The Truest Thing - Hart's Boardwalk

She nodded but didn’t respond.

Jack fell into silence easily, enjoying it because it meant he got to look at her. He tried not to grin at how she found numerous ways to avoid his intense regard. Until finally her eyes flew to his, her cheeks bright pink, and she huffed, “Stop looking at me.”

I can’t, sunrise. There’s nowhere else I want to look.

Instead he smiled and made her blush even harder.

Finally, sensing she’d reached her quota on squirming under his flirtatious attention, he asked something that had bothered him since their hospital visit. “You were in a car accident when you were seventeen?”

It was amazing really.

How fast it happened.

How quickly Emery’s entire expression tightened, then smoothed out into perfect blankness. “It was nothing,” she replied coldly.

And before Jack could question her abrupt change in demeanor, Iris returned with their food. She stuck around a bit, thawing Emery’s iciness.

But when she left, silence descended over the table again, and Jack didn’t know how to breach it. That wall Em had put up was now covered in barbed wire and volts of electricity. Her one-word answers drove him crazy.

She seemed relieved when they left, and she didn’t want him to walk her down the boards to her beach house.

Jack walked her home anyway.

He said goodbye as she mumbled it in return and hurried into the house, locking the door behind her.

He studied the door that stood between them.

Something happened to Em when she was seventeen. Something important. And that gut instinct he used to rely so heavily on told him he needed to know what that was. Knowledge of Em’s past could only help him figure out a way to convince her that he was her future.

33

Emery

As beautiful as warm mornings were in Hartwell, I often enjoyed the dull, gray days just as much. That morning, I’d gone outside with my mug of hot water and lemon and curled up on my giant porch swing to watch the energetic waves push against the shore. Soft gray clouds hinted that it might rain later.

It was the end of September. Most tourists had returned home to the normal routine of life. Schools were back in session, and Hart’s Boardwalk’s low season had begun.

I hadn’t slept well the night before. Not because of the baby, who seemed to be giving me very little trouble so far. We estimated I was only twelve weeks along, and Jack was on his way over to pick me up to take me for our first scan.

Every time Jess asked how I was feeling, I felt incredibly guilty because I was great. Jess had been plagued by sickness in the first half of her pregnancy, and now she was plagued by swelling. By the end of every day, her feet, legs, and fingers were swollen and uncomfortable. Plus she’d had to go through most of her pregnancy during the summer heat. At thirty-four weeks, she was almost ready to pop, and she looked it. She was irritable, exhausted, and ready for Baby Lawson to arrive. Cooper was taking it all in his stride, even though he absorbed the brunt of her irritation.

“How are you coping?” Bailey had asked him one Saturday afternoon when we were all hanging out at Jess and Coop’s. Jess was in the bathroom peeing for the hundredth time, which was really making me anxious about those last few weeks of pregnancy.

“My wife is carrying our kid,” Cooper had replied. “She’s exhausted. She’s sore. She’s worried constantly about doing something that will make us lose our baby … so I can take it. It’s nothing compared to what she’s going through right now.”

Jack had shot me a look in that moment that told me he understood Cooper completely.

It’d made my stomach somersault and that familiar ache score across my chest.

Jack Devlin was a major problem.

I’d discovered that just because you told yourself someone wasn’t good for you didn’t mean your heart would feel the same way. And when it came to Jack, my heart most definitely didn’t want to acknowledge that Jack was bad for it.

Attraction was a problem too, especially now that I had an increased sex drive.

Every time he was around, my body came alive. I’d look at his lips or his hands and I’d feel my breasts tighten and that tug low, dirty, and deep that made me want to rip his clothes off and have my wicked way with him. I looked it up. Apparently, hormones could make some women extra needy during pregnancy. Lucky me.

If only there were someone else who incited such feelings in me.

But no.

Just Jack. With his big knuckles and long, graceful fingers. Big man hands I wanted on my body.

And it wasn’t just physical attraction.

Every time he threw that sexy, wickedly boyish smile my way, I melted. Every time he did something considerate, which was all the time (holding doors open for me, bringing me snacks just because I mentioned a craving earlier, sliding an extra pillow behind my back anytime I shifted uncomfortably on the couch), I wanted to jump him. I wanted to throw caution to the wind and scream, “Screw it!”