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  I tucked my hands in my pockets. “This is the most memorable date I’ve ever been on,” I admitted, checking my watch. “And we’re only thirty minutes in,” I said, offering her my arm.

  “Oh, and by the way, when the nice man welcoming us aboard addressed you by your last name, your pleading the fifth as to boat ownership was useless.” Shouldering me, she reached for my arm. “Nice boat.”

  I wrenched my face into confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, so maybe we should stop talking and move onto . . .”—I winked, making her eyes widen—“dinner,” I said, motioning behind her.

  She spun around, but not before I detected the color bleeding through her cheeks. “Whoa,” she whispered to herself. And whoa it was, as I’d intended.

  I knew it was a generally agreed upon adage that less is more, but it was one I’d vehemently been against my entire life. More was more as far as I was concerned, and in holding to this excessive tradition, the dining area prepared before us fit the bill.

  Jewel toned oversized pillows, Moroccan lamps flickering with sandalwood scented candles, and a canopy of turquoise silk with a jasmine garland blew in the breeze, transporting us into another time, another world. A world where there was no one but Emma and me, and when she looked over at me, hard and purposeful, I knew she felt the same thing.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, moving towards our little piece of Morocco.

  “Yes it is,” I said, staring at her as she fingered the silk rippling off the canopy.

  When she looked back at me, her face was glowing, like she was two minutes into finding Neverland. “Thank you,” she said, her face happy in a way I hadn’t seen it before. Happy like she had no bad memories to taint it.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, fighting off the urge to shrug it off like it was no big deal. Because it was a big deal. I’d lost count decades ago, this could have been my ten-thousandth date, but this was my first date with someone I cared about. Truly cared about.

  Trailing her fingers along the silk, she said, “What? No witty comeback? No word play in return?” she asked, giving me a knowing look.

  “Nah,” I said. “I figured you’re properly aware of how incredibly funny and downright comedic I am by now. It’s time to get to the meat and potatoes of our relationship.”

  Her face dropped a little. “Meaning?”

  “It’s question and answer time, baby, and since this is my date,”—I wagged my eyebrows at her—“I get to be the questioner.”

  The skin between her eyebrows creased. “Sounds painful. Excruciating even.”

  “Nah,” I replied, chancing a hand on the curve of her back before weaving us under the canopy. “I’ll go easy on you.”

  She took my arm as she sank into one of the oversized pillows surrounding the table. “That would be reassuring if your ‘easy’ was like everyone else’s ‘easy,’” she said, a grin flickering over her mouth.

  “Meaning?” I asked, lounging into the pillow across from her and moving the centerpiece to the side. Nothing was going to impair my view of her tonight.

  Her eyebrows twitched upwards. “Your easy is everyone’s hard. It’s like you live your life looking for the next great challenge. The next Everest to scale. The next city to conquer,” she said, staring at me like she’d got me all figured out. “What people look at and say ‘impossible’, you say ‘bring it on.’”

  Just as her stare was about to bury me where I sat, her shoulders lifted in time to the corners of her mouth. “Your easy is my hard.”

  “That was deep,” I replied in my lightest tone, though I was still reeling from her words. “And scary accurate, so the first question I was going to ask you tonight will have to be superseded by this,”—I raised my index finger—“do you come from a long line of psychics? Mind readers perhaps? Voo-doo mamas?”

  She put on a face that I suppose she meant to be cryptically mysterious, although all it did was make me grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  I leaned forward. “I’d like to know everything there is to know about you,” I said, hoping she couldn’t hear the thoughts running in the back of my mind. “Including the first and last name of the first boy you kissed.”

  Her head tilted to the side. “Question number one?” she asked. “Of all the questions in the universe to ask, you want to know who was the first boy I kissed?”

  “You better believe I do,” I answered immediately.

  She took a sip of water before answering, “Brent Cooper. Fifth grade, at the water fountain outside of Principal McKay’s office.”

  I narrowed my eyes in jest. “Lucky bastard.”

  “Maybe for all of two seconds until Dallas shoved through Principal Mckay’s door after his every-other-day reprimanding and busted the water fountain after busting Brent’s face through it.” She laughed, shaking her head. “It was a two visit day to the principal’s office that day for Dallas, and Brent never so much as looked at me again.”

  “Yeah, your brothers are protective of you,” I said. “I picked up on that.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, overprotective is probably the most accurate description, but they mean well. It’s like they made some sacred vow that they’d never let another man hurt me the way our dad did when he left us.”

  I almost replied back with a smart ass comment about Ty making it past their radar, but her eyes shifted to the side, focusing on nothing in particular. Like she was hoping the movement would keep whatever tears that might be forming inside.

  My hand found its way to hers, my fingers twining between hers before my mind caught up. But she wasn’t pulling away. Her fingers curled around mine like I was the only thing holding her above water.

  “I’m sorry your dad left you,” I said, wishing I could siphon away the pain coursing through her right now. “If I had a daughter like you, I’d need a damn good reason to leave. And I’d be thinking of you every second of every day if I did.” The words fell out of my mouth before I knew they were there.

