by Sienna Ciles
If nothing else, I thought as I confirmed with Ginger where and when, I would be able to enjoy watching the excitement unfold. Ginger explained that Sabrina didn’t even remember who the guy was, but she’d been intrigued enough to go along with his plan, just for the sake of a fun story. I laughed along with Ginger and finished up the conversation as quickly as I could, so that I would have enough time to nap and get ready to go out.
Bast didn’t understand why I curled up in my bed, but she was definitely happy to curl up with me, and I set my alarm for an hour and a half. I wanted enough time to get a quick shower and put on some makeup. I might have had the dubious distinction of being single on Valentine’s Day, but I would go out looking my best, that much I knew.
Chapter Eight
Stefan
I’d been too nervous—weirdly enough, for me—to put off getting ready for my mystery date as late as I usually would have. Between the blue balls from the night before and how much Sabrina had intrigued me, I couldn’t make myself wait. I got to the bar about twenty minutes early, one of the roses from the arrangement she’d brought me the day before tucked into my blazer pocket.
Giordano’s was already hopping when I got there, with tons of couples. Most of them had the obvious signs of a first date, or at least an early date: people fidgeting and blushing and smiling as they talked to each other, looking like anxious greyhounds at the gate. Some of the couples seated around the bar and restaurant did have the veteran look: not as many bouquets of flowers sitting on the table, no stuffed animals set aside to make room for food or drinks, but dressed nicely. There were one or two couples who I was pretty sure were having their first night out since they’d had a kid—they had that tired, relieved look.
I sat at the bar and waited for Sabrina to arrive, nursing a beer to steady my nerves. It was risky, what I’d suggested. It would be hard to convince my friends and their girlfriends that the girl I was with was someone I’d been dating for a little more than a year, especially since I didn’t know the first thing about her other than where she worked and the fact that she was sarcastic and funny. I saw a couple of women come in and take up the last two seats at the bar, on the far end away from me. One looked to be in her sixties, with dark blond hair that was going gray, dressed modestly but still with some style, her hair in a long braid. The other one looked a bit younger, with reddish-brown hair that fell past her shoulders, and she wore a dress that fell down to her shins, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it.
Neither of them was Sabrina, so I kept nursing my beer for a while longer. I checked the time and saw that it was about ten minutes before I was supposed to meet the delivery girl. She should, I hoped, be there soon. As I looked around, hoping to spot Sabrina, I saw another woman come in—maybe in her late twenties, dressed to the nines, but in a very particular way: her black hair was in a tight bun, and her dress was all black, clinging to the curves of her body. She was actually pretty good-looking, with her pale skin and the cleavage at the front of her dress, and she grinned and hurried over to the two women who had come in before. Maybe she was one of their daughters?
I looked around again and saw the goth-looking girl approaching me, looking a little confused but otherwise perfectly confident. I smile politely at her, thinking maybe she recognized me from somewhere or had a question to ask me.
“Stefan?” I blinked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, I don’t remember you from yesterday, but you seem nice enough,” the woman said. “We can still do the date if you want.”
I stared at her in confusion for a moment and then caught movement in the corner of my eye. A woman came into Giordano’s, and I glanced in that direction, still trying to figure out what to say to this random—beautiful—goth woman who’d come up to me and seemed to know my name. When my gaze fell on the new person who entered, my heart started beating a bit faster.
“Sabrina!” I called out. It was her. Obviously not in her uniform—that would be crazy—but she looked amazing in the deep green cocktail dress she’d put on, and with her hair loose around her shoulders. She’d taken off a light coat as she’d come in, and her shoulders showed in the dress.
“What? I’m Sabrina,” the goth woman next to me said. She followed my gaze.
Sabrina hadn’t even looked in our direction but had made a beeline for the two women on the other end of the bar.
“What?” the goth woman’s words cut through my distraction, and I looked at her in confusion.
