“Besides,” she said with a grin, “anyone that hot has to be a better boss than Warren. Don’t tell my husband I said this, but I wouldn’t mind a visit in the storage closet with him. I’m a little jealous of you if you want to know the truth.”
I groaned and willed my face not to heat up. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” she asked, sitting back in surprise. “We were broken up.”
I shrugged. “I know, but still. I didn’t want you to think…” I shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
Nessa laughed. “I knew it was just pranks and dares. You guys were always doing that stuff. Remember when Porter Kingsley showed up in a bikini at Caroline Moser’s sweet sixteen?”
She must have realized I hadn’t joined in her laughter. “Ellison? It was a dare, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “There was a dare involved, yes.”
“So why do you look like you just swallowed a lemon? You’re not still embarrassed, are you? You’ve been paying penance on that situation for a long time now.”
I nodded again. “I’m embarrassed for not sticking up for him. I’m embarrassed for not… admitting that I wanted to be in that closet with him regardless of the dare.”
There, I’d said it. I’d admitted my attraction to someone other than Ian. I watched Nessa for her reaction.
Her smile was soft and understanding. “That explains a lot. I’ve often wondered based on everything you’ve done since. Did Grey know it was more than a dare?”
I opened my mouth to tell her yes, of course he had. But I stopped and reassessed. “He does now. I thought he did at the time, but now I wonder if I was wrong. It doesn’t matter, really. Too much water under that bridge by far.”
“There’s no such thing,” she said. “At least, I don’t think so. It’s never too late to apologize to someone for being wrong.”
“I’m trying.”
“And do you still wish you were in the closet with him?” She flushed pink. “The literal closet, not the metaphorical one.”
“God yes,” I blurted. “So freaking much. But that makes me a horrible person. Doesn’t it?”
“Why? Because of your father? Because of York?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be in that closet for love or lust?”
The question stopped me in my tracks. It could only be lust since I didn’t know Grey Blackwood well enough for love. But if I’d only wanted to get with a guy physically, there’d been many other men since then I could have experimented with. It wasn’t just about the physical. There was something about him that attracted me. Like a kind of magnetism.
“I don’t know,” I said, because it was easy.
Nessa shrugged. “We can’t help who we like. Don’t forget how I met Jaxon.”
I chuckled. Her now husband was an investigative journalist who’d uncovered corruption at the charity where Nessa had worked after college. The exposé he’d written had led to the charity’s closure and Nessa’s sudden joblessness. She’d hated him for it, right up until the moment she’d started loving him instead. Their subsequent relationship had falsely convinced her work friends she’d been his source for the article, and she’d lost all of her friends.
“True,” I said with a laugh. “So, everyone around here basically thinks the Blackwood acquisition is a good thing?”
She shook her head. “Not everyone. I worry about his plans for the foundation.”
That surprised me. “You said he was a large corporate giver. Surely, you don’t think he’d close down the foundation?”
She shrugged. “He might simply consolidate it into the Blackwood Giving Program, which would put me out of a job.”
“Unless he brought you over to their program,” I suggested, even knowing it was unlikely. Finding a good job in corporate giving wasn’t easy.
“True. But at least he’s charity-minded, unlike your father. You and I both know once you left, Warren would have found a way to make the foundation smaller and smaller until it didn’t need an actual director any longer. I’ve been on borrowed time for a while now.”
She was right. My father had already threatened to dismantle the foundation once before to get me to bend to his will, and I’d caved to his demands for Nessa’s sake. Now that I was gone, he’d have no incentive to protect her job. This was the updated version of him taking away Gigi’s allowance when I disappointed him.
“I’m sorry.”
“None of this is on you, Ellison.” Nessa crossed her arms in front of her chest. A small photo of her daughter and son caