I Heard Dad's Friends Through the Wall, Now They Hear Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Glass of Water

Diana lies to her father about why she is in the den, then kisses Emmett at the kitchen sink until Boone's headlights come back up the drive.

I did the only thing I could think of.

I turned around, opened the den door, and took the glass of water off the hall shelf.

"I came down for water," I said, loudly enough to reach the stairs.

Behind me, Dex coughed into his fist.

My father came down in his bathrobe with his reading glasses pushed up on his head.

He is fifty-six with shoulders that fill a doorway, and at the foot of the stairs he looked at all of us in turn.

"It's twenty to one," he said. "Why are you in the den, Di?"

"The water in my room was warm."

"So you walked in on a card game."

"We weren't playing cards," said Dex.

Boone closed his eyes for a second.

Dad looked at the whiskey bottle on the desk, and then at me, and then at the flush I could feel climbing my face.

"Diana, bed," he said. "Boys, you're done for the night."

"Yes, sir," said Emmett.

He watched me walk back to my room with the glass in my hand, and I felt every one of his eyes on the back of my head.

I shut my door and stood against it.

Through the wall, nothing.

Then Boone said, very quietly, "Gil, I'll take Dex home."

"Emmett's got the lock-up," said Dad. "Go on. Drive safe."

Boots crossed the hall.

The front door opened and closed.

I heard Dad's slippers on the stairs, then a long creak overhead, then his bedroom door.

I waited until the house went still.

Then I went out into the kitchen in my bare feet and the old store T-shirt, and Emmett was standing at the sink with his sleeves pushed up, washing four whiskey glasses.

He didn't turn around.

"You should be in bed," he said.

"You should be in your truck."

"Somebody has to wash these. Your dad notices a dirty glass."

I leaned on the counter beside him.

His forearms were wet to the elbow, and there was a long pale scar across one of them that I had never asked about.

"You looked at my glass," I said. "In the hall. You looked at it like you knew it."

His hands stopped in the water.

"Gil leaves it for you," he said. "Doesn't he?"

"I always thought so."

"Then he does."

He turned the tap off.

The kitchen was very quiet, and the refrigerator hummed, and my father's floor was over our heads.

"You said you couldn't sleep in your own bed," I said.

"Diana."

"You said it in front of Boone and Dex. Say it to me."

Emmett dried his hands on the dish towel, one finger at a time.

When he looked at me, his tired eyes were not tired at all.

"I can't sleep," he said, "because I think about this kitchen. About you in that shirt at six in the morning, getting the coffee down, and me in the doorway not breathing."

I hadn't known he had ever been in the doorway.

"I'm forty-one," he said. "I put my hand up a cow for a living. I have no business."

"I'm twenty-seven," I said. "I'm a grown woman, and I'm asking."

"Asking what?"

I took the towel out of his hand and put it on the counter.

"Kiss me, Emmett. Before somebody comes down."

He didn't move for a heartbeat.

Then both of his wet hands came up and framed my face, careful, and he lowered his mouth to mine.

He kissed slowly at first.

He tasted of whiskey and a little of the mint he kept in his coat.

I got my fingers into his shirt and pulled, and the kiss changed.

His mouth opened against mine, hungry now, and a low sound came out of him that I felt in my stomach.

He lifted me by the waist and set me on the counter, and I wrapped my legs around his hips.

He was hard against me through his jeans.

I gasped, and he took the gasp into his mouth.

"Quiet," he breathed against my lips. "Gil's right over us."

"Then make me be quiet."

His hand slid up under the hem of the shirt and spread across my bare ribs, warm and rough and slow.

I shuddered.

His thumb moved just under my breast, and he stopped there, shaking, and rested his forehead against mine.

"Not in your father's kitchen," he said. "Not the first time."

"Is there going to be a second time?"

"Diana," he said, and it was almost a laugh. "I'd be a fool to say no."

I would have said something back.

But light swept across the kitchen window, and a truck engine rumbled up the drive and cut off.

Emmett lifted his head.

"That's Boone's truck," he said. "He came back."

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