Good girl, Grace 2.0 said with a little football-player-style slap on the ass. This is supposed to be your time. Single time, girl power, whatever you want to call it.
Right. Got it. Grace straightened her skirt and headed into the lobby of the Ravenna building for the first time in over a month.
First day of her new life and all that.
It was time to figure out who Grace Brighton really was. And that meant no relationships. No sex. No men. For six months, at least.
Especially not tall dark playboys who climbed into cabs with strange women and likely skipped underwear after one-night stands.
No matter how dead sexy he was.
Chapter Two
“Wait, you never answered the question. Was he hot?”
Grace paused in dumping sugar in her coffee and glared at Riley McKenna. “Who cares if he was hot? I said he was an ass.”
“Yes, but was he a hot ass?” This from Julie, who, like Riley, had apparently missed the point of Grace’s story.
“You’re giving him entirely too much credit,” Grace muttered as the three of them headed toward the conference room for their weekly meeting. Thanks to cab guy, she’d made it in plenty of time.
Riley and Julie exchanged a glance. “He was totally hot,” Julie said in a loud whisper.
“Are you allowed to say that? I mean now that you’re engaged and all?” Riley asked Julie.
Engaged. Grace ignored the little twinge that word caused.
She was happy for her friend, of course. Julie Greene was one of her best friends, and easily the most likable person Grace had ever met. With her honey-blond hair, wide smile, and friendly personality, it was impossible not to like Julie. And sure, it had come as a bit of a surprise when her flirtatious, chronically single friend had fallen for the subject of one of her articles a few months ago—particularly since Mitchell Forbes was pretty much the opposite of Julie.
But they were happy together. Happily engaged.
Which was great.
Really.
It was just …
Grace had always imagined that she’d be the first of the Stiletto “it girls” to take the marriage plunge. Instead she was the furthest from the altar she’d been in ten years. It was as though she were twenty again, back before she’d met Greg Parsons and had started mentally putting together the future Parsons family scrapbook.
Oblivious to Grace’s envy, Julie was twisting the diamond on her fourth finger. “Of course I can still ogle hot guys. What Mitchell doesn’t know …”
“Mitchell’s an omniscient robot when it comes to you,” Riley said as they filed into the conference room. “I’m pretty sure he knows everything. And I bet he knows that right this second you’re ogling Grace’s new man.”
“Grace has a new man?” asked Stiletto’s slim, skinny-jean-clad associate fashion editor.
Great, Grace thought. Now they had an audience. Just what she needed—the gabbiest person in the office thinking that she was seeing someone. Grace gave her friends a stern fix-this look. Oliver Harrington was better than Twitter when it came to spreading gossip.
And seriously, people thought she’d moved on already? It had only been just over four months since she’d learned Greg was having extracurricular time between his colleague’s thighs. Surely she was entitled to a little time to heal before she started dating again?
Say, like … six months more. Six months of glorious single time. Six months of girls’ wine nights and maybe training for a half marathon and figuring out how to be on her own.
It was a great plan. She was pretty sure of it. But only Julie and Riley knew that Grace’s sabbatical from men was an actual premeditated agenda, and she wanted to keep it that way.
No need for anyone else to know just how deeply Greg’s betrayal had cut. It was bad enough that her personal life was in upheaval. But in Grace’s case, the very fabric of her career had also been ripped in half by Greg’s admission.
Okay! I slept with her! But before you get up on your self-righteous high horse, take a good look in the mirror, because these things aren’t one-sided.
Yeah, that had stung.
But what had really burned her ass was that just two months prior, Grace had written the very popular “Ten Signs He’s Cheating” article.
She’d thought it was just another in a long stream of her typical relationship articles: “How to Tolerate His Football Habit.” “You Want Sushi, He Wants Wings—How to Compromise.” Basically she told women how to make their relationship work, and they’d listened.
The cheating article had been a diverting challenge. Since she’d (wrongly) believed that she didn’t have any personal experience in the area of infidelity, Grace had spent months interviewing women whose significant others had strayed. She’d recorded all the subtle signs, the little quirks. The lack of sex, the effusive compliments, the changed passwords …