by Lauren Layne
Jason shot him a What the hell? look and Emma turned her head to give him a withering glare.
Alex shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
Emma turned back to Jason. “And then we’d go home and read. For as long as we wanted, guilt free.”
Jason nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember that about us.”
A quiet moment passed, and Alex felt an uncomfortable stab of jealousy, not just out of the instinctual territorial jealousy a man had about sharing a woman with another man, but at the everydayness of Jason and Emma’s time together.
The thought of Emma having spent quiet Sunday mornings in bookstores with someone . . . well, hell. Alex liked bookstores. Loved to read. Would love nothing more than to read with—
He pushed the thought away.
Emma scribbled something in her notebook and then looked up again as she took another sip of wine. “All right, Jace, ready for the hard part?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why did we break up?”
Alex lifted his eyebrows at the bluntness of the question, but then, that was Emma for you. To the point even when you didn’t want her to be.
Jason pursed his lips. “It was mutual, I remember that. We were eating dinner at a Thai restaurant, and got to talking and just . . . decided that it wasn’t working. Am I remembering that right?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Pretty much. No name-calling or blowups.”
What, no engagement ring chucked at his head? Cassidy thought.
“Do you remember anything else?” Emma asked. “The reason, or the catalyst?”
Jason looked down at his wine and gave a nervous laugh. “So, I never told you this. . . .”
Emma leaned forward, pencil at the ready, and God help him, Cassidy was pretty sure he leaned forward, too.
Jason ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Well, about a week before we parted ways, you and I had gone to the library—the big one, on Fifth—just to look around, for fun. . . .”
What was it with the two of them and their romantic book dates?
“Anyway, there was a wedding that was just wrapping up. A big happy affair, with all the bridesmaids in matching dresses and a big dress on the bride, and lots of excited hollering as they did their pictures, or whatever. . . .”
Alex felt Emma freeze, and he had the strangest urge to take her hand.
He didn’t.
But he wanted to.
“So I was, I don’t know . . . I’ve got a big family, and always pictured a big old wedding like that. And I asked you how you pictured your wedding. Not in the proposal kind of way, just casual conversation, you know?”
Emma nodded, although she hadn’t moved. Hadn’t written a single word.
“You said you didn’t want to get married. Ever,” Jason said, his voice kind, rather than accusatory. “And it’s not like I’d been secretly naming our children and house hunting in the suburbs, but—”
“But you did want to get married some day,” Emma finished for him.
“Yeah.” Jason smiled. “Definitely have always seen myself going the wife and kids route, you know?”
“Well,” she said with a forced smile. “You’re almost there! When’s the big day?”
“Not for six months,” Jason said. “I didn’t realize what a big wedding entailed until I met Gretchen. There’s cake tasting and flowers and seating arrangements and catering decisions—”
“Yeah, it’s crazy,” Emma cut in, her voice just the tiniest bit sharp. “So happy for you, though! Okay, so that was the last of my official questions, but if there’s anything else you want to add, anything about our relationship or me . . .”
Jason shook his head as he set his glass of wine on the coffee table. “Just that you were lovely. Are lovely. Are you seeing anyone special?”
“No. Not at the moment.”
Jason stood, and Emma and Alex did as well. Jason headed toward the front door, and Emma followed him out.
Alex grabbed all three of their wine glasses, lost in thought. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this. Any of this.
He started to head toward the kitchen when Jason paused in the process of shrugging on his jacket. “You know, there’s one other thing that I thought about for months after we broke up,” Jason said.
“Yeah?” Her voice held an artificial brightness.
Jason opened the front door and glanced down at her, his smile regretful. “I wish I could have made you smile more. The big, genuine kind that makes your eyes crinkle and all of your teeth show.”
Emma let out a little laugh. “I seem to be hearing that one a lot.”
Alex’s gaze flew to her profile at that. She hadn’t smiled for her other boyfriends? He thought back. He can remember her laughing all the time. Her smile wide, her eyes laughing. She was shy, so it had taken awhile to get beneath the surface to earn a real Emma smile, but once she’d trusted you, she’d been so easy to make happy. They’d both been happy, feasting off the other person’s laugher.
Apparently that sort of effortless joy was something she’d grown out of.
Or maybe you destroyed it.
“Nice meeting you,” Jason said with a wave at Alex.
Alex lifted a hand in response, turning away before they hugged good-bye.
When she came back into the kitchen, she tossed her notebook onto the counter and plowed her fingers into her hair.
He itched to go to her . . . to somehow ease the weariness from her. But he didn’t know how. Didn’t know that she’d want it.
“Happy now?” she asked. “The article moving along to your liking?”
Not by a long shot.
“Are they all like that?” he asked. “The meetings, I mean?”
She released her hair, bracing both palms against the counter. He topped off her glass a bit and shoved it toward her, but she didn’t reach for it.
“Jason was the fifth one so far. And, yeah, they’re all pretty much the same. Some innocuous memory. A tepid breakup. And the pronouncement that I’d apparently been a humorless bore the entire damn relationship.”
“Emma.”
