One in Waiting (Reedsville Roosters Book 2), page 15
“I’m surprised they haven’t cracked them in my direction yet.”
“Shush.”
Emilie’s Camp Out rules were pretty simple. Alcohol was okay, but public drunkenness wasn’t. It was a family-friendly event, and there were scads of kids around. No drugs. Smoking only in designated areas. No exhibitionism. Keep the trash at bay. And…basically, don’t be an asshole. At the last event, they’d had some dopeheads following one of the bands create quite a bit of newspaper-worthy chaos, and Emilie was hoping to prevent a repeat of that.
“I know what you can do if you really can’t sit idle right now,” Ceria said. She pulled Emilie’s sandwich over for a bite.
“What?”
“You can help Alison set up her tent. She’s got a couple of her friends here this year, and they didn’t look like they shared Alison’s, well, technical capacity.”
“You think she’d want my help?”
“Not even going to justify that with an answer.” Ceria set her clipboard on the Mule’s floor.
“Did she claim a good spot?”
“Yep, away from the crappers, away from the speakers, and out of heavy foot traffic from the food trucks, but on an aisle so she can actually see the stage. I think she marked it off yesterday. I was wondering why she’d asked me for a map.”
“She’s smart.”
“Why do you consistently seem so surprised by that? Of course she’s smart. Just because you and Leary made stupid mistakes doesn’t mean you didn’t contribute some intelligence to her mix of genetics. And she’s had a good upbringing, in spite of everything.”
“I feel guilty.” The words came out unfiltered, before Emilie had a chance to sanitize them—to tamp them down.
“You survive on a diet of guilt. I know it. I don’t yell at you about it, but it wouldn’t do any good. What is it this time, though, huh? Are you still worrying you don’t do enough for her?”
“Well, I don’t. I…I’m not there enough.”
“Do you want to be?”
“I do, but I feel like that would be a slap in the face to the Waynes. They raised her, and I don’t want them to feel like I’m horning in after all this time.”
“You forget that the Waynes had a hand in raising you, too. If you’re going to overanalyze every fucking thing, make sure you’re considering every aspect of them. If you were to ask the Waynes straight-out how they felt about you wanting to spend more time with Alison, what do you think they’d say?”
“They’d…they’d say okay.” That was obvious. Indisputable.
“That’s right. And the fact of the matter is Alison is nearly grown. Either they let her forge relationships now and oversee them—make sure they’re healthy and productive—or they can let her run loose at eighteen when they have absolutely no oversight. Which would you prefer?”
“Sooner than later.”
“That’s because you’re thinking like a mother even though you keep telling yourself you’re not cut out to be one.”
Emilie drummed her fingertips on the steering wheel and watched the people clustering around the snow cone truck for a while. She was sick of tamping down those impulses born the same morning Alison had been. Sick of being disconnected. Sick of being afraid she was going to have her heart broken again over her child. She needed to stop being afraid of what people would think if she actually felt something for the baby she’d never wanted to give up.
She rubbed her tired eyes and blew out some air. “Show me her spot. We can show her friends how to put a tent together.”
Ceria chuckled. “I can’t help you there. You do the assembly. I’ll keep her friends from tripping all over themselves.”
Emilie navigated around the milling Camp Out attendees, following Ceria’s precise directions, slowing occasionally to appreciate certain high-end tents and camping accessories. She’d never gone camping as a kid. It wasn’t something Beaudelaires did…at least not the ones who wore dresses. She could have sworn Henri was a Scout for a while. Perhaps he’d had the experience and she’d long since repressed him getting it.
Seeing all the families working together to construct their tents, and…hell, even all the arguing, tugged at her heartstrings. She still had a chance to do those things—especially the arguing part. She was good at that. She didn’t have to allow herself to become some dried-up shell of a woman because her life hadn’t gone to plan at age sixteen, and could still have the kind of family she wanted. “Not dead yet,” she whispered as she pulled the Mule’s brake.
