Instant Gratification

Chapter 9

With that inexplicable and annoying awareness tickling up her spine, Emma got out of the truck and strode to the rock. Up close, it wasn’t as tall as she’d first thought, maybe only twenty feet, and the kids were only about halfway, which meant that their feet were just about head level. Her father was slightly below the kids, Stone above them.

“Are you kidding me?” she asked, eyeing the kids on the rock and thinking of cracked skulls and broken bones, all of which would be utterly needless injuries. “Where are the safety ropes?”

Stone twisted around to look down at her, his jeans going taut across his butt.

It was quite the impressive butt.

In fact, everything about him was impressive. Arms and legs stretched out, muscles tight and strained, he was spread-eagle, holding onto what appeared to be nothing more than tiny crevices in the rock.

“We use ropes on the higher climbs,” he said.

“It doesn’t look safe.” Not the rock, and certainly not you.

Her father began to work his way down toward her while Stone stayed with the kids. Stone’s faded gray t-shirt was snug across his broad shoulders, loose around his waist, gaping out enough to reveal a tanned, sleek back. He was no longer wearing bandages over all the road rash, and she could see his injuries were healing quite fast and well as he moved along with easy grace.

Yeah, that’s why she was staring at him, to make sure he’d healed properly.

Her father hopped to the ground. “Emma.” He smiled at her, light and welcoming. “Nice surprise. Nobody needing you at the Urgent Care then?”

“No.” With baited breath, she watched the group of five kids work the rock safely with Stone’s quiet reassurances. “Who are they?”

“A group of local foster kids. Stone takes them out of their element and on mini-expeditions.”

She’d already heard from Missy that he did this but it became real when she saw it firsthand. It was yet another layer of Stone revealed. Hard to keep picturing him as nothing but a mountain bum when he kept unraveling like a damn onion.

“He’s big on making sure the kids don’t fall through the cracks,” her dad said. “Like he and his brothers did.”

Tilting her head up, she watched Stone give each kid a fist bump as they got to the top. Hard to imagine him as a little boy, much less a vulnerable one.

“Anyway.” Her father slid off his baseball cap. His gray hair was wild as always. “Today is rock climbing day, as you can see. We’re rafting next week.”

“We.”

“I help with the kids when I can, which is more often now.”

Ironic, she thought. He was there for those kids, when he’d never been there for his own.

The kids were preparing for their descent. She wanted to point out how dangerous this sort of thing was, but hell, the teens in New York faced their own daily dangers, and if there was someone to steer them through surviving out here, so much the better.

But that it was Stone…Yeah, it really put a dent in the whole ski bum rep.

“You’re doing okay at the clinic?”

She looked at her father. “I accepted three more casseroles and two gossip sessions today. I had a case of poison ivy, a wicked toe infection, and…nothing. Nothing else. I’m not sure how I managed to handle it all.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Different pace here, yeah?”

“You could say that. Dad…” She’d given up so much to be here, so damn much, and he was rock climbing. “What are you doing?”

“Well, Stone here and I will make dinner for the kids, and then-”

“I mean…” She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. “How is it that you can rock climb and not work?”

“Oh.” He moved toward his front porch with a surprising spryness for a sixty-one-year-old heart-attack victim, minor or otherwise. “Yeah. About that.”

“You’re improved enough to come back to work,” she said.

Her father scratched his head. “Well…”

“Frankly, I think it’s rude of you not to tell me so.” They were on his porch now, separate enough from the others that they could have some privacy. “I’ve been asking to see your chart, to help you monitor your recovery, but you’ve chosen not to involve me. Fine, I get it, you have your life. But I have mine, too, Dad. A busy one, and I need to get back to it.”

Her father’s smile slipped some. “I didn’t involve you in my care because it can be disconcerting to read the medical records of a close family member.”

“As I buried mom only six months ago, I think I can handle it. Actually, I can handle anything. The bottom line is that I came to help you, and clearly you don’t need it. I would have appreciated knowing that, as this hasn’t exactly been a vacation for me.”

