“You really think I’m a good person?” she asked softly.
“I do,” he said, his thumb gently stroking the back of her hand. It sent a shiver of awareness up her arm, making her heart beat faster in her chest. “Everyone has to make the decision to be nice. I think you can choose to be someone people like and look up to for the right reasons.”
She could do that. “Thank you.” Maddie hesitated, the words on the tip of her tongue. “Emmett, that night in the bakery when we kissed, you told me I was beautiful. Did you really mean that, or were you just trying to rile me up?”
“I meant it. You’ll find that for my many vices, I’m usually pretty honest. I mean what I say. Why are you always questioning me when I say nice things about you?”
Maddie shrugged and looked down at their entwined fingers. “I don’t know. I’m not used to it, I guess. Or I’m used to it being insincere flattery.”
Emmett shook his head. “I don’t understand. I can’t figure out why there aren’t men lined up outside your door just waiting for the chance to tell you how beautiful you are.”
“I guess I’ve scared away all the eligible men in Rosewood. You’re legally obligated to stick around.”
“I’m not obligated to be here right now,” Emmett said as he reached out to cup her cheek and turn her face to him. “It’s my choice.”
The intense way he watched her made her insides feel like they were melting. “Okay,” she said, feeling emboldened by his touch. “Since you’re so honest, tell me—would you like to kiss me again?”
His eyes narrowed at her in the darkness. “Do you think it would help or hurt our tentative truce if I said I did?”
“I guess it depends on how good the kiss is,” she answered with a sly smile curling her lips. She leaned in to him, sucking in a lungful of his scent she’d craved: a mix of woodsy earthiness and subtle spice. “Feel like taking the risk?”
He answered with his mouth, pressing his lips to hers before she could even react. Maddie stiffened at the suddenness of the kiss, but immediately responded to his touch. She couldn’t help it. She found herself leaning into him, moaning softly against his lips as though he was the tastiest pastry she’d ever crafted.
The first time they’d been handcuffed together, but this time she had no impediment to her movement. Maddie wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling as close to him as the obnoxious console between them would allow. She felt the heat of Emmett’s hand at her waist, his touch burning through the fabric and raising her body temperature by a couple of degrees.
She had never been much of a fan of French kissing. A lot of the men she’d kissed in the past took it as an opportunity to try choking her with their tongues. It was sloppy, strange, and not at all arousing. All those men could’ve taken lessons from Emmett.
His tongue coaxed her mouth open, the silk of it gliding along her own. It caressed, teased, tasted. When he groaned against her lips, it built a warmth in her belly that she’d never experienced from kissing alone. As his hand moved up her side, nearing her breast, she could feel her nipples tighten in anticipation. She wanted him to touch her. Needed it. And yet a part deep inside of her started to tense and panic at the idea of where this might be heading.
Before her nerves could get the best of her, his hand shifted to her arm, sliding up until it reached her shoulder, gently pushing her away.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing. Not a damn thing,” he said, slumping back against his seat and running his fingers through the long strands of his hair. “Except that we’re in your car, sitting in the square, in the middle of the night. I don’t think that’s where you’d want this to progress, and even if you did, I don’t have any protection on me. Besides that, we’re supposed to be watching for the Penis Picasso. If that’s still your goal for tonight, we need to stop now before we get so distracted, he could spray-paint right in front of us and we wouldn’t notice him.”
Maddie was disappointed, but she knew he was right. She wasn’t entirely sure how she’d handle it if they’d gone any further, anyway. With a sigh, she sat back in her seat and turned her attention to the windshield and the dark, silent town ahead of them. She tried to ignore the tiny bursts of electricity that traveled along her body where he’d touched her and the fire that had been lit in her belly. “That little bastard better show up soon.”
Maddie’s eyes fluttered open as a beam of sunlight stretched across her face. “Whaa . . . ?” she muttered as she looked around and realized she was still in her car.
Looking over, Emmett was passed out beside her, his coat balled up as a pillow against the glass of the passenger window.
“What time is it?” she asked, scrambling around for her phone.
Emmett stirred beside her, but he was slower to rise than she was. She found her phone in the console. Lord, it was eight in the morning.
“Wake up,” she said, giving Emmett’s shoulder a shake. “We fell asleep in the car.”
Emmett finally sat up, frowning at her with a grumpy, sleepy face that was a little adorable. His blond hair was standing up, and he had red marks from his coat across his cheek.
“What’s going on?” he asked, looking out the windshield as people walked by them.
“What do you mean? They’re on their way to church. The Baptist service starts at eight fifteen.”
“I don’t care where they’re going. I want to know why they keep stopping and pointing at the car as they walk by.”
Maddie looked out the window and noticed he was right. People were giving them peculiar looks. Perhaps being caught sleeping with Emmett, so to speak, was scandalous. But they weren’t really looking at them. They were looking at the hood of her car.
She leaned forward in her seat. A slash of crimson across the pearl-white hood of her Mercedes immediately caught her eye. “Oh my God.”