“Who said you didn’t earn it? How many scholarships did you apply for that you didn’t receive because an applicant had connections with the powers that be? You told me you also applied to a few other Ivy League colleges and didn’t get in. Why not? You had the grades and the test scores. Maybe a legacy student got the slot that should have rightfully gone to you. Did you ever think of that? And I highly doubt Nate would have paid for you to go to a school like Columbia if your grades and test scores didn’t warrant it. When you have billions, as generous as it is to write a check for a good cause, that’s the easiest part.”

  “I get all that, but—”

  “Sweetie, I hope you’ll take what I say next in the spirit it’s given, from someone who knows. Your boy had money. He saw you needed it. He filled that need and didn’t tell you because he knew you’d refuse it—and he was right. Listen, I understand you feel in his debt and you understandably hate that. But it’s not about the money, honey. For him, that was an act of love.”

  Hugging her knees to her chest, Kennedy stared at her fire-engine-red toenails. “I don’t know. Maybe I’d feel different if we weren’t sleeping together. It isn’t as if our relationship isn’t lopsided enough.”

  “What do you mean lopsided?”

  She absently flicked a clump of hair that came dislodged from her ponytail over her shoulder. It was more wavy than straight, days after the blowout. “You know what I mean. He’s got it all. He’s worth billions. His parents are part of the whole Hollywood crowd. And he’s gorgeous. He could probably have any woman he wanted even without all the money and glam. Sometimes I feel I’m hitting way above my weight class.”

  There was no feeling like not feeling good enough. It was soul destroying.

  “And he’s white, right?”

  “Yeah, there’s that too,” she replied gloomily. Another brick in the wall between them.

  Sahara released an audible sigh. “You have to know you’re a catch, right? You’re all the things he said in his statement, and on top of that, you’re one of the kindest, most compassionate people I know. And you’re pretty funny too. But I understand how you feel. I’m living a life I could only ever dream of, but there are always doubts. Am I good enough? Will they like me? What if my film or album bombs? What if after all of this, I never get married and have the family I always wanted? I think about all that stuff. Everyone does, Ken. And probably Black women more than anyone. But it’s normal. You’re not alone. At the end of the day, though, he would be the luckiest man in the world to have you, and judging by his statement, I think he knows it too.”

  Kennedy gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I’ve been telling myself that a lot, and then I discover he basically paid my way through college. And not just any college—an Ivy League one.” Which put her in his debt. A debt she’d never be able to repay.

  “Take it from me—no one becomes successful on their own. It’s literally impossible. Intelligence, talent, ambition, and hard work only gets you so far. Whether it’s being born into wealth or being lucky enough to be born with a voice and a face that can sell millions of records, behind every successful person there are usually a host of people and the right opportunities that helped pave the way. You did all the hard work, so give yourself a break. You don’t have to be superwoman all the time.”

  Kennedy huffed a laugh. “I wish.” If that were true, Joseph Russo wouldn’t have thought her capable of something as reprehensible as throwing a Black female reporter under the bus. The complete antithesis of what she was trying to do with her agency.

  “Look, I’m not trying to take anything away from your man, but he was born on third base. If he wants to pay it forward, let him. You don’t owe him anything, which is why his name wasn’t attached to the scholarship.”

  How could she not owe him anything when he’d put her through college? That was no insignificant thing. It had everything to do with where she was in her life right now and where she’d end up. She had to come up with something to level the playing field. But first, she had to talk to Nate. See him and touch him. If there was one thing she knew, they were far from over.

  “Hey,” Sahara said, her voice penetrating Kennedy’s thoughts. “Everything is going to work out. With Phil and Sam out of the picture, things will calm down and get back to normal. And if you need me to run interference with the press, just say the word. You know me—I have a knack for distraction. Now, go find that hunky man of yours and put him out of his misery. Have yourself some of that good, wall-banging makeup sex and thank me in the morning.”

  Kennedy smiled. Her friend did have a way with words. “How about I just thank you now in case I’m too busy in the morning?”

  “When the time comes, promise to name your little angel after me,” Sahara said, amusing herself to no end.

  Teasing or not, normally Kennedy would have told her friend not to get ahead of herself. Today, in the midst of a pandemic of disasters, she found herself laughing along.

  * * *

  If Nate had known when he’d promised to give Kennedy space that after three days he’d be going out of his mind missing her, he would have insisted on a time limit.

  Checking the time every hour didn’t help; it just made the day longer. Work kept him relatively busy during the day. Markham had finally agreed on a settlement amount, and four of the company’s former employees would be getting their old jobs back—with a nice raise. Jack was gone and Nate was on the hunt for a new CTO, and he was implementing significant changes to human resources personnel and their entire recruiting and in-house promotion process. The face of management at the company had to change, and that wasn’t going to happen if they continued to do the same thing that had landed them in trouble in the first place.

  Nate checked his phone again. Nothing. What he needed was to get out of his head and his bloody apartment. Take a walk. Get some fresh air. Maybe take a drive across the Brooklyn Bridge and grab a bite to eat at Junior’s. He could go for a slice of strawberry cheesecake.

