“Well, the first thing to know is that I absolutely will not, at any point in the article, reference your name or any details that would lead back to you. Your own mother wouldn’t know I was talking about you.”
“A shame,” he said with a wink. “Mum always liked you.”
You’ve got to be kidding me, Alex thought.
But Emma apparently didn’t recognize the line for what it was, and merely laughed. “I always liked her, too. Give her my best, if you would. Okay, so I have just three basic questions—if you could answer as honestly as you can, without fear of hurting my feelings.”
“Okay,” Jason said, taking a sip of wine. “Let’s have it.”
“What was your gut reaction when you got an email from me, asking for this meeting?”
Emma didn’t look down at her notebook when she asked, and the question rolled off her tongue as though she’d asked it several times before. Which she probably had. For the first time, Alex questioned his own judgment on assigning her a story that would put her into contact with men she’d dated. Kissed. Slept with.
Maybe even loved.
“First reaction?” Jason said, scratching his cheek idly. “Terror.”
Emma laughed in surprise. “I’ll admit, that’s the first time I’ve gotten that particular response.”
“Well, probably because none of your other exes are currently engaged to a redhead,” Jason said with a wink. “My first thought was that Gretchen would kill me for getting together with one of my exes.”
Alex took another sip of wine to hide his surprise. Jason was in a relationship. A serious relationship. And Emma didn’t look the least bit fazed.
“Congratulations,” she said, leaning across the table to squeeze his hand. “I’m so happy for you.”
Alex glanced at her profile. She did look happy, genuinely so, which filled him with…relief? Which was messed up. Why would he be relieved that Emma wasn’t torn up about a prior lover getting married to someone else?
“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.”