“I didn’t think so, Emma.”

“Well, what did you think? That I’d appreciate, after all this time of no contact, having to drop everything and come do your work for you?”

He didn’t say anything to that.

“I need to be in New York,” she said quietly.

“Putting in eighty hour work weeks.”

Minimum. With her mom gone, her stepdad gallivanting around the world, and nothing else going on, what did it matter? “I like the work.”

“There’s more to life than work.”

“Dad.” She rubbed a weary hand over her eyes. “It’s a little late for the fatherisms, okay? If you’re better, I just want to know.”

He was quiet, and after looking at him, waiting, she turned away and nearly ran right smack into Stone, who’d climbed down the rock and come up onto the porch without a sound. The kids were in the yard, kicking a ball around. Stone’s usual smile was nowhere in place. “He’s not ready to go back to work, Emma. He’s-”

But her father put his hand on Stone’s arm, and whatever else he’d planned to say never left his lips.

Men. Stoic and silent and stupid. “I have three casseroles in the damn truck,” she said, giving up. “I brought them to you so you’d have food.” She stalked back to the vehicle; stacking the dishes up together when the skin at the nape of her neck did that prickle thing, a phenomenon which had never happened to her before Stone.

Not something she wanted to think about.

But damn him.

She whirled around and yep, there he was. Funny how fast the guy could move when he wanted to, like a cat, she thought, looking up, up, up into his eyes, which for the first time were closed off to her. A big, tough, wild leopard. Or a tiger. Something surprisingly silent and edgy and dangerous in worn jeans, his t-shirt molding to his broad shoulders and chest and abs. His wayward surfer hair was spiky today, as if he’d used his fingers instead of a comb. His face-“Hey.” She ran her finger over his temple. “Your stitches.”

“I took them out.”

Yeah, he was most definitely dangerous, at least to her mental health. “You what?”

“Admit it, I did a good job.”

The cut had healed, perfectly. “You should have let me.”

“To be honest, I was never going to let you.” He paused. “Emma-”

“No.” She didn’t want to hear it. She understood his role as protector, that he was there for her father. But she was pretty damn tired of everyone having someone at their back but her.

Damn tired. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Too bad, since I do.” He turned to make sure no one could overhear. “He came to see you, Emma.”

“What?”

“When you were young. He tried to see you, multiple times in fact. But your mother always caught wind of it and whisked you off on a trip somewhere.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He sent letters and called too. He tried to be a part of your life, but she told him that it wasn’t going to happen. That it couldn’t happen, because she was aiming high with you, higher than him.”

“No.” Emma shook her head. “She wouldn’t say that.” But…but how many times had Sandy said those very words, that Emma was to aim high, far higher than her own roots. Oh, God. “I don’t believe it.”

“I know it must be hard, after being raised by her, to hear the other side.”

No. No, it wasn’t hard. She knew more than anyone that there were two sides to every story. But this, this couldn’t be right.

Yet the look on his face, the utter empathy, the utter certainty…“Why?” she whispered. “Why did he let her tell him that he couldn’t see me?”

“Because he owed her. He felt responsible for her losing those years of her life when she stayed out here, the years she blamed him for.”

Sandy had resented those years, bitterly. Just as she’d bitterly resented every single wrinkle on her face, the ones she’d blamed on the high, harsh, Sierra sun. “He came to New York to see me.”

His eyes softened, revealing his honesty. “Yes.”

“And she turned him away.”

“Yes.”

Emma stared blindly at the granite rock, the rough, rugged pines. “She didn’t want to share me.”

“I imagine not, though it hurt him. And because he had time and love to give, he turned to other kids. Me, for one. And others.” She heard him take a step toward her, his feet crunching on the fallen pine needles. “He’s a good guy, Emma. A really good guy.”

She closed her eyes at the emotion in his voice.

