His gaze dropped to her mouth, his own curving into a smug little smirk. She was even more dismayed to admit she knew that, because her eyes had dropped to his mouth as well.
Mutual mouth staring.
So wrong.
Especially because instead of being able to muster the same smug smirk that stupid Jase had working, she was just…completely undone. Reacting like the sixteen-year-old girl she’d been when he’d first caught her eye. Before she knew what a world-class jerk he was. Before she’d had it confirmed in the most unpleasant ways, over and over again, that Jase Foster wasn’t and hadn’t actually ever really been her friend.
Unbelievable.
Shoving a hand through her hair, she brushed his aside and returned his soda. “Thanks.”
He nodded and stepped back to toss the drink into the can in front of the store.
When he turned back, he’d lost that too-confident look. Shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, he grumbled, “I used to date the event coordinator at your hotel.”
Emily raised a brow. “I’m listening.”
Intently.
“Look, it didn’t end well. She misread the relationship and thought there was more going on than there was. I tried, really tried, to let her down easy, but—”
“Now you won’t even set foot in her hotel?”
“Now I wouldn’t let her get within a thousand feet of a single thing she knew I might care about.”
Her heart softened. “Like a friend’s wedding.”
“Yeah.”
Damn it, why did he have to show her he wasn’t always the total bastard he liked to be around her? Why did he have to remind her of what a good guy he could be to everyone else?
Why did she care?
She shouldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
“Fine. We can check out your restaurant.” She would have anyway. It had a great reputation, and the fact that they’d had a cancelation was a minor miracle. Besides, raking Jase over the coals had lost its luster.
* * *
Jase stood at the bar, his beer tight in the death grip he’d had going since he’d heard it. That laugh. Light and bubbly, melodic and soft, floating over the ever-present Café Ba-Ba-Reeba crowd. No way this was happening again. It had only been five damn days since they’d been sampling mini crab cakes and caprese skewers with Romeo and Sally. What was it going to take to get a break from Emily?
Jase told himself to calm down.
Ba-Ba-Reeba was a popular restaurant, a Chicago favorite.
And it wasn’t like this was the first time they’d ended up in the same space.
They frequented several of the same restaurants and a handful of the same bars, though thankfully she stayed clear of Belfast. So her being at the same establishment tonight—not a big deal.
They wouldn’t be seated together. Hell, chances were they wouldn’t even be in the same room, because in addition to being packed, Ba-Ba-Reeba was also pretty huge.
She probably wouldn’t even notice he was there.
Only then he felt it. Fuck. He knew. She’d seen him.
He shouldn’t look. Shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t…
His eyes were moving over the crowd toward where he’d heard that laugh, the one he wasn’t hearing now. And sure enough, there she was.
Several inches taller than most of the women around her. She was probably taller than most of the men too. And she was looking right at him.
Damn.
Eye contact.
The kind where too much passed between them before he had the good sense to pull back and break the lock. A deep breath and a long pull on his beer later, Jase braved another look. She was still standing there, but her focus had shifted to the hostess, who was scowling down at her seating chart with grim determination.
Which gave him the opportunity to catch what he’d missed on that first pass. The soft coils of hair tumbling around her shoulders, the wide-necked sweater too thin to do anything but draw his eyes to everything it didn’t hide, and the trousers cut to keep his attention torn between the perfect curve of her ass and the teasingly short stretch of softly toned bare legs ending in—
He gulped.
The heels.
If ever a pair of shoes had earned the moniker, this red-spiked business she had going most definitely did.
Fuck-me heels.
He couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop thinking about those red leather spikes sliding up the backs of his thighs, or the miles-long legs that came attached wrapped tight around him.
Holy hell.
Look away, man. Look away.
He tried to, but she looked too good.
Finally he gave in to the pull, accepting there was no escaping the vortex of hot he’d just fallen into. It didn’t matter anyway—he was a guy. And he’d been admiring Emily Klein’s good looks for years already.
He’d never done a thing about it.
So what was the problem? There wasn’t one.
Only then she reached up to brush the hair that had fallen forward behind her ear, slowly, tentatively. Her gaze slipped back to him, and his beer hit the bar with less finesse than he usually mustered. He hadn’t been braced for the punch that caught him square in the gut.
Emily. Looking less than tough.
Looking vulnerable.
Because of him.
There was no satisfaction in it. None at all.
No, they didn’t get along. And yes, they got off on trying to one-up each other in the insult arena. But Christ, even he was feeling the strain of how much time they’d been spending together lately. The dinners out with Sally and Romeo to make sure all the plans were coming together. Working the peace in public and then laying into each other in private. All the while with that thing in the air between them—the one he wasn’t having quite so much fun with anymore—screwing with his thought process.
Yeah, Emily had probably needed a break as much as he had. But now here they were. Together. Again.
