She's With Stupid Read online

  Emilie appeared to be equally entranced by Ethan and his standard ensemble of blue jeans, snug white button-down, and worn leather jacket. She was practically melting into a puddle where she stood.

  Kate directed an expectant look at both of them and waited for someone to speak. Then she waited some more.

  It was Lana who finally broke the silence. “How are you, Ethan?”

  Seemingly startled to realize there were other people in the room, Ethan looked up and blinked. His face broke out in a warm smile. “Lana, how are you, sweetheart?” he said with a wink.

  Emilie’s eyes narrowed. “Enough chit chat,” she snapped. “What do you want?” Her hand found her left hip, as it always did when she was especially irritated.

  The look on Ethan’s face suggested that he found an irritated Emilie just as appealing as he found a cheerful Emilie.

  Ethan put his hands in his pockets (presumably, Kate thought, to prevent himself from grabbing Emilie and kissing her soundly). Instead, he tilted his head and observed Emilie for a long moment.

  “You,” he finally replied in a soft voice.

  Three pairs of eyes widened in surprise at the naked sincerity in his voice, though Emilie managed to inject a healthy dose of sarcasm into her voice when she said, “Aren’t I a lucky girl?”

  The intent gleam in Ethan’s eyes let her know that he had caught the slight tremor in her voice, and Emilie nervously cleared her throat and took a small step back. Averting her gaze from Ethan’s face, she addressed the worn patch of carpet to the right of Lana and Kate. “If you’re coming to the dance we need to leave soon.”

  “Ooh, a dance,” Ethan drawled as he rubbed his hands together with excitement and pretended not to notice Emilie’s rising blood pressure. “Sounds like fun. Shall I drive?”

  His voice was deliciously rough, soft and raspy and — Emilie abruptly shook her head to halt that crazy-train of thought.

  Ethan had addressed the group, but he was still watching Emilie’s every reaction with a lazy grin on his annoyingly perfect face. When she realized that he was actually serious about going to the dance, her other hand found her right hip. “You’re not coming!”

  “Why not, Emmy?”

  He stuck out his lower lip and unexpectedly resembled his eleven year old self. Since Emilie had been quite fond of that version of him, she looked away again to prevent herself from weakening and tried to slow her heart rate by taking a deep breath.

  “Because,” she said with false patience. “It is an eighth grade dance, not a nightclub. My principal will think I’m losing it if I bring so many of my friends. And you.”

  “Oh, come on, Em, it could be fun,” Kate said with a grin.

  Emilie shot her a warning glare. “No one asked you, Katherine.”

  Before Emilie could voice the next objection already forming in her mind, Ethan stepped forward, took firm hold of her hand and dragged her down the hall towards Kate’s bedroom.

  Her mind slightly fuzzy from the jolt that always came from physical contact with Ethan, Emilie was too dazed to do anything but allow him to haul her along behind him. Otherwise, she assured herself, she would have protested his high-handed behavior.

  She was 99.9 percent sure of it.

  Ethan dragged her into the room and shut the door behind him with a soft click before turning to face her. He looked exasperated and amused and incredibly sexy, Emilie’s treacherous brain noted. No, no, no, she thought in mild panic. Get a hold of yourself, Emilie!

  Her stupid subconscious went right on ignoring her, though. Typical.

  A slow smile spread across Ethan’s face as he crossed his arms and leaned against the door, effectively caging her in the room with a hungry tiger. Or maybe a dragon was a more apt metaphor.

  Yes, he was looking at her like he was a hungry dragon and she was the tasty morsel he was planning to devour. And for some truly absurd reason, Emilie found that far more intriguing than she would ever have imagined possible.

  Emilie felt her face pale before a blush swiftly bloomed high on her cheeks. She did not want to find Ethan appealing in any way. And she definitely didn’t want to think about why she felt completely safe and secure when she was trapped in a room with him, despite every indication that she was neither safe nor secure where he was concerned.

  It wasn’t fair. Her body and her heart betrayed her at every turn, insisting that her mind was wrong to keep pushing him away.

