by Lauren Layne
There was no guarantee that he would forgive her, but she had hope. Especially when she told him the decision she’d made this morning.
She wasn’t going to write the story.
Mitchell meant too much to her. And even if it wouldn’t break his heart to have their relationship splayed across Stiletto’s shiny pages, it would break hers. What they had was too precious to share with the world. It was theirs and theirs alone.
Of course, not writing the article meant that she technically didn’t have to tell him at all.
Except that she did.
Julie might not know much about relationships, but she knew that the good ones weren’t founded on secrets and lies.
But first she had to explain away last night’s mistake. “Mitchell, I really am sorry. I wish I could explain exactly why, but the truth was I freaked out about whatever this is and thought a backward step might help.”
“Did it?”
She answered with her eyes. No.
He studied her for several moments before reaching across the table and taking her hand. He rubbed a thumb over her knuckles. “So we’re not seeing other people?”
Julie blinked in surprise at how much the thought of Mitchell with someone else hurt.
“No,” she breathed. “I don’t want us to see other people.”
He raised her hand to his lips. “Me neither.”
“So we’re good then?”
He let go of her hand and dug into his bagel. “We’re good.”
Thank God. Appetite restored, Julie reached again for her bagel.
“You up for a little run around the island?” Mitchell asked.
Julie’s sandwich paused halfway to her mouth. “The island? Please tell me you’re not talking about the island of Manhattan.”
He took a gulp of coffee, apparently completely unaware that he’d gone off the deep end. “Yep.”
“It’s a city, Mitchell. Not a damned track.”
“Still an island. And a small one at that. Thirteen miles long, only two across.”
She held up an objecting hand as she stuffed her bagel in her mouth. “Human bodies are not meant to do that. I mean, why don’t we just swim to Staten Island when we’re done?”
“I’d love to.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she said with a full mouth. “I have a better idea. How about we walk two blocks to an air-conditioned movie theater and split a big-ass bag of popcorn?”
“Or …” He caught her eye and held it, and she struggled to swallow her sandwich. She knew what that look meant.
“Now?” she asked. “But I’m all puffy and gross and—”
Julie didn’t get a chance to finish her protest as he scooped her up, Rhett Butler style, and carried her the few feet into her bedroom.
She expected him to pounce, but instead he laid her gently on the bed, crawling over her with deliberate slowness. Julie’s tiny bedroom window got exactly fifteen minutes of direct sunlight each day, and they were right in the middle of it. The room was otherwise dark except for the soft morning sun shining on her bed, and Julie smiled at the picturesque perfection of it. As though someone up there was smiling on this particular moment. On her and Mitchell’s moment.
His eyes never left hers as his palms slid up her rib cage in deliberate slowness. She framed his face with her hands. It should have felt familiar by now, but something was different this morning. Julie swallowed nervously. What now?
His dimples flashed briefly, and she knew that he felt the change too.
They knew each other’s bodies backward and forward. They knew heat, passion, lust. But there hadn’t been caring in the bedroom.
Not until right now
“Mitchell,” she said, lurching to her feet in sudden panic, “I—”
Julie half expected him to cut off her words with a kiss. She wanted that. Wanted him to take them back to when sex had just been sex and the idea of being with him didn’t seem to matter so damn much.
Instead he stood up and cupped a hand to her cheek. “You what?”
Julie fixed her gaze on his nose, unable to meet his eyes. She wasn’t sure what she’d meant to say. Wasn’t sure what she should say.
He tipped her chin up, which allowed him to rain soft kisses over every inch of her face.
Julie’s eyes fluttered closed in resignation. Caring about this man was no longer a choice. It simply was.
Finally his lips came down on hers, warm and hard and achingly familiar. She clutched at the front of his shirt, trying to lose herself in the kiss, but he held back, keeping it light and easy. Making it last. His palms continued to cup her face as his lips brushed and plucked, and when the tip of his tongue finally touched hers, they both groaned.
Julie’s hands slid toward the hem of his shirt, wanting to tug it up and off, but he pressed closer against her, crushing her hands between them and continuing to kiss her senseless. When his lips finally traveled down her neck to lick at her collarbone, she was ready to come apart in his hands and they hadn’t even gotten their clothes off.
