Red Hot Reunion

“Rocco?” Emma couldn’t have been more surprised if Kate had just said she was a lesbian. “He’s nothing like the zillionaires you usually go out with.”

Kate smiled a secret smile. “I know. He’s so much bigger. Hunkier. I just want to take a bite out of him.”

Emma tilted her head to the side. “How’d you meet?”

Kate waved away her question. “Long boring story, you don’t want to hear it. Now tell me everything that’s been going on for the past week while I change into something lower cut and higher heeled.”

Emma followed Kate through Jason’s house, amazed at how effortless her best friend’s confidence was.

Emma would have given anything to be like Kate. But after this week, she knew that no matter how hard she tried to be a self-assured sex goddess, no matter how good Jason thought her moves were in bed, she was still the same Emma on the inside.

It was a hard realization, and yet, one that helped her see things in a true light. She was always going to love Jason. And she was always going to worry about not being good enough to keep him around. So really, if those were the two constants in her world, she might as well give in to them and let herself love him for as long as he let her.

Twenty

Rocco picked Kate up a couple hours later. Watching brand-new sparks crackle between them, Emma wished she could hit the rewind button. If only she and Jason could start over again. From the first day they met. Their first kiss. If she knew what she knew now—which admittedly, didn’t feel like a whole lot, although she was gaining smarts every day—she would never have chosen Steven. She would never have turned her back on a love that was so true, so powerful, for something plastic and fake and horribly overrated.

Tonight she would talk to Jason, really talk to him about her fears, her concerns. She had to. Sure, it had only been one day, twenty-four hours since he’d asked her to move in, and yet she couldn’t go on wondering why, constantly asking herself if things could possibly work between them in the long term with so much unresolved history.

Her house and mortgage company were just details. Her reservations and unanswered questions went so much deeper than that.

Why had he come to the reunion? Why had he asked her to join him by the lake? In the lake. Why hadn’t he turned her away when she showed up in Napa on Monday? Why had he asked her to move in with him by Wednesday night?

She’d sensed so much hardness in him this week even as he’d loved her better than she’d ever been loved before. She could no longer turn away from it, no longer deny his anger because it was the easy way out.

Unable to sit alone in his house any longer, she decided to go have dinner. At Cravings. She didn’t want to bother him while he was working, and she wouldn’t, but at the end of the night she wanted to make sure they talked. Until then, being in his restaurant was as close as being with him.

An hour later, during which she tried on all of her new outfits only to find each and every one of them lacking, she was seated in a nice, corner table of his restaurant where she could watch the action. Julie, the waitress she’d helped out the day before, winked at her and Emma felt that maybe, just maybe, this was a sign that everything would be okay. That everything would work out.

Everything on Jason’s menu looked amazing and so incredibly decadent. Falling into her usual pattern of searching for the lowest-calorie item on the menu, she stopped and took a deep breath.

She didn’t need to do this to herself anymore, did she? Jason said he’d think she was beautiful if she had lush curves, hadn’t he?

Somewhere in the back of her brain, a voice asked,“So now you’re going to gain weight to make him happy? Isn’t that the same thing as losing weight to please your mother?”

But no, Emma refused to think that the two things could have anything at all to do with one another. Of course she wasn’t eating fattening foods just because Jason wanted her to. What a ridiculous idea.

Fortunately, an instant later, she found she didn’t need to worry about making any decisions about the menu when Julie came by her table with a big glass of champagne. “On the house, courtesy of the boss.”

A glow started all the way down at Emma’s toes. “Isn’t that sweet?”

Julie raised an eyebrow. “Just between us girls, I’ve never seen him like this.” Emma grinned but then Julie added, “Almost as if he’s not here half the time.”

Maybe that was romantic, but to Emma, something about it sounded not quite right. Jason had always been the most fully present person she knew. She didn’t like to think of him being out to lunch while on the job.

“Oh. Okay.”

Julie didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, so Emma said, “I have no idea what to order. It all looks so good.” And so fattening.

“No problem. How about I put together a meal for you of Jason’s best?”

A customer across the room waved Julie over and Emma nodded quickly. “Go ahead and take care of your real customers. I’m just going to sit here and enjoy being pampered.”

Two hours later, Emma had tasted heaven. Each bite was better than the next. She felt sated and sleepy, envisioning a night of slow, passionate lovemaking. Her irrational fears would be there in the morning at which point they could have their long overdue discussion.

Relaxing into the comfortable chair, Emma let a newfound, champagne-fueled sense of peace take her over, feeling certain that nothing could ruin her night.

Kate openly admired Rocco’s enormous muscles over the glass of Pinot he’d poured her in the middle of a vineyard.

“Isn’t someone going to come out here with a shotgun and nail us for trespassing soon?”

“If the owner was going to nail you,” he replied with a lusty grin, “he wouldn’t use a shotgun.”

“So you’re already thinking of nailing me, huh?” she said, sending his blood racing, and then added, “I take it you’re the landowner in question?”

“You’d better not use too many lawyer phrases with me,” he said, grinning even wider. “I’m just a lowly souschef. Although, I have to admit hearing you say things like ‘landowner in question’ is a huge turn on.”

Knowing exactly what she was doing to him with her generous curves, her luscious red mouth, and her dirty, brilliant mind, she gestured lazily to the vines that surrounded them. “So you’re a low-ranking kitchen worker who just so happens to own a huge vineyard?”