  Stupid instincts.

  Chapter 14

  Ethan watched the conflicting emotions flit across her face. He knew she would scoff at the idea that he could still read her so clearly, but he could easily see her wariness about being alone with him, her curiosity about what he would do next, and he was certain he saw a flash of longing in her eyes before she smothered it and tried to present him with a calm façade.

  His grin deepened. She was glad to see him, even if she was frustrated as hell with herself for it.

  “Why don’t you want me to come to your dance, Emmy?” He endeavored to keep his tone light so as not to get her dander up any more than it already was.

  Her hand found her left hip again. He barely suppressed a groan at how lovely she looked when she was mad at him.

  “Why did you buy that house, Ethan?”

  Emilie’s eyes widened the second the words escaped her lips, and he knew she hadn’t meant to ask him about it so bluntly. His eyes narrowed. If he knew Emmy, and he liked to think that he did, the pigheaded woman had probably been prepared to never ask him what he meant by purchasing that particular house.

  “You know why I bought it, baby.” He made sure to keep his voice patient and low, and he was distinctly satisfied to note that Emilie barely suppressed a shiver.

  “No, I don’t,” she insisted mulishly.

  Ethan bit back another grin. He was sure she had meant for that to sound indignant, but instead it came out all breathy and sweet. Emilie’s groan of frustration indicated she knew it, too, and didn’t like it one bit.

  “You do know,” he said firmly. “And as soon as you’re ready to admit you know, we’ll talk about when you want to move in.”

  If her eyes got any wider, they were going to pop out of her skull. Ethan hooked his fingers into his belt loop and calmly considered her panicked expression. He felt his features soften when he saw her hands clutching at the folds of her skirt, and he allowed a small smile to curve his lips.

  “Now about that dance, Emmy…”

  Ethan watched as she closed her eyes and took a calming breath, and suddenly, out of nowhere, he felt something inside him click. In that moment, he realized with stunning, blessedly liberating clarity that he was hopelessly, helplessly in love with her. He probably always had been, and he definitely always would be.

  Even if she was the most obstinate woman in Christendom.

  Oblivious to the life-changing revelation Ethan had just experienced, Emilie continued to scowl. “It’s not my dance, Ethan,” she informed him in that haughty teacher tone she used when she wanted people to back off.

  It only made Ethan want to kiss her, if only so he could watch her get even more flustered.

  “It’s a middle school dance,” Emilie said, still blithely unaware of the direction of his thoughts. “I don’t even know why Lana and Kate are so determined to go, but I can assure you it would not be fun for you.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of what’s fun for me? Come on, Emmy. Let me see where you work, maybe let me cop a feel while we dance to a cheesy pop song. Would it kill you to bend just a little?” he asked gently.

  Emilie’s fingers dug into her hip at the third reminder in as many weeks that she was inflexible. It wasn’t as if she liked ducking for cover every time Ethan showed up. It had just become a habit over the years that she was finding difficult to break. She drew another deep breath to steady her nerves. “I’m not trying to be unkind, Ethan.”

  He pounced on the slight hesitation in her voice. “Then let me come w
ith you tonight. Come on, honey. Think of how much fun the four of us used to have. Wouldn’t it be nice to laugh like that again?”

  “I’m not the reason all that changed, Ethan.” Her voice sounded unmistakably wistful, which made her want to kick her own butt.

  Ethan stepped closer and ran his hand lightly down her arm until their fingers were clasped. She hesitated for a moment before relenting and softly curling her fingers through his.

  “I know I screwed up with us, Emmy.” He waited for her to lift her eyes to meet his gaze. When she finally managed to do it, he smiled tenderly. “But I want to make up for it now. I need you to let me try. Please?”

  He seemed so sincere. The more time she spent in his immediate vicinity, the stronger she had to fight an urge to throw her arms around him and never let go, which was, in her opinion, excessively annoying. Not to mention inconvenient.