Only not really. Because then the hostess was leading her toward the back of the restaurant, and suddenly Jase couldn’t see her. Couldn’t see who she was meeting. If it was some guy she’d gone to all that trouble for. If she had a date who was going to be able to rest his fingers over the flare of her hips and brush his thumbs against the rise of her ribs.
Feel the way her pulse accelerated. Know it was for him.
Forcing himself to stop staring at the empty doorway she’d disappeared past, Jase downed the second half of his beer.
Picking at the label, he wondered who he knew that might be able to tell him if Emily was dating someone—without it getting back to her. Because that would be even worse than flat-out asking her himself.
“There he is!” proclaimed Marcos Nicks like he’d been on an epic quest searching for Jase, instead of just walking into the place where they’d agreed to meet. Two hands gripped his shoulders and shook until Jase’s brain rattled in his head.
Turning around, Jase pulled the guy into a one-armed hug and then gave him a clap on the back. “Hey, man, how’s it going?”
They caught up on the day, which included Marcos’s account of his girlfriend waking him up with a hummer that morning and how he’d been late all day because of it. Jase was happy for the guy—because, come on, who wouldn’t be—but didn’t encourage elaboration because locker room talk hadn’t really interested him even in high school.
Involuntarily, his thoughts drifted back to Emily. To her sliding out of the booth where they’d been devouring doughnuts at 2:00 a.m., leaving Eddie watching her go with that hot look in his eyes.
“She’s going to give it up. Finally. You know how I told you what she kisses like. With that hot, wet tongue sliding all over my mouth. I nearly lose it half the time I’m kissing her good night. Think about what that’s going to
feel like on my dick, man. I think she’s ready to do it.”
Jase sat there with that placid smile ready to crack on his face. Yeah, he knew how most guys talked. That there were milestones they were all working toward, and when one of them finally scored it, the rest were supposed to be there on the sideline, cheering them along.
But Jase just wasn’t built that way.
His head cranked around to see whether Emily was within hearing distance, hating the idea of her being embarrassed by the guy she was dating dishing up what she undoubtedly thought would be private between them. Hating how much he hated the idea of her giving up any of the things he knew—thanks to Eddie running at the mouth—she’d been holding on to.
“I got her to touch it last night, man. Over the jeans. We were making out, and I kind of caught her hand and, real slow, put it on my package. She got up to go right after that, but for a second she totally left her hand there. Soon, man. Soon.”
From the start, Jase had been trying to compartmentalize everything with Emily and Eddie in his head, but in that moment, the walls were down and Jase was sitting with his fists balled. Willing his best friend—the guy who’d been like a brother to him—to shut the hell up before he did something totally against his code and knocked Eddie’s teeth in. Because the idea of Emily—
Fuck.
She was walking back to the booth and sliding in next to Eddie, who took her hand in his and held it, turning to flash Jase a quick wink.
Jase pushed out of the booth, set on distracting himself by…shoot, maybe going over to the table of girls at the other end of the place to say hi.
A glance over his shoulder told him Eddie didn’t mind the opportunity to work a little magic with Em, who was laughing quietly at something the guy had said, that smile in her eyes probably making him feel like the king of the whole damned world.
Good.
He wanted that for him. Really. He did.
“—so it’s going to be a few more people tonight. Figured you wouldn’t mind, or at least you’d get over having to share me for the night.”
Jase slid back into the present and what Marcos was saying with a jolt. The memories of Emily from high school were still too fresh in his mind to really pay attention to what his buddy was saying.
Which was bull, he knew. Emily was no one to him now.
Almost. Except that somehow he’d managed to work his way another five feet down the bar looking for a different view into the other room. Nothing.
So he still didn’t know whether she was there with a date or not.
“Hey, Marcos, thought I saw someone I knew in the other room. Give me a minute, will you?”
Marcos was making deep eye contact with the bartender, willing the guy to come over and take his drink order. “Yeah, but hurry up. I saw O’Donnel pulling up to the valet when I came in.”
Jase headed over to the doorway, feeling like a world-class puss for needing to look in the first place. But he wanted to know if Emily was there on a date. If there was another guy—correction—a guy she was involved with.
He almost hoped there was. Because that would be enough to deep-six the kind of thoughts he’d been having about her lately.
But the slow cruise past the doorway just left him feeling like more of an ass. Especially when he couldn’t see jack.
Rubbing at the tightening muscles along his neck, he turned back to the bar to find Marcos headed his way, beer in hand and Brody and two other guys in tow.
“Table’s ready, girls. Let’s go.”
Jase smiled, exchanging a few fist bumps and shoulder checks with the new arrivals as he fell in beside Brody.
“Something’s up,” Brody said conspiratorially, nodding at Marcos.
Jase frowned, looking ahead at Marcos.
“Why do you say that?”
Brody gave him a sympathetic look. “The guy is practically bouncing off the ceiling. He can’t stop fidgeting. And haven’t you noticed the peak in trash talk?”
