They turned and greeted the fourth member of their little Love and Relationships club. As always, Emma Sinclair looked impeccable. Both she and Grace had that cool, perfect thing going on, but whereas Grace was more of an East Coast prep princess, Emma was all southern drawl perfection. Although not in the clichéd, made-for-TV-movie kind of way. There was no big hair or constant talk of fried chicken. And there wasn’t a bless-your-heart to be heard from Emma. But the tidy, smooth layers of her light brown hair, the never-clumped mascara and endless supply of pristine white button-downs weren’t just for show. That sort of groomed perfection was ingrained in Emma right down to her bones.

Riley had done a Pilates class with the woman and had the occasional impromptu slumber party after an enthusiastic happy hour, and she could vouch that Emma always looked like that.

She doubted Emma Sinclair had ever had so much as a pimple.

“What’s wrong, sugar?” Riley said, linking arms with the shorter woman. “Don’t want to have a tête-à-tête with your ex-fee-ance-say?”

Emma’s brow furrowed just slightly. “Not a sober one. And I thought we agreed never to speak of that.”

“Nope,” Julie said happily, taking a sip of her red wine. “You instructed us never to speak of that. We all nodded and crossed our fingers behind our backs.”

Emma was the newest member of the Love and Relationships group and had done a damn fine job of hiding the fact that she’d once been engaged to the very luscious, very sexy editor in chief of Stiletto’s brother magazine.

Oxford was to men as Stiletto was to women, and with Alex Cassidy recently taking over the reins, the magazine’s readership had exploded.

Had it not been for the fact that Mitchell Forbes did a lot more listening than talking (a bonus, considering he was planning to marry Julie), they’d never have learned that the oh-so-perfect Emma had a not-so-perfect past. But thanks to Mitchell’s unintentional espionage, they’d recently learned that Emma’s closet wasn’t without skeletons.

However, despite a failed engagement being the ultimate in girl-talk fodder, they’d had a heck of a time getting Emma to discuss it.

But they would. Because it’s water under the bridge did not count as an answer.

Not when it came to friends.

Or the deliciousness that was Alex Cassidy.

There was an awkward tapping of the microphone, and after exchanging a look of resignation, the three women slowly turned to face the front of the room, where their boss had climbed onto some sort of box and was teetering dangerously.

“Here we go,” Grace said, appearing at their side and completing their foursome. “What do you think we’re dealing with here? Do you think she’s going to have the entire issue printed on gold-leaf paper? Or maybe every headline will contain the word fifty. ‘The Fifty Best Beauty Products of All Time.’ ‘Fifty Things to Do Before You’re Fifty.’ ‘Fifty Shoes That Will Never Go Out of Style’ …”

“ ‘Fifty Sexy Positions You’ve Never Heard Of,’ ” Riley supplied.

Grace paused. “Fifty? Really?”

Riley gave her a knowing glance. The one that said, I know things about sex that mortals can’t even fathom. It was a look she’d perfected early on in her career at Stiletto when she was trying to brand herself in a way that would make her indispensable to the magazine.

She’d succeeded.

Riley hadn’t always been the “sex girl.” Once she’d simply been just another “go-to” girl, filling in wherever needed. “Understanding SPF,” “Dealing with Catty Coworkers,” “Mastering Hot Yoga” …

And then Robyn Kessler’s husband had gotten a job in Houston, and there was a very crucial spot open in the Relationships department. By then Julie and Riley had become fast friends, and since Julie worked the sex/love beat, Riley had gotten first dibs on the vacant article slot: “Ten Things He’s Really Thinking in Bed.”

It had been easier than she imagined.

Having two brothers close in age had given Riley easy access to a data pool, and she’d supplemented her own network of men with flirty interviews with strangers in bars.

She’d been a hit in more ways than one.

Whereas Robyn’s sex-related articles had been matter-of-fact and borderline clinical, Riley had infused a candid woman-to-woman element that resonated with readers. So she’d gotten another sex assignment. Then another.

And when everyone assumed her candor was the result of an unabashed sex life, she sure as heck hadn’t corrected them.

In this case, the lie was a hell of a lot easier than the truth.

Within three months, Riley went from floater to a regular Love and Relationships columnist along with Julie. Grace joined the department soon after, and within a year, they’d not only become the golden girls of the magazine, they’d become the It girls of the city.

Since then, Riley’s reputation as the “sexy” one of the group had expanded. Alas, her actual experience had not.

Up until now, being a fraud hadn’t bothered her. Much. But something had been shifting in recent months. Part of it was due to Julie and Grace having recently laid themselves bare for the sake of a story—and for the sake of love.

But the other part was a bit more … physical. Riley’s sex drive seemed to be shaking off the cobwebs of disuse. And it was demanding some attention now.

As if it wasn’t enough that her loins were betraying her, she was also starting to feel guilty about the whole thing. Guilty about misleading her readers, certainly, although she didn’t owe them anything other than good sex advice, and that’s what they got.

But far worse, she was guilty of lying to her friends, and Riley was fresh out of ways to justify that.

She jolted a little as everyone around her clapped, and she gave a polite little clap of her own to hide the fact that she’d been daydreaming and had missed most of Camille’s speech thus far.

Riley forced herself to tune in to her boss’s ramblings.

“… Now as I’m sure most of you know,” Camille continued, “the past year has been an interesting one for Stiletto journalists. First, we had Julie Greene, whose public declaration of falling in love with Mitchell made for our bestselling issue ever …”

The crowd burst into delighted applause while Julie blushed prettily, and Mitchell’s arm slid around her waist even though a part of him looked ready to run. Riley joined in the clapping, letting out a whoop as Julie’s fingers found the lapel of Mitchell’s suit and pulled him down for a smacking kiss.

Riley had had a front-row seat to Julie and Mitchell’s epic love story, and it never failed to make her feel warm and mushy. Julie had rather famously set out to use Mitchell for a story (Riley’s idea), just as Mitchell set out to use Julie to win a bet. It could have been the makings of a trashy talk-show episode, but because they’d been unexpectedly perfect for each other, it had skipped tawdry and gone straight to sweet.

At the front of the room, Camille forged on, turning attention to her other celebrity couple. “… and more recently, we’ve enjoyed the sheer spectacle that was Jake and Grace’s love story with the whole world watching. Their very public battle of the sexes—”

“—Which I won,” Jake hollered, ignoring the elbow jab from Grace.

Camille smiled and continued. “Their very public battle turned from what should have been a routine five-issue series into a spontaneous HeSaidSheSaid blog, which, in turn, became our most successful digital program to date.”

Jake, Oxford magazine’s best-known male columnist, always up for playing to a crowd, very purposefully pinched Grace’s butt, earning a sharp squeal, which he stifled with a kiss.

The antics were clearly all for show, but the private look they exchanged was not. Their romance may have started as a good-natured competition over which sex had a better read on the other, but like Julie and Mitchell, Grace and Jake were the real deal.

Riley felt the old familiar tightening in her chest as she read Jake’s lips where they pressed against Grace’s ear. I love you.

“I never know whether to hug them or punch them,” Emma muttered quietly at Riley’s side.

“Seriously,” Riley whispered back. “It’s like a nonstop romantic comedy up in here.”

Still, she was a little surprised by Emma’s admission. When it came to men and relationships, Emma had always given off that breezy, don’t-need-’em vibe. But her tone held just the slightest trace of longing, and Riley wondered if she wasn’t the only one who was starting to feel a bit lonely in her role as sexy bachelorette.

“And it’s this success of our very own Stiletto starlets that planted the seed for the theme of our fiftieth-anniversary issue,” Camille was saying.

Riley’s attention snapped back to her boss, dread creeping up around the edges of her boredom.

For the most part, Riley had a good relationship with the editor in chief. Sure, they butted heads every other week over whether Riley’s articles were too risqué, but at the end of the day, Camille Bishop’s sense for what Stiletto readers wanted was spot-on. And more important, Camille treated her team like family. A family that threw food at the dinner table, perhaps, but beneath her immobile orange hair, affinity for Botox, and bark that would have cowed Robert E. Lee, Camille was a bit of a mother hen. And it was kind of nice.

However, that didn’t mean Riley liked the direction of her long-winded speech. She was hearing an awful lot of words that sent alarm bells off in her brain.

