“What?” Liam asked.
“Nothing. It’s going to sound bad.”
“Em, it’s just you and me talking,” he said. “You look flustered. You look ready to cry.”
I swallowed hard. “This place isn’t as successful as it looks, okay? It’s a pain to keep going.”
“What does that have to do with Miranda?” Liam asked.
“She suggested I… sleep with Jeff?”
“What?” Liam growled. “Why?”
“She had a passing thought to get him to buy the building,” I said. “Then I could get out of my lease with her without hurting myself, her or our friendship and all that…”
“Wait a second,” Liam said. “She said that?”
“I shouldn’t have repeated it,” I said. I rubbed my forehead. “Can we go back to last night?”
Liam showed me his left wrist. “This still hurts.”
I smiled. “I bet.”
“Em, I’m sorry about everything here,” he said. “I had no idea. Is there anything else going on?”
“It’s not your burden, Liam. I’m sorry for bringing it up. This is supposed to be a happy time. I’m supposed to be helping you with… you know…”
Your wedding.
I couldn’t say the words.
“Well, since you brought it up,” Liam said. “And since I came to defend your honor. I think you owe me one.”
“Ut-oh.”
“No, it’s not bad,” Liam said. “We just have to go try some food.”
“When?”
“Whenever you close this place up,” he said. “I have two tickets to visit the restaurant. They do the catering. So we get to sit there and eat like crazy and pick out what we like and don’t like.”
“So I get to act like a food snob?”
“I hope so,” Liam said.
“Can we keep things tame today?” I asked. “No busted pipes, smoke alarms going off, or trips to the hospital?”
Liam thought about it for a few seconds. “I don’t know, Em, that’s a long list of do nots. I’ll try my best.”
“That’s all I could ever ask for.”
I stood up and Liam’s eyes followed me.
He smiled.
I smiled back.
See… this was what it was supposed to be… just friends laughing, talking, and having a good time.
Chapter Nineteen
Liam
“Is this kind of wrong?” Emily asked as the car turned down what looked like a long and haunted kind of road.
There were some kind of fruit trees lined up on each side of the road. Old, hand painted wooden signs declared peaches, plums, apples, and pears were all ahead.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I took my eyes off the signs and back on Emily.
We sat in the backseat of the car, lots of space between us, and we had been just mindlessly chatting about anything and everything.
“This,” she said. “I’m, what, pretending to be your fiancée?”
“No,” I said. “We’re just sampling food.”
“For free.”
“Yes.”
“Under the idea that I’m your fiancée,” she said.
“Do you want me to pay for the tickets?” I asked.
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “It’s just…”
“If you want to leave, we can,” I said.
Just as I said that, the trees ended and the land opened up to a view that made Emily gasp.
That gasp was why I picked this place myself.
It was called Paragen’s. A little bit of a hidden gem because the owner - Glen - started out with a catering business that exploded. But this…
“This is unbelievable, Liam,” Emily said. “Has Miranda seen this yet?”
“Nope,” I said. “Just me. I met with Glen. He owns everything up here. He has these weekly massive dinners. You sit outside and eat all you want and watch the sun set. I think he does it because his band plays too. He’s had a wild life.”
“I’d love to hear all about it.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Of course. Why?”
I smiled. “No reason.”
I hated to think what I thought right then, but truthfully I couldn’t remember the last time I was able to geek out a little about something that caught my attention that didn’t involve money, legal stuff, or anything important.
“Well, okay,” I said. “Glen started a band and they couldn’t make it. So he started working for this catering company. The guy that owned it sold the business and then it all shut down. Glen lost his job and showed up right here…” I pointed. “That main house was the house the guy owned. Glen confronted the guy about not selling the catering business to him. So the guy lent Glen the money to start his own catering business. That’s where Paragen’s started.”
“Wait,” Emily said. “This is Paragen’s?”
“Yeah,” I said with a laugh.
The car came to a stop.
I leaned forward and told the driver to hang around or be back in a few hours.
I slipped him some cash so if he left he could get a bite to eat before coming back.
Emily was already out of the car, leaving me annoyed that I didn’t get the chance to open the door for her.
“Liam, I don’t even care what the food tastes like,” Emily said. “This is… breathtaking.”
“Well, I’m just here for the food,” I said. “This isn’t exactly the kind of place Miranda wants to get married at.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.”
She shook her head for a second.
“So what do we do now?” Emily asked.
“We sit down and eat,” I said.
“And we’re supposed to be engaged?”
“I don’t think it really matters,” I said. “Nobody is going to be announcing it.”
“Okay. I was going to say, I don’t have a ring…”
I cleared my throat. “Well, now that you brought it up.”
“What?”
I reached into my pocket. I took out a small diamond ring and showed it to Emily. “It’s nothing fancy. But if you were thinking about it…”
Emily stuck her left hand out and smiled. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.”
I slipped the diamond ring on Emily’s left ring finger…
The wine was the best wine I ever had.
And I wasn’t a wine drinker.
Of course Glen had a deal with a local vineyard.
Everything he did was local.
We were treated like a king and queen.
The tickets Glen gave me were signed by him, which meant the staff knew who we were. That we weren’t just there for a night out. There was a big invoice coming my way if I decided to go with Glen’s business. Which I knew I was going to choose no matter what.
“What are you thinking, Em?” I asked.
She put her right hand over her mouth as she chewed and swallowed a bite of mushroom risotto.