Chapter 2

It was fascinating, Luke thought. He got on a plane in one world, and stepped out in a completely different one.

At Cologne Airport, nobody asked for his autograph. Nobody knew his name, nobody had read the stupid article, and nobody went on his nerves. It was a holiday from his life.

His mother had barely changed. A few more lines in her face, but she still cosseted him like she'd done when he was thirteen. He'd had to practically tear his suitcase from her hand, to prove that he could carry it on his own.

After he'd gotten some sleep, and tried to ignore the jetlag as much as that was possible, his mother had cooked him the best lunch Germany had to offer: roast, dumplings, red cabbage, and the typical dark rye bread to go with that.

Now he was standing in the cold with his friends, debating where to go. They were four guys, two of them married – the poor sods, not even thirty and already married – which narrowed their search for a fitting place.

For reasons unclear to him, they did not want to go to a strip club.

It was weird. He hadn't seen his buddies in over a year, but they treated him as if they saw him every day, as if he was still one of the gang. After sixteen years. In Philadelphia he had no friends he knew from high school. When he became a pro baseball player, people had split into enviers and those who wanted to bask in his glory. Or maybe Luke had simply turned into an asshole. He wasn't exactly sure yet.

"How about Club Casanova?" Daniel – married – suggested.

"Are you insane? At eight in the evening, the place is empty. And we're too old for it anyway." Meik looked at his friend as if he'd inhaled his daughter's diapers for too long. "What do you want to do, Luke? You're the guest of honor today, sort of. That means it's your choice."

"I'm hungry. How about some Italian food? I don't want to talk about the stuff they call pizza in America." The crust of the gluten-free pizza consisted of ground meat. That was plain wrong.

They all nodded, and Finn, the fourth in the gang, who was already blessed with three children – how suicidal did anyone have to be for that – clapped his cold hands.

"Italian sounds good to me. Giovanni's?"

"I'm sure it will be packed," Daniel said. "But we can try."

"Is it far from here?" Luke wasn't in the mood for a long march through the biting cold.

"Just around the corner," Meik reassured him.

The group started walking, and stood before the restaurant a few minutes later. The place had a wide glass front, through which you could see the elegant, and fully occupied dining tables, and the rather tweedy-looking bar.

"That doesn't look promising at all." Meik craned his neck, and Luke had to agree. It looked as if there were already twenty people too much sitting around the tables.

"We'll check anyway," Finn decided.

The cold air pushed the men into the foyer, where dozens of coats were defying gravity on the coat rack. Several couples and a small family were standing in the waiting area before them, slowly inching forward into the restaurant proper. There was a dark wooden desk, where apparently the tables were assigned. Luke couldn't see who was behind the lectern-like desk, because there was always someone in his line of vision. Plus the person behind the desk couldn't be very tall.

"Oh, it's a woman. We're in luck." Finn laughed and gave Luke an encouraging look.

"We're in luck?" he repeated his friend's words. "Why are we in luck?"

In the meantime the crowd had thinned, and Luke was finally able to catch a glance at their hostess. A blonde woman in her mid-twenties, clad in a red blazer that reminded Luke of the elevator ladies in some of the better American hotels, who pushed the buttons for the guests. She was looking at a list and checking off names. Her hair kept falling into her face, and she tucked it back behind her ears approximately every other second.

She was really short. Her head would most likely not even reach his chin, and her fist looked as if Luke would be able to wrap his hand around it easily.

"She's rather cute, Luke." Meik punched him in the arm. "Don't you think?"

Cute was probably the right word to describe her. She was no stunning beauty, not like the women he'd been photographed with the other night, but her face could be described as pretty. As for her body … well, you couldn't expect everyone to spend their life at the gym and be a size four, or even six.

"Puppies are cute, too. But you haven't pointed out any of those so far. So why …?" Luke narrowed his eyes at his three grinning buddies. "Oh no!"

"Come on. All you need to do is flirt a little. We'll be seated in no time," Daniel pointed out.

Luke raised his eyebrows. "Then why don't you do it?"

"I'm married," he said defensively. "It wouldn't be proper for a married man to flirt with another woman, would it?"