Apparently, Leary had beaten her to the job. He waved his mallet at her and resumed his work of tamping down a tent stake.
Alison walked over to the Mule, grinning ear-to-ear. “Unless the weather guy lied, temperatures are going to drop a few degrees. Might not sweat to death this year.”
“You’re young. You’ll survive,” Ceria said.
“Doesn’t mean it’ll be comfortable. Emilie, you’ve met my friends, right?”
Emilie nodded and waved to the two girls who were too distracted by Leary’s back to wave. She couldn’t blame them. He was something special to look at, and he wasn’t exactly the typical middle-aged dad. Nothing typical about him at all, for that matter.
“How are your construction skills, Em?” Leary canted his head toward the tent’s opposite side.
“I do pretty well when pressed.”
“Well, I’m pressing you. Try not to embarrass me. I talked you up big time and don’t want to be made out a liar.”
After a moment’s delay to convince herself it was fine to be heard, she let the laugh out and got to work threading the supports through the canvas.
“Hey, do you three want to share a funnel cake with me?” Ceria asked the girls. “The line’s gone now.”
They vaulted themselves toward the Mule so quickly Emilie wasn’t sure their feet hit the ground.
“There went our construction crew,” Leary said as they puttered off. He tied off a cord at the back left corner and nodded for her to do the same on the opposite side.
“If I had to choose between putting up a tent and getting a funnel cake, I’d probably choose the junk food, too.”
“I’ll buy you one when we’re done.”
“And help me eat it, too, I bet.”
“Of course. It’d be the chivalrous thing to do.”
“Is that what they’re calling it now?”
“They’re bad for you, Em. You gotta take care of that ticker so you’ll be around for years and years of these pain-in-the-ass events.”
“Don’t bother worrying about me.” She tied the cord around the stake loop and moved to the next corner. Leary had already driven in the first stake, so they just needed to make sure they got the damned thing square. “I’ll be around for a long time raising hell and driving the staff nuts.”
“Oh, just half the staff, from what I hear. Ren says you don’t need to start completely from scratch.”
She groaned and sat back on her heels. “He owes me for rabble-rousing. The staff is suspicious about what I’m up to now, and I’ll have to lay into them on my own until the end of the baseball season.”
“You’re gonna give him the job?”
She rolled a length of cord between her fingers and stared down at the intricate weaving. She thought it was amazing that mankind had evolved enough to create machines capable of producing such elegant material.
“Em?”
“Uh. Yeah.” She tied the rope to the last stake. “I think he’s suited to the job. Ceria agrees.”
Leary squatted next to her and whispered, “I’m sure he won’t mind paying you back in his own way for the rabble-rousing. And I’m sure I wouldn’t mind being there to see it. What else do you have in those boxes of yours, huh?”
“Leary…” She started to stand, but he put his hand to her knee to throw off her balance.
“You stay right there. We’re talkin’. I might have to start taking your rudeness personally. You know, I wanted to make love to you slow and gentle…” He skimmed his fingers up her thigh and leaned in so close she felt the tickle of his breath on her ear. Not necessary as no one was close enough to hear, but impactful all the same. Her nipples tightened and sex clenched around nothing, remembering how he’d felt. How he’d filled her. “But I’m starting to wonder if you poke at me because you like me bending you over like that.”
She swallowed. “I’m not poking at you. I just thought—”
“You thought what? That I was going to drop what we’d talked about? Nah. I’m not. I’m just gonna push a little harder for it because you’re evidently incapable of looking out for your own best interest.”
“And you think you two jackasses are my best interest?”
“Yep. I do, pretty girl, I really do.” He squeezed farther up her thigh, and she had to clasp his wrist in warning before one of Ceria’s righteous ladies came by to police them. “We’ll figure out a way to make it work so no one gets hurt, but you’ve got to agree to try.”
“What if I don’t want to try?”
“Then I would think you were being shortsighted.”
