Stirring Up Trouble Read online

  “Make love to me,” she said, her hand caressing his stubble-covered jaw. “Make me forget about all that for a little while longer.”

  “Absolutely.” Emmett’s mouth met hers in a tender yet firm kiss.

  Maddie met his enthusiasm, running her fingers through his messy blond hair and tugging him closer. She couldn’t get enough of him—the rough feel of his hands on her body, the taste of his mouth and his skin on her lips. His scent lingered on the sheets and filled her nostrils as he moaned softly into her mouth. He was a feast of the senses and she was starving.

  She responded instantly to his touch. It continually amazed her how quickly Emmett had learned her body. He effortlessly stroked and teased her into arousal, bringing her to climaxes faster and more often than she’d thought possible.

  They came together quickly. Maddie was eager to empty her mind and feel nothing but the pleasure of being in Emmett’s arms, and he was happy to indulge her. She lifted her hips, welcoming him into her body with a contented sigh.

  As they moved together, Maddie realized just how perfect this moment was. No matter what else was going on in her life, this was real. This was right.

  She needed to stop being afraid. She couldn’t let the past ruin what she had with Emmett by making her second-guess everything. He hadn’t done anything to warrant her suspicion, it was her own fears getting in the way. She just needed to admit to herself that she had feelings for Emmett . . . real feelings. And that was okay. Making one bad choice in a man didn’t mean she was doomed to make them forever. Emmett was thoughtful and kind and honest. He deserved whatever love she had to give him.

  Love?

  Her heart leapt in her chest as she realized what she was thinking. Looking up at those green eyes she could get lost in, she pulled his jaw down to kiss him. She was worried that if she didn’t, she might say the words aloud. There was a lightness in her chest, and the words threatened to bubble up out of her. She’d barely come to terms with the idea herself, so she wasn’t ready to announce it to him when they hadn’t been together that long. It was possible that Maddie was way ahead on the emotional curve and she needed to let the relationship develop at the proper pace.

  Reaching down between them, Emmett stroked at her center, teasing her swollen flesh as he drove into her again and again. All thoughts of love and confessions, all thoughts of her family and betrayal, slipped away as she was jerked back into the here and now of her physical desires. Every muscle in her body drew taut as she bit her lip and waited to reach the pinnacle of pleasure.

  “Yes!” she shouted out as she peaked, clawing at his shoulders. Soon, his own cries mingled with hers as he rocked with Maddie through the waves to the end of their release.

  Exhausted and spent, Emmett collapsed. He slid to the side and shifted his weight to keep from crushing her, but Maddie didn’t care. In this moment, everything was perfect, including the heated touch of his body pressing heavily against her own.

  When he finally rolled onto his back, Maddie sidled up against him, resting her head on his chest. His heart was still racing from exertion and she lay there listening until it finally slowed to its usual, steady pace.

  Her lids were starting to get heavy. It was late morning, hours past when she normally started her day, but she hadn’t slept very well last night. She gave in to the lure of the sandman and fell asleep in his arms. She didn’t know how much time had passed when the sound of Emmett’s voice jerked her back to consciousness.

  “It’s my turn to go to work.”

  Maddie whined and clung to him. She didn’t want him to go downstairs. She wanted him here, all to herself.

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t want to go downstairs, either, but there’s a big game on this afternoon. You can hide in the bar today if you want to. No one will expect to see you there. Or you can stay up here. Either is fine with me.”

  She sighed and let go of him. “If you insist,” she said. He got up and disappeared into the bathroom. Knowing there was nothing she could do to entice him back into bed, she gave up and started dressing. As much as hiding out in his apartment all day appealed to her, she wouldn’t. She would go home and face whatever awaited her there, now that her resolve was steeled by time with Emmett.

  When she headed to the kitchen, she noticed his coffeepot on the counter and thought she’d brew a pot. He could probably use it after being up so late with the Halloween crowd.

  She hunted down the coffee filters and grounds, loading a pitcher of water in the reservoir and turning it on. As it started to perk and bubble, she leaned back against the counter to wait. After a few minutes, when the last drop of coffee fell into the pot, she opened up a few cabinets to hunt for mugs. She found two and sat them on the counter, sliding a stack of papers out of the way so she didn’t get them dirty.

  All the paper slid easily except for one that drifted off the top. She picked it up, moving to put it on the stack, but hesitated as her eyes narrowed in on all the zeros.

  It was a check for twenty-five thousand dollars made out to Emmett. That certainly wasn’t pocket change or standard payment for a bookshelf in Connie Jackson’s den. Whatever this was for, it was something big. Good for him. She sat the check back on the top of the pile, finally seeing the text in the memo line that her thumb had covered before.

  Payment from Adelia Chamberlain, Acct#007568

  That’s when her blood turned to ice in her veins. She picked the check back up and examined it more closely. It was a certified check from Rosewood Bank, dated early last week. The check didn’t notate what the money was for and the To: line had been handwritten in, instead of typed in by the bank. That was odd. Why would her grandmother have a check cut for twenty-five thousand dollars and leave the recipient line blank? If she dropped it, anyone could pick it up and fill in their own name. Unless she didn’t want anyone to know she was giving the money to Emmett. Like Maddie.

