The Trouble With Love (12 page)

Emma stepped aside so a puzzled-looking Jason could enter.

She started to close the door on Alex without another word, but he stopped it with his palm. “I thought I’d sit in on this one.”

“Nope,” she said, trying to shut the door again. “There is literally no chance of that.”

“Emma,” he said, his voice cajoling and maybe a little condescending. “I haven’t been getting progress reports on your stories like I have from everyone else.”

She glanced at Jason, who’d had the good sense to let himself into the living room instead of eavesdropping.

Emma turned so she could face Alex head-on, stepping forward so they were face-to-face. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Supervising my employee.”

“Don’t be an ass, Cassidy. You said if I wrote this idiotic story you’d stay out of my business.”

“If all your ex-boyfriends are as dull as this one, there won’t
be
a story,” he whispered back.

“Don’t worry, they’re not all dull,” she shot back. “In fact, there’s a real asshole in the bunch, and I’m still debating whether he’s worthy of mentioning—”

He put his hand on her waist to move her aside as he stepped into her apartment, ignoring both her sharp intake of breath at the contact and his own unexplainable urge to keep his hand on her waist. To pull her closer.

Alex dropped his hand, clenching his fist in reaction, and moved past her, focusing his attention on Jason. “What can we get you to drink?” he asked in a man-in-charge voice that had Emma bristling behind him.

“Water would be great,” Jason said.

Jason’s relationship with Emma must have been a hell of a lot more peaceful than Alex’s if the man wanted
water
. He moved to the fridge like he owned the place, pulling out a Brita water filter and searching around until he found a glass.

“You’re sure this is all you’re having?” Alex asked as he poured. “I’m going to have a glass of red.”

“Are you now?” Emma said, both hands on hips. She was wearing a berry-colored dress that was high necked and long sleeved and would have been unsexy as hell if it didn’t hug her body in all the right places.

“Some wine would be great,” Jason said, his voice slightly relieved.

Emma gave Alex one last glare before going to a small wine rack next to the dining table and pulling out a bottle.

She shoved it at Alex’s chest before giving Jason a soft, sweet smile that Alex couldn’t remember seeing from her . . . ever.

“Jace. I’ve barely had a chance to say hello! How have you been?”

She walked toward her ex with open arms, and Alex stabbed the corkscrew into the top of the bottle with more force than necessary as the two exchanged a long hug. That lingered.

Emma gestured for him to take a seat in one of the chairs, and she sat on the couch across from Jason, crossing her legs. Alex didn’t think he was imagining the way Jason’s gaze latched on to Emma’s slim calf.

Asshole
.

He poured three glasses, and carried them all into the living room where he set Jason’s on the table in front of him before holding one out to Emma. Forcing her to take it—to touch his hand.

She was smart, though, and used two fingers to take the glass at the top, avoiding his touch altogether.

Emma probably had the right idea, avoiding their touch, but Alex was still simmering with the same angry restlessness that had been bugging him all day. So to punish her—to punish them both—he deliberately sat beside her on the couch. Just close enough that her arm had to brush his when she set her wine glass down to reach for her notebook.

She shifted away from him under the guise of crossing her legs to the other side, and Cassidy almost smiled as he took a sip of the wine.

Simper and smile all you want for Jason, honey. I bet he doesn’t make your body hum like this.

“So how does this work?” Jason asked, seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents between Alex and Emma.

“Well, the first thing to know is that I absolutely will not at any point in the article, reference your name or any details that would lead back to you. Your own mother wouldn’t know I was talking about you.”

“A shame,” he said with a wink. “Mum always liked you.”

You’ve got to be kidding me,
Alex thought.

But Emma apparently didn’t recognize the line for what it was, and merely laughed. “I always liked her, too. Give her my best, if you would. Okay, so I have just three basic questions—if you could answer as honestly as you can, without fear of hurting my feelings.”

“Okay,” Jason said, taking a sip of wine. “Let’s have it.”

“What was your gut reaction when you got an email from me, asking for this meeting?”

Emma didn’t look down at her notebook when she asked, and the question rolled off her tongue as though she’d asked it several times before. Which she probably had. For the first time, Alex questioned his own judgment on assigning her a story that would put her into contact with men she’d dated. Kissed. Slept with.

Maybe even loved.

“First reaction?” Jason said, scratching his cheek idly. “Terror.”

Emma laughed in surprise. “I’ll admit, that’s the first time I’ve gotten that particular response.”

“Well, probably because none of your other exes are currently engaged to a redhead,” Jason said with a wink. “My first thought that Gretchen would
kill
me for getting together with one of my exes.”

Alex took another sip of wine to hide his surprise. Jason was in a relationship. A serious relationship. And Emma didn’t look the least bit fazed.

“Congratulations,” she said, leaning across the table to squeeze his hand. “I’m so happy for you.”

Alex glanced at her profile. She
did
look happy, genuinely so, which filled him with . . . relief? Which was messed up. Why would he be relieved that Emma wasn’t torn up about a prior lover getting married to someone else?

“Thanks,” Jason said, grinning. “It happened kind of fast, but she and I actually dated back in high school, and then reconnected, and . . . it just worked.”

She smiled. “I’m glad. Okay, so even with that terror, though, you still came to see me?”

“I did. Ran it by Gretch, and turns out she’s a big fan of
Stiletto
. Was
thrilled
at the idea that I might be part of a story.”

Emma took a sip of her wine and wrote something down. “Okay, well then for Gretchen’s sake, keep in mind that I absolutely won’t mention your name in conjunction with this next question, so . . . what do you most remember about our time together? It can be a moment or a memory, or just a feeling.”

Alex tensed. He didn’t want to hear about Emma’s time with this man. Or
any
man.

How the hell had he thought tagging along to this stupid meeting was a good idea?

Jason swirled his wine as he thought about this. “I remember the reading.”

“Reading,” Emma repeated.

He shrugged. “In a good way, I assure you. But we had this Sunday morning routine—”

Jason broke off as though embarrassed, and Emma smiled encouragingly. “I remember.”

Alex shifted on the couch, realizing his mistake in being here more with every passing second.

“We’d sleep in. Go to Starbucks, then the bookstore, when it opened, and we’d browse for an hour, sometimes longer . . .”

“But never buy anything,” she said, holding up a finger. “Not unless we really
truly
didn’t have anything at home to read.”

Jason laughed at the memory. “Right. The price we pay for tiny Manhattan apartments.”

“Actually the price for a Manhattan apartment is, in fact, the
actual
price of rent,” Alex pointed out. “It’s one of the highest cost-of-living cities in the country.”

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.