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“Ooh.” Leo wiggled his eyebrows. “A younger woman.”
“I’m thirty-four!” Hugh threw his hands up, then picked up his beer to take another well-needed swig. “She’s older than me,” he went on, despite knowing that Leo had only been winding him up. “You know how old I am.”
“I wasn’t referring to your biological age,” Leo said, smirking. “I was talking about your maturity level.”
“Someone’s got to be mature around here,” Hugh said.
“What else do we know about her?” Damian aimed the question at Emmy.
“She’s a single parent with a seven-year-old daughter.”
“No,” Leo groaned, while Damian dropped his chin to his chest and grumbled his disdain.
“What’s wrong with that?” Hugh asked.
“Single parents are the worst people to date,” Damian said.
Beside him, Leo nodded along. “They really are. All that baggage.”
“Hello!” Emmy said, glaring at them. “He’s a single parent too. So were you two until recently.”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” Damian said. “We all have awesome kids. What are the chances her kid is as cool as ours?”
“You make a good point,” Em agreed. “I’m pretty amazing.”
“Exactly,” Damian said. “But this woman’s kid will probably be a brat, and she’ll probably have issues with her ex. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
Leo rested his forearms on the table and fixed Emmy with an intense glare. “Have you considered how you feel about having a sibling? Is that really okay with you?”
“He’s just going on a date,” Emmy said, grinning. “It took long enough to talk him into it. You’re not allowed to talk him out of it.”
“This is true,” Damian said. “Plus, it’s never going to work out with the first woman you find on a dating app, so we’ll just consider this target practice and not worry about her suitability.”
“It’s probably actually a good thing if she’s not entirely suitable,” Leo mused.
Hugh pulled out the chair beside Emmy. “How do you figure that?”
“It’s your first date in a very long time.” Leo raised an eyebrow. “It’s highly likely that you’ll mess it up and scare her away, so it’s better not to waste your warm-up on a great candidate.”
“You’re filling me with confidence,” Hugh said dryly.
“Where are you taking her?” Leo asked.
“The restaurant at the golf club.”
Damian looked thoughtful. “Interesting choice.”
“Bad choice,” Leo corrected.
“It was her choice,” Hugh said. “And I was quite happy with it since it’s only up the road. And as you’re both convinced it’s going to go terribly, I don’t suppose it matters where we go.”
“I think it’s going to go brilliantly.” Emmy rested her head on his shoulder. “And it’s great that you’re giving dating a go.”
“I’m not even sure how you talked me into it,” Hugh remarked.
“Because secretly you think it’s a good idea, too.” She gazed up at him with her bright green eyes, and he grunted in reply.
He wasn’t about to admit that she was right and that maybe, deep down, he had a small spark of hope about the whole dating thing.
