“You’re being too heavy-handed, Colt,” she whisper-yelled. “You haven’t been listening at all to what you sister wants, and she’s the bride.”
“Oh, I’ve listened. I’m just trying to put a classier spin on their plans. That’s all. I’ve been to tons of weddings and I’ve planned my own, which means I know a little better about what works and what doesn’t. All of that experience will help make the day better overall. I’ve also been all over the world and I live in the best city on the planet to learn about taste and style. Face it, Emma, my opinion is valid and valuable. I won’t just be ignored.”
“That’s the problem,” she snapped, still keeping her voice down but no longer whispering. “You’ve lost touch with your roots and who your sister is. She doesn’t want an over-the-top, worldly wedding. Teddy and Scott live right here in Rockdale. They’re happy here, and if they wanted a fancy, stylish wedding, they’d have said so.”
Ms. Anita came back, glancing at us over the rim of the red frames of her glasses. “Is everything okay here?”
“Perfect,” Emma lied, but she did it so brightly that I wouldn’t have picked up on it if I hadn’t known better.
Since Ms. Anita didn’t know better, she took Emma at her word and went over the options they had available. Once they were done, we left the shop, our argument starting back up right where we’d left it.
“They might live in Rockdale, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a stylish wedding. I’m not trying to force fancy on them like Reece was with the ballroom, but they don’t have to have the cheapest of everything either.”
“Just because the flowers they chose aren’t needlessly expensive doesn’t mean they’re the cheapest. They just didn’t choose them based on their price. They chose what they chose because it’s what they like and what they want. Now stop trying to imprint your big city ideas about what things should cost on them.”
Not happy about the way she was talking to me and what she was accusing me of, I suddenly got the idea that this couldn’t have been coming from her. Emma was usually polite and deferential, despite that inner strength of hers. She wasn’t being either of those things now, and I had a suspicion I knew why.
“You’re siding with Reece, aren’t you?” I asked curtly. “That’s what this is about. You’re pretending to be choosing my side so that you can keep an eye on me, but you’re really not actually with me.”
Slamming to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, she whirled around to face me and poked me in the chest with her index finger, her eyes flashing with rage. “I’m on Teddy’s side, Colt. I don’t give a damn about what you or Reece want for her wedding. I’ve always been on her side and her side only. Why do you think I never confessed about us sneaking around back in high school?”
Clearly, the question was rhetorical since she didn’t wait for me to answer before she kept ranting at me. “I never wanted to hurt your relationship with your sister, or my own with her. Teddy has been my best friend my whole life, and she’s like a sister to me, too. I love her to death and those two years we were apart nearly killed me. You, on the other hand, have barely even been home in years. You think you know best, but you don’t. Not when all you know about who she is now is from what you learn in a five-minute phone conversation you schedule with her on a Sunday afternoon every once in a while.”
As she spoke, she got closer to me. Inching forward as she kept poking me, the next thing I knew she was right in my face and my anger somehow warped into passion. Emma was fucking hot when she was like this, and I had the sudden urge to back her up into a wall and bury myself deep inside her right there on the sidewalk.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, however, I knew that wasn’t a good idea. Settling for second best on the fly, I grabbed her hand and pulled her down the alley next to us. As soon as we were sort of shielded from view, I spun her around and closed the last of the distance between us, kissing her so hard that our teeth clashed together.
Emma gasped, but she didn’t push me away. Not immediately anyway. She kissed me back, her arms looping around my neck and her body melting into mine. After the briefest of moments, she wrenched her lips away from mine and stumbled a few steps back.
“We can’t do this, Colt,” she said breathlessly. “Not now. It’s Teddy’s time, and I refuse to do anything that might jeopardize the wedding or our friendship. I just won’t. Leave me alone. I’ll find my own way home.”
Without waiting to hear a word from me, she stalked away and left me reeling in the aftermath of that kiss. One thing was for fucking sure, though. I wasn’t going to leave her alone, not after that. For now, I’d let her have the battle but I was going to win the war.
Whatever the hell that might mean.
10
EMMA
“We’re never going to get this right,” Teddy grumbled and nearly fell over as she lunged to keep the top of the elaborate centerpiece we were trying to assemble from toppling off. “What was wrong with our old centerpieces?”
“Nothing,” I replied, equally cranky after spending most of the day and night trying to assemble these damn things that Reece had ordered. They were huge and overly complicated, and while they were beautiful, they were also entirely unnecessary. “There was absolutely nothing wrong with the old centerpieces, except that they weren’t chosen by Knucklehead One or Knucklehead Two.”
She looked up at me from across the dining-room table, forgetting to hold one of the balls in place as she did. As a result, the whole intricate arrangement she’d been building fell back to the tabletop in a tinkling crash. Grunting in frustration, she swiped her hands over her face. When I saw her shoulders starting to shake, I feared the worst until she peeked out at me from between her fingers and I realized she was laughing, not crying.
“Which one is Knucklehead One?” she asked between giggles. “I bet they’d even argue about that. I was just imagining the look on Colt’s face if we told him Reece won the Knucklehead of the day prize for today with these silly things. He’d probably be furious.”
She kept laughing, and I felt her amusement creeping into me, infecting me until I started chuckling too. My mind conjured up images of Colt’s face, horrified when he found out that Reece had beat him for the title.
“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” I giggled and took a step back to survey the piles of silver lying all over the table, waiting for us to somehow turn them into something that resembled the centerpiece in the picture we’d propped up against one of the boxes. “How are they this competitive? I mean, what has to go wrong in a friendship for it to end up with us standing two feet deep in parts that we now have to assemble just because Reece needed a victory?”
Teddy shrugged. Her laughter subsided as she moved to her left, her gaze also raking all the parts we had lying around. “Colt has always had this crazy competitive streak, and Scott says Reece is the same. It’s served them both well professionally, but Colt is usually better at hiding his day to day. Reece seems to bring it out in him.”
“Yeah, I got that part.” I shook my head, wiping away the slight tears the laughter had brought to my eyes. “What I don’t understand is how they’re supposed to be friends? They sure don’t seem very friendly to me.”
“No one has punched anyone, so that’s pretty friendly for them.” She winked before sighing and getting this faraway look in her eyes. “I’ve wondered, too. All I know is what Scott has told me, and since he was there with them at college, I think he understands them a whole lot better than we do.”
“So what’s the scoop?” I asked, genuinely interested but also just enjoying being able to talk to her freely for what felt like the first time since all this had started.