The One In My Heart

“Uh-hmm,” he answered, scanning the wine list.

What? I almost said aloud. In hindsight it was painfully obvious: I’d never seen him eat anything that used to walk, swim, or fly. But I was so distracted by the man I’d paid no attention to what he did or didn’t put on his plate.

Beneath the apparent pleasantness at the table, tension rippled—until I placed my order. “I’ll have the salad with scallops to start and the roasted duck breast.”

“You’re not a vegetarian, Evangeline?” asked Mr. Somerset, the first time he’d spoken since we exchanged greetings.

“No, I’m not.”

“Bennett hasn’t sung the virtues of a meatless diet to you yet?”

So he had been a militant vegetarian in his youth—probably as much to annoy his dad as anything else, I’d guess.

“Bennett would no more dream of changing my diet than I would of changing his,” I said firmly.

My fake boyfriend sent me a grateful look. I gave his hand a squeeze under the table. He might be a man of many flaws, but his diet wasn’t one of them—and he’d been completely unobtrusive about it.

I asked his parents about themselves. Mr. Somerset was semiretired—after having divested the shipbuilding portion of Rowland Industries, the family firm, he was using some of the proceeds to build a solar portfolio. Mrs. Somerset was a member of the managing committee at the Federal Bank of New York—and didn’t see herself slowing down anytime soon.

“Rowland never really wanted to be a businessman, so he is more than happy to step away,” she explained. “But I’m doing exactly what I want to do.”

They in turn spent some time asking about my work, and I gave more detailed answers than I normally would, to satisfy their curiosity. After that the topic turned to Bennett’s siblings: Prescott the economist in Singapore and Imogene the techie in Silicon Valley.

Apparently Imogene had a new boyfriend, but no one was particularly excited.

“My sister is a major player,” Bennett said to me. “I had to tell her to stop bringing her current conquests to meet me, because I couldn’t keep track.”

“Imogene told me that she kept hauling her boyfriend du jour to lunch in the hope that you might bring a girlfriend,” said his mother. “She claimed you never did.”

He slanted me a glance. “I was waiting for the right one to come along.”

My heart gave its usual pathetic throb. I smiled at his parents. “Please excuse Bennett. He does get a little carried away.”

On second thought, that might not have been the best thing to say—they already knew how carried away he could get in a romantic situation. But Bennett only laughed softly.

“So you two are official now?” Mr. Somerset asked me.

I speared a piece of carrot that had been braised in duck jus onto my fork. “I’m a bit of a commitment-phobe, but…neither of us is seeing anyone else.”

“Official enough for me,” said Mrs. Somerset, leaning forward. “Do excuse a nosy old lady, but I’m dying to know how you finally met.”

Bennett dug into his pasta. “Technically, it was on a dark and stormy night.”

I gave an indulgent, didn’t-I-tell-you-he-gets-carried-away eye roll. “That makes it sound like we met in the middle of a nor’easter. It was Cos Cob in August. I was taking a walk and Bennett stopped in his car because he was worried that I’d be flattened by a stampede of other concerned neighbors.”

“It’s that kind of neighborhood,” he murmured.

“And that’s how we met, more or less,” I said.

“That was more or less it for Evangeline. But for me it was the culmination of weeks of internal debate over whether to approach her.”

I turned toward him in surprise.

“Why the hesitation?” asked his mother.

“Because I thought it might turn out to be serious.” He was smiling, the same kind of smile he had on when he’d said that he’d marry me any day of the week. “But once my lawyers and technical advisers evaluated her patents, it was a no-brainer: I had to get her before anybody else could.”

If only I had a team of technical advisers to evaluate the bullshit content of everything he said.

“Aww,” I said. “Dream on. You’re not putting a ring on this until you sign on the dotted line of an ironclad prenup. I and my future billions will not be parted by a pretty face and a lot of sweet nothings.”

“Hmm. Maybe I need to go back to gold-digging school. I’m obviously falling down on the job here.”

At this, even Mr. Somerset smiled a little.

We had all sat down at the table rather stiff and cautious. But by the time appetizers appeared, Bennett already looked as relaxed as he had been at our dinner with Rob and Darren.