Page 45 of The Emma Special

Summer gasped. “What baby?”

Emma’s voice shook as she responded. “He’ll live.”

Six pairs of eyes with varying degrees of shock and confusion struck Emma. “Peaches! Y’all should see your faces. James is pretending to care about little Arnie, but he doesn’t even know what we’re talking about. James, meet the Kiss and Tell Book Club, where we read kissing books with happily ever afters. Girls, this is James Moore, my boss⁠—”

“Friend,” James interrupted. “I’m her friend from work. Glad to meet everyone.”

Katie held out a hand to James. “It’s nice to see you again. We’ve been hearing so many good things about Anderson and Associates.”

“Inflated, I’m sure. Emma has a way of adding—” He flared his hands in a rainbow arc. “Some extra sparkle. She seemed exceptionally excited about book club today. Interesting chapters this week?”

Say nothing, Emma used her telepathy to warn the girls to keep quiet, but shouldn’t have worried. The sisterhood had her back.

Katie leaned forward with her chin in her hands as if boys crashed their meetings all the time. “Arnie is the baby in Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke. You heard of it?”

James’s gaze flicked toward Emma, then back to Katie. “I’ll have to get myself a copy. What’s it about?”

What was he doing? What was his game?

Emma had the diary this week. She might as well record this once-in-a-lifetime encounter with boys at the book club. She started to stand up but accidentally put weight on her wrong leg. The pain was instant—blinding her for half a second before she jerked to a halt. She sucked in a gasp and plopped back on the couch, sloshing hot coffee over her hand. “Ow!”

James slipped her mug away from her and pressed a napkin in her hand. “Hang on.” James strode toward the check-out counter before she’d finished processing what had just happened.

Emma blinked at her friends. Summer scowled—not surprising, Summer rarely trusted men when they were being nice for no apparent reason. Katie smiled. Allison lifted a prim eye-brow, but Daniel… He crossed his arms with a smirk and relaxed into his chair.

“Typical James,” he said.

“Have you read anything fun lately?” Katie asked Daniel. Sweet Katie chiming in to break the silence.

“Instruction manuals count?”

“No—” Allison grunted at the same time as Katie’s “Sure!”

James returned with a bag full of ice and a roll of plastic wrap. He knelt in front of Emma before asking, “Can I see your knee?”

When she nodded, he gently extended her left foot away from the couch. It was too late to be embarrassed about the white tennis shoes she’d put on with her black pantyhose and grass-green skirt.

“Does it hurt when I touch it?” He pressed his fingers against the sides of her knee cap, and she winced. “Emma,” he breathed out her name, exasperated. “Why haven’t you had this looked at?”

“Well… I am. I will. I had to wait for the—I have an appointment scheduled for next week.”

“Ah, that’s why you’re taking off next Monday afternoon.” James looked down at her damaged knee. “I’m going to wrap the ice around it. Did you take anything to reduce the swelling?”

She nodded, her normally blabbering tongue was stuck against the roof of her mouth. Her friends chattered and laughed, but it was fabricated. They were all watching. They had to see that he… that she… they had to know that… that what?

That James was incredibly kind. He was gentle. Sweet and thoughtful. A man of action. Caring. He was… She swallowed. He was lifting both her ankles and placing her feet on his lap across the couch. He drummed a beat on her shins, the picture of casualness.

“There.” He flashed her a secret wink. “Kiss and Tell Book Club,” he said with a smile. “What was your last book about?”

Emma covered her face as her shoulders began to shake with laughter. “James! This isn’t a club for you.” Her laughter only grew thinking of him staying up late, flipping pages to find out if they were going to kiss already. “You know what? Fine. The last book…” She couldn’t even get the words out because she knew how ridiculous they would sound to someone like him. “Katie, tell him.”

“Eighteen hundreds. Wagon train. Husband dies. She’s pregnant. The farmer who digs the grave asks her to marry him and help take care of his kid.”

“Wow.” James looked honestly shocked. “I did not see that coming.”

Daniel leaned back on the overstuffed chair and stretched his legs out. “I’m invested. So then what? She runs away, has her baby in the forest, dies, baby is raised by wolves and turns into Tarzan.”

Allison scoffed. “This is why we don’t invite boys to book club.”