was no other word for it. With sunlight streaming through the blinds, there was no hiding the brilliance of his body. Seriously. He was criminally hot. Everything about him shouted strength and power. Heat washed over my face as I recalled that body joined with mine—as I remembered how easily he had lifted me up in his arms. His body wasn’t created from hours at the gym. It was the result of his life. Playing sports. Years in the Marines. Hours of labor. He was real. He wasn’t a boy. He was a man. A man who made me feel like a woman for the first time in my life.
The knocking started up again and jarred me to action. I scrambled to my feet, yanked his shirt off me and tossed it at him. He grinned, his eyes devouring me as I darted to my closet in my panties.
I slipped on a pair of yoga pants and a University of Dartford sweatshirt as he pulled his shirt back on. A glance at the clock revealed it was eight forty-five A.M. I didn’t know who it could be, but the RA was rather free with her master key. If it was Heather, I didn’t want to risk her walking in on us partially dressed.
Shaking my hair back on my shoulders, I pulled the door open and faced a girl I had never seen.
She clutched the strap of her messenger bag, her wide eyes sweeping over me. “Emerson?”
“Uh, yes.”
She held out her hand. “I’m Melanie, Justin’s fiancée.”
Heat flashed through me, followed by a sudden rush of cold. Justin’s fiancée. What was she doing here? I glanced over my shoulder at Shaw. He watched curiously.
She followed my gaze, noticing him. Pink brightened her cheeks. Wholesome. That’s the word that popped into my mind. This girl was sweet and wholesome. And she was marrying Justin. Ugh. That made about as much sense as bananas going into a peanut butter sandwich.
“Oh. Hello.” She waved once at him.
Shaw stepped forward and offered his hand. “Hello, I’m Shaw.”
She visibly relaxed at the courtesy, shaking his hand in turn. I certainly hadn’t shown her any such courtesy. I was too bewildered at her appearance. “Melanie.”
“Emerson’s boyfriend,” he added.
My gaze whipped to him and I forgot that Justin’s fiancée was standing in my doorway. He looked at me mildly, as if he hadn’t uttered the most shocking thing. Boyfriend? I’d never had a boyfriend before. There had been boys, sure, but I’d never had a boyfriend. To hear him call himself that both thrilled and terrified me.
“Oh,” Melanie practically gushed now, drawing my attention back to her. “It’s so nice to meet you, Shaw.”
Feeling annoyed, I asked as gently as possible, but there was really no way to take the bite from my words, “Melanie . . . why are you here?”
Her cheeks colored again. “I know this is unexpected . . .” She shook her head and smiled weakly. “This is more awkward than I thought it would be.”
Suddenly she riffled through her bag and pulled out two envelopes. “I know you probably got these already. We mailed them, but here are the invitations to the wedding and the rehearsal dinner. It’s next weekend.”
“I know,” I said through numb lips. “I got them.”
“Yes, well. I’d love for you to be there. Justin and your mother . . . well, they’ve told me all about you.”
They did?
“Did my mom send you? Or Justin?”
Her pretty blue eyes widened. “Neither one actually sent me. But they know I’m here. Your mother is heartbroken that you won’t come.”
I swallowed back a snort. In order for her to be heartbroken she would have to possess a heart. “What did she tell you?”
“Er, just that you two had a fight a while back.”
Try five years ago.
“I know it’s none of my business. I’m not trying to pry. It would just mean so much to her and Justin if you came. And, well, me. I’m an only child . . . I kind of thought it would be nice to have a sister-in-law.” She smiled that smile again, her hands fluttering self-consciously in front of her. Genuine and self-effacing, and the insane urge to tell this girl to run as far as she could from my stepbrother and mother seized me. I wanted to warn her that she was marrying into one ginormous hot mess of a family. Mom. Justin. Even my blah of a stepfather. All three of them equated the family from hell. A crazy impulse, of course. If I did that I would have to explain why, and I wasn’t having that conversation. Especially not in front of Shaw.
