After the Kiss (Sex, Love & Stiletto 1)

“I know,” Julie said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “You’re right.”

Kelli stopped crying abruptly, her mouth gaping. “Seriously? You agree.”

“Yes, I agree,” Julie snapped. “And up until this little bomb in the Tribune, I was planning to tell Camille that the story was yours.”

Kelli sucked in a breath. “You were?”

“Yup. I was,” Julie snarled, stuffing the paper in her purse. “But, see, I’ve changed my mind. I won’t write about Mitchell. He’s too important to me. But I will keep my article. I don’t know what the hell I’ll write about, but I’ll make something up.”

“You’re doing that just to spite me.”

Julie’s anger spiked. “Thanks to you, the entire city thinks I’m a soulless whore! Do you have any idea what Mitchell will say when he finds out?”

I’ll lose him.

Kelli’s expression turned nasty. Well … nastier. “You know,” she said, with a faux-thoughtful tap of a finger against her lips, “somehow I don’t think he’ll care one way or the other.”

Ignore her. She’s trying to get under your skin. But it was as though Kelli had her skinny finger on the pulse of Julie’s insecurities. So she bit the bait.

“Why wouldn’t he care?” she asked carefully. “You don’t even know him.”

Kelli gave a slow smile. “Not personally, no. But I know friends of his.”

“And?” Julie wanted nothing more than to slap the smug grin from Kelli’s face, but first she had to know.

“We’ll see,” Kelli said, taking a half step closer. “You know that part two that Mr. Carsons referenced in his article? That too was my scoop.”

Julie thought back to the wording in the paper: Her prey had his own nefarious reasons for letting himself fall into her disingenuous web.

“What are you talking about?” Julie said, hating that her voice had gone shaky.

Kelli gave her a look of sham sympathy. “You didn’t know? Honey, turns out at the very time you were hatching a plan to reel the man in, he was making a bet that he could make a fling out of you. He and my boyfriend made a bet that Mitchell couldn’t have a flirtatious, meaningless short-term roll in the hay with Manhattan’s favorite girl toy.”

“No,” Julie whispered.

But the word didn’t stop the barrage of mental pictures. The first date, when he hadn’t bothered to ask her out for a second. The emotional detachment. The resistance to movie night. Even the obsession with baseball fit the bill.

“Yup,” Kelli said, checking her fingernails. “He didn’t even agree to it at first because you weren’t his type. But then he decided to fuck you over for Yankees tickets.”

“You’re lying.”

“Actually, she’s not.”

Julie froze in shock at the familiar voice. Kelli, she noted, didn’t look the least bit surprised.

It couldn’t be.

She turned.

It was.

But why was Mitchell here in Kelli’s house? Her eyes flicked to the overgrown frat boy next to him and the pieces fell into place.

The guy with short brown hair was Kelli’s boyfriend. The one who’d proposed the bet to Mitchell. A bet Mitchell had accepted.

And why was Mitchell here today? To collect?

Her eyes searched his face, silently begging him to deny everything. But his eyes were icy, betraying nothing.