He hadn’t been looking forward to this. Facing his brothers and admitting that he hadn’t been able to last the full three months of their bet was humiliating. Even though, he thought, with a small inner smile, losing the bet had been the best time of his life.
When that thought crowded into his brain, Connor frowned and pushed it back out.
“You’re kidding, right?” Aidan, sitting right beside him asked, with an elbow jab to his ribs.
“Ow.” Connor looked from Aidan to Brian and finally to Liam. “Nope. Not kidding. I’m out. Fit me for the coconut bra.”
“Woo-hoo!” Aidan hooted gleefully and signaled the waitress to bring another round of beers to the table. Shifting his gaze back to his brothers, he grinned and said, “This round’s on me. In celebration.”
“Hey,” Connor reminded him, “just because I lost, doesn’t mean you won.”
“He’s right,” Brian chimed in. “We’re out of the running, but you signed on for three whole months of no sex. You’ve still got another six weeks to go, man.”
“Piece o’ cake,” Aidan said, reaching for the bowl of tortilla chips in the center of the table. “I’ll show you guys how it’s done.”
“Right,” Liam said, sarcasm dripping from his tone. “You’re in complete control.”
“Totally,” Aidan boasted.
“Liar,” Brian said, taking a sip of his beer.
“Hey,” Aidan took exception. “Shouldn’t you guys be ragging on Connor? He’s the one who lost the bet, y’know.”
“Thanks,” Connor said, and absently smiled at the waitress as she brought them each a tall, frosty glass of beer. He took a long drink and let the icy, foamy drink slide through him, cooling him off.
It had been a long, hot day.
And every time his thoughts had returned to the night before, spent in Emma’s arms, the temperature had only climbed.
“So,” Liam asked in the sudden silence, “do we get to know who?”
Connor glanced up from his drink and found all three of his brothers watching him. Well, hell. Only a few weeks ago he’d sat in this very booth and laughed his tail off as Brian had confessed to dropping out of the bet. Funny, it had seemed hilarious at the time. Now…not so much.
“Emma,” he said tightly.
“The mechanic?” Aidan’s voice hitched in surprise.
A flicker of something hot and dangerous sparked into life inside Connor. He swiveled his head to stare at the brother sitting alongside him through narrowed eyes. “You’ve got a problem with Emma?” he asked tightly. “Something wrong with her?”
Aidan’s eyes widened as he lifted both hands in mock surrender and shook his head. “Nope, not a thing. I was just surprised is all. Chill out, man.”
“A little touchy aren’t you?” Brian asked.
“And your point is…” Connor demanded, sparing the man opposite him a quelling look.
“No point, just an observation.”
“Emma’s a sweetheart,” Liam’s quiet voice spoke up, and the three men looked at him. Liam shrugged. “Hey, she fixes my car and I think she’s cute.”
Brian lifted one eyebrow and chuckled. “You are a priest, remember?”
“I’m a priest, I’m not dead.” Liam shook his head and then turned to focus on Connor. “So you and Emma are together now?”
Panic reared up inside Connor. He leaned back into the booth, as if to distance himself as much as possible from that question. “Together? No. We’re not a couple or anything. We’re just friends.”
“Naked friends,” Aidan said on a laugh.
“Best kind.” Brian lifted his beer in salute.
“Friendships change,” Liam mused quietly.
Connor slanted him a wary glance. It didn’t help at all that he himself had been thinking the same damn thing all day. His friendship with Emma was important to him. They got along great, shared a love of cars and old movies and thunderstorms. They could talk about anything, and he trusted her as he trusted few other people in his life.
Connor’s friends were important to him.
And Emma was a friend.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” he grumbled, “just forget about it. I’m not looking to get married like poor ol’ Bri here.”
“Hey,” Brian objected. “It’s not like I’m caught in a trap trying to chew my leg off to get free, you know.”
“I didn’t say that,” Connor snapped. “I just said that it wasn’t for me.” Never had been, never would be. He didn’t want to be married. Didn’t want to have anyone depending on him. Didn’t want to change who he was to accommodate someone else.
He liked his life just the way it was. Hot and cold running women streaming in and out of his life in a constantly shifting smorgasbord of femininity.
Emma was a great woman—but she wasn’t going to be the only woman.
That’s not what he was looking for.
Connor waved Brian off and concentrated on his brother the priest. “Don’t start thinking that just because Emma and I heated up the sheets that it’s going to be anything more than that, Liam.”
“I don’t know, bro,” Aidan pointed out, helping himself to another chip, “you did give up a shot at ten thousand bucks for her.”
Connor scraped one hand across his face and wished to hell he’d been born an only child. “It was just sex.”
“You sure?” Liam asked quietly.
“Of course I’m sure.” Connor picked up his beer and took a long swallow. As the conversation between his brothers went on without him, he fought down the stray thought niggling in the back of his mind.
The one that claimed he wasn’t as sure as he was pretending to be.
CHAPTER NINE
“MRS. HARRISON,” Emma said as she stalked around the confines of her small office, tethered by the coiled phone cord. “If you’d just reconsider, I could make you a very good offer for the car.”
