Page 4 of Tempt Me

“I wanted to talk to my brother. He’s still in with Cooper?”

“They’re all in there. Go on in,” he said. I pushed the door handle.

It wasn’t until my gaze slid off Cooper seated at his desk and my brother leaning against the windowsill to the third person in the room, that I replayed what Mateo had said:They’re all in there.I realized who he meant by“all.”

Shewas there. My brain stalled out. She wasn’t supposed to be in San Francisco at Synergy. She was supposed to be at her office, an hour away, in Silicon Valley.

“Nutter Butter!” Jackson sprang across the room and folded me in his arms. He added a noogie for good measure, disheveling my artfully messy bun.

Why did he have to call me that goofy name? When I was an awkward nine-year-old, I let him call me whatever he wanted because I craved any attention my big brother would give me. Now I was as grown-up as he was. Yet he never failed to point out that adults had jobs and didn’t live with their parents.

“Get off of me.” I pushed against his overlong arms.

He loosened his hold but kept one arm slung around my shoulders, probably to keep me in noogie range. “What are you doing here?”

“I, uh…” Suddenly, telling my sob story for some sympathy from my brother seemed like a terrible idea. “I missed my big brother?”

“Aw.” He ground his knuckles into my hair again. “Well, you’re just in time to laugh at Jamila for what she’s done now.”

Laugh at Jamila? Not only was she the most gorgeous woman I’d ever met, but she was everything I wished I could be—smart, confident, capable. Like Cooper, she’d never wavered along her march to success.

I’d avoided her for four months since that disastrous party at Billie Woods’s place. And now she’d caught me at my lowest point with no designer clothes or makeup to armor me and smelling like the contents of Larry’s digestive system.

She sprawled on Cooper’s leather sofa, her right leg stretched to the floor, and the left propped on the back of the sofa with her beige stiletto heel dangling from her toes. Her flowy white wide-legged slacks were rucked up, showing the smooth, dark skin that covered her trim ankles and muscular calves. She wore a lilac sleeveless blouse and a pearl choker. The pearls and pastels implied softness, but her sharp words always cut through the illusion.

When she was nineteen, she had an abundant, coiled mane I envied. Now, her hair was cropped close to her head, showcasing her long, elegant neck. Running a billion-dollar software business didn’t leave time for curl maintenance.

Flinging one arm across her eyes, she let out a frustrated growl. “I’m telling you, all I did was try to protect my company. That reporter is an asshole.”

“That’s not how the asshole reporter wrote it in his article,” Cooper said dryly.

“What happened?” I asked.

She lifted her arm from her face and gave me a casual wave. “Hey, Nat.”

She sounded friendly enough. Maybe four months was enough time for her to forget, though I never would. My voice wavered as I asked, “Is everything okay?”

She huffed out a sigh. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, baby. I…”

As usual, my brain shorted out when she called mebaby.I wished she meant it as a term of endearment, but she’d called me that since she came home with Jackson during spring break their first year of college. Even at nineteen and wearing a cropped Stanford sweatshirt over skinny jeans, Jamila had been impossibly sophisticated in my nine-year-old eyes. She still thought of me as a pigtail-wearing tween, and today I looked like a toddler who’d been playing in the dirt.

“…it’s nothing, really.”

“Nothing?” Cooper’s dark eyebrows shot up. “TheWall Street Journalarticle was particularly unflattering.”

“Wait. What?” I asked.

“Keep up, sis.” Her nostrils flared, and my face burned hotter. Of course she was sensitive to me tuning her out. Since Billie’s party, she must think I was a blond bonehead. Because that’s exactly what I’d acted like.

My face burned. “Sorry, I spaced out. Could you tell me again? Please?”

Jamila rolled her eyes. “There’s something fishy going on with Moo-Lah. I heard they’re launching a product that’s a lot like our new app. Every move I make, they seem to be a step ahead of me. I hired a PI to see if one of my folks is talking to them.”

“And the press found out,” Cooper added. “They called you paranoid.”

“Only the paranoid survive,” Jamila said. “That’s what Andy Grove used to say.”

“I agree with Mila,” my brother said. “Not about the paranoid bit, but that everyone’ll forget. I’ve done worse things, and I’m a media darling now.” He beamed.

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