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She glanced over at him, then sighed. “That was pretty much my reaction, too, if you must know.”
Boone chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I didn’t expect you to admit it.”
“I’ve never been a liar, Boone. That was you.”
Boone frowned at the accusation. “Me? When did I lie?”
“You said you loved me. Next thing I knew you’d married Jenny.”
He was startled by the level of pain he thought he heard in her voice. Had she been rewriting history? “You made it pretty clear you weren’t ever coming back. What was I supposed to do? Pine for you?”
“You could have given me some time to work through things,” she accused. “That’s all I really asked of you.”
He regarded her with surprise. “When did you ask for time? If you’d asked for it, maybe I would have. Instead, you said we were over. You made it sound pretty final.” He studied her face. “Or was that the lie you had to tell yourself so you could leave town and not look back?”
She seemed to take the question to heart and actually mull it over. “Something like that,” she conceded eventually. “Okay, we both made mistakes. I wasn’t clear enough. You jumped to conclusions. I can admit to that much. Can you?”
He hesitated, then said, “I suppose.”
“Such a heartfelt concession,” she murmured dryly, then met his gaze. “But it doesn’t change anything, Boone. Not really. My life still isn’t here.”
“Believe me, I’m well aware of that. What Cora Jane hasn’t told me, B.J. has. He’s very impressed with you and Samantha. You’re the first real celebrities he’s ever met.”
Emily had the grace to chuckle at that, the tension easing slightly. “Samantha can lay claim to being a celebrity, but I just work for a few. Most of my clients aren’t that famous.”
“Just rich?” he queried.
“Is there something wrong with being rich? Your family wasn’t exactly poor. Your father was a high-powered lawyer, and your mother married a guy who made millions on widgets or something.”
He smiled at her dismissive assessment of his stepfather, who’d owned a multinational manufacturing company. “That has very little to do with me. I started from scratch and earned what I have.” He gave her a lingering look. “And I wasn’t making judgments. I just meant that having money calls for a certain kind of lifestyle, keeping up appearances, that sort of thing.”
“No question about that.” Her gaze narrowed. “Are you making a point?”
He gave her a thorough survey that put patches of bright color in her cheeks. “I just wonder what those clients of yours would make of it if they saw you in shorts and a tank top with a discount store tag hanging out the back?” He winked at her as he snapped off the tag, allowing his fingers to linger just a little too long against her bare skin before adding, “Me, I just think you look incredibly sexy.”
Her breath caught, and there was no mistaking the struggle she had to keep her gaze steady.
“Let’s not go there, okay?” she pleaded. “Obviously we have to find some way to get along with each other for the next couple of weeks for my grandmother’s sake, but then we’ll go our separate ways again. Acting crazy will only make that harder to do.”
Well, that was a clear enough warning, he thought. “No craziness,” Boone said. “Got it, though it might help if you defined this craziness you think we should avoid.”
“No fighting,” she said at once. Color climbed into her cheeks. “No touching or kissing. You know exactly what I mean, Boone. Don’t pretend you don’t. It doesn’t take much, even now, to stir us up, apparently.”
He grinned. “If you can keep a civil tongue in your head and your hands to yourself, so can I.”
“Okay, then,” Emily said.
He thought he detected a hint of disappointment in her eyes, but it was gone too quickly for him to be sure.
She turned to head back inside, but Boone caught her shoulder. Her skin heated beneath his touch, though he felt her shiver.
“Just one thing,” he said, holding her gaze. “Why were you crying when I came out here?”
The question clearly flustered her. “Just being silly,” she said, obviously not wanting to discuss it.
Boone knew better. He knew it ran deeper. The entire time they’d been together, he’d seen her struggling to find some kind of elusive acceptance from her father and even, to a degree, from Cora Jane. Her grandmother’s approval had never been withheld, in his opinion, but Emily hadn’t always been able to see that. And the distance between Sam Castle and his daughters had been impossible for any of them to bridge.
“You took offense when Cora Jane brushed off your offer,” he guessed based on past experience. “You thought it meant she didn’t need you here, didn’t you? You thought that’s why she didn’t jump all over your advice about the renovations.”
“Maybe,” she conceded, the tears gathering in her eyes proving his point.
He tucked a finger under her chin. “She needs you here, Em. She needs all of you here, not because of what you can do or how much help you’ll be. She needs you because she’s getting older and she misses you. Remember that, okay? She loved you all enough to let you go, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want you underfoot from time to time. She needs to fuss over you, meddle a little, to feel your love again.”
