Love the One You're With (2)

by Lauren Layne

“Weird. I wonder if there’s a trophy shop around here so we can get you a little memento to savor your lone victory.”

  She just grinned at him before grabbing another fry.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Nothing serious before or after the cheating douche bag, right?”

  “Well, it’s only been four months. Long enough to move on, but not long enough to get back in the saddle. Not that I want to. And before Greg, there were a couple dance dates and kisses in high school, but Greg … he was the one, you know?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Obviously,” Grace muttered.

  He was watching her. “Do you miss him?”

  Grace chewed thoughtfully. Did she miss Greg? “I miss … someone,” she said finally. “I know this probably sounds like I’m single-handedly rolling back the women’s movement, but I liked taking care of someone, you know? Being that other half?”

  “Would you take him back if he asked?”

  She hated this question. Didn’t even ask it of herself. She wanted to say no. Grace 2.0 pretty much demanded that she tattoo no on her bicep. But the other part of her … the romantic part of her wondered about forgiveness.

  Couples did come back from infidelity. People did forgive.

  She just didn’t know if she was one of them.

  And then there was the even more alarming fact that she was thinking about Greg less and less lately. The fact that she was no longer even remotely sure that he’d been the love of her life.

  “Can I pass on that one?” she said.

  Jake’s jaw tightened briefly, and she thought she was about to get the lecture on how Greg was garbage.

  Instead he gave her a half smile. “Sure.”

  Grace thought about protesting when Jake ordered a chocolate torte for them to split, but whom was she kidding? She had a weakness for dessert.

  A weakness for dessert? 2.0 taunted. Or a weakness for Jake?

  If she was honest, this lunch was the best time she’d had in a long while. She and Jake had all of the easy comfort that she and Greg had once had, but unlike in conversations with Greg, she never found herself tuning out when Jake spoke.

  She tried to tell herself it was probably just a function of Jake being new. Maybe she and Greg had simply reached that level of familiarity where it was okay to tune out the other person once in a while.

  But she couldn’t ever remember laughing this much with Greg, or so easily sharing every thought that came into her head, no matter how random.

  Not even at the beginning.

  Jake held out a bite of dessert across the table, and she hesitated before taking it, her eyes scanning the room, automatically wondering how the gesture might be interpreted. Too interested? Too clichéd?

  His gaze shadowed briefly. “There’s no one here, Grace. Just me.”

  “Yeah, I seem to remember we’ve both played that line before, only to have the private moment all over the blogosphere,” she said before neatly cleaning the bite of torte off the fork.

  “Not all private moments,” he said, taking a bite for himself. “Neither one of us has made those kisses public. Why do you think that is?”

  “Because we agreed not to?”

  “Try again.”

  Because it’s too special.

  But she didn’t say it out loud. She didn’t want to be wrong. Not about this.

  “Because it was real,” he said. “We may be trying to trip each other up all over the place these past few weeks, but even though we both want to win, we know some things are sacred.”

  Then why haven’t you tried to take it beyond kissing? 1.0 wanted to ask.

  Jake had definitely not been beating down her door to get into her pants. Which was polite, and gentlemanly, and totally depressing.

  Just once she wanted to be that woman that drove men crazy. She wanted to be the irresistible sexy one, not the nice, classy one.

  She’d told that to Greg once. She’d had one too many glasses of chardonnay and confessed that she sometimes she wished her life was just a little bit messy, the sex something other than vanilla.

  He’d just given her a small smile before taking away her wineglass and tucking her into bed.

  The next morning she continued being the one whom people consulted about bridal shower gifts and who received lovely but generic jewelry for her birthday.

  “You like beer?” Jake asked.

  “What?” Grace asked, not at all following his train of thought.

  “There’s a brewery up the road. They give tours and have a nice little tasting area.”

  “You’re inviting me to a brewery tour?”

  Jake laughed. “You can say no, Grace.”

  “No! I mean yes! Yes, I’d like that.”

  “Yeah?”

  She shrugged. “I mean, don’t expect me to wow the tour guide with all my beer knowledge, or buy a case or anything, but yeah … that sounds fun.”

  His mouth tilted up as he signaled for the check. “I bet nobody’s ever asked you to play hooky before, huh?”

  The playful question was too close to the thoughts that had been spiraling through her mind just seconds before, and she heard herself answering too seriously.

  “Nobody has. And I like it.”

  He looked at her then, really looked at her, his eyes understanding.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, trying to break the moment. “I’m so not having sex with you just because you take me to some rinky-dink beer tour.”

  The cocky grin returned immediately. “I don’t recall asking, Ms. Brighton, but believe me, this little thing we have will end with us in bed one way or the other.”

  Grace felt her heart drop to her stomach before it soared back up and lodged in her throat.

  “You think so?” She was trying for coy, but instead it came out sultry.

  He stood and extended a hand for hers. “Count on it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Though they’d never explicitly talked about it, neither one of them wrote about that day in the stairwell.

  The lunch, the brewery tour … the casual night that had followed, with them sharing a pitcher of beer and playing pool.

  Nobody knew about it.

  It was theirs alone, and even though 2.0 was pissed about it, Grace tucked it away in a little part of her labeled Happy Memories.

  Not that the shenanigans on the website had ceased. There were more followers than ever, their reader base ever more vocal. In an effort to appease their “fans,” Grace and Jake did lunch together more regularly, often followed by lingering coffee breaks in the afternoon.

  More often than not, they had an audience of some kind.

  More often than not, Grace forgot about the audience.

  And she suspected he did too.

  Which was not to say they were shirking their duties. They took plenty of good-natured swipes at each other on the website. He’d sent her a picture of him in his briefs, knowing full well she’d put it on the website.

  She had.

  And when she’d “accidentally” flashed her thigh when getting up from a booth at a local restaurant, she’d known he’d rant on the blog about how it was the oldest trick in the female playbook.

  Neither of them had spoken about his threat/promise about them sleeping together. But it was there, between them. Looming closer.

  And despite the fact that she still adamantly waved her six-month sabbatical in Julie and Riley’s faces whenever they tentatively suggested she try going on a real date, she was no longer sure that Jake was wrong.

  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 origin
al 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 fascinatio
n. “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?”