Not for the first time I entertained the thought that my stepbrother had changed. The possibility—the hope—had been there ever since that phone call. Melanie seemed like a smart girl. I doubted she was diving into marriage without knowing the man she was marrying. She at least knew him better than I did. These days anyway. I couldn’t claim to know Justin at all anymore. Could I still hold him to the same judgment of five years ago?
“Here, just take them . . . . in case you lost the others.” She thrust the invitations into my hand. “Feel free to bring Shaw.” She flashed a sparkling smile at him. “It should be a lot of fun. The menu is amazing. Daddy pulled some strings and got last year’s James Beard winner to cater the wedding.”
“Sounds fabulous,” I murmured.
“Friday night’s rehearsal dinner is at the Four Seasons, overlooking the Public Garden. Your mother would have nothing less. It might even outdo the wedding.” Melanie started to edge out the door, but she hesitated before turning back around and folding me in a hug. “I hope we can be friends, Emerson.” Her lips brushed my hair as she spoke.
I patted her back awkwardly. Damnit. Why did she have to be so nice?
Releasing me, she stepped back, her cheeks pink again. She really was a Girl Scout. “Well. I hope to see you soon. At the wedding or . . . maybe Easter.”
Easter? Did she think I regularly spent holidays with my mother? I nodded rather than explain how that wasn’t going to happen. “Bye.” With a flutter of her fingers, she turned and disappeared down the hall. I closed the door behind her.
Shaw arched an eyebrow. “What was that about?”
I shrugged. “Family.”
“Yeah. Apparently yours wants you to attend a wedding.”
“I’m not going.” I moved for my closet and grabbed my shower caddy, still bewildered by Melanie’s visit and needing something to do with myself.
He reached for my hand, stopping me. “Why does it sound like there’s a story there and you’re trying to avoid sharing it?”
I shrugged. “I’m not tight with my mom. Even less so with my stepbrother.” I lifted my robe off the hook.
“Why?”
Why?
Such a simple question, but loaded with so much pain. I lifted my gaze to Shaw, my chest tight and aching. For the first time there was a longing to unload, to unleash everything that I’d kept bottled up inside me all these years. Maybe because of last night. Maybe because he knew almost everything about me already. He was closer to knowing the real me than anyone else. Could I tell him the rest?
He must have seen something in my face because he squared himself before me, both of his hands on me now, gently chafing my arms. “Hey, it’s okay. You can tell me, Em. I want to know. You can tell me anything.”
I nodded jerkily, the scald of tears rising up in my throat. He tugged me toward the bed and forced me down on his lap.
“I’m a mess,” I choked, warm tears dashing down my cheeks.
“Hey. Ssh.” His fingers ran over my cheeks, the callused pads wiping the tears away. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
I sniffed noisily. And I couldn’t believe I was crying. I wasn’t the type of girl to cry in some guy’s arms. I wasn’t weak like that.
“It’s not you.” I sniffed again, wiping at my nose. “She just . . .” I motioned to the door where Melanie had just stood. “She seemed so nice, right?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, his expression worried as he watched my face.
I sucked in a wet breath. “I can’t believe she’s marrying Justin. He’s such a douche.” I stopped and exhaled, shaking my head. “No. I always blame my stepbrother, but he’s not really the one who’s turned me into this.” I waved at myself.
“And what is ‘this’?” he asked. His fingers stilled on my cheek. His touch was feather soft, and my heart squeezed a little. “I happen to like this.”
I snorted. “This is a girl who flirts and parties and acts a big game but is really just a big phony. I’ve used guys for years. Played them.” Until you.
He was quiet a long moment, staring at me. I laughed humorlessly. “No denial there.”
He nodded once. “I kind of figured out that you had less experience than you pretended to have. Even before last night, I knew. The real question is—why? Why have you been doing this?”
I sucked in a breath. He was going there, poking around all those raw and tender places. I’d started this though. No backing down now. “I did it because it made me feel in control . . . and I guess I got off on calling the shots and manipulating boys.” There was so little I controlled. I had parents who didn’t really want me around. My mother put everything else before me. She always had. When I was fifteen I’d learned how little she valued me. It was a harsh lesson. I was still a kid then. I thought mothers protected their daughters. Not mine. My world flew off its axis then. It had been off course ever since.