“I’m Sabrina. That is Emma,” the woman said, scowling slightly. “Good job, jerk.” She shook her head and turned around, walking back the way she’d come before I could even process what she’d said.
Sabrina met up with the group and started talking to all of them and if it weren’t for the fact that my friends would be arriving in less than half an hour, I would have just slunk out of the restaurant right then. All four women—including Emma—turned their heads and looked at me as Sabrina continued to speak. I felt like the world’s biggest creep. It went on for a good ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and I wondered just how low a guy could sink in a twenty-four-hour period.
And that feeling only intensified when Emma left the group of women at the end of the bar and hurried up to me. She must have done her makeup, I realized as she approached, looking agitated, her cheeks a little pink; it wasn’t that she looked different from the day before, but her features were sharper, and her eyes looked deeper. Her lips were a deep, inviting red.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Me? I thought I was meeting with you,” I said. “I thought we’d made an arrangement to meet up for you to pretend to be my girlfriend earlier.”
“What? No!” Emma shook her head, glaring at me a bit. “And why would you have made an arrangement with me and Sabrina? I already thought you were an ass, but now I’m pretty sure you’re a stupid ass.”
I looked around, aware that the people at the bar were beginning to take an interest in the drama unfolding between us. “Listen to me, okay?” I waited for Emma to nod. “I forgot the name you gave me yesterday, so I called the florist shop and they told me Sabrina is the one who does deliveries. I swear she sounded exactly like you over the phone, so how was I supposed to know it wasn’t you?”
Emma raised an eyebrow. “Well, for one, you could have remembered my name, if I made such an impression,” she said tartly.
I had to give her that.
“I’ll explain the reason why later. I promise it isn’t a crap reason. At least, I think it isn’t,” I told her. “I swear I thought I was talking to the beautiful delivery girl from yesterday. Sabrina agreed to go out with me, so I guess she thought I was someone she’d seen yesterday, too.” I shook my head. “How the hell did they confuse you for her?”
Emma’s scowl dissolved into sudden understanding. “Sabrina does most of our deliveries,” she explained. “We missed the order for your bouquet until after she’d left for the last run, so I took it since your place is closer to mine than anyone else’s.”
“Okay, that makes a little more sense,” I said. “Look, my friends are going to be here any minute. Can’t you just ditch your friends? Sabrina can take your place, since she’s obviously not going on the date with me.”
Before she could answer, my friends all came in with their girlfriends. I spotted Nate and his girl Jessica, then Mike and his girlfriend Monique, and finally Julian came in with Helena in tow. “That’s them,” I said, pointing as unobtrusively as possible so they wouldn’t see me. But the next moment, they spotted me at the bar and started moving in our direction. “Please, just play along, okay?”
Emma just stared at me as the three couples approached us.
“Looking good, Stefan,” Helena said with a smile. “This must be the famous girlfriend you haven’t let any of us meet yet?”
“I’m Mike,” my friend said, extending his hand to Emma.
“This is Emma, everyone,” I t
old them quickly. “Emma, this is Mike, Nate, Julian, Helena, Monique, and Jessica.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Emma said, shaking hands with my guys and accepting hugs from the women.
“We’re going to head in. You coming in or are you going to nurse that beer another hour?” Julian nodded to the almost-dead bottle on the bar next to me.
“We’ll follow you,” I told him.
The guys nodded, and the women all gave Emma a pleased smile. After another few moments, they started toward the hostess stand for the restaurant proper.
“We can wing this,” I said, finishing off my beer and dropping some cash on the bar for a tip. “Come on.” I started in the direction my friends had gone in, but Emma grabbed my arm, holding me back.
“No, we can’t wing this, and I’m not going to,” Emma said. “I didn’t agree to this.”
“I thought you had, or I would have already figured something out,” I told her.
“A lack of planning on your part doesn’t make an obligation on mine,” Emma countered with a little smile.
