At first Emma thought her sister’s phone calls had stopped because she was a distracted new bride, but when the text messages began, Emma knew it was the opposite. Daisy was miserable. She and her husband lived in a tiny apartment in Raleigh. Daisy’s only free time to talk was in the evenings after work, which was also when Gary was most likely to be home. So Daisy had texted. Casual complaints at first. He was irritable. Would get mad when she hadn’t made dinner, and then wouldn’t show up when she had. The television was always turned to sports and changing the channel was “not up for discussion.” Then things had gotten worse. He wouldn’t come home at all. He’d leave the room whenever he took a phone call. He’d yell at Daisy whenever she mentioned the prospect of starting a family. The best text Emma had ever received was the one saying Daisy was getting a divorce.
But Emma and Daisy had never gone back to their hours-long phone calls. Daisy said it was because she’d simply grown accustomed to texting, but sometimes Emma worried it was something darker—almost like Daisy knew she could hide behind a text more than she could a phone call. Because if anyone could read into the tone of your voice, it was your twin.
Still, when it came to griping about a bad date, texting did just fine, Emma thought as she chomped her Goldfish and let her fingers fly across the screen as she began to fill her sister in on her evening.
Just got back from the blind date.
Daisy’s response was immediate. Uh-oh. It’s early. Was hoping for love at first sight.
Oh, it was love at first sight all right, Emma texted back.
Wait, what? Do I get a do-over on my maid-of-honor gig?
Don’t buy your bridesmaid dress just yet. He fell in love with someone else. I think I actually WATCHED it happen.
As Emma and Daisy texted back and forth, and as the wine level in Emma’s glass got lower and lower, something dawned on her.
She was annoyed by the entire evening, true.
But what was really eating at her wasn’t that she and Benedict hadn’t hit it off.
It was that Emma couldn’t bring herself to care.
Not even the tiniest bit.
Chapter 7
There was a knock at Alex’s office door.
“Yeah?” he called.
“Boss.”
He glanced up to see Cole Sharpe standing in his doorway. Not who he’d expected.
“Where’s Jake?” Alex asked.
Cole entered the office uninvited and ambled toward Alex’s desk with the easy stroll of a man who never hurried anywhere. Why would he? Everything came to him. The prime stories. The prime women…
“Jake Malone,” Cole answered, picking up Alex’s stapler and clicking it a few times as he sat down, “was last seen entering the stairwell.”
“The stairwell?” Alex leaned back in his chair, not following.
“You know…to meet Grace?” Cole said, wiggling his eyebrows.
Alex clicked his pen. “They do that a lot?”
“Maybe,” Cole said, reaching across the desk and snagging a PowerBar Alex had never gotten around to eating. “Why, got some voyeuristic tendencies?”
Actually, Alex couldn’t care less whether one of his top columnists was copulating with his new bride in the stairwell, but he and Jake did have a meeting scheduled.
And Alex needed Jake’s advice.
More specifically, he needed Jake’s wife’s advice.
But Jake wasn’t here, and Cole was, so…
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard about me taking over Stiletto for a few months?” Alex asked.
“Of course I heard that,” Cole said around a bite of PowerBar.
Alex threw up his hands. “How? How did you hear that? You don’t even work here full-time.”
Despite Alex’s best efforts, Cole Sharpe insisted on maintaining his contractor status. He was Oxford’s best sports columnist by a long shot. He had connections in the NFL, NBA, NHL…college sports, high school sports, you name it.
Alex was dying to get Cole on an exclusive basis, but so far the man had clung hard and fast to his freelancer status. As far as Alex could tell, Cole Sharpe wasn’t the type of man to settle down in any aspect of his life. Tall, broad shouldered, with the slightly scruffy good looks of a Hollywood romantic-comedy hero, he managed his career like he did his women:
Enthusiastically and noncommittally.
Still, Cole’s reputation with women might be exactly what Alex needed.
There was an enormous stack on the corner of Alex desk. He pulled it toward him and rapped the papers with his fist. “You know what this is?”
Cole glanced at the stack. “Your diary?”
“Stiletto articles,” Alex said, thumping the papers again. “Page after page about exfoliants and multiple orgasms and lipstick.”