Blindsided by Jami Davenport Read Free Book Online Page B

parents are in the music business, how come you don’t give it a shot? They have to have connections.”
    Emma’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she rubbed them viciously with a napkin. He’d hit a nerve with an innocent question, and his instant regret threw him off-balance. Tanner rarely regretted anything, except getting caught, yet he regretted making her sad.
    Her shoulders shook as she buried her face in the napkin. Tanner watched helplessly, never comfortable with a woman’s tears and completely uncertain what to do next. He rubbed her back, feeling awkward and off his game.
    He wanted to know why his question upset her so much, which was a problem in itself. Tanner didn’t really care why people did what they did. He only cared about whether or not they liked him, at least on the surface. So why did he care about Emma?
    That answer was buried in an emotional pit he hid from the world, and he wasn’t sure if there was a backhoe big enough to excavate what lay under all the outer bullshit.
     
    * * * *
     
    Emma was mad—at herself. She’d revealed her biggest weakness to Tanner of all people. And for what reason? Heaven only knew. She sure as heck didn’t. He wasn’t the One, and she had no business telling him her secrets because he didn’t really care.
    “Are you okay?” Tanner stared at her, his mouth set in a grim line, while a lone muscle jerked in his jaw.
    Emma shook her head. His concern wrenched another bout of sobs from her. How stupid and ridiculous and weak? She was crying over karaoke for heaven’s sake. Except she knew it was more than that. She was crying because she wasn’t strong enough to follow her dreams like Avery or willing to give up the safe and known for the dangerous and unknown. Emma liked everything lined up in neat little lines, liked her life mapped out, all the way down to her someday wedding dress she’d clipped out of a bride’s magazine and stored in what she called her Notebook of Dreams. Tanner was in there, too, as her dream man—the guy she measured every other guy against. Of course, she didn’t really know him, only his public persona as a guy who did lots of charity work and was known for his easygoing, generous lifestyle with a lot of partying thrown in.
    “Oh, man, sweetheart, I’m sorry.” He wrapped his strong arms around her. She stiffened briefly, but couldn’t resist him no matter how hard she tried. Emma relaxed into him, letting his warmth seep into her cold places, comforting her in ways she’d only imagined. She’d certainly never been comforted by her parents as a child. Izzy tried, but Izzy wasn’t exactly into warm-fuzzies. Yet, this man she barely knew made her feel better with just a hug because he was good at this. Really good. She reminded herself she meant nothing to him. He was not the One, she repeated over and over in her head. Only her heart had donned noise-cancelling headphones and was picking out wedding music.
    Sniffling, Emma pulled back. “No one in my family knows I sing karaoke, and they can’t know.”
    “Why?” Confusion spread across his handsome face.
    “We have a pact—my sisters and I.”
    “A pact? Not to sing karaoke? Seriously?” His brow creased in confusion and made him look so adorable, his expression helped staunch the flow of tears.
    “No. We have a pact to never follow in our parents’ footsteps and become entertainers. We’ve lived that story of being on top, crashing to the bottom, and spending the rest of their lives trying to get back to the top again. The drugs, the drinking, the late nights, the complete and total disregard for anything but the music, especially your children.” And why was she telling him all this?
    “Oh,” he seemed at a loss for words. “But you sing at the parties you crash?”
    “That’s different.”
    “Because Izzy approves of it?” he guessed, and Emma nodded slowly. “So you come here once a week to sing?”
    She nodded again, surprised at how