A Game Of Brides (Montana Born Brides) (3 page)

She stared at the place where his strong, calloused hand wrapped around her bare skin because she
’d shoved her shirt and sweater up over her forearm, and didn’t understand how he could
do
this. How he could touch her in such an irrelevant, perfectly polite way and her whole body
ignite
like he was gasoline and a lit match and she was nothing but dry kindling.

“
I’m sorry,” he said, a low rumble.

And it all sort of rolled up inside of her, then.
Her sister’s unreasonable demands that had left Emmy with no choice but to risk her job to spend the required three weeks here or sign herself up for an open war with the bride. How angry she was, though she’d never admit it, that Margery, who had spent every single summer of their lives complaining about having to spend
two entire months
in what she called
that backwater
had turned around two years ago and claimed this place for
her
wedding. Not that Emmy had any wedding plans herself, but that didn’t matter, did it? She was the one who had always loved Montana. Surely she should have been the one who got married here. Not to mention, all of her unresolved feelings about Griffin and what had happened all those years ago. It all rolled around and hardened and then
burst.

“
I don’t know what that’s an apology for,” she gritted out, glaring at his hand, wishing she couldn’t
feel it
everywhere, in the tightness of her chest and that telltale melting in her core. “I can think of at least twenty things you
should
apologize to me for, but this isn’t the place for that any more than the airport was.”

“
Twenty?” Griffin’s voice was as hot as his hand, and darker. She had to fight back a shudder from way down deep inside of her. “I was thinking more like two.”

Emmy risked looking up at him then, and glared.
At that absurdly beautiful face of his that had ruined her, really, when she thought about it.
That
had been her first, completely unrequited, deeply scarring, and humiliating introduction to love. How could anything or anyone else compare? No wonder, she thought now that she was sitting next to him again and could see that she hadn’t been exaggerating his impact on her years ago, that she’d had entire relationships with less spark and sizzle than Griffin Hyatt’s hand on her arm.

“
Twenty at the very least,” she snapped at him. “And I’m not eighteen any more. If you want to apologize to me, Griffin, you can do it like a man. Over a drink at that goddamned saloon I was never old enough to enjoy properly, or not at all.”

His hand tightened slightly on her arm, and she saw his smile in his green eyes a moment before it made those hard lips crook.

“Welcome home, Emmy,” he murmured.

“
Go to hell, Griffin,” she replied, and that felt like old times too, all those summers before she was eighteen when they’d done nothing but trade barbs and hurl words at each other like weapons until they’d made each other laugh. Emmy didn’t want to admit how comfortable it was now, like she’d accidentally dropped herself back into the life she should have had, the life she’d walked away from a decade ago when she’d vowed she’d never come back to Montana again.

Something hung there between them, alive and
much too sharp, and Griffin’s gaze darkened. Emmy found she was holding her breath.

And then she heard the door slam and her sister
’s trademark squeal, loud enough to scare the birds from the nearby trees and worse, Griffin’s hand from her arm.

“
You’re already late!” Margery cried from the top of Gran Harriet’s stairs, her hands on her tiny little hips and her pretty face already wreathed in a scowl. “What kind of maid of honor is late to her only sister’s wedding?”

Griffin was grateful to Margery Mathis
for what was undoubtedly the first time in all the years he’d known her.

He watched as Emmy
,
his
Emmy, who had followed him around like a puppy for years and there was probably something wrong with him that he missed that phase, shifted in her seat and sighed.

She
certainly wasn’t a puppy any longer.

Emmy had
been skinny as a rail at fifteen, but now had the kind of lithe figure that begged for a man’s hands—or
his
hands, anyway. They itched to touch her. Her hair was a silky, shiny brown run through with hints of gold and the way she wore it showed off her elegant bone structure, making him feel greedy and hot. Her mouth was something too close to indecent, and he couldn’t seem to keep his gaze off of it. And she still looked at him with those clever dark brown eyes of hers, the way she had as a know-it-all eighteen-year-old almost-college-freshman, like she could see straight through him to the hidden things beneath.

All that, and she looked
edible besides, in jeans that licked over her lean curves the way he’d like to do and that cute scarf that wrapped her in a deep blue gauze.

Emmy squared her shoulders, climbed out of the passenger seat, and
didn’t look back as she walked toward the front steps and her pain-in-the-ass sister. Griffin lied and told himself he was grateful for that, too.

He
’d expected to appreciate her. He always had, even before that stupid night he’d gotten much too carried away, which he didn’t really think was entirely his fault given
that mouth
and what he’d liked to have done with it, but hadn’t. Didn’t he deserve retroactive points for not being
as much
of a douchebag as he could have been?

He
’d expected that, as ever, he’d enjoy Emmy Mathis’s company, even if by some chance she was still mad at him.

But h
e hadn’t expected sheer, near-ungovernable lust to blindside him, pinning him there against the wall of the baggage claim when he’d first seen her saunter into view. He hadn’t expected that pounding, driving hunger to slam its way through him, making him wilder with every breath, when he hadn’t felt a damn thing for or about anyone since he’d left Jackson Hole last fall. He hadn’t expected Emmy’s scowl to jack up his temperature like a blast of summer heat and he certainly hadn’t expected a simple hand on her arm to feel like her mouth against the hardest part of him, just like all those fantasies he told himself he hadn’t had way back when.

