Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
“Would you focus?” Kate snapped her fingers in Sabrina’s face. “You’ve got your guy. I’m trying to find mine.”
“I think the problem is you already have.”
“I thought you were just trying to tell me that Jack only sees me as a friend.”
“I wasn’t talking about Jack,” Sabrina said with a meaningful glance toward Kennedy’s office.
Kate stilled. “No.”
“And yet you told me that Kennedy and Claudia broke up before you told me that you and Jack kissed. Interesting which development you seem to care about more.”
Kate sipped her drink. “I hate you.”
“I love you, too,” Sabrina said. Her tone was playful, but Kate knew her friend well enough to see the concern in Sabrina’s blue eyes.
“I’m fine,” Kate said softly. “I’m over him, remember?”
“I remember you said that.”
“Because it’s true. I’m not going to waste my time loving a guy who’ll never love me back, Sabrina. I’m holding out for the guy who doesn’t treat relationships the way he does his stock portfolio, all cautious and analytical. I want the guy who looks at me and knows how great I am. The guy who jumps all in with both feet.”
“Uh-huh. Just like you’re jumping all in?”
“Meaning what?” Kate crossed her arms.
Sabrina gestured at Kate with her Starbucks cup. “Just a couple weeks ago, you were a new woman with the hair and the makeup and the wardrobe. You’re still rocking it, by the way. The new hair is on point, that pink lipstick is amazing, and that blouse is killer.”
“I sense a but.”
“But . . . despite your sassy new look and your all-in talk, to say nothing of the fact that you are the boldest, most confident woman I know, all I see is someone who’s scared to death of facing that.” Sabrina punctuated her challenge by pointing at Kennedy’s door.
“I told you—”
“You’re over him. I heard. But you said it yourself, your loins didn’t get the message.”
Kate’s nose wrinkled. “Can we not use that word?”
“Okay. Genitals?”
“Eeew.”
“My point is, you may not be smitten with the guy anymore, Kate, but you still want him.”
“So?”
Sabrina leaned down. “So do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Seduce him.”
Kate laughed, horrified by the thought. “Um, no. I wouldn’t even know where to start. And he’d probably laugh.”
“We’re talking about Kennedy. He’s not really a jolly kind of guy.”
“That is so reassuring.”
“Sorry. I just think that maybe if you two had some hot animal sex, you could finally be totally free to move on. Heart and body,” Sabrina said, pointing at Kate’s crotch.
“Don’t be creepy,” Kate muttered, even as she looked at Kennedy’s closed door, hating that Sabrina might be a tiny bit right. Not necessarily about the loins and all of that. Kate liked to think she could control her baser instincts.
But it stung a little to realize just how much she’d been holding back when it came to Kennedy Dawson—first by trying to disguise her amorous feelings, then by trying to disguise her hurt feelings, now by trying to manufacture all the reasons he was wrong for her.
Kate picked up her cell.
“Who are you calling?”
“Jack,” she muttered.
“You’re going to see him again?”
Kate nodded as the phone started to ring.
“But I thought we agreed those were friendship roses,” Sabrina whispered.
“Exactly. Which is why I need to see him. Whether he meant it or not, he sent the right flowers, because apparently friendship is all I have to offer.”
“For how long?”
Kate jabbed a finger in the general direction of Kennedy’s office. “Until I figure out how to deal with that.”
15
Saturday, April 20
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Kennedy pulled back from the railing where he’d been staring absently at the murky water of the East River. “Hey, Dad.”
Roger Dawson joined his son at the railing, his ever-present scotch in one hand.
“Great party,” Kennedy said, taking a sip of his cocktail.
“Yeah, your mother always did put together a nice event.”
Nice event was an understatement. Kennedy’s parents had decided to celebrate forty years of marriage on a luxury yacht, chartered for the evening for two hundred of their “closest friends and family.” With a caviar buffet, live jazz band, and black-tie dress code, it made Kennedy’s birthday party a few weeks earlier feel like a backyard barbecue in comparison.
He felt a little flicker of guilt. The birthday party made him think of Claudia, which in turn made him realize this was the first time the woman had even crossed his mind since they’d broken things off earlier in the week.
“So you want to talk about it?” his dad asked again.
“Talk about what?”
“You tell me.”
“Oh good,” Kennedy said sarcastically, tossing back the last sip of his drink. “This game.”
His father smiled, not bothering to pretend that he didn’t know exactly what Kennedy was talking about. Roger had left his sons’ earliest years to his wife and an ever-present nanny, but by the time Kennedy and his brothers were in high school, their dad had stepped forward a bit, played more of a role, and this had been one of his favorite strategies. Whenever there’d been something on one of their minds, whether it be school, girls, friends, or sports, he’d had the same approach: he’d ask if his son wanted to talk about it. And then wait. And wait. And wait.