“Considering how disruptive you two could be to my life isn’t being shortsighted. It’s being proactive.”
“But it’s already disrupted, right? You’re going to have to deal with me, anyway, because I certainly don’t think seeing Alison once is enough, and eventually she’s going to figure out that in spite of the fact I have a boyfriend, I’m still sweet on you. If you want to keep it a secret—just between me, you, Ren, and Ceria—while we test it out, that’s okay. But you should know if you push me aside, I’m gonna dog you until you do the right thing.”
“The right thing in your opinion.”
He held her head still and dragged his lips across hers.
Her eyes closed on a sigh.
“I like to think my opinion matters a little. Are you really going to look me in my face and tell me you don’t still love me a little?”
No. She wasn’t going to do that. She pressed her palms to his cheeks and drew back just enough to lock onto that dark, penetrating gaze.
“Why don’t you let us give you what you need?” he whispered.
“Maybe I don’t fully understand what that is.”
His lips were so beckoning, so ripe, so she took them. Just a little kiss—an acknowledgement that she saw him and wanted him. Still wanted him.
“I’m not saying we don’t have work to do. For as well as we think we know each other, we’ve got to go through a lot of getting-to-know-you stuff. Gotta undo old misconceptions and forgive ourselves for the bullshit. It’s gonna take some time, but we’ve got time.”
“Yeah, we’ve got that.” She gave him one last peck and stood as the Mule motored back up the path. “I’ll think about it, Leary. Okay? Just give me some time.”
He nodded.
“I thought you two were capable,” Ceria chided. “Do I need to Google the instructions?” Hands on hips, she strode over and smirked.
“Shush. You knew what you were doing abandoning us.” Emilie knelt at the tent corner ready to pull it up. “Everything you do is calculated to the Nth degree.”
“True.” Ceria ambled back to the cart where the girls were sharing a funnel cake piled high with whipped cream, nuts, and God knew what else. Emilie’s stomach growled in anticipation. She could eat a plate with just the whipped cream and be euphoric for the rest of the afternoon. Something about that particular combination of fat and sugar really did it for her.
“I wish you looked at me like that,” Leary said as he skimmed around her.
“You shush, too.”
“Nope.” He winked. “Let’s get this thing up. A little bird told me the line for barbecue gets long early, and I plan on gorging myself this weekend.”
“Don’t you need to be light on your feet on Monday, Captain?”
“Don’t worry about me. I plan on working it off before then.”
She just bet he did.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Emilie didn’t hold out hope that the calm, clear-headedness she’d earned during the weekend would last, but she planned on clinging to it while she still could. She didn’t know, really, how she’d ended up sleeping in Alison’s tent. It likely had something to do with Ceria’s meddling as she’d been in and out of there most of the weekend herself.
Emilie was continuously stunned by Alison’s unflinching empathy, and not just in her kid-gloves handling of her anxious mother, but of everyone around her. She always tried to make conversation easier for Ceria by positioning herself where Ceria could see her face, which Emilie knew wasn’t strictly necessary, but it certainly cut down on how much repeating the speaker would have to do. She switched gears seamlessly between her friends, one of whom was higher energy and had a lot more to say. The other was quieter, and whose additions to the conversations were less frequent, but no less welcome. Alison walked a sort of tightrope between the two of them. Bridging them, in a way, as they may not have been friends if it weren’t for Alison. Their energies were just far too disparate.
And as high as Alison’s emotional IQ was, Emilie recognized she was still in need of a little reassurance, in spite of her seemingly overflowing well of self-confidence. Emilie saw it in the way Alison would look at her after saying something that might have been borderline controversial. She wanted to know what Emilie thought about her just as much as Emilie worried what Alison thought of her. Maybe that was how they’d be able to salvage it all.
Emilie let herself pull Alison into a hug—no second-guessing, no chance to talk herself out of it—before putting her into the Waynes’ car. She didn’t know what to say while holding the child who was almost a woman—the child who knew too much. She just held her, and maybe sighed. Alison walked to the car saying, “I’m not scary.”
