Page 49 of Breaking Emily's Rules
Stone had wanted to bring Emily here because she was, after all, his student and it sounded like something a good teacher might do. Something Dad might have done, go ahead and introduce her to other pilots. He was still feeling his way around this whole teacher-student relationship, and the kiss this afternoon hadn’t helped. Emily wasn’t making it easy, kissing the way she did.
Probably had been a mistake to pick her up at her place. The last thing he’d needed to see was her bed in the middle of the small room, which smelled so much like her—warm hints of vanilla and honey. It didn’t help that she was dressed casually, because he imagined Emily’s curves couldn’t even be hidden underneath a tent. Her jeans and tank top were casual, sure, and wasn’t that what he’d said? Dress casually. Sounded simple enough.
Should have said “don’t dress to tease me with what I can’t have.”
Because he couldn’t have her, not like he wanted.
She was being a good sport about his song choice to the king of make-out music. While he pulled her in close, he tried to not tease himself. It turned out he was able to mostly ignore the expressions of the idiots that had congregated to watch.
Matt was blowing kisses in his direction and Crash was grinding. NFG stood there with a sad puppy dog expression on his face, and damned if he didn’t look like he was about to cry.
“Do you want to get out of here?” Stone asked when the song ended.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go to your place.”
“Are you sure?”
She rolled her eyes. “I want to see where you live. I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“Okay. But, for the record, I don’t think we’d do much sleeping.” He tugged on Emily’s hand, managed to extricate them from his idiot friends without too much effort and drove home.
Home. To his father’s house, basically. Because no matter how he sliced it, he was a tenant there. Not for much longer.
He offered her a hand getting out of his truck. “Watch where you step. There are a couple of stones loose in the walkway. Need to fix that.”
He led the way up the front porch stoop but before he unlocked the door, he turned to Emily. She deserved a warning. “There’s a dog.”
“You have a dog?” Now her eyebrows lifted.
Why were people so amazed by that?
“Used to be Dad’s dog. And it’s more like I have a roommate.” How to explain Dad’s dog had mistakenly assumed he was a human being? He rang the doorbell to scare Winston. It would give Stone a little more time.
“Is your dog going to open the door for us?” Emily said from behind him.
“No, but that would be cool.” He let himself in the front door and turned on the light in the hallway entrance.
“Where’s your dog?” Emily turned to him, eyes narrowed. “Do you really have one?”
“Don’t let the silence fool you. Brace yourself. Stay behind me.” As per the usual, after a slight pause, once Winston realized the doorbell sounds had ended, he came around the corner and launched in guerrilla warfare attack mode.
“Down, Winston, down.” Stone stood in front of Emily, taking the worst of it. He was able to fend off Winston’s French kiss attempts and finally wrestled him into a sitting position.
“Wow, you’re a big dog.” Emily emerged from behind and knelt down to pet Winston’s head.
“See what I mean?” He hoped to gain some sympathy for his plight.
“He’s adorable.”
And Winston was behaving himself for the first time since Stone could remember. Winston managed to sit, albeit on Stone’s foot, and panted, his tongue hanging out.
“It’s a trick. I don’t trust him.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Emily laughed. “He’s sweet.”
“Don’t turn your back on him.” Stone walked farther into the house, turning on lights as he went.
“Aw. He just wants a little love.”
