Chapter Ten
Stefan
I had just about reached the point of deciding to go with exactly the story Emma had given me about why she’d left when she approached me once more. My heart slowed and then sped up again at the sight of her, and I hoped that she was coming to tell me she’d changed her mind about my offer.
“Five hundred?” Emma crossed her arms over her chest and looked up at me with a faint little smile curving the corners of her lips. I had to admit that I would probably want to spend the rest of the evening with her whether or not the whole thing with my friends had been going on.
“And the necklace?” I smiled a bit back at her.
Emma shook her head. “Just the five hundred would be good,” she said. “This is going to be intense, isn’t it?”
I laughed at the deadpan sound of her voice. “I think we’re both smart enough to make it work,” I said, holding out my hand for her.
Emma looked at it for a moment and then uncrossed her arms, giving me her hand. I led her through the rest of the bar and toward the hostess stand and the rest of the restaurant.
“This is going to be interesting,” Emma told me. Mike, Nate, Julian and their girlfriends had all already gone to the table, but the hostess was happy to lead me and Emma over.
“We’ve been dating about a year,” I said quietly. “Got it?”
Emma nodded, and I could see the glimmer in her eyes, like I had the day before, after she’d gotten over her embarrassment. She was starting to see the humor in the situation.
“I am going to laugh my ass off at you, trying to pull this off—just a fair warning,” Emma told me.
“I would expect no less,” I said, as the hostess brought us to the table where my friends and their girls were. There were still two seats empty, and I interrupted the hostess’ move to pull out Emma’s chair for her. I’m lucky she decided to come out tonight, and that she decided to dress like this instead of some other way.
“Glad you could finally join us,” Monique said with a grin.
“We were just about to come looking for the two of you,” Mark added. “Jess thought you two had snuck off to have a little private Valentine’s celebration.”
“No, just talking about later tonight,” Emma said, a little too sweetly, and I had to stifle a laugh. Later tonight, I would be paying her, I assumed.
“Oh, big plans?”
I shrugged. “Nothing too big. I figured the dinner and drinks thing was a good celebration of the day,” I said.
Helena tsked at me, shaking her head. “Just when you finally get to showing signs of maybe settling down, you still don’t make the effort.” Helena looked at Emma sympathetically. “Obviously, you know by now he’s a good guy, but you need to keep a firm hand on the reins.”
I snorted.
“A guy like Stefan can’t be managed like that,” Julian told his girl. “I’m sure Emma knows how to handle him well enough.”
Emma’s cheeks heated, but she laughed it off. “I don’t know if I handle him,” Emma said. “But I definitely have a hand on him, as often as I can.”
That, I couldn’t help laughing at.
“That sounds about like I would expect from someone who’s been with him this long,” Mark said, nodding, as everyone else around the table laughed, too.
The waiter came, and we all had to quickly decide what we wanted from the prix fixe Valentine’s Day menu. We’d arranged it and all put in money in advance to secure the table for the group, so we had three choices each for four courses: appetizer, pasta, entree, and dessert. It was an Italian place, so all the options were, of course, Italian ones.
The waiter went around the table, giving Emma and me the time to go last, since we’d been the last to formally arrive.
“I think we need a bottle of champagne, don’t you, guys?” Mark looked around the table.
“Get this celebration really going?” Julian added with a smirk.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Monique agreed.
I glanced at Emma, and she didn’t seem against it, so I chimed in with my support as well.
When it came to my turn, I ordered the grilled shrimp, tonnarelli pasta with tomato-basil sauce, short ribs, and for my dessert, the cannoli.
“And for you, ma’am?”
Emma glanced at the menu one last time, and I wondered if she was going to throw a wrench into my plan for the night.
“I’d love the pear and goat cheese bruschetta to start,” Emma said. “And for my pasta, I’d like the squid ink agnolotti, and then the trout, and finally the panna cotta.” She smiled and handed over her menu.
“She’s daring,” Jessica told me. “I was looking at the squid ink pasta, but I chickened out.”
“That’s got the sea urchin roe in the sauce,” Julian remarked, raising an eyebrow. “Ever hear what Anthony Bourdain had to say about women who will eat sea urchin?”
Emma’s cheeks took on a reddish pink color at the tone of his voice, but she laughed. “That they go down? Well, I would hope that Stefan hasn’t revealed that about me one way or another.”
I couldn’t help myself: I busted out laughing.
Helena pinched Julian, obviously offended on Emma’s behalf. “We’re in this nice restaurant, and you’re needling that poor girl about whether or not she gives head,” Helena said, shaking her head in disapproval.
“Well, Stefan here has kept her such a mystery,” Mark pointed out. “You can’t blame us all for being curious.”
I had to admit that Emma was right: this was going to shape up to be an interesting night. I had gone in with all kinds of bravado, but now that I was in the midst of it, I wasn’t sure how long we were going to be able to keep it up. We just didn’t know anything about each other.
“He wouldn’t even tell us how he met you,” Monique told Emma.
“I like to keep my personal life personal,” I protested, hoping to cover for the fact that I still wasn’t telling them.
“It’s a good story, actually,” Emma said, and I looked at her, hoping that she wasn’t going to crash my whole plan.
“Oh! Tell us!” The champagne came and that gave us a reprieve as the waiter opened the bottle and poured it around the table, and then the first courses arrived.
“Do you want some of my shrimp?” I hoped against hope that the topic of how Emma and I had met would have passed as everyone else settled into their appetizers.
“Sure, do you want some of my bruschetta?”
I looked at it. Normally I don’t like frou-frou things with fruit and cheese, but I had to admit that what she ordered looked pretty good.
“Why don’t we split and share?” That would make us look like more of an established couple. Julian and Helena were dividing up their appetizers, but Nate and Jessica were both the type to never share plates.
“Absolutely,” Emma said, moving her first course plate closer to mine. I took one of her bruschettas and scooped my shrimp onto her plate, along with some of the sauce it had been served with.
“So, what were you saying before about how the two of you met?” Emma and I both had full mouths, but I knew that my friends weren’t about to give up on the idea of prying into our supposed relationship. I could only hope that Emma was going to come up with something we could remember and stick to for the rest of the night.