He hadn
’t expected her to push every last one of his buttons without even trying, and maybe he should have. Emmy had always gotten under his skin, even when she’d been nothing to him but the bossy little kid next door every summer. Hence the nickname
Bug.

But then, he
’d always been a dumb fuck where women were concerned, hadn’t he? Or Celia would never have left him that last and final time to shack up with his best friend less than forty-eight hours later, which had been the final push Griffin had needed to get the hell out of Jackson Hole—and whatever the hell his relationships had become while he’d been focusing on the business—at long last. It shouldn’t really surprise him that even here in Marietta, the place he’d come to get his head on straight and figure out what the hell he was doing with his life, he’d find more proof that he was nothing but a fool where pretty women were concerned.

Or that it would be
this
particular pretty woman, who he’d already made a fool of himself over a long time ago.

The unpleasant recollection of his pathetic history with women
was his cue to drive away, duty done and Emmy safely delivered to the family home and the arms of her insane Bridezilla of a sister, but, of course, Griffin didn’t do that. He’d never been one for self-preservation. The term for that in the common parlance, he was well aware, was
dumb fuck.
And because he couldn’t help himself, he was out of the truck and standing in the drive with another excellent view of Emmy’s sweet ass before he knew what hit him.

Before he could get himself in check the way he knew he
needed to do.

“
It’s actually impossible for me to be late to an event that’s over three weeks in the future,” Emmy was saying in that smartass way of hers, all crisp and a little bit snooty. “Thanks, though, for asking. I’m doing well. My flight was fine despite the tight connection in Minneapolis, not that flying all the way to
Minnesota
was at all out of my way or annoying or anything. Oh, and I’m not being paid for what my horrible boss has decided she’ll call ‘personal leave,’ because it’s so much freaking time off. But never fear, I’m happy to dip into my savings for you, Margery. Nothing’s too extreme for your special day! Even if it’s actually twenty-one days instead of one, like a normal person.”

Margery, who had always been pretty in that
overly cultivated way that left Griffin cold—maybe because he’d been knee deep in girls exactly like her at Andover and Dartmouth, or maybe because he’d always seen that gleam of calculation in her lovely blue eyes—smiled benevolently down at Emmy like the queen Griffin was pretty sure she already thought she was.

Come to think of it, he
’d seen that smile before. It was the one Celia had worn when he’d proposed to her. And then again when he’d pounded on Henry’s door to find the two of them inside, half-naked and not at all sorry that he’d finally caught a clue.

Dumb.
Fuck.

“
Are you done?” Margery asked mildly, reminding Griffin where the hell he was.

“
Not really. There’s a lot to be said about the bridesmaids’ dresses. Who looks good in purple? Particularly
that shade
of purple?”

“
It’s
dahlia
, actually, as I’d think you’d know, given your advertising expertise where I’d assume every little detail counts. And didn’t you do that whole big campaign on flowers?”

“
I did a campaign on allergy medicine which featured a lot of flowers because they were
allergens,
which feels like a good segue back into the bridesmaid’s dresses. Mine makes me look like I’m dying of scurvy.”

“
Then I’ll be certain to make sure you get an extra helping of fruit salad at the reception instead of the cake everyone else will be enjoying,” Margery said coolly. “Now are you done?”

“
For the moment,” Emmy said in that dry way of hers that went straight to Griffin’s gut—or maybe lower. He was too busy wondering how she’d managed to steal all the air when she wasn’t even looking at him and they were standing outside in Big Sky country to tell exactly how many ways she was getting to him.

A
nd then the two Mathis sisters proved that Griffin really didn’t know a damned thing about women because they both giggled, and then hugged. Long and hard, like they really meant it. It was baffling. He was baffled.

“
You’re a pain in the ass,” Emmy muttered as they pulled apart, and Margery kept her arm slung across Emmy’s shoulders.

“
That’s why you love me,” Margery replied airily, and then her gaze moved from Emmy and landed on Griffin. She inclined her head slightly, still in her regal mode. He supposed that came with the marrying-a-very-rich-dude territory. “Griffin.”

“
Margery,” he replied. “Congratulations.”

She smiled.
“That almost sounded like you meant it. And here Gran Martha was telling us all about your poor, broken heart just last night. You seem all patched up to me.”

“
Looks can be deceiving.” He tried to look polite. “That Philip sure is a lucky guy.”

Margery
’s smile deepened, and suddenly, she reminded Griffin of a cat.

“
Aren’t you a good little bag boy,” she said, almost merrily. “I’m sure Emmy appreciates having such a rich and famous gentleman as her very own chauffeur. Or is it bellhop? Either way, you can bring her bag inside. I’m sure it’s that ratty old duffel, isn’t it, Emmy? One of these days I’m burning it in a fire.”

“
It’s a perfectly practical bag,” Emmy protested.

“
If you’re a hulking frat boy,” Margery replied. She eyed Griffin. “Though I suppose you fit that bill nicely.”