With another deep breath, I met his stare head-on, part of me stunned to be confessing this to him, but the other part? There was only relief. Like I was releasing a pent-up breath. “But I couldn’t do that with you.”
“Emerson,” he said gently, his fingers flexing on my arms. “What happened to you?”
“When my mother started dating Don, I was living with her. I moved in with Dad afterward. After she chose Don over me.” I sniffed again, bitterness filling me as I remembered the morning I approached my mother and told her that Justin had crept into my room the night before. He had just come home from a night out with his friends. His breath reeked of alcohol. I guess I should be grateful that he was so drunk. It made him clumsy.
“After what? What happened?”
“At first I thought Justin was nice. He always paid me attention. He was twenty and drove a cool car. All my friends thought he was cute. I was fifteen, an only child. Suddenly having a cool older brother was . . . well, cool.”
Shaw’s face hardened and I knew he’d already guessed where this was headed, but he said nothing, just nodded for me to continue.
“It was just little things at first. He would always touch me, brush my hair back from my face. Then he started walking in on me in the bathroom, my bedroom . . . he acted like it was an accident . . .”
“Bastard.”
“I told my mom he was making me uncomfortable and she told me I was being silly. Then New Year’s Eve happened. It was really late. I’d stayed up to watch the ball drop and went to bed afterward. He came in my room drunk. Good thing, I guess. He wasn’t that coordinated, so I could shove him off before he did anything. He passed out on the floor next to my bed. I actually left him there and slept in the guest room. With the door locked. Mom and Don were out.”
Shaw’s gaze glittered brightly with a light I’d never seen before in his eyes. “He deserves to be in jail. What did your mom do when she got home?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. She told me that even if it happened, I was exaggerating the event. And that’s when she let me know she was marrying Don and I needed to learn to get along with Justin.”
“Oh, Emerson.” His hand cupped my face, his thumb grazing my cheek back and forth.
“That hurt the most, you know. It’s not so much what my stepbrother did. He was nothing to me. But Mom? Her betrayal was the worst thing. She’s my mother. She’s supposed to protect me. What did I do for her—”
“No. It’s not you.” His hands tightened slightly on me. “Baby, there’s something broken in her. A mother would die protecting her kid.”
I nodded, looking away, blinking burning eyes.
“I would, Emerson. I would die protecting you.”
My gaze jerked back to his face, my heart clenching at his words. They were words I hadn’t realized I needed to hear, but I guess I did. I needed to believe that someone cared enough to fight for me. That someone could love—
I killed the thought before it fully formed. No one had said the L word. Certainly not him. I wasn’t going to allow myself to even think it. Shaw was a Marine. He was conditioned to serve and protect. I didn’t need to read more into it than that.
He kissed me. His warm lips moved over mine. I slid my tongue along his, pouring all my feelings into it, all the turmoil that Melanie’s visit had stirred in me, all the emotions that this conversation with Shaw had created.
His hand cupped the back of my head. I deepened the kiss, pressing against him, delighting in the way my breasts mashed against his chest. I looped my arms around his neck. We fell back on the bed, me splayed over him, our mouths fused, slanting one way and then another, growing hotter, more feverish.
He stopped abruptly, holding the hair back from my face with both hands as he looked up at me. “No way can you go to that wedding.” His eyes scanned my face, intent and determined.
“I wasn’t going to.”
Concern etched the lines of his face like he wasn’t fully convinced, but he nodded. “Good. I don’t want you anywhere near your stepbrother.” Some of my hair fell forward, dangling between us, and he smoothed it back with his palm, wincing a little as he added, “Maybe I don’t have any right to get all caveman and tell you that . . .”
I pulled back slightly. No one ever told me what to do. I’d been on my own too long to let a guy start controlling me now. It was one thing to sleep with him, but he couldn’t start dictating my actions. If that happened, then I had given up all control entirely.
He exhaled a great breath, evidently reading my reaction accurately. “I know I sound like a controlling prick.”