  Still, Emilie could feel her heart pounding insistently that she stop being a coward and let him try to prove himself to her. She had asked for a sign before, and she’d bloody well gotten it with Leo’s secret fiancée and startling mental decline. Maybe —just maybe— it was time for her to forgive Ethan a little.

  Yes, he had hurt her. Yes, he had broken her heart once. But they had been friends for a long time before he had, been as close as family in a lot of ways, and she missed that. Though she was loath to admit it, she missed him.

  Emilie glanced down at their intertwined fingers and sighed. “Okay,” she said quietly.

  “Okay?” he repeated in a sweetly hopeful voice.

  “Okay,” Emilie confirmed with a tentative smile. “But I’m not promising anything else.”

  Ethan pulled their locked hands up to his mouth and placed a light kiss on her knuckles. “That’s good enough for now, Emmy.”

  Emilie felt her knees actually go weak. She shook her head in consternation, knowing she was in deep water and liable to sink at any moment.

  Ethan grinned and, with her hands still clasped in his, turned to open the door with a triumphant flourish. The moment the door opened, Lana and Kate fell into the room in a heap. Emilie and Ethan raised their brows in mock rebuke as the two attempted to regain their balance and get up from the floor. Lana at least looked embarrassed, but Kate shrugged her shoulders and brazened it out.

  “Oops,” she said with an unrepentant smile.

  Still retaining his hold on Emilie’s hand, Ethan laughed at the pair of them. “Come on, girls.” He winked back at Emilie, who blushed again under his intense regard. “Let’s go to the ball.”

  In the late 1940’s, St. Mary’s Academy had converted a prayer chapel behind the main building into a gym, and it still retained several stained glass windows that looked out of place during pep rallies and volleyball games but oddly whimsical during school dances. The theme of this Valentine’s dance was evidently “Sock Hop” — there were posters of James Dean and Elvis Presley hanging throughout the room, old-fashioned streamers and confetti balls fell from the ceiling, and Fats Domino was blaring from the loudspeakers.

  When the girls were in junior high, their own tiny Christian school had hosted autumn and spring banquets rather than dances, adhering to the Footloose school of thought that said dancing led directly to the gates of hell. Seeing the St. Mary’s students milling around in little groups by the walls, bleachers, and refreshment tables, and the few brave souls who were bobbing their heads and shuffling their feet in the middle of the dance floor, Lana silently acknowledged that they might have been overly harsh in their thirteen year-old rants and ravings against their school administration’s narrow-minded efforts to ruin their social lives. It appeared that they had not been missing all that much.

  “Wow,” said Kate as she looked around the gym in fascination. “This is so surreal. I feel like any minute The Fonz is going to come sauntering around a corner and offer to buy me a milkshake.”

  Lana nodded in agreement. “It’s like we’ve entered a time warp. I must say the Grease décor is pretty cool, though.”

  Kate glanced at Emilie’s outfit and smirked. “I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and say you were in charge of the decorating committee, Em.”

  Emilie put her nose in the air. “If you can’t do something right, you shouldn’t do it at all.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more, love.” Ethan grinned at the startled expression on her face and squeezed her hand.

  Lana nearly laughed out loud at Emilie’s bemused expression as she stared down at their interlocking fingers. Ethan had pulled his truck into the spot next to Emilie a few minutes earlier and immediately claimed her hand the second she exited her “obnoxious,” according to him, car. Emilie had thus far been unsuccessful in her attempts to get her hand back.

  “Public school dances aren’t much better,” Ethan assured them. “But they still make you feel like any second something wonderful could happen.” He waggled his eyebrows dramatically, and the girls tittered at his newly rediscovered silliness as they moved further into the gym.

  Emilie shook her head at all of them. “It’s a simple dance; I can assure you that it will be uneventful, save for the hysterical tween sobbing that will inevitably occur in the girls’ restroom later.”

  “Some things never change,” said Kate. “Now where are Twiglet and Frog?”

  “Who?”

  At Ethan’s question, Lana and Kate paused mid-step and stared guiltily at Emilie. With a longsuffering sigh, Emilie waved her free hand nonchalantly in front of her. “Frog is Kate’s nickname for Leo and Twiglet is his fiancée.”

