by Lauren Layne
With each step back to her office, she felt her writer’s block begin to lift. Julie could write this story. She owed it to herself. She owed it to her readers.
And most of all, she owed it to Mitchell.
Chapter Nineteen
“Mr. Forbes, I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s a woman here to see you.”
Mitchell almost laughed into the phone. Once upon a time, a woman wanting to see him had been a good thing. But that was before his home had been invaded by a manipulative, social-climbing heartbreaker and an endless bevy of nosy journalists.
“Get rid of her, Christian,” Mitchell said to his building’s doorman. “I’m not expecting anyone.”
“But she says she knows you, sir.”
Mitchell pushed his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets in exasperation. “I’m sure she said that. But so have a dozen other women who’ve been by here wanting an exclusive.”
Christian’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t think this one’s a reporter. She’s quieter, you know?”
Mitchell raised an eyebrow. Couldn’t be Julie. There was nothing quiet about her.
Curiosity got the best of him. “What’s her name?”
“Grace Brighton. Says you work with her ex-boyfriend?”
That had Mitchell pausing. Ex-boyfriend? Greg and Grace’s relationship predated cellphones. They were over?
And he noticed that Grace had failed to mention their other connection. Julie.
What the hell was she doing here? They’d only ever made a little small talk. And he highly doubted Julie had sent anyone to plead her case. It had been almost three weeks, and he hadn’t heard from her. Not a text, not an email, not a missed call.
They were over.
Exactly what he wanted.
And yet …
“Oh, what the hell. Send her up.”
Mitchell tugged at his tie and threw it over the back of the bar stool as he grabbed a beer from the fridge. It had been his sad routine for the past week: wake up, run, work, come home, work some more, maybe watch a game he no longer cared about.
He was bored. And maybe a little wounded. He washed away that last emotion with a swallow of beer.
He’d never thought of himself as someone who needed a woman. Hell, when he and Evelyn were together, those rare “alone” nights had been precious. But with Julie … with Julie it had been different. Calling her after work to grab a glass of wine or a beer had been second nature. Watching a movie with her legs slung over his lap had been relaxing. Shit, even takeout tasted better when they’d eaten together.
And she was probably scribbling notes about it every time you took a piss.
To think that he’d been actually daydreaming about what style of ring would suit her best. The thought of his own foolish naïveté made him sick.
There was a polite knock at his door, and Mitchell yanked it open with more force than necessary. If Grace had come to plead her trampy friend’s case, he’d let her know exactly where she could shove her precious magazine.
His self-righteous anger faded slightly at the sight of Grace. “Are you okay?”
The question spilled from his lips as he pulled her inside. He’d never seen Grace Brighton look anything but perfectly put together. But this Grace looked like she’d been rummaging around for hot dog remnants in the garbage cans of Central Park.
“I know,” she said, running a hand through hair that hadn’t seen shampoo in days. “I look like hell.”
Pretty much. “Nah, you just look … not yourself.”
Her smile was probably meant to reassure him, but the grimace only made her look more like the Joker. “Got any more of those?” she asked, jerking her chin at the beer bottle in his hand.
He hesitated for a moment but then realized he couldn’t exactly throw her out in her present condition. And a little companionship wouldn’t kill him. He hadn’t spoken to anyone except colleagues in the past couple of weeks, and then it had only been about bonds and money.
Colin had been nervously circling around him like a whipped dog, forever dropping off gourmet sandwiches and fancy coffees as peace offerings. He wasn’t a bad guy, just an incredibly stupid one, with wretched taste in women.
Still, the fact that he’d dumped Kelli after learning she’d sold their pillow talk to Allen Carsons spoke highly of him. And Colin had pulled the necessary strings over at the Tribune to get the second part of Carsons’s ridiculous story killed before publication.
All in all, Colin was shaping up to be a better friend than Mitchell would have guessed.
Didn’t mean Mitchell was going to put a stop to the free coffees and lunches, though.
Mitchell grabbed a beer from the fridge, popped the cap, and handed it to Grace. She took a healthy swallow. And then another. Then another.
She let out the tiniest of burps before grinning like a madwoman at the bottle. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve had a beer? With Greg, I only ever drank chardonnay.”
Oh, boy.
“Hey, Grace, can I call someone for you?”
She gave a maniacal little laugh and settled uninvited onto one of his bar stools. “Sure, sure. Call Greg. I’m sure he has nothing else going on. Oh, wait! That’s not right. He’s probably busy boning that slutty coworker of yours.”
Mitchell tipped the bottle to his lips. Ah. So that’s how it was.
Not that he was surprised. Greg’s “friendships” with the females of the office were well known. He only wished they were rumors instead of fact.
But the proof was in Grace’s tangled hair and mismatched shoes. He felt a surge of sympathy. “You guys broke up, huh?”
She gave a wave of her hand. “Broke up … exploded. Whatever you want to call ten fucking years down the drain. Apparently I don’t excite him anymore. Guess I should have been spending my time figuring out how to hoist my breasts up to my eyebrows instead of doing his damned laundry.”
