Alex was well aware that his own taste was classic minimalist bachelor. A sleek black sofa, basic coffee table, a bar-height dining table for two. He kept the lighting low. Liked the way it accentuated the city lights.

Emma ran a finger over the dark wood of his sideboard as she stepped all the way into the room. “Very…you.”

“You know what I like about you, Emma? How you can manage to put so much insult into just two words.”

She turned to face him, her only response a wink.

“Drink?” he asked.

“Yes, please. I had just poured myself a glass when I got derailed by a visitor.”

“Oh, yeah?” He pulled the cork off a bottle of open red on the counter and reached for two glasses.

“Yep.”

Her voice never lost its perfectly civil edge. Neither did his.

But when she announced that it was Danielle who had stopped by, Alex might have faltered while pouring the wine. Just for a half second.

“My girlfriend came to see you,” he said, handing her the glass.

“Ex-girlfriend from the way I heard it,” Emma said, lifting her eyebrows as she took a sip of wine.

He took a sip of his own wine and watched her. “So that’s the real reason you’re here. Rub salt in the wound?”

“Honestly?” she swirled her glass and watched the wine. “Yes. I had a…shall we say a bit of pique about the way you forced a story on me via email. Thought this seemed like a good chance to get back at you.”

“Yeah, you’re really the picture of a woman bent on vengeance,” he said, taking in the haughty tilt of her chin and the coolness in her eyes.

Emma shrugged. “The revenge urged passed. Being petty wasn’t worth the effort.”

Alex was surprised by how much her disinterest bothered him. Just once, he wanted her to get riled. Just once he wanted to know how she felt…if she felt.

But even as he longed to shake her—to tell her to get mad or frustrated or sad about anything—he couldn’t do so without being entirely hypocritical.

Because, strangely enough, he suspected that he and Emma understood each other better than anyone else. They’d both spent an extraordinary amount of their energy keeping messy emotions at bay.

“Danielle wanted Benedict Wade’s phone number,” Emma said.

That made him choke on his wine. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely immune. He did have some pride, after all. “What?”

Emma nodded. “You did see what went on between them that night when he and I went on our date, right?”

“Damn,” Alex muttered. “I guess I thought it was odd, but I thought it was just a fleeting thing. What kind of woman leaves a stable relationship because of sexy eye contact with a stranger?”

“The smart ones,” Emma said, tapping her fingernails against her glass. “Trust me, you have no idea how rare it is to feel that kind of tug toward another person.”

“That why you have twelve exes to talk about in your next article?”

“Okay, about that,” she said pointing a finger at him. “If we do this story, I do it my way. You publish it as I write it. No interference, no power plays as my temporary boss, and no getting weird because of our personal history.”

“But you’ll write it?” he asked.

“Of course. If I don’t write it, won’t you manage to convince yourself that I’m trying to hide something?”

He watched her over his glass. “Trust me, Em, you’ve made it perfectly clear that I’m all but dead to you.”

She tilted her head. “Mutual, though, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” he replied. Because he had to.

Their eyes held for a second too long, and suddenly he became all too aware that for the first time in years, he and Emma Sinclair were in the same room. Alone.

Making matters worse, he was recently single, she was available, as far as he knew, and between the wine and the dim lighting and the quiet jazz, the mood was…arresting.

No. The woman was arresting.

But that wasn’t what was eating at him. What burned at the corners of his consciousness was the realization that this could have been their path. Would have been their path had they not been two foolish kids who’d let pride and secrets rip them apart.

He’d used to dream about this. In college, when his life had mostly been a whirlwind of media attention for his soccer career and parties, he’d dreamed about what would happen after, when it was just the two of them, and he could just be.

Emma had been his place of calm. The one who’d centered him.

Right up until the point she’d left him.

She took another sip of her wine. “I should be going. You hardly look devastated over your breakup, so there go all of my plans of making you cry yourself to sleep.”

He smiled. “I liked Danielle.”

“But?” she said, lifting her eyebrows.

“You really want to hear this?” he asked.

“Cassidy, give me a break. You’re going to be reading about twelve of my exes. I think I can handle hearing about one of yours.”

“Well,” he said, topping off their glasses, “I could imagine Danielle in my life just fine. She was smart. Pretty. Sweet.”

“But…”

He shrugged. “It was also pretty damn easy to picture my life without her. In fact, the thought of her not being there didn’t cause so much as a pang. I don’t think it’s supposed to work that way.”