Free Listed: Volume VI by Noelle Adams Page B

little in his life but
waste time, money, and relationships, but she did anyway. “Yeah.”
    “You’ll
let me keep you safe?”
    “Yeah.”
    He
squeezed her shoulder before he dropped his hand. “I won’t let you down.”
    ***
    Three weeks later,
Emily buried her aunt with a simple graveside service.
    The
Masons opened their home afterwards so people could give Emily their support
and comfort.
    She
liked these people. Some of them she even loved. But she didn’t want to talk to
any of them. She didn’t want to see them.
    She
wanted to hide under the covers and wake up from this endless nightmare.
    After
an hour and a half, she couldn’t take any more sympathetic smiles or soft
voices asking how she was. She felt too hot. Claustrophobic. She slipped away
from the crowded rooms where people were mingling and eating from paper plates.
    She
went outside to the front porch and breathed deeply of the summer air, trying
to catch her breath since it seemed impossible to cool down.
    She
hadn’t cried all day, but the world felt like a gray, slow-motion dream.
    “Are
you ready to leave?”
    She
stiffened at the unexpected voice and turned her head to see Paul standing on the
walk that led up to the house. He wore the dark suit he’d worn to the graveside
service and stood with his normal confident, almost arrogant stance.
    He
hadn’t come over to Chris’s house with her after the graveside service. She
didn’t know why but didn’t care enough to ask.
     “I
shouldn’t,” she said, her voice sounding hoarse like she’d overused it,
although she hadn’t really been talking that much.  “They went to so much
trouble.”
    “They
did it for you. They’ll want you to do whatever you need to do.”
    Emily
looked longingly at the chauffeured car—which was the vehicle Paul had started
to use now that he went around with bodyguards all the time.
    She
still didn’t think Vincent Marino was capable of violence against her. Or
against his own son.
    But
Paul evidently did.
    She
wondered what it was like for him to believe that his father might try to kill
him.
    She
didn’t have the emotional capacity at the moment to wrap her mind around it.
    “Let’s
go,” Paul said. He held out one hand in a subtle beckoning gesture.
    Emily
took a step toward him before she remembered her manners. “I need to tell Chris
and his folks first. I need to thank them.”
    “I
can tell them, if you want—”
    “No.
I’ll do it.”
    She
went back into the too-hot, crowded house and managed to explain that she
needed to leave. The Masons looked at her in kind pity, and Chris gave her an
awkward but sincere hug.
    He’d
given her a surprise party in this house for her seventeenth birthday. Less
than a year ago.
    He’d
given her a birthday kiss at the end of the evening, and she’d had dreams for
weeks afterwards that he was finally starting to develop feelings for her.
    He
wasn’t. It was one of those daydreams that just died.
    All
of them did eventually.
    Now
she could hardly remember being the girl with such a crush on him.
    Paul
was waiting by the car when she returned.
    When
they got in and the driver pulled away from the curb, she leaned her head back
against the seat and closed her eyes.
    She
was so incredibly tired. Her mouth and her eyes felt so dry.
    Paul
sat in the seat beside her, and she could feel his presence. He wasn’t a
naturally quiet person, so he must be trying to give her some space.
    He
was used to being the prince of whatever room he walked into. Which was why she
was vaguely surprised that he’d been so helpful for the last few days, taking
care of all the logistics so she didn’t have to do anything but just show up.
    On
that thought, she opened her eyes. “Thanks.”
    “For
what?”
    “For
helping me out with all the arrangements. For everything.”
    He
glanced away, looking uncomfortable. “It was nothing.”
    “It
wasn’t nothing to me.”
    When
he didn’t respond, she changed the subject. “Any