Instant Gratification (Wilder #2)(21)

“Ya think?”

“I should have offered to help.”

“You could offer now.”

“Okay. You want some time off? You need to get the hell out for a while or something? You could take the first Alaskan trip, no problem.”

Stone sighed. “It’s not like I’m chomping at the bit to get out of here.”

“But…”

“But…” He decided what the hell. “I want to do another renovation project.”

TJ blinked. “So…you want to stop having fun all day in order to work your ass off?”

“I don’t want to stop doing this. Jesus. You don’t listen.”

“I listen plenty, and what I’m hearing is that you need to get laid.”

Stone let out a laugh. “Is that your answer to everything?”

“Yes,” TJ said fervently.

Okay, true. Sex was an extremely nice fix to just about everything, but he knew he needed more than that this time. “Remember when I bought that house on the corner of Main and Sierra and fixed it up, then sold it to Old Man Pete?”

“Your first project. I remember. He turned it into the convenience store next to his gas station.”

“Yeah.”

“You nearly lost your ass on that project.”

“That’s because I was twenty-two and got screwed on the loan, but it worked out. It’s not about the money, TJ. It’s about doing something I love. This…” he gestured around him. “It’s good. It gives Cam a purpose, and it’s what you love, but I need more. I need something for me.”

TJ just stared at him. “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“Well, Christ, Stone. What’ll we do without you?”

Now he stared up at the sky, feeling it weighing down on him. “I’m not leaving. I’m not asking to leave. I just want some time for me.”

“Maybe you just need a distraction. Ask her out, man. It’ll help.”

Stone didn’t have to ask which “her”, he knew exactly. “No.”

“Is it because she saw you buck ass naked on your first date? That could be construed as a romantic memory, you know.”

Romantic? True, her hands had been all over him, but she’d been pulling gravel and chunks of rock out of his flesh, her fingers steady as a rock as he’d sworn the room blue.

Yeah, romantic as hell. “It wasn’t a date, you ass. It was…an encounter. Then I brought her up a mountain to deliver a baby because you didn’t notice that one of your clients was twenty-two months pregnant.”

“Hey, that could have been romantic, too.”

“How? How could that have been romantic?”

TJ thought about it for a minute and then shrugged. “Okay, maybe not.”

Stone just shook his head.

“So what do you think you’ll do for your next…encounter? Maybe tell her that the minor heart attack she thinks her father had was in fact a major one, and that if you hadn’t been there he’d have died?”

“I thought I’d save that for some other time.” Like, oh…never. Never worked for him. Emma wouldn’t thank him for not telling her the truth, he knew that much. Nor would it matter to her that it hadn’t been his truth to tell.

“Maybe you could try a new tactic.”

“Like?”

“Like a date. Without the blood and guts and someone screaming in pain.”

As the middle child, Stone was the talker, the peacemaker, the one who kept them all together, but as the oldest, TJ usually had the answers, at least when it came to women. “You don’t think that would be a waste of my breath?”

“I think you’ve got a shot.” TJ smiled. “I’ll put your first-aid kit back so you have it handy. Knowing you, you’ll need it.” With a pat on the back, Stone’s supposedly smarter, wiser, older brother got up and headed toward their clients.



The next morning, Emma woke up to her cell phone vibrating right off her nightstand. When she finally caught the thing, she saw Spence’s number and felt herself smile.

Spencer did that for her, made her smile.

They’d become friends in an undergraduate freshman biology class at Columbia. They’d become friends-with-benefits their junior year when he’d been dumped by his long term girlfriend, and that tradition had continued on an as-needed basis throughout the years. When they were dating others—mostly Spencer, because Emma didn’t often make time for dating, they saw each other less, but in between significant others—again, mostly Spencer’s—they spent more time together. Whenever there were bad breakups, and for Spencer there was never any other kind, they’d occasionally knocked their feet together in bed.

It’d been a year since they’d last gotten naked, and that wasn’t what Emma wanted from him now. She wanted the company of someone who knew her and accepted her, as is. “Tell me you’re still getting on a plane tomorrow,” she said.

“I’m already here. I got in late last night to surprise you.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I’ve already been on a mountain bike ride this morning, in the rain, no less, which was amazing. I suppose your lazy ass is still in bed?”