The Trouble With Love(31)

“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 someday,” 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—”