“Here, the sofa, or the bed?” His voice was husky as he laid out their options, his hand kneading her ass and dipping between to tease her moist center.

  “Whichever will get you inside me the fastest,” she replied breathlessly, a cry of pleasure bubbling up inside her.

  Pushing her hair aside, he nipped her neck with his teeth before soothing the spot with his tongue. “Okay, hold on,” he rasped, kneeing her legs wider apart. “I’m going to take you like this.”

  Kennedy was panting so hard, so consumed by his taste and touch, the sound of the condom wrapper being torn open didn’t fully register until he thrust into her and she could feel every inch of him as he sank deep.

  Tightening his grip on her hips, he went motionless as if savoring the initial moments of being inside her. She involuntarily clamped down on his erection, squeezing him tight, prompting a low and tortured groan from his throat.

  Kennedy undulated her hips and clawed at his back, her sense of gravity lost in the whirlwind that encompassed them. He pulled out and slammed into her again, wrenching a sobbing cry from her. Her arms circled his neck as she sank her teeth into the taut flesh of his shoulder.

  “Fuucck.” Everything he was feeling seemed to be encapsulated in the solitary uttered word. Then the chase was on, as he pounded them both to blissful completion.

  Minutes later, when the vestiges of an explosive orgasm still held her body in thrall, she sagged and would have crumpled to the floor if he hadn’t scooped her into his arms.

  Smiling dreamily up at him, she brushed his hair off his sweat-damp forehead. “That was good,” she murmured.

  Nate chuckled and dropped a hard kiss on her swollen lips. “After I feed you, not only am I going to show you that collection of James Baldwin books I promised, but I’ll add in a couple from Jane Elliott if you’re good.”

  Kennedy giggled and snuggled into the crook of his neck. “Looks like you’re angling for a blow job tonight.”

  To that, Nate threw back his head and guffawed. After his laughter subsided, he lifted her chin with his finger and stared deep into her eyes. “I would like that very much.”

  He kissed her again and she smiled against his lips.

  She didn’t know for sure if she was falling in love—at this point, she wasn’t even sure she’d ever been in love—with this man, but she could safely say she’d officially crossed the line of liking him a lot to liking him too much. Way too much.

  * * *

  “Oh good, you’re here. Mrs. Hanson-Gertz is here to see you. She doesn’t have an appointment, but she said she’d wait, so I put her in the small conference room,” Mina announced the minute Kennedy walked into the office the following morning.

  What a lovely way to start off her day. From Nate’s strong arms to a personal visit from the dragon queen herself.

  “I don’t think people are allowed to say no to her. For such a tiny woman, she’s pretty scary. She sure scares the crap out of me.” Mina’s expression was deadly earnest.

  Kennedy snorted a laugh. “I guess I won’t be able to say I wasn’t warned.” She studied her young employee. “How are you doing? Are things getting better?”

  Mina hadn’t taken the breakup with her ex-boyfriend well, but she didn’t talk about killing him anymore. Progress. But more than once Kennedy had caught her coming out of the ladies’ room, eyes red-rimmed and complexion mottled by the effects of tears. Addy had officially moved out two weeks ago, and today was the first day Mina looked close to her normal, cheerful self.

  “Things aren’t getting better—they’re actually pretty good. I have a new roommate as of yesterday. Her name is Jazmine. She’s Iranian and Black and knows all the good places to go in the city and says I’m going to go out with her and have fun if it kills her—or me,” she concluded with a laugh.

  “That’s great.” After everything she’d been through with her cheating ex, Mina deserved to be happy. She deserved to have fun.

  “We went shopping yesterday and she picked this out. What do you think?” she asked, standing to show off a cute pair of sage-green three-quarter pants and a white petal-sleeve blouse. Mina had been trying to lose twenty pounds since Kennedy hired her and was self-conscious about wearing anything that revealed too much of her figure.

