Damon idly rattled the keys in his palm, looking between Casey and Emma. “Us?”
“I’ll stay here with Emma and B.B.”
Emma nearly strangled on her own startled breath. Seeing Casey so unexpectedly had unnerved her enough. No way did she want to be alone with him. Not yet. “I can drive a stick.”
B.B. looked at her anxiously and took an active stance. His muscles quivered as if he might leap after her if she tried to leave.
“Right.” Damon sent her a look. “And you really think he’ll stay alone with me on an empty street while you ride off with a stranger? He’ll have a fit. Hell, he’d probably chase the car all the way into town. It’d be different if we were at the motel and you left, but out here…”
“Okay, okay.” Damon was right. B.B. was so defensive of her, she often wondered if he hadn’t been a guard dog in another life.
“Besides,” Damon added, further prodding her, “the room is held on my credit card.” He stared at Emma hard, undecided, then abruptly shook his head. “Hell no. Let’s forget this. It’s already late, so what’s a few more hours? We can wait for Triple A and then find a motel back on the highway to stay in for the night.”
Emma gave that idea quick but serious thought, and knew the only reasonable thing to do was to stop acting like a desperate ninny. She couldn’t imagine finding another motel that would allow her to bring B.B. inside. Besides, Damon had driven most of the hours, and despite his suggestion, he looked exhausted. B.B. wasn’t in much better shape.
She’d stopped being selfish long ago.
“It’s all right, Damon.” She gave him a smile to reassure him. “I’m beat and so are you. You go on, and B.B. and I’ll wait here.”
Kristin crossed her arms and struck a petulant pose. “Don’t I get a vote on this?”
Casey spared her a glance. “Not this time.” Then he added, “And, honey, don’t pout.” He walked her to the car, his large hand open on the small of her back, urging her along while he spoke quietly in her ear.
Damon used that moment to pull Emma aside. He practically shoved her behind the open driver’s door and then bent close. “Dear God,” he muttered, holding his head. “I can understand why he became your adolescent hero, Emma. He’s testosterone on legs.”
Emma couldn’t help but laugh at Damon’s look of distaste. He wasn’t into the whole machismo display. Damon was far too refined for that, a man straight out of GQ. He also knew exactly how to lighten her mood. Not that he was wrong, of course. If anything, Casey was more ruggedly masculine now than he’d ever been.
Emma decided to tease him right back. “I hate to break it to you, Damon, but he’s obviously into women.”
Refusing to take the bait, Damon glanced over at Kristin with critical disdain. “I’m into women. He’s obviously into twits. There is a difference.”
Casey and Kristin were still in quiet conversation, their bodies outlined by the reaching glow of the car lights. “You really think so?”
“That she’s a twit? Absolutely.”
“No, I didn’t mean that.” She swatted at him and stifled a laugh. “I mean, do you think they’re a couple?”
“Worried?”
Damon knew better. She wouldn’t be in Buckhorn long enough to get worried about Casey and whom he might or might not be involved with. Probably his girlfriends were too many to count, anyway. Until he’d turned sixteen, Casey had been raised in an all-male household. Sawyer and his three brothers had been the most eligible, respected and adored bachelors in Buckhorn. One by one they’d married off, starting with Casey’s father. But Casey had inherited a lot of their appeal and long before Emma had left town, the females had been chasing him. “Only curious. I haven’t seen him in so long.”
Damon’s look plainly said yeah, right. “I think he wants to be into her, if you need true accuracy. Whether or not he likes her—who knows?” Then he added with more seriousness, “You know to most men, liking and wanting have nothing in common.”
That was Damon’s staunchest requirement. He had to genuinely like and respect a woman to decide to sleep with her. Intelligence sat high on his list, as did motivation and kindness. The second a woman got gossipy or catty, he walked away. Unlike many of the men she’d known through the years, Damon wasn’t ruled by his libido. Emma respected him for that, even while she knew he’d be a tough man to please.
Again Emma chuckled, but her humor was cut short as Casey called, “You ready to go?”
Damon ignored him as he cupped Emma’s face, forcing her to look him in the eyes. “Will you be okay?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Too fast, doll. That was nothing more than an automatic answer.”
“But true nonetheless.”
He waggled her head. “Just be on guard, okay? I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“I’m not made of glass,” she chided.
“No, it’s sugar I think.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, nipped her knuckles and said, “Yep, sugar.”
Emma was well used to that teasing response—he’d been saying it to her since she was seventeen years old, when they’d first met. She’d been backward, afraid, alone. And he’d treated her like a well-loved kid sister.
Laughing, she turned toward the other car, and caught the censure on Casey’s face. He didn’t say a word, but then he didn’t have to. She knew exactly what he thought. And none of it was nice.
Worse, none of it was accurate.
CHAPTER THREE
EMMA STOOD IN front of her car, watching Damon and Kristin drive away. With their departure, the previously calm evening air suddenly felt charged. She was aware of things she hadn’t noticed before, like the warm, subtle scent of Casey’s cologne, the nearly tactile touch of his watchfulness. The pulsing rhythm of her own heartbeat resounded everywhere, in her chest, her ears, low in her belly.
B.B. shifted beside her, restless and uncertain with this turn of events and her renewed tension.
Though he didn’t make a sound, she knew Casey was now closer behind her. As if he’d touched her, she shivered in reaction, and continued to stare after the car.
“So how’ve you been, Em?” His voice was low and intimate, a rough whisper of sound somewhere above her right ear.
The twin taillights of the other car faded away, swallowed up by distance and fog, the inky blackness of the night. Left with nothing to stare at, Emma drew a deep breath, took two steps away and turned to him with a bland smile. “Good. And yourself?”
“Good.” He visually caressed her face, slowly, thoroughly, as if he’d never seen her before. As if maybe he’d…missed her.
Emma moved to the side of the car, taking herself out of the harsh beams of the headlights. The dog followed and she leaned down to give him a reassuring pat. When she straightened, Casey was even closer than before and he made no attempt to move away. She felt vaguely hunted.
“You look so different, Em.”
She wasn’t about to back away a second time. Faking a calm that eluded her, she shrugged. “Eight years different.”
“It’s not your age,” he murmured, once again looking her over in that scrutinizing way of his. “Your hair is different.”
Emma started to reply, but the words hung in her throat as Casey reached out and caught a shoulder-length tress, rubbing it between fingers and thumb.
Both