Raising his head slightly, he eyed her. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that at least eighteen of your employees believe there’s a race-and gender-based glass ceiling at the company impeding possible advancement.”

  He held her gaze for a couple moments before tipping his head back and growling, “Fuck! I thought we were on top of this. Ahead of our time and the bloody competition. I thought, except for the normal butting of heads and battle of wills, my employees didn’t have much to complain about.”

  “Hey, don’t start beating yourself up about this. No company’s perfect.”

  “Most companies also don’t have a class-action discrimination lawsuit hanging over their head,” he shot back wryly.

  “Your company employs over fifteen thousand people. You have more diversity than your competition. You’ll get through this. You just need to take things one day at a time.”

  “Meanwhile, they’re writing shit like the tone is set at the top, and everyone knows what that’s code for. That everyone is taking their cues from me. That I’m the one encouraging this shit.”

  “You’ve been in France for practically the last three years. Someone else has been in charge,” Kennedy offered in his defense.

  “Nobody is going to give a shit about that. It’s my company. I’m the owner and CEO. The buck stops with me.”

  He was right. The newspapers and reporters wouldn’t give a whit if he’d been a Tibetan monk in Timbuktu the last five years. He’d still been the person in charge, the one whose net worth climbed every time the Dow saw a gain.

  Leaning forward, he propped his forearms on his spread thighs and looked her directly in the eye. “I need your help.” It was more a demand than an entreaty. Typical Nate.

  “I’m sure Aurora will—”

  “No, not my sister. I need you. This is your area of expertise. This is where you shine.”

  Kennedy furrowed her brow, genuinely perplexed. “But, Nate, you already have a diverse workforce. You don’t need me.” At the end of the day, that was the ultimate goal of her services. The lawsuit was a hiccup.

  “No, you’re wrong. I do need you,” he said, and for a fleeting moment, she thought he meant more than just her professional services. But of course that couldn’t be it. He didn’t feel that way about her. He’d made that clear enough the past several years.

  “Come on, Nate. You know the rules,” she lightly chided. “Representing family can be...problematic.”

  “But we’re not family, which is why I’m asking you.”

  Kennedy shifted uncomfortably but managed to maintain eye contact. “But Aurora is, and she owns half the agency.”

  “And because of that, you’re going to deny me your expertise?” he asked with an arched brow.

  Okay, if she had to judge herself objectively, she would humbly admit that she was good, but she wasn’t the only game in town and certainly not the most esteemed. “How do you know how good I am? You’ve been in France since we opened the agency.” And they’d had a total of twenty clients, none of which his company had ever done business with. At least, not that she was aware of.

  A softening around his mouth eased the grimness of his expression. “Because I know you. Not only did you graduate at the top of your class, you’re good at anything you set your mind to. Why wouldn’t I want you on my side?”

  Kennedy slowly shook her head. “I’m really sorry, Nate, but it’s an agency policy I can’t break.” Work with Nate? Take him on as a client? Nope, not in a million years.

  Her refusal sent him into used-car-salesman mode. “C’mon, Kennedy. You’re a genius at this stuff. I’ve seen you in action. You can charm the mustache and beard off Santa Claus. You’ll have the guys who put out those hit-job pieces eating out of your hand. All I want you to do is put your talents to use for me. And to prove I’m on the up-and-up, I won’t even ask for a discount. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to pay above the going rate if you can squeeze me in today.”

  If you can squeeze me in today. Kennedy simultaneously cleared her throat and dragged her mind out of the gutter. “I can recommend the best—”

  “No. No.” He held up his hand to her. “I don’t want anyone else. There’s no one better at this than you. And as my sister’s best friend, I would think you’d want me to be represented by the best.”

  He looked and sounded as if he meant it. That he wasn’t simply trying to flatter her.

  “I’m sorry, Nate, but I can’t.” She intended to come across as firm and decisive, but her voice refused to cooperate. A part of her came perilously close to wavering. Thankfully, it wasn’t enough to overcome her sense of self-preservation. “You need someone who is—who is less—” Damn, how did she say it without showing all her cards?

  In an abrupt move, he leaned forward in his chair. “No one else is going to know me like you do.”

  Her heart thumped in response as she gave a short laugh. “Nate, we’ve barely seen each other the last two years. I would hardly say I know you that well anymore.”

  He sat up straight, his brows shooting up. “What? So now you don’t know me?”

  His words struck her ears like a challenge. Perhaps she should have phrased it differently, but it was too late to take it back. In for a pound and all that.

  Stiffening her spine, she replied, “No, Nate, I don’t think I do. At least, not the man you are now,” she tagged on, to give more credence to her statement.

  Chuckling low in his throat, he caught and held her gaze. “Kennedy, I was your first. You gave me your virginity. If that doesn’t say you know me and I know you, then I don’t know what does.”

  6

  Kennedy’s breath caught in her throat as she stared at him, unblinking. She couldn’t believe he’d gone there. A place they’d never gone before. Not in all the years since it had happened.

  An involuntary shiver delayed her response.

