Free Every Little Kiss by Kendra Leigh Castle

her the truth: He was at her service.
    “Anytime.”

Chapter Five
    “N o, I . . . No, I didn’t actually go streaking through the square. Where did you hear that? No, there wasn’t a flash mob, either. Yes, I’m sure. It’s . . . Wait, how is that disappointing?”
    Emma pressed her fingers to her temple and rubbed gently while she held the phone to her ear with the other hand. Her mother seemed to think the tales of her daughter’s exploits were hilarious, which figured. Andromeda Henry was a warm, giving human being, but she had a twisted sense of humor. Especially, Emma thought, when it came to yanking her elder daughter’s chain. That was at least part of the reason why the beautiful old house Emma had grown up in was always sporting obnoxious colors on the shutters and mailbox. Last year they’d been purple for a while. Currently they were bright green, which was about the color Emma had turned when she’d seen them.
    Sam thought it was funny. Of course, Sam would. And Andi’s well-to-do neighbors on the Crescent liked it about as well as they usually did, which was to say, not at all.
    Emma walked up Hawthorne Street, heading away from the square and the little harbor just beyond, withits rocky cove and strip of pebbled sand. The air was salty today, a strong breeze carrying the taste and scent of the sea. Emma breathed deeply, trying to focus on anything but the ridiculous story her mother was so amused by.
    It wasn’t Mike Tyson and a tiger, but that was sort of a low bar to clear.
    “Oh, honey, I can hear you brooding,” Andi was saying. “Come on. It’s too ridiculous not to laugh at. I’m just glad you had fun at your sister’s party. You ought to have fun more often.”
    “People keep saying that,” Emma grumbled. “It’s not like I’m a hermit.”
    “Not a hermit,” her mother agreed. “More like one of those warrior monks who spends all his time training or meditating and never really interacts with people unless he has to kill them. For the greater good, of course.”
    “Mom,” Emma groaned. “That’s a horrible analogy! What have you been reading?”
    “Things. And why is it horrible? Take away the shaved head and the body count, and I think it’s pretty close.”
    Emma pressed her lips together as she walked past black wrought-iron fences and lampposts, past trees covered in leaves that were still the young green shade of spring. It was cool enough to warrant a light jacket, so she’d thrown on a plain gray hoodie, a piece of her wardrobe that she almost never took outside. Everything else had seemed too dressy for a simple walk—and she didn’t usually take walks, so her active-wear collection was the pits. She also wore the only comfortable jeans she had, which were ancient and dotted with paint, and the sneakers she’d bought one of the times she’d pretended she was going to work out regularly.
    She felt vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of beingout in public like this, but the urge to get outside and escape her thoughts had been overwhelming. Now she just tried to move quickly enough that no one would be able to identify her.
    Naturally, her phone had started vibrating just as she’d locked the apartment door.
    “Mom, we’ve talked about this,” Emma finally said. “I’m fine. My life is fine. I’m not going to end up sharing dinners with Boof and crocheting doilies in my spare time.”
    “I know you’re fine, Emma. I’d like you to be better than fine, but that might require some upheaval and you never did like much of that. I just wish you didn’t take everything so seriously. I was hoping to hear you laugh about all this.”
    “I would if it were funny.”
    “The idea of you and Big Al streaking through the square isn’t funny?”
    “That’s not one of the many words that come to mind, no.” She was nearing the gallery where Sam worked and sold her pieces, a once-dilapidated little historic home that now shone like the gem it had been