After the Kiss (Sex, Love & Stiletto 1)

Neither had Colin exaggerated her dating record. There’d been a male-model look-alike by Julie’s side in almost every picture. Always a different guy, always the same flashy good looks and toothpaste-commercial smile.

Which raised a question: what the hell did she want with him?

Julie was all dazzle and fun, and he was, well … Wall Street.

But Mitchell wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, or whatever the hell that phrase was. The woman was his ticket into Yankee Stadium. That’s all he needed to know.

Standing on the doorstep of her brownstone, Mitchell found the call button marked “Greene.”

“Hey, Mitchell! Come on in—up the stairs, first door on the right.”

He tentatively pushed the door open, looking around curiously. Call him a snob, but a Manhattan home without a doorman was new to him. He’d only ever lived in swanky high-rises, as had his previous girlfriends.

Still, this was no run-down hovel. The building, while old, had obviously been renovated and kept in good condition. Stiletto must pay their princesses good money.

Mitchell started to knock on her door when he heard a loud clatter of pots and pans followed by some very unladylike cursing. Raising an eyebrow, he tried the knob and pushed it open when he found it unlocked.

“Julie?”

“In the kitchen,” she called.

Considering the fact that her apartment was less than six hundred square feet, there really wasn’t a kitchen so much as a corner dedicated to cooking.

It looked like a war zone.

Julie popped up from whatever she’d been doing in the oven, and Mitchell didn’t know whether to laugh or politely avert his eyes. He’d been expecting some sort of Martha Stewart–style domestic scene, perhaps Julie in a fetching little apron and retro red lipstick.

He’d been wrong. Mitchell had seen homeless waifs who looked more put together. She was wearing what appeared to be threadbare boxers that were one wash away from being a pile of string. And her USC shirt probably hadn’t even been new when she’d been in college. Definitely no bra under that sucker, either.

“Mitchell,” she said with a too-wide smile. “You must be early.”

“I’m late, actually,” he said, forcing his eyes up from her chest.

“Ah, right. Well, I’m just putting the last touches on dinner, and then I’ll go freshen up. Dinner should be ready in just a few minutes.”

He hoped by “freshen up” she meant “completely make herself over.” Although, truthfully, this rumpled version of Julie wasn’t without appeal. He’d never seen a woman in such complete disarray, and damned if he didn’t kind of like the unpretentiousness of it. Past girlfriends had never been caught dead without lipstick, much less looking like Little Orphan Annie.

He approached the mess carefully. If “dinner” would be ready anytime before the next Ice Age, he’d sell his right testicle.

“What, uh … what are you making?”

Mitchell wasn’t exactly a kitchen whiz, but he was pretty sure those tiny flecks of metal sticking out of some sort of mutilated meat weren’t edible.

She followed his gaze and slumped slightly. “Chicken Marsala. I was supposed to pound the chicken, but I didn’t have plastic wrap, so I used foil instead. It, um … it kind of broke apart.”

“I can see that.” It looked like a UFO had collided with road kill. “And that?” he asked, gesturing toward a mountain of something green and stringy.

“Leeks!” she said proudly. “Just finished slicing them.”

Mitchell’s eyes fell on the nearby knife and saw that the tip was crooked. Stabbing might have been a more appropriate word choice.

“Julie,” he said softly. “You don’t know how to cook, do you?”

She huffed a strand of hair out of her eyes, and he realized for the first time that her hair was a mess of soft, fuzzy curls instead of the shiny, straight version he’d seen last night.

“What makes you say that?” she asked as she wrestled a cork out of a bottle of Pinot grigio.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, trying not to stare at the way her breasts swayed beneath her T-shirt as she tugged at the cork. “Maybe the box of ‘beginner’s set’ cookware in the corner.”