Mitchell fiddled with the label on his beer bottle. This was definitely not his territory. And surely she had other girlfriends she could man-bash with. He was betting she and Julie could have a field day.
“Well, Greg’s loss,” he said finally, meaning it. Grace Brighton was a classy broad. He couldn’t see her shacking up with some guy for the sake of a story.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said in a small voice. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”
Mitchell straightened, his body going on high alert. He knew where this was going. “I don’t want to talk about her. Not with you. Not with anyone.”
Grace sighed. “I know. I know. And I can’t say I blame you. I should have stopped the stupid undercover-girlfriend idea before it even started. But you have to know, you meant something to her.”
He snorted. “Yeah, another rung on her career ladder.”
“Stop,” she snapped. “You can be mad and you can be hurt—”
“I’m not hurt,” he interrupted sharply. Jesus, that’s the last thing I need. One more person thinking he was slinking around like a lovesick swain.
“Well, she is,” Grace said firmly. “She’s dying inside.”
“Yeah, a guilty conscience can be a bitch.”
Grace gave a long-suffering sigh. “Okay, I can see this was probably a mistake. And it’s really not my place. But …”
She pulled a rolled-up magazine out of her bag and tapped it against her palm. Grace bit her lip and looked at him nervously.
His eye caught the telltale image of a high-heeled shoe on the spine of the magazine and he let out a harsh laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Is that it?”
Grace gave a weak smile. “Our August issue. It won’t be out on stands for a few days, but I thought you should be the first to read it.”
The very thought made him nauseous. “So she wrote it. She actually fucking wrote it.”
He hated that the knowledge burned a hole in his gut. Hated that he’d been holding out hope that she’d cared enough about what happened
to keep it private. That deep down, she’d meant what she’d said about him being more than a story.
“She wrote about you,” Grace said softly. “But not in the way you think.”
This was bullshit. He didn’t care what kind of pretty words she used to describe her fucked-up game. His personal life was splayed all over a brainless women’s magazine, probably sandwiched between an article on Botox and one on the G-spot.
“I think you should leave,” he said, trying to keep his tone level.
Grace nodded, gathering her bag and taking another sip of her beer. “I should. But I’m leaving the magazine.”
“Great, I’ve been running low on toilet paper.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, resting a protective hand on the glossy cover. “My best friend’s heart is between these pages. You may not owe anything to her, and I know what she did to you was wrong. But you owe it to yourself to hear her side. It may give you some peace. And need I remind you that you’re hardly an innocent party in all this? What makes what she did so different from what you did?”
I loved her. I was going to call the bet off.
Grace chugged the rest of her beer before slamming the bottle with force back on the counter and marching to the door. He didn’t see her out. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the damned magazine.
Instinct demanded that he throw it away. Even if Julie had managed to spin a pretty story and had withheld his name, it didn’t change the fact that everything they’d shared had been a sham. The article would be too.
Grabbing another beer from the fridge, he started to head toward the couch, away from the magazine. Away from all reminders of her.
Then a headline caught his eye: “Pieces of a Broken Heart.”
Surely that wasn’t her story. That couldn’t be Julie’s article. But Grace’s words echoed in his ear. She’s dying inside.
Don’t touch it, man. Do. Not. Touch. It. Mitchell reached out a hesitant hand. Fiddled with the corner of the cover.
And then he sat down and began to read.
Chapter Twenty
As if Julie needed more proof that her once cheerful, predictable life was now turned upside down, she was running.
Willingly. On a Friday night.
She should be out on the town, living it up the way Julie Greene was expected to do. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have options. Keith had called for another date. Riley and Grace had begged her to join them for dinner. Even Camille had wanted to take her for drinks to celebrate. Sales numbers for Stiletto’s August issue were in, and true to Camille’s prediction, it was one of their best-selling issues to date, even though it had been only four days since it hit the stands.
Still, it wasn’t all good news. The feedback was starting to come in, and some of the readers were let down. After Allen’s Tribune article, they’d expected a juicer story. They’d wanted a tabloid-worthy exposition of what it was like to seduce a man into a relationship for the sake of a story, only to find out he didn’t want you in the first place.
Instead they’d gotten a love letter about heartache.
One columnist for a local paper had called her story classy, brave, and utterly dull. The New York Tattler thought she’d stolen the story from an eleventh grader’s diary. And then there was Allen Carsons’s follow-up article. He’d accused her of being a first-class swindler who’d resorted to playing the victim upon being outsmarted by his own “superior journalism.”
Julie ran faster, her breath coming in sharp gasps. Swindler, her ass. She’d poured her heart and soul into that article. She’d held nothing back.
And he hadn’t called.
Had he even read it? She suspected that the control freak in him would want to know what she’d said about him.
But the Mitchell who had stared at her that last day? That Mitchell had been done with her. For good.
Julie swore as she nearly tripped on a root. Maybe running in Central Park at dusk hadn’t been the best plan. She slowed her pace to a jog so that she could better see where she was going.