“More,” she pleaded. “Please.”
He dragged his hands down her front, his palms snagging on her hardened nipples as he paused there for a moment before continuing his slow torture. He stroked up and down over her T-shirt until she was writhing against him.
Finally, finally he slid his hands under her shirt, finding her skin warm and damp.
“I love the way you feel,” he whispered as the shirt crept up inch by inch.
He stopped when the shirt was just beneath her breasts, giving her a teasing wink before he began journeying the opposite way down her body, leaving her aching for more.
He hooked his fingers into the waist of her pajama pants, pulling down slowly until he’d exposed her panties. His eyes flew up to hers in surprise. “White cotton?”
She blushed. She’d gotten up in the middle of the night to put them on. “I don’t like to sleep in thongs.”
No man had ever seen her in her granny panties, and she could tell he knew that. Could tell he liked that.
“Julie,” he whispered, pressing a reverent kiss to her navel and then pulling her back to the bed.
But Julie wasn’t in the mood for playing. She dug her fingers into his hair and pulled him upward, pulling his face down to hers.
“Now.”
He moved quickly, shoving his jeans down to his hips to free the essentials. Two fingers scraped her panties to the side, and he groaned as he felt her wetness.
And when he slid into her with aching slowness, she cried out.
“Mitchell.” Her whole heart was in the word, saying the words she couldn’t.
“I know,” he said roughly against her neck. “I know.”
He continued to press inside her with slow, rocking motions, giving her body a chance to adjust to his.
“More. I want more,” she said, her nails clawing helplessly at his shoulders.
He moved in earnest then, making love to her with slow, sure strokes. His hands slid to her inner thighs, spreading them wider so that each thrust rubbed there, and Julie came apart in his arms, in a vicious, ripping orgasm that went on forever.
When her cries had come down to soft whimpers, Mitchell’s eyes found hers and she saw the same destroyed look on his face as he found his own relief, coming inside her with a harsh cry before collapsing gracelessly on top of her.
She ran her fingers through his damp hair as she dropped kisses onto his shoulder.
It had been the deepest, most important sex of her life.
So why couldn’t she shake the feeling that it was also goodbye?
* * *
When Julie opened her eyes again, the patch of sunlight had moved on, and her legs were completely asleep.
“Mitchell,” she groaned, shoving at his weight. “We fell asleep.”
He grunted and rolled off her, and Julie tentatively wiggled her toes until feeling returned.
A sharp buzzing sound had them both sitting up
right, blinking off their sex-induced haze. Julie groaned. Who the heck was at the front door?
She looked around for her pajama pants, which Mitchell handed over. “Is that your new boyfriend coming to collect on the booty?”
“I don’t think I have any booty left,” Julie said, giving him a swift kiss before she padded out of the bedroom to the intercom.
“Hello?”
“Jules, it’s us. We need to see you.”
Julie frowned at the strained note in Grace’s voice. We could only mean she and Riley, and Riley lived in Brooklyn. If the two of them were at Julie’s doorstep before nine on a Saturday, it wasn’t good news.
She shot a nervous look at the bedroom, where naked Mitchell had resumed his sprawled position. She fixed a smile on her face and grabbed the doorknob. “It’s the girls. I’m going to close this, okay? To protect your virtue.”
“ ’Kay,” he muttered sleepily.
She opened her front door to Riley and Grace, her panic increasing as she saw that this was definitely no surprise brunch call. Riley was wearing her glasses, which was practically unheard of outside the walls of her apartment, and Grace was wearing ratty sweatpants and a shirt that looked like it had probably come from Greg’s hamper.
“What’s going on?” she whispered, ushering them in.
“Why are we whispering?” Riley whispered back.
Grace gaped at Julie’s kitchen table, which clearly showed the remnants of breakfast for two.
“You slept with him? You just met the guy!”
It took Julie a few seconds to realize that Grace was talking about Keith. “No, not him,” Julie said with an impatient wave. “Mitchell.”
She glanced meaningfully toward the closed bedroom door, and her friends’ eyes went wide in matching horror.
“Mitchell’s here?”
