Page 39 of The Love Wager

“So what’s good, then?” she asked, eyeballing the appetizers. “What was your favorite dish?”

“The lamb with mushroom risotto,” he said, and Hallie realized that his college experience had been vastly different from her own Top Ramen version. “You have to try it.”

Shit.Hallie was a picky eater. Picky as in most third graders had a broader palate than her own. She liked burgers and chicken strips and the occasional spaghetti, but lamb? Withmushroomsin the risotto? No, no thank you. But since she’d asked his opinion, she kind of had to take his suggestion, right?

“I was kind of feeling like a burger, but maybe now...” She trailed off, hoping it would prompt him to say,Get whatever sounds good.

“Get the lamb.” He smiled, snatched her menu out of her hand, and said, “You won’t regret it. I ordered you a glass of chardonnay, by the way.”

“Okay.” Hallie reached for her glass. “Thank you. And I’m trusting you on the lamb.”

“Good girl.” He cleared his throat, picked up his wineglass, and said, “So how was work today? Did you make it through the marathon meeting?”

She’d told him about the quarterly business meetings that had been going on since Monday, and she was impressed he’d remembered. “I made it. It’s amazing how challenging it is to look interested in very boring information.”

“I bet.”

She said, “I’m sure you have to listen to lots of rambling from your patients.”

“Yeah, but I can stick my hands in their mouth and make it stop,” he quipped, which made her laugh.

She glanced at Jack’s table, where he and his date appeared to be deep in conversation. She was very pretty and wearing the cutest red dress, so unless she was a total bore, Jack was off to a great start.

She looked back at Stephen, the dentist, and felt pretty good about her start, as well.

They started talking about his job, and he was super interesting and funny as he told her dental horror stories. She interjected with her own stories, and she was surprisingly relaxed and comfortable.

She was actually having a good time on her date.

The food came, and she didn’t want to eat lamborrisotto. But she started with the meat, which was tolerable if she didn’t picture fluffy little baby lambs, and she pushed around the risotto so it looked like she’d eaten some.

While saying a lot ofMmmm, this is so good.

“So we should probably cover relationships, right? Isn’t that a first-date thing?”

That made Hallie set down her fork and take a big ol’ gulp of her chardonnay before saying, “Um, sure...?”

“I just want to put it out there that I’m divorced.”

“Oh.” Hallie didn’t really know what to say. She didn’t have a problem with someone being divorced, but she also didn’t want to squeal something inane likeI love divorce. The way she saw it, divorce was no different from her breakup except for the fact that he’d had a party with formal wear and she hadn’t.

“We got married young, I guess, and didn’t realize until it was too late that we didn’t have much in common.”

Hallie gave a nod and said, “It happens.”

“The worst part was telling the twins.”

“Ohmigosh.” Hallie set down her glass and cleared her throat. “I didn’t know you had twins. How old are they?”

“Four years old,” he said, his smile returning as he talked about the kids he clearly adored. “They’re really incredible.”

“That’s such a fun age,” she said, her mind a little blown that he hadn’t included that on his profile. She’d never considered the possibility that she might find someone on the dating app who had children. She could potentially become a stepmom? God, she didn’t even want to go there.

“It is. They’ve finally stopped putting everything in their mouths and falling asleep on top of me.”

That made Hallie a little gooey inside, picturing this handsome man with sleeping munchkins draped all over him. He really was a hormonal destroyer, wasn’t he?

“Wow, how do you tell someone so young about divorce?” she asked. Her own parents just lived by the you-irritate-me-but-till-death-do-us-part motto.

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