  “You look great. Green is the perfect color on you and the slim cut makes your legs look long.” As far as Kennedy was concerned, she didn’t need to lose a pound.

  “Thanks,” Mina said, her face flushed with pleasure. “Going forward, I’m going to treat myself to a new outfit every time I get paid.”

  “Good for you. You deserve it. By the way, where’s Jonathan?” Kennedy asked, glancing over her shoulder at his dark, empty office. He was usually the first one in.

  “Doctor’s appointment. He won’t be in until eleven.”

  Duh. How could she forget—he’d only reminded her before he left the office yesterday. Kennedy blamed her memory lapse on her orgasm hangover, which couldn’t be cured with aspirin or caffeine, but didn’t come with the headache and cotton mouth brought on by alcohol.

  “Okay,” Kennedy said, letting out a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. “Let me get this over with.”

  Mina saw her off with an encouraging thumbs-up.

  Margaret Hanson-Gertz was exactly how Kennedy pictured her. The photo she’d pulled up of her on Google had to be at least ten to fifteen years out of date. The face that greeted her when she stepped into the conference room was more lined, the crow’s-feet around her hazel eyes deeper. The shots of gray running through her dyed blond hair were barely discernible to the naked eye.

  At seventy-three, she was a handsome woman in the way Adam Driver was a sex symbol. Maybe not at first or second glance, but the longer a person looked, the arrangement of her individual features grew more pleasing when observed together. She wore a cream pantsuit that fit her petite figure in a way that screamed its custom-made origins.

  “Mrs. Hanson-Gertz, this is an unexpected surprise.” Kennedy greeted her politely.

  “Is it really a surprise? After your recommendation to my board, I thought you’d be expecting me,” she said in a voice that sounded as if she’d recently given up cigarettes after decades of chain-smoking two packs a day.

  Oh wonderful. It was going to be one of those conversations. Kennedy had naively hoped the woman would want to do what was best for the company. Clearly not.

  “What can I do for you?” Kennedy asked calmly, ignoring her sharp tone and the question.

  Irritated, the jewelry heiress thumped her veined, age-spotted hand on the table and replied, “You had no right to advise my board to fire me.”

  Having watched more than her fair share of period dramas, the heiress reminded Kennedy of a haughty nineteenth-century British aristocrat who made it their job to belittle “the help” to the point of enragement.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hanson-Gertz, but under the circumstances, it was the right thing to do.”

  “What circumstances?” Her voice rose imperiously. “Whatever it is you were told, I did not write that email. In your line of work, I would think you’d want to hear the whole story.”

  One day, Kennedy would love it if the first thing out of a client’s mouth was them taking responsibility for whatever mess they’d gotten themselves into. It’s all my fault. I take full responsibility. However, it looked like she’d have to wait for hell to freeze over for that to happen, and until then, this was what she’d be dealing with. A litany of denials upon excuses upon denials.

  “I did hear the whole story and I’ve viewed all the evidence. And as I told Mr. Bellamy yesterday, whether you wrote that email or not is immaterial. It was sent from your email address and your signature was at the bottom. If that was done in error, the mistake should have been corrected three years ago, not now.” The woman was trying to close the stable doors long after the horse had been let out. Long enough for the horse to have been impregnated and given birth several times over.

  “You didn’t hear from me,” she said crossly.

  Good lord, the woman was a piece of work.

  “I may begin to sound like a broken record, but as I told Mr. Bellamy, the only thing I can do is to try and salvage the company’s reputation, not yours. The email is too damaging, and your employees have established, to everyone’s satisfaction, that they were following orders. Now, as I said, the sooner you issue Ms. Scott a public and personal apology, the sooner the press will lose interest.”

  Vanessa Scott had already issued a statement of her own. Not only had she vowed never to step foot in any of their stores again, she was also returning the three-hundred-thousand-dollar diamond bracelet she’d purchased from their store in England the week before.

  “This is my company. They are going to vote me out of the company my grandfather started at the turn of the last century.” She was all self-righteous indignation with her gratingly strident tone.

