Emma crossed her arms over her chest.
“Oh my God. Are you twelve?” Alison whipped out her phone, accessed the security app, and then held it out to Emma. “Enter a new password. Something that is not Simon.”
Two minutes later, they were inside. Alison turned to Emma. “To be clear, we’re not talking about your and Simon’s sex life.”
Emma nodded, but her eyes went suspiciously shiny.
Dammit. Alison headed to the counter and pulled herself up to sit on it.
Emma ducked behind the counter and came up with two red Solo cups and a bottle of red wine. “Gabby left this for us.” She opened the bottle and poured two very generous portions. Then she handed one over, taking the other for herself before gently knocking it into Alison’s in a toast. “To independence.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Alison said and they drank. “Since we’re not going to talk about stupid males, what do you want to talk about?”
“Well, I did come up with a good idea earlier,” Emma said.
“Your last idea wiped out my savings, so . . .”
“Right now we have big dogs and little dogs separated,” Emma said, ignoring the sass. “We have it like that because the little dogs terrorize the bigger, sweeter dogs. But some of the big dogs like being with the little dogs, so I think we need to rethink it. What do you think about labeling the yards ‘sweet’ and ‘salty’? We’d have to be careful with the scheduling for the salty dogs, of course, scheduled yard time and all that, but we do that anyway.”
It was a damn good idea, but Alison just looked at Emma. “Why do I feel like you’re thinking you’re the ‘sweet’ and I’m the ‘salty’?”
“Well, I do get dehydrated just looking at you.”
Alison thought about that and had to shrug. “Fair.”
Emma laughed. “So . . . yeah?”
“I can’t believe I’m going to be the voice of reason on this issue, but it’s possible you’ll insult people with those labels.”
“Only the salty people though.”
“Hey, salty people have feelings too.”
Emma snorted. “Let’s ro-sham-bo.”
“The last time you and I competed for anything was in our sophomore year. We didn’t even know each other. It was the cartwheel challenge, remember?”
“Yeah,” Emma said. “Winner got to be homecoming princess. I won. I did one hundred cartwheels. How many did you do?”
Alison sighed. “Twenty-five. I got dizzy. And you should know I still do them sometimes at the gym. I mean, I’m down to ten in a row, but still. You really think you could still beat me?”
“Doubtful since I recently broke a whole bunch of bones and ended up in a coma.”
“Oh my God.” Alison shook her head. “Fine. You win, but that’s the last time you get to play the sympathy card, Coma Girl.”
“Do you really go to a gym?”
Alison lifted a shoulder. “I went once.”
Emma laughed and moved to unpack the latest deliveries of inventory.
Alison sat on the counter sipping her wine. Wine made her melancholy. Not that it had stopped her from drinking it. But the loneliness felt . . . insidious, a deep, unsettling ache in her chest. Actually, scratch that. It was more like a huge, gaping hole.
The reason was simple. She missed Ryan’s easy affection. His laughing eyes. The way he said her name . . . She’d never been the type of woman who couldn’t live without a man. She had a perfectly good vibrator, thank you very much. But sometimes there was nothing like being held, desired, hungered for.
“Dammit,” she whispered and pulled up her Find My Friends app. Ryan’s dot was at Whiskey River, a bar and grill hidden off the highway far enough that it was mostly locals only—just the way the locals liked it. Him being there was a sure sign he was on a date, maybe with his pretty neighbor. Which, for the record, she hated.
“Who are you stalking?”
Alison looked up and found Emma had come close, standing at her elbow, looking over her shoulder. “Jeez, it’s called personal space. And no one.”
“You mean Ryan.”
“Okay, yeah. Ryan.” Because Alison was a glutton for punishment, she stared at his dot. It was late. If his date was going well, they’d probably leave soon and go make merry somewhere. Just the thought had her belly cramping. And then the little dot changed positions.
“He’s on the move,” Emma said. Captain Obvious.
Feeling a little sick, Alison put her phone away.
“You’re stopping now? It was just getting interesting.”
“I don’t want to see where he ends up.”
“Yeah.” Emma nodded. “I get that.”
This reminded Alison of Emma’s exes squared. “People suck.”
Emma shrugged. “Not all of them.”
Alison gaped at her. “You can still say that after what happened to you?”
“If it hadn’t happened, if Ned and Cindy hadn’t found each other, I might still be with him.”
Alison wasn’t used to looking at the positive side of things. It wasn’t where her brain lived. But maybe there was something to it. Okay, so . . . playing the what-if game, if she and Ryan hadn’t broken up, she’d . . . still be with him. “Nope, thinking positive doesn’t work for me.”
“Maybe because you haven’t learned whatever you needed to.”
Afraid that was actually true, Alison hopped off the counter and grabbed her purse. “Whelp, this has been fun, but I’ve gotta go.” Even though she didn’t really want to. Apparently setting her lack of physical intimacy aside, she was also missing an emotional connection.
She hadn’t seen that one coming. “Lock up when you go.”
“Thanks for coming and saving me. That was nice of you.”
“Nice had nothing to do with it,” Alison said. “Now you owe me a favor.” She moved to the front door to go out into the night and . . .
Came face-to-face with the man she missed beyond bearing.
Behind her, Emma made a sound, but Alison didn’t even breathe. All she could do was stare up at Ryan.
He had one hand above him, braced on the doorjamb, the other holding Killer against his chest, his tall, leanly muscled body at ease and confident. He was always at ease and confident, whether he was wearing his reading glasses to look over a set of engineering plans, or chasing a baseball, or in bed. Maybe especially in bed. The man made love like he did everything else, with dedicated purpose, easy affection, and utter abandon. Anything goes. Nothing outside his comfort zone.
It’d been addicting.
He was addicting.
He wore jeans and a leather jacket, his hair wind tousled, his dark eyes calm. Ryan didn’t waste a lot of energy with things like worry and anxiety, and certainly not the bone-deep self-doubt that sometimes threatened to drown her.
His gaze met hers and slowly trailed south, which was when she remembered what she looked like, and with an undignified squeak, she jumped behind the door and shut it.
“Mature,” Emma said.
“Shh! Maybe he’ll leave.”
“He’s not going to leave,” he said through the door.