  Mind made up, he grabbed his keys and headed for the door. Sometime during his half-hour trip, he took a turn that bypassed his intended destination and somehow ended up at Kennedy’s. Five minutes later, he rounded the corner to her apartment to find her turning the key in the lock of her door.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked.

  Kennedy gave a startled yelp as her head swiveled in his direction and her hand jumped to her throat.

  His heart received the same jolt it had when he’d first laid eyes on her. God, she was beautiful. And for some reason she looked younger. It took a moment to pinpoint what was different about her today. She wasn’t wearing makeup, or if she was, not much of it.

  “You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here?” she asked, her hand dropping to her side.

  He slowly approached, stopping when they were only inches apart. “Answer my question first.”

  She visibly swallowed. “I was on my way to see you.”

  “I was hoping you would say that,” Nate said, breathing a little easier.

  Gently brushing her hand aside, which was gripping the key still in the lock, he unlocked the door and led her inside.

  “I guess I’m not going anywhere after all,” Kennedy said, as she turned on the lights in the tiny hallway, toed off her sneakers, and made her way to the living room.

  Nate followed closely behind and had to rein in the compulsion to touch her. It was too soon, he told himself. He needed to proceed with caution. For all he knew, the reason she’d been going to see him was to break up with him for good.

  Although, that wasn’t what he was picking up from her. Something in her eyes told him their days apart had been just as hard on her as they had been on him. Added to that, she’d been about to head into the city in a pair of leggings and sneakers, with her hair in a messy ponytail. Very uncharacteristic of her. It was as if it’d been a spur-of-the-moment decision and she’d been in a rush and threw on whatever was close at hand.

  He drew in a breath and followed her down onto the sofa as she settled in among the cushions, her gray-blue eyes intent on his. “Before you say anything,” he began, “first let me say I’m sorry. I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things. I shouldn’t have done what I did with the scholarship, and I shouldn’t have asked Aurora to keep it from you when she found out. And I was wrong about Jack and you were right. You were right when you said I had blind spots where he was concerned.”

  Reaching out, he cupped her smooth cheek in his palm. “I’m sorry I dismissed your feelings about him. I’m sorry for saying that shit about you looking for enemies in every corner. You were seeing what I refused to see. It was an arrogant and condescending thing to say. I hope you can find it—”

  “Shh,” she said, her voice soft. “It’s okay. I understand. He’s your friend and you’ve known him a long—”

  “No, none of that matters,” he said, cutting her off. “You matter to me. Kennedy, you’ve got to know I’m head over heels in love with you.”

  At that, her lips parted and her eyes became glassy. “I love you too. I’m crazy in love with you and I’ve never felt like this about anyone before in my life.”

  “Thank God for that,” he said against her mouth as he kissed her. Then he quickly pulled back, the sweet taste of her still on his lips. They needed to talk, and if he started kissing her now, he wouldn’t be able to stop, and he didn’t want to make love to her without clearing the air between them.

  Nate inhaled a deep breath. “Let’s get through this first. Now, about Jack. He and I have been friends for a long time, but it’s obvious there are things about him I didn’t know. Or maybe I didn’t want to know.” Hindsight being 20/20, he was sure there had been signs. But he’d been too busy building and expanding, too concerned with the big picture to pay close enough attention to many of the details. He’d forgotten that companies like his needed constant vigilance if they wanted to keep the advantage diversity gave them.

  “Or maybe,” she offered gently, “he was careful to keep that side of himself from you. Have you ever thought of that? Remember, he knows who you are. You’re Mr. Equity and Equality for All. If there was anyone he’d do his best to hide it from, it’s you.”

  God, he loved her.

  Nate stole another kiss, her heart-shaped lips plush and pliant against his. He pulled back again. “Well, he’s gone. I let him go. He’d been lying to me, and if it weren’t for you, God only knows how long it would have taken me to figure it out.”

  * * *

  “Not long. People like him eventually out themselves. Now, are you going to ask me why I was coming to see you?” Kennedy asked, smoothing her hands over his shoulder as she sat pressed against his side, practically in his lap. Forget the sex for a moment—she’d also missed the sound of his voice, the ocean breeze scent of him, and simply having him within reach, being able to touch him.

  He peered down at her, brow arched. “Do I want to know?”

  “I wanted to explain about the scholarship. Why I reacted the way I did.”

  Nate covered her hand and held it still against his chest. “You don’t have to explain. I understand—”

  “No, I do,” she insisted, planting a kiss on his jaw. “Hear me out.”

  His arm tightened around her waist.

  “In all my relationships, I’ve always seen myself as an equal. Even if the guy made more money than me, I was fine with it because we were still on the same plane. In the same league, so to speak. People wouldn’t look at us and think, Why would he settle for her when he can do better?”

