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He needed to see if he and Grace had a chance.
But then his eyes found the brochure and his gut twisted. Hell, what did it matter if he went to the game or not? Things were still headed in the same nowhere direction. He’d be jetting all over the place. She’d be here and planning her big white wedding.
He’d known it wouldn’t last.
He just hadn’t known it would suck this bad when it ended.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Hey, give me two minutes,” Grace said, seeing Jake waiting in the doorway of her office. “Just need to finish a draft of this article: ‘Five Romantic Comedies He Won’t Hate.’ ”
“Yeah right,” Jake said. “You writing about unicorns next?”
She shot him a look. “You survived Sleepless in Seattle just fine the other night,” she said, her fingers tapping away on the keyboard.
“No, I survived Tom Hanks just fine. Everyone likes Tom Hanks. Doesn’t mean I’m going to buy the limited-edition DVD or anything.”
She rolled her eyes, ignoring him for a second as she finished her thought before turning to face him. “Okay. Done. Where to today?”
His eyes scanned the office. “Where are the girls?”
Grace pointed to each of her friends’ chairs. “Dentist, lunch-sex, don’t know.”
“Who’s who?”
“Emma’s at the dentist, Mitchell swung by to pick up Julie, which is why I’m assuming there’s lunch-sex involved, and I think Riley’s off interviewing women in Times Square for her new article, but I’m not really sure.”
He didn’t respond, and Grace looked at him then—really looked at him for the first time since he’d come into the office.
And she didn’t like what she saw. This wasn’t playful Jake. It wasn’t even focused-on-work Jake.
It was a withdrawn, closed-off Jake.
The office suddenly felt stifling. She knew that look. It wasn’t unlike the one on Greg’s face that horrible day when she’d confronted him about Maureen.
The look was so much worse than anger or disdain. It was resignation.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. She knew it wasn’t.
“Can we talk?”
And there it was.
There wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t know what that meant. Both 1.0 and 2.0 rallied around her for support, 1.0 to comfort, 2.0 to shield.
“Sure,” she said with a sunniness she didn’t feel. She stood and shut the door. Grace really, really didn’t want an audience for what she thought was about to go down.
“I talked to Cassidy today,” Jake said, half sitting on Riley’s desk. Grace did the same on Julie’s desk since it was across from Riley’s and as far from Jake as she could get without leaving the crowded office.
She waited for him to continue.
“And I got my new work assignment.”
She blinked. Not what she was expecting. It definitely didn’t explain his expression. He looked like someone had died.
What did his new assignment have to do with them? Even if his new story involved something in the dating department, it didn’t mean it had to affect his personal life. Just look at Julie—she was happily engaged and still wrote dating articles all the time. In fact, her writing about relationships had gotten better since she’d entered into one herself.
They could make it work. They could make anything work.