Jaw shifting to the left, Jase gave Marcos a closer look. The guy was definitely jumpy. Boisterous, as he followed the hostess through the maze of the restaurant, cracking one joke after another with barely a breath in between. His hands going a mile a minute to match his mouth.
“He on something?” Jase asked, concern creeping up beside the guilt he was feeling, because he hadn’t even noticed how Marcos was acting when he first got there. Because he’d been distracted. By Emily.
Who he shouldn’t be thinking about at all.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” Brody said with a grin, nodding at the table ahead of them, “and say this isn’t about drugs.”
Jase followed his buddy’s stare to the table where the hostess had stopped. Where Delphine Allen was beaming up at Marcos with pure adoration in her eyes and what looked like the Heart of the Ocean flashing from her finger.
Engaged.
They’d gotten engaged, and this dinner was their way of sharing the news with—oh hell—their friends. Their best friends. Four of them each. And sure enough, there was Emily, seated two chairs down from the bride-to-be.
* * *
This was not happening. Not again.
Emily had kept her smile in place for nearly twenty minutes following the news Delphine had just sprung on them—the wonderful news, really. But beneath that smile she definitely meant on some level, a few other emotions were at play.
Emotions that required the employment of letters like W, T, and F to convey them accurately, as well as other emotions that tended toward an uglier, self-pitying bent. Because this was supposed to be the Jase-free, sanity-restoring girls’ night she so desperately needed. But there he was. Seated just across the table to the right—and not even a pitcher of white sangria with a crazy straw in it or hoarding a whole plate of those little beef skewers with the horseradish cream for herself could make it better.
On the bright side, their one moment of eye contact had been without any gloating or one-upmanship. He seemed as genuinely dismayed as she was.
Only somehow that didn’t feel like any consolation at all.
After an acceptable period of time had passed, her smile was on the brink of collapse and Emily excused herself from the table. Cutting toward the narrow stairwell that led down to the ladies’ room, she let the facade go and started gulping air.
Oh God, she was going to cry.
She could feel it bubbling up her throat too fast to swallow back and pushing at her eyes.
Jase. Again.
She was barely managing the time they were forced to spend together as it was. And now, just when she thought she was closing in on that light at the end of the tunnel, here he was again. Waving her through to that next expanse of winding, crowded darkness where she was a person she didn’t entirely love being. A petty, biting, bitchy woman with a lacerating tongue and, worst of all, a past she couldn’t let go of, forcing itself into a present where it didn’t belong.
The door was at the bottom of the stairs, only feet away, when she heard someone on the steps behind her.
She didn’t have to look; she already knew. Something about the way her heart skipped a beat and then started to race. About the way that spot deep in her belly tensed and her skin started to tingle.
“Emily, wait,” Jase said, his deep voice rumbling around the claustrophobic hall surrounding her.
No way.
“Sorry, just give me a minute, and I’ll meet you back at the table,” she said, barely turning her head so he wouldn’t be able to see her face.
She pushed into the ladies’ room, but there wasn’t even time for the door to swing shut before Jase came in after her, shocking her into stumbling back a step.
His hand shot out, catching her elbow.
“Are you okay?” he asked, maintaining that hot grasp on her arm even after she had steadi
ed on her feet. The fact that she was thinking of the way that touch felt, that it was good, suggested that, no, she most definitely wasn’t okay.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, but the tremor in her voice gave her away. “You just startled me coming in here.”
Jase’s eyes were locked with hers, the look in them telling her that wasn’t what he’d meant when he asked. “I didn’t know about the engagement until tonight. Honestly, I didn’t even know you were Delphine’s friend.”
Emily nodded, more embarrassing tears pushing at her eyes.
“I knew you were friends with Marcos.” Of course she knew. Women loved talking about Jase. Handsome, funny, such-a-great-catch Jase. Even when they were fully committed to someone else, they rambled on about him. Maybe especially then. “But I didn’t think… I didn’t know how close they were to getting engaged.”
Not the way Delphine had been talking. But apparently that was behind them. And now Emily was going to be standing up in her friend’s wedding, and Jase was too.
Emily felt her lip start to tremble and she blinked, but the tears were coming as quickly as the words tumbling past her lips. “I’m at least five inches taller than the other girls.”
Jase nodded, his brows furrowed as he stroked a comforting thumb over the sensitive inner skin of her elbow.
“Brody’s the only guy even close, and I’ve got an easy three on him.”
Emily blinked again, peering up into Jase’s face as she gave in to the tears completely.
“But I hate you.”
“I know, honey.” He pulled her to his chest, closing those powerful arms around her back so all she could do was crumble into him. “I feel the same way.”
God, how could he make her feel so much better? How could burrowing her face against his shoulder feel so right?
She drew a shaky breath, catching the scent of his cologne as he brushed his fingers through her hair. And then something wholly different from the overwhelming frustration that had sent her running from the table moved through her body. Something warm and quiet. An awareness that shouldn’t be there.