Page 70 of Not Part of the Plan
Her head was still spinning from last night, from this afternoon. Everything about Niko pushed her off balance. The way he’d made her feel in bed—and then again in her office—was so intense, she needed time to adjust, to get used to it. She’d played it cool when he showed up in her office, but on the inside, adrenaline was thrumming through her veins the second she’d looked at him and remembered how it felt to have him over her, under her, in her.
Then he’d thrown her again with his “see where we end up” suggestion. She must have been temporarily insane to have agreed to something that ridiculous. They couldn’t possibly have a future together. Why waste the time?
She looked across the table at him and when his dark gaze met hers she rememberedexactlywhy it was worth wasting the time. He was so effortlessly gorgeous, so incredibly talented, and still so interested in her. While their friendship had started as a joke, Niko never made her feel like he didn’t value the time he spent with her.
A heated debate broke out over appetizers. Joey and Caleb wanted wings while Jax and Reva were staunchly in favor of the beer-battered onion rings. “Why can’t we get both?” Joey grumbled.
“Because we’re feeding kids, and we’ll stunt their growth or give them high cholesterol if we feed them like this,” Jax argued.
“Shit.” Joey looked down at Caleb. “Sorry. Crap.”
“It’s okay. Our mom says ‘shit’ all the time.” Caleb patted her hand.
“We’re getting both appetizers,” Joey decided. “But just this once,” she added sternly.
Reva’s lips quirked again, and Emma thought that maybe miracles did happen.
She looked over at Niko and smiled when he winked at her.
“So you two, huh?” Jax grinned from the head of the table.
Emma shot Joey an accusing look.
“What?” Joey shrugged. “You didn’t swear me to secrecy. He’s kinda my husband. We have to talk about stuff.”
Emma took a deep breath. “Yes, we’re… dating.”
“How do you think the Beautification Committee’s going to handle this?” Jax asked.
“We’re not even a blip on their radar,” Emma paraphrased Elvira. “I’m sure they’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
Joey snorted. “Don’t be too quick to believe everything you hear,” she warned.
“The Beautification Committee has better things to do with their time than worry about us,” Emma argued.
“You’d think, but no,” Jax put in.
The appetizers arrived and were divvied up and the conversation turned to how life at the Pierces’ was going with two new additions.
“My commute’s a lot shorter,” Reva joked.
Niko grinned approvingly at her humor, and the girl flushed to her roots. Emma bit her lip and hid her smile. Nikolai Vulkov’s charm had quite the effect on women of all ages.
They ate and talked and laughed and the normalness of it all had Emma hiding her panic and excusing herself under the guise of brewery business. She ducked into the kitchen and checked up on Julio who was training a new cook. Her dishwasher, Shane, waved cheerily from his spotless workstation.
“I like the apron tonight, Shane,” Emma winked at him and made him laugh. She’d hired Shane through a nonprofit program that paired workers with disabilities and traumatic brain injuries with local employers. He’d been her favorite hire to date, and everyone on the staff loved him. Shane’s claim to fame was his rotating wardrobe of colorful aprons. Tonight’s was a Blue Moon original in flaming tie-dye colors.
She took the kitchen’s back stairs down a flight to the keg room. She took her time hefting each tapped keg to make sure it would last the night. Cheryl, the head bartender, ruled the keg organization with an iron fist, and Emma was pleased to see everything was in order after this week’s kegging of the new lager.
She took a moment to sit and breathe. Sitting across the table from Nikolai felt too… right. If she was going to make this “see where things go” relationship work, she had to forget about the end game and focus on the now. This was painfully new to her. She was nothing without her goals and long-term projections. At one point, she’d thought that Mason was her future, yet when she’d broken things off, she hadn’t felt overly disappointed. The fact of the matter was, she just hadn’t felt much at all besides secure when it came to Mason and their future.
There was a hell of a lot more emotions that came to mind when she was with Nikolai. Lust, need, anxiety, terror.
If she was going to enjoy this, she needed to let go of the what-ifs temporarily. Eventually, Niko would move back to the city and pick up his life where he left off, if the photos today were any indication. And she not only needed to be okay with that. She needed to enjoy the time they had together.
Pep talk completed, Emma took a rallying breath and stood, straightening her skirt, and marched back upstairs. She handled a few voids on the POS, gave a birthday discount, and busted Sunny and Rupert’s make-out session in the supply closet before returning to the table.
Niko eyed her speculatively as she approached, and she winked. She could do this. She could be fun. Temporarily.
