“Because I’m a girl?”
No, because being helpless to get to her when he thought she was about to be crushed by six hundred and fifty pounds of rolling four-wheeler made him feel…something. Something not good. “Because I don’t want to be the one who has to tell Cat we broke you.”
That made her laugh. “I’m going to feel like I got hit by a Mack truck later, but I’m not broken.”
“I’ll run you a hot bubblebath when we get home. That’ll help with the aches and pains.”
When she smiled and her face relaxed, Sean moved in for a kiss. Not because he was thinking about Emma all naked and soapy with her nipples peeking through the bubbles, but because he was so damn relieved she wasn’t hurt.
His lips had barely met hers when she jerked away. First he thought he’d hurt her, and then he thought she was mad. But he realized she’d already heard the sound he was just now registering—an ATV racing toward them.
“Wouldn’t want to make you lose your bet,” she muttered with a faint thread of bitterness that made him feel guilty, even though he wasn’t sure why.
He had no reason to feel guilty. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Besides, she knew he didn’t take that stupid betting pool seriously and that he didn’t want his aunt disappointed when he and Emma parted ways. But he didn’t get a chance to explain it.
Kevin came into view, riding fast. He braked when he saw them and his machine had barely stopped when he jumped off. “What happened? Emma, are you okay?”
She nodded. “Chipmunk. I hesitated and blew the corner.”
“You hurt?”
She showed him her scuffed arm. “I’ll live. Hoping I can say the same for Lisa’s four-wheeler.”
Evan and Terry pulled up and Sean stepped off to the side while they fussed over her and Kevin fired up Lisa’s machine and maneuvered it back onto the trail.
“Doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “Cracked some plastic and scuffed the end of the grip. Pretty sure her front rack was already bent a little. Small tear in the seat. We’ll slap some duct tape on it and call it good.”
Emma groaned. “Duct tape. That’s classy.”
Terry laughed. “They have four boys. Half the stuff they own’s held together by duct tape.”
Sean picked Emma’s helmet up off the ground and turned it over in his hands, brushing it off and looking for damage. The way she’d looked hitting the ground still had him feeling a little wobbly inside, he realized as he ran his thumb over a gouge that may or may not have been from this incident.
She could have been seriously injured and he was having trouble processing just how much that scared him. He didn’t want to see anybody get hurt, but the thought of how close they might have come to waiting for a helicopter to come airlift Emma out of the woods had his gut churning.
The feeling didn’t lessen when Terry got her first-aid kit out of her cargo box and started cleaning the scrapes on Emma’s arm. She was leaning against the front of Terry’s machine, smiling at something Kevin and Evan were talking about, but his stomach seemed to clench up even more instead of relaxing.
She was one hell of a woman. Emma was smart and fun and tough and she worked hard, and she turned his world upside down between the sheets. And maybe that was the problem. His world was starting to feel a little upside down when they were fully clothed, too.
“You okay?” Kevin asked him, and Sean swore under his breath. He hadn’t even noticed him coming.
“Yeah. Just checking out her helmet.”
“You look a little peaked.”
Pretty natural look for a guy whose world wasn’t right-side up anymore. “Wasn’t a fun thing to watch.”
“I’ve been teaching Beth to ride when Ma can watch Lily and I swear I have a heart attack every time she so much as hits a bump.”
“But she’s your wife.” Sean looked at Emma, who was looking back at him. “That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” He said it firmly, wondering which of them he was trying to convince. “Emma’s a nice girl and I don’t want to see her get hurt, but it’s not the same thing at all.”
When she raised an eyebrow at him from across the distance, he wondered if she was a better lip reader than he’d thought. And when she mouthed nice girl, with a questioning look, he knew he was busted. She wouldn’t like being called that at all.
“You keep telling yourself that and I’ll leave you two to make googly-eyes at each other while I go check the air in my tires. Think I’ve got one going soft on me.” Kevin slapped his shoulder. “And I don’t think that’s all that’s going soft around here.”
His cousin walked away before Sean could tell him he wasn’t going soft. The fact he didn’t want to see the woman he was and wasn’t pretending to have sex with wrapped around a tree didn’t mean he was going soft. It just meant…
It just meant he might be starting to get a little soft and he needed to get the hell out of there the second Cat’s departing flight started its taxi down the runway.