"I'll give her two minutes," Emily said darkly.
Michael Devlin stood up. "Let me handle this," he said with a grin. Then, walking across the country club dining room to where Rina stood in earnest conversation with her two friends, he took her arm, saying, "Rina, my dear girl, we cannot order until you have joined us, and I for one am famished." Then he smiled at Carla Johnson and Tiffany Pietro d'Angelo. "I'm Michael Devlin, Emily's editor. I hope you won't mind if I steal Rina away from you." He turned Rina Seligmann away from the two women and escorted her across the floor.
"You got chutzpah, dearie," Rina murmured as they walked.
"Emily was getting upset. For some reason-and I cannot fathom why-she wants to keep our love affair a secret, Rina," Michael Devlin said softly. Reaching the table he seated her with a flourish, and then sat back down himself.
Rina chuckled. "I like him," she said to Emily. "You have my approval to do what you will with him, my child."
Emily burst out laughing. "That, sir, was ballsy," she told her lover.
"I agree with my wife, but don't I always agree with my wife?" Dr. Sam said. Then he turned to the waiter, who was now hovering. "I'll have the salmon with dill sauce, but I want rice, not those red potatoes you're always trying to palm off on me. Balsamic on the salad, and I want more than one of those blueberry muffins in the basket tonight."
While they ate an orchestra tuned up, and by the time they reached dessert people were beginning to dance. The music being played wasn't at all new, given the audience. There were foxtrots, waltzes, rumbas, and sambas. The Seligmanns got up to dance, and Emily smiled watching them.
"Aren't they cute?" she said. "He adores her, and she adores him."
"They're good people. I'm glad you have them," he answered.
"I'm lucky," Emily admitted. "Only in America would an Irish-Polish Catholic girl have Jewish parent figures. Sam's ancestors and my Dunham ancestors were among the founders of Egret Pointe. There has been a Dr. Seligmann here as long as anyone can remember."
"I don't think of the States as having such history," Michael Devlin admitted. "I am not going to ask you to dance, angel face, because if I do I will embarrass us both. I can't seem to hold you in my arms without getting a hard-on."
She blushed, but laughed softly at the same time. "What is going to happen with us, Devlin? This tutorial is getting out of control, isn't it?"
"I don't know," he said slowly. "I don't find that I am unhappy-rather the opposite. What about you?"
"I feel the same way," Emily said quietly. "Let's see how well we travel together. When are you going to Frankfurt?"
"Early October," he replied. "Want to meet in England on the tenth?"
"I'll make the reservations at the inn in Barrow tomorrow," she said. "How long do you want to visit with the Palmers?"
"I'd better fly back the fourteenth so I can be in the office that day," he said. "I don't want J.P. asking why I'm away so long. Since I'm going to smooth things out with Sava and Pruny, I'll call it business, and then say I wanted to check on my house as well, since I was there. Who will know you're away?"
"Rina and Essie," Emily replied. "I'll fly home the sixteenth, so Sava and I can have a little girl time together. I know I said three days, but I haven't been to England in a while, and I can call it a research trip."
"You two should get out there and dance," Rina said breathlessly as she returned to the table. "They're playing real music."
"We're enjoying drinking our wine and talking," Emily quickly spoke up. "Besides, we don't want your friends gossiping, do we?"
"They'll gossip anyway," Rina said with a grin. "That's what we do every Monday morning: eat doughnuts, drink coffee, and gossip. We've been doing it for years. Now that we're all working again we just meet earlier. And you have to admit that no one has seen you having dinner at the club with a handsome, eligible man in years, Emily." She turned to Michael Devlin. "And I know you're eligible, and quite the man," Rina told him. "Oh, Emily is very quiet, but I see how happy she is. It would be such a pity if you were gay. Every time I see those men on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy I want to weep. That Kyan! So handsome and sexy. Jai… now Jai I would take home and mother. He's adorable."
"I'd like Carson as a best friend," Emily said. "He makes me laugh, and he's so witty. But kind too."
The evening was coming to an end. Fewer couples were dancing now. The dining room was growing quieter. Dr. Sam insisted on picking up the check, and they all left together, passing by the now empty table where Rina's friends had been sitting. In the parking lot they kissed, then went to their separate cars. The Seligmanns' Lexus pulled away first. Michael Devlin's Healy followed.
"He's in love with her!" Rina said triumphantly.
"Stay out of it, Rina," her husband warned.
"I just want her happy, Sam. She deserves to be happy."
"Yes, she does," he agreed. "So stay out of it. They are two grown people, and they will find their own way. What's meant to be will be."
"She'd make the most beautiful bride." Rina sighed.
Sam Seligmann laughed as they drove along. "My wife, the matchmaker," he said fondly. "A daughter and two sons, and you're still not satisfied. Now I know what your ancestors did back in Russia, Rina."
She joined in laughing. "So I'm a Golda the matchmaker," she said. "Sue me!" Then she grew serious. "Do you think he'll marry her, Sam?"
"You said he was in love with Emily," her husband reasoned.
"But he's forty, and never married before," Rina fretted.
"Do you think she loves him?"
"You can't see it? Oh, yes, Sam! Emily loves Michael," Rina declared with great assurance. "He's her first love, and I suspect her last love. She isn't a girl to give her heart lightly. Oh, God! What if he doesn't want a wife?"
"What's meant to be will be," Dr. Sam repeated. "It's already written in the book of life, Rina, my darling. So stay out of it!" He turned their car onto Ansley Court.
The Healy turned into Emily's driveway. They walked together into the house.
"Are you hungry?" she asked him.
He pulled her into his arms. "Only for you." His mouth took possession of her, moving tenderly over her lips, tasting her with his tongue, playing with the tongue she offered him back. "Why are you always so delicious?" he murmured against her short strawberry-blond hair. "I can never get enough of you." His hands pushed up her silken skirt, caressing her hips, her buttocks. He backed her against the kitchen table, green eyes dancing mischievously. "We're going to do it on the table," he growled in her ear. "Right now, angel face!"
"Devlin!" She gasped as he lifted her up. She was quivering with her excitement. Tomorrow he would return to the city, and she wouldn't see him again for almost a week. Her buttocks felt the rough oak beneath them as he lowered her. His head was between her open legs, searching out the core of her, finding it, teasing it. "Oh, yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" she encouraged. Her nipples were hard and tingling. She slipped the straps of her dress off her shoulders and freed her breasts from the fabric. He was pulling her forward onto his cock. His mouth found her nipples. "Oh, God!" He was inside her, moving slowly at first, and then with a quicker and more intense rhythm. He suckled on one of her tits hungrily as he worked them to a fever pitch. Emily cried out as they came together in a blaze of heated passion.
What the hell is the matter with me? Michael Devlin asked himself as he pulled himself off of her. He loved her. Did he really want to go back into the city tomorrow morning and spend the day away from her? But what if it didn't last? What if it had just been a wild and wonderful fling that Emily had initiated to learn about sex? And that had been her-their- original intent. Maybe she was one of those women who prized their independence above everything else. He needed more time. He was too old to offer his heart to a woman, only to have her refuse him.