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.

“Family money,” Colin said by way of explanation. “Her mom is the maven of one of those massive cosmetic corporations or something.”

Mitchell couldn’t stop looking around. Surely that wasn’t a real Picasso. “Where is the little heiress?” he asked quietly.

“Primping,” Colin said with a jerk toward what Mitchell assumed was a bathroom. “She’ll be in there for hours. There’s an office space back this way where we can talk.”

Mitchell noticed Colin was doing something fidgety with his hands. He’d tap one fist against his palm and then switch and do the same thing on the other side. Over and over and over.

He’d seen Colin do that before when something big was going down on the exchange. Colin was nervous about something. Either Mitchell’s phone call had scared the hell out of him or his girlfriend was even more of an uptight bitch than he was letting on.

The “office” was more of a nook with a sliding door, and there was a stack of magazines on the desk, with Stiletto on top. Mitchell smiled. It made him think of Julie.

“So what’s up?” Colin asked, folding his arms across his beefy chest and giving a plastic smile.

Mitchell’s instincts went on alert. Colin was seriously freaked out about something.

“The deal’s off,” he said quietly, grabbing a stapler off the desk and clicking it idly.

“I’m sorry?” Colin said, his eyes locked on Mitchell’s hand.

“The deal. With Julie, the Yankees tickets, the whole thing . . . done.”

Colin ran a hand over his short brown crew cut and gave a nervous laugh. “That’s it? Okay, then. Consider it over.”

Mitchell narrowed his eyes at Colin’s easy tone. “Let me be more clear. It never happened.”

Colin looked confused. “Wait, I don’t get the office? I thought that was part of the deal. I thought you were conceding.”

Mitchell swore. “Christ, I don’t care about the damned office. I just meant as far as Julie knows, this whole thing never happened.”

Colin held up two innocent hands. “Sure, man. I’ll never mention it again.” A flash of Colin’s old smugness resurfaced, and Mitchell felt oddly relieved.