The Trouble With Love(44)

“Please,” Emma said, giving him a look. “You were there for the entertainment.”

Cassidy grinned. “I admit, I so was not expecting him to burst into tears as he reminisced about the afternoon you two spent at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.”

“Trust me, he is a man who loved flowers way more than he ever loved me.”

Cassidy studied her. “You don’t seem bothered by that.”

“I’m not,” she said with a shrug. “It takes an awful lot to get under my skin.”

“Since when? You didn’t used to be so—”

“So what?” She leaned forward, matching his posture. “So cold? Unreachable? Bitchy?”

He held her gaze for several moments without answering. Then: “Ask the questions, Emma.”

“Why are you so insistent on this?” she asked.

“Why are you so reluctant?”

“I’m not,” she protested. “I’m just…you know what? Fine. Let’s do this.”

He lifted his glass and settled back in his chair. Emma pulled her notebook onto her lap as she crossed her legs and took a deep breath. “Okay, so I had to tweak the first question for you. With the rest of the guys, I asked for their reaction when I emailed them asking for their participation about story, but since you were the one that forced this upon me—”

“You could have said no,” he interrupted.

She ignored him. “So the revised, special Alex Cassidy version of question one: What was your reaction when I agreed to tell this story?”

Cassidy swirled his wine. “Honestly, I thought for sure you’d say no. You probably should have. As you’ve rightly accused, it was a jerk power move on my part. So I guess, to be completely accurate, you could say surprise was my first reaction. But to be honest, that feels like the cop-out answer.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because it might have been my first reaction, but it wasn’t the strongest one. Nor the most important.”

Emma took a swallow of wine, but it did nothing to help her sudden shortness of breath, nor the pounding of her heart. “Okay…so if not surprise—”

“Fear.”

“Fear?” That had so not been what she’d expected. She’d been thinking smugness. Maybe relief or curiosity. But fear?

“What were you scared of?”

He shook his head and looked away. “I have no idea.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “That’s what you want me to put in print? That you were scared, but don’t know why?”

He met her eyes. “You and I both know that this story was never about Stiletto. You’ll write the story. I’ll print the story. But let’s not pretend for one second that this isn’t one hundred percent personal.”

“I won’t deny that,” Emma said, keeping her voice level. “It still doesn’t explain why your reaction to my acquiescence was fear. Whatever my reasons for taking on this story, I’m still committed to making it accurate.”

They fell quiet for several moments before Cassidy broke the silence. “Perhaps my fear came from the suspicion that there was more unfinished business between us than I cared to admit.”

She started to write down his response out of habit, but then stopped. “Has that suspicion proved correct?”

He studied her. “TBD.”

Emma threw her hands up in exasperation. “Okay, I can’t write that, either. So far, my story is going to be like eleven days of exes, and one day of a big fat question mark.”

His lips twitched. “Why don’t we go on to the second question? We’ll figure out the first one later.”

“Fine,” she muttered. “When you think of our time together, what do you most remember? It can be a general feeling or a specific moment—”

He held up a finger. “You can save the explanation. Heard this one before.”

Emma made a by all means gesture with her wineglass and sat back casually as though his answer to this question had no effect on her whatsoever.

Which was, of course, the biggest of lies.

From the moment she’d come up with the three stupid questions for her story, her nights had been haunted by wondering just what he’d have to say.

She didn’t want to hear that he had regrets—she wasn’t sure she could handle it. But the alternative was almost worse.

What if Cassidy looked back on their past and felt nothing but relief? Relief that he’d escaped what had been doomed to be a loveless marriage at the last hour.

Because Cassidy must have known all along that their marriage wasn’t one for the fairy tales. Just as her father had known.

And her sister.

Emma had been the only clueless one.

“What I remember most about our time together…” Cassidy took a sip of his wine and considered.

“Oh, come on,” Emma said impatiently. “You’ve had, like, three weeks to think about this.”

“You’re right. I’ll just go get my daily journal then, shall I? The one where I’ve spent hours agonizing over this conversation?”

He hooked a finger into his collar as though it was too tight. A decidedly un-Cassidy-like gesture.

She leaned forward as realization dawned. “You’re nervous.”