Her laugh was genuine and a little startled. “Really.”
Kennedy picked up one of the white pawns he’d captured early on and rolled it between his palms as he sat back in the uncomfortable chair, studying her. With her hair falling over one eye, her eyes dark and smoky and a little mad, and his jacket accentuating her tininess, she didn’t look like Kate, his no-nonsense assistant. He saw only a woman. An angry woman.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” he admitted, struck by an uncomfortable reminder that perhaps he didn’t know this woman nearly as well as he’d like to. “What is it you want out of a relationship?”
To his relief, instead of answering defensively, she seemed to consider his question seriously. “Probably the opposite of what you want.”
“Perhaps.”
She bit her lip. “You can’t make fun if I tell you.”
“I won’t.”
She met his eyes. “I want someone who’s all in.”
All in? “You mean . . . loyal?” he asked, trying to understand.
“No,” she said with a laugh. “I mean, yes, of course loyal, but also someone who’s not afraid to fall wildly, crazily in love with me.”
Kennedy was beginning to see her point about their having opposite visions. He didn’t do wild. Or crazy.
“I want the struck-by-lightning kind of love,” she said, her eyes bright and cheeks pink as she seemed to warm to the topic. “You know, where you lock eyes with someone, and both of you just know.”
They locked eyes as she said it, and he was oddly disappointed when she looked away immediately. “You mean like love at first sight?” he said, the words sounding more stilted and incredulous than he intended.
Kate smiled and shrugged. “It can happen.”
“Infatuation at first sight, maybe,” Kennedy said. “But that’s not the lasting kind of steady love needed to make a relationship work.”
“Wrong,” she insisted. “My parents met when they were nineteen, and they both knew they were it for each other from the very first moment. They got married a year later, and they’ve been crazy in love ever since.”
“And that’s what you want? Crazy in love?”
“I do,” Kate said with quiet confidence. “I don’t want to have to convince someone to fall in love with me. I want a guy who just knows I’m The One and goes all in.”
“Sounds . . . exhausting.” He regretted his words as he watched her smile dim, saw her shut down.
“Like I said,” Kate replied, her tone a little stiff, “I think we have different visions.”
To say the least. Kennedy wasn’t one of those cynics who didn’t believe in love, but he knew that love wasn’t magic. You didn’t just look at someone and know, as though you were fated for each other. It was work. You had to learn each other’s nuances, assess compatibility.
He didn’t know how he and Kate could both thrive so well on organization and order, and yet approach their personal lives so differently. When Kennedy pictured his future wife, it was someone who had the same practical approach to marriage as he did. Someone who understood that the most successful relationships weren’t about passion and butterflies but hard work and like-mindedness.
He was pulled from his thoughts as Kate gave a start, then pulled his iPhone from the pocket of the suit jacket she was still wearing. “You’re buzzing.” She handed over the phone, screen up, Claudia’s name impossible to miss.
He stared at the screen a moment, then looked up. “I should probably get this.”
“Definitely,” Kate agreed.
He continued to stare at the screen and then, surprising himself with the impulse, used his thumb to silence the buzzing before setting the phone facedown on the table and moving his piece. “Let’s finish our game.”
Kate shrugged, turning her attention back to the board. “Can I ask something?” She didn’t look up as she said it.
“Hmm?”
“If your brother asks, will you give him my phone number?”
Kennedy tensed. “You don’t want me to do that.”
Her gaze flew up to his. “Excuse me?”
“I just mean . . .” He started to backpedal, knowing that telling any woman what she wanted was a bad move. Telling a woman like Kate was suicidal.
“What did you mean?” Her voice was quiet, and the vulnerability there caught him off guard.
Kennedy chose his words carefully, reminding himself that he was her friend. “Jack’s not your all-in, crazy-in-love guy.”
“Ah,” she said lightly. “Because I’m not that kind of woman, right? The irresistible type?”
“Not what I said.”
“But it’s what you meant,” she said, her tone clipped as she made her move on the chessboard. Then she stood, the sleeves of his jacket falling well beyond the tips of her fingers. “We should get back to the party.”
Kennedy scowled. “You can’t leave in the middle of a chess game.”
“Oh, did I forget to mention?” she asked casually, pulling her hair out from the neck of the jacket and letting it fall, dark and heavy, against the lapel, then pointing down at the board. “Checkmate.”
Kennedy looked at the pieces, his disbelief shifting quickly to shock as he realized that his king was out of moves. He gave a thoughtful look at the woman he’d known—or thought he’d known—for years.
And wondered just what else he’d underestimated about her.
9
Sunday, April 7
“Damn it,” Kennedy muttered under his breath, tapping his six iron in irritation against the toe of his golf shoe. “Where’s the drink cart? I need a beer.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’ll help,” Ian said, shielding his eyes from the sun and looking in the direction of Kennedy’s ball to the far right. “Hell of a slice.”
“Actually, sometimes a drink really does help with this game,” Jarod Lanham said from behind the wheel of the golf cart he was sharing with Matt. “Gets you out of your head a bit.”
“I don’t think Kennedy’s ever been out of his head in his life,” Matt said.
“Sure he has. He’s had sex, right?”
“Even then, I’m not so sure if he really loses himself,” Ian said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were diagrams in his nightstand with all of the various erogenous zones labeled.”
“You fools realize I can hear you, right?” Kennedy asked.
Kennedy had gladly accepted the invitation to join his friends and Jarod for a golf getaway in Florida for the weekend. He’d have said yes regardless, but even having grown up around money, he couldn’t deny that Jarod Lanham bumped the definition of luxury up to a whole other level.
For starters, the man was a billionaire with a capital B. Kennedy knew plenty of seven- and eight-figure guys. But meeting an eleven-figure guy face-to-face was rare, even on Wall Street. Even more impressive, Jarod wasn’t some old fossil who’d amassed his fortune over the course of seven decades. At thirty-eight, he was only two years older than Kennedy. It would be annoying, if Kennedy didn’t like the guy. Which he did.