“Come on, please?” I held her gaze for a moment. “I’ll pay you. How much do you want? I can give you five hundred dollars to just pretend to be my girlfriend for the night.”
“Oh, no,” Emma said, laughing and shaking her head. “Not-uh. Tell them I had an emergency at the hospital I work at.” She snickered. “It’d be about as genuine as what you’ve already told them.”
“Emma, please just do me a solid and do this? I’ll buy you a great necklace to go with that dress and give you five hundred dollars. I’ll spend however much money you want at the flower shop. Please?”
Emma shook her head. “You’re on your own, Tex,” she said, patting my arm and then breaking away from me, heading for the group of women still sitting at the bar.
Chapter Nine
Emma
When Sabrina had come back to Nora and Ginger and me and told us about the guy from earlier, I’d looked over and seen that it was Stefan. As I walked back to the ladies from the shop, they were full of questions. “What’s going on?” “What happened?” “Who were all those people?”
“So, apparently, he couldn’t remember my name from yesterday,” I explained, “and he just introduced me to his friends as his girlfriend and then begged me to play along.”
“That was the deal he and I had made over the phone,” Sabrina said.
“He offered to pay me! Can you believe it?” Ginger and Nora both raised their eyebrows. “I told him no.”
“Are you crazy?”
I shrugged, but I could feel the heat in my cheeks. I was offended at the offer to be paid to pretend to be someone’s girlfriend—it felt a little too much like being asked to prostitute myself—but at the same time, I had to admit that his friends seemed like pretty decent people, and he had offered me five hundred dollars.
Ginger was shaking her head. “A gorgeous guy wants you to pretend to be his girlfriend for a night to cover up the fact that he’s single and even offers to pay you, and you say no?”
“He’s an ass!” I tried to keep my voice low. “Besides, I’m not an escort.”
“How much did he offer to pay? Because I might still do it,” Sabrina said.
I snorted. “Five hundred.” I shook my head again.
“That’s a lot of money for dinner,” Sabrina pointed out.
“That’s a lot of money for sex,” Ginger added. “And he’s not even asking for sex.”
“You two did look cute together,” Nora pointed out. “And if nothing else, it would be a fun story to remember when you get to be my age. What I wouldn’t give for someone to have offered to pay me to play their girlfriend for a night when I was still young.”
I rolled my eyes at Nora, but I had to admit that their arguments were getting through my skull.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Ginger asked. “We’ll be here, and if he turns out to be a total jerk, we’ll come bail you out.”
“And beat the crap out of him,” Sabrina added.
I snickered and looked around. Stefan was still standing where I’d left him, looking a bit crestfallen. I was sure he was trying to scramble to come up with an excuse for me. After all, he’d only just introduced me to his friends as his girlfriend; not even just as a girl he’d only met the day before, but a girlfriend of pretty long standing.
“Go on,” Nora told me. “We’ll watch out for you, and maybe you’ll even have fun.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Not to mention he is really, really good-looking.”
“Prime beef,” Ginger said with a grin. I sighed and thought about putting up more resistance but decided against it.
“Fine, I’ll go,” I said. “But don’t any of you leave, okay? And check in with me. If he turns out to be a jerk, I’m going to need an exit strategy.”
Chapter Ten
Stefan
I had just about reached the point of deciding to go with exactly the story Emma had given me about why she’d left when she approached me once more. My heart slowed and then sped up again at the sight of her, and I hoped that she was coming to tell me she’d changed her mind about my offer.
“Five hundred?” Emma crossed her arms over her chest and looked up at me with a faint little smile curving the corners of her lips. I had to admit that I would probably want to spend the rest of the evening with her whether or not the whole thing with my friends had been going on.
“And the necklace?” I smiled a bit back at her.
Emma shook her head. “Just the five hundred would be good,” she said. “This is going to be intense, isn’t it?”
I laughed at the deadpan sound of her voice. “I think we’re both smart enough to make it work,” I said, holding out my hand for her.
