Instant Gratification (Wilder #2)(78)

Serena brought out a tray of to-die-for brownies and slapped it on the counter. “Have at it.”

Emma frowned at the pastry chef. “Something wrong?”

“I’m overworked, under-appreciated, and I need a damn vacation.”

“I’m sorry if you’re overworked,” Doc said very gently. “But if it helps, these are the best brownies I’ve ever had.”

“Thanks.” Serena leaned against the counter, propping up her head with a fist. “I hear you sold. Think your investors would be interested in this building too?”

“You selling?” Emma asked in surprise.

“Thinking of it.”

It was so unlike her that Emma reached out to put her fingers on Serena’s wrist to check her pulse.

“Stop it. I’m not sick, just tired.”

“Maybe you should take a vacation off the mountain. Get your mojo back. I hear Mexico is good this time of year.”

“Yeah, you’re right on getting out of here. But I was thinking New York.”

Emma blinked, then set down her brownie. “New York. As in my New York?”

“As in Spencer’s.” Serena paused, looking first at Doc, then Emma. “He left me this.” She pulled an envelope out of her pocket with the words written DO NOT OPEN UNTIL READY on the front.

Spencer’s writing.

“On the day I didn’t take him to the airport,” Serena finished.

“Okay, what?”

“Yeah. I kept him overnight and had my merry way with him until yesterday. Sorry, Doc,” she said to her father.

He shook his head. “No apology necessary.”

Serena watched as Emma opened the envelope and peeked inside. “A ticket to New York. Wow. He must really like you.”

“It’s a one-way,” her father noted, looking over her shoulder. “Must have been a nice night.”

Serena smiled dreamily. “It was.”

Emma eyed Serena in an entirely new light. “You’re thinking of doing it, you’re thinking of going.”

“Would that be so odd? Me in New York, crushing the competition with my off-the-charts desserts?”

“No.” Actually, Emma could see it quite clearly, and it worked. Just as Serena and Spencer would work. As her father had earlier when she’d needed it, Emma reached out and squeezed Serena’s hand. “I’m happy for him.”

Serena looked down at her hand in hers. “And me? Are you happy for me, too?”

Emma smiled and went with her trademark honesty. It was all she had at the moment. “No. You, I’m jealous of.”

“Because I’m going after what I want, which is Spencer, and you don’t have the guts to go after Stone?”

“Actually,” Emma said dryly. “I meant because Stone isn’t likely to follow me across the country.”

“You could follow him,” her father said.

“And stay here,” Serena finished for him, nodding.

“My life is in New York.”

“Yeah.” Serena took back her envelope. “Well, if Stone hands you an envelope that says DON’T OPEN UNTIL YOU’RE READY, don’t open it, cuz you’re not ready.” Without giving Emma a chance to respond to that, she turned to Doc. “So it’s a done deal?”

He took another brownie. “Done deal.”

“Too bad Stone couldn’t talk her out of it, huh?”

Emma looked at her dad in disbelief. “What?”

Serena winced in Doc’s direction. “Sorry. That slipped out. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Her father stuffed a brownie in his mouth.

Emma didn’t blink. “You wanted Stone to talk me out of selling?” she pressed.

Her father grimaced. “Not exactly.”

Oh, boy. She set down her second brownie, her heart kicking hard. “Then what exactly?”

With a sigh, he set down his brownie and faced her. “It’s not a big deal. I just thought maybe, if things worked out between the two of you, that you’d want to stick around.”

“So you wouldn’t have to sell.”

“So I wouldn’t have to sell.”

Oh, God. “Dad, I asked you a hundred times if you really wanted this. A thousand. I asked and asked, and you never—”

“I wanted you to want to stay. To want to not sell. To want to run the clinic.” His smile was solemn and heartbreaking. “I wasn’t going to ever ask it of you.”

Oh, no. He didn’t get to pull the martyr card. “You weren’t going to ask it of me directly, you mean. Instead, you were going to have Stone talk me out of it, a nonmember of the family, a virtual stranger—”

“Is he?” her father interrupted softly. “A stranger?”

He hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her the truth. “I can’t believe this. You sold your own business, and you didn’t want to. Do you have any idea how…frustrating this is?”

“Really? You want to know frustrating?” Her father stood up. “Frustrating is your livelihood being taken away from you by the turning of time and bad genes. Or watching your child choose a world that is slowly sucking the life and joy and heart and soul right out of her, three thousand miles away so that you can’t help. That’s frustrating.”