A Game Of Brides (Montana Born Brides) (15 page)

Griffin discovered he was holding his breath w
hile Emmy considered her answer.

H
e shouldn’t have asked, he knew. But he was already having trouble letting her go. He hadn’t liked that she’d been out of his sight while he’d tried to nail down the wedding contest’s organizer, the always-on-the-move Jane Weiss. He’d tracked the woman back and forth across the restaurant, one eye on Jane’s black bob as she moved in and out of various groups and was always too busy to talk to him, and the other searching for Emmy like he was afraid she’d already bolted.

It felt too much like the real thing, coming at him like a train, that no amount of loaded questions could change.

“No,” she said softly, her dark eyes luminous as they met his, and something so much like shy it made his heart somersault inside his chest. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

He didn
’t know he was moving, but he took both her hands in his and he thought it was possible he could spend the rest of his life just like this. Her hair was down for once, tumbling to her shoulders and glossy in the overhead lights. She was wearing a cute little wrap dress that flirted with her lean curves and made him want nothing more than to unwrap it and reveal her. Then taste every inch of her like this fire between them was new.

You
’re still such a dumb fuck,
he told himself.
You can’t even do this right.

“
Emmy,” he said then, because he couldn’t help himself and he wasn’t certain he’d want to if he could. “I have to ask you something.”

It was an echo of that night long ago and he saw that she remembered it when she smiled, their history a bright, hot ghost between them
right there in the middle of a crowded party, their grandmothers no doubt watching their every move. Griffin didn’t care.

Do you still have that crush on me?
he’d asked ten years ago, so full of himself and so arrogant, because he’d already known the answer. It had never been in any doubt, not in years. He’d seen it all over her face every time she’d looked at him since she’d turned thirteen.

No,
she’d lied. They’d both known she was lying. She’d blushed and he’d grinned.
Who would have a crush on you? You’re awful.

He
’d been close to her then. He’d propped an arm up over her head and leaned into her, his mouth so close to hers he’d been able to feel it when her breath had come in short little pants. And he hadn’t cared what he’d been
supposed
to do just then. He’d wanted a taste of her. He still did.

Too bad,
he’d said, because he really had been awful.
I thought you might want to kiss me. But only if you still had a crush on me, of course.

Back then, she
’d called him arrogant and he’d smirked, they’d moved closer, and then she’d kissed him after all. He couldn’t imagine, now, how he’d managed to walk away.

“
No,” Emmy whispered now, still looking up at him in that way that made his chest feel tight. “I don’t have a crush on you, Griffin. That would be a whole lot easier.”

Her meaning flowed through him, the electricity of it arcing between them, setting him on fire, making him feel something like giddy and drunk and wild all at once.
His hands tightened around hers. He had to remind himself where they were, and even then, he wasn’t sure he cared.

“
Emmy—” he started, but she was smiling up at him and he didn’t know what he wanted to say, only that she felt this, too.
She felt this
.

What else c
ould possibly matter?

“
Griffin?”

It took him a
long, hard minute to place the voice. To understand that Emmy wasn’t the one who had said his name and that worse than that, he recognized who had. But it didn’t make any sense.

He turned slightly, still holding Emmy
’s hands, not really sure he was breathing properly, and so his first thought was that he was hallucinating. That all the things roaring and pounding and surging their way through him were making him lose his mind entirely.

Because there was no way she could be walking
toward him, cutting through the crowd, her eyes on him the way they were. There was absolutely no way this could be happening, especially not right now.

Not right now.

She was wearing more clothes than the last time he’d seen her, and he’d forgotten that she really was pretty, in that easy, athletic way he’d always liked. Her shoulders were a little broad because she was strong and she still walked like she’d rather be running, her toffee-colored hair smoothed back into a slick ponytail and that hopeful smile on her mouth, and she was the last person on Earth Griffin wanted to see.

He felt Emmy tug her hands away and he felt nothing but empty, t
hen, but he stood there like he’d turned to stone and waited until this particular apparition stopped in front of him.

Not now,
he thought again, but nothing happened. She was still right there.

Her eyes flicked to Emmy and then back to him and her smile didn
’t dim, precisely, but she didn’t look back at Emmy, either.

“
It’s been a long time,” she said quietly.

“
Not long enough.”

He hadn
’t meant to say that and especially not the way he did, because it sounded like he cared when he didn’t. The thing he truly cared about made a soft little sound beside him, like she’d been kicked in the stomach, and he hated it. He hated all of this.

