“I’m on it.” He glanced at the wine list, his expression thoughtful. “How do you feel about French Chablis to start? There’s one here that’s really lovely—crisp, clean, perfect for a summer evening.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
He ordered it when the server returned, and I watched the easy, practiced confidence when he chatted with her briefly about several of the wines. This was his world.
When the server left, he turned his full attention back to me. “You’re even prettier than your photos. Have you been on the app long?”
“I’ll tell you about that later,” I said, flushing.My daughter put me on the app without me knowing and I freaked out and then changed my mind and now I’m here with you.“It’s kind of a long story.”
“Tell me about being a designer. How did you get into it?”
And just like that, we started talking.
I’d expected the conversation to be stilted. Awkward. Full of long pauses and desperate searches for topics. To my surprise, it was the opposite.
I told him about my work. How I’d started my interior design business when I was still married. “I decorated all my friends’ homes first, to build up my portfolio. Things sort of took off after that. But it was still part-time work because I was busy with Mia. That had to change when we got divorced. Suddenly I was a single mother with a small business.”
“Not easy.”
“No, but many women do it every day. A mother does what she has to.” I paused, taking a sip of water. I was not accustomedto talking about myself quite so much. “Thankfully, I’ve had steady clients. Just when I get worried, I always book another job.”
“Is that stressful?”
“Yes, it is.” I wished I could tell him about the television gig, but I’d agreed not to speak about it publicly just yet. “What about you? Tell me about being a sommelier. I’m such a foodie and wine lover that I always imagined it to be a glamorous job.”
“It doesn’t suck, let me say that,” Vance said. “But after I sold my app and came back to the States, I haven’t been working. I’m basically retired. Which is weird.”
“Are you bored?”
“Not yet, no. I have a lot of interests. Hobbies.”
“Such as?” I asked, curious to know everything about this fascinating man.
“Reading. Film. Art. Running. Cooking.”
“We share all of those except running,” I said. “I’m more of a beach walker and Pilates kind of girl. One of my best friends, Gillian, teaches Pilates out of her studio here in town. She’s whipped us into shape.”
“Us?”
“My best friend group. There are five of us. We’ve been best friends since our kids started kindergarten the same year. I don’t know what I would do without them. We’re all single—well, we were—Gillian just got married. But for years we’ve all been single and helped one another out however we can. Picking up kids if something comes up. Like aunties, I guess.”
“That says a lot about you.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“People who have close friends value relationships. Even friendships take work.”
“I guess that’s true. We are very different from one another. All have different strengths and weaknesses. But we agreed earlyon that we would take care of one another, no matter what.” I took another sip of water. My mouth had gone dry. “What about you? Do you miss your friends from France?”
“I do, actually. I had a close gang—mostly friends from the restaurant where I worked for many years. Restaurant work is intimate. People grow close.”
“Is that how you met your ex-wife?”
“No, I met her at a party. She’s from Cliffside Bay. So we bonded over that, I guess.”
“And then it went south? Did she cheat on you?”
He cocked his head to the side, watching me, amusement flickering in his eyes. “Okay, you just jump right in with the real questions.”