He cared about her dad. She absorbed that a moment, then went still at the feel of his hands pulling her around to face him. His arms slid along hers as he took the casseroles from her, his body warm and sinewy. “Stone?”

“Yeah?” He didn’t shift away, remaining so close she could feel his breath warm on her temple.

“Thanks for telling me,” she whispered.

He nodded, then shook his head. “He won’t thank me.” He set the casseroles on the hood of the truck, then stepped close again.

She’d never been so aware of a man’s body.

Or her own.

Not good.

Yet she didn’t move away. If anything, she shifted slightly closer.

“You look tense enough to shatter,” he murmured, lifting a hand to touch her cheek.

Shocked at herself and her utter lack of control, she shifted into him. A mistake, because as she knew all too well, chemistry was basic.

And they had it in spades. “You might have noticed, I’m not good at relaxing.”

His mouth quirked. “I can help.”

Her mind went there, to how she’d let him relax her, and all it came up with was getting naked.

Oh good Lord. This was all his fault. He practically oozed sex appeal, and being this close wasn’t helping. Nor was the hand he had on her arm. That and his eyes, on hers, weakened her defenses, tearing down a wall she’d put up a damn long time ago, leaving her feeling far too exposed.

“Yeah,” he murmured, his thighs bumping hers. “It’s definitely there.”

Knowing what it was-that Chemistry 101 she was thinking about, all that sheer, bare, physical need-she lifted her chin. One thing at a time, and right now, she was concentrating on her self-righteous frustration over her dad. “This…this whatever it is between us, isn’t going to be a problem.”

“No?”

“No.” She firmed up her voice. “No way, no how.”

“You trying to convince me?” he asked. “Or yourself?”

“I mean it. This would be a very bad idea.”

“A bad idea, huh?” His voice was low and shockingly seductive as he dipped his head down slightly so that their mouths were disconcertingly close. “If that’s what helps you sleep at night, Doc.”

His eyes were smoldering with a dark and enticing knowledge, and her knees actually wobbled. Other reactions occurred too, reactions she wasn’t ready to admit to. But she could admit this-for whatever reason, whether it was his sheer testosterone-fueled masculinity, or the fact that he was different from the men she usually let in her life-she was too vulnerable to him.

Far too vulnerable.

Turning, she picked the casserole dishes back up and shoved them into his arms. “You cook those at 350 degrees for about an hour.”

His lips were curved slightly, and she drank in his closeness. He smelled a little woodsy, a little citrusy, and a whole lot male. His face was tanned, with fine lines fanning out from his eyes and the corners of his mouth, assuring her that he laughed, and often.

She had no idea why that was so damn attractive. Maybe because she’d always wondered what it was like not to be ruled by her work.

But her work was her life. She’d made sure of it.

Stone rubbed his jaw. He hadn’t shaved that morning, maybe not yesterday either, and the stubble should have put her off.

Yeah. It so didn’t.

She needed something to put her off. Maybe he wore holey socks. Maybe he snored. God, she hoped he snored.

“You going to talk to him before you go?”

“I think I said enough.”

“You were pretty hard on him.” The casual bluntness of the words struck a chord deep inside her, mostly because he was right. Which she hated.

“Maybe you could find something else to say. Something kind.”

Ah, good, there it was, the putting off. Perfect.

But in the face of her silence, he just held her gaze, clear and steady, and she sighed. Just say it, Stone. Say the rest of what you want to say.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “I get that in your world, you can back up that badass city girl thing you’ve got going on, but things are different here.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” she responded. “People around here tend to get all up in other people’s business, for one.” She shot him a meaningful look.

He smiled. “It’s called caring.”

“Oh. I thought it was called nosy.”

He shook his head. “You’re stubborn. You get that from him. He means something to me, Emma,” he said softly, with steel underlying every syllable. “Maybe you could cut him some slack.”

She wanted to promise him that she would, but that stubbornness reared its ugly head and she bit her tongue.

He looked at her for a long moment, then when she didn’t speak, nodded his thanks at the casseroles in his arms and turned and walked away.