  Lydia’s taunts rang as loudly in her head as though she were standing next to her in the kitchen. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you if all of a sudden he’s building bookcases for your grandmother or something.”

  Or a cedar closet. Or maybe nothing at all. Maybe this was some kind of ridiculous pity loan that he’d managed to talk her grandmother into. Business at Woody’s seemed to be doing okay, but what did she know? Emmett could have other things going on in his life that she had no clue about.

  Either way, she was going to find out the truth. Her whole life men had been using her. She’d thought Emmett was different. She thought that she might really, truly be in love with a guy who might return her affections. If this check was what she thought it was, she would know for certain that she was a damn fool.

  And she’d never trust her heart again.

  He needed to tell her the truth. Emmett rinsed the shampoo from his hair and continued to argue with himself on the subject. It had been hard to lay there and listen to her tell him that he was the only one she could trust when he knew that he was keeping so much of his life a secret from her. After finding out about her father, she would be sensitive to anything like that. He needed to just clear the air and make sure there wasn’t anything that could come back and ruin what they had. That was the last thing he wanted to do.

  He didn’t know why it bothered him so much to confess the truth about who he was. He could ask her not to tell, but he wasn’t sure how long it would be before everyone knew about him. She was paranoid about people just using her for her family’s money, and he knew what it was like. People were always coming to you with investment opportunities or sob stories. Some people felt entitled to a share of what he had. And even the folks who didn’t want or need his money would treat him differently just because he was wealthy.

  Why couldn’t he just stay Emmett the bartender—the easygoing, fun-to-talk-to guy?

  As Emmett turned off the shower, he decided to tell her. She didn’t want
any more secrets in her life, so this was his chance to be honest and explain why he didn’t want anyone to know. She’d understand and help keep his secret as her grandmother had, he was sure of it. He slipped out of the shower and dried off. Wrapping the towel around his waist, he walked into the bedroom, expecting to find Maddie still lying there. The bed was empty.

  The scent of coffee caught his attention and his stomach growled. He traveled down the hallway and past the kitchen where he found Maddie sitting on the couch. She was hunched over, resting her elbows on her knees and staring at a slip of paper in her hand.

  He took one step closer before he realized what she was holding. It was the check her grandmother had given him last week. Damn it. He didn’t realize he’d left it out. He should’ve deposited it by now. With a sigh, he shook off his worries. That was just a segue into what he wanted to tell her anyway.

  “I guess,” Maddie said, “that I shouldn’t be surprised. After what happened last night, I should know that even the people closest to me can’t be fully trusted. If you can’t trust your own father, why should the bartender I’ve been sleeping with tell me the truth?”

  This was what he was afraid of. “Maddie, I can explain.”

  She shook her head sharply. “I don’t want you to explain, or rather, I don’t need you to. Lydia, of all people, told me what you were really up to two weeks ago. I didn’t believe her, but given that she’s a weasel of a liar, she probably recognized deception when she saw it.”

  “Deception?” Emmett said, his voice rising in pitch. “You’re really going to take what Lydia Whittaker said about me at face value? I can assure you she doesn’t know a thing about me.”

  “Apparently I don’t, either.” Maddie stood up. “The man I thought I knew wouldn’t use me to bilk money out of my grandmother.”

  Emmett planted his hands on his hips. “You think I’m bilking your grandmother? That I’m playing some kind of angle on Adelia Chamberlain? Is that even possible? The woman is like a cardsharp in a white wig.”

  Maddie ignored him, a frown deepening the lines of her forehead. “My granny is a good person. She’d do anything for this town and its residents. If you showed up on her doorstep like a lost puppy and told her that commissioning a woodworking project would give you the money to take me out and treat me nicely, she’d do it.”

  “I have no doubt of that. But that’s not what’s going on.”

  “Isn’t it? Granny told me she’d spoken with you about putting in a cedar closet for my mother while she was on vacation as a surprise for her birthday. I’m pretty sure that’s not twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of work.”

  Emmett sighed. He wished that Adelia had told him she’d devised a cover story. Maddie must have pushed her about it. Did someone tell her he’d been to the house? Or did she see Adelia come by the bar to bring him the check? Either way, suspicion had been cast and he’d been unprepared.

  “You’re right. It’s not. A gold-lined closet wouldn’t cost that much. That’s because this check doesn’t have anything to do with a closet. Your grandmother was just covering for me. I’m not building a closet or a shelf or anything else for her.”

  “Then what is this?” she asked, holding up the check with a tight jaw. “A low-interest loan? Did you talk her into buying an interest in the bar? What, Emmett?”

  Emmett’s hands clenched at his sides. He wanted to explain everything to her, to calm her down, but she wasn’t listening. It was just like when they first clashed over the noise at the bar. Every word out of her mouth made him want to dig his heels in further and further. “It’s none of those things, I swear. Just sit down, take a breath and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  Maddie narrowed her eyes at him, making no move to sit or relax.

  Okay, fine. “I’ll admit there are things I kept from you, Maddie, but there are parts of my life that no one knows about. If I told you, I’d have risked everyone in town learning the truth.”