Suddenly I remembered him at the club, informing me that I had had enough to drink right before he yanked me out of there. I shook my head, unwilling to consider any of this right now and ruin whatever tenuous bond that was forming between us. “But it’s a nonissue anyway because I wasn’t planning to go.”
His thumb gently stroked my cheek. “It’s not only your stepbrother, you know. It’s your mother, too. She doesn’t deserve a daughter like you, Em. And I don’t trust her not to hurt you again.”
Okay, so he was bossy and high-handed and sent my feminist hackles sputtering, but he was sweet, too. He gave a damn. He cared. I let him in and he reacted with concern. With more than concern. There was a hint of . . . I don’t know . . . possession in those words. In his expression. Like a part of me belonged to him now. Like we belonged to each other. God. And I guess I wanted that. He tempted me on every level. It was beyond appealing to just lose myself in him and let him protect me.
Only it wasn’t that simple. I shook my head slightly as if to jog some sense into myself. She was my mother. Nothing could change that. He couldn’t save me from what I was. He couldn’t save me from everything wrong in my life. But a part of me melted to realize that he wanted to. My hand crept up between us to cup his face. My palm flattened against his cheek, fingers curling inward ever so slightly. I reveled in the scratchy hint of beard coming in.
Suddenly the door to the room opened and Georgia stepped inside. “Oh, sorry,” she mumbled. “I should have texted to make sure you didn’t have company.” She turned away, but not before I glimpsed her ravaged face—and ravaged was putting it mildly. It was splotchy pink and her eyes were puffy and bloodshot.
“Georgia!” I hopped off Shaw and rushed to her side. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
She shook her head, trying to turn away. I took hold of her arms and turned her around gently. She buried her face in her hands and spoke between her fingers. “I don’t want to interrupt—”
“Georgia, tell me what happened,” I insisted.
“It’s Harris.”
“What happened? Is he okay?”
“Oh, he’s great.” She laughed brokenly, the sound wretched and lacking all levity. “It’s over. He ended it. Five years . . . and it’s done. Gone.”
I inhaled sharply. “What? Why?”
“Apparently I’m boring. He said he wants someone more . . . adventurous. Can you believe that? And guess what? He already has her picked out. He’s been seeing a girl in his econ class behind my back.”
“That asshole!” I exploded.
Shaw lightly touched my arm. “I’m going to go.” He pressed a quick kiss to my lips, flicking a sympathetic look at Georgia. “I’ll text you later, Em.”
I nodded, watching him as he slipped from the room. With a snap of my head, I refocused on Georgia.
She sniffed back a wet sob as the door clicked shut. “You and Shaw . . . I guess things are going well.”
“Let’s not talk about me right now, honey.” I smoothed a hand over her back in soothing circles.
“No. Let’s talk about you. I’m so happy that you’ve finally found someone.” She smiled, clearly miserable but determined to shift the focus from her to me. “Guess it’s my turn to be single now.”
I hauled her closer, hugging her taller frame. “Maybe he’s just stressed. Maybe you guys can work it out—”
“He’s seeing someone else, Em.”
I winced. “Yeah. Well. You two have been together for a long time. He’s going to be miserable without you. He’ll come to his senses. Maybe he’ll—”
“Emerson. I appreciate what you’re doing, but it’s done. You didn’t see his face. It’s over.”
I nodded, a lump rising up in my throat. For Georgia. For the quiver of pain I heard in her voice. I hated that she hurt. She didn’t deserve this, but it was happening anyway.
I nodded resolutely. “I know this is the last thing you want to hear . . . but I always knew you were too good for him.” I looked at her anxiously, biting my bottom lip. “Too soon?”
She laughed weakly. “Now you tell me.”
“You’ll see. It’s hard to believe now, but—”
“I’ll be glad it happened? This is all for the best?”
I shook my head. “I’d suck if I said that.” Even if I thought it. Even if I had thought she would be better off without Harris all along, I wouldn’t be that insensitive. “I wasn’t going to say that at all.” I tucked her hair behind her ear. “I was going to say, how do you feel about going out for some pancakes?”
A shaky smile curved her lips. “Chocolate chip pancakes?”
“Are there any other kind?”