  Kennedy took her job of being the voice of reason seriously. “I understand how you must feel, Mrs. Hanson-Gertz—”

  “With all due respect, Miss Mitchell,” she snapped, “I doubt very much that you do. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like to watch your life’s work being taken from you.”

  Haughty must be second nature to her, as she lapsed into it effortlessly. Haughty was also a surefire way to get Kennedy’s back up. “While this agency hasn’t been open quite as long as Hanson’s, nor does it come close to its considerable net worth, I do understand hard work and, more than that, I understand what it’s like to start with nothing.” She made a pointed reference to the Hanson heiress being handed a thriving multimillion-dollar business upon her father’s death more than twenty years ago.

  Mrs. Hanson-Gertz cast a dubious look around the room, no doubt comparing it unfavorably to the offices and conference rooms she was accustomed to. But her smile, doggedly stiff and polite, never once wavered. She’d been at this a long time and was used to playing the game.

  “Managing a half-billion-dollar company that spans several continents and countries isn’t quite the same as running a business...less involved.”

  Kennedy kept a tight rein on her derision. The woman was a caricature of a caricature, a jeweler mogul version of Cruella de Vil come to life.

  “Well, I can only imagine what that’s like. But as I said before, there is nothing I can do to extricate you from this quagmire you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  The older woman studied her through narrowed eyes. “I don’t want to hear any nonsense about quagmires,” she said, sucking her teeth. “I was told you’re the best at what you do, but what is clear to me is that you don’t want to help me.”

  Such damning praise. Kennedy would take it.

  “Whoever told you that was right. I am the best at what I do. But what I’m not is a miracle worker, and that’s what you would require. Now, I’m not sure whether you’re a snob, a bigot, or a racist, or all the above, but at this point, it doesn’t matter. Your current position as CEO of Hanson’s is untenable and is already having an adverse effect on the company. The last time I checked, your stock was down fifteen percent. If you resign today, you can turn it around, and with that I’m sure the calls for boycotts will cease. No customer wants to run the gauntlet of protesters to shop at your stores.”

  Since the incident, protesters had arrived with signs in hand to picket the Park Avenue store. There were also protests going on at their London and Paris stores, successfully keeping customers away.

  Mrs. Hanson-Gertz pursed her lips, causing deep lines to snake from her lips like tributaries. “Just because I bring my old-fashioned values to my business, it doesn’t make me a bigot or a racist.”

  Kennedy noticed she didn’t deny being a snob. But then again, being a snob didn’t make someone a social pariah.

  “If by old-fashioned you mean posting a figurative wealthy whites only sign on the doors of your stores in the form of store employees, I don’t agree with you. Which is your problem. Those days are over, despite efforts to resurrect them.” Kennedy kept her voice free of censure and malice, simply letting her words do the unpleasant but necessary work of dressing down a racist.

  Mrs. Hanson-Gertz remained stone-faced as she rose from the chair and huffed, “Well, this was a waste of time.”

  Kennedy quickly followed suit, towering over the older woman. “I wouldn’t call our meeting time wasted.” Although, she could think of a dozen other things she could be doing right now and a hundred she’d rather be doing, like running the New York City Marathon in ninety-degree heat. Neither she nor her hair could survive that.

  “I don’t imagine you would,” the older woman replied, the insult hardly veiled.

  The Hanson employees owed her for helping to remove the detestable woman from her position.

  You’re welcome. No need to hold a parade in my honor.

  Before Kennedy could blink, Mrs. Hanson-Gertz was at the door, clearly eager to leave.

  “Mrs. Hanson,” she called before the heiress breached the threshold. “Can I ask you a question?”

  After a beat, the woman reluctantly inclined her head in a nod and a disdainful sniff.

  “Would I have been allowed into any of your stores?”