“
Celia,” he said, and he noticed she was still wearing the ring he’d put on her finger, a detail that made him want to tear the whole place down because what could she possibly be thinking. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“
What does it look like?” she replied, and she tilted her chin up like she was ready to go a few rounds, whether he wanted to or not. “You should have answered my calls. I’m here to win us a wedding.”

Celia was staying in the Graff Hotel, in one of the newly renovated suites that fairly burst with Old West ambiance and Victorian elegance. Griffin probably would have liked it a lot more if he wasn’t so furious.

He stood by the windows that looked down Front Avenue, toward
FlintWorks Brewery at the old railway depot where Emmy had changed everything for him and past it, to the little shop he’d put an offer on before he’d left the realtor’s office this afternoon. This was his future. This was what he wanted.

But his past was standing behind him in a tight black dress and he supposed he
’d been avoiding her long enough.

“
Where’s Henry?” he asked.

He could see Celia in the reflection of the window, standing to one side of the couch in her sitting area, her hands wrapped around her
middle. He knew what that meant. He knew she was hurting. And while that didn’t matter to him the way it might have once, he found he couldn’t pretend he didn’t care, either.

“
Who was that woman you were with?” she asked.

He laughed as he turned
to face her, though it wasn’t a good sound. “Really?”

“
You looked happy, that’s all.” Celia had the grace to look uncomfortable. “That’s what I meant. I can’t remember the last time I thought you looked happy.”

“
It doesn’t matter who she is,” he said instead of addressing that, and all the reasons he hadn’t been able to tell her how unhappy he’d been. “You scared her off. Was that the goal?”

Emmy had excused herself, smiled at Celia as if delighted to meet her, and then fled.
And the only thing he wanted to do was chase after her, but he couldn’t. Not until he put his past behind him, at last. How could he move on until he did?

Was that what
Gran Martha had been trying to tell him?

“
Did my grandmother set this up?” he asked, because this seemed unduly cruel for the Grans. They liked to push and poke, but they rarely threw their relatives off of the kind of cliff this had been tonight. And he couldn’t imagine they’d want to hurt Emmy, much less let him do it.

“
No.” Celia shook her head to emphasize that. “She told me to write you a letter if I wanted to talk to you. But I did a little looking online and I saw that you and I were entered in this wedding contest and I… hoped.”

Griffin only looked at her.
And for the first time in a long while, he let himself remember. It hadn’t all been
handling
and deceit. He’d loved her as much as he could have loved anyone back then, when he’d thought he had no choice but to storm his way up the corporate ladder. That version of him had meant to marry Celia. They’d talked about kids and a long future together, and he’d wanted that. He was sure he must have wanted that. But he couldn’t see any of it any longer. It was like looking at someone else’s photographs of a time he hardly remembered anymore, and that wasn’t just Emmy’s influence. It was all these long months away from a life he should have mourned and missed, but hadn’t.

“
I should have taken your calls,” he said now. “I shouldn’t have let this all drag out.”

“
You were pissed.” She shrugged, and her mouth did that thing it did when she was trying not to cry. “You had a right to be pissed.”

“
You and Henry didn’t…?”

He had no idea where he wanted to go with that question and was glad when she blew out a breath and answered it anyway.

“It didn’t last long.” She held herself tighter, but she didn’t look away. “I don’t think he can forgive himself for what he did to you.” Her smile then was tinged with something bitter. “I’ve always liked that about both of you, you know. You’re good, decent people. I’m really not.”

He would have agreed earlier today, but that was his pride talking.
Everything seemed a lot more complicated now. A lot more shaded with grey. He thought of all the questions he’d wanted to ask her at different points, when he’d sat there in the cabin and indulged his temper—how long she’d been with Henry, if she’d cheated on him before, if she had, how many times—and none of them seemed worth asking any longer. What did any of that matter now? He’d moved on a long time ago. Maybe before he’d left Jackson Hole.

She
’d done him a favor.

“
You’re going to meet the right person, Celia,” he said then, and he meant it. “And it’s going to be easy. Not like us. Not all the back and forth, the fighting. It’s going to make sense.”

“
It wasn’t all bad,” she whispered. “Not all of it.”

“
No,” he agreed after a moment. “Not all of it. But if it’s that hard to do the right thing, it’s probably because it’s not the right thing at all.”

She nodded once, jerkily, and she took in a sharp breath, and when she looked back at him any trace of emotion in her gaze was gone.
He didn’t tell her that he’d always admired that she could do that, that she could hide anything, because he thought she’d take it as a dig. She stripped the ring he’d given her off her finger and held it out to him.