His car was waiting at the side of the building—a dark, clean-lined thing driven by someone who clearly knew what they were doing. Emma slid into the passenger seat, set her bag at her feet, and told herself, very firmly, that this was simply a professional lunch and she was going to conduct herself accordingly.
She had mostly convinced herself of this by the time they arrived.
The restaurant was on the beach side of the city, far enough from the dormitory that the air changed: salt-touched and open, the sky wider out here where the buildings thinned and gave way to the shoreline. It was a seafood place built on a wooden deck that extended toward the water—the kind of establishment that was beautiful without trying to be, where the tables were simple and the view was doing all the heavy lifting.
"This is a nice place," Emma said, taking in the view of the water as they were seated. The afternoon light was doing something extraordinary across the surface; long gold sheets of it moved with the slow rhythm of the waves.
"It is," Chase agreed, settling into the chair across from her with that same unforced ease. "I like looking at the water when I eat. It makes everything slower." He glanced at the horizon. "Calmer."
Emma looked at him across the table. "I wouldn't have expected this," she admitted.
"What?"
"This." She gestured briefly at the restaurant, the water, and the general situation. "I thought you'd be more of a club and bright lights kind of man. Loud music, women who look like they stepped off a runway." She said it honestly, without edge, because it was simply the image that the name Chase Lopez had always produced in her mind: someone who moved through the glittering, crowded parts of this industry the way powerful men tended to move through them.
He leaned back slightly in his chair and looked at her with an expression of genuine amusement. "Is that what you think of me?"
"It's what I expected," she said carefully. "I'm willing to be corrected."
"I can be that kind of man," he said, and there was something light and self-aware in his tone, "if that's what the situation calls for. But it's not what I prefer." He paused. "What do you prefer, Emma?"
The question was simple enough on its surface. She looked out at the water for a moment before she answered. "Quiet," she said. "Real things."
Something in his expression shifted—almost imperceptibly, the way still water moves when something passes beneath it.
They ate. The food was good—the kind of good that came from simplicity done well—and they talked the way two people talk when they are discovering, with some surprise, that the other person is significantly more interesting than the version they had constructed in their head. He asked about her and listened when she answered in the way that people who are genuinely curious listen; not waiting for a pause in which to speak, but actually tracking what she said. She asked about him, and he answered without the careful self-presentation she had expected from someone in his position—without the PR gloss.
After they ate, he asked if she wanted to walk along the beach. She nodded.
The sand was warm beneath the thin soles of her shoes, and the air was thick with salt and the particular restfulness of being near something larger than yourself. They walked without rushing, their footsteps leaving shallow impressions that the waves would erase in their own time.
She started to smile. She couldn't entirely help it. It came from somewhere she hadn't quite given permission to, something loosened by the afternoon, the water, and the unexpected reality of this man beside her.
"What's funny?" he asked, watching her with that quiet, attentive look.
"Nothing, really." She glanced up at him. "I just didn't think you'd be the kind of man who likes to walk on beaches."
"And now?"
"And now I'm revising my assumptions." She paused. "You were not what I pictured."