Emma looked at it for a moment and then uncrossed her arms, giving me her hand. I led her through the rest of the bar and toward the hostess stand and the rest of the restaurant.
“This is going to be interesting,” Emma told me. Mike, Nate, Julian and their girlfriends had all already gone to the table, but the hostess was happy to lead me and Emma over.
“We’ve been dating about a year,” I said quietly. “Got it?”
Emma nodded, and I could see the glimmer in her eyes, like I had the day before, after she’d gotten over her embarrassment. She was starting to see the humor in the situation.
“I am going to laugh my ass off at you, trying to pull this off—just a fair warning,” Emma told me.
“I would expect no less,” I said, as the hostess brought us to the table where my friends and their girls were. There were still two seats empty, and I interrupted the hostess’ move to pull out Emma’s chair for her. I’m lucky she decided to come out tonight, and that she decided to dress like this instead of some other way.
“Glad you could finally join us,” Monique said with a grin.
“We were just about to come looking for the two of you,” Mark added. “Jess thought you two had snuck off to have a little private Valentine’s celebration.”
“No, just talking about later tonight,” Emma said, a little too sweetly, and I had to stifle a laugh. Later tonight, I would be paying her, I assumed.
“Oh, big plans?”
I shrugged. “Nothing too big. I figured the dinner and drinks thing was a good celebration of the day,” I said.
Helena tsked at me, shaking her head. “Just when you finally get to showing signs of maybe settling down, you still don’t make the effort.” Helena looked at Emma sympathetically. “Obviously, you know by now he’s a good guy, but you need to keep a firm hand on the reins.”
I snorted.
“A guy like Stefan can’t be managed like that,” Julian told his girl. “I’m sure Emma knows how to handle him well enough.”
Emma’s cheeks heated, but she laughed it off. “I don’t know if I handle him,” Emma said. “But I definitely have a hand on him, as often as I can.”
That, I couldn’t help laughing at.
“That sounds about like I would expect from someone who’s been with him this long,” Mark said, nodding, as everyone else around the table laughed, too.
The waiter came, and we all had to quickly decide what we wanted from the prix fixe Valentine’s Day menu. We’d arranged it and all put in money in advance to secure the table for the group, so we had three choices each for four courses: appetizer, pasta, entree, and dessert. It was an Italian place, so all the options were, of course, Italian ones.
The waiter went around the table, giving Emma and me the time to go last, since we’d been the last to formally arrive.
“I think we need a bottle of champagne, don’t you, guys?” Mark looked around the table.
“Get this celebration really going?” Julian added with a smirk.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Monique agreed.
I glanced at Emma, and she didn’t seem against it, so I chimed in with my support as well.
When it came to my turn, I ordered the grilled shrimp, tonnarelli pasta with tomato-basil sauce, short ribs, and for my dessert, the cannoli.
“And for you, ma’am?”
Emma glanced at the menu one last time, and I wondered if she was going to throw a wrench into my plan for the night.
“I’d love the pear and goat cheese bruschetta to start,” Emma said. “And for my pasta, I’d like the squid ink agnolotti, and then the trout, and finally the panna cotta.” She smiled and handed over her menu.
“She’s daring,” Jessica told me. “I was looking at the squid ink pasta, but I chickened out.”
“That’s got the sea urchin roe in the sauce,” Julian remarked, raising an eyebrow. “Ever hear what Anthony Bourdain had to say about women who will eat sea urchin?”
Emma’s cheeks took on a reddish pink color at the tone of his voice, but she laughed. “That they go down? Well, I would hope that Stefan hasn’t revealed that about me one way or another.”
I couldn’t help myself: I busted out laughing.
Helena pinched Julian, obviously offended on Emma’s behalf. “We’re in this nice restaurant, and you’re needling that poor girl about whether or not she gives head,” Helena said, shaking her head in disapproval.
