“Okay,” he pulled a small plastic box off the top of the bench. “I’ll save you some things for afterwards.”
“Oh,” Emily’s cheeks flushed pink. “You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s no trouble.” He insisted. “We always make more than they need.”
She bit down on her lip. “If you’re sure…”
“Of course.”
Emboldened by the chef’s kindness, she lingered a moment. “What is this party for, anyway?”
“It’s a charity fundraiser for the children’s hospital in Kensington.”
“Really?” Emily’s expression showed her surprise.
“It doesn’t seem like it?”
Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug. “Not really.”
“What does it seem like?”
“A lot of very attractive, expensive people talking about nothing.”
The chef laughed. “You don’t approve.”
“Oh, no, no.” She shook her head. “I didn’t mean that.”
“It cost four hundred quid just to get in the door.”
Emily almost dropped the tray. “Four hundred … pounds?”
The chef laughed. “Hardly even small change to this group.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She thought of the bill in her handbag. It was only a fraction of that amount and she was going to lose sleep over how to pay it. How the other half lived, she thought with a small frown. “I’d better take these out.”
“We’ll be pausing service soon. There’s a speech and then we’ll switch to dessert.”
“Okay.” She smiled. “Thanks
for making this so easy for me.”
“You’re a natural.”
She looked down at the delicious crab cakes and was suddenly glad that the chef had put some aside for her. They did look delicious. She gravitated to a couple first, and then on to another group. A very tall, reed thin blonde woman was at the centre. She had lips that looked surgically enhanced and a body to die for. There was another woman beside her, and then a man with glasses and a pale pink tie. Emily’s eyes drifted past him, to the fourth man in the group, and she had to suck in a deep breath to stop from visibly reacting.
Because the fourth member of their ensemble was the most handsome man she’d ever seen in real life. Or on the screen.
He was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen in the flesh. Like a movie star come to life, but so much better.
A beautiful dark grey suit hugged his muscular frame - all six and a half foot of it. His skin was dark brown. His cheekbones were slashed out of stone, and his eyes glimmered like black diamonds in his face. His lips were wide, his mouth intelligently curved. His chin, square and strong, had a brush of stubble across it.
Emily had never been in love. She’d never even kissed a boy, unless you counted the incredibly inept experimenting she and a friend had engaged in during her sixteenth birthday party. She’d never been in love, but Emily had read a lot of books on the subject, and she was pretty darn sure that the way her heart was hammering in her chest had something to do with love at first sight.
The very idea made her blood simmer and her cheeks heat unbearably. Her big blue eyes didn’t dare meet his. She focussed instead on the blonde in the centre of the group. “Crab cake?” She murmured quietly, suddenly wanting to get as far away from the very beautiful man as possible.
“Are they paleo?” The slim blonde enquired, as though anything else would be an offense.
Emily shook her head. “Paleo?” She frowned. What the heck was paleo?