“For a website called HeSaidSheSaid-dot-com, you certainly didn’t bother to get the he-said portion,” Jake growled.
“And what would the he portion have entailed?” she said quietly. “Would he have denied it?”
“Hell no,” he said. “I wanted you that day, and I don’t care who knows it.”
She blinked. “You don’t?”
“Nope. If I cared about keeping my private life private, I sure as hell wouldn’t have agreed to work for a magazine that occasionally demands I spill my guts.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem, Grace, is that you, my partner in this, didn’t give me the least bit of warning.”
She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. First of all, we’re not partners. We both know this is a competition. Second of all, if you’d had this idea first … if Oxford had sent a camera to catch irrefutable proof that I wanted you, would you have told me? Or would you have jumped at the chance to gain the upper hand?”
He wanted to refute her accusation. He couldn’t. It had been a damned good idea. And she was right. He wished he’d thought of it first.
So what the hell was eating at him? His pride was stinging, sure, but the burn was deeper than that.
“I wanted you to trust me,” he said quietly, putting both palms flat on the door on either side of her head and leaning forward for a split second before pushing back and turning away from her. “We agreed that next month’s print article would be about reading sexual undertones of a second date. I wrote it the afternoon after that lunch, and I was honest. Oxford readers were going to hear from me just how badly I wanted to know what color your bra was, and if your ass is as great up close as it is from a distance.”
“You can still tell them yourself,” she said giving him a patronizing smile. “This online portion was just a little appetizer to get people excited about the upcoming October issue.”
“Bullshit,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “This was about revenge, pure and simple.”
She wisely clammed up as she tightened the belt of the tiny little robe and moved toward the fridge.
The woman had fantastically curvy legs. And if that robe would just creep a couple of inches higher, he’d get a prime view of the ass that he couldn’t get out of his mind. His fingers itched.
He shoved them in his pocket.
What was wrong with him?
“Wine?” she asked, pulling a bottle out of the fridge.
“You’re changing the subject,” he said. “And I’ll take a drink, but do you have anything stronger?”
She poured a glass of wine for herself before gesturing to the sidebar along the window. “Help yourself.”
Jake poured himself a healthy dose of excellent bourbon before helping himself to a couple of ice cubes from her freezer.
She leaned back against the counter, watching him warily. “So you already wrote your piece?”
“Yup. Finished it about ten minutes before my boss called me into his office and showed me my splattered dignity all over his computer screen.”
He was oddly gratified to see the flash of guilt on her face. She was devious, but at least she wasn’t completely without a conscience.
“You work fast,” she said quietly.
“What can I say? A couple things were fresh on my mind.” He let his eyes linger on her chest, and as he expected, her fingers reflexively moved to grasp the lapels of her robe and pull them closer together. She caught his knowing look, and her knuckles tightened briefly before she removed her hand.
All that fussing with the robe left it more open than it had been before. Not enough to give him a glimpse of cleavage, but just the smallest shrug of her shoulders or the tiniest tug with his fingers, and he’d be able to see …
Christ. Jake resisted the urge to dive into her freezer for more ice cubes. Anything to cool off and keep from touching her.
She ran a hand over her smooth ponytail before moving onto one of the bar stools at her kitchen island, taking a sip of her wine, and crossing her legs primly as though granting an interview to a curious reporter instead of dealing with a horny man.
The robe was millimeters away from revealing whether or not she was wearing panties, and Jake was rapidly forgetting why he’d called in a dozen favors to track down Grace’s address. Revenge? A tantrum? Confirmation that she wanted him too? A guarantee that she’d be honest an