No, she wasn’t. She was easy. So easy. Emilie had been the one making things difficult. Self-flagellating and destroying herself. She was tired of it.
It was time to let some things be easy. So, she decided that she was going to cling to the calm the best she could and carry it forward into her days. She’d find new things to fixate on.
Stepping into the kitchen, she nearly face planted after tripping over an unexpected hard lump in the dark, but slapped her hand onto the counter edge to catch herself at the last minute. “Shit!”
The overhead light popped on, and Leary appeared in the doorway to the living room. “Sorry, sweetheart. If I’d thought you were coming in through that door, I wouldn’t have left my suitcase there.”
“I thought you’d left. Ceria said you have to check in with the team manager the night before a game.”
“Supposed to, but we couldn’t get a flight until midnight. Wallace says it’s our own damned faults and we could have gotten out this morning, but…” He shrugged. Grinned.
He’d known exactly what he was doing, and likely gave no shits as to what the repercussions would be. Why would he give a damn about professionalism in baseball when he was so eager to get out of the game?
She nodded and shoved her hands into her jeans pockets as Ren appeared in the doorway beside him. He certainly didn’t look ready to go. Barefoot, shirtless, and clad in a pair of mesh athletic shorts that in spite of their bagginess left very little up to the imagination. “You plan on flying like that, cowboy?”
“Nah, just saving time.”
“What for?”
“Wanted to make sure you don’t forget about us.”
“By modeling for me?”
He nudged Leary’s side. “I guess she wants you to spell it out.”
“We don’t have time to be coy, so might as well.” Leary shucked his shirt as he crossed the kitchen and tossed it on top of his rolling bag. Her grabbed her hand. Led her around the island, and pulled her toward the hallway. “Don’t know when we’ll be back this way,” he said.
“So you were looking to be topped off?”
“It’s a mutual topping-off, the way I see it. While we’re gone, you can think of all kinds of creative trouble for us to get into later.”
“Assuming I’ll have any time to think at all.”
“Oh, we’ll send you plenty of reminders as to what you should be thinking about.” He stopped at the foot of the bed and nudged off his shoes. “Just make sure you delete ’em from your phone when you’re done with the…visual stimulus.”
“I see.” She crossed her arms over her chest and watched the spectacle unfolding before her. Leary undressed with locker room speed and perched on the foot of the bed. He beckoned Ren over, and Ren stood waiting between Leary’s legs. Leary hooked his thumbs into the elastic waistband of Ren’s shorts and shimmied the garment down and Ren’s briefs along with them.
She didn’t know if she’d ever get over how comfortable Leary was with male-male intimacy. She wouldn’t have pegged him as being capable of it when they were teenagers, but perhaps they both had plenty of surprises to share with each other now. Watching wasn’t generally one of her kinks, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t intrigued by the way the two attended each other.
Leary took Ren’s cock in hand and cast Emilie a speculative look. “We’ve got half an hour, tops. You gonna undress, or do you need help, too? And don’t look at me like that. If you want to be the one in control, then do it faster.”
Emilie pushed up an eyebrow. She was pretty sure Leary already had the control, but they could share. Ren probably wouldn’t mind getting bossed around from two directions.
She stepped out of her boots and wriggled out of her shirt, walking it slowly to the hamper in the closet as Ren sank to his knees between Leary’s legs. He raked his hands up Leary’s thighs and cupped him. Emilie stepped into the closet and finished undressing. Briefly, she considered going into the guest room and seeing what toys she could pull out of her boxes of fun, but as Leary said, they only had thirty minutes. They’d have to make do with what they already had available on their bodies. Their bodies were enough, at least for the moment.
She stepped back into the bedroom to find Leary’s fingers twined at the back of Ren’s head as Ren took him deep into his mouth again and again in long, slow sucks. There was nothing abashed or tentative about it. He’d done it before and liked it.
