“I should ask Gram if she minds. But if she doesn’t, I’d love to go if Lisa will let me steal her machine again. I haven’t ridden since last summer.”
“We’ll hook you up.” Lily was squirming like a fish out of water and Kevin was losing the battle. “She wants to see her Aunt Paulie. Call me and let me know. By Thursday night would be good so we can figure out which trailers we need to load up.”
After they left, Emma returned to her Jasper burger consumption with gusto. She’d asked Lisa once to find out the recipe for their seasoning mix, but Kevin wouldn’t give it up. Plus, as Lisa had pointed out, it wouldn’t do Emma any good to have it since she couldn’t cook worth a damn anyway.
“So about what I said before,” Sean said after he’d wolfed down his food, “about not wanting them to know we’ve had sex. It’s not that I’m trying to hide it, I just…”
“Don’t want them to know.”
“Yeah.”
“That makes sense.”
His face brightened. “Really?”
“No.”
“Damn.” He’d finished his beer, so he took a swig off the glass of water she’d requested with her meal. “Under normal circumstances, I’d want everybody to know we’re sleeping together. Trust me. I’d put a sign on my front lawn.”
“But these aren’t normal circumstances.”
“Not even in the ballpark. I have this bet with my brothers I’d last the whole month and I don’t want to listen to them gloat.” Of course he had a bet with his brothers. Such a guy thing to do. “But it’s more about the women.”
“The women?”
“In my family, I mean. Aunt Mary, especially. They might start thinking it’s more than it is. Getting ideas about us, if you know what I mean.”
Emma ate her last French fry and pushed her plate away. “So we have to pretend we’re madly in love and engaged…while pretending we’re not having sex.”
“Told you it complicates things.”
“I’m going to need a color-coded chart to keep track of who thinks what.”
He grinned and pulled his Sharpie out of his pocket. “I could make sticky notes.”
The man loved sticky notes. He stuck them on everything. A note on the front of the microwave complaining about the disappearance of the last bag of salt-and-vinegar chips. (Emma had discovered during a particularly rough self-pity party that any chips will do, even if they burn your tongue). A note on the back of the toilet lid telling her she used girly toilet paper, whatever that meant.
He liked leaving them on the bathroom mirror, too. Stop cleaning my sneakers. I’m trying to break them in. Her personal favorite was if you buy that cheap beer because it’s on sale again, I’ll piss in your mulch pile. But sometimes they were sweet. Thank you for doing my laundry. And you make really good grilled cheese sandwiches. That one had almost made her cry.
“Not to change the subject,” she said, intending to do just that, “but I’m going to bid a landscaping job tomorrow. The homeowner wants to extend the deck out and add some built-in seating. It’s a rush job because they’re spending the last week of July there and want it done. I thought maybe you could do up a bid for that and we could submit it as a package. You know, if you’re interested and think you can it done in time.”
“Are you going to stand over my shoulder and double-check all my measurements and cuts?”
She felt her face blush and rolled her eyes. “No. Pounding nails is your thing, not mine.”
“Then I’m interested. We could make a good team, you and I.”
The words pierced some part of her heart she didn’t want to think about, but she laughed. “Yeah. Just don’t tell anybody.”
Watching Sean flip ham steaks on the grill through the window, Emma tore up lettuce for salads. Her grandmother was cutting the tomatoes, which was probably good since she shouldn’t use a knife and watch Sean cook at the same time.
“Hey, Gram, would you mind if Sean and I disappeared for a few hours on Saturday?”
“Of course not.”
“A few of the Kowalskis are going four-wheeling and Kevin invited us to go. But if you want to spend the day with us, I can go—we can go—another time.”
“I had plans of my own, actually.”
Something in Gram’s voice drew her attention away from admiring the way Sean wielded a meat fork. “Oh really?”
“Russell’s going to take me out for an early dinner and then we’re going dancing at the high school. They’re having a fundraiser for chem-free graduation.”
“Oh.” Emma realized she was tearing the lettuce into confetti and dropped it into the bowl. “That sounds fun.”
“Do I need to have the talk with you about how going on a date with Russell doesn’t change the fact I still love your grandfather very much and miss him every day?”
“No.” She shook more lettuce out of the bag, just to give her hands something to do. “Maybe.”