She glanced up. “Every relationship, Cassidy. Every guy has said that same thing about me not smiling. I smile. Don’t I?”
He hedged. “Eh, right now you’re not.”
“Well, of course not, it’s you,” she said with a huff picking up her glass.
And for some reason that made him smile.
He’d take grumpy Emma over fake-smiley Emma.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked, following her into the living room where she threw herself onto the couch in a rather un-Emma-like gesture.
She grunted her assent, and he sat in the chair that Jason had just been in, leaning forward with the wine glass between his big hands.
“The whole not-getting-married thing that Jason mentioned . . . did I do that to you?”
Emma’s eyes met his, but she didn’t sit up. “Do you want to get married someday?”
He hesitated. “Haven’t done much thinking about it, but . . . no. Not really part of my game plan.”
Not anymore.
She gave a sad smile and closed her eyes. “Well, then, there you go. I’d say we did this to each other, don’t you think?”
Chapter 13
“Yup,” Alex called out at the knock on his office door.
He glanced up and was both surprised and yet not at all to see Cole Sharpe standing in his doorway. Cole had this way of being everywhere he wasn’t expected, while managing to stay MIA whenever Alex went looking for him. It was a gift.
“Whose meeting am I crashing this time?” Cole asked, entering uninvited.
“Grace Malone,” Alex said, glancing at his watch. “And don’t even tell me she snuck into the stairwell with Jake. Do those two just wait until they’re supposed to meet with me to go get it on?”
Cole’s eyebrows wiggled. “Maybe thinking of you makes them horny.”
“I assure you, that is not the case,”
Jake said from the doorway.
He, too, entered uninvited, taking the chair next to Cole, as he tossed a stack of papers across the desk at Alex.
“What’s this?” he glanced at the documents.
“Grace’s notes for her story.”
“Why didn’t she give them to me herself? We’re supposed to have a meeting.”
“I’m hijacking her time.”
Alex opened his mouth to protest, but Jake cut him off. “Trust me. Her story’s fine. She doesn’t need a babysitter. And whatever you think you know about blow jobs, I assure you, Grace knows more.”
That shut Alex up. He really, really did not want to talk to his best friend’s wife about giving head.
He pushed the papers aside to read later. As in never.
“Is there some sort of crisis I should be aware of?” Alex asked.
“Actually, yes,” Jake said.
Alex pinched the bridge of his nose. “What now? Is the new copy editor not working out?”
“She’s working out just fine,” Cole broke in. “She’s cute.”
Alex shook his head. “Don’t be that gross guy.”
“I didn’t say I was going to hit on her,” Cole protested. “But she is cute.”
Alex shifted his attention to Jake, picking up a pen and clicking it. “So what’s the problem?”
Jake eyed the pen and lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve been . . . oh, what’s the word I’m looking for, Cole?”
“Grumpy?”
“Yes,” Jake said, snapping his fingers. “Grumpy.”
Alex stopped clicking for a half second before he resumed. “Grumpy.”
“Irritable? Grouchy?” Cole said, tilting his head as though to consider the new word choice. “No, I’ve got it. Cantankerous.”
“Yes!” Jake said with a nod. “You are cantankerous.”
“This is what I get for working with a bunch of journalists. Fifty synonyms for my irritation about people interrupting my workday.”
Cole and Jake glanced at each other. “Bilious?” Cole said.
“Nice,” Jake replied, holding out his hand to fist bump Cole.
“And you two clowns thought this was going to help my mood?” Alex asked. “Coming in here and badgering me about it? If I’m short-tempered it’s because there aren’t enough hours in the day to run two magazines.”
“Nah, that’s not it,” Jake said after considering.
Alex didn’t bite at whatever it was they were dancing around. Didn’t want to humor them.
“Don’t fret, boss,” Cole said, shifting up to fish his cellphone out of his back pocket to look at the time. “Help should be here any minute.”
“Help for what?” Alex asked helplessly when it became clear they weren’t going to back off.
“The source of your crankiness.” The new voice came from the doorway, and Cassidy glanced up to see yet another of his Oxford reporters.
Lincoln Mathis strolled into Alex’s office like he owned the place, and since there were no more available chairs, he propped a hip on the side of Alex’s desk before flipping his cellphone onto the stack of cover mockups Alex had been looking at.
“What’s this?” Alex asked, glancing at the phone.
“The modern man’s version of the black book,” Lincoln said.
Alex glanced up at his all things sex and women columnist. Lincoln Mathis had started at the magazine just a couple months after Alex joined, taking over the Relationships department after Jake moved to Travel. But despite his relatively short tenure, Lincoln had quickly established himself as the heart and soul of the magazine, rivaling only Jake in reputation and charm. And Cole, but Cole didn’t fully count because of his contractor status.
Lincoln’s record with women was legendary. Brown hair, blue eyes, and always ready with a line, Lincoln was exactly the type of guy that other men hid their women from.
Alex placed three fingers on the phone and slid it back across the desk toward Lincoln.
Lincoln pushed it back. “Dude, Jake and Cole are right. You need this.”
“Need what?”
“To get laid,” Lincoln said, emphasis on the last word.
