how much Dee talked about you, when she came back after her dad died. About how you saved her sanity after that business with her ex. How you stood by her when your folks...well...”
At that, Emily pushed out a tiny laugh. “Yeah, propriety’s kind of a biggie with them. Mom especially.” Meaning a knocked-up niece hadn’t been part of Margaret Weber’s game plan. Although that was small potatoes compared with her daughter’s society wedding getting the ax weeks before it was supposed to happen. Never mind that it would have been a total sham.
“In any case,” Josh continued, “after everything you did for Dee, anything we can do to return the favor—”
“Thanks. But...”
Her cousin’s husband grinned. “What?”
Emily sighed. In the rush of adrenaline that had followed in the wake of discovering Michael’s secret, her fight-or-flight impulse had kicked in, big-time. And since fighting had felt like an exercise in futility, she’d chosen flight...as far from Michael and her mother and all those gasps and clacking tongues in McLean, Virginia, as she could get. And where else but to the place that had been a balm to her soul the few times she’d been here as a kid? And where the only person who could effortlessly toggle between being a nonjudgmental sounding board and understanding when Emily needed space lived?
However, now that the adrenaline was subsiding, it occurred to her that this was a newly married couple...a newly married couple with two young children between them, who probably cherished their alone time when said children were asleep. So the last thing they probably wanted, or needed, was some emotionally volatile chick invading their space.
“You guys have to promise me,” she said to Josh’s bemused expression, “you’ll let me know the minute you feel I’m cramping your style.”
At that, Josh laughed out loud. “We live with a four-year-old and an infant. Cramped is our style. As it will be for many years to come, I expect. Although at least you can get your own glass of water if you wake up in the middle of the night. You can, right?”
Emily chuckled. “Not only that, I can even make my own breakfast.”
“Then there ya go.” Josh leaned over to give her shoulder a quick squeeze. “In case you missed it, we’re kinda big on family around here. So not another word, you hear?”
Her eyes burning again, Emily nodded. And this time, not because she was worn-out. Not even because of her own foolishness, letting herself get caught up in a fairy tale that now lay shattered in a million pieces at the bottom of her soul. That had been just plain stupid. Even so, she had no doubt she’d eventually recover. And be stronger for the experience, if not a whole lot wiser. So out of the ashes and all that.
But what yanked at her heart now was the sudden and profound realization of what had been missing from her life to this point, or at least not nearly as much in evidence as it should have been:
The good old Golden Rule, treating others the way you’d want to be treated. At least, as far as being on the receiving end of it went. All her life, it now occurred to her, she’d tried so hard to do what was expected of her, to not make waves. A lot in life she’d been fine with, for the most part. So sue her, she liked making people happy. But how often had anyone else ever done that for her? Other than Dee, that was, who’d come to live with Emily and her parents shortly after her mother died, when they were teenagers.
Now Emily looked at the kind, wonderful man her cousin had married, feeling overwhelmingly grateful for Deanna’s happiness...and even more acutely aware of how badly she’d been screwed. And as her cousin joined them in the kitchen, one arm slipping around her husband’s waist, resolve flooded Emily, that the next time—if there even was a next time—either the dude would look at her the way Josh looked at Dee or fuggedaboutit. Because God knew Michael had never looked at her like that, had he? And look how that had turned out.
“She asleep?” Josh asked Dee, who spiked a hand through her short dark hair. Almost chin length now, grown out from the edgier style she’d worn when she worked at that art gallery in DC. Roots were showing, too, a burnished glimmer against the black ends.
“Out like a light,” Dee said, yawning as she leaned into Josh. Again, envy spiked through Emily, at how comfortable they were with each other. How much in love. Which was what came, Emily supposed, from their having been friends first, when they’d been kids and Josh’s father had worked for Dee’s. But between that and the trip and the events leading to the trip and the weirdness with Colin, Emily suddenly felt used up.
“If you guys don’t mind,” she said, “I think I’m going to turn in. It’s been a long day.”
“I’m sure,” Dee said, slipping out of the shelter of her husband’s embrace to wrap her arms around Emily, hold her close for a long moment. “We’ll talk tomorrow. If you want.”
“I’m sure I will,” Emily said, then left the kitchen, letting the silence in the long, clay-tiled hall leading to the bedroom wing enfold her. Even with the updates to the house from when Dee and Josh thought they’d sell it after Uncle Granville’s death, the place hadn’t changed much from what she remembered from childhood. But the century-old hacienda, with its troweled walls and beamed ceilings, seemed good with that, like an old woman who saw no need to adopt the latest fashion craze simply because it was the latest thing.
A giant gray cat, curled on the folded-up quilt on the foot of the guest room’s double bed, blinked sleepily at her when she turned on the nightstand’s lamp. No one seemed to know how old Smoky was, or how he’d even come to live here—like a ghost whose presence was simply accepted.
“Hey, guy,” she said, plopping her smaller bag onto the mattress, chuckling at his glower because she’d disturbed his nap. Not to mention his space, since he’d clearly staked a claim on the room in her absence. “We gonna be roomies for the next little while?”
The cat yawned, then meowed before hauling himself to his feet and plodding across the bed to bump her hand as she tugged a pair of pajamas from the case and zipped it back up. Unpacking would come later, a thought that hurt her chest. Not because she was here, but because of why she was here—
Dee’s quiet knock on her open bedroom door made Emily start. Her cousin had changed into a loose camisole top, a pair of don’t-give-a-damn drawstring bottoms and a baggy plaid robe that definitely gave off a masculine vibe.
“Need anything?”
“A new life?”
With a snort, her cousin came over to sit on the edge of the bed, which the cat took as an invitation to commandeer her lap. “I know I said tomorrow,” she said as Emily unceremoniously disrobed, tugged on the pajamas. Unlike her relationships with nearly everybody else in her life, she and Dee had no secrets between them. “But... I’m so sorry, Em.”
Emily crawled up onto the bed, sitting cross-legged to face Dee like she used to when they were kids. The cat immediately changed loyalties, flicking his poofy tail across Emily’s chin before settling in, rumbling like a dishwasher. Smiling, she stroked his staticky fur.
“Better now than later, right?”
Her cousin blew a half laugh through her nose. “At least you’re not pregnant,” she muttered, then frowned. “You’re not, are you?”
It was everything Emily could do not to laugh herself at the absurdity of her cousin’s perfectly reasonable question. Especially since the sweet baby girl down the hall wasn’t Josh’s, but the result of Dee’s affair—well before she moved back to New Mexico and reconnected with Josh, whom she hadn’t seen since she was a teenager—with a man who’d neglected to mention he already had three children. And a wife. A thought that immediately displaced Emily’s inappropriate spike of amusement with anger, at how both she and her cousin had been played for fools by a pair of scumbags who mistook agreeableness for weakness.
Or stupidity.
“What do you think?” she said, and her cousin’s mouth twisted.