The only fixed variable was Amelia. Her denial and affront; the way she assumed the worst of him and that every gesture was done in bad faith.
It started to feel like extended foreplay with no avenue for release. Emory had even told her so with no expectation that she’ddrop to her knees and be good to him, but the statement must’ve galvanized something in her.
“I don’t want to fight anymore. It’s become too personal,” she told him that morning, her tender contrition merely a smokescreen.
Emory knew what she meant. It wasn’t what was said or that it had gone too far. It was that it felt like make-believe where they maligned each other the way only lovers could. Too personal meant too intense, too intimate, too liable to escape fantasy and become something real.
At the breakfast table, Amelia scooted as close to him as she could tolerate to still keep with the lies. Legs crossed, her interwoven fingers cupped one knee. The pose exaggerated the fullness of her breasts in a loose tank top.
“I think we should clear the air. I heard you have business tonight, so whenever you’re free, I’m ready to open up to you.”
Open up to me.
She chose the suggestive words with care, but it’d taken her a week to try that approach. A woman adept at weaponized seduction would’ve already batted her lashes and showed some skin. Out of her depth, the attempt almost endeared, but Emory discerned her intent to disarm and distract.
Still, he drank in the sight of her—auburn hair aflame in the morning light, pillowy lips parting with what he swore was an invitation, and the illusory warmth of her gaze. The last bit bothered him the most, that she’d toy with his heart to earn her freedom.
“Sure,” he replied tepidly. “I can’t reschedule my meeting tonight, but tomorrow works.”
It wasn’t a lie per se, just an embellished truth. He had dinner plans with a few associates, nothing he couldn’t cancel. As expected, the detail roused her interest, and Amelia flashed a heartbreaker of a smile.
A lesser man would’ve shattered. If only she meant it. She didn’t, and that was her fatal flaw. She overplayed her hand, andwhen he left for Vegas in the evening, she watched him go and even waved goodbye as if she might ache at his absence.
Emory enjoyed a nice meal and productive conversation that would’ve continued at a members-only gentlemen’s club, but he cut the night short. Just before midnight, he arrived back at Liam’s and parked in the garage to hide his arrival. With a fine bottle of bourbon from the basement lounge, he crept through the mansion turned down for the night.
In the parlor, he poured a drink and waited in a chair with clear sight of the stairs. At a half past midnight, the doubts arrived as he freshened his glass—maybe he’d misread Amelia’s intentions—but a door creaked on its hinges upstairs, and light footsteps padded down the hall.
With his eyes well-adjusted to the dark, Emory watched Amelia tiptoe down the stairs in bare feet, her ballet flats hooked on her fingers and her purse clutched to her chest.
When she reached the landing, he yanked the pull-chain on the lamp beside him. Amelia jumped with a startle and expelled a sharp gasp.
“Going somewhere?” he asked, delighted at trouncing on her great escape.
Poor thing looked devastated as she stashed her shoes and purse by the front door and crossed the foyer.
“You’ve been waiting for me?” Amelia asked as she entered the parlor.
“What do you think? That I trusted you to stay put?” Emory chuckled as he lifted the bourbon glass to his lips. “You’re determined. I’ll give you that.”
He eyed her over the rim as he sipped and wondered if her choice of attire was deliberate—denim shorts that barely covered a damn-near perfect ass, thin white t-shirt slipping off her shoulder, a black bra visible underneath. She’d have to hitch a ride somehow and showing some thigh to a lonesome trucker wasn’t the worst idea.
A thunderbolt of jealousy knocked Emory off kilter. He downed hisdrink but poured another finger of bourbon and studied the way Amelia’s body moved as she slinked toward him. It drove him crazy; all that doe-eyed innocence he just wanted to wreck.
Amelia wasn’t so innocent, though. With the face of an angel, she’d probably fuck him like a fiend. If she planned to seduce him, he wished she’d get on with it. He was tired of the dance and in need of some affection, more than just a warm body in his bed.
Amelia sat on the sofa adjacent to him and didn’t seem to mind that his outstretched legs rested perilously close to hers. Emory offered her the glass. He didn’t know if she liked bourbon or even drank at all. That was their paradox. The heated exchanges implied depths of knowledge not at all earned.
“I thought you had business tonight,” Amelia said and cautiously took the glass.
“Were you counting on it?”
She held his stare and took a sip. “What do you think?”
“What do I think?” Emory knit his fingers behind his head and reclined in his seat. “I think you should reconsider running out on me.”
“Don’t count on it,” she mocked.
With a flicker of defiance in her eyes, she held out the glass. Complicated impulses had convinced Emory that he despised her. It wasn’t her, he realized, but the fool for the fantasy he’d become. Night after night, his thoughts faithfully beat a well-worn path back to her. Always to her.
