Page 57 of Playing for Keeps

“Just a little.”

I wanted to offer to take her coat, but she shrugged it off and draped it over the back of her chair when we got to the table. I sat across from her, still trying to shake off the image of her walking in. She already made this place feel so different from every other night I had sat here.

“I would have picked you up,” I said as I got comfortable. “But you said this was easier?”

She nodded and smoothed out her napkin on her lap. “I had a meeting at the university that went late. It was easier to come straight here than to run back and forth by the time it was over.”

“Still.” I shrugged. “Would’ve been nice.”

Her lips curled, as if she understood what the words meant. “Next time,” she said simply.

Next time. That made my heart race.

The waiter appeared, the same guy as before. The poor bastard had seen me through three disasters, and I half-expected him to roll his eyes the second he saw me. But when he looked at Emma, the stiff formality vanished. She gave him a smile that reached her eyes, open and unhurried, and he smiled back right away, as if he couldn’t help it.

“Good evening,” he said. “Is this your first time dining with us?”

“It is,” Emma said warmly. “It already smells amazing.” She glanced at the menu, then back at him. “I’m a vegetarian. Any suggestions?”

“Absolutely,” he said immediately, and for the next minute he named dishes with more enthusiasm than I’d ever heard from him. Emma listened carefully.

“I’ll trust you,” she said. “Surprise me.”

By the time he left, I was staring at her. Not only because she had charmed the waiter in less than a minute, but also because it wasn’t an act. Emma was… easy. She listened. She laughed at his joke about the chef’s obsession with truffle oil. And Christ, she made me feel like the room wasn’t so heavy anymore.

We ordered drinks – wine for her and beer for me – and the conversation just… flowed.

The waiter brought bread and olive oil. She tore off a piece of bread, dipped it into the oil, and sighed like it was the best thing she had ever tasted. “I love bread so much. Honestly, how can people not want to eat it?”

I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. My trainers would probably give you a lecture about carbs right now.”

She grinned at me over the crust. “Your trainers are wrong. Bread is happiness. People’s lives will be better the sooner they accept that.”

“That so?” I reached for a piece myself and dipped it in the oil. “Bread equals happiness? Bold claim.”

Emma gave a little shrug, playful. “It’s not a claim. It’s a fact. Universally accepted. Think about it: every culture has bread. The French, the Italians…”

“The Canadians?” I asked, smirking.

Her eyes twinkled. “Even the Canadians. Don’t you have enough doughnuts to qualify as a bread-obsessed nation?”

“Fine,” I said, laughing. “You win. Bread is happiness.”

“I know,” she said with a grin, as she tore off another piece. “Long before the kintsugi craze, Mum went through this whole bread-making phase.”

“Ah, the pre-gold era.”

“Exactly,” she chuckled. “She would experiment with various flours while kneading dough for hours on end. For weeks, the kitchen smelled like a bakery.”

“That sounds divine.”

“It was. It was comfortable, familiar, but always a little different. A bit like books or films.” She started talking about Inception, which she’d apparently seen for the fifth time, and picked apart the details.

I couldn’t help contradicting her, teasing her into one of those cute eye rolls. Within seconds we were arguing like we’d done it a hundred times before.

She squinted at me, but the smile that spread across her face ruined the effect. “You’re infuriating.”

“And you like it,” I shot back.