The Trouble With Love(25)

“It’s about the ever-revolving rotation of your guys’ significant others,” Julie explained.

“Meaning?” Emma helped herself to a glass of wine from the sideboard.

“Meaning, that nobody wants to sit across from the person their current significant other almost married. So it’s hard to have you both over at the same time, you know?”

Emma sat on the bar stool at the counter and stole a piece of salami off Julie’s platter. “So, what, you just take turns inviting us over?”

“When one of you is in a relationship, yeah.”

“I haven’t been in a relationship for, like, three months,” Emma said.

“Right,” Julie said, holding out her hand and wiggling her fingers for Emma’s wineglass. “But Cassidy has.”

Emma scowled. “If you want me to share my wine, that little reminder is so not the way to make it happen.”

“Aha!” Julie said, waving a finger in Emma’s face. “So you do care that he was seeing someone.”

Mitchell cleared his throat. “Julie. We talked about this. Remember that whole mind your own business thing?”

Julie sighed and went to pour her own wine. “I just—”

“Nope,” Mitchell said, pointing the knife in her direction.

“Fine,” Julie muttered. The second Mitchell’s back turned she looked at Emma and mouthed, “Later.”

Emma rolled her eyes.

Julie could talk about Cassidy until she went blue in the face.

Didn’t mean Emma had to talk back.

She was saved from any further interrogation by the noisy arrival of Riley and Sam, followed by Jake and Grace. Judging from Riley’s mussed hair and Grace’s smeared lip gloss, Emma had been spot-on about the reason for them being late.

As Julie took everyone’s coats and fielded an argument between Riley and Grace about some Bachelor contestant drama, Emma moved up beside Sam Compton.

“Your shirt’s untucked in the back,” she said quietly.

He glanced down and gave her a sheepish smile. “Sorry. The cab ride—”

Emma held up her hand. “I don’t even want to know.”

He grinned and reached around to tuck his blue button-down shirt into his jeans. Not that it mattered. Shirt in, shirt out…either way, Sam Compton was a ridiculously good-looking bit of man meat.

Hell, all the men in the room were almost painfully good-looking. Sam was blond and blue-eyed, with this bad-boy-meets-boy-next-door charm. Emma could hardly blame Riley for being obsessed with the guy since high school.

Grace’s guy was equally appealing. Jake Malone was tall, dark, and handsome personified. He had a sort of Hugh Jackman–type confidence and copious amounts of charm with a wicked smile that promised deliciously dark deeds in the bedroom. Or so Grace told her.

And then there was Mitchell Forbes. Sex in a pinstripe suit. Well, no pinstripes tonight. But the dark-haired, blue-eyed Wall Street hotshot had a buttoned-up seriousness that should have clashed with Julie’s carefree-party-girl vibe. Instead they were living proof that the whole opposites attract thing actually worked.

Her friends had hit the relationship jackpot.

If Emma weren’t so determined not to need a man, she’d be jealous.

She was about to ask Sam how things were going with ROON—the distillery he’d established a couple years ago that had started to get national press in the past couple months—but Sam’s attention had drifted away from her.

“Yo, Cassidy. Good to see you, man!”

And so it begins.

Emma turned to look at him, only because not looking at him would be, well, obvious. And she made damn sure that there was no outward reaction to him. No knees buckling, no knuckles whitening from where she gripped her wineglass, not even a flicker of facial reaction.

But inside?

Inside something fluttered.

Dangerously.

There was no sign of the usual suit today. He was wearing jeans like the rest of the guys, and a black sweater that fit just well enough to emphasize sculpted shoulders and a trim waist. He held a bottle of wine in his left hand and shook Sam’s hand with his right. And his eyes…

His eyes met hers over Sam’s shoulder. And held.

And something shifted.

It wasn’t much. Not even a smile. The glance wasn’t even prolonged.

But for two people who had very deliberately tried to live outside of each other’s orbit for the past year, it was definitely something.

Emma pressed her lips together as they both looked away.

The moment had been so fleeting that nobody else seemed to have noticed.

It was as though their spontaneous shared drinks a week earlier had been a turning point. Emma just didn’t know toward what.

Or if she even wanted it.

“I’d say you guys didn’t need to bring wine, but, of course, it’s always welcome,” Julie said, buzzing from person to person, kissing cheeks.

“I brought dessert,” Riley said, holding up a box of cupcakes.

“I told you I made dessert!” Julie said.

“Right you did. I totally forgot,” Riley said, exchanging a glance with Mitchell.

Julie caught it and spun around to glare at her fiancé. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her nothing,” Mitchell said. “No words were exchanged.”