evening, her planned thank-you meal with Dylan felt more like a date. Which was crazy. Though of course she’d had to dress up a bit for it; she couldn’t just go out in her usual black trousers and a zany top.
And it felt even more like a date when the taxi arrived and her mother kissed them both goodbye at the door. ‘Don’t worry, Tyler’s in safe hands—just go out and enjoy yourselves. And don’t hurry back.’
Emmy felt almost shy with him, and she didn’t manage to make any small talk in the taxi. Neither did he, she noticed. Was it because he was a geek with no social skills, or was it because he felt the same kind of awkwardness that she did? The same kind of awareness?
‘Nice choice,’ Dylan said approvingly when they reached the small Italian restaurant she’d booked. ‘And I’m buying champagne. No arguments from you.’
Even though that was pretty much negating the point of the evening, it also broke the ice, and Emmy grinned. ‘When have you known me argue with you, Dylan?’ she teased.
He laughed back. ‘Not for a few weeks, I admit.’
‘I really appreciate your support over the article.’
‘You would’ve done the same for me,’ he pointed out.
‘Well, yes. But it’s still appreciated. You put yourself out.’
The waiter ushered them to their table, and the awkwardness returned. Emmy didn’t have a clue what to say to Dylan. This was ridiculously like a first date, where you knew hardly anything about each other. She’d lived with him for weeks now and knew a fair bit about what made him tick—what brightened his day, and what he needed before he could be human first thing in the morning—but at the same time he was still virtually a stranger. He hadn’t opened up to her about anything emotional. She knew nothing about his childhood or why his marriage broke up or what he really wanted out of life. He kept himself closed off. They were partners of a sort, stand-in parents to their godchild; and yet at the same time they weren’t partners at all.
The champagne arrived and Dylan lifted his glass in a toast. ‘To you, and every success in that magazine.’
‘Thank you.’ She lifted her own glass. ‘To you, and thanks for—well, being there for me.’
‘Any time.’
Given that Dylan didn’t have a clue how to be nice to people for the sake of it, she knew he meant it, and it made her feel warm inside.
‘It was good of your mum to babysit. She’s really nice,’ Dylan said.
Was she imagining things, or did he sound wistful? ‘Isn’t yours?’ she asked, before she could stop herself.
‘She travels a lot.’
Which told her precisely nothing. She could see that Dylan was busy putting up metaphorical barbed-wire fences with ‘keep out’ notices stuck to them, so she stuck with the safer topic. ‘You’re right, my mum’s really nice. I’m lucky because she’s always been really supportive.’ She sighed. ‘I just wish I could find someone for her who deserves her.’
Dylan raised an eyebrow. ‘Your mum’s single?’
She nodded. ‘I nag her into dating sometimes. So does her best friend, but she always turns down a second date with whoever it is, or agrees they’d be better off as just friends. I guess she’s never found anyone she really trusts.’
He sat and waited, and eventually Emmy found herself telling him the rest of it. ‘My father pretty much broke her heart. While they were married, he had a lot of affairs. Now I’m older, I can see that it chipped away at her confidence every time she found out he was seeing someone.’ Just as her own disastrous relationships had chipped away at her confidence, one by one. Every man who’d wanted to change something about her—and it had been a different thing, each time, until in the end the only thing she knew she was good at was her work.
She bit her lip. ‘The worst thing is, Mum always wanted more children after me but couldn’t have them. He refused to consider adoption or fostering. And then his current woman found out she was pregnant, and he left us for her. Mum felt she’d failed.’
* * *
Dylan knew exactly how it felt when your marriage failed and you were pretty sure it was all your fault. First-hand. And it wasn’t a good feeling. ‘It wasn’t your mum’s fault,’ he said. ‘I might be talking out of line, here, but sounds to me as if your dad was incredibly selfish.’ Just like his mother. He knew how that felt, too, realising that you were way down someone’s list of priorities. The amount of times he’d come home from school and let himself into a cold, empty house, and there was a note propped on the kitchen table telling him to go to his grandparents’ house because they’d be looking after him for a few days. Days that stretched into weeks.
‘My dad was incredibly selfish. He probably still is.’
‘Probably?’ Dylan was surprised. ‘Don’t you see him?’
‘He didn’t stay in touch with us, and for years I thought it was my fault that my parents split up. It was only later, when I’d left university and Mum told me what really went on when I was young, that I realised he was the one with the problem.’
And now Dylan understood why she’d accused him of breaking up his marriage because of an affair. She’d been caught in the fallout from her father’s affairs, and it clearly still hurt.
She blew out a breath. ‘I think he decided not to see me because whenever he did see me it reminded him of my mum, and that made him start to feel guilty about the way he treated her.’
‘So is that why you’re single? Because you don’t trust men?’ And that would certainly explain Spiky Emmy. It was clearly a defence mechanism, and it had definitely worked with him. He’d taken her at face value.
She frowned. ‘Not quite. I just have a habit of picking the wrong ones. Men who want to change me—everything from the way I dress, to what I do for a living. Nothing about me is right.’
At one point Dylan would’ve wanted Emmy to change—but now he knew her better and he understood what made her tick. And he knew that she wasn’t the woman he’d thought she was. ‘You’re fine as you are. There’s nothing wrong with what you do for a living. Or how you dress.’
‘I wasn’t fishing for compliments.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m tired of dating men who can’t see me for who I am or accept me for that. I’m tired of dating men who are all sweetness and light for a couple of weeks, then start making little “helpful” suggestions. All of which mean me changing to fit their expectations, rather than them looking at their expectations and maybe changing them.’ She sighed. ‘It’s not that I think I’m perfect. Of course I’m not. I’m like everyone else, with good points and bad. I just wanted a partner who understands who I am and is OK with that.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘you should’ve got Ally to vet your dates before you went out with them.’
‘I wish I had.’ She sighed. ‘The last one...’ She grimaced and shook her head. ‘No, I really don’t want to talk about him. But he was definitely my biggest mistake. And he was my last mistake, too. So if you’re worrying that I’m going to be flighty and disappear off with the first man who bats his eyelashes at me, leaving you to
