Free Naked Truth by Delphine Dryden

Chapter One
     
    Stella thought the second drink was probably the one that set her on the path to ruin.
    “Hey, you need a refill,” Paul said, grinning his cheeky, lopsided grin at her and waving at the bartender.
    “Are you trying to get me drunk, Mr. Maddox?” Stella heard herself flirting and hoped she wasn’t doing anything dumb like actually batting her eyes.
    “Of course. That makes it so much easier to take advantage of you. How are those beer goggles feeling? Comfy?”
    “They’re great. You’re supposed to have two heads and five eyes, right?”
    He still had that adorable chuckle. Why hadn’t she gone out with him in business school again? Oh, that’s right, she’d already been engaged to Mr. Wrong. And then she’d moved out of town, and by the time she returned, she’d assumed Paul Maddox had forgotten all about the quiet little redhead from the MBA program.
    Until a mutual friend had suggested they get reacquainted.
    “So Lindy mentioned you’re running your own business now. A boutique, right? Should I be worried?”
    It was Stella’s turn to chuckle. “Unless your company is in pretty damn bad shape, I’d say you have nothing to worry about from my little place. I’m just glad you didn’t end up snatching away my favorite designer,” she added.
    Paul had come to know Lindy when he tried to recruit her to design for his chain store’s house brand. But Lindy, determined to remain a free agent, ended up contracting for just a few designs instead of a longer-term relationship. Which meant Lindy was still free to sell to stores like Stella’s boutique, much to Stella’s delight.
    And when Lindy discovered that Paul and Stella were old school friends, she had pointed Paul in Stella’s direction, also much to Stella’s delight.
    “Can I ask you about what happened?” Paul ventured after the next round of drinks had arrived. “With your divorce and everything?”
    Stella shrugged and nibbled at the vodka-soaked apple slice that had garnished her appletini . “About what you might expect. We got married, he seemed okay, he turned out to be a jerk with a drug problem. The main problem being that he wasted a whole lot of our money on cocaine before I figured out what was going on. You know what really gets me?” She pointed at Paul with the tiny pink cocktail sword that still skewered a bit of apple. “All these people told me afterward that they’d known something was going on but they just didn’t know how to tell me. Or assumed I knew. Or didn’t feel right getting involved. Or just, ‘I wanted to tell you but, you know…’”
    “If they knew and they wanted to tell you, why didn’t they?”
    “Exactly.” She punctuated her comment with the sword and the strength of the gesture flipped the apple slice straight into Paul’s dirty martini with a plunk and a splash. After a moment of stunned silence, they both burst into peals of laughter. Paul fished the fruit out and made a show of patting it dry with a cocktail napkin before he presented it back to her with a flourish.
    “I believe you dropped this, madam.”
    “Why thank you, kind sir. Wow, who knew I had aim like that? Couldn’t make that shot again if I tried.”
    She took an exploratory bite of the apple, found it still palatable if slightly salty, and ate the rest while Paul tasted his martini for traces of fruit contamination. Noticing the splash had extended to his tie, Stella leaned forward and dabbed at it with the napkin she was still holding.
    “Sorry, you have a little thing here.”
    “With all due respect, I have to disagree. It’s really not that little.”
    When she looked up and caught his smirk, she was mortified to realize what she’d said while hovering practically over Paul’s lap. She tried to pull her hand away, but Paul had already wrapped his fingers around her wrist and was holding her hand firmly in place against his chest. His jaw was clenched but he didn’t look upset in the least about