Listed: Volume II Read Online Free PDF Page A

several times.  He started to pour most
of the rest of the Chianti into her glass.
    Then
he noticed her lips were twitching again as she watched him.
    He
finally realized what she found so funny.
    “Damn
it,” he choked, jerking the bottle back, “You shouldn’t be drinking this!”
    Emily
burst into a delicious ripple of uninhibited hilarity. “I was wondering when
you’d notice,” she gasped after a minute, evidently trying to control her
laughter but failing miserably.
    “Why
didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, embarrassed and unsettled by such an obvious
gaffe. What the hell had he been thinking?
    “I
wanted wine with the lasagna,” she explained, her lovely face glowing with her
attempts to suppress her amusement.  “And you were so cute serving alcohol
to a minor.”
    Paul
glared at her, deciding she was having far too much fun with his mistake. But
his glare—which had intimidated many over the years—just made her laugh even
harder.
    He
couldn’t hold onto his resentment for long, not in the face of her transparent
amusement. He hadn’t heard her laugh so uninhibitedly since her father had died
two years ago, not even when she’d been skinny-dipping in the lake.
    She
must have seen his face softening because she looked at him with something warm
and almost fond in her eyes. “After all, I had champagne on our wedding day, so
it’s not entirely unprecedented.”
    “But
that was in France,” he muttered. “Where it wasn’t illegal.”
    He’d
started drinking when he was fourteen, and it had been a lot more than a glass
of wine with dinner.
    Emily
was different, though.
    She
burst into another ripple of laughter and reached over to pat his hand.
“Seriously, Paul. How much chance do you think there is that I’ll take up
binge-drinking or fall into a lifetime of alcoholism?”
    Her
voice was light, almost teasing, but her words reminded him of a reality that
he’d let slip from his mind for the last hour. He felt a heavy sinking in his
gut as he recalled that she would never reach legal drinking age at all.
    Emily
met his eyes, and her laughter transformed into something poignant and aching.
“Thank you, Paul,” she murmured. “The wine, the whole meal was really…special
to me.”
    He
nodded, not having any idea what he should say. He just picked up the Chianti
bottle and split what remained between their two glasses.
    Apparently,
Emily didn’t need him to say anything. They sat in silence, looking at the
sunset, until the wine was gone.
    *
* *
    Paul tried to work again
after dinner, but he kept getting distracted. Eventually, he gave up on work
completely. At nine-thirty he left his office with several sheets of printed
paper.
    He
wandered the apartment until he found Emily in the media room.
    She
was curled up in a corner of the sofa, covered with a cashmere throw, and she
was wearing pale blue pajama pants and a little white camisole with lacy
straps, one of which was slipping down her shoulder.
    She
smiled when she saw him. “I should be reading Shakespeare, but I gave up.”
    Paul
glanced at the television screen and recognized Casablanca . She was only
a few minutes into it.
    “I’ve
never seen it,” she explained. “It’s not on my list, but it seems like
something you should see.”
    He
sat down next to her on the couch. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen Casablanca .”
    “So
says the ultimate patrician. Clearly, I’ve lived a very plebian life.”
    Her
tone was wry, but he didn’t like the sentiment, and he shot her a disapproving
look.
    “What
do you have there?” she asked, gesturing toward the papers in his hand.
    “See
for yourself." He handed them to her with a pleased smile, looking forward
to her reaction.
    He
wasn’t disappointed. It took a minute for Emily to scan over them, but then she
gave a little squeal of excitement. “We can go to Egypt to see the Pyramids? So
soon?”
    He
nodded and was about to respond, but then Emily threw herself at him