  Nate stiffened against her, his chest stilling beneath her palm. She knew he was about to interrupt and tell her she was being irrational. “Please, let me finish,” she urged softly. With those words, she felt his body lose some of its rigidity. “Then you came along. Twice. Once when I had no sexual experience to speak of. And I fell for you hard. Not in a married, happily-ever-after way, though. I was too young for that, and you were my first. But I did hope it would last longer than a month,” she stated with a dry laugh.

  “You couldn’t have wanted it more than me,” he said, his tone equally dry.

  “But you were probably right to end it when you did. I needed to concentrate on school and you had your company.”

  He tipped her chin with his finger and stared deep into her eyes. “Even if I wasn’t growing my company, you were too young for what I would have wanted.”

  Kennedy’s whole body shivered at the huskiness in his voice and meaningfulness of his tone. She cleared her throat. “But this time—” She broke off, in search of the right words. “This time I decided to just go with it. See how far it went. But I knew I had to accept everything that came with. Your wealth, your looks—”

  “You like my looks?” he asked with a look of feigned surprise.

  “—your parents being who they are,” she continued, as if he hadn’t facetiously interrupted for an ego stroke. Vain, vain man. “And because we’re an interracial couple, we’d get the stares and the double looks. I knew it all came with the territory and I was willing to accept that.”

  “If they stare at us, it’s because you’re so beautiful,” Nate whispered, briefly kissing her on the lips, no doubt in an act of repentance for his vanity.

  “Okay, whatever,” she said with a small smile. “But you know what I mean. That’s our reality. And then I found out about the scholarship, and what I considered my biggest accomplishment—putting myself through college—wasn’t even mine anymore. It was yours. A degree from an Ivy League school opened doors for me that would otherwise have been closed. It was the foundation of everything else—my jobs, the agency, everything. I owed you so much and it made the gap between us wider, and I hated that.”

  Sighing heavily, Nate briefly closed his eyes, his expression pained. Gently touching her cheek with the pad of his thumb, he said, “The last thing I ever wanted was to make you feel as if you’re somehow indebted to me. You’re not. That’s not why I did it. And everything you’ve achieved, from your degrees to the agency, is because of your intelligence and hard work. I didn’t do that. You did.”

  Kennedy worried her bottom lip with her teeth as she looked into his eyes. “I knew that in a logical sense, but it was hard to change how I felt. Of all the people in my life, I needed you to see me as your equal, and the scholarship made me feel like a charity case. Like your personal cause. And that’s the last thing I wanted to be to you.”

  “Sweetheart, you’re more than just my equal. You’re the love of my life.”

  You’re the love of my life.

  Kennedy shivered as tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She’d never tire of hearing him say those words to her.

  “Do you want to know what used to scare the hell out of me?” Nate asked, his expression solemn.

  “Without question,” Kennedy replied. The more she learned about him, the more she wanted to know.

  “I was afraid that one day you’d decide you wanted a nice quiet life with someone like your ex. A life where no one stared at you because you’re with me and all the other shit that can go with us being together. I was afraid one day you’d throw in the towel and decide I wasn’t worth the aggravation.”

  Wow! She never would’ve imagined he’d harbored those kinds of fears. But then again, she’d subconsciously placed him in the driver’s seat of their relationship. He, on the other hand, had seen them as co-drivers, both equally capable of driving it off the road or stopping and getting out. Of course, she preferred the version where they drove off into the sunset together.

  As she looked into his blue eyes, suddenly he appeared more vulnerable, making her fiercely protective of him. “Nathaniel Vaughn, you are worth every aggravation.”

  His expression softened. “That’s exactly how I feel about you. I looked at the scholarship as a gift. Maybe it’s because I’ve been given so much in my life, but I think it’s natural to want to do the same for others, especially the people I care about. And if there’s one thing I’m one hundred percent certain of, it’s that if our positions were reversed, you’d do the same. You’d use your money and all your advantages to help others. You’ve always had that equal justice warrior streak in you. It’s what you’re doing right now with the agency.”

  Kennedy’s heart swelled. She wanted desperately to believe she was doing good, but after what had just happened with Joseph Russo, she wanted to do better. Vowed she would do better.

  “When I was talking to Sahara about this earlier, she said you were born on third base, and I—”

  Nate interrupted with a barked laugh. “I’m surprised she didn’t say first and goal. Didn’t she perform in the Super Bowl halftime show a few years back?”

  “No, she sang the national anthem,” Kennedy corrected. “And she didn’t mean it in a negative way.”

  “I know exactly how she meant it.” He smiled, indicating he took no exception to the remark.

  “So in keeping with the baseball analogy, I changed it a bit. You see, in my scenario, you’re born on third base, but on your next time up at bat, you hit a home run.”

  Chuckling softly, he kissed her on the forehead as his hand slid up her waist, coming to rest right below her breast. “I think you’re giving me a little too much credit. I’m only thirty-four and I have a lot more to do in life—things that have nothing to do with what’s in my bank account or how much my company is worth.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, like a wife and a couple kids. I’ve been told I’d make a wonderful husband and father,” he stated with the same humility it must take for a man to declare himself the handsomest in the world.