The woman on the other end of the phone line sighed, then said, in a soft, Southern drawl, “I know it seems silly to you, Emma dear, but I just can’t bear to part with Sonny’s car. He loved it so.”
“But that’s my point, Mrs. Harrison,” Emma plunked down on the one uncluttered corner of her desk and stared off through the front windows at Main Street. “If Sonny loved the car so much, wouldn’t he want to see it restored to all its former glory?”
“Well…”
While the older woman thought about that, Emma stared out at Baywater. Summer traffic was still as thick as the humid air. Even at sunset, tourists crowded the sidewalks and cars backed up at the streetlights. Horns blasted, people shouted, and kids, apparently immune to the heat, dashed along sidewalks on skateboards, dogs nipping and yelping at their sides.
A typical, ordinary, summer evening.
So why did everything feel so different?
Because she was different.
Emma sighed and told herself to get over it. To get past it. But how could she? For hours the night before, she and Connor had made love. It was as if neither of them could bear to stop touching the other. He’d stayed with her until sunrise, leaving only when the first streaks of crimson splashed the horizon.
She’d walked him to the door and watched him stride to his car and then drive away and she hadn’t once given in to the urge to call him back.
But it had been there.
A crouched, needy thing deep inside her. She’d fought it back and made herself remember the promise they’d made to each other after their first bout of soul-shattering sex.
Friends.
They’d vowed to remain friends and she wanted that. Absolutely. But she also wanted him in her bed. And just how was she supposed to get past that?
Oh, things were fast getting more complicated instead of easier.
“I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. Harrison said, dragging Emma gratefully away from her thoughts. “It just doesn’t seem quite right to me somehow.”
Emma sighed, but she wasn’t really surprised.
She spoke to Mrs. Harrison at least once a month, hoping to get the woman to part with that old Corvette. Sonny Harrison had been dead for forty years, but his mother still wasn’t ready to let his car—all she had left of him—go. So Emma would give up today and try again in a month.
“I understand,” she said, and a part of her really did. It had to be hard, losing the one last link to a past that felt more real than the present. It was pretty much how she’d felt the day she’d packed up all of her girly clothes after her ex-fiancé, Tony Demarco, had shown his true colors. But she’d gotten over the death of her dreams, and one of these days maybe Mrs. Harrison would, too. “I hope you don’t mind if I keep trying to convince you, though.”
“Not at all, honey. You call again real soon.”
When they hung up, Emma smiled. She had a feeling that the elderly woman would never sell her that car—mainly because then she’d lose the fun of Emma’s phone calls and visits.
The phone rang again almost instantly, and for one brief shining moment, Emma thought that maybe Mrs. Harrison had changed her mind. “Hello? Jacobsen’s Garage.”
“You haven’t called me with an update.”
“Mary Alice?”
“Who else?”
Emma smiled, walked around the edge of her desk and sat down in her chair. Kicking her feet up, she crossed her legs at the ankle on top of a stack of papers at the edge of the desk and said, “I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“Uh-huh,” her friend said, “and I’ve been meaning to go on a diet.”
“Another one?” Emma grinned.
“Let’s not get off track here,” Mary Alice said quickly. “This isn’t about me. I want details. When last I heard, Mr. Gorgeous Reilly was walking up to your office looking like dessert.”
“Oh, wow…”
“I’m guessing that this is going to be a long story?”
“You have no idea.” She’d meant to call Mary Alice. She really had. But she’d gotten so involved with her own plans and preparations for snapping a trap shut on Connor, that Emma’d completely forgotten about everything but the task at hand.
And after the night before, she thought, her insides curdling into a warm puddle of something sticky, she was lucky she could think at all.
“So talk.”
“Where do you want me to start?” Emma asked, “With the first time or the last time?”
Mary Alice sucked in a breath that was audible even from three thousand miles away. “How many in between?”
“Three.” Connor, Emma had learned during the long night, was a pretty amazing man. In stamina alone, the Marines were lucky to have him.
And so was she.
Whoops. A minor mental slip there.
She didn’t actually have him, now did she?
“Oh, boy.” A heavy sigh drifted through the phone line. “Hold on a sec.”
A lot more than one second ticked past before Mary Alice spoke again. “Okay,” she said. “I’m back. I needed a glass of wine for this. Start talking and remember to linger over the details.”
Emma laughed and silently thanked her friend for calling when she most needed her. “God I love you.”
“Ditto. Now spill your guts.”
CONNOR’D HAD EVERY intention of staying away.
He’d reassured himself all day long that there’d be no problem in keeping his distance. It was for the best, anyway. For both of them. Last night had been amazing, but it was one night out of their lives.
Emma was his friend. That she was also the woman who’d nearly set his hair on fire the night before, wasn’t important. The friendship was. So with that thought firmly in mind, he’d made a solemn vow to himself that he’d steer clear of her for at least the next few days.
Give them both a little breathing room.
Make the memory of last night a little dimmer before they spent time together again.
