Page 128 of Perfectly Matched: Harbor Falls Romance Collection

“Emma! We’re so glad you could make it!”

Shit.

She glanced about. People.

A couple here. A couple there. Everywhere a couple.

A party?

No. Please no.

Over by the fireplace stood another couple, Suzie’s sister, Shelley—they were in the same class in school—and her husband, Matt. She’d heard Shelley had just delivered baby number three, a girl, recently, the first for her and Matt together. They were happy as clams or looked to be. One happily Suzie-matched couple?

Brad Matthews, Suzie’s husband, headed toward his wife. They made couple number four. And then, coming in from the kitchen, was her best friend Annie, and her hunky hubby, Curt. Couple number five.

Couples.

Everywhere a couple.

But she was a singleton.

And damn her, Suzie said nothing about a party. Had she misunderstood? Did she come on the wrong night? Surely not, Suzie had said tonight.

Annie rushed forward, took a couple of packages from Emma’s arms, and kissed her on the cheek.

“I didn’t know if you were coming or not!”

she exclaimed, and then turned to her husband.

“Curt, can you take these things upstairs to the blue room? First door on the left.”

Then giving Emma her full attention, she smiled.

“Merry Christmas, sweetheart. Glad you are here.”

Emma lowered her chin and her voice.

“Annie, what the hell…”

Annie grasped her arm and twisted away, dragging her toward the couple closest to the door.

“There’s Nash and Mary Lou over there. You remember them, right?”

She waved and Emma gave a little finger wave and grin back to the happy and recently married couple.

Something didn’t feel right in her tummy.

She turned back to Annie.

“Tell me, please…”

“Oh!”

Annie exclaimed, this time dragging her by the elbow to her left.

“I don’t think you know Jillian and Scott, do you? Jillian owns that new candy store, Bittersweets, downtown.”

What the hell…

She halted Annie, twirled her around, and then Emma did the leading off, pulling Annie toward the kitchen. Once they were behind the solid oak door of the room, she lit into her.

“Of course, I know Jillian, Annie. I met her at the Fall Festival a couple of months ago. But you are diverting me for some reason and now…”

she faced her, square on, and took another half step closer to her friend.

“tell me what is going on. I came here for a private consult with Suzie, and there is a party going on. A party where there are couples everywhere. And me? I’m not a couple. It’s obvious. Something is up, and I don’t like it. I don’t like being left in the dark, and you know that, so Annie, my dear friend, you need to tell me right this instant what in the world…”

A man cleared his throat. The two women simultaneously whirled to their rear. There, standing by the coffee pot, stood Will Craig.

Hell’s Christmas Bells.

“Well, hello there, Emma. Long time no see.”

“Will? Oh, hello.”

He stepped toward them.

“Funny, I didn’t know you were coming here tonight. You never mentioned it this afternoon.”

I didn’t know I was coming either. To a party, that is. She bit her lip, and then said.

“It was that thing I was talking about.”

He nodded and lifted his coffee cup to his mouth and sipped.

“Yeah, me too. And this is all very interesting.”

She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. His head tipped toward the living room.

“See you later.”

Then he left.

Emma watched him leave, balled up whatever confusion that was spiraling around beneath her breastbone into a neat and tidy package, and slowly looked to Annie.

“This was your idea,”

she said to her.

Annie shrugged.

“What idea?”

“Will. Are you trying to fix me up with Will?”

Shaking her head, Annie responded.

“Heck, Emma, why would I do that? I figure if you and Will were ever gonna get together, you would have done it by now. You’ve both been ogling each other for weeks. How long have you known him? Six years or more.”

“I don’t ogle him.”

“Well he ogles you.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

Annie paused.

“You saw him this afternoon?”

Nodding, Emma confessed as she blew out a breath.

“Yes. We had lunch. Over in Dalton Springs.”

Annie smiled big. “Good.”

“No. Not good. Well maybe. I don’t know!”

Emma waved her hands and circled around, pacing.

“But why is he here?”

Again, Emma shrugged.

“I don’t know the answer to that, Emma. Why don’t you ask Suzie?”

Suzie?

It was then her brain settled on the matchmaking idea she and Suzie had talked about this morning.

Ah, shit. No.