  One of the tears she was trying so hard to keep contained fell. Damn my must-say-the-first-thing-that-comes-to-mind straight to hell.

  “Em, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying,” I said, tightening my grip on her hand. “Just pay no attention to the idiot sitting across from you.”

  “It’s fine,” she replied, and thankfully I repressed replying with whenever you girls say “it’s fine,” it’s anything but fine. “You’re a good man, and that’s what a good man would think,” she said, her eyes glassed over, somewhere else, before she whispered, “but my dad wasn’t a good man.”

  Silence was my reply. My only reply. Nothing I could say or do could counter, cancel out, or comfort that bombshell. How does one come back with a reply when a daughter tells you her dad wasn’t a good man? I guarantee you the shrinkiest of shrinks doesn’t have a good answer for that one.

  Thank the heavens the captain chose the moment before I was about to scoop Emma in my arms and carry her off to a private island where she could never be hurt again to fire the engines to life. The water churning broke both our silences.

  “Question two?” she asked, visibly bracing herself.

  “I promise,”—I crossed my fingers over my heart—“they won’t be as . . . emotional as the beginning of our Q and A.”

  “Like I said, your easy is everyone’s hard,” she said as she wrestled the heels from her feet. Tossing them to the side, she folded her arms over the table and leaned forward, fixing her eyes on me. “Bring it on.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She loved porcupines. Yep, the oversized rodents that blow-dart needles at you if you look at them the wrong way. At least, that’d been my impression of the ugly as snot species until Emma set me straight.

  She claimed they were misunderstood little sweetie-pies that were so affectionate and loyal God had to give them needles or else everyone would want a pet porcupine. For all that tough exterior, they were nothing but softies inside, she’d said. />
  No, I didn’t miss the irony that her favorite animal was the four legged equivalent of moi.

  She was born not so far away and had grown up in the same house she was born in, was going to be twenty in May, loved singing almost as much as she loved volleyball, but she said Stanford offered to give her a full ride scholarship to any other school but theirs when the admissions committee heard her sing.

  In addition, she liked bluegrass music—it made me reach for the nearest vomit bag. She loved mornings—I was a night owl. Her favorite season was winter—mine was summer. She was a dog person—I was a car person. So on and so forth.

  We couldn’t have been more different.

  I was glad the courting, match-making, and arranged marriages of my times had evolved into it being acceptable for a couple to choose one another because, on paper, we were about as compatible as oil and water.

  But, the big but, in every other way that couldn’t be made note of on paper, we were perfect for each other. The energy zapping in the air, the bottoming out of my stomach when she made any kind of movement with her mouth, the ache and emptiness I felt when I was away from her, the nonexistence of everything else when I was with her. It was powerful stuff. Destiny uniting our paths together, powerful stuff.

  She just didn’t know it yet.

  “You’re being uncharacteristically quiet over there.” Emma’s voice broke my shameless daydreaming. “Did you finally run out of questions?” I heard the I hope insinuated.

  “I just so happen to have a question for you of such utter importance that I’ve been mentally formulating how best to deliver it.”

  Something that registered like panic flashed over her face. “Yes?”

  I made the smallest nod of my head and, right on cue, a platter—platinum plated, thank you very much—extended between us.

  “Crème brulee or strawberry and whipped cream covered funnel cake?” I asked, staring at her like I had her in an interrogation room and this is the all important did-you-or-didn’t-you question.

  She played right along, only moving her gaze from mine to review the dessert selection. Her eyes slid back to mine, and by this point I can tell we’re both close to losing our composure. “Funnel cake. Any day of the week.”

  “My God, woman,” I said, aghast, “quit being so perfect.”

  She laughed, for at least the hundredth time tonight. And like her smile, it’s real. No high notes of phony, no perfectly tapered chuckling to completion. Just raw, real laughter.

  “It’s funnel cake for the lady, Albert. You know what I’ll have.”

  Albert was already sliding the powered sugar dusted funnel cake in front of Emma. Her eyes reminded me of a little girl’s as he scooped the strawberries and homemade whipped cream deliciousness onto the deep-fried mound of dough.

  Her attention diverted, I didn’t waste an opportunity to stare at her, but then I noticed her arms were speckled with goosebumps. I muttered an internal curse for being so wrapped up in Q and A I neglected to consider the chill in the late night air.

  I slid out of my tux coat in one seamless movement and was already tightening it around her shoulders before she noticed.

  “Oh, thanks,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me. “I was all right.”

  I slid the jacket deeper over her shoulders, just for an excuse to be this close awhile longer. “What was that little agreement about honesty we had earlier?” I mused, tapping my chin.

  “Okay, fine. I was a little chilly,” she admitted, followed by a sigh. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” I grinned victoriously all the way back to my seat where Albert was just putting the finishing touches on my funnel cake extraordinaire.

  “I would have taken you more for a crème brulee kind of guy,” Emma said around a mouthful of whipped cream.

  Flames—the good ones—erupted in my gut. The woman could make eating carnival food sexy. Unbelievable.

  “And why’s that?” I asked.

