Listed: Volume II (2 page)

Paul
took the knife automatically and then stared at it in his hand blankly.

Emily
climbed back onto her stool, grinning. “Now,” she said, as if she was making a
great concession, “You can help, but you can’t hog the icing. They never give
us enough in these little tubs.”

He
watched as she scooped an enthusiastic amount of thick icing onto her knife.

As
she slathered the icing onto the biggest of the five large cinnamon rolls, he
dipped his own knife in the icing. He’d never iced cinnamon rolls before, but
it seemed to be a fairly simple process, so he moved one of the rolls on the
plate closer to him and coated the top smoothly.

Emily
was already digging into the tub with her knife for more, but she paused to
watch him. “You don’t have to be so neat,” she told him with another frown.

Paul
blinked in surprise. He hadn’t been trying to make his icing neat, but a quick
glance from his to Emily’s haphazardly iced roll made the difference clear.

“You
have to go fast, or they’ll start to get cold,” Emily added, smearing the icing
on a second roll.

Paul
obediently sped up his icing process on the second of his cinnamon rolls. Then,
while Emily iced the final one, he used the remainder of the icing to add to
the rolls that had been cheated.

“Now,
then,” Emily said, her eyes laughing as she put down her knife on the counter
and picked up the roll with the most icing. “Finally.”

He
watched in amusement as she took a big bite and closed her eyes with a little
moan of pleasure.

When
she opened her eyes, she gestured toward the plate. “Aren't you going to have
one?”

Paul
picked one up and took a bite. It was too sweet, of course, but the taste
matched the warm, pleasant scent, and he realized he was hungry.

They
each ate two of the cinnamon rolls. When Paul was returning to his stool after
refilling both of their coffee mugs, he noticed Emily eyeing the last roll
greedily.

“You
can have it,” he told her, marveling that she could eat so much when she seemed
so small to him. He wasn’t so foolish as to tell her that, of course.

She
shook her head with a little smile and pulled the last one apart, offering him
one very messy half.

Paul
didn’t really want it, but he ate it anyway.

Emily
gave a happy sigh as she finished, but then she put a hand on her stomach. “Oh,
I feel sick. I ate too much.”

He
couldn’t help but laugh.

“You
shouldn’t mock me when you reaped the benefits of my culinary energies this
morning.”

“I
did,” he acknowledged, trying to suppress another ripple of laughter. “And I
greatly appreciate it.”

Paul
felt a little sticky from the icing, so he got up to wash his hands. When he
returned to the bar, he saw that Emily had gone back to her smart phone.

“How’s
Chris?” he asked casually.

“He’s
fine. I talked to him last night.” Then she seemed to realize what had prompted
the question. “Oh, I’m not texting Chris. I was just reading.”

“What
are you reading?” Paul asked, leaning over from his stool to peer at the screen
of her phone.

Emily
looked a little sheepish, but she replied readily enough. “Shakespeare.” At his
questioning look, she explained, “One of the things on my list is to read all
of Shakespeare’s plays. I still have a ways to go.”

“Which
one are you on?” he asked.

“
Coriolanus
,”
she said with a curl of her mouth.

“Oh.
I’m sorry.”

She
shook with laughter at his dry tone. Then she explained, “I’ve read all the
normal ones.
Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear,
Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, As
You Like It, Merchant of Venice.
” She paused, evidently trying to think if
she’d forgotten anything. “So now I’m stuck with the less appealing ones. I
haven’t even started the history plays yet, since they scare me.”

“Actually,
the two parts of
Henry IV, Henry V
, and
Richard III
are really
good. You’ll probably like them. But I’m afraid you do still have some rough
going. Wait until you get to
Titus Andronicus
.”

“Don’t
scare me this early.” Emily made a face, but then she squared her shoulders.
“But I can do it. I’m a pretty fast reader, although it’s harder to get through
Shakespeare than it is a novel.”

“The
more you read of him, the easier it gets. After a few more plays, you’ll
probably be able to get through them pretty quickly.” He thought through the
list she’d just rehearsed. “Wait, you haven’t read
Hamlet
?”

“Not
yet. It was never assigned in school, and now I’m saving it until the end.” She
glanced away, a flicker of emotion on her face. “I mean the end of the
plays
.”

“I
know,” he said quietly, his relaxed mood subdued by this reminder of the
shortness of her life. “It will be a great one to read last. If someone was
only going to read one work from all of English literature, it should be
Hamlet
.”

He
suddenly realized he sounded rather nerdy. He couldn’t remember ever feeling
that way before.

He
had no idea what had happened to him in the last six months.

She
smiled, evidently not thinking there was anything unusual about his discoursing
on literature. “Then I’ll have it to look forward to, since you like it so
much.”

Paul
cleared his throat and returned to a less emotionally-charged topic. “Why are
you trying to read the plays on your phone? That can’t be easy.”

“It’s
fine. I don’t have copies of most of them, but they're all available for free
online. I use my computer too, when it’s convenient.”

“That’s
ridiculous. I’ll buy you copies of them. You’ll strain your eyes trying to read
that way, and it will take even longer to get through them.”

“I
don’t like for you to have to buy me everything. It will be a waste of money,
since I won’t be around for—”

“Paperbacks
don’t cost that much,” he interrupted, feeling a familiar swell of frustration
at her stubbornness. “Actually, I think I have something here…”

He
got up before Emily could argue and walked back to his office, trying to force
down his annoyance.

He’d
meant what he told her in the car on Friday night about trying not to bulldoze
her. He’d resolved to try to hear her side of things and make any compromises
he could legitimately make.

