The Trouble With Love by Lauren Layne Page B

drag her away from the church and had patiently fed a couch-ridden Emma nothing but root beer floats for two weeks before quietly insisting that Emma was too young to throw her life away.
    So Emma had gotten off the couch. Brushed her hair. And moved to New York City, and never looked back.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Emma said, when the silence stretched on. “It was a long time ago when we were both immature and stupid. We’ve moved on.”
    Cassidy nodded once in agreement. “We’ve moved on.”
    But from the looks going around the table, Emma had the sneaking suspicion that she and Cassidy were the only ones who believed that.

Chapter 12
    Alex’s day had been complete shit.
    Two copy editors had quit within an hour of each other. Then one of the printers had gone on the fritz. A major advertiser had declared bankruptcy and pulled out of a prime spot in the December issue.
    And just as he was thinking it was impossible for the night to be any worse than the day, an epic thunderstorm rolled in on as he walked home—without an umbrella.
    All Alex wanted was a glass of the French Malbec he’d opened the night before and the spy thriller he’d been trying to finish for weeks but just couldn’t quite find the time for.
    Alex caught the elevator at his apartment building just as it was closing, running a hand through his wet hair, only to glance up sheepishly when he realized he wasn’t alone.
    “Sorry,” he muttered at a guy he didn’t recognize.
    “No worries,” the man said in a British accent. “Coming down rather hard out there, isn’t it?”
    Alex glanced at the man, whose reddish-brown hair was perfectly styled and not the least bit wet. Neither was the bottom of his gray suit pants water-marked like Alex’s, and his Burberry jacket didn’t show so much as a drop. Even the umbrella in the man’s hand was dry.
    Clearly he’d taken a cab. Or had a personal driver.
    “Sure is,” Alex said grumpily.
    Belatedly he realized he hadn’t pushed the button for his floor, but the man was also going to twenty-four.
    “Just move in, or visiting someone?” Alex asked.
    The man smiled politely. “Visiting someone.”
    “Ah.”
    “An ex-girlfriend, actually,” the man muttered, as though a little disbelieving.
    “Ouch,” Alex said in sympathy. “Picking up a box of forgotten items, or having one last ‘talk’?”
    “Neither. I haven’t even seen her in a year or so, but she’s a journalist and doing a story on ex-boyfriends, and since she’s one of the noncrazy ones, I figured . . . why not help her out?”
    Alex closed his eyes.
    Incredible .
    He should be putting his shitty day behind him with a good book and a glass of wine, but here he was, all but escorting his ex-fiancée’s ex up to her apartment so that she could write a story that Alex himself had pushed on her.
    He’d barely seen Emma since the dinner party at Julie and Mitchell’s, but when he had, the mood had been downright glacial.
    Their chilly relationship, which he had thought was beginning to thaw, had taken a turn toward the next ice age thanks to the spontaneous dinner conversation about their ill-fated wedding day.
    But Alex was not inclined to share the blame for that little development. If it had been up to him, they’d have kept dodging their friends’ questions about their past.
    Instead Emma had green-lighted everyone else’s curiosity and gotten answers—or a lack of answers—that she hadn’t liked one bit.
    Well, too damn bad, Em. I didn’t like your answers much, either.
    He was the bad guy. He got that.
    Preferred it, even. Because being cast as the villain was a hell of a lot better than everyone knowing that you’d spent your wedding day half-drunk, feeling like there was a crater where your heart should have been.
    Alex suspected that was the real reason for the coldness of his and Emma’s current relationship. There was something numbing in all of those icy exchanges.
    And numbness was better than