To his regret, more tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
“When did you get to be so darned smart and sensitive?” she asked, her voice hitching.
“I was always smart and sensitive,” he claimed, amused. “You might have missed it because back then all you cared about was my body.”
Because she evidently had no response that wouldn’t be a flat-out lie, Emily turned and walked away, swiping impatiently at the tears on her cheeks as she went.
Though her lack of response left him chuckling, he couldn’t help staring after her and wondering just how complicated his life was about to get. Despite her declarations and his promises, he was pretty sure things between them were far from over. And that was going to cause more problems and heartache than he’d ever wanted to experience again.
4
By late morning, Cora Jane’s cell phone had rung half a dozen times, and several members of her kitchen and wait staff had shown up to help with the cleanup. She had put them to work scrubbing down the kitchen, top to bottom, so it could pass the toughest health inspection ever, if need be.
The last to arrive was Jeremiah Beaudreaux, better known as Jerry. He’d been cooking at Castle’s practically since the doors opened. Now in his sixties and still standing tall at well over six feet, the one-time Louisiana fisherman’s face was deeply tanned and weathered, his hair white, but he still had a smile that lit his bright blue eyes.
“Well, this sure enough is a sight for sore eyes,” he declared when he saw Emily, Samantha and Gabriella at work sweeping the debris in the dining room into piles to be discarded. “Looks like an ill wind blew us at least some good, Cora Jane.”
“Better wait till you see how much trouble they manage to stir up, Jerry,” Cora Jane retorted, but her eyes were sparkling.
“Let me give you girls a hug,” he said, lifting them each off their feet in one of his massive bear hugs.
“How’d you get to be so strong?” Emily teased, just as she had the first time he’d tossed her into the air as a child. Compared to her reed-thin grandfather, Jerry had seemed like a gentle giant.
“Toting around those cast iron pots of crab soup your grandmother has me making,” he responded. “Now let me get in that kitchen and see what else needs to be done. Those kids you put to work, Cora Jane, will do a slapdash job of it without my supervision.”
“Some of those ‘kids’ are as old as you are, Jeremiah Beaudreaux,” Cora Jane said. “They know what to do.”
“I’ll feel better if I see the results for myself.” He winked at Emily and her sisters. “We’ll sit down and have us a long visit once this place is set to rights. Andrew said he’d be over here in an hour, Cora Jane, soon as he helps his grandmama set a few things outside in the sun to dry out. You just put him to work whatever needs doing around here. I promised his grandmama we’d keep him out of mischief.”
Jerry spotted B.J. “There’s my best helper,” he said exuberantly. “You gonna come with me, young man?”
B.J. beamed. “Whatever you need,” he said eagerly.
Before heading into the kitchen, Jerry paused and gave Cora Jane a searching look. “You doing okay? We’ll have this place shipshape in no time. You’re not to fret about it, okay?”
Emily caught the tender look that passed between them. She waited until Jerry and B.J. were gone before asking, “Did anyone else happen to notice the way Jerry was looking at Grandmother just then?”
“Oh, hush! You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cora Jane responded tartly, though there was a surprising blush in her cheeks. “Jerry’s been my right-hand man around here for a lot of years. He was one of your grandfather’s best friends.”
“Looks to me as if he’d like to be more than friends with you,” Samantha chimed in, her eyes alight.
“No question about it, Grandmother,” Gabi added. “Is there something you’d like to tell us?”
Cora Jane regarded each of them with an impatient look. “Don’t think you’re going to throw me off course by trying to turn the tables and meddle in my life,” she said. “Now, let’s get back to work. We’re setting a poor example for the girls who came in here to help out.”
Emily let the subject drop as she picked up her broom and went back to work. Gabi pushed her own pile of debris over to merge with Emily’s.
“You don’t really think there’s something going on between Jerry and Grandmother, do you?” Gabi asked. “You were just trying to rattle her, the way she said.”
Emily shrugged. “I saw something. Maybe it was nothing more than two old friends exchanging a fond look, but it seemed like more to me.”
“Would that be so bad?” Gabi asked, her expression thoughtful. “She must get lonely. Grandfather’s been gone a long time now.”
“I guess I never thought about that,” Emily admitted. “I don’t think kids ever give much thought to their parents being lonely, much less their grandparents.”