But
he’d never met anyone who could drive him so crazy with her stubborn
unwillingness to accept help.

When
he got to his office, he scanned the bookshelves for his Shakespeare. Not
finding it, he went to search the bookshelves in his bedroom instead. There, he
found the big Riverside Shakespeare he’d gotten in college and pulled it off
the shelf.

As
he carried it back into the kitchen, he saw that Emily was sprawled over the
bar again. She’d confiscated his newspaper, but at the moment she was reaching
over to get the last of the icing off the plate with her finger.

She
was sitting on her folded legs again, which he couldn’t believe was very
comfortable. She leaned forward, bracing her weight on her forearms on the
counter with the newspaper spread out in front of her.

Her
top was riding up on her back, and he could see a wide expanse of smooth, fair
skin. Her position had caused the waistband of her pajama pants to dip low at
the back, revealing the top of what looked like blue cotton underwear.

For
a moment, he was startled by how lush the curve of her ass was, the rounded
shape highlighted by her position and the thinness of the fabric stretched over
it. A flash of physical interest surprised him as he stared at the deeply
curved line from her slim waist to her full hips.

It
only took a few seconds for him to realize what he was doing. He jerked his
gaze away with a guilty cringe.

He
was not—
not
—going to be that man. The man who leched after a vulnerable
seventeen-year-old just because she happened to be available.

If
only he hadn’t instinctively turned around when she'd squealed getting out of
the water on Friday night. She’d ducked down immediately, but he’d still had
time to see her. While he’d been too surprised to immediately register what
he’d seen, it didn’t take long for his mind to catch up. After she’d hugged him
and he’d noticed the way her dress clung to her breasts, he’d finally processed
the memory of her walking out of the lake like a naked, sopping-wet Aphrodite.

Her
skin was pale, and it had almost glowed in the moonlight. Her breasts were full
and firm with peaked nipples, bouncing slightly with her motion in the hip-deep
water.

And,
damn it, his body was interested in that memory.

Paul's
body clearly had none of the scruples that his mind had, but he refused to let
it do what it wanted. This was too important. These were the last weeks of
Emily’s life.

He
was going to do right by her, no matter what it took. He was not at the mercy
of his passing sexual interests, and so far he’d been fairly successful in not
entertaining sexual thoughts about his wife.

But
it would have been easier if he hadn’t seen her naked.

“What’s
that?” Emily asked, looking back and catching him standing there like an idiot.

“Shakespeare.”
He pulled himself together and walked over to place the book on the counter
beside her. “It will be easier to read the plays this way.”

“Thanks,”
she said with a smile. “Although the size of that book is a little
intimidating.”

He
returned her smile, relieved that he’d once again managed to lock away any
inappropriate thoughts about her where they wouldn’t trouble him. “You’ll get
through them all faster than you think.”

She
murmured thanks and fanned through the pages of the large book, and the
position of her arm suddenly highlighted something he hadn’t noticed before.

With
a sharp inhalation, Paul grabbed her bare arm and pulled it into a position
where he could see it better.

“Hey,
what are you doing?” she demanded, trying to free her arm.

Paul
stared down, horrified, at a line of faint bruises that were clearly made by
someone’s fingers.

His
fingers.

He
let her arm drop loosely and stood frozen in place, slammed with waves of
intense guilt and self-disgust. She was small and sick and vulnerable and
young. And, in his anger, he had manhandled her violently enough to leave
bruises.

Emily’s
face reflected bewilderment, and she tried to look over her shoulder, down at
whatever he’d seen on the back of her upper-arm.

She
must have figured it out because she rolled her eyes. “Don’t be melodramatic. I
just bruise easily.”

Paul
didn’t respond. He’d made a lot of mistakes in his life. He’d done a lot of
things he wished he hadn’t. But he’d never believed himself to be the kind of
man who would hurt a woman.

“Paul,
I mean it,” she snapped, “You didn’t hurt me. I didn’t even know the bruises
were there.” When he still didn’t answer, she added, “I shouldn’t have been
running away.”

“So
that means you deserved to be…to be…”

“To
be
what
?” she demanded, “What exactly do you think you did to me? You
grabbed me to keep me from getting in the cab, and you squeezed harder than you
meant to. You didn’t assault me or anything.”

He
wasn’t sure if he could allow himself to take comfort in her words. He’d been
so angry on Friday night. When Tim had told him that his wife had somehow
managed to get into the main parking deck of the building, he’d been swallowed
up in a kind of panic, afraid she would get away, get hurt, get killed—and he
would have utterly failed in his commitment to take care of her.

She’d
just been half a block away, hailing a cab, when he made it outside. The look
on her face—a kind of secret exhilaration—had snapped his control. How dare she
look like
that
, when he’d felt so worried and helpless.

“Paul!”
Emily’s sharp words broke through his bleak reflections. “You’re being
ridiculous. If you’re not going to let me be ridiculous, then I’m not going to
let you be ridiculous either. Do you really think I’d trust you if you’d hurt
me? I let you take me skinny-dipping right afterwards! Would I have trusted you
like that if you’d been…been what you’re thinking?”

Paul
blinked, something in her words getting through to him. He cleared his throat.
“Emily, I didn’t mean to—”

“I
know you didn’t mean to! What the hell do you think I’m trying to tell you, you
big dumbass?”

Paul
had never been called a dumbass before. Not to his face, at least. Despite his
relief at her words, he didn't really appreciate the name-calling.