  She picked at another bite. I foudnd myself both hoping and not hoping it would be more whipped cream. “Because girls from lower class, broken families like funnel cakes, and boys from rich southern families eat cream brulee. For one, because you know how to say it the right way without embarrassing yourself, and for two,”—she shrugged—“because it’s the best.”

  She just managed to draw a parallel between food preferences and socio-economic classes. No wonder she’s at Stanford.

  “Emma, I don’t choose the best because it’s what everyone else thinks is the best. In fact, I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks.”

  “Sure, sure,” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Why would you be the kind of person to choose the best? It’s not like you drive the best, or sail the best”—the twitching was advancing into a smile—“or wear the best,”—her eyes scanned my tux, ending at my watch, which, although it was pretty darn blingin’, wasn’t my “best”—“or that you—”

  “So I have a taste for the finer things in life,” I interjected, sensing her just getting started up. “What’s wrong with that? I like the car, the boat, and the clothes because I like them, not because I care what anyone else thinks. If some secret society of rich stiffs decided to declare that Kia was the best car out there, I can assure you I wouldn’t be putting along in a hunk of junk more plastic than metal.”

  “Touchy,” Emma replied. “I must have hit pretty close to the mark.”

  I shot her a give me a break smile while I restrained myself from shoveling a third of the cake into my mouth. Chewing through a respectable, but date-appropriate sized bite of funnel-licious, I considered the quickest way to end this debate before we launched into an argument.

  In my experience, women liked being right (even when they were wrong). I mean, really liked being right. The one good thing about being the last single brother was I’d gleaned invaluable experience by watching my brothers with their wives. The quickest way to end an argument was to concede and, while conceding was something I wasn’t known for, Emma had proven to me how even the deepest rooted habits I held could be tossed on their butts.

  “So you’re right,” I admitted. “I do like the best. The best of the best. Why do you think I’m here with you?” Her face was as equally pleased as it was surprised. And something about that expression made me shove the dessert plate away and come around the table toward her. “Dance with me?” I asked, reaching for her hand.

  Like the pro he was, Jacque made sure the music started just then.

  Emma snapped her head behind her. “A mariachi band?” she exclaimed, staring at them like they couldn’t be real. Like a five member mariachi band astounded her more than the car, the boat, or anything else tonight.

  “Who are you, Patrick Hayward?” she asked, looking back at me slowly.

  “Who do you want me to be?” I said, praying she’d tell me, knowing I’d be whatever it was she wanted.

  “You,” she answered, slipping her hand into mine.

  “Good thing for both of us that’s who I am best.” Folding my other hand over hers, I half-guided, more-pulled her towards the band, feeling like if I had to wait one more heartbeat to have her in my arms, I’d keel over from the anticipation.

  “The last woman I danced with told me I’m pretty much a lost cause,” I said, hoping she couldn’t hear my heart thundering like I could. “So don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “I happen to be a dancing queen. The kind that inspired the ABBA song,” she said, trying to keep a straight face. “Try to keep up.”

  With a flick of my wrist, I spun her before twisting her into my arms so close I could feel the beat of her heart against my chest, and on a scale between hummingbird and sloth, Emma’s was trilling more along the lines of the avian species.

  In fact, it was almost keeping up with my own erratic beats. The clashing sensations hit me harder than I knew how to manage. Feeling her skin heating through to mine, the scents that were all her own, the innocent s
mile lighting up her face, it was like a brigade of assassins attempting to kill my restraint. I was going to kiss her. I knew I shouldn’t, I knew I couldn’t, but you know what desire tells your inhibitions when it’s at full throttle?

  Screw you. I do what I want.

  I could feel the sting from the slap I’d likely be dealt, the drive of it was that strong. Grasping at whatever fate would throw me, I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and prayed this would dim the kissing autopilot. I opened my eyes, right into hers, very possibly the most beautiful eyes I’d ever looked into—certainly the most captivating—and wanted her more than I had a moment ago. I wanted her to be mine. Forever.

  Here was the slap to the face I needed just then, although I’d be cursing it from here on out. She wasn’t mine. She was Ty’s. She’d been his and she’d continue to be his if I couldn’t get her to see reason. Reason being Ty was the bad boy fathers had been warning their daughters against since the time of Abel.

  “So you’ve been with the boy of Steel for six years, huh?” I said, clearing my throat and my mind at the same time.

  She didn’t look amused by my attempts at humor. She rarely was when it involved Ty, whereas I thought those were the crème de la crème of my comedic aptitude. “Six years next month,” she clarified.

  “You ever mistaken your life for purgatory?” I asked, keeping my arms locked around her, not able to let her squirm away. Now that I had her where I wanted her, I wasn’t sure I could let go.

  “Only recently,” she threw back at me, her eyes sharply pointing right at the guilty party.

  “So that’s—Ty, I mean,” I said, “what you want?” This time, there was no undercurrent of teasing in my voice. I wanted to know. And while I’d be anything she needed, if it was a person like Ty, I just didn’t know if I could contort myself into a similar mold.

  Staring over at the band unseeingly, she answered, “It’s what I know.”