And as she contemplated that, she determined she had to talk to Suzie pronto and get this thing straightened out. Will Craig was not the man she needed to be matched with. He didn’t fit her criteria, not at all.

And the second thing she needed to do was to tell him right straight flat out that this wasn’t her idea and that she was not interested in a relationship with him.

She turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

Annie asked, crowding close behind her.

Emma glanced over her shoulder, caught her friend’s gaze and held it for a sec, then said.

“To undo stuff.”

Then she pushed back into Suzie’s living room before Annie could stop her.

****

The temperature outside was probably in the twenties but in Suzie’s living room, Will was sweating like a pig in a trailer outside a BBQ smokehouse. Reaching for his collar, he pulled it away from his damp neck, wondering why he’d worn a sweater. He didn’t wear clothes like this normally. He was pretty much into button-downed collars and trousers at school and t-shirts and jeans if he was out and about in town. And the sweater? Not his favorite choice.

But he’d been told to dress a little differently from the norm. That he might get noticed that way. Well, hell… This wasn’t him, and he was damned uncomfortable. He wanted to rip the sweater off right now.

But of course, he didn’t.

He moved away from the fireplace, let his gaze settle and linger over the room and the people in it for a moment. Next, he eyed the front door. Everyone was pretty much engaged in conversation or eating appetizers, so he decided to go for it. Five minutes on the porch, breathing in the crisp, night air, would do wonders to chill the sweat on his brow and around his neck.

Not to mention cool off his libido.

Damn. One look at her. One glance his way from those sexy green eyes. One soft hush of her voice…and he was hard as a rock.

He had to get out of here. Moving with stealth, he headed for the door, turned the knob, and was out on the porch before anyone could ask where he was going.

Once there he let out a huge sigh of relief, closed his eyes, leaned against a porch pillar, and tried to get his mind on anything but what to do about Emma.

He stayed that way for several minutes, soaking in the calm, the party chatter in the background. A thin sheen of snow had fallen within the forty-five minutes he’d been here, and he looked up into the clouds, wondering if more was on the way. He’d not listened to the weather all day, and sometimes, in this neck of the woods, the weather could change on a dime.

No matter. He wouldn’t hang around here too much longer. In fact, perhaps he should go in, make a round, say his good-byes, and be off for home. But wait—that meant he had to face Suzie, and he wasn’t sure he could do that. And he had to face Emma, and that was out too.

He’d made an ass of himself with his abrupt departure in the kitchen. What would she be thinking about him right now? He was out of dating practice.

But this wasn’t a date. This was a set-up and obviously one that Emma wasn’t prepared for either, so maybe all this awkwardness could be dismissed.

And then again, maybe he should just leave now, without saying anything to anyone. He could always call back and tell Suzie he’d taken ill, decided to head on home, thank her for the party and the nice idea about Emma, but well…

Shit. What was he doing? Avoidance. He’d never acted this way before. He didn’t sneak around, and he didn’t lie. At least now that he was grown up. Forget those times as a kid. But he was about to lie his way out of leaving this party.

Was he that desperate to leave? And why, when lately it was all he could do to keep Emma Jo Baker off his mind, did he want to scramble away when she was put smack out before him, in a socially acceptable situation, for the offering?

“Because of the rules,”

he said quietly. Better just to get on home. Plead forgiveness later.

Pushing away from the pillar, he took one hard step down from the porch. The next couple of steps were easier. Sleet hit his face as he moved into the wind and down the sidewalk.

Behind him, the party chatter suddenly got louder, he turned, registered a sinking feeling in his gut, and caught her pert silhouette in the open doorway.

Emma.

“Will Craig, where in hell do you think you are going?”

Busted.

****

Oh, freakin’ crap. He’s getting away before I can right this wrong.

“Will!”

Emma called out again. “Wait!”

Without a thought, she headed down the porch steps, her gaze fixed on the man who had just whipped back to look at her. In her right hand, she held a really cool piece of spicy cinnamon candy—homemade by Suzie—that she’d snatched from a plate right inside the door. As she descended the steps, she popped the hard candy into her mouth, momentarily distracted by her quest. Good, the candy was awesome! She sucked the crisp night air in over her teeth.

Nice.

Will caught her eye. She hated to admit it, but he was nice too.