After dinner with his brothers, he’d even driven halfway home before he’d found himself turning around and heading back to Emma’s house. The disappointment he’d felt at seeing the house dark and empty wasn’t something he wanted to think about. And what he should have done was take her absence as a sign from above. Someone up there was looking out for him. Steering him away from Emma even when he was trying to hunt her down.
Instead though, he’d driven to the garage.
Over the past two years, there had been plenty of times when he’d worked late with her, helping her with a stubborn oil change or just sitting in the office talking. In fact, he hadn’t really noticed—until he started trying to stay away from her—just how much time he actually spent with Emma.
Somehow or other, when he wasn’t looking, she’d become an integral part of his day. She was usually the one he complained to about whichever new recruit was giving him fits. She was the one he laughed with over the stories Aidan told. She was the one who listened to him grouse about his dates, his job, his life.
Emma was more than a friend.
She was his best friend.
“And now you know what she looks like naked.” He groaned tightly and told himself to shut that thought off fast. No way could he concentrate on driving if his brain was filled with images of Emma’s smooth skin in the moonlight.
Beside him at the stoplight, a carload of teenagers were whooping and hollering. The girls looked shiny bright and the boys were busy trying to be cool. Music blasted through their open windows and into Connor’s, shattering his thoughts. He smiled to himself as the light changed and the car sped off with a squeal of rubber on asphalt. He almost envied them.
Summer nights were made for long drives and laughter. For stolen kisses and slow walks. For sighs and whispers and the promise of more.
And damn it, he wanted more.
More of Emma.
“You’re in bad shape,” he muttered grimly as he steered the car toward the garage. His fingers clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. His stomach jumped and his brain was shouting at him to stay the hell away from Emma.
But he wasn’t listening.
He couldn’t.
Besides, he thought, staying away from her was probably not the answer. Not seeing her only made him think about her more. Maybe seeing her would help him keep this whole business in perspective.
That thought made him feel a little better about the whole situation. Slapping the steering wheel with the flat of his hand, he nodded and said, “Exactly. She’s your friend. So going to see her is just proving to both of you that you can deal.”
If a small voice in the back of his mind whispered that he was just making excuses…he ignored it.
He pulled into the parking lot in front of Jacobsen’s Garage and noticed that the office was dark but that lights were on in the garage bay. The oversize garage door was closed, but the half-moon-shaped windows above the door shone with soft lamplight.
Turning the engine off, he set the brake, clenched his jaw and realized that for the first time in his life, he felt like retreating.
That thought alone was enough to get him out of the car and moving toward the shop. The hot summer night closed in around him as he stalked across the parking lot like a man on a mission.
Emma’d always liked working late. She liked being here alone. Having time to think, she called it, and Connor wondered what she was thinking about tonight.
Opening the office door, which she should have had locked, damn it, Connor scowled and closed it behind him, turning the lock for good measure. What the hell was she thinking, working late and leaving the door open for just anybody to stroll inside? His stomach fisted as the thought of “what might have beens” rushed through his brain.
Idiotic, he knew. Baywater was a safe, tiny community and no doubt there was nothing to worry about. But he suddenly didn’t like the idea of Emma working here late at night, all alone. He suddenly didn’t like the idea of her being alone. And what the hell did that mean? It hadn’t bothered him last week or last month or last year. O
h, man—
Shaking his head, Connor stepped into the air-conditioned office and headed for the connecting door to the garage. A wave of hot, steamy air rushed at him. The garage was not air-conditioned, since it would have been impractical, with the door wide open all day. There were fans whirring in every corner, but they didn’t do much to reduce the ovenlike effect.
Connor didn’t care, though. He stepped into the heat and closed the door to the office behind him. He heard the music first, and smiled in spite of the thoughts churning in his mind. Classic rock and roll, and if he knew Emma, she was singing along, safe in the knowledge that there was no one to hear her.
He paused in the shadows, giving himself time to simply admire the view.
She hadn’t heard him come in—not surprising since the radio volume was set at just under ear shattering. She wore coverall—standard, gray coverall that before wouldn’t have given him a moment’s pause. Today, though, he wasn’t fooled. Today he knew what kind of weapons she was hiding beneath the too-baggy work uniform. And his body went hard just thinking about it.
She did a quick little sidestep, her hips swaying to the rhythm pounding out around her and her blond ponytail swung with her movements. She kept time with the rhythm even as her small, capable hands worked on the carburetor lying in pieces on the workbench.
He grinned when she picked up a wrench and, holding it as if it were a microphone, sang into it along with the voice pouring from the radio. Even though she had more enthusiasm than talent, Emma poured her heart into the song of love and loss, and something inside Connor twisted as he watched her.
Beautiful.
Even in the ugly gray coverall, she was beautiful.
Sure, he thought. Friends. No problem here.
Scraping one hand across his face, Connor breathed deeply, hoping to ease the instinct clamoring within. The one that was prompting him to march across the garage, grab her up and bury himself inside her as fast as he could. Every cell in his body was on high alert.
Coming here had been a lousy idea.
But he couldn’t have left if it had meant his life.