  Mrs. Hanson-Gertz visibly stiffened in obvious affront. But a moment later, she ran a critical gaze over Kennedy, taking in her formfitting dress, her eyes lingering absently on the bell sleeves. Then she looked Kennedy square in the eye. “I honestly don’t know,” she intoned, obnoxiously overbearing to the end.

  Kennedy couldn’t fault her for her honesty. “Which I believe proves my point. That it’s time for you to step down. And I think you have too much pride to allow the board to fire you.”

  “We’ll see about that.” And with those words, she was gone.

  Kennedy could only count her blessings that she dealt with more Roger O’Briens than she did Margaret Hanson-Gertzes. And she hoped it stayed that way.

  20

  Less than ten hours after the wretched woman marched herself out of Token’s doors, Hanson & Co. released a statement that Margaret Hanson-Gertz would immediately be stepping down as CEO and president.

  The news hit social media while Kennedy, Aurora, Sahara, and April—the performer’s twenty-eight-year-old designer—were enjoying appetizers and their first round of cocktails. The women were the sole occupants of the VIP section in a small club Sahara liked to frequent. Its intimacy, celebrity-indifferent clientele, and staff discretion made it the perfect venue for their girls’ night out.

  By their second round of drinks, conversation had moved on from whether Mrs. Hanson-Gertz was experiencing karma or her just deserts, to the rights and wrongs of nepotism. Sahara’s cousin was looking for a job. Unfortunately, he wasn’t qualified for much, so if she hired him, she would be taking a chance.

  “Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with nepotism per se. And it’s not as if everyone else doesn’t do it,” April said, as someone whose sister’s modeling career helped pave the way to her own.

  “I’m not saying your sister being a model wasn’t helpful, but you would have gotten representation without her,” Sahara insisted, eliciting sounds of agreement all around.

  The biracial, green-eyed beauty was smart as well as ambitious. She’d started her design company after graduating with a master of fine arts degree in fashion design. Last year, business had grown enough for her to hire another designer. With her new contract with Sahara and ECO Apparel, she planned to hire another.

  Aurora popped a glazed meatball into her mouth, instantly moaning her appreciation as she chewed.

  “It sounds like you’re going to need to book a room for you and your meatballs,” Kennedy joked.

  Laughter and giggling ensued, a refreshing change from their previous conversation.

  Having a famous friend did have its perks. She could hang out with a bunch of women, comfy in overstuffed chairs while listening to music at a volume that didn’t impede conversation. The best was being able to enjoy herself without random men deciding she would be the lucky recipient of their unwanted attention for the night. It was amazing what a difference it made to be able to have a relaxing evening out with just the girls.

  “Are you dating anyone?” April asked, directing the question to Aurora. “All that moaning means you’re not getting it enough or you’re getting it too much. Which one is it?”

  The question caused Aurora to nearly choke on the crab-stuffed mushroom she’d just put in her mouth.

  Kennedy reached over and patted her on the back. “I don’t know how to perform the Heimlich maneuver, so please don’t get that thing stuck in your throat.”

  Aurora grabbed an untouched glass of water and swallowed a mouthful before she was able to speak. “I think it went down the wrong pipe,” she croaked, tears filling her eyes. Turning her gaze to April, she said, “Warn a girl when you’re about to ask her if she’s having non-self-induced orgasms.”

  The entire table erupted into peals of laughter.

  Sahara clucked her tongue in mock sympathy. “I’m sorry, doll. You should have said something to me. But no worries—I know just the man who can take care of that. And before you go getting the wrong idea, let me first say that there was nothing going on between me and Grant on the set. He was the perfect British gentleman, but I did hear things. Very good things. Loves giving as much as he loves receiving, which isn’t always the case. A lot of guys can be selfish that way.”

  “Not my husband,” April said, blessing them with a smile of the sexually satisfied.

  Or Nate. But Kennedy judiciously kept that to herself, his sister being right there and all.

  Aurora cast her gaze heavenward. “That’ll be a hard pass from me. I’m never getting romantically involved with anyone remotely connected to Hollywood.”