Red Hot Reunion - Bella Andre Page 0,16

stepping inside, and coming face to face with her mother.

“Emma darling,” Jane said as she air-kissed Emma’s cheeks.

Emma knew her plastered smile must look far more like a grimace, but it was the best she could do. Her mother peered closely at her face.

“Are you wearing blusher?” her mother said, through tight disapproving lips.

Emma frowned. “No, Mother.”

But Jane obviously wasn’t going to take her word for it, because she reached for a tissue from the nearby table and roughly wiped it over Emma’s cheek. Staring at the unblemished white of the tissue, her mother was finally satisfied that she was telling the truth. “You know how vulgar blusher is.”

Knowing her mother wasn’t expecting a response, nor would wait for one, Emma merely nodded. It

wasn’t that she thought blusher was actually vulgar, but in her experience it was far easier to agree with her mother than it was to state her own opinion.

Having done away with makeup as a reason for Emma’s new look, Jane asked, “Are you ill?”

Emma noticed that her mother took a step back as she asked the question, obviously more afraid of catching something from her daughter than she was concerned about Emma having an actual illness.

“No,” she began, but then she realized that she did in fact look different. Her passionate, wild night with Jason—she could hardly say his name in her head without blushing and breaking out in a sweat—must have changed her on the outside, just as it had irreparably changed her on the inside. And if she didn’t plead illness, what would she say?

Oh, you know how it is, Mother, when you spend the night having sex with an old flame in public, you just glow a little bit more than usual.

A wild giggle threatened to erupt from her mouth. If she ever dared to say something like that to her mother, the earth would surely open up and swallow her whole.

“Emma?” Jane said, her tone sharp. “I’m waiting for your answer.”

Emma feigned a cough into her hand. “I might just be a tad under the weather.”

“If only Steven were still here to take care of you.”

Emma watched as Jane turned and headed into the kitchen, slightly sickened. As if Steven had ever taken care of her a day in his life.

If only her parents would learn to accept that Steven was gone. They were divorced and no amount of wishing and hoping would bring him back.

Not, Emma realized with sudden clarity, that she wanted him back anyway. Nothing she and Steven had shared during ten years of marriage had come even close to the passion and intensity of her stolen hour with Jason in the lake.

Emma felt as if a pin had pricked her. And it hurt. A lot. Until last night, she suddenly realized, she hadn’t

“felt” anything in years. She had, in essence, been walking around completely numb.

Dazed by the enormity of her discovery, her hand unclenched of its own volition and she dropped her purse and jacket in a heap on the well-polished hardwood floor.

“Emma, why are you dawdling in the foyer?” her mother called out from the covered back porch. “It’s time to come outside and serve lunch to your father.”

It took a moment or two, but the sound of her mother’s voice, and the disapproval in it, helped Emma to refocus her blurred vision. She walked through the formal white and beige living room and out through the French doors to where her father was seated.

“Emma,” her father said, his greeting as terse as usual. “Your mother’s roast is getting cold. Please serve it now.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Emma found herself automatically replying, her tone as coldly polite, as emotionless as her father’s. An image flashed before her of her passionate, heated, violent response to Jason’s touch the previous night. It was such a contrast to the coldness all around her that she felt light-headed again and clumsily dropped the carving knife to the table.

She blindly reached out to steady herself on the back of a chair.

Jane immediately stood up and grabbed the knife. “Sit down, Emma. I’ll do it,” she added with a sigh.

Emma knew her cheeks had to be red, considering how the thought of Jason made her feel like she was burning up all over, and her father’s eyes narrowed as she worked to regain her composure.

“I hope you didn’t drink too much last night at your class reunion,” he said. “That’s no way to make a good impression on potential clients.”

“You know better than that, Emma,”