Hard Sell| ETHMA

8

EMMA
Saturday Lunch, September 23

I frown and look up at the sign as Ethan holds open the restaurant door for me. "Isn't this a chain?"

"It is."

"But—"

He plants a hand on my back and gently pushes me forward.

I'm fully braced for garish decor, horrible lighting, and the smell of old onion rings. Braced for everything that reminds me of my childhood, of my mom's occasional stints working at dirty, tired restaurants until she'd be inevitably fired . . .

I'm pleasantly surprised.

The lighting's flatteringly dim, and the restaurant seems to be made up of tall black-leathered booths, no red vinyl or paper napkin dispensers in sight.

Nothing to trigger my Philly flashbacks.

Ethan steers me toward the bar. I let him, mainly because sitting side by side on barstools somehow seems less intimate than sitting across from each other in a booth.

"You know, nobody's going to see us here," I say, sitting down next to him and putting my purse on the stool beside me. The shopping bags—all dozen of them—are being delivered to my apartment, as planned. "It's just tourists on weekends and corporate drones during the week at chain restaurants."

"I know," he grumbles.

"So why are we here?"

"Because I like it," he says.

"Okay, fine, why am I here?"

He sighs. "Honestly, I don't know. I didn't think it through. What I do know is that I just spent an obscene amount of money buying you clothes with plenty of witnesses. You got your girl to pump our names into the gossip circuit. Tomorrow, we'll suffer through a stuffy brunch with tiny plates of shit like escarole and free-range turkey sausage. So right now, all I want is to sit in relative silence and get an enormous French Dip sandwich, with an even more enormous martini. Okay?"

I purse my lips and consider. "Okay."

His eyes narrow. "That's perhaps the scariest word you've ever said."

"How do you figure?" I say, taking a sip of the water the bartender's just set in front of me.

Ethan leans in a bit farther. "How easily you forget that I know you. And I know that any time you easily agree to something, hell is sure to follow."

I hide my smile, because damn it . . . he does know me. Readily agreeing to something and playing the part of perfect acquiescence has long been key to my strategy of staying one step ahead of anyone and everything that comes my way.

See, the trick to being in control is letting other people think that they are. No one lets their guard down faster than a man or woman who thinks he or she is driving the ship.

Truth be told, though, right now, my "okay" really is just that—an okay.

Ethan's not the only one who's tired. Sure, we've been together all of a couple of hours, most of it spent drinking champagne and shopping.

Not exactly a hard day's work.

And yet, it's Ethan and me. Which means there's no such thing as easy. I've spent every minute far too aware of him, and don't even get me started on whatever that was in the dressing room.

I refuse to admit, even in my own head, just how close I came to letting that kiss turn into something more. To letting him back me against the wall. To having a quickie in a dressing room, for crying out loud.