days...most of it not good. The site loaded and he clicked on “Our Team.”
At the top of the page was a group photo of five or six people. He didn’t see faces. He was too distracted by a shock of red hair. He leaned closer to the screen, squinting. Had the leaves on the trees led him to a mirage? Is that...Kendall? It looked like her. It really did. He scrolled down to individual photos of the team members.
There she was. Kendall Ross, Senior Director, Public Relations.
He sat back in his chair and let his eyes rest on her full ruby lips, creamy skin with hints of peach and gold, the bright blue eyes that had given him a verifiable moment of weakness on the dance floor at his friend Matt’s wedding six weeks ago. She was just as stunning as he remembered. He hadn’t let the memory of her improve as the nights since then had passed and he’d been craving a woman’s company. Now he was really kicking himself for not calling her after he’d returned to the city. Perhaps he should’ve broken his rule about getting involved. Just once.
There was one unavoidable detail about the weeks since the wedding, and it was one with which he was unfamiliar. She hadn’t called him either. Had she not enjoyed herself? He couldn’t fathom how that could be possible. They’d spent hours pleasing each other in practically every way a man and woman could. She’d said she’d had a wonderful time. She’d even kissed him goodbye in the morning—a slow, soft and passionate kiss that lingered on his lips for hours afterward. If he closed his eyes, it was still there in his mind.
He took in a deep breath and picked up his phone to call Kendall’s boss. He had to forge ahead with the task at hand. Hopefully his past with Kendall Ross wasn’t about to make his visit to Sloan PR unbearably awkward.
* * *
Kendall Ross’s shoulders drooped when she scanned that morning’s headlines. “Of course Sawyer Locke is in the paper. The man is everywhere.” She put her phone on her dresser and scrolled, reading while she zipped up her dress. One more flick of the screen and she saw the picture—Sawyer crossing the street in front of his Grand Legacy Hotel, sunglasses on, in an expensive suit, looking like he was the King of Manhattan. How could one man wield that much sexiness? It wasn’t fair.
She plopped down on the bed and worked her feet into her pumps, which had been cast aside last night after she dragged her exhausted self home from work. She shouldn’t let a photograph get to her, just like she should’ve ignored every random reminder of Sawyer that had cropped up over the last six weeks. There was the guy who rode the same morning train she did, a man she’d hardly noticed before Sawyer. Now she knew they wore the same cologne. There was the locksmith who’d worked in her office building a few weeks ago—his van parked out front. Locke and Key. Clever. Then there was the construction project that had just started down the street from her apartment. The vinyl banner for Locke and Locke went up right after the chain link fence. She walked past it every day on her way to the subway. And back.
She caught the time on her alarm clock. Five more minutes and she’d miss her train. She had to stop thinking about Sawyer, but keeping her mind off her huge mistake was not going well.
Thanks to the romantic comedy she’d watched on TV last night, she might have a fix.
She opened her closet and pulled a dusty shoe box down from the top shelf, plunked it on top of her dresser and lifted the lid. Under a stack of old photos of her mom, she found the black velvet box. Most women might keep their mother’s jewelry in a place of higher importance, but Kendall had very mixed feelings about this ring.
She opened the clamshell box and there it sat—a square setting of platinum with large diamonds surrounding a blue amethyst. Kendall would never forget her mother’s initial excitement at receiving it from one of her suitors, and her disappointment when she realized the lavish ring was only a gift, an expensive means of keeping her content. It had not come with a proposal.
When Kendall was a little girl, every new boyfriend her mother brought home was a new chance at having a dad. By the time she was a teenager, she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Her mom had a real talent for finding men with money and power, men who wined and dined her, took her to bed, never bothering to marry her. It meant that the rent was always on time and the fridge was stocked, but they otherwise treated her mother as a pretty bauble.
Since Kendall had devoted so much energy over the years to not repeating her mom’s mistakes, it made the one-night stand with Sawyer Locke that much harder to forget. Kendall made a point of being strong when it came to men. She could dismiss them with aplomb when needed.
Sawyer, however, had been the one guy for whom she had no defense. She’d let him sweet-talk her, even when she was sure it was all a line. He’d told her she was beautiful and sexy and she’d lapped up every word like she’d never had a decent compliment. And then there was their ultimate destination that night—bed. A one-night stand was not her style, but it had felt like an inevitability only a few moments into their first dance. He was commanding and powerful and even though Kendall had always sworn she’d never fall for that, she’d practically jumped at the chance with Sawyer.
The champagne hadn’t helped. The first glass gave way to flirtatious glances. The second brought an answer of “yes” when he asked her to dance. It had also made her pretend that she didn’t know he was from a wealthy and powerful New York family. In fact, she’d ignored all the damning knowledge she had of him—the playboy reputation, the money—even though men like Sawyer Locke had broken her mother’s heart more times than she could remember.
In the weeks since the wedding, Sawyer had proven her every assumption about him to be true. He might have asked for her number and said he would call her, but he hadn’t. Oldest trick in the book, a real blow to the ego, and probably for the best. Sawyer had been a mistake.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the clock. No time to waste, she slipped the ring onto her left hand. “Men of Manhattan, back off. I’m engaged.”
Kendall made record time down her block and around the corner to the subway stop. Thundering down the stairs, she swiped her pass and clunked through the turnstile, narrowly making her train. She sat next to a gray-haired woman who was clutching her purse to her chest. Shielding her hand with her laptop bag, Kendall eyed the ring and reminded herself what she wanted it to symbolize. She didn’t need anyone. She made her own future, no man required.
The heroine in the movie with the ring had been just like her—single, making stupid mistakes with men. Creating the illusion of being a taken woman served two purposes—it would be an ever-present reminder to stay on track with her career, the one thing she could truly count on, and it kept men away. That last part was a very good thing for Kendall. Men only ever approached her because she was, as her grandmother often pointed out, buxom and curvy. Sawyer Locke had undoubtedly only approached her for those reasons. It wasn’t like he’d had asked her to dance because she looked smart or like she might have a sparkling personality.
She probably never should’ve gone to her old college roommate’s wedding in the first place. That entire dream weekend in Maine was a magnifying glass on Kendall’s singleness. It normally didn’t bother her, but it was different being crammed into a banquet hall with her old friends, all married or in a serious relationship. Many had kids. One was already on her second husband. They had all moved forward with their lives. Kendall had, too, in her own way—building the one thing her mom had never managed to put together—a career. She needed to get back on track. Worrying about men was going to keep her running in circles.
The train arrived at her station, and she hurried along to the office of Sloan Public Relations. She’d been with the firm for nearly two years now, and was making strides. Her boss, Jillian Sloan, had said as much.
