Young Billionaire’s Dog Runs Into Her at Park. He Apologizes With Coffee, Then Dinner, Then Forever

Chapter 3

The restaurant was in the West Village, and it was exactly the kind of place Emma had walked past a hundred times and assumed she’d never step foot in — dim lighting, candles on the tables, the low murmur of other diners, and a host who somehow knew Grant by name. The man seated them at a corner table with the quiet efficiency of someone doing this for the hundredth time.

Emma’s pulse quickened in a way that felt almost silly. This was a date. A real date. The first one she’d been on in over a year, ever since she’d come home from a party early one night and found her ex-boyfriend kissing someone else by the coat rack, and decided men were more trouble than they were worth.

But Grant held her chair for her. And when he sat down across from the table, his foot accidentally brushed hers underneath, and he apologized with such genuine alarm that Emma found herself laughing, and something in her chest loosened before she could stop it.

“So,” she said, unfolding her napkin. “Tell me more about this hotel business.”

Something flickered across Grant’s face — so fast Emma almost missed it. A shadow, there and gone. “What do you want to know?”

“How did you get into it?”

He took a slow sip of water. “My father started a small hotel when I was a kid. I grew up around it, learned the business from the ground up. Literally. I started in housekeeping.”

“You?” Emma couldn’t quite picture it — the polished man across from her folding sheets and scrubbing bathrooms. “Really?”

“My father believed you can’t run a place you don’t understand.” Grant shrugged. “So I did housekeeping, then front desk, then management. By the time I was twenty-five, I was running the hotel. It’s a family business.”

“That’s impressive,” Emma said, and she meant it.

“What about your family?” Grant asked, turning the conversation back. “Are they artistic too?”

Emma’s smile tightened a fraction. “Not exactly. My parents are both accountants. My sister is a lawyer. They think art is a nice hobby for someone who hasn’t accepted reality yet.”

“But you’re making it work,” Grant said.

“I’m trying.”

She appreciated that he said it like it was a fact, not a question. “The children’s book is my third commission this year. If I can land a few more, I might actually be able to afford an apartment bigger than a walk-in closet.”

The conversation flowed between them like water finding its level. Grant told her about Zeus’s habit of stealing socks and burying them under the couch in a secret sock cemetery. Emma told him about the time she’d spilled ink over a nearly finished illustration and had to start over from scratch at three in the morning, crying into her coffee.

They talked about movies they’d seen, music they loved, and the strangest things they’d witnessed on the subway — Grant had once seen a man in full pirate costume reciting poetry to a pigeon, and claimed it was the most romantic thing he’d ever witnessed. Emma was laughing so hard at one point that the couple at the next table turned to look at them, and she didn’t even care.

She spent the whole dinner waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for Grant to reveal some fatal flaw, some red flag that would make everything make sense. Because surely someone this thoughtful, this attentive, this genuinely funny couldn’t be real.

But it never came.

When the check arrived, Grant reached for it before Emma could even touch her purse. “This is way more than making up for grass stains,” she protested.

“Then consider it me wanting to spend time with you,” he said simply. “Not everything has to be about Zeus’s poor manners.”

He walked her home the long way, through streets that glowed with shop windows and streetlights, and Emma told him about her favorite illustration — a series she’d done about a traveling cat who visited famous landmarks and painted them. Grant told her about the time Zeus had gotten loose in his office building and caused chaos on three floors before being captured in the executive kitchen, eating someone’s leftover lunch.

When they reached her building, Emma discovered she didn’t want the night to end.

“Thank you for dinner,” she said.

“I had a really good time.”

“Good enough for a third date?”

“We’ve only had two,” Emma pointed out. “Coffee was the first. This was the second. The third should probably be something even better.”

Grant’s expression was hopeful but not demanding, leaving room for her to say no if she wanted. She didn’t want to say no.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Let me surprise you.” His eyes crinkled. “Are you free Saturday?”

Emma ran through her schedule mentally. The commission would be done by then, and she had nothing pressing until the following week. “Saturday works.”

“Perfect.” Grant smiled, and Emma noticed he had a small dimple in his left cheek that only appeared when his smile was genuine. “I’ll text you the details.”

They stood there for a moment, the weight of the ending hovering between them. Emma wondered if he was going to kiss her. Wondered if she wanted him to. Decided, with startling clarity, that she definitely did.

Then Grant leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek instead.

“Good night, Emma,” he murmured.

“Good night,” she managed, her skin still tingling where his lips had touched.

She watched him walk away with his hands in his pockets, and she didn’t go inside until he’d turned the corner and disappeared. Only then did she press her fingers to her cheek, still warm from the ghost of his kiss, and let herself smile.

The week that followed passed in a blur of work and text messages. Grant texted her every morning, usually with a photo of Zeus doing something ridiculous — asleep on his back with all four legs in the air, wearing a stolen sock like a hat, staring at a squirrel with the intensity of a philosopher. Emma sent him progress updates on her illustration, and he responded with genuine enthusiasm and questions that showed he’d actually looked at what she’d sent.

They talked about everything and nothing. About the rain that turned the city silver. About the difference between being lonely and being alone. Grant told her about growing up in Chicago, about his mother who had passed away when he was fifteen, and about the weight of living up to a father who had built everything from nothing. He told her these things slowly, carefully, like he was offering pieces of himself and watching to see what she’d do with them.

Emma found herself offering pieces back. About how it felt to be the black sheep of a family of overachievers. About the fear that she’d work her whole life and still never be good enough. About the loneliness she’d felt before moving to New York, the way she’d known exactly one person in the entire city for the first two months.

They were building something. Each message was a brick, each shared laugh sealing it into place, and by the time Saturday morning rolled around — crisp and blue and perfect — Emma felt like she’d been talking to this man for years instead of a week.

Grant had told her to dress casually and be ready by ten in the morning, which was unusual. But Emma trusted him.

He picked her up in a black car that looked far too expensive for someone who worked at a hotel, and for a moment Emma considered asking about it. But then Grant was smiling at her with that dimple, and Zeus was barking a greeting from his spot in the back seat, and the question slipped away before it could take root.

“Where are we going?” she asked, buckling her seatbelt.

“You’ll see.” The dimple made another appearance. “Trust me.”

Emma surprised herself by answering honestly. “I think I do.”

She really, truly did.