“We’re adults, not kids,” Gabi said. “We should be more sensitive.”
“Boone said something very much like that earlier,” Emily admitted.
Gabi grinned. “You’re quoting Boone now. That’s quite a turnabout.”
“Don’t make too much of it,” Emily said. “He just mentioned that, even though Cora Jane let us all go, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want or need us around from time to time.”
“He’s right about that,” Gabi admitted. “Not even I get over here half as much as I should, and I live closest. Forget about Dad. Until the other day when he drove over to pick her up, I can’t recall the last time he set foot in Sand Castle Bay. He doesn’t even drive crosstown in Raleigh to see me unless I force the issue.”
“Did you honestly expect otherwise?” Emily asked her.
Gabi looked momentarily disconcerted by the question, then laughed self-consciously. “I suppose I did. Crazy, huh? Mom couldn’t even get him to come home for dinner most nights. I guess a part of me was thinking that with Mom gone, he might need company from time to time, maybe even a home-cooked meal.”
Emily regarded her with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Gabi.”
“Don’t be sorry for me. He’s disappointed all of us, Mom included.”
“But I think it affected you the most,” Emily said. “Mom accepted the way things were. Samantha went her own way. So did I. We gave up expecting anything, but you’re the one who’s settled right there in Raleigh, followed in his footsteps, tried to become a part of his world. Now don’t go and take offense at this, but we all know you did that hoping to finally get his attention.”
Gabi didn’t even bother trying to deny it. “I may be in the same field, but I don’t sit over a microscope the way he did,” she said candidly. “I write press releases about other people’s discoveries.”
Emily chuckled. “Worse, you do it for a competitor, who’s wildly successful, in part thanks to your PR work,” she said. “That must give Dad heartburn.”
Gabi grinned. “It isn’t nice to gloat,” she chided.
“Well, it makes me smile. It’s what Dad deserves for not hiring you himself. I know that’s what you really wanted.”
Gabi sighed. “It would have been a disaster. I can see that now. He was right to say no.”
“I’ll give you that,” Emily said. “I’m glad you can finally see it, too. You’d have been miserable having a boss who withholds praise or is too distracted to even notice you’re alive until you make a mistake.”
Gabi frowned. For a minute Emily thought she might jump in and try to defend their father, but instead she let it go. That alone hinted at her disillusioned acceptance of their father’s flaws.
“How’d you and Samantha get along on the ride over?” Gabi asked, deliberately changing the subject.
“Fine,” Emily insisted, a defensive note immediately creeping into her voice. “Why?”
“Because she always seems to get on your last nerve without even trying.”
“Not this time,” Emily swore, “though she does seem to have some crazy idea about me and Boone.”
Gabi laughed. “Sweetie, we all have crazy ideas about you and Boone, even you if you’re being honest with yourself. Tell me you did not just about swoon when you laid eyes on him for the first time today?”
Though she’d have denied it had Samantha asked, with Gabi she admitted the truth. “Maybe just a little swoon,” she said. “I told him there couldn’t be any craziness between us, though.”
“Did you now?” Gabi said, clearly amused. “And why did you find it necessary to say such a thing?”
“Because there was a moment out there on the deck, just a moment, when there seemed to be something sizzling between us the way it used to.”
“And you’re totally opposed to any sizzle?”
“Totally,” she declared very firmly, as much for her own sake as to prove anything to her sister.
Gabi looked disbelieving just as Samantha had earlier. “Oh, honey, you are in a heap of trouble if you believe that.”
“I can’t want anything to happen between me and Boone,” Emily insisted.
“Saying it won’t make it so. Feelings as strong as what you two once shared don’t vanish just because time has passed or because they’re inconvenient.”
“But we moved on,” Emily protested. “Both of us.”
“And now you have another chance. Seems to me what would be really crazy is not taking advantage of that.”
Emily started to utter another more vehement protest, but Gabi cut her off.
“I’m just saying it’s something you should consider before you get all stubborn and dig in your heels. Boone’s an incredible man.”
Not even Emily was fool enough to try to deny that. “But he’s an incredible man who lives in North Carolina.”
“Gee, last time I checked we had phone lines, airports and even Wi-Fi,” Gabi said. “And from everything I hear, you have an established reputation in your field that might even follow you all the way to this mid-Atlantic wilderness outpost.”
Emily laughed. “Okay, point taken.”
But that didn’t mean she was going to open her heart...or risk breaking Boone’s for a second time.
