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He’s not for you, her head said bluntly, while her heart grew heavy in her chest, and a longing she barely understood filled her body.
But her head was right—hadn’t Marty said as much?
He was not for her…
* * *
Hell’s teeth! What had he been thinking, kissing Emma?
Though it hadn’t been a real kiss—
Then why had his toes curled?
Okay, so no more kisses, not even unreal ones…
He headed for his car. He’d call Carrie later and apologise for leaving without saying goodbye to everyone. At least they were all out the back in the barbecue area, eating ice cream.
Except Emma.
But when he turned his head, he saw that she, too, had moved, so hopefully no one would see or even notice his strategic retreat.
Except Izzy, of course. It was nearly dinner time and he’d just returned from the base where he’d been doing some work on his own chopper—something that up until today had always soothed him—when Izzy phoned.
‘You left very suddenly,’ she said.
‘Stating the obvious, Iz?’
‘Well, you did! It’s Emma, isn’t it? Emma and that stubborn streak of yours about commitment. Honestly, Marty, of all of us, I thought you were the most sensible—the most stable—and you were Hallie and Pop’s kid from the time you were five or six, so they were your parents, that house was your home—your life.’
‘Leave it, Iz,’ he said quietly, and she did because they had all always respected each other’s boundaries.
‘So tell me about That Man,’ she said, and he knew she was talking about Neil.
‘Got caught by him, did you?’ he teased. ‘I can’t think why Carrie invited him.’
‘For Emma, of course,’ Izzy replied, ‘although Carrie mustn’t have known him well—just that he wasn’t downright ugly and was single. She couldn’t possibly have had a conversation with him. He spent half an hour telling me how young boars sometimes have difficulty mating and how a boar’s penis is shaped like a corkscrew.’
Marty roared with laughter, only stopping when Izzy said frostily, ‘It’s all very well for you to laugh. I couldn’t get away from him. Mac was there, pretending to clean the barbecue, but he was secretly enjoying it so much he didn’t want to rescue me.’
Marty apologised but Izzy was having none of it.
‘You’re still smiling, I can hear it in your voice. How is Emma? Did she get over being stranded on the beach? Is she enjoying Braxton? Those boys of hers are a handful, but Ned seems to be able to handle them.’
‘He does, but I suspect it’s starting to worry Emma that he gives so much of his time—his life really—to her and the boys. I’m sure that’s why Carrie asked Neil to the party. I think she’d like to get Emma married off.’
‘For her sake or for Emma’s?’ Izzy asked, and Marty laughed again.
‘You don’t miss much, do you?’
But he was more relaxed now. Talking about Carrie and Ned and a possible romance there had got Izzy off the subject of his commitment to remain single.
Izzy was the most perceptive of his siblings—probably because she lived close by and saw more of him than the others did.
But for all that Pop had been the father figure he had followed and still adored, his memories of the fear and rage he’d felt towards his birth father were still too strong, too vivid, to ever be forgotten.
And that man’s genes were embedded deep within him. So he had no intention of ever putting them to the test…
* * *
Emma collected her tired and grubby boys after the ice creams had been consumed, telling her father to stay on and enjoy himself.
‘The boys and I both need a rest,’ she added, as Carrie helped out by insisting Ned stay on.
But although the boys, once bathed and free of sticky ice cream, went peacefully off to sleep, and she tried to rest, she remained awake, staring at the ceiling, her mind—and other bits of her body—remembering the kiss.
Not that it was a real kiss, she kept reminding herself, but if it wasn’t real, why did even remembering it make her lips tingle?
But the no-commitment thing had been laid out, made plain to her in no uncertain terms. So tingly lips were about all she’d ever get from Marty—tingly lips and friendship—she was pretty sure that was still intact.
She sighed, and because the ceiling wasn’t giving her any answers she gave up pretending to rest and went into the kitchen. She’d have a baking afternoon, fill the biscuit tins, maybe make some meals that could be frozen for nights when she didn’t feel like cooking.
Not that she cooked that often in the evening, but if she was going to push her father further into whatever social life Braxton held for men his age, then she’d have to get used to it. Carrie’s friends had mentioned a bridge club and her father had always loved a game of bridge.