Finn patted Luke's shoulder. "You're the best-looking one of us, plus you're an athlete, so you're always in peak form. I think that settles it."

Luke groaned loudly. "Is that your usual shtick? Sweet-talking people until they give in?"

"It's the German way, dude."

"I grew up here, Finn. I'm sure it's absolutely not the German way. Much more of an American thing."

"But you want to eat dinner here, don't you?" Meik asked slowly, his grin widening.

Yes, these guys really treated him as if they went out together every day.

Right, so why not? It wasn't as if Luke had a problem with flirting. He didn't need to go to bed with the little wallflower afterwards.

"Okay, I'll do it. For the gang. And drinks are on you later."

***

What the devil was with those guys loitering in the foyer? They reminded her of a bunch of oversized puppies, waiting to be adopted. And now they were patting each other's shoulders and chuckling. Emma corrected herself: They looked like Neanderthals, waiting to be adopted.

One of the cavemen approached her. He seemed to be in his late twenties, and his sheer size should have intimidated her. But when she saw the smarmy smile on his face, she was certain she could take him on if necessary.

His brown hair was cropped short, and the chiseled face might have been attractive, if it wasn't for the telling smile, which branded him as far too self-confident. Judging from his physique, he was also one of the guys who spent their spare time in a stuffy gym, just to be able to show off their muscles at the beach.

Not her type at all.

And she was lying only a tiny little bit.

"Hello, pretty woman." The man leaned on the desk, and Emma forced herself to smile at him.

"Hello, stranger. Can I help you?"

"Yes, you can." He fixed his gaze on Emma, and she had to admit that at least his blue eyes were rather likeable. Maybe he was a nice enough man. By no means did she want to pass a hasty judgment on this vainglorious egomaniac. Nope.

"My friends and I would like a table for four." He nodded in the direction of the other Neanderthals, who seemed to think this was extremely funny.

Maybe they had seen the smarminess of his smile, too?

"Did you make a reservation?"

"I'm afraid we did not."

Emma raised her eyebrows and pressed her lips together briefly. He expected to get a table for four right now, during rush hour?

That seemed a tad too optimistic.

"Okay." She leafed through her list, concluding as expected that the restaurant was fully booked. She tapped her pen against the sheet of paper and shook her head. "I'm sorry, but we don't have a table for you." She shrugged her shoulders in apology. "We're fully booked for the rest of the evening."

"Fully booked?" The man was still smiling as if that would change anything about the available seats.

"Fully. To capacity."

The tall man slowly shook his head and nestled at the collar of his white shirt. "Well," he leaned forward as his fingertips brushed her arm, "we could move closer together. Squeeze in, you know ..."

Her arm was instantly covered in telltale goose bumps. Alright, so maybe he was her type, at least a little bit. Was it her fault that she was attracted to muscles and a handsome face?

Fortunately he was still sporting that fake, incredibly sleazy smile – it prevented her from losing her head.

"Well, if you and your friends are not prepared to sit stockpiled on top of each other, we still don't have a seat for you."

The man sighed heavily. "This place is huge; I'm sure your pretty head will be able to figure something out."

Emma was getting impatient, and gritted her teeth accordingly. "My pretty head tells me that tomorrow will be Christmas Eve, and at the same time it wonders how your smarmy head could expect us to have a table for you in the first place, on the busiest day of the month and without a reservation."

"Mhm. That's very interesting, but … Has anyone ever told you that you have a beautiful mouth?"

Perplexed, she blinked at him. "Uh, what?"

"Yes. Very pretty – but it would be even prettier if your lips would form the words, ‘we'll have a table ready for you in a minute' now."

Incredulous as his nerve, her jaw dropped. "What do you call this weird thing you're doing? Flirting?"

He grinned. "Yes. Nice of you to notice."

She shook her head and looked up at him. Once again, here was proof: The better-looking a guy was, the dumber. "You call it flirting, I call it embarrassing. My goodness, don't you have a shred of self-respect? For the last time: We don't have a table for four! Simply try to be less spontaneous next time."

The smile vanished from the man's face, and he narrowed his eyes at her. "Listen."

