The Wedding She Always Wanted. Stacy Connelly
grounded and stuff for sneaking out.”
Ginny reached out a sympathetic hand to her brother, and together they started back toward the hotel.
Meg turned to Emily with a puzzled frown. “Did Duncan just ground himself?”
Emily nodded. “I think so.”
“Well, that’s a first.” Shaking her head, the babysitter thanked them for finding the kids before following her young charges back to the room.
Waiting until they disappeared inside the hotel, Emily turned to Javy. “Okay, what was that about?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the whole talk in the treetop and Duncan forfeiting watching a video without anyone carrying him, kicking and screaming, away from the TV.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that.”
“It’s a guy thing. I really don’t think you’ll understand,” Javy said as he rolled down one of his shirtsleeves.
“Try me.”
“It had to do with Duncan seeing his house from the treetop.”
“He couldn’t possibly. Aileen and Tom live almost twenty miles from here.”
“Exactly. But sometimes a man has to take a chance, even if he knows he’s reaching for the impossible.”
He wasn’t talking about her. She had no reason to think he was talking about her. But as Javy stepped closer, Emily caught her breath, unable to deny the single-minded focus in his gaze as he raised an arm, reached out and … took the jacket from her hands.
Embarrassed and hoping her breathless assumption hadn’t been written on her face, Emily took a step back. Without his jacket to hold on to, her arms felt empty. She crossed, then uncrossed them before linking her fingers together in front of her.
“Thank you for, um, helping Duncan.”
“It was nothing. Just a typical day in the life of a superhero.”
Emily closed her eyes and counted to five, but when she opened them, Javy was still there. “You heard that, did you?”
“Yeah. Super hearing is just one of my superpowers.”
“Along with your super ego,” Emily muttered, trying to maintain an unaffected air when, in truth, she was as impressed as her six-year-old niece.
“There is that.” He laughed as he hooked the jacket collar on two fingers and swung the jacket over his shoulder.
Catching sight of a long scratch marring his muscular forearm, Emily reacted without thinking. She stepped closer, ducking her head to try to see better. Taking his wrist in both her hands, she turned him more toward the light. “You’re hurt.”
After a brief pause, Javy said, “I’m fine.”
“You need to get this cleaned out. There could be bits of bark caught in the cut. It could get infected.”
“Emily.”
She wasn’t sure what exactly she heard in Javy’s voice, but the sound was enough to make her realize how close they stood together. How his breath brushed the side of her face. How the muscles in his arms had turned to stone beneath her touch.
Helpless to resist, Emily looked up. With his dark hair and onyx eyes, he seemed a part of the night. Mysterious, cast in shadow and maybe even a little dangerous. His gaze dropped to her lips, and Emily swallowed hard. Make that a lot dangerous.
She should back up. Walk away. At the very least, make a joke to break the tension. But she’d never been good with jokes. She always forgot the punch lines. Until recently, when her own fiancé turned her into one.
If the recent memory of Todd’s betrayal wasn’t enough to slap her back to her senses, Emily flinched when light and laughter spilled out as a nearby door opened, a reminder that the reception was still going on and just about every person she knew was right inside the ballroom. If she thought the rumors about Todd were bad now, how much worse would it be if she were caught kissing another man at what should have been her wedding?
Jumping back, she said, “I have to go.”
“Emily—”
“No, really. Thank you. For the dance, for helping Duncan, for … everything. But I have to go,” Emily said as she backed away quickly.
Javy took a breath, looking ready to call after her, but she didn’t dare let him stop her. She didn’t know if she should blame heartache, and the loss of the wedding that should have been hers, or if something else was at fault, but Javier Delgado had an effect on her she couldn’t explain. The kind of effect she’d never experienced before with any man.
He left her breathless, weak and far too vulnerable at a time when her heart was still raw.
As she raced away, she thought for a split second that Javy might come after her, but the tap of her heels was the only sound she heard. She could have cut through the ballroom, but she didn’t think she could summon up one more fake smile. If the longer walk around the outside saved her from facing any more wedding guests, the blisters on her feet would be well worth it.
As she passed the French doors, she took a quick look inside, hoping to sneak by without being noticed. She shouldn’t have worried. Inside, the reception was still going strong. A line of guests stood at the bar, and couples were twirling together to the romantic strains of a love song. No one even glanced her way or seemed to realize she was missing.
A dark-haired man spun his blonde partner into an elegant dip, and Emily’s breath caught until the couple turned and she saw the man was not Javy. But just because she didn’t see him on the dance floor, that didn’t mean he hadn’t gone back inside. Was he, right now, coaxing some other woman out of a corner and onto the dance floor?
Emily shook her head and started walking. She had to be crazy to be thinking of Javier Delgado now. To be thinking of him at all.
Emily and her parents were staying in a bungalow-style suite away from the main buildings of the hotel. She’d nearly reached the door to her room when she realized she’d left her purse and her key back by the tree her nephew had decided to climb.
She’d been in such a rush to get away from Javy—to run away from the undeniable and unexpected desire he sparked inside her—she’d foolishly forgotten the small clutch.
A sick feeling dragging down her stomach, Emily knew at best she was going to have to go look for her purse. Worst-case scenario, she would have to go back into the ballroom to find one of her parents to let her in through one of their connecting rooms.
She’d let her guard down the moment she left the ballroom, unable to keep up that front a second longer, and she didn’t know how she could possibly build it up enough to go back. Helplessness and frustration swamped her, and she leaned her forehead against the door, tempted to curl up in the doorway and cry.
“You forgot something.”
Emily gasped and spun around at the sound of the deep murmur behind her. Javy stood a few feet away, his white shirt glowing in the faint light, her tiny beaded purse looking wholly out of place in his masculine hand. “My purse!”
The relief sweeping through her was out of proportion to the simple favor of returning her purse, but to Emily, Javy had just saved her from reentering the lion’s den. The roller coaster of her emotions seemed to fly off track, and before she thought about what she was doing, she flung her arms around his neck.
“Oh, Javy, thank you!” The threat of tears choked her voice as she tried to explain. “I was so afraid I was going to have to go back to the ballroom, and I just didn’t know how I could face all those people again—”
“You could do it,” he murmured, his voice full of confidence. “You already faced them once, and the second