Page 37 of Whiskey Lies

The buzzer in the apartment sounds, and I smile to myself. There’s my best friend. I run to the door, hit the button to allow her up, and sprint to my room to quickly get dressed so she doesn’t know that I’ve been slumming it all morning.

“Grace,” Tessa shouts from the living room, walking into my apartment with the energy of a teenager. “If you are lying in bed crying, I’m dragging you out of here by your pigtails!” She rounds the corner into my bedroom holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and a bottle of tequila inthe other.

“Wow, you came prepared,” I tease, looking at her as I slip on a pair of jeans, doing a little jig as I pull them over my hips. I may have overindulged in Florida. These feel a bit tighter than they were a few weeks ago.

Tessa drops the bottles onto the bed and flops down herself, giving me a once-over. Her auburn hair is up in a ponytail, and with the freckles on her face she looks far younger than her thirty-six years. Bitch.

“Why do you always look so fresh?” I ask in an annoyed tone. I love my friend dearly, but it really is trying that I have to spend time putting on makeup and doing my hair and she can just waltz out of the shower and look like that.

“Oh stop. Last time I checked I don’t have any millionaires banging down my door to date me.”

I laugh and motion around the room, then put my hand up to my ear. “Hmm, I’m not hearing anyone knocking and there definitely isn’t anyone hiding in the bathroom. No millionaires. No men at all.”

Tessa sits up and grabs her large messenger bag. She reaches in and pulls out her phone. “Well according to page six you were seen with not one but two millionaires last night.”

I grab the phone from her hand and pull it to my face, grimacing when I see a photograph of me standing between a smiling Jonathan and a menacing Cash. It was precisely when Jonathan had snaked his arm around my waist, and I can now see that Cash’s hands were balled into fists. It’s not a good look. For them or me. Although, fortunately, it only identifies me as the mystery woman.

“Oh God, this caption is absurd!” I laugh.

Business Isn’t the Only Thing that Cassius James and Jonathan Hanson Fight Over.

Ha. As if. The real news would be that neither man is actually interested in Grace Kensington and oh, by the way, she’s married.

“How is this considered news?” I ask in disgust as I toss the phone back in my friend’s direction.

She shrugs her shoulders and turns over onto her back, opening the article to read the commentary. “Grace, you knew by agreeing to go to Lucia’s, the hottest restaurant in Boston right now, with the hottest bachelor in Boston, that you would end up in the gossip columns.” She looks at me pointedly and I stifle a grin.

“Perhaps I was aware that could be a possibility.” I move into the bathroom to work on my makeup. “I mean it is my job to make sure Cash is seen and to get buzz around his name. I need to find him the perfect woman.”

Tessa follows me into the bathroom and looks at me in the mirror. “And you just happened to make sure that you didn’t wear your wedding rings so no one knows that you’re married. Least of all so they could serve as a reminder to the man you are currently crushing on.”

I roll my eyes. That was so not my plan.

“No, I’m a professional, and I knew it would look bad if he was pictured with a woman with rings. Can you imagine the headlines then? Cash James, heir to the James Spirits fortune, having an affair with a married woman. That is not the press he needs.”

Tessa just stares at me. “But that is what’s happening.”

“No, it isn’t. There is no affair. I’m doing my job. That’s all.”

Tessa puts her phone on the bathroom counter and points to the screen. “Then what is this?”

My eyes grow as I see a picture of me and Cash kissing. It is the most indecent picture I’ve ever seen of two people fully clothed. The way my hand holds the back of his neck, and his fingers dig into the flesh of my thigh, one finger breaching the top of my skirt. And how my teeth hold his lip as we stare at each other as if we are in our own private oasis. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. I throb remembering just how it felt to be possessed by him, and my throat grows dry.

I will never feel like that again.

It is a startling and unwelcome thought. And likely true. No one has ever made me feel the way Cash does and it’s likely no one else ever will.

Shit.

“Where did you get this?”

“Photographer I know through Vanity Fair. He knows we’re friends. He snapped the pics but told me he wasn’t selling them or publishing them. Your secret is safe. For now. So spill. What the fuck is going on with the two of you? And don’t tell me he is your client because that shit is bull and we both know it. I wasn’t even part of that kiss and my fucking vag is throbbing. How are you still standing, and please tell me if he is not hiding somewhere in this apartment now that you at least brought him back here for a good time last night?”

My shoulders fall. “No, T, no affair. No sex. Nothing more than that hot—okay, panty- melting, sizzling-hot—kiss that I will probably be reliving for the rest of my life.”

“But why? Why won’t you just let yourself be happy with him? I mean look at the way he was looking at you when Jonathan so much as touched you? He looked like he was eating glass. And this…” Tessa says, picking the phone up and sticking it in my face. “This isn’t how a man kisses a woman he’s not crazy about. He is ready to devour you. And from the way you’re pulling on his neck, it appears the feeling is mutual. So, what gives?”

Sighing, I look away from the phone. “He found out I’m getting a divorce and he didn’t seem interested. Maybe the idea of me was more exciting than the reality. The whole I-can’t-have-her vibe I was giving off, the forbidden, maybe that turned him on. But the going through a bitter divorce and starting over? That’s not hot. That’s not what a young, yes millionaire as you like to point out, needs or wants in his life.”

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