“Yeah?” Her voice held an artificial brightness.
Jason opened the front door and glanced down at her, his smile regretful. “I wish I could have made you smile more. The big, genuine kind that makes your eyes crinkle and all of your teeth show.”
Emma let out a little laugh. “I seem to be hearing that one a lot.”
Alex’s gaze flew to her profile at that. She hadn’t smiled for her other boyfriends? He thought back. He remembered her laughing all the time. Her smile wide, her eyes laughing. She was shy, so it had taken a while to get beneath the surface to earn a real Emma smile, but once she’d trusted you, she’d been so easy to make happy. They’d both been happy, feasting off the other person’s laugher.
Apparently that sort of effortless joy was something she’d grown out of.
Or maybe you destroyed it.
“Nice meeting you,” Jason said with a wave at Alex.
Alex lifted a hand in response, turning away before they hugged good-bye.
When she came back into the kitchen, she tossed her notebook onto the counter and plowed her fingers into her hair.
He itched to go to her…to somehow ease the weariness from her. But he didn’t know how. Didn’t know that she’d want it.
“Happy now?” she asked. “The article moving along to your liking?”
Not by a long shot.
“Are they all like that?” he asked. “The meetings, I mean?”
She released her hair, bracing both palms against the counter. He topped off her glass a bit and shoved it toward her, but she didn’t reach for it.
“Jason was the fifth one so far. And, yeah, they’re all pretty much the same. Some innocuous memory. A tepid breakup. And the pronouncement that I’d apparently been a humorless bore the entire damn relationship.”
“Emma.”
She glanced up. “Every relationship, Cassidy. Every guy has said that same thing about me not smiling. I smile. Don’t I?”
He hedged. “Eh, right now you’re not.”
“Well, of course not, it’s you,” she said with a huff, picking up her glass.
And for some reason that made him smile.
He’d take grumpy Emma over fake-smiley Emma.
“Can I ask you something?” he said, following her into the living room, where she threw herself onto the couch in a rather un-Emma-like gesture.
She grunted her assent, and he sat in the chair that Jason had just been in.
“The whole not-getting-married thing that Jason mentioned…did I do that to you?”
Emma’s eyes met his, but she didn’t sit up. “Do you want to get married someday?”
He hesitated. “Haven’t done much thinking about it, but…no. Not really part of my game plan.”
Not anymore.
She gave a sad smile and closed her eyes. “Well, then, there you go. I’d say we did this to each other, don’t you think?”
Chapter 13
“Yup,” Alex called out at the knock on his office door.
He glanced up and was both surprised and yet not at all surprised to see Cole Sharpe standing in his doorway. Cole had this way of being everywhere he wasn’t expected, while managing to stay MIA whenever Alex went looking for him. It was a gift.
“Whose meeting am I crashing this time?” Cole asked, entering uninvited.
“Grace Malone’s,” Alex said, glancing at his watch. “And don’t even tell me she snuck into the stairwell with Jake. Do those two just wait until they’re supposed to meet with me to go get it on?”
Cole’s eyebrows wiggled. “Maybe thinking of you makes them horny.”
“I assure you, that is not the case,” Jake said from the doorway.
He, too, entered uninvited, taking the chair next to Cole, as he tossed a stack of papers across the desk at Alex.
“What’s this?” Alex said, glancing at the documents.
“Grace’s notes for her story.”
“Why didn’t she give them to me herself? We’re supposed to have a meeting.”