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Grace leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands while smirking at her best friend. “You could just slather the guy with bacon-flavored lube. Sex it up a bit?”
“There will be no lube,” Camille said with a sharp finger jab. “And no sex. This is a dating column, not a prostitution ring.”
Riley faked a big yawn.
“Fine,” Camille snapped. “Emma? You up for it?”
Grace’s spine slowly straightened. Whaaaaat?
She understood why Riley had been Camille’s first choice—this sort of battle-of-the-sexes thing was a perfect fit for Riley’s snarky, bold style. And she understood why Julie was out of the running—an engaged woman doing a first-person dating project wouldn’t work.
But why Emma before Grace? Adding insult to injury, nobody else in the room seemed to think this was strange. Even Riley and Julie didn’t seem fazed by the fact that Grace was apparently freaking invisible.
Oddly, only Emma seemed aware that something was off, and her eyes flicked to Grace as though asking permission. Grace wanted to give her a reassuring smile. To tell Emma to go ahead and take the story because it wasn’t Grace’s thing. She gravitated toward stories that were less edgy, less ballsy …
Less interesting.
At least Grace 1.0 gravitated toward stories like that.
Grace 2.0 was screaming that this was their chance to redeem themselves. To expose men as philandering frauds while slowly rebuilding their dignity.
“I’ll do it!” Grace blurted out, her hand shooting in the air like a precocious second grader rushing to beat her classmates to the answer.
Twenty pairs of eyes fell on her.
“Grace …,” Camille said, her voice gentle.
Oh shit. If their take-no-prisoners, half-batshit-crazy boss was going soft, it was worse than she thought.
“You just got back from vacation,” Camille said. “Give yourself a little breather to get back into the swing of things.”
But Grace 2.0 was strapping on battle armor, so Grace forged ahead. “Look, you need someone to go with an open mind into a dating scenario, right? Who better than someone who’s freshly back on the dating scene?”
“But we need—”
Grace held up a finger to stop the objections. “And who better to see through a man’s bullshit than someone who just got thrown over by a man? Nobody will be more watchful of a guy’s BS than me.”
“She has a point.”
Grace was a little startled to realize it was Emma who had spoken, but the new columnist looked completely unperturbed by the fact that Grace was trying to steal a prime story from right under her nose.
“Look,” Emma said in her husky voice. “Office water-cooler gossip has made it obvious that Grace is coming out of a nasty relationship. If this is truly a competition—and if Stiletto wants to prove that women read men far better than they read us—then we’ll need someone who has a burning desire to get it right.”
Grace didn’t know why Emma was taking her side, but Emma made an excellent point. Grace did have a burning desire to get it right.
She felt Camille studying her, her boss’s auburn bob barely moving as she tilted her head to the side.
“Okay,” Camille said simply.
Okay? Okay? That was it?
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Julie and Riley give her victorious smiles.
Camille changed the subject to some rant about organic skin care, and Grace sat back in her chair, feeling the best she’d felt in weeks.
Grace 1.0 was biting her nails nervously, and Grace 2.0 was doing victory push-ups.
Operation Reclaim Dignity was officially on track.
