apologies! but posts in March and April, sigh, could be a bit short and/or slapdash, due to a truly wacky/busy spring semester
Chapter 5: Mawage is what bwings us
togeva today
Since
Joe and Emma can think of NO OTHER PLAN to allow gossip to die down and keep
Joe on the Carolina Storm, they are going to get remarried/stay married. There’s
just NO POSSIBLE WAY THAT THIS CAN GO WRONG. Clearly.
They’re
in Emma’s apartment, awaiting their guests. I’m impressed that they can get
people to Emma’s place so quickly, frankly—not just their guests but their
officiator, too.
She knew their mothers were going to
be too happy about him neglecting to use his razor
(62).
Oh,
I don’t know. I suspect they might overlook that particularly flaw, what with whole
suddenly getting married thing.
I
don’t know what the “happy” couple told their guests (Emma’s parents, Joe’s
mother, Joe’s attorney, and the Storm’s head coach) to get them there, but it
wasn’t that they’re getting married. Nope, that’s saved for in person, just
before the arrival of the photographer and minister.
To
their credit, Joe and Emma don’t try to convince their families that they’re in
love or that they’ve actually been having this secret marriage for the past
seven years—they’re upfront that this is to quell the gossip. But when Joe’s
mother protests that they don’t love each other, Emma says that they once did
and that they’re “hoping those feelings will come back to [them] if they spend
time together” (63). Which, given that after criticizing Joe’s unshaven-ness,
Emma says she’s intentionally not wearing anything borrowed, blue, old, or new
in order to “jinx their nuptials and prevent any real emotional involvement on
either side,” I’d say that that that part is a Big Ol’ Lie (62). But it’s hard
to tell, because of course Harlequins, no matter which line a title is in, are
inherently conservative in that the main couple is going to love each other
Happily Ever After (HEA) by book’s end, so I can see how it’d be confusing to
write. Emma says she doesn’t want any
emotional attachment on page 62, but she’s really lying to herself (in
Harlequin HEA terms) there and it’s telling the truth when she thinks she’s not on page 63.
Or
maybe writing the book took about as long as the actions in the book and thus it was hard for the author to keep straight.
Before
the minister arrives, Saul takes Emma aside to chat with her. She expects him
to criticize Joe’s character, but instead he informs her, point blank, “You don’t
have what it takes to be a hockey player’s wife” (63). Emma did not see that
coming, and to be honest, neither did I.
Then
again, Emma’s response includes “her lower lip slid out in a dissenting pout”
(63) so he might actually be right.
If Emma’s reaction is to sulk like a child, she doesn’t have what it takes to
be anyone’s wife, well above the age
of consent or not.
If
you’re wondering what Saul’s logic is, he declares that Emma has been pampered
and in the spotlight her whole life and as a hockey player’s wife she won’t be
(in the spotlight at least) and that her husband will be away all the time,
tempted by groupies, concerned mainly with what happened during his games, and prone
to injuries. That seems a very one-sided way of looking at the situation, but I
suppose Saul isn’t technically wrong.
Joe
overhears this diatribe and calls Saul out on it, saying it’s a dark view. Saul’s
response is to say that his directive to Joe to fix the situation did not
include marrying Emma, and Joe goes on the attack, saying that he knows that
Saul hoped he’d either quit hockey (yeah right, like any NHLer would
voluntarily?!) or at least ask to be traded. Saul’s reaction is to tell Joe
that he’s slightly less dense than he’d expected, with “something akin to respect
coming into his penetrating gaze” (65). That could have been phrased a lot
better, but even barring that, it’s a weird moment. So Joe standing up for
himself makes Saul respect him? We’ve never been told that Joe didn’t stand up for himself before
(although I suppose there haven’t been details about what happened the first
time around.) Still, I don’t see how Joe could
have done anything that first time around, at least not once he’d returned
Emma to her dorm. I think if the two of them had decided to go for it, full
speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, then maybe Saul would have respected him
more?
At
any rate, the wedding happens, and because the press is there (the local news
station in the hopes that this will get them to stop following Emma and Joe
around), Joe’s kiss to Emma at “you may kiss your bride” involves bending her
over backwards so that she has to hang onto him. There’s no indication of
whether the news people believe the kiss, but their mothers do, to the point
where they’re speculating over the marriage being successful.
(Can
you believe this STILL isn’t the end of chapter 5? Or that all this has
happened but we’re only 67 pages out of 205 into this book? I seriously cannot imagine
what all will still happened as I’ve only read to the end of this chapter. I’m
sure more wackiness will ensue.)
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