Personal, intimate, exposure …

“She’s not going where I think she’s going …,” Riley said to Emma out of the corner of her mouth.

“Yup,” Emma said, taking a long pull on her wine. “We should probably all invest in pink fuzzy diaries like we had when we were ten, because this shit’s about to get personal.”

“When I was ten, my diary had a lock,” Riley growled.

Camille continued undaunted, and unaware that two of her best columnists were less than enamored of the direction she was heading. “… by now you can all guess what I’m suggesting …”

Please no, please no.

“The theme of Stiletto’s semicentennial issue in December will be ‘Stiletto Gets Real: The Truth Behind the Headlines.’ ”

Oh shit.

“Catchy,” Grace said, earning a snort from Julie.

But Riley was too horror-stricken to join in even thinking about joking, especially when she heard Camille’s elaboration on the theme.

“… each of our columnists will write this issue’s story in first person. A sort of real-world account of how they live the Stiletto way in their own life.”

“ ‘The Stiletto way’?” Emma asked. “Is that a thing? I mean I know I’m new here, but …”

Riley didn’t answer. Instead she pushed her cocktail glass at a surprised Julie and headed for the bathroom, where she was quite possibly going to puke.

The truth behind the headlines.

The truth.

She’d always known there’d come a breaking point. A time when she’d either have to come clean or get laid.

The trouble was, she didn’t know how to come clean without losing her pride. And worse, she wasn’t at all sure she could get laid without losing her heart.

Because when Riley was completely honest with herself, she wasn’t celibate because of lack of opportunity, or because guys like Steven Moore carried around handcuffs in their back pockets.

When it came right down to it, there was only one man for Riley Anne McKenna, and she’d pretty much made a career out of telling herself he wasn’t interested.

But if she was going personal for the story—if she was going to tell the truth—first, she had to find out the most important truth, once and for all.

It was time to find out if Sam Compton wanted her back.

Chapter Four

“Um, Mom? Does Dad know we’re having tacos for dinner?”

“No, he does not. And neither of you will mention it until it’s too late for him to start hollering about the ways of our motherland. It’s a stubborn, rigid mind-set, if you ask me.”

Riley exchanged a glance with her younger sister, Kate, both of them wisely opting not to mention the chunks of potatoes nestled in with the meat on the stove. Her mother probably hadn’t even consciously included them. For her potatoes were like salt. Never the meal, but always an unspoken part of the meal.

Both Erin and Joshua McKenna had been born and raised in Cork, Ireland, but they had different approaches when it came to the cuisine of their homeland. Riley’s dad was a purist and rarely made it through a meal without muttering, “If my mother caught me eating this foreign slop, she’d die all over again.”

Erin, on the other hand, fancied herself a bit of a fusion cook.

Hence the tacos with potatoes. Last week it had been pasta carbonara. With potatoes. The week before that, she’d put corned beef in stir-fry.

“Always an adventure,” Kate muttered under her breath before grabbing her beer and escaping to the living room, where the guys were watching soccer.

“I like the new cupboards,” Riley said, gesturing at the dark-wood cabinetry her mother had finally convinced her father that they needed to install. It was one of the few things that had changed in the Park Slope house Riley’d been born and raised in, and she liked it that way. She liked the way everybody had a favorite chair around the kitchen table that fit their butt just right. Liked the way they all knew not to wear socks without shoes in the kitchen because the boards were getting rough and tended to snag them. She even liked her mother’s affinity for cheap watercolors, and the way the weepy landscapes covered every possible wall.

It wasn’t fancy. But it was home.

“How’s work?” her mother asked, carefully spooning a carton of sour cream into a bowl. Riley’s mother wasn’t above convenience, but she drew the line at setting a plastic carton on the dinner table. Everything store-bought was promptly transferred to a “real dish.”

“Work?” Riley asked, feeling her eyebrows creep up to her hairline. Her mother rarely asked about Riley’s job.

Probably because she hated Riley’s job.

Riley couldn’t blame her. She doubted there were very many mothers out there who would be excited that their baby girl’s career involved reviewing dildos.

Particularly conservative Irish-Catholic mothers.

“Work’s … um …” Awful? Stressful? Ruining my life?