Page 51 of The Gilded Cuff
“Oh God, I can’t do this.” She started to back away but Emery caught her by the waist with one arm, the gesture outwardly relaxed, but his hold was firm.
“Sophie, calm down, or I’ll take you back to my room and bend you over my knee…” He let the sensual threat sink in. She forced her lungs to open and her tension to fade.
“Okay.” She meant only to glance at him, but that one look held her locked in place.
“I need you to be with me. I haven’t…” he cleared his throat. “I kept myself apart from them for so long that I feel like I’m a stranger lost to them.”
Lost to them?She wondered at his choice of words. Wouldn’t he feeltheywere the strangers? Then again, he’d been a lost little boy so long ago, perhaps he’d never been able to escape that feeling and was finally now confronting it. She squeezed his hand back.
“I’m here. As long as you want me.”
With a little nod, he seemed to relax. “As long as I want you,” he echoed.
They rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and Sophie caught her first glimpse of Miranda and Elliot Lockwood, talking with Hans and Cody. Sophie was struck instantly by Miranda’s beauty. She was in her late sixties, but the woman’s ageless face made her look not a day over forty. She wore a knee-length, white and black striped dress and black sandal wedges. Her gold hair was swept back in an artfully styled bun, threaded with fine hints of silver.
Emery’s father was dressed exactly like Emery, in an expensive suit and an ice blue tie over his crisp white dress shirt. He was incredibly handsome. Laugh lines bracketed his mouth and crinkled the corners of his eyes as he shook Hans’s hand and grinned with warmth. Sophie’s heart clenched. Emery’s features were a masterful blend of his parents’: the twinkle of his mother’s eyes, the relaxed but even-tempered smile of his father. Emery’s face bore his mother’s features honed to masculine perfection, and his body carried the muscular build of his father.
The welcoming hubbub grew silent as Miranda and Elliot noticed Sophie and Emery for the first time. Miranda’s eyes tracked them uncertainly and she raised a hand as though to reach for her son before she dropped it back to her side. The tension was palpable.
“Emery…” she began hesitantly. Hurt and loneliness carved aged paths over her face, showing twenty-five years’ worth of misery and heartache.
When Emery made no move to go to her, Sophie reacted and jabbed him in the lower back, hissing just softly enough for him to hear. “Hug her.”
He moved immediately and caught his mother’s hand to press a kiss there, a formal reaction. But his mother tugged him into her arms for a tight embrace.
“After all this time,” she said just loudly enough that Sophie heard. “I will not let you pull away from me.” There was anger and hurt hinted at in the soft cultured voice, but Sophie heard it. Miranda Lockwood had missed her son.Deeply. Even though he only lived a few miles away, he must have made it seem like an ocean separated them. Her heart went out to Miranda.
“It’s good to see you, Mother,” he murmured.
Miranda held him, her eyes closed as she kissed his cheek, her body shaking against him.
Elliot gently tapped his wife’s shoulder. “All right, Mandy, let the boy breathe. I want him to introduce his lovely guest.” He didn’t hug Emery as his wife had. Instead, he held out his hand and after a second, Emery took it.
Miranda wiped her eyes and released her son, her gaze zeroing in on Sophie.
Emery quickly stepped back and curled a supportive arm around Sophie’s waist. “This is Sophie Ryder. She’s my—” He looked down at her and then with a wicked glint in his eyes he finished, “girlfriend.”
Standing behind Emery’s parents, Cody’s eyes popped wide and Hans’s lips quirked.
“Girlfriend? I know we haven’t seen you in months, but I wasn’t aware you were…seeing anyone.” Miranda assessed Sophie with a critical eye that had her wanting to blush and bury her face against Emery’s chest to hide. Instead she smiled and held out her hand in greeting. She had to seem confident now; that’s what Emery needed. Her support.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”
Miranda and Elliot were still hesitant but finally they each shook her hand, as though surprised that Emery had finally introduced them to a woman. He’d confessed earlier that day that he’d never introduced them to a woman he’d been seeing before.
“Dinner should be ready.” Emery cut in when his mother opened her mouth, likely to start in on questions.
They proceeded en masse to the dining room, where the salad course was already set out. Sophie was oddly relieved to have Hans and Cody there. They acted like buffers against what would have been an extremely awkward dinner with just the Lockwoods. Hans and Cody were her allies now and it might be handy to have witnesses present if the Lockwoods decided to interrogate her. Given the calculating look she was receiving from Elliot, she thought she might already be tied to a chair and getting questioned beneath a single lamplight in a dark room had Emery not been present.
Elliot pulled out his wife’s chair, allowing her to sit, and Emery mirrored the action for Sophie. His palms settled on her bare shoulders for just a moment. The touch was a fleeting comfort and a sign of support she desperately needed.
When she found the courage to face Miranda, who sat directly across from her, she managed a nervous smile. Emery carried on a polite conversation through dinner about other family members, mutual friends, and the status of the company. Sophie noted with interest that while Elliot had surrendered his role as president to his son years ago, he still kept up with the latest news.
“Is it true that the Black Widow GPS locater is virtually untraceable by metal detector scans?” Elliot asked. He toyed with the stem of his wineglass, rotating it in small circles over the white tablecloth as he spoke.
Emery swallowed his food, took of sip from his own wine and then leaned back in his chair. “Yes. The device is small enough to fit in any cell phone. It’s designed to piggyback off the motherboard of any device and it blends in like a chameleon. You can’t detect it with any metal detector devices. It also has a tracking range of 500 miles.” Pride was reflected in his tone.
Sophie perched on the edge of her chair, fascinated to hear Emery talk about his company and the products he made. It was the first she’d seen of the infamous businessman, but it was also the first time she’d seen passion in him outside of their bedroom activities. His enthusiasm excited her. What he described would be groundbreaking.