  In the breach of silence, Nate watched her, head tipped to the side and brows lifted. “What?” he asked, a note of challenge in his dulcet tones. A bit of smugness there too. “I was only stating facts, since you appear to have forgotten just how—” he inserted a meaningful pause “—intimately we’re acquainted.”

  Not coincidentally, the recovery of speech coincided with the collection of her wits. “Why would you say that?”

  She was genuinely bewildered because between them existed an unwritten agreement to never speak about the incident. Correction, incidents plural, since it had happened more than once. Okay, more than twice. Fine, it had happened more times than she had fingers, but that wasn’t the point. The point was they shouldn’t be having this discussion.

  But apparently, telepathic agreements weren’t worth the paper they weren’t written on, because he’d rebutted her claims as if he’d been quietly biding his time, waiting for just this moment to arise.

  And now it was out there, sitting between them like a piece of luggage left in the middle of a hallway that could hardly contain its bulk. For years, it had sat there unencumbered yet an impediment. They had been the ones encumbered, ever careful not to disturb it as they’d sidled by, bodies pressed tightly against the wall to avoid contact.

  It was clear Nate had made the decision he wasn’t sidling anymore. The luggage had to go.

  The hell it does. That luggage was her shield, fortified and strengthened by the time passed.

  He continued to toy with her, asking, “Say what? The truth?”

  “I’m saying, why would you even bring that up?”

  Seriously, the gall of the man. He had come to her asking for her services, and this was the way he behaved? Sitting there, legs spread like he owned the place as he needled her about a past she tried hard to forget. Some days she managed it better than others.

  “Did you or did you not give your virginity to me?” He posed the question as if it were a frequent topic of everyday conversation, which of course it was not. Not by a long shot. Especially when they’d only ever talked about it once after the fact.

  The memory of their first time together swamped her, his words ringing in her mind with the clarity of Dolby Digital Plus. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was your first time,” he’d half groaned once he was hilt-deep inside her.

  Kennedy slammed her eyes shut, a brief respite from having to look at his face. His ridiculously gorgeous face. She willed herself not to think about it.

  That he was purposely taking her on a trip down memory lane only made her angrier. Slitting her gaze to skewer him like a shish kebab range, she pressed her lips together, refusing to rise to the bait because that was exactly what he wanted.

  “Not admitting to it won’t change what happened.”

  Kennedy literally had to sit on her hands to stop herself from reaching across her desk and wringing the obnoxiousness out of him. “What does one thing have to do with the other?” she asked snippily.

  “What does you professing not to know me have to do with me being your first, is that what you’re asking?” Chuckling softly, Nate shook his head. “You can’t even say it.”

  Cheeks on fire, Kennedy was a hairbreadth away from attempting to bodily remove him from her office. However, since he outweighed her by a good seventy pounds, he wouldn’t exactly be in danger of being manhandled. A good tongue-lashing, however, she could deliver.

  There will be no tongue anything.

  Again with this? For the love of God, would you please get your mind out of the gutter?

  “I’m saying whoopee, we had sex, so what?”

  His gaze sharpened on her. “You gave me your virginity.”

  “And? The last I checked, that still counts as sex.”

  “Are you saying it meant nothing?”

  Kennedy lifted her shoulder in a negligent shrug, purposely evading the question. “I had to give it to someone eventually.”

  An ominous stillness settled over her first-ever lover. “Yes, because I suppose at the age of nineteen you would have given your virginity to anyone who looked at you twice.” Despite the already hot eighty-two degrees outside, an early winter frost lurked in the depths of his blue eyes.

  “First of all, I was eighteen, and it wasn’t as if we were in a relationship. What we had was a—was a—a series of—of one-night stands.” Okay, she’d blown that big-time. It was impossible to achieve convincing nonchalance without a smooth delivery.

  But so what if she hadn’t lost her virginity earlier? Eighteen wasn’t exactly ancient. And she could honestly say that in high school, she hadn’t been ready, much to the frustration of two boyfriends who’d tried their best to cajole her into giving it up to them. Steadfast and true to her convictions, she’d been convinced she’d know when the time was right.

  Then Nate materialized like a manna from the virginity gods, and she had known. Her body had definitely known. He’d hit every one of her buttons, and a few she hadn’t known existed. From their very first meeting, her attraction to him had skirted the edges of idolatry. It had also scared the shit out of her because she’d never felt that way before about anyone.

  How he’d felt about her...? To this day she still didn’t know exactly. Had she been a notch on his bedpost? A Pretty Little Thing? A novelty? It was over before she was able to squirrel it out of him.

  “A series of one-night stands over the course of four weeks?” A skeptical raised brow accompanied his question.

  Kennedy bit back a growl of frustration. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, what I’m trying to say is that just because you took—that you were my—that we—that we had sex, it doesn’t mean that I know you or that you know me.”

  “I know you well enough to call you on your bullshit, which is exactly what’s coming out of your mouth right now,” he stated baldly.

  “Is this how you are with all the women you’ve ever slept with? It’s been over ten years.”

  Eleven years and five months, but really, who’s counting?

  Certainly not you, Miss “After All These Years, Nate Vaughn Is STILL the Best Sex I Ever Had” Mitchell.

