Twisted Arrangement 4 (16 page)

Unable to resist the urge any longer, Emma reached up and brushed her palms over Josh’s tousled hair, running the tips of her fingers over the delicate shell of his ears. He sighed, his eyes closing. Emma linked her hands behind his neck and leaned into him, resting her cheek lightly against his chest.

If she concentrated on listening to the low, steady throb of his heartbeat and the soft sound of his breathing, the nearly nauseating pain from her headache receded a bit.

Josh’s arms slid slowly around her waist and pulled her tighter against his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin. They both sighed. Emma felt some of the tension drain out of her, replaced by the warmth of Josh’s body. She thought he might feel the same thing. His frame slowly relaxed against her.

This wasn’t about putting on a show, although it had certainly occurred to her that Kara would expect Emma to comfort Josh, as his wife. Unlike so much of their relationship up to this point, Emma wasn’t thinking about what she should or shouldn’t be doing; what purpose it would serve or what trouble it might cause. She wasn’t thinking at all. She was acting on instinct.

After too brief a moment, in her opinion, Josh pulled out of her embrace. “Does anyone want coffee?”

“I’m good, sweetie.” Kara turned to Emma, her eyes tired. “Visiting hours are technically over, but Josh managed to persuade them to let you all stay. At least for a little longer.” Kara’s fingers squeezed her husband’s hand tightly.

“I guess I’ll head out, now that Emma’s here. I’m sure if we
all
camp out, the hospital’s patience will wear thin.” Ben moved to Kara’s side and pressed a kiss against her hair. “Call me if there are any changes.”

Emma tapped out a text on her cell. “Ben, Martin booked a suite of rooms at the Mandarin, if you want to stay close. I’m texting you the confirmation number.” Ben tipped her a small salute and gave Josh one of those one-armed man hugs.

He paused in the doorway to watch Cam for a second before repeating, “Call me. I’ll be close.” Ben flashed a quick grin at Emma at those words, and then he was gone.

Josh stared at her. Emma shifted uncomfortably at the strange look on his face, slightly wide-eyed, one corner of his mouth twitching slightly upward. Strain, she expected. But he looked... wary? She tried to smile. “How about we get that coffee?”

“Yeah. Okay.” He strode out, expression gone stiff. Emma turned to Kara, but the older woman was focused intently on her sleeping husband. With a brief touch on her shoulder, Emma followed Josh’s rigid, receding form.

The cafeteria coffee was scalding hot and bitter. Josh grimaced as he sipped from the tall Styrofoam cup. The cashier, a young girl in her late teens, cast him and Emma surreptitious glances from beneath her pale blonde lashes. He jingled the change in his pocket, waiting for her to ring them up for the coffees, and Emma’s honey-glazed beignet.

Emma plucked at one corner of the pastry, her wedding band and engagement ring glinting in the bright white light from the buzzing overheads. Josh stiffened as the girl, who couldn’t be more than seventeen, stopped pressing buttons and stared at the rings.

Her mouth fell open and she raised wide, glistening brown eyes to stare at Emma. Then her gaze drifted to him and she gulped.

“You’re Josh Owens.” She breathed the words, a flush staining her pale cheeks. Her doe eyes shot back to Emma. “I saw you guys on the cover of People magazine! Your wedding was like... crazy romantic.” The cashier sighed, her eyes going glassy. “I can’t believe you were working for him when you guys fell in love! That’s so romantic! Like a movie... the office assistant and the hot CEO!”

She seemed to realize what she was saying then, and her flush deepened to an almost cherry red. Emma cleared her throat a little.

“Um, thank you.” Emma’s glanced at the small, white name tag on the girl’s maroon smock. “Thank you, Jenny. That’s very nice of you to say. How much –”

“Was it just like the most amazing thing ever? Getting swept off your feet by
him
?” Jenny breathed ‘him’ the same way very religious people did, capitalization implicit, and  peeked at Josh again. He took another sip of his too hot coffee. His face felt like it was made of cold plastic. He really just wanted to turn and walk away.

Normally, Josh didn’t mind when people recognized him. He wasn’t a celebrity on the level of someone like Ransler. Producers weren’t nearly as newsworthy as the stars. But he was young, rich, and attractive and he got more than his fair share of press. So, while he never got mobbed by fans, he was used to being recognized and occasionally approached by someone who wanted to talk. Usually by someone who wanted to pitch their ‘totally blockbuster’ movie idea. But it had never really bothered him before.

Today was different. Tonight. What time was it? He didn’t want to deal with some giggling teen who wanted every last detail of his and Emma’s ‘fairytale romance’.

Emma set her own coffee down on the counter and rubbed her hand up and down the steely length of his spine. Her lips curved upward into a lush smile that seemed to hint at shared secrets. The cashier sighed again. Emma’s hand slipped around his bicep and squeezed gently.

“Meeting Josh was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Her words were soft, barely a breath. And damn it if they didn’t sound sincere. His chest burned and his stomach flipped.

Just like that, Josh couldn’t take it. Not right now. This stupid charade had been his idea and he knew it, but he just couldn’t deal with listening to Emma lie so convincingly about loving him. He needed to concentrate on his dad.

He tugged free of her loose grip, spun on his heel, and stormed toward the entrance to the cafeteria without a word. He knew it was rude. He could practically hear the cashier’s jaw hitting her bony chest. Emma muttered a few words of apology, something about ‘stress, family’ and then he heard the clatter of change on the counter and Emma’s hurried footsteps behind him.

“Josh, wait!”

