Love the One You're With
Page 16

It was time to have a little talk with 2.0 about the rules.
Maybe sex with Jake would be a step forward in her recovery, but 2.0 was having none of it.
And since the war between Grace 1.0 and 2.0 took up most of her mental energy, she never saw the email from Camille coming.
Grace—
Spoke with Cassidy. Given the success of the HeSaidSheSaid website, we’ve decided to eschew the original plan of a traditional series in the print magazine and continue fostering the unexpected digital growth. The website feels like a better venue for this type of back-and-forth story anyway. Will wrap up your and Jake’s “story” at the end of the month and feature a new couple with new chemistry.
Great work on this—we can get you back on your regular story rotation immediately. Was thinking your next piece could be on the resurgence of online dating. Haven’t done that angle in a while, and readers will relate to a newly single gal entering a new approach. Good?
Camille
Grace numbly reread the email. Knew what it meant.
At the end of the month, there’d be no more Jake. She could refocus on Grace 2.0 without the distraction of a certain sexy journalist.
She could simultaneously secure her reputation as an expert on men while going back to dodging them completely in her personal life.
It was the perfect ending to her perfect plan.
And it sounded awful.
Chapter Seventeen
“What do you mean, I’m off the story?”
“You’re not off the story. We’ve just switched the objective a bit.”
“You said I’d write five articles. I’ve only written two.”
Alex Cassidy slowly tapped a pen on his desk as he studied Jake. “Two print articles, but the online component has monopolized all of your time for over two months. You’ve put in more than enough legwork, and I couldn’t be happier with the results.”
Well, I’m glad someone’s happy.
In truth, Jake knew he should be happy. This meant he could get back to writing his own story ideas instead of appeasing the higher-ups. It meant that at the end of the month he’d be able to go to Starbucks and grab something to eat without creating a firestorm in the office.
It meant he could get back to dating women for fun instead of for work.
And yet he still wanted to punch something.
“Why don’t you just come out and ask?” Cassidy asked, watching him with an amused look on his face.
“Ask what?” Jake grumbled.
“How soon until you can start the Travel gig now that you’re wrapping this up.”
Jake’s mind went temporarily blank before reality crashed down.
Well, holy hell …
Somehow he’d temporarily forgotten all about their initial agreement.
It was really happening. He was going to live abroad. See the world.
Get rid of the damn itch between his shoulder blades.
Which … come to think of it, he hadn’t noticed the itch or the restless feeling in weeks. But this travel position was still the opportunity of a lifetime.
“How soon?” he asked Cassidy.
His boss gave a sly smile. “I’m working on it. Just wrap this thing up with the Stiletto woman, and I think you’ll like what I’ve got in the works.”
The Stiletto woman. It didn’t even remotely do Grace justice.
“Aha,” Cassidy said, tossing his pen down on the desk triumphantly. “I knew it.”
“Don’t,” Jake said with a glare. “Just don’t.”
His boss ignored him. “I thought Cole was full of shit when he said he thought there was more going on between you than just a little good-natured website banter. But here you are looking like I just took away your puppy. Or should I say … your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“You want her to be.”
Jake opened his mouth to refute it. That was nuts. Jake Malone wasn’t the settling-down kind of guy. Not yet, anyway. He’d always imagined he had several more years of playing the field before he’d get nipped by the white-picket-fence bug.
Although Grace wasn’t a white-picket-fence kind of girl. She was more a gated-community-and-penthouse kind of girl. He tried to picture her with her teetering high heels and sleek hair twists in the casual chaos that was the Malone living room back in Wisconsin.
She wouldn’t last a day under his sisters’ prying scrutiny or his dad’s nonstop Packers talk or his mom’s insistence that she should really just try a little Wisconsin cheese on her toast. And her salad. And her apple pie.
“Grace and I are mismatched.”
“That’s not what our readers say,” Cassidy said, turning around his monitor and gesturing to the damned website. Jake barely glanced at it. The latest poll had 92 percent of readers thinking he and Grace had already slept together.
He wondered if the 92 percent had any bright ideas on how he could make that a reality.
“How much time do I have?” Jake asked.
“To get Grace into bed?”
Yes. “No, I mean you said you wanted me to wrap up this saga on the website before you and Camille put a new couple up for cyberspace to analyze. How much longer do Grace and I have to keep this up?”
“Just till the end of the month. Then you and Grace will both write a farewell piece, and we’ll introduce the next round of HeSaidSheSaid. And you’ll be in Singapore or Cape Town or wherever you wanna be.”
Jake did a quick mental calculation. The end of the month gave him just over twenty days. Twenty days to …
Well, he didn’t know what exactly. But he knew one thing.
He and Grace Brighton weren’t even close to over.
* * *
“He wants to go to dinner.”
Riley, Emma, and Julie immediately ended their debate over which bottle of wine to order and stared at her.
“Who?” Julie asked.
Emma pinched her arm. “Jake, obviously.”
“What do you mean, obviously? Camille said they just had to keep up the casual flirty stuff for a couple more weeks and then they’re done. Now they have to go on a date?” Riley demanded.
“I’m betting they don’t have to,” Emma said coyly.
Grace fiddled with her fork. It was the first time Emma had tagged along for one of these little Love and Relationships after-work outings. Julie had suggested they hit up their favorite wine bar, and inviting Emma along had felt completely natural. Their threesome had officially become a foursome, and Grace was finding she didn’t mind at all.
Except Emma Sinclair did seem to be somewhat of a mind reader, and that was proving to be a bit inconvenient at the moment.
“Wonder what his angle is,” Julie mused as she perused the menu. “You want us to tag along? Do a scan for hidden cameras, Oxford spies, that kind of thing?”