“Yes, he’s here,” Julie said with strained patience. “What exactly is going on?”
Grace took a deep breath. “We need to talk. And he needs to leave.” She gave a sideways nod toward Julie’s bedroom.
“I can’t just kick him out. He brought me breakfast.”
And held me while I cried. And then made love to me so gently I wanted to cry all over again.
“Doesn’t look like you finished it,” Riley said, poking at a barely touched bagel.
“We got distracted.”
Grace squinted at her. “Are you blushing?”
Julie’s bedroom door swung open, and Mitchell emerged looking every bit the man on his way to a round of preppy golf, and not at all like a man who’d just been passed out with his bare ass hanging out of his jeans.
“Mitchell! Hi!” Grace’s voice could have broken glass.
Riley’s eyes were wide with alarm, but she quickly fixed a smile on her face and ran a hand over her knotted hair.
“Hello, ladies,” Mitchell said. “I was just on my way out.”
Grace looked at his untouched breakfast and bit her lip. Julie knew that her manners were warring with whatever doomsday proclamation she’d come to make.
“We need some girl talk,” Grace finally said. “Sorry to chase you out.”
Crap. Julie had been sure that Grace’s manners would win out and she’d insist that Mitchell finish his breakfast. If she was chasing him out, the situation was dire indeed.
He smiled in understanding, and grabbed his keys and wallet from the table before bending to give Julie a swift kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call you.”
“Okay,” she said, forcing a smile.
He turned to go, and impulse had her grabbing frantically at his sleeve. He glanced at her curiously. “What’s up?”
Her eyes skimmed over his comforting face, wishing she could burrow into him and stave off whatever storm was about to hit. He smiled softly, his eyes glowing warm, and she knew, she knew, that it was the last time she’d see that expression.
“Nothing,” she said, her voice cracking. “Have a good day.”
Tell him you love him.
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.”
“Not on the phone. I need to see you in person.” He needed to look in Colin’s eyes and make himself very, very clear.
“Come on, man, I’m about to take the woman out to brunch. She’s been hounding me about it for days.”
The fact that Colin had a woman surprised Mitchell. That Colin called her “the woman” did not.
Mitchell checked his watch. “No decent brunch place is even open before eleven. Give me fifteen minutes.”
Colin let out a petulant sigh, and
Mitchell knew curiosity was warring with inconvenience.
“Please,” Mitchell said finally.
“Okay, fine, but you come to me.”
“Done,” Mitchell said, “You live on Park, right? That’s close to my place.”
“I’m not at home.”
Mitchell slumped back again. “Where are you?”
“My woman’s place. She’s down in the Village.”
Shit. Mitchell had just left the Village. “Can you turn around, please?” Mitchell murmured to his cab driver. “Change of plans.”
The cabbie looked annoyed, but he made the first left-hand turn to head back south. Mitchell recited the address that Colin rattled off to him.
“Thanks, Colin,” he said.
“Just make it quick,” Colin said quietly. “She’s pissy until she gets her mimosa.”
“She sounds lovely,” Mitchell muttered, hanging up.
He needed to put this bullshit with the bet behind him so that he could move forward with Julie. For the first time he understood that relationships had nothing to do with compatibility or mutual goals or shared interests in movies. And love wasn’t measured in days spent together or in conversations talking about love.
Love simply was. Love was Julie.
And not just for today, or tomorrow, or the near future. For keeps, as crazy as that sounded.
But if years of working on Wall Street had taught him anything, it was that gut feelings mattered. Because even when common sense told him that there was risk, even when his practicality told him that he’d only known someone for a month, well, sometimes his gut just knew better.
And his gut was definitely telling him that he wanted to spend a lifetime with the happy yet fragile woman who’d turned his life upside down with her sunny smiles.
He’d be damned if he’d risk losing her for the sake of some ball game tickets.
Mitchell knocked on the door of the address Colin had indicated and was relieved that it was Colin himself who opened the door and not the put-out prima donna.
He whistled as he stepped inside. From the outside, it had looked like an average brownstone, but inside, it definitely smelled like money. By New York standards, the place was huge, and everything from the hardwood floors to the modern thermostat on the wall screamed recent renovation.