He leaned against the desk. "It's not my fault that you're on your period right now, so would you just–"

"Oh my God!" She almost burst out laughing. "Why are you still standing here? We're fully booked – and if I were on my period, my fist would already have punched you in the face. So you're lucky you were wrong about that."

The man didn't budge. What did it take to get rid of him? Did she have to throw a shoe at him?

He leaned forward again, and his coat rustled, as if there was money hidden in the pocket.

"So you still don't have a table for us?"

Annoyed, Emma wanted to open her mouth again, when he pulled something from his coat pocket and placed it on the desk in front of her.

Emma looked at the wooden top, eyebrows raised. So he actually had hidden money there. "What's that?"

"A fifty-Euro note."

"I can see that, but why is it on my desk?"

"I thought that maybe with this banknote in front of you, you might see another angle of the reservation situation."

Emma crossed her arms. If flirting wouldn't get him anywhere, he tried bribery? She'd like to have a word with the pastor who held his conscience.

"Do I look corrupt?" she demanded slowly.

"No, of course not. You look adorable – and yet I imagine you'd like to buy a new pair of shoes maybe …"

Emma considered that. It had been a long time since she last went shoe shopping. She reached out and took the money, put it in her pocket. "Thank you very much. I've never gotten such a generous tip from a man who didn't even get a seat in our restaurant."

The dark-haired man gave her a disbelieving look. "You're still not giving us a seat?"

She sighed. "Oh, I'm sorry, are you Angela Merkel?"

"Excuse me?"

"Maybe Barack Obama then? Or Madonna? Oh, I know: you're a boss of the local mafia! No? Not even a Teletubbie?" She shrugged her shoulders in theatrical exaggeration. "Then I'm sorry to tell you one final time: There will be no seat available in this establishment for the next three hours."

The man's expression changed. He frowned at her. The frown suited him, she thought. More honest.

"Fine," he growled, "then please give me my money back."

Emma gave him a look that professed confusion. "Your money? What money?"

"The money I slipped you a minute ago, lady," he replied, no longer pretending to be charming.

"Slipped me?" Emma put a hand on her chest. "But you didn't slip me any money. Because that would be attempted bribery, and thus a penal offense. Nope, I don't know anything about that."

The man straightened with a jerk. "Fine. Keep it. Take it to a decent hairdresser, or buy a friendlier disposition with it."

Emma nodded in mock seriousness. "Thank you, I'll take that advice to heart. And you should buy yourself a telephone, so you can make a reservation next time!"

Either he didn't hear her last comment, or he simply didn't want to react.

He was probably just embarrassed, because he didn't know how to buy a phone. Poor caveman.

***

Finn, Daniel, and Meik didn't even try to hide their grins.

"I've never seen a woman look at a guy with so much disdain."

"I have. My wife sometimes looks like that when I forget to buy groceries."

"Very funny, guys," Luke said dryly. "I flirt like a maniac, lose fifty Euros in the bargain, and now you're making fun of me?"

Meik laughed even louder. "You let her get a fifty off you? Someone once told me you were a woman whisperer!"

"I am a woman whisperer! But that was not a woman – she was a fury! I don't speak her language. What has the world come to, huh, refusing a bribe like that?"

He was losing faith in this shady humanity. First he was criticized for giving alcohol to a nineteen-year-old, and then this woman had treated him like a piece of gum stuck to the sole of her shoe.

The world was quite obviously out of joint.

"Ah, it feels great to be able to laugh freely like this," Finn rhapsodized, before he shook his head. "And you, my dear, seem to have no idea what women want. Women only want money in the form of chocolate, flowers, or alimony."

Luke snorted. There was really no reason to doubt his prowess … or did the women in the States only fall for his lines every time because they knew he had a lot of money?

That was a far too deep topic for tonight, he decided, and shook off the thought. The blonde waitress must have had a bad day. That was the only plausible explanation.

"Shall we go to Blackbox then?" Daniel suggested. "Maybe there Luke can regain his confidence."

"What? Did you just say I'm free to punch you in the face once we're there?" Luke grinned with a show of confusion.

Daniel laughed and patted his shoulder. "Don't get butt-sore, princess. We still think you're a man. A sad man maybe, but still a man."