The Trouble With Love(61)

“You still want that, Emma,” he said, leaning forward and then turning his head to look at her. “I know you do.”

Emma glanced up at the overcast sky. “Maybe. Do you?”

He turned his head away, staring down at his coffee cup as he fiddled with the paper sleeve. “Depends.”

“On?”

He didn’t respond, and Emma waited. And waited.

But after a couple minutes of what she assumed was him thinking things over, he turned his face back to hers, the haunted expression of a few moments earlier nowhere to be seen.

“You ready to make it up to me?”

Emma’s eyes narrowed. “Make what up to you?”

“The horrible art exhibit. What else would I be referring to?” he asked with a wide grin.

“Good question,” she said slowly. “What else would you be referring to? Because we both know that of the two of us, I’m the saint while you—”

Cassidy stood, dropping his now-empty cup into a nearby trash can and holding a hand out to her. “Come on. You owe me for making me stare at that blue blob for thirty minutes and then having another thirty-minute conversation over whether it was inspired by the artist’s dead wife or his morning dump.”

“Um, that was your assessment, not mine,” Emma said, accepting the offer of his extended hand and standing. “If you would have read the placard, it clearly said—”

Cassidy put a finger over her mouth. “Creepy art time is over. No, what I propose is a little less hoity-toity, but a lot more fun.”

“Sex?” Emma asked, giving him a you’re such a guy look.

He wiggled his eyebrows. “I like where your head’s at, Sinclair, I do, but I was thinking more along the lines of gelato at Eataly.”

“Gelato? We just ate breakfast.”

“Good point,” he said, putting up no fight whatsoever. “We’ll go with your idea. Sex it is. My place or yours? Scratch that…my place. Because your place is actually Camille’s place, and my package refuses to be exposed to that environment.”

“Your package isn’t going to be exposed at all,” Emma said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “We agreed that last night was a onetime thing. Remember?”

“Sure,” he said, slipping his hand in hers and pulling her back in the direction of their building. “But that was before.”

“Before what?” she asked, looking up at him.

He gave her a slight frown, as though the answer was obvious. “Pancakes, Emma. Clearly. Why, what were you thinking?”

Emma didn’t reply, but she did smile.

Come to think of it, she’d smiled more today than she had in a long, long time.





Chapter 24


With Julie out of the office for the next two weeks, Emma had high hopes of getting off easy when it came to the postwedding rundown.

She’d known that Julie had seen her dancing with Cassidy, but was pretty sure Grace and Riley hadn’t.

Five seconds after walking into the office on Monday morning, those hopes were dashed.

The door to their office was generally kept open to avoid a claustrophobic feel, but it was closed when Emma arrived.

Opening it, she found Grace and Riley doing a goofy slow dance to…that damn Carrie Underwood–Randy Travis song.

Emma dropped her purse on her desk, trying to look stern, but a smile slipped out as she put hands on her hips. “Really. Really?”

“Shh,” Grace said, resting her head on Riley’s shoulder. “We’re having a moment.”

“The good kind of moment,” Riley said, before starting to make some sort of Elvis pelvis move.

Emma stuck her arm between their bodies, pushing her friends apart. “Ha. Freaking. Ha. Let me guess: Julie called you and reported that I’d danced with Cassidy?”

“Of course she didn’t call,” Grace said, going to her laptop to stop the music blaring from its crappy speakers. “It was her wedding night.”

“Yeah, don’t be a dolt, Ems,” Riley said, pulling a box of doughnut holes—they still made those—from her purse and popping one in her mouth. “She texted.”

Emma started to ask what Julie’s text had said, but clamped her mouth shut. The less said, the better. She didn’t like keeping secrets from her friends, but neither was she about to volunteer that she and Cassidy had spent all of Saturday night in bed. And she definitely wasn’t about to tell them that they’d spent half of Sunday day in bed, too.

Watching her friends fall in love had given Emma plenty of I told you so moments. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to be on the receiving end, even though she’d definitely earned it. Karma really was a bitch.

But to her surprise, Grace and Riley didn’t ask. They didn’t even fish. Grace had turned back to her computer, and Riley was eating her third doughnut hole as she used her thumb to scroll through Twitter on her phone.

Emma’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, but when they still didn’t say a word, she turned her chair around to boot up her computer.

“Oh,” Grace said, in a casual, by-the-way tone. “Cassidy stopped by this morning. Asked if you could head up to see him.”

Ah. There it was.

Emma matched Grace’s casual tone. “Did he say what he wanted?” Emma asked, toying with a hair rubber band as she spun her chair around to face them.