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“And Alex Cassidy?” Grace said, scrunching up her nose. “As in sexy editor in chief of Oxford?”
“Can’t vouch for the sexy part, but yeah. I think that’s the guy.”
“They don’t even know each other,” Julie said. “Emma’s new to Stiletto and he’s new to Oxford.”
“Doesn’t mean they don’t know each other,” Mitchell said.
“Mitchell,” Julie said sweetly. “Will you stop doing that dense male thing and tell us what the hell you’re talking about? What drama?”
Mitchell spared them a glance, but only because it was between innings. “They used to be engaged.”
Grace didn’t have to look at Julie to know that her best friend’s mouth was gaping open. Just as hers was.
“Engaged? No way. How do you know?”
“Heard them talking about it. They were in front of me in the hot dog line.”
“Were they bickering?” Julie asked eagerly. “Was it like Riley and Sam?”
All three of them glanced down to see Riley taking a not-so-gentle swipe at Sam’s shoulder. “Eh, it was a little chillier than that. Can sexual tension happen in ice? Because these two were stone cold.”
“How could Emma not tell us?” Julie wailed, waving her hands wildly and sloshing some of her beer.
“Hard to say. I mean, you’re handling the news so well,” Mitchell muttered.
“Guess that explains Emma’s sudden migraine,” Grace said, scanning th
e crowd for Alex Cassidy. He was next to Camille, looking as reserved and handsome as ever with his short black hair and green eyes. He was lean and athletic. Grace seemed to remember Jake saying he’d been a college athlete of some kind.
Was that where he and Emma had met?
It was easy to picture them together. They both had that sort of unshakable calm, as though no one and nothing could ruffle their feathers.
Maybe that’s why they hadn’t worked. Maybe, as Mitchell had said, there had been too much ice, not enough fire.
Alex caught her staring and gave her an aloof smile before he leaned down to hear whatever Camille was rambling about.
Grace was so busy studying Alex and worrying about her friends’ love lives that she’d almost gone and forgotten about her own romantic drama. Almost.
But then Cole Sharpe plopped into the seat beside her, and reality came crashing back.
“Hey, baby.”
She forced a smile in return. She knew what he was trying to do. He’d be stepping in for Jake during the damned fifth-inning kiss-cam that would officially bring her and Jake’s saga to a close.
Only the close would be Grace moving on with another guy, with Jake nowhere to be found.
It made her look a bit like a hussy and made him look like a slime ball, but Grace wasn’t a fool. The local stations had their eye on her. The ticket winners who kept giving her pitiful looks had their eye on her.
She’d kiss Cole Sharpe for the magazine.
She’d do it to end the questions and the scrutiny over what had or hadn’t happened between her and Jake.
But after this inning?
She was peacing out of the romance department the way she’d originally planned months ago. The way she’d intended before a certain coffee-eyed, scruffy-jawed stranger had hopped into her cab and turned her carefully laid plans upside down.
Greg had fooled her once, Jake had fooled her the second time.… She’d be damned if there’d be a third time.