“I don’t think it’s like that,” Grace said tentatively. “His text seemed … straightforward. Genuine.”
“Please,” Riley said. “Like you can tell over text. Lemme see.” She held out her hand expectantly, and Grace handed over her phone. She might as well get a second opinion.
“ ‘Dinner? Just us,’ ” Riley read out loud. She frowned. “Huh.”
“Right? Is it a trap?”
“No,” Emma said, at the same time as Riley said, “Yes.”
“He’s messing with her,” Riley said emphatically. “They haven’t had any time together that hasn’t been documented and analyzed. Why start now?”
Grace pretended sudden fascination with the wine list, lifting it to cover her face. Two seconds later, Julie batted it out of the way. “Graaaace …”
She cleared her throat. “We, um, we may have sort of snuck away and had lunch one day.”
“What do you mean, you snuck away?”
“It was that day when he was supposed to be at Lucky’s …”
Julie’s eyes went wide. “The day you ‘went to the bathroom’ and never came back?”
“Sort of, yeah. We were both trying to sneak away unnoticed in the stairwell and then suddenly we were at lunch. Together. In Brooklyn.”
“You went all the way to Brooklyn just for lunch?”
“Well, it sort of turned into a thing.…”
Riley cooed in delight. “You guys did the nasty in the restaurant bathroom, didn’t you? How was it?”
Julie stared at Riley in fascination. “Sometimes I think your rep as Stiletto’s sexpert is going to your head. Why would that be your first assumption?” Then she glanced at Grace. “Did you do it in the bathroom?”
“No! It was just lunch. And then … we just did this random brewery tour, and then grabbed wings at a pub. There was no sex, no kissing—not then, anyway, and—”
They all exchanged a glance, and Grace threw up her hands. “Stop doing that. Enough with the looks. Bring me into the loop here.”
“Well, it’s just that I don’t know what’s more baffling,” Riley said. “The fact that you kissed him and didn’t tell us about it, or the fact that you ate wings. Your mother would probably faint.”
Grace waved all of this away. “So am I agreeing to dinner or not?”
“Do you want to have dinner with him?”
Yes. And I want to have the after-dinner with him.
“No,” she said. “It feels too much like I’m violating my six-month rule.”
“But your six-month rule is complete garbage,” Emma said, patting her hand.
“It’s not! Plenty of women have dedicated single time after coming out of a long breakup.”
“Sure, meaning they don’t actively go out and try to snag the first guy they can. They allow themselves to be single; they don’t force it when a good one comes along.”
“I’m not forcing it,” Grace grumbled. “Jake doesn’t even want me beyond this story.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s Jake Malone. You guys are the ones that told me the stories about him! He’s like a modern-day Lothario.”
“But you like him,” Julie taunted.
“Yes! But this isn’t the third grade, this is real life, and …”
“And you don’t want to get hurt again,” Emma said softly.
Grace let out a long breath. “And I don’t want to get hurt again.”
“But maybe Jake’s not like Greg. Maybe—”
“I’ll stop you right there,” Grace said. “Greg was practically the poster child for husband material. And if he cheated, then Jake Malone, poster child for raunchy bachelor, sure as hell isn’t going to be the steady, loyal type.”
“You don’t know that,” Julie said.
“And even if he isn’t your dream guy,” Emma added, “it’s just dinner. What if you went and just treated it like a practice round for when you do want to start dating again?”
“Does practice round include sex?” Riley asked. “Because this one needs it.” She jerked a thumb at Grace. “Also, where the hell is our server?”
Two minutes later, Riley had flagged down one of the flustered servers and they were ordering one of their usual assortment of small plates, while Grace’s mind drifted.
No, 2.0 said succinctly. Just no.
But it’s just one night.
Still no.
What’s the worst that can happen? Grace pleaded.
Crossing her arms, 2.0 glared. Crabs. Mayhem. A UTI. A broken heart.
Orrrr, the one night could help get him out of my system, Grace argued back. You know, sleep with him so I can move on.
After thinking it over, 2.0 inquired, So this is like an itch you need to scratch? One night of hanky-panky to take the edge off so that you can get him out of your system?
Grace pounced on it. Yes. Precisely.
Fine, 2.0 huffed. Use a condom.
“Grace?” Julie asked. “You want to add anything to the order?”
She shut the menu, her mind made up on more than just food. “The cheese plate,” she told the waitress. “Definitely the cheese plate.”
Then she retrieved her cell phone from Riley’s clutches and typed in one fateful word in response to Jake’s message.
Yes.
Chapter Eighteen
Grace had known she was out of practice with dating.
She hadn’t known that getting back on the damned wagon would be such a complete disaster.
Clad only in matching green bra and panties, she stood in front of her closet. And stared. And stared some more.
Without taking her eyes off the mess of clothes that were all wrong, she retrieved her phone from the nightstand and called Julie.
“Hey, Grace,” her friend chirped.
“I have nothing to wear.”
There was a beat of silence followed by rustling … of sheets, or maybe clothes? … followed by a whispered, “Stop!” and then a giggle.
Grace rolled her eyes. “Did I interrupt something?”
“Of course not,” Julie said. Another giggle was followed by a squeal.
“When Mitchell’s done copping a feel, can we please deal with my crisis?”
“Sure, sure,” Julie said, her voice turning all business. “Listen, you’ve called the right woman. I’ve written about eight articles on exactly this problem. Now, I know this is going to be hard to believe, but what you think you’re experiencing is not real.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s the first-date-and-I-have-absolutely-nothing-to-wear panic you’re experiencing. It’s perfectly common, but also 100 percent in your head. Now repeat after me: ‘There is the perfect thing to wear in this closet.’ ”