Page 28 of A Fool's Game

To his credit, the guy actually looks pretty relieved. I thought he might try to play some kind of sympathy card with Gem, tell her what a dick I am at work, but it seems he’s smart enough to know how our dynamic in the kitchen would make him look like a weak little shit.

Which I’m officially starting to doubt he actually is.

“Yeah, of course,” she says quickly. “No work talk.”

“I’ve gotta be honest, this feels like some kind of interview,” Ainsley says, rolling up a bite on his fork and pushing it into his mouth.

I look away from that mouth and try to focus on my own plate.

“No, no. Just dinner,” Gem says, but you’d be a damn fool to believe her.

No one does.

“Good,” Ainsley says anyway. “I’m not sure that guy is who I'd want interviewing me.”

He pins me with another of those intense stares and my mind actually stumbles for a moment, taken completely off guard by the surprise of his attack after I just decided he was surrendering.

Gem starts to answer but I recover and get there first. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

He holds my gaze, neither of us willing to be the first to look away.

“Is there something I need to know?” Gem asks, hand sliding over to rest on my thigh.

I take the win of her affection and drop my gaze to her. “Everything’s fine.”

She narrows her eyes at me, and I know I’m going to hear about this later.

“Is this something you two do often?” Ainsley’s voice cuts into our little moment, and I feel both relieved and annoyed. “Bringing people in like this?”

“No,” I tell him honestly, at the same time Gem says, “Yes.”

My head turns sharply back to her in time to watch her shake her head.

“I mean,” she starts, twirling her fork like she’s got something to be nervous about. It’s uncharacteristic and concerning. This guy has her all out of sorts. “We’ve always known that we wanted our family to be bigger. But we’ve never seriously considered…”

She trails off and glances at me as if I'm going to take up the helm of explaining to this near stranger how the cards told her he was part of our destiny.

I don’t say anything, and the table falls into a far less comfortable silence.

“But this is just dinner,” Gem says finally.

“So I'm not going to end up naked and chained in a dungeon somewhere in this freaky house?” he says, and it’s clear he’s only partially joking.

“No,” she says firmly. “No dungeons.”

I leave them alone to chat about their shared childhood history and clear the table. The quiet of the kitchen and thewarm water of the dishes calms me down enough to think more clearly.

There’s something here. With Ainsley. It’s making Gem act crazy, and it’s making me nervous.

She wasn’t lying before that there were others. We’ve had plenty of memorable nights with a third person in our bed, but that’s all it was. A person in our bed.

This is different.

Last night when she pulled the Page of Cups, I’d searched every damn book I could find on her shelves to find one that would give me the interpretation I needed to say no to this, but none of them did. They all proclaimed a fair-haired man would waltz into our lives, urging us to stay open to new relationships, to take risks for love. When she tapped her short pink fingernail on the cup in the figure’s hand, where a little fish peeked out, I know she was reminding me without words about their serendipitous fish and chips Christmas night.

And I knew I was fucked.

It’s true we’ve always wanted a bigger family. We’ve always been open to growing our relationship to include the last puzzle piece we both feel is missing.

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