The breakneck sprint hadn’t accomplished what she’d hoped, anyway. She still couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Damn it, it was supposed to have gotten easier after writing the article, but she still couldn’t seem to go five minutes without checking her phone, desperate to see the one message that never came.
Still, the actual writing process had been therapeutic. Not only because she’d had a chance to spill her guts, but because she had hoped that it would help some other lovesick girl along the way.
Love is not a game, ladies. Treat it like one, and you’re bound to lose.
Everyone talks about the rewards of finding that one person. Nobody warns you about the pain of losing him.
She shook her head to clear it. Her own words had been running on repeat in her mind, and she just wanted to think about something else, anything else. But it was everywhere she turned. Riley had deemed her ballsy for spilling her guts. Grace had called her gracious. But right now she felt stupid. She’d told her story to strangers, and the one person who mattered didn’t give a damn.
Julie slowed to a walk and punched her hands into her hips as she gasped at the muggy summer air and fought back the tears.
Mitchell, I miss you.
Julie walked until her breathing returned to normal, but the anguished feeling didn’t leave. Running might have been a good idea, but running the exact same path she’d run with Mitchell that first day had not.
She kept seeing him with his easy pace ahead of her, glancing back to make sure she hadn’t fallen into the bushes or stolen someone’s bicycle. She pictured the teasing smile that was completely at odds with his stuffy image and high-tech running gear.
She pictured him waiting on the bench, ready with a hot dog and water bottle. The memory was so clear, so poignant that for a moment she really did see him. Saw the bench, saw Mitchell—
Julie stopped in her tracks.
Blinked. Blinked again. Squinted and crept closer.
It wasn’t a memory.
It was Mitchell.
Except this time, there was no teasing smile of welcome.
There was, however, a Stiletto magazine by his side.
He’d read it.
The heartbeat that had just barely returned to normal sped up to triple time as she slowly approached, her eyes locked on his, desperate for a sign of what he was feeling. Was he pissed? Pleased?
Did he still love her? Had he ever loved her?
But his blue eyes betrayed nothing. So afraid to hope that she could barely breathe, Julie wordlessly sat on the bench beside him.
She ordered herself to speak. Hi. Hello. I’m sorry. I love you.
Instead she said nothing. They weren’t touching, but she could feel the warmth from his hip just inches from her own, and she longed to lean in, just for a moment.
“You read it?” she asked when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
He nodded once. “I wasn’t going to, but Grace brought it over. Came at me like a woman on a mission.”
Julie gave a tiny smile. “I can imagine. I think she figures that since she can’t fix her own love life, she’ll interfere in someone else’s.”
“Yeah, she mentioned things with Greg ended badly. How’s she doing?”
Julie hitched her heel up on the bench and tightened laces that didn’t need tightening as she wondered why they were talking about Grace instead of them.
Still, Grace was a safe topic, so …
“She’s all right,” Julie replied. “Actually … no. She’s a wreck. Says she’s going ‘off men.’ ”
Mitchell turned to look at her. “Off men. As in she’s playing for the other team?”
Julie let out a little laugh. “No. Or at least, not that she’s told me. She’s just declaring a boycott on romance. She’s angling for a year’s sabbatical, but Riley and I are trying to talk her down to six months.”
He fell silent for several mo
ments. “And you? Are you going off men?”
Depends on the man.
But she didn’t say it.
She’d already risked enough of her heart in that article. She wasn’t about to go running off her mouth on top of it.
Not until she’d heard what he’d had to say.
She dodged his question with one of her own. “How’d you know I’d be out running?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you were doing? Running? It looks more like you’re dying.”
She cut him a glance.
“Right,” he said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “It was just a hunch, you know … that you’d come back to run here.”
“And you knew it would be today?” she asked skeptically.
He didn’t meet her eyes, and she watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “I’ve um … I’ve been coming here for the past couple days, actually. Waiting for you.”
Julie’s stomach flipped.
“That’s very stalkerish of you,” she said softly.
And very sweet.
He nodded awkwardly before handing her a foil-wrapped package. Wordlessly she opened it, and when she saw what was inside, she gave a watery smile.
It was a hot dog.
Just like on that first day. No, not exactly like the first day. No relish this time. For some reason, that one small change made her feel like weeping more than anything else. It represented all of the nuances that changed a man from being just a guy to being the guy.
Although she could barely fathom the idea of eating, she took a bite of the hot dog, painfully aware that he was watching her chew.
“So all these days you’ve been waiting for me … is there something you wanted to discuss, or was it just a sit-in-awkward-silence type of deal?”
Please say something.
He reached down to pick up the magazine by his side. Its cover was wrinkled and water-splattered. Either he’d dug it out of the garbage or he’d read it. Several times, from the looks of it.
Wordlessly he turned to a dog-eared page of the magazine—her article. Julie winced and looked away. Her article in his hands was the ultimate vulnerability. As though he just had to make a fist in order to crush her.