He looked…different…this evening, standing there in the moonlight with little crystal flecks of snow on his shoulders, looking back at her. In fact she probably paid too much attention to how he looked to her because as her left boot hit the bottom step, she felt her knee give away, her body pitch forward, her right elbow go out, and from then on, it was rather an ugly scene, she figured, from the outside looking in.

“Oh, God…”

She groaned and lay in a heap on the cold sidewalk and lit into a coughing fit. Candy. She gagged and rolled the hard sugar piece in her mouth and tucked it into her cheek. Last thing she needed was to die from asphyxiation on Suzie’s front steps.

Within half a second, Will was at her side, calling her name, feeling all her bones. Had she smacked her head too? Yes. She’d plonked the porch railing on the way down, and the pain in her forehead didn’t feel so good. Darn it….

She thought she heard Will mumble a slew of curses—one that she’d never ever heard him say before—as he picked her up, carried her up the porch steps, barreled through the door, and into Suzie’s house.

“Really, Will…this isn’t…”

she slurred.

“Just be quiet, Emma. For once, just be quiet.”

It was all a blur. Her body was whisked through the room, and as the couples started exclaiming things like.

“what the heck?”

an.

“oh darn, is she all right?”

she just let Will take over and say things like, “yes, yes”

an.

“took a little spill on the ice”

an.

“I think so.” To which she heard Suzie remark, “take her to my bedroom, just off the kitchen.” That was when Emma groaned for real, again, because not only did her elbow and head hurt like hell, but some other feeling deep in her gut told her she was in trouble.

Some sort of trouble. She just didn’t know what yet.

They rushed through the kitchen, the oak door swinging, passed through the small breezeway sunroom—she’d always liked that room of Suzie’s—and then into their private bedroom quarters where Will placed her on a gigantic, king-sized bed. The door shut behind them.

She expected the throng of couples to crowd in after, but she was wrong.

They were alone.

Will sat next to her and brushed an unruly shock of hair out of her face.

“Damn, that was a nasty spill. Let me look at you.”

His fingertips softly grazed over her forehead and temple, and involuntarily, Emma closed her eyes. For a moment, there was silence.

Too much silence.

Slowly she fluttered her eyelids open to see Will leaning over her, his right hand still stroking the fine baby hairs away from her temple and gazing down at her with concern and…and…and….

“You had me worried there for a moment,”

he whispered.

“I think I’m okay,”

she replied, her voice a little breathy.

“How is your head?”

She winced.

“It hurts a little.”

“What else hurts?”

She was trying to figure that out.

“My elbow. This one.”

With care, she raised her right arm, and he leaned the opposite direction, bracing himself with his arm at her side, to examine it.

“Ow,”

she said. He had grasped right at the crazy bone.

“I’m sure it will be fine.”

“Tender?”

“A little.”

“Should we take you to the emergency room?”

She shook her head and wished she hadn’t. That hurt a little.

“No. No, I’m fine.”

She tried to sit up. He positioned himself so that she couldn’t.

“Emma, lay back and catch your breath. Give yourself a minute.”

Well I would, she thought, except that you are leaning over me way too close, looking into my face, and for some strange reason that makes me all squirmy.

So, she closed her eyes again for a second, inhaled, exhaled, and opened them again.

Will still watched her.

“Will…”

He placed a finger on her lips. A tingle shot through her chest.

“Emma, I’m going to tell you something, just so I can give you fair warning. This is a little awkward, maybe, and I hope you don’t hit me or something, but I am going to kiss you. Kiss you hard. Right here. And right now.”

She swallowed. “Oh?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

His lips descended. Emma lay there and let him playfully toy with her lips while her heartstrings went zippidy-doo-da haywire in her chest. He leaned in and Emma lifted her hands to his face and cradled that twenty-four o’clock shadow in her hands while he deepened the kiss. After a moment, he pulled back with an exhale and stared into her eyes.

And she just looked back up at him. Wow. Will Craig just kissed her?

“Are you okay?”

he whispered.

“I’m not sure.”

His brows knit.

“What do you need?”

She sighed.

“I think I need...”

He positioned himself a little closer to her face.

“What Emma,”

he whispered.

“What do you need?”

“One more kiss?”