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He arched a dark blond eyebrow. “You either have a real dating life or a fake one. You can’t have both. The last thing I need are stories of my girlfriend dating other men.”

Kennedy absently stirred her piña colada with the straw. Did he think she was stupid? Of course she knew she couldn’t date anyone else while they were supposed to be together. It was also none of his business who she’d been dating before. She gave a fleeting thought to Aidan, marveling at how little she’d thought of him since Nate had appeared on the scene.

“What about my male friends? I do have them, you know.” Jonathan and Darrell were good friends and she loved hanging out with them. No need to tell Nate that she didn’t have any straight male friends. She’d tried it in the past, but it never worked. Every guy who’d ever told her they were fine just being friends had been lying. Shocking.

Nate stared into her eyes and then made a head-to-toe sweep of her. She deeply resented what the look did to her insides, the way her stomach bottomed out in reaction to it. “You do, do you? Then what are we? Do you consider us friends?”

The way he was looking at her—the heat in his gaze—had her swallowing hard and her face warming to embarrassing degrees of discomfort.

“Apparently not according to your exact definition of the word,” she replied with a forced laugh in an attempt to bring the conversation back to a friendlier footing.

Nate returned her smile, his easy and relaxed. “Then how about we shoot for simply getting along? I’ll take that.”

Kennedy held up her glass. “I’ll toast to that.”

11

Today was one of those days that Nate wished for a campus like Apple Park in California. The tech giant was headquartered on one hundred and seventy-five acres and had cycling and jogging trails—an impossibility in a city nicknamed the Concrete Jungle. Constellation’s corporate offices were housed in two twenty-two-story buildings connected by a glass sky bridge and not located close enough to Central Park to offer a view indicating they were in anyplace except a big city no matter which floor you were on.

In renovating the buildings, he’d had to work with what he had, creating separate outdoor work and eating areas in the courtyard. The work section came equipped with tables that seated four, and electrical outlets. On warm summer days like today, when the humidity wouldn’t have him sweating through his shirt, he found it preferable to work out here rather than upstairs cloistered in his office.

“I thought this was where I’d find you.”

Nate shot a glance over his shoulder and watched Jack’s unhurried approach. Like him, his friend wore chinos and one of the company’s short-sleeved collared shirts featuring their logo, which was a constellation, because of course.

“So that’s Kennedy,” Jack remarked, spinning the chair across from Nate around and casually straddling it. After dropping his folder on the table, he rested his forearms along the back of the chair.

“Yeah, that’s Kennedy.” Nate returned his attention to his laptop but could feel his friend’s gaze on him, a ridiculous smirk on his face. It looked like everyone had either seen the press conference or the picture of them in the papers last week. His mother had called him that night to commend him on his skillful handling of the situation. She’d also taken the time to defend her husband against the twenty-year-old allegation the reporter had raised.Impertinent upstart. Your father handled the situation the best he could. Saved the production, if you ask me.

“Funny, whenever you talked about her, I don’t remember you saying anything about how hot she was. You leave that part out for a reason?”

Nate ignored questions that didn’t warrant an answer. His friend was being a dick.

“Where’d you disappear to after the press conference? You didn’t go back to your office.”

“I took Kennedy to lunch and then gave her a ride to her appointment.” She’d gotten her pizza.

Jack strangled a laugh. “A ride, huh?”

Nate cast his eyes skyward and prayed for strength. “What are you, six? She’s Aurora’s best friend.” It was amazing that someone as brilliant as his friend still possessed the sense of humor of a middle grader.

“Ah, c’mon. Don’t lie and tell me there’s nothing going on between you. Besides the scene at the press conference, I saw the picture of you two in the papers.”

“Since when did you start reading gossip?”

“I don’t. My mom emailed it to me. I taught her how to save an image on the internet last month, and as you can see, she’s putting her new skills to good use.”

That didn’t surprise Nate one bit. Divorced from Jack’s father for five years, she lived in Long Island and had gone from devoting her life to her banker husband and two children, to devouring the latest celebrity news like it was her job and she was gunning for a promotion.

“I know she didn’t send it without commentary.” Sighing, Nate snapped his laptop closed and regarded his friend. “Let me guess. She said something about Kennedy being Black?”

The look of discomfort on his friend’s face confirmed he’d hit the nail on the head. The woman was as predictable as she was closed-minded.

In pitiful defense, Jack said, “You know my mom. She’s old-fashioned.”

And by old-fashioned, he meant racist as fuck. A throwback from the 1950s even though she was born in the early ’70s, she also disapproved of bikinis and miniskirts, and constantly complained that professional women tried too hard to be like men by committing the crime of wearing pants to work. She vainly believed the perfect woman had been made in her image: wealthy, attractive, straight, and white. Needless to say, a champion of women’s rights and diversity she was not. Nate suspected Jack’s younger sister was gay but too terrified, ashamed, or a combination of both, to come out to her parents for fear of being disowned.

“Tell your mother she needs to join the twenty-first century.”

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