After the Kiss (Sex, Love & Stiletto 1)

Instead she let him go.

Julie stood for a long moment staring at the closed door before she finally turned to face her friends.

“It’s bad?” Julie asked, not knowing what they were dealing with but bracing herself all the same.

Grace slowly pulled a newspaper out of her oversized bag. “It’s worse than bad.”

She spread the paper on the table, and Julie warily approached, her eyes following Grace’s fingers as Riley slid an arm around her waist.

Her eyes found the headline.

The nervous throb in her head disappeared completely, only to be replaced by a deathly ringing as she read it again. And again.

Then she read it out loud. “ ‘Selling Out: How Low One Stiletto Columnist Will Stoop to Get the Scoop.’ Oh, my God,” she whispered, running her fingers over the print, not wanting to believe it. “How?”

“Allen Carsons,” Grace spat, referring to Camille’s ex-husband and Stiletto hater. “How he learned about your story, though, I don’t know.”

Julie had a sneaking suspicion she did.

“It gets worse,” Riley said grimly, turning the page.

“How can it possibly get worse?” Julie asked, her voice ten octaves above normal.

Riley began to read. “ ‘What the sneaky, unscrupulous Ms. Greene doesn’t know is that her prey had his own nefarious reasons for letting himself fall into her disingenuous web. To be continued tomorrow.’ ”

“What truly shoddy journalism,” Grace said in disgust. “Unscrupulous, nefarious, and disingenuous all in one sentence. It’s like he reads the thesaurus on the crapper.”

Julie’s mind was reeling. “ ‘To be continued’?” she spat. “This is the New York Tribune, not the season finale of some TV melodrama.”

“But it is a finale. And it is melodrama,” Riley said regretfully.

Julie snatched the paper and read the last paragraph again. What did it mean, that Mitchell had his own reasons? He was too straightforward to play games.

Surely this was just Allen Carsons fishing for a two-part exclusive. It had to be.

But what if it wasn’t? What if she wasn’t the only one who’d been putting on a charade?

With Grace’s help, she sank into the chair, dropping her head into her palms as she tried to think. “I need to talk to Mitchell.”

Grace stroked her hair. “Maybe you should wait until part two comes out so you know what you’re dealing with.”

Julie lifted her head. “No. If there’s something to be said, I want to hear it from him directly. It’s the least we owe each other at this point. I just hope I can catch him before he reads this trash,” she said, nodding at the paper.

“With any luck, he doesn’t read the Tribune. He seems like a Times guy. You might have some time.”

Julie nodded, distracted. Somewhere deep in her soul she felt like dying. But hovering closer to the surface was a simmering anger. And she knew exactly where to direct it.

“I better have some time,” she muttered, heading to her bedroom to change. “Because I have a hell of a stop to make first.”

Chapter Fifteen

Mitchell hit redial for the fourth time. “Come on, pick up you son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“Dude. Tell me this is a repeated butt-dial situation. It’s Sunday.”

Mitchell sat bolt upright at the sound of Colin’s voice. Finally. “Dude, I’m aware of that. We need to talk.”

A brief pause. “Okay, so talk.”