  Oh hush, you. Drawing comparisons helps no one.

  Nate scowled. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Don’t talk as if what happened between us meant nothing.”

  Kennedy stared at him, unable or perhaps unwilling to believe what she was hearing. Tiptoeing up to the invisible line she’d drawn and had done her best not to cross, she asked, “Are you saying it meant something to you?”

  He smoothly sidestepped her question with one of his own. “Are you saying it didn’t mean anything to you? It was just sex?”

  Nope. Not going there. That is a field littered with emotional land mines.

  “Can we not talk about this now?” Or ever. “I mean, why did you even bring it up? It happened eons ago. We’ve both moved on.”

  Ancient history. She’d be celebrating her thirtieth birthday at the end of the year, and at a doddering thirty-four, wasn’t it about time he started losing his hair? But looking at his mussed dark blond locks, she reluctantly concluded that his hairline wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, if at all. His father still had a full head of hair, and he was in his sixties.

  Nate blew out an exasperated breath. “Jesus Christ, Kennedy, why is everything with you a battle?”

  “It’s not. I just don’t understand why you had to bring it up.” As if she needed a reminder of just how far down the Nate hole she’d gone before having to violently pull herself back to reality. She wasn’t Cinderella and he wasn’t her prince. “Clearly, it’s not something I want to talk about.” Especially with him.

  Although, it was something she’d never be able to forget.

  A woman never forgot her first.

  Nate’s eyes narrowed as silence gained a foothold in the room. She dreaded what he would say next. Worried about how she’d respond. If today had taught her anything, it was that as much as she’d wanted to close that chapter in her life, her feelings for him weren’t anything close to resolved.

  “You’re right and I’m sorry. I should never have asked for your help. This isn’t your problem, it’s mine, and it was selfish of me to ask you to break the rules for me.”

  Kennedy blinked. Wait—what just happened?

  Shoving back his chair, he came abruptly to his feet.

  “I—I—” She was too disoriented by his sudden change to form a coherent sentence.

  He stayed her attempted protest with a decisive shake of his head. “No, you don’t have to say anything. I’m just going to get out of your hair so you can get back to work.” He flashed her a wooden smile.

  Kennedy stared at him, feeling utterly helpless. Despite her refusal, this wasn’t how she wanted to leave things between them. And it wasn’t that she didn’t want to help him. She did. If only—

  A perfunctory knock interrupted her thoughts. Before Kennedy could respond, her office door swung open, and Aurora, hair done up in a pretty French braid ponytail, and summery in a blue polka-dot blouse and slim ankle pants, breezed right on in.

  “Good morning,” she said, although her singsong salutation didn’t match the warning glint in her eyes. “You can imagine my surprise when Jonathan informed me that my darling brother was here and not in Paris, where he was the last time I spoke to him—oh, let me see—” head tilted, she touched a contemplative finger to her chin “—the day before yesterday.” She fixed him with a pointed look, appearing every inch the aggrieved baby sister. Then her gaze turned faintly accusing when it swung in Kennedy’s direction. “Then I find you two locked in here together.”

  Kennedy huffed at the gross exaggeration. “We weren’t locked behind closed doors.”

  “Are you saying the door wasn’t closed?” Aurora asked, gesturing at it.

  “Yes, but not locked. Big difference.”

  “Is that the greeting I get?” Nate regarded his sister fondly, her arrival eliciting the first genuine smile Kennedy had yet to see on his face today.

  Aurora would not be swayed—at least, not easily—crossing her arms over her chest. “What kind of greeting did you expect when you sneak into the country without a single word to me and then beat me to my office in the morning? Who does that?”

  Grinning, Nate easily closed the distance between them and tugged her into his arms with a gruff, “Come here, brat. Give your brother a hug.”

  Aurora quickly abandoned the petulant-little-sister act and threw her arms around his neck, giggling as she returned his embrace. “Oh my god, it’s so good to see you.”

  He planted a kiss on her cheek. “It’s good to see you too.”

  The second he released her, she slapped him lightly on the arm and chided, “What are you doing home so early? I thought you said you needed a few more months before you moved back.”

  Kennedy blinked at her friend. Nate had planned to return to New York for good? Why hadn’t Aurora said anything to her about it?

  “Believe me, this wasn’t part of the plan,” Nate said, his expression clouding over.

  Aurora stilled, her gaze volleying between Kennedy and her brother. “What? What’s going on? Did something happen? You’re not sick, are you?”

  “Relax, Ror, your brother isn’t sick,” Kennedy assured her, before her friend’s mind took her on a tour of the worst WebMD.com had to offer.

  Aurora audibly exhaled, her shoulders slumping in relief.

  “Yes, you’ll be happy to know that I’m not dying. The company is just being sued for discrimination.”

  * * *

  “So what are you going to do? Does Jack know about this?” Aurora gave her head a shake. “What am I saying? Of course Jack knows. What did he say?”

  The discussion had moved from Kennedy’s office to his sister’s five minutes ago. Nate told her as much as he knew, and as expected, Rory ditched her sister cap and donned her crisis-management one.