“What kind of friend?” a woman snarked.

  It took only one or two to turn the whole thing into a spectacle and there were at least that many in the crowd. But she couldn’t blame it all on them. If she’d kept her big mouth shut, none of this would be happening.

  “Is she a reporter? Why is she here?” someone behind her asked.

  Kennedy didn’t bother to turn and see who was demanding Nate justify her presence.

  “I believe it’s still a free country, or was I in France too long?” Nate remarked dryly.

  Her cell phone began vibrating. Kennedy instinctively glanced down at her handbag, placing her hand over the tan leather as if that would stop it.

  She lifted her gaze to find the blonde she’d previously rebuked glaring at her and then speaking to the woman beside her in a faux whisper meant for others to hear. “I don’t believe it. I think she’s a plant.”

  Kennedy refused to dignify her accusation with a response. But what was becoming tragically clear was that she and her well-meaning self had made things worse for Nate.

  The irony? It didn’t escape her.

  As if seeing the writing scrawled on the wall where someone had hastily written Kennedy fucked up, Nate called the press conference to a blessed close. “That’ll be all for now. I want to thank everyone for coming, and I will personally keep the public apprised of the results of the investigation.”

  Kennedy released a long breath. It was over, and not a minute too soon. Now she needed to haul her butt to the pharmacist and get something for the foot-in-mouth disease she’d obviously contracted.

  She turned to the man who had encouraged—no, goaded—her to defend Nate, only to find the spot beside her empty, Jack nowhere in sight. When he’d slipped away, she didn’t have a clue.

  The sound of chairs scraping on the shiny tiled floors combined with the buzz of conversation as the attendees prepared to leave. Not an insignificant lot of them kept looking her way. And she knew what they were thinking.

  She smiled when she saw Aurora hastening toward her.

  “Wow. Can I just say wow,” she said breathlessly upon reaching Kennedy’s side. “We’ll have to talk about it later because I gotta run. See you back at the office.” Then she was gone, as fast as her white Jimmy Choos could take her toward the exit.

  “’Bye,” Kennedy called out to her retreating back.

  Suddenly she felt a hand grip her elbow, firmly. Startled, she turned to find a grim-faced Nate peering down at her.

  “You—” his voice was clipped “—are coming with me.”

  * * *

  That’s what I get for taking questions for the sake of transparency.

  The presser hadn’t gone as planned, and Nate had the slender arm of the cause of its derailment firmly in his grasp as he led her to the covered parking lot at the rear of the building. To his surprise, she offered no resistance. Instead, she was full of apologies.

  “I know. I made a mess of things. I’m sorry. But honestly, some of those questions—” She concluded her statement with a frustrated growl.

  “They’re reporters. That’s what they do. You’re not supposed to take the bait.” The automatic glass doors before them slid open. He immediately slowed his pace once it became clear that she could barely keep up with his long strides.

  As if only just realizing where they were, she furrowed her brow and asked, “Where are we going?”

  He released her arm and placed his hand on the small of her back, steering her to where his car was parked in the first row. “For a walk in the park,” he answered wryly.

  “Funny. But seriously, where are you taking me? I have an appointment uptown in an hour and a half.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get there on time. And in comfort. Where’re you headed to?” He opened the passenger door for her.

  She rambled off the address and made a move to get in the car, before pausing, glancing inside and then back up at him. “Are you at least going to feed me? I skipped lunch to make your press conference.”

  Nate’s mouth hitched at the corner. “Anything you want. Now get in before people think you’re being kidnapped.” They probably already thought that. As soon as he’d stepped off the stage, he’d made a beeline to her, oblivious to how it might appear to onlookers. After he’d literally spirited her away, he could only imagine the number of eyebrows it would raise and the kind of coverage it might garner. None in his favor.

  “Are you serious? They think we’re partners in crime, not kidnapper and kidnappee,” she said with a snort.

  While she buckled in, he closed the door and made his way to the driver side and slid behind the wheel. He’d driven out of the parking lot before anyone spoke again.

  “I meant what I said. I’m really sorry.” She truly sounded contrite. “And you’re right. I shouldn’t have taken the bait. We live in a world of sound bites and clickbait headlines. I should have kept that in mind before I opened my mouth.”

  “For someone who didn’t want to get involved, you sure picked the highest cliff on the Eastern Seaboard to take that dive.” She’d ignored her own warning. She’d said this was what would happen, and it looked like she’d been right.

  “I know, right? But in my own defense, their questions were way over the line.”

  Of course, she was right. He may have initially been irritated with her when it became clear that, by the end, a good number of those in attendance believed her appearance and fervent defense of him weren’t exactly on the up-and-up. But it was impossible to stay mad at her for long. His irritation had lasted the length of the walk to his car. Her heart had been in the right place, even if her sense of situational awareness needed work. Add that to the list of things he admired about her, her unyielding sense of fair play.

  “But you know what they think now, don’t you?” He stopped the car at the stoplight.

  Kennedy huffed, indignant. “Yeah, that the whole thing was staged and I’m your Black defender.”

  “Yes, that or that I’m fuc—sleeping with you.” He wasn’t able to course correct in time.