  “You don’t think you can trust me to keep a secret?”

  “I didn’t know if I could or not.”

  “What could be so terrible that you had to hide it from everyone, including me? Do you have some kind of criminal past? Are you on the run from the cops?”

  “No,” he insisted. “It’s nothing bad. Why do you always think the worst of people? You seem to have believed that I’m a criminal from the beginning and you’re using the flimsiest of evidence to make that conclusion. My first brush with the law came the same day yours did, Maddie. I’m not running from the law and I’m not trying to swindle your grandmother. As a matter of fact, I don’t need your grandmother’s money, okay?”

  Maddie snorted and crossed her arms over her chest in contempt. She had made up her mind and nothing he said was going to convince her that she was wrong. That look was back on her face—the tight lips, the arched, disbelieving eyebrows, and slightly upturned nose. It was that smug, holier-than-thou expression that made him grit his teeth and do anything to aggravate her. Emmett was on the verge of telling her the truth, of letting his secret out, as much as it pained him, but now he was beginning to wonder if she was worth the sacrifice. He thought so, but if she could turn so quickly on him, he might’ve misjudged her.

  “There you go again,” Emmett said. “You think you know so much, but you don’t know anything, Fancy Pants. I must not know much, either, because I thought that you and I were really making progress. I thought that someday we might . . .” His voice trailed off, unable to finish what he wanted to say.

  “Don’t give me that wistful romantic crap,” Maddie snapped. “You’re just like all the other guys who saw me standing around looking lonely with a giant target on my chest. I’m nothing but a means to an end, a way to get to my family and everything they can offer you. I thought you were different, but you’re just another Joel with a surfer’s veneer.”

  “You’re comparing me to the guy who drugged you and tried to rape you?” Emmett shouted. “Are you kidding me?” He ran his fingers through his wet hair. This wasn’t even close, but her reflex to not trust men was stronger than her common sense. “You know what? Forget it. Forget this whole thing.”

  Her eyes flickered with a painful emotion that quickly faded. Her arrogant expression returned, projecting to him and anyone else that she didn’t care what the unwashed masses thought of her. “Go ahead, break it off now. You got what you wanted.” She held up the check mockingly.

  “You know, if you have that little faith in me—in us—then our whole relationship is just a ruse. Everything that’s happened over the last month is nothing but forced proximity at work.”

  “You’re right. I fell for your smile and your charms, but my first instincts to stay away from you were right. You were just out to use me and get back at me for calling the cops and getting you in all that trouble.”

  Emmett took another deep breath to try and calm himself and keep from saying something he would regret, but it wasn’t helping. She wanted to play hardball? Then he’d play. “You know,” he said in a scathing tone, “for someone who practically lives off the money her family gives her, you don’t have a lot of room to talk.”

  Her blue eyes grew wide with aggravation and surprise. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” he snapped bitterly. “If it wasn’t for Mommy and Daddy and Granny, you’d be living in a cheap-ass apartment behind the sporting goods store and scanning groceries at the Piggly Wiggly.”

  By this point, she’d damn near developed a nervous twitch. “That’s not true,” she said with nearly a wince of pain.

  “Oh yeah?” Emmett challenged, ignoring her. “Who paid for your schooling in Paris? Or that Mercedes? Who paid for the bakery and all your fancy, frilly renovations? Who gave you the down payment and cosigned for that Victorian house you call home? Admit it,” he said. “You’re less worried about being used than you are about someone else puttin
g their hand in your private golden honeypot.”

  Her face had turned a mottled red, running down her neck and around her ears. She was so angry; she seemed as though she’d nearly lost her grasp of English. She sputtered and stumbled through a response, finally looking as though she were about to go primal and just roar at him. “How dare you!”

  Her anger just fueled his words. He laughed at her frustration. She wasn’t used to being challenged or having someone force her to look in the mirror. It wasn’t pretty. “You know what, Fancy Pants? I dare. I dare because I don’t give a shit about your family and their money. I don’t care about how important they think they are or how paranoid they can be about people just wanting to use them. I say what I want because I don’t need them or you to condone my life and make me feel like I contribute.”

  He wanted to shout the truth at her now. That he could buy and sell her. That even if that check were going to him and not into her grandmother’s investment account, he didn’t need a dime of it from her or anyone else. He didn’t even need the money from the bar; it just gave him something to do and some business expenses to keep the IRS from eating him alive. He would’ve happily paid those five-hundred-dollar noise fines until she was blue in the face because it didn’t mean a damn thing to him.

  But he wouldn’t tell her. If she couldn’t love, trust, and accept him as a broke bartender, she didn’t deserve to know he was rich. Or that he was dumb enough to have fallen in love with her.

  Maddie had no response. She stood, searching for words, and when she couldn’t find them, took it out on the check. She tore it into twenty pieces, tossing them in the air before she marched out of his apartment and slammed the door.

  Damn it, he thought as he listened to her stomp down the stairs. Not only had all this not gone the way he’d planned, but Adelia was going to be pissed that she had to get another check written. Now he had two angry Chamberlain women on his hands.