He didn’t. He rounded the corner, the corridor widening. There was another set of double doors between him and the bank of elevators. The patter of Emma’s footsteps drew nearer.

Neon bright panic swelled suddenly in Josh’s gut. He wasn’t sure where the overwhelming urge to run from Emma was coming from, but he was too exhausted to question it. He chucked the nearly full coffee into a trash bin and ducked through a door beside a small, discrete plaque that read ‘CHAPEL.’

Like most of the hospital chapels Josh had seen, the place was almost entirely empty. One man, a shabby looking guy in his late forties, sat in the last row, head bent. Josh couldn’t tell if he was praying or sleeping. To the man’s left was another door, an open arch, though Josh couldn’t see if it was an alcove or perhaps another part of the chapel, the chaplain’s office or something. The walls were a soft, warm honey color. The pews were dark wood. The lighting was low. Faint, vaguely choral music filled the hushed room.

Candles flickered on a tiny altar, behind which hung a mosaic window of various hues of glass – green, blue, purple – lit from behind so it glowed in the dimness.

Josh stood stock still between the two rows of pews, unsure what he was doing here. His breath was uneven, ragged, catching in his chest with each exhalation as if his ribs were broken off in jagged edges. He didn’t sit; he just stared at that multi-colored mosaic as if it held answers for him.

The door opened behind him. Several seconds passed before it closed again, as if she were just standing in the doorway. Staring at him? Josh tensed, waiting for Emma to speak. She didn’t. He was pretty sure she was there though. The hair on the back of his neck rose and his body prickled with cold and then flushed with heat. As contradictory as his emotions.

The mosaic reminded him of the rose window at the church in Saint Helena. The church where they were going to film several scenes within the next few weeks. The church where he’d begun his faux marriage to Emma. Right now, in this moment, feeling as if someone had shoved a rusty corkscrew into his lungs as he tried to get away from her fake love, it seemed like the worst idea he’d ever had.

She’d asked him not to push it, he remembered. That first morning after he’d ‘proposed’ at the press luncheon, Emma had come to see him in his office at the house. She’d agreed to his scheme, but before she’d left she’d said, ‘
I’m going to ask you, just once, to let this go
’. He remembered it vividly. He’d been incensed at the thought that the idea of being his wife, even in a pretend capacity, was so abhorrent to her.

He should have listened to her.

“Josh...” Her voice was hesitant. The scuff of her shoe on the thick carpet made him flinch as if she’d kicked him.

“Don’t.” Josh threw a glance over his shoulder at her. He didn’t see the man in the last row. Gone, he guessed, when Emma had come in. He met her wary green gaze. “I know we agreed you’d play the dutiful wife because we’re in public, and you’re just trying to hold up your end of this whole twisted arrangement, but... just don’t. I can’t right now.”

The muscles of her face tightened, the skin around her lips going white. “Josh, I...” She stopped, took a deep breath. “Okay, in the cafeteria I was trying to get us out of an awkward situation, yes. But this...” She waved a hand at the walls, indicating the hospital around them. “This isn’t about our agreement. It’s not about me pretending to be your wife. It’s about me really being your friend. You’re stressed and I’m trying to help. Can’t you let me do that?”

His first inclination was to turn, go to her, and let her hug him like she’d done in his father’s room. She was right. Sham marriage or not, they had been, were becoming, friends. Friends comforted each other. Immediately on the heels of that though, however, he felt the urge to ask her to leave. To go very far away from him. Being near her was unsettling, and he couldn’t deal with being so off balance while they waited to see if his father would wake up.

When
. Waited for
when
his father woke up.

Bile crawled up the back of Josh’s throat. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. Emma took another step forward, closer to him, and a feeling as if someone had ripped out his guts with a bailing hook tore through Josh’s body.

“You need to go.” He choked on the words, not looking at her, once again staring ahead at the glowing mosaic. Behind him, Emma sucked in a whistling breath.

“Josh –”

“No. I can’t deal with faking this right now, Emma. I need to be here for my mom, and my father. And that’s it. So, you need to go.” He swallowed, hoping the rawness in his throat – from the too hot coffee – would ease. The room was so quiet, even with the soft music, that he actually heard her lick her lips.

“Won’t your mother wonder why I’m not there? As your wife, I should be here with you.”

“You’re not really my wife!” The words came out harsher than he’d meant them to, but he felt the sting of tears at the back of his eyes and just wanted her to
go
before he broke down.

Emma made a noise in her throat, a soft ‘unh’ of... protest? Anger? Josh wasn’t sure. He couldn’t turn around and look at her.

When she spoke, her voice was low and calm, as if talking to a frightened animal. “She doesn’t know that.”

“She’s too busy being concerned with her spouse to worry about mine.”

There was a long moment of silence. Josh could hear the rapid, uneven beat of his heart, the soft shushing of Emma’s breath and the low, almost hypnotic choral humming. He inhaled, long and deep, and then pushed the breath out again, regaining a small measure of control. “I’ll see you on set tomorrow,” Josh said, his voice more gentle. She sighed.

“No. Uh...” Emma cleared her throat and then spoke, just as gently. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle Morse and the rest of the crew. You stay here with your mom and dad. I had Martin send some of your things to the Mandarin if you need them. A change of clothes, toiletries. You just... do what you need to do.”

“I’ll see you on set tomorrow,” he reiterated. He didn’t want to think about sitting around his father’s hospital bed and staring at his still form for another day. Or maybe days. He was a wreck enough as it is. And what if it went on longer than that? Josh shoved the thought away. “Goodbye, Emma.”