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“Hey,” she said, voice testy. “Just because my parents were determined to turn Daisy and me into little princesses doesn’t mean that I have to stay that way.”
She felt him studying her profile. “But Daisy did.”
“Yeah. Daisy did. Does,” Emma corrected. “Even after the divorce she’s still all pretty manners and bless your heart.”
Cassidy smiled and Emma’s heart twisted. “Guess my dad had the right idea all along when he tried to set you guys up.”
His smile dropped. “Emma—”
“Don’t, Cassidy. Don’t tell me you didn’t want to date my sister.”
He swore softly, dipping his head. “When I was twenty years old and didn’t even know you. And once I did—”
“It doesn’t matter. You got what you wanted. A job with my father. And a blissfully ignorant girlfriend—no, fiancée—who had no idea that you had asked her out just to get a job.”
He pointed a finger. “Asked you out, yes. Proposed, no. That was all me.”
“Was it?” she asked, taking a healthy sip of wine. “Or was it because my father had no intention of handing over his company to someone who wasn’t family?”
Cassidy swore softly and dropped his chin.
“Emma—”
“Don’t,” she said softly. “Please don’t.”
Then she lifted her hand to wave at Jana, who glanced at them, grabbed two bottles of wine, and made her way toward them. “Refill?” she asked, holding up the red for Cassidy and white for Emma.
“Yes, please,” Emma and Cassidy said at the exact same time.
“And two burgers would be great,” Emma added, handing Jana their menus.
Cassidy glanced at her. “You’re staying for dinner?”
She understood what he was really asking: You’re staying for dinner with me?
She lifted an eyebrow. “Are you?”
In response he turned to the bartender. “Can we get Gruyère on those burgers?”
When Jana had refilled their wine glasses and gone to punch in their orders, Cassidy steered their conversation toward safer topics, and Emma let him.
No, welcomed it.
She supposed at some point, she and Cassidy would need to finish that conversation they’d started on the night of their rehearsal dinner. She wasn’t sure what else could be said, but she did know they owed it to each other to have that talk without all the temper and devastation that had choked them that night.
But for now . . . now she was content to share a meal with someone who was . . . well, not a friend, exactly. But spending a casual Saturday night with him felt strangely right.
“Do you ever think about going back?” he asked. “To Charlotte?”
Emma thought about this. “I’ll never say never. And Dad’s there. And, of course, Daisy. But . . . I think New York is my home now. Which is strange, because I always figured Manhattan was an itch I’d grow out of in my twenties, but—”
“It gets into your blood,” Alex said.
“Yes,” Emma replied. “That’s exactly right. What about you? You ever think about going back?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know where I’d go back to. My parents don’t live in Boston anymore, so nothing for me there. They bought a place in Florida. North Carolina was only home because of college and then because—”
“Because that’s where my father’s company is,” she finished for him.
