“So, what is it you do, Connor?” she asked, finally coming up with some safe ground she could talk to him on.
“I manage strategy and M&A, mergers and acquisitions, for a liquor distributor.”
“Ah,” she said. “Mass market quantities then?”
His eyes narrowed as he turned to face her. “Was that scorn I heard?”
Emerson bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to be so…forthright. “No. Honestly. There’s certainly room in the market for artisan and mass products with the inevitable quality and quantity tradeoffs.”
Connor laughed. “Would you like to borrow my spade so you can dig that hole a little deeper?”
Emerson put her palm to her face. “I think that maybe I should stop trying to talk to you.”
He reached for her wrist and playfully pulled her hand away, and Emerson was certain he could feel her elevated pulse. When he let go to reach for his silverware, she was a highly contradictory mix of relieved and disappointed.
“No, please. I find you thoroughly entertaining.” They both took a bite of their food. “You were right,” he said. “Overcooked chicken and what I’m guessing is a mediocre house white.”
Emerson noticed the swift change of subject but decided not to push further. It wasn’t like Dyer’s gin needed distribution help right now, and she hadn’t meant to sound so darn snooty about it. She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “Wait until dessert…it’ll be dry chocolate brownie with melty ice cream on top, I’ll bet.”
Connor glanced at her. There was something about his gaze that caused her heart to flip-flop. “You sound almost excited.”
“Are you kidding? It’s second on my crap-but-delicious food list.”
Connor laughed. “You have a crap-but-delicious food list?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” Unable to resist, she leaned a little closer. “You know, food that you can get great quality of, but somehow the lower quality food tastes just as good?” She knew that she should quite possibly be smooth-talking the other people at the table, but she glanced around quickly to find them either eating or having private conversations.
“I’m intrigued, Em. Tell me more.”
“It’s Emerson. Please don’t shorten it.”
“My apologies.”
She paused and took a sip of wine. A shortened name was a sign of friendship, occasionally affection. The idea of Connor using her name in that manner was more than she wanted to deal with. Plus, the sound of it rolling off his tongue made her shiver in the best of ways, something she really should work on suppressing.
“So, my friend prefers the giant dollar store white chocolate Easter rabbits to a Belgian chocolate egg, for example. It’s packed with stuff that’s borderline fit for human consumption, but she loves it anyway.”
Connor leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, and, sweet baby Jesus, his arms bulged. “That’s gross.”
Emerson took a sip of wine and noticed his had gone untouched. She admired his discipline. “But that’s only because you look like a guy who probably meal plans with sweet potatoes every Sunday and counts your macros. The rest of us humans like to combine the luxurious with the glutinous…the five stars with the…well, whatever the opposite of a fancy restaurant is.”
“Have you been checking me out, Emerson?”
Gah. She had. “It would be hard not to,” she replied truthfully.
Connor’s laughter was rich and deep. “Do you always speak this bluntly?”
Did she? Or was it just him making her ramble? She tried to remember the asshole on the airplane. The guy who had glared at her more than once. The guy who had accused her of being a lush over one teeny-tiny measure of wine. Perhaps he’d been having a bad day. Lord knew she’d had enough of them the last three months.
“You seem to bring out the worst in me,” she admitted honestly.
Connor unfolded his arms, and she couldn’t help but follow the movement. He placed his hand on her knee beneath the table and squeezed it gently before removing it. “Apparently, you do the same to me. So, what’s number one on your list?”
She could still feel the imprint of his warmth on her skin, making it hard to focus on the question. “I was once in a mall in Cleveland, and I had the most amazing food court General Tso’s Chicken. One day, I’m going back to see if it tastes as good as I remember it.”
Laughter burst from Connor. “You want to revisit a Chinese stall in a mall?”
“I do. Don’t tell me there’s no food you crave. Like, ever done a midnight run for a dirty burger?”
Connor appeared to think for a moment. “Swim meet I went to in Toronto once. Got me hooked on shawarma until I realized I’d put on four pounds over the course of the four-day event.”
This time it was her turn to laugh. Connor Finch looked as though he carried the same percent body fat as a coat hanger. She couldn’t imagine him splurging and was proven right when the dry chocolate brownie with melty ice cream came out and he lifted a hand to signal to the server that he wasn’t having any.
As dessert came to an end, the awarding of the medals began, starting with tequila. Two bronze medals, two silver medals, and one gold were handed out to enthusiastic recipients. The same happened for whiskey, only this time a double gold was issued, meaning every judge in the panel had awarded the whiskey a gold medal. Emerson made a note in her phone to contact the distillery and congratulate them.
Then it came to gin.
“Good luck,” Connor whispered in her ear, and for a moment she was struck with the question of how he knew this was the category she had entered. She racked her brain to recall if she’d told him.
But Dyer’s was reasonably well known in Denver, and if that was where Connor actually lived rather than just where he’d caught the plane, he might have heard of the family and put two and two together.
She ran her tongue nervously along her lower lip, wishing she’d checked that there were no bits in her teeth from dinner.
“And the bronze medals go to…”
Emerson paid attention, her heart raced, and her vision began to blur. When they didn’t call out Dyer’s name, she experienced a simultaneous rush of hope that they might get a silver medal and a downpour of reality that it was unlikely.
“And the silver medals go to…”
There was a hope the gin was good enough for silver. The bronze medals had been awarded in alphabetical order, and when Ginevere Distilleries won silver, disappointment began to take root.
The disappointment flourished and bloomed when the gold medals were announced. Only two of them, and neither were Dyer’s. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t even matter. But winning one would have pepped up the morale of everyone working their butts off to keep the distillery afloat. Now she had to go back to work and tell everyone they didn’t win a medal, and the thought was depressing.
The enjoyment she’d felt at the start of the night, from chatting with Connor, began to drain from her bones, leaving her tired and even more resentful that she’d have to make her way up to her room in the heels she’d borrowed from Olivia.
It was hard to admit that it was pure ego preventing her from looking in Connor’s direction. The last thing she needed was commiseration from a man she’d just met. Even though she’d bet he’d dish out nice sympathy. Perhaps he’d buy her a drink and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. They could sit close on those bar stools, arm grazing arm, a hand placed on a thigh. She’d give him an hour before she went back to her room to lick her wounds.