Read Every Little Kiss for Free Online

couldn’t dismiss her easily, Emma knew. An effective one, too. Despite all the years they’d orbited each other only distantly, they understood each other well.
    Sam had come to check on her for a reason. There would be no avoiding the conversation.
    “It’s easier to keep a straight face when getting paiddepends on it. Trust me,” Emma said. When Sam simply sat there, looking at her expectantly, Emma folded her hands and tried to steel herself for what was coming. “Look, I have kind of a lot going on today, so . . .” She drew the word out, letting it hang in the air like a question. Sam gave her a look that clearly indicated doubts about her sanity.
    “Really? That’s it?”
    “
What’s
it? I’m not trying to run you off, Sam, I’m just busy.” She tried to keep the edge out of her voice—the one she knew very well had crept in over the years. Her tough shell had been the price of staying in the Cove, with all its baggage and memories. Sam understood some of it . . . better than anyone else in her life. But her little sister had gotten to run away, and had stayed gone for nine years before coming back last fall. Emma had gone to college, but she’d gone only as far as Boston. She’d never really left. She hadn’t felt she could.
    Whether the benefits outweighed the drawbacks was an open question, since the answer changed daily.
    “Yes, you are trying to run me off,” Sam said, tucking a lock of pale blond hair behind her ear. “And you know very well what
it
is.” The cheerful veneer fell away again. “When I walked in, I wasn’t sure whether you were going to throw a knife at me or keel over. I know how you are, Em. Seriously, are you okay?”
    Emma organized a stack of papers into an even neater stack of papers. “You mean about my local film debut? Not my best work, but I’ll live.”
    Sam sighed, with an expression that said she wasn’t buying it. Not that Emma had expected anything different. “It’s just a stupid little video,” Sam said.
    “You saw it, I guess?”
    “Yes. It was better live.”
    Emma sighed. “I doubt that.”
    “Okay, so it’s three and a half ridiculous, kind of funny minutes that could have been a lot worse,” Sam said. “Most people aren’t making a big deal about it. I hope you know that.”
    Emma looked back at her blandly. “Uh-huh. ‘Most people’ meaning your friends, who definitely aren’t everybody.” She tapped one French manicured fingernail on her desk. “Look, I know it’s making the rounds, Sam, and I know it’s an even bigger laugh because everyone thinks I have the world’s biggest stick lodged up my ass. So they can have their fun with it, and I’ll ignore it until it goes away. End of story. You don’t need to worry.”
    Sam looked surprised by her blunt assessment, and Emma took some pride in that. She’d worked hard at not showing much emotion over the years, and her work had paid off. How she felt underneath her reserve was a completely different matter, but she’d deal with that later. Alone.
    “Well,” Sam finally said, “I wanted to tell you that nobody who
matters
cares. And that the jerk who put it up in the first place already took it down.”
    That news brought a measure of relief she couldn’t hide completely, strong enough to make her feel slightly light-headed. “Oh? How do you know that?”
    “Jake saw Melody Northrup maybe half an hour ago. Her dog, Otis, had a limp she wanted looked at. And while she was there, Jake got an earful about her freeloading son and his online activities, which she wanted to apologize for. He called me right away.”
    “And you came right here.”
Northrup
. Emma closed her eyes briefly, summoning the image of a guy right around twenty-one years old, snapback hat over stylishly scruffy hair, ironic T-shirt, cute in a douche-y sort of way.For all that her memories were fuzzy, she remembered him. He’d been trying to grind on her before she’d told him to get lost in more