Red Hot Reunion
Page 3

Emma blinked away the tears that were about to fall. It was true, her parents had adored Steven from the minute they laid eyes on him at a Stanford faculty function ten years ago. As the reigning football star on the West Coast, he was perfect son-in-law material. So she’d paid the bills and gotten his suits dry-cleaned, but there had never been passion between them. Glimmers of friendship, but never desire.
“You pulled me aside before the wedding, Kate, and told me I didn’t have to go through with it. Why didn’t I listen to you? Even when you pointed out that I still loved—”
No, she couldn’t say his name out loud. Not now, when all of her perfect choices had turned out to be anything but. Not when the memory of her latest middle-of-the-night fantasy was still burning between her legs.
Kate, of course, had no such qualms. “You have wanted to be with Jason Roberts since the day you met him. You still do.”
Emma looked at Kate with surprise.
“What? You think just because you don’t ever talk about him that I don’t know how you feel?”
Emma hated how transparent she was. How even though she’d tried to deny her feelings for Jason for years they were still written all over her face.
“I need more to drink,” Emma said, craning her neck, looking over Kate’s shoulder for the cute waiter.
Emma knew that she was going to feel bloated and sick tomorrow, that she was going to have spend the entire day at the gym with nothing but lettuce and rice cakes for dinner, but she didn’t care. Booze was taking the edge off. And Lord knew she needed the edges of her life hacked off with a machete tonight.
Pathetic loser that she was, she had TiVo’d every single one of Jason’s Food Network shows, all of his book signings, anything where his name was listed as a guest.
And even though she’d fantasized about seeing him again a million times, a part of her still hoped that he wouldn’t come tonight. That he’d be too busy with his top-rated cooking show. Or his world-famous restaurant. Or one of his supermodel girlfriends.
Because then she wouldn’t have to face him. Wouldn’t have to figure out what she could possibly say, if he would even talk to her.
I always loved you.No, too pathetic.
I’m sorry.Definitely not good enough to make up for what she’d done. For how she’d done it.
Make love to me.He’d laugh in her face. Jason could have any woman in the world. Why would he
possibly want her? Even her own husband, make that ex-husband, hadn’t wanted her.
Emma was reaching for another truth-blotting drink when Kate’s red-tipped hand gripped her forearm.
“He’s here.”
Emma’s blood grew cold. She craned her neck in desperation, praying for a back door to appear out of thin air. “He can’t see me looking like this,” she hissed, desperate for a hiding place.
She had always dreamed of looking like a goddess the next time they met. Of blowing him away with her allure and sophistication and irresistibility. Instead, she was drunk and nervous and only now realized how boring and dried up she was in her silk-lined cream Ann Taylor linen dress.
Kate turned to face her. “You know what you have to do tonight, don’t you?”
Emma blinked hard and tried to swallow, tried to speak, but her mouth was the Sahara. Finally finding her voice, she whispered, “I can’t.”
Kate’s eyes hardened. “Yes, you can. You’re single. You’re gorgeous, no matter what you seem to think.
Just once, if only for tonight, take this chance for you. Stop trying to please everyone else, honey. It’s time to please yourself.”
Two
Eighteen-year-old Jason Roberts looked around at his new home for the next four years and wondered if his acceptance to Stanford University had been a big mistake. Everyone was white-collar. Wonder bread.
Perfect. He’d only been on campus for an hour and already he’d met a cute brunette who was an Olympic gymnast. She hadn’t made a big deal out of it, but he was star-struck anyway.
Not that he’d ever show it, of course. Leaning against the bottom of the stairs in a Rolling Stones T-shirt and faded jeans, he watched one fellow student after another drag heavy suitcases into the dormitory lounge. He memorized every detail—the oversized diamonds on the mothers’ hands, the well-groomed fingernails on the fathers’, the confident, excited expressions on their kids’ faces—and yet to the casual observer he looked almost disinterested in the comings and goings around him. It was something he’d perfected over the years, a casual, effortless presence: cool enough to fit in with anyone in any situation, but not too cool that people thought he was a snob.
And thenshewalked in and his cover was blown.
The girl was blonde and thin, nearly too thin, but what really stood out to Jason was how nervous she was. Painfully so. He wanted to reach out and pull her away from her parents, who were obviously more concerned with assessing the wealth of the fellow students than they were with their own daughter’s welfare. He kept his face averted, but his eyes remained on her.
Something about her pulled at him, made him want to hold her, kiss away her uncertainty. He wasn’t a virgin by any means, but he’d never felt this way about a girl within the first minute of setting eyes on her.
He waited until her parents had disappeared, then moved to stand beside the girl.
“I’m Jason. Need some help with your things?”
The grateful smile she gave him lit her up from the inside out. All the beauty he suspected beneath her overly pale skin, her prominent cheekbones, bloomed to life before him.
“That would be great,” she replied, staring into his eyes, seeming to get lost for a second.
His groin jumped with awareness and his gaze moved to her lips instinctively. He couldn’t wait to taste her. A taste that he was certain would be sweeter than anything he’d ever had on his tongue.
And then, polite little girl that he knew she’d been raised to be by the stiff-as-a-board couple who had dropped her off, she held her hand out. “I didn’t mean to be rude. My name’s Emma. Emma Holden.”
He curled his large fingers around the fine bones of her soft hand. And in that moment Jason Roberts wanted Emma Holden more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He might have been only
eighteen, but already he knew he’d have her. And it would be exactly right. The best thing they’d ever done. For the both of them.
Jason Roberts firmly believed that charging in on his white horse to save Emma Holden that first day of college was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. And somehow, he couldn’t escape the foreboding that attending his ten-year reunion might also end up at the top of his list of worst decisions.