  Ethan seemed both intrigued and appalled by this new information, but Emilie held up an imperious finger to halt his questions. “I’m not going there right now,” she stated flatly. “Needless to say, her existence was unknown to me whilst Leo and I were dating and is a major reason for our parting of ways.”

  Kate snorted. “His emotional and mental downward spiral may have also been a contributing factor.”

  “Anyway.” Emilie glared at Kate and then glanced back up at Ethan. “It’s over now. May we please move on to a new subject?”

  Ethan looked like he wanted to say more, but the tension in Emilie’s posture must have stayed him. Instead of arguing, he pulled her under his arm and smiled with understanding. Emilie, apparently fascinated by this turn of events, smiled back at him without the slightest hesitation.

  Kate and Lana observed the exchange in amused silence until Kate couldn’t take it anymore. “If you two are finished making googley eyes at each other,” she smirked. “We still wanna know where Twig and Frog are.”

  Emilie groaned at the way Kate and Lana were very unsubtly craning their necks to try and spot Leo in the crowd. Ethan quirked his brow and gave her a helpless shrug. Sighing, Emilie looked around until she spotted Clarissa on the other side of the room, standing against the wall by a fire exit with a few of the other teacher’s aides. She vaguely indicated her location on the other side of the room and her friends followed the direction of her fingers to get their first glimpse of Stupid Leo’s other woman.

  “Her?” Kate cocked her head to the side. “The blonde kid? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I am sure.” Emilie’s face was pulled into a mask of disgust. “I have to see her twiggy little face every day.” Ethan gave her hand another gentle squeeze, and she shot him a grateful glance.

  Lana observed tiny Clarissa with admittedly critical eyes. She was very pastel, from her straw-like hair and nearly translucent skin to her rail thin body encased in a wispy yellow dress Lana was certain must have come from the little girl’s department. She estimated that Clarissa could not possibly weigh more than ninety pounds, soaking wet.

  Lana winced and put her arm around Emilie’s waist. “You were right. She looks like a strong wind will blow her away.”

  Kate snorted. “I’m almost afraid she’d break were I to inadvertently shove her into that wall over there and then accidentally pour fruit punch down the front of her dress.”


  Kate had that evil glint in her eye again, and Emilie reluctantly smiled at the image she presented. Seeing Emilie’s amusement, Kate continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “Seriously, Em, I don’t know what Froggy’s problem is, but you are way more attractive than her. And smarter. And better in every way.”

  “Absolutely,” declared Lana.

  Emilie looked at them both with affection. “Thanks for the support, but you have to say that. You’re my best friends.”

  Kate gave her a dubious look and patted Emilie on the head the way she might a silly child. “Sweetie, when have I ever bothered to mince words with you?”

  Lana nodded. “She lacks the tact gene, remember?”

  “Hold up.” The girls shifted their attention to Ethan, having forgotten for a moment that there was a man in their midst — one who was presently frowning and scratching his head in confusion. “Are we talking about the little girl standing against the wall?”

  “Yes,” Emilie said slowly. If he in any way indicated he thought Clarissa was attractive, she intended to maim him with her shoe.

  “Then, baby, speaking as the only real man you are currently acquainted with,” he said. “Let me assure you that only an insecure dumbass would prefer that child over you.”

  He gave her an appreciative once over, and Emilie’s cheeks darkened in pleasure. When his eyes finally reached her face, it looked as if he was going to kiss her, but he merely winked and kept massaging her palm with his thumb.

  Emilie smiled slightly. “Thanks.” Nudging her friends further into the gym, she firmly changed the subject. “I’m supposed to walk around and make sure nobody’s fighting or making out in a corner, so you guys can wander around if you want. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Kate and Lana shared a telling glance and Emilie pointed a forbidding finger at them. “Don’t even think about it. No pranking Twiglet, no matter how fun it may sound. Do not make me regret agreeing to bring you here, or I will be forced to put you both in detention.”