Alex glanced around his office at the other men. “That’s what this is about? You think I’m curt—”
“Curmudgeonly,” Cole broke in.
“Because I’m horny?” Alex asked, ignoring Cole’s interruption.
“Definitely,” Jake said with a nod.
“I’m not,” Alex ground out. “I’ve only been single for a couple weeks. Not even. I’m not so licentious that I can go that long without a woman.”
“Generally speaking, that’s probably true,” Jake said. “But for whatever reason, your tolerance for abstinence is way down lately. Ever since that dinner party, actually.”
Alex met Jake’s gaze and saw from the other man’s expression that Jake thought he knew exactly why Alex had been running a little ragged lately.
Alex narrowed his eyes to indicate that Jake didn’t know shit.
If Grace had planted some garbage in her husband’s brain about Alex being hung up on Emma, that was Jake’s problem.
Alex wasn’t going to dignify it with a response.
“Anyway,” Lincoln said, “that’s where I come in. I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve got this rather impressive skill of staying on excellent terms with all women, even those I’ve slept with—”
“He really does have that skill,” Cole broke in. “It’s annoying. Every girl I sleep with wants to kill me after.”
“That’s because you slip out of bed in the a.m. and leave a “Thanks, babe” Post-it Note on the pillow,” Jake said.
“So does Mathis!” Cole said, pointing. “And, hell, so did you for that matter, before you met Grace.”
Jake ignored this, shifting attention back to Alex.
Once again, Alex shoved the phone back at Lincoln. “I am not going to scroll through your contact list and pick a woman at random.”
“Of course not,” Lincoln said in a soothing voice. “We’re going to use my expertise to find a woman for you. Now. Talk to Uncle Lincoln. Since you and I don’t hang out much outside the office, I’ll need to know a little about your type.”
“He likes them tall,” Cole said. “But not model tall.”
“Slim,” Jake added, “But not model skinny.”
“Got it, so no models,” Lincoln said, his thumb scrolling over his screen. “What about actresses?”
“No, too showy,” Jake said. “He likes the smart ones.”
“Geek smart, or street smart?” Lincoln asked. “Because there’s this cute girl I used to date over in IT at—”
“Sophisticated smart,” Cole said. “His girlfriend was an attorney or some shit.”
Alex began to click his pen in earnest. “I can find my own women.”
Lincoln gave him a condescending look. “That must be hard. Seeing as you never leave this damn office.”
“Women come into this office,” Alex shot back.
“Yeah, but they all work for you, and something tells me you frown on that sort of thing.”
He did. He definitely did. Hitting on employees was not an option. Ever.
And as much as he hated to admit it, these three interfering buffoons were right about one thing. Alex had been feeling restless lately. And he was spending way too much time in this office, staring at his computer screen, alternating between reading about glittery eye shadow (Stiletto) and the correct way to do pull-ups (Oxford).
A distraction would be welcome. A female distraction would be incredibly welcome. But not like this.
“I’m not taking one of your leftovers,” Alex growled at Lincoln.
Lincoln looked up. “What about one that I haven’t slept with yet?”
“Nope.”
“I’m serious. I haven’t even dated this one woman who would be great for you. I hit on her friend, but then I got her phone number as well since she’s an accountant and I was looking fo
r one.”
“No,” Alex said, voice bored.
Lincoln handed his phone over. It was the woman’s Facebook page. She had small, almost elfish features, wavy brown hair, a friendly smile, and intelligent green eyes.
She looked . . . normal. Like someone he could talk to.
“Her name’s Alisha. I swear to God she’s not a weirdo,” Lincoln said.
Alex hesitated for only a second before handing the phone back. “Nope.”
He reached for his pen. Clicked.
Lincoln shrugged as though it was no matter to him, and pushed off the desk, ambling toward the door. “Suit yourself.”
Cole and Jake stood as well, turning their backs on him.
“Cross,” Jake mused, loud enough for Alex to hear. “The man is cross.”
“Peevish,” Cole one-upped him.
“Hey, did you text Emma back about Friday?” Jake asked Cole. “She told Grace that she liked Italian, so Babbo’s a safe bet, but you should probably confirm with her. Women like when you talk to them directly.”
Alex clicked the pen faster.
“I know what you’re doing,” he called after them. “It won’t work.”
Neither man turned around, and Alex swore softly.
Cole wouldn’t really go on a date with Emma.
Would he?
Cole was a friend, and it violated every sort of bro code. Except . . . Alex had been going out of his way for years to show that his and Emma’s past was only in the past, so could he blame Cole for thinking she was fair game?
Yes. Yes, he could absolutely blame Cole.
And yet . . . there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Nothing he should want to do about it.
Emma wasn’t his. Not anymore.
And if the thought of Cole touching her made him want to jab his pen into his femoral artery, surely that was completely understandable and normal.
Alex tossed the pen aside. Fuck.
Then he stood, going in search of Lincoln. Maybe he did want this Alisha’s phone number.
Chapter 14
After a wretched afternoon of moving the rest of her stuff out of her old apartment (Riley was right; it did reek of mildew), Emma couldn’t even think about being sociable.