  His remark elicited a narrow side-eye, a look he found sexy as fuck. She had incredible eyes. He used to stare deep into them when he was fucking her.

  Memories. Good times.

  “You do realize that not everything between a man and a woman boils down to sex.”

  “Not everything,” he agreed, because not every woman was Kennedy. “But when it comes to women as beautiful as you, that’s where a lot of minds go. Especially men.” He shot her a quick look before he resumed driving.

  At his compliment, she simultaneously rolled her eyes and blushed, a faint stain of red on the crests of her cheeks.

  “Our situation is different, though, because it isn’t as if someone happened to see us together out on the town one night. The press conference was planned, and the press was explicitly invited. For those reasons, they think we wanted them to know about our ‘so-called’ relationship. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. And there’s only one reason we’d do that. To give you cover for the lawsuit. You have to know that. Honestly, right now, you’d be better off if they truly believed we were fucking.”

  A bolt of lust hit him directly in the groin. The sound of that word on her lips really did it for him. Eyes on the road, he schooled his expression to hide the moment of tumult.

  “Really? How so?”

  “Because it’s better we convince them we’re lovers or, at a minimum, that our relationship is real, or they’re going to think you’re underhanded and sneaky and willing to do just about anything for favorable coverage. And if that’s what they believe—” shaking her head, she gave a mirthless laugh “—they’re going to do their best to make your life hell.”

  There wasn’t one ounce of doubt in his mind that was precisely what they’d do. The snarky remarks at the presser were only a taste of things to come, unless they were able to nip this in the bud. It was a good thing he didn’t have to warm to the idea. Pretending to be her lover would be like riding a bike. All they needed to do was to work out the kinks and get their story nice and cohesive.

  “How can we expect them to believe we’re in a relationship when I only just came back from France yesterday, where I’ve been living for the last three years? And what about you? I’m sure you’re dating someone. Perhaps several someones,” he mused aloud, his tone guileless.

  Since Aurora had made him promise not to say anything to her about the proposal and her ex-boyfriend, he thought it best to play ignorant on the matter of her dating life.

  * * *

  Kennedy eyed him suspiciously, wondering if he knew about Aidan. “I’m not seeing anyone now. Are you?” Her breakup was fresh, yet it felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. Nate sweeping back into her life had upended its structured orderliness. Now she didn’t know what to expect from one minute to another. And he hadn’t even been back forty-eight hours.

  “No.”

  Good.

  She resented the sense of peace the single word brought her. “Okay, well, I think the most important thing we need to do is prove we had a relationship in the past. And to that end, I may still have some pictures of when—” she fluttered her fingers “—when we were, you know, involved.”

  Briefly tearing his eyes off the road, he shot her an arch look. “Involved?”

  “Okay, fine, sleeping together.” Why did he have to be so annoying?

  Nate’s shoulders shook with laughter. “I’m gonna be honest with you, but I don’t remember a whole lot of sleeping going on. Why is it so hard for you to say it? We had sex. We fucked.”

  “Okay, fine, when we were fucking. Happy?” she asked snippily.

  He smiled to himself. “I’ll let you know when I’m happy.”

  Kennedy didn’t even want to know what he meant by that. Prolonged proximity to him was playing havoc with her lady parts.

  “So tell me about these pictures. You have some of us? Together?” He sounded more than a little intrigued at the prospect.

  “I don’t delete anything, and I think there’s a couple of us out there in the cloud. I’ll have to check.” The compunction to explain why she kept pictures of him, and worse, of them together, made her sound defensive.

  There were nine pictures exactly, and they resided on her phone and laptop. Unlike print photos, which gave people the satisfaction of ripping them into little pieces in a fit of rage or sobbing heartbreak, digital photos only required the click of a button to send them into digital purgatory where they weren’t actually deleted. Not close to dramatic enough.

  “When did you take pictures of us? You’re going to have to show me.”

  “I don’t know. I think it was that time we went to Coney Island.” Those she’d had to scan because she’d bought physical prints taken by the Pennywise-looking clown photographer. Did he even remember that?

  “You mean the one taken by that creepy-looking clown of me, you, and Rory?”

  She nodded. Of course, he remembered. Honestly, Stephen King had a lot to answer for.

  “We hadn’t slept together yet.”

  There was an implicit so you had a thing for me then in his statement. The guy had an ego on him.

  “Right, but I don’t have any of us in bed together, so...the one with your arm around me at Coney Island is going to have to do,” she said, the sarcasm dripping from her lips.

  A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Funny, funny, lady.”

  “Difficult, difficult, man,” she retorted with equal mockery. “Anyhoo, I will take care of getting the picture to the press, and then hopefully by tomorrow or the day after, there won’t be a doubt in anyone’s mind that what went on at the press conference wasn’t staged.”

  “Isn’t what you’re proposing against agency rules?” he asked innocently.

  “You won’t be a paying client, and as far as I’m concerned, this has nothing to do with the agency. This is personal. And it’s the least I can do after what I did back there,” she said, grimacing inwardly.

  He glanced at her and then looked away, only to return his gaze to her a moment later. “Seriously, though, what do I owe you for this?”

  “Your undying gratitude and your firstborn. However, I will settle for a Broadway season package and dinner at the best restaurant in the city. I’m a simple woman with simple needs,” she declared airily.

  Only after the words emerged sounding more provocative than flippant did she ask herself that age-old question, What the fuck is wrong with you?

  The man sitting beside you is fire. Don’t play with him.

  His mouth quirked and he murmured, “Yes, I believe I have a vague recollection of some of those needs.”

  Nate, on the other hand, didn’t hold back his punches. He just went in for the kill. No insinuation. No beating around the bush. Why should he when she’d all but lined up the pins for him so that all they required was a light tap to knock them down?

  “Those aren’t the needs I was talking about.” Technically, that was the truth. The lie had been about her being a simple woman with simple needs. Simple she was not.

  “Yes, it was. Don’t lie.”

  Kennedy was smart enough to walk away from fights she couldn’t win, this being one of them. “Honestly, Nate, you don’t owe me anything.”

  Pausing at another stoplight, he turned, his gaze flicking from her eyes to her mouth, and then back to her eyes again. “So we’re doing this.” He paused a beat. “How does dinner this weekend sound?”

  She huffed a laugh. “I’m not going to even consider dinner until you feed me the lunch you promised and get me to my meeting on time.”

  His smile didn’t do a thing to put her at ease.

  “Don’t worry—I got you. Leave everything in my hands.”

  Nor did his words. Those she found more terrifying.

  9

  “All righty, missy, what is going on?”

  Kennedy’s head shot up as her best friend swept into her office.

  “What the hell did I miss yesterday? It’s clear I can’t leave the two of you alone together,” Aurora said, walking to her desk and thrusting her iPad in Kennedy’s face.

  Kennedy took it from her, her eyes immediately scouring the headlines.

  OLD PHOTO SHOWS CONSTELLATION CEO ENJOYING THE BENEFITS OF HAVING THE RIGHT KIND OF FRIENDS.

  Flicking a look at Aurora, Kennedy rolled her eyes. “Ha ha ha. Benefits with friends, get it? Honestly, these headline writers try to be too cute by half.”

  “Tell me about it,” Aurora said, her tone equally wry.

  Kennedy resumed reading.

  Days after a class-action discrimination lawsuit was filed on behalf of current and former employees, and not even a day after its CEO, Nathaniel Vaughn, son of Hollywood powerhouse couple Kurt and Sylvia Vaughn, held a press conference to address the matter, an old picture has surfaced of him and beautiful Kennedy Mitchell in a clincher of an embrace. Her passionate defense of him at his press conference yesterday started intense speculation about the nature of their “so-called” friendship. Cynics concluded it wasn’t a coincidence that he was being defended by Ms. Mitchell, who just happens to be African American, from a lawsuit accusing his company of racial discrimination. In this case, however, it appears the cynics were wrong. The picture proves their relationship—whatever the nature—goes back many years...

  And so on and so on.

  The picture of Nate with his arm around her was posted above the story. And it was hardly a clincher of an embrace. Anyone with eyes could see that. She couldn’t even tell Aurora had been cropped out of the picture. All hail Photoshop. Cecelia was the expert, but over the years, Kennedy had gotten pretty good at it, if she said so herself.

  Seriously, it was criminal how easy it was to plant stories in the papers. You just had to know the right people. In this instance, the right person had been Naomi Smith, a Page Six reporter she’d met through Sahara.

  Kennedy beamed a smile at her friend. “Wow, that was fast. Naomi said she didn’t think she’d be able to get the story out until tomorrow. Talk about service.”

  Signaling her impatience, Aurora tapped the tip of a pink polished nail on her watch face. “So are you going to clue me in or what?”

  “Come on. Get that pouty look off your face. I was going to tell you today. This morning, in fact. Like as soon as you got in.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Nate and I have come to an arrangement. I’ll be helping him with damage control. I mean, after what happened during the presser, it’s the least I can do, right? I should have followed your lead and kept my mouth shut.”

  “Well, take it from this unbiased observer—” Aurora said, her tone flippant “—that reporter was a tool. I’d have said something myself if I hadn’t been the one to advise him on the dos and don’ts.”

  “I have no idea what came over me. They were so obnoxious and I just kinda snapped. You know me—I’m usually pretty levelheaded. Anyway, what I realized after the fact was the only way for me to help repair the damage I caused—because you know nobody is going to believe the whole thing wasn’t staged—was to prove we genuinely have a relationship that predates the lawsuit, with indisputable visual evidence. Voilà.” Kennedy pointed at the picture.

  They really did look cute together, both wearing sleeveless T-shirts and shorts, wide smiles on their faces. Pennywise had done a good job at capturing the moment.

  “You’re okay with people believing there’s something going on between you two?” Her friend looked surprised.

  “Sure. Why not?” Kennedy shrugged. “I’m not going out with Aidan anymore, and if it’ll help, it’s the least I can do.”

  Aurora smiled. “You’re the best. I’ll always be grateful our paths crossed that day at nationals.”