Page 46 of Ruthless Edge

She looks at me. Looks at the box. Looks at me again.

"I'm done with those," I say.

She pulls the box closer and eats another fry, and I look at the side of her face for longer than I should.

Her jaw. Her nose. The way she's listening to Owen with her chin slightly tilted, like she's deciding how much she agrees with whatever he just said. The eyelashes, still blue. There's a piece of hair stuck to her neck that got caught in whatever mud was in the crawl zone and she hasn't noticed, and I'm going to tell her about it in a minute, or never, because it'll probably be better for me if she never knows I've been cataloguing every detail of her face.

Emma announces she needs to head back and help with the event cleanup.

Owen starts to say something and I say "I'll come" at the same moment Owen starts talking, and Emma looks at me, and Owen closes his mouth, and Laura doesn’t say a word.

I stand up. Emma looks at me for a second longer, then back at the group, and then she picks up the rest of her food and says her goodbyes, and I follow her before anyone can make it complicated. To my relief, Owen and Laura don’t follow.

We walk across the lawn and onto the path back toward the event field, and I'm aware with every step that it's the two of us and no one else for the first time all day.

"Thanks for coming," Emma says. She's looking at the path. "With the team. The registration numbers were apparently the biggest the event's ever had."

"Good."

"Knox." She glances at me. "I mean it. You didn't have to do that."

"You needed participants. I knew where to find eleven idiots willing to put on eye paint for a Saturday morning."

"It worked."

"I know."

She goes quiet for a second. I'm watching her walk because I can't stop watching her walk. She's got one shoe and she's compensating for it without seeming to notice she's compensating. Her hair is moving because there's a wind off the ocean today and she hasn't tried to put it back up since the ponytail holder snapped, probably because she didn’t have another one. I know what it says about me that I've been tracking all of this.

A couple walks by going the other direction. They look at Emma and then at me, the way people look at two mud-covered people after an event, and Emma pulls her arms slightly in.

"I shouldn't have gone out looking like this," she says.

I stop walking.

She makes it two more steps before she realizes and turns around.

"Emma. Are you serious?"

"I'm covered in mud."

"People are staring because you look beautiful. That's why."

She gives me the look she gives me when she thinks I'm saying something for effect. "Yeah. Okay."

I reach out and catch her wrist. She goes still.

"I mean it." I wait until she's actually looking at me. "You've never looked more beautiful than you do right now."

She pulls her wrist back, not hard. She looks away and starts walking again, and I fall into step beside her, and I'd rather see the discomfort on her face than never say it.

"Laura was unhappy today," she says, after a minute.

I look at her. "What?"

"Laura. She wasn't exactly thrilled about how much time you spent with me."

"Why would Laura care?"