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head and down his face. “I don’t know what else to do,” he admitted. “I’ve sent e-mails.”
    “Apologize on the blog, maybe?” Theo suggested.
    “Hell, no.” Torrian shook his head. He jumped up from the workbench and headed for his locker. Forget the showers. He could do that when he got home, after he took care of this latest post from her.
    “You really should think about apologizing,” Theo said. “You are the one who started it with that stupid response. You should have just left it alone.”
    He dropped the towel from his waist and pulled on a pair of sweats. “She started it by posting the review in the first place.”
    “That’s her job!”
    “Well, she needs to get a real job instead of giving opinions on something she knows nothing about,” Torrian retorted, stuffing his arms through the sleeves of his shirt and jerking it over his head. “I’ll bet she’s never even tried to write a book.”
    “Dawg, you didn’t write this book either,” Theo reminded him. “You need to come with something better than that.”
    Torrian started to speak, then stopped. “Shut up, man,” he finally said. “All this could have ended Sunday night if she’d erased that response like I asked in my e-mail. She’s the one dragging this on.”
    It was hard to believe she was the same woman he’d met in the grocery store a week ago.
    “So, what you gonna do?”
    “Fight fire with fire,” Torrian said. He slung his gym bag over his shoulder. “They don’t call me the Fire Starter for nothing.”
     
     
    Angela and Paige stood at the corner of 32nd and 3rd as lunch-hour traffic whizzed toward the East River.
    “So, what’s the latest in the Torrian Smallwood drama?”
    Paige groaned. “Don’t ask.”
    “Uh-oh.” Angie laughed. “What happened this time?”
    “That man is an ass,” Paige said. “Can you believe he had the nerve to come to my own blog and ask me if I started reviewing books because I was too insecure to write my own? I wanted to smack him through the computer.”
    “Hmm, now that I think about it, that is a legitimate question.”
    “Angie!” Paige screeched. The light changed, and the sea of bodies that had accumulated at the edge of the block flowed across the street. “I’m a columnist. I dabbled in creative writing in college, but I’ve never had any real aspirations to write novels. I love to eat and read and experience life, and I am lucky enough to have a job that allows me to do all of those things. Torrian Smallwood is an insecure jackass who is too stupid to recognize when he’s lost the battle.”
    “So, are you just going to keep this up?” Angie asked. “It’s been great for the Web site. This city is absolutely obsessed with the two of you.”
    “The publicity was cool in the beginning, but this has gotten out of hand.” She looked pointedly at Angela. “But I’m not backing down first.”
    If she looked deep enough, Paige could admit that keeping up this online quarrel with Torrian was retaliation for him not living up to the charismatic man she’d built him up to be in her own mind. The rational part of her brain knew it wasn’t fair to judge him based on a five-minute chance encounter, but the attraction had been too strong. She wanted him to be the man she’d met last weekend. Clearly, he was not.
    She opened the door to the deli a block away from Big Apple Weekly ’s offices. The owner, who knew them by name, greeted them as they walked up to the counter. Paige ordered a cup of vegetable soup and a turkey sandwich on whole-grain bread. She tried not to cringe as Angela ordered corned beef on rye with a side of coleslaw.
    As soon as they sat at a table, Paige’s cell phone rang. She grabbed it from her purse and saw a number she didn’t recognize on the screen.
    “Probably a wrong number,” she said, and put the phone back into her purse without answering it. Not a minute later, the phone rang again. It was the same number.
    “Just answer