Page 47 of The Emma Special

Daniel stood and stretched. “Good. I’m starving.”

A flash of inspiration hit Emma in the moment. “James, can I ride with you to Honky Fish?”

Katie settled her purse strap on her shoulder. “You don’t want to ride with me?”

James’s hands moved smoothly over the ice pack, unwrapping it from her leg.

“Of course I do. I ride with you all the time.” She tried to communicate with expressive, best-friend, secret eyebrow code. “I just have something to talk to James about.”

His hands stilled above her knee. “You do?”

“Work stuff.” Emma flashed him a small wink and mentally begged him to go along with it.

Daniel bumped his arm against Katie’s. “Does that mean I can bum a ride with you then?”

Katie’s face bloomed in a soft shade of red. “Sure.”

Mission accomplished. James lifted the ice pack from her leg and pulled the wrap off. “I parked about a block down the road, but I’ll go get my car and bring it to the door so you don’t have to walk far.”

Emma glanced at her friends who all wore matching grins. James was checking all of the boxes tonight. What a good friend he was.

Daniel offered Katie his bent arm. “Let’s go have some fun.”

Fun? Emma was already having fun and they hadn’t even “gone out” yet. As much as she needed to stay in her lane, she found herself drifting toward James in all the wrong ways.

Or was it the right way? For now, she was going to enjoy a night out with her friends and the two newest members of the Kiss and Tell Book Club.

Chapter 14

James Understands Nothing

James held open the door of Brews and Books as Emma and her friends stepped onto the sidewalk. The store lights beaming through the windows contrasted with the soft evening glow as the sun dipped behind the two-story buildings across the street.

“It wasn’t moving when I left it,” Emma said over her shoulder.

Katie threw her hands in the air. “You literally paralyzed it! You used a whole can of my best hairspray to demobilize a beetle.”

Emma took another step, quickly shifted her weight to her uninjured side, and turned. “It was coming at me. I grabbed the first weapon I could get my hands on.”

“Hairspray is not a weapon,” Katie countered with a grin.

Summer held up a finger. “To be fair, hairspray is a biohazard. It’s technically a chemical weapon.”

Allison wrapped her arm around Emma’s waist. “Well, you biohazarded that fiend straight back from whence he came.”

A glorious smile bloomed on Emma’s face. Her happiness was contagious. Infectious. She wasn’t hiding behind a desk with a spine so rigid it could serve as a flag pole. Her hands weren’t clasped neatly in front of her as she politely escorted a client down the hallway.

She was free—free to be her silly and beautiful self. Here, she could laugh about disabling an insect with hair products. At the office, she hid her quiet tears after someone with too many zeroes in his bank account berated her for putting mediation documents in the wrong colored binder.

Until this moment, James would have said Emma was happy at Anderson and Associates. Now, he could see behind the facade.

“Wait here, Emma.” He flipped his key ring around his finger. “I’ll be right back.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it before saying anything. Good. At least she wasn’t going to argue with him.

With a nod, he headed down the sidewalk toward his car. How was he going to talk to Emma about her leg injury? It was getting worse by the hour. The tightness in her jaw earlier at work had moved to her neck and shoulders. She couldn’t hardly take a step without support.

He slipped into the car, letting the hum of the engine drown every thought except Emma. She was the one with the injury, yet his stomach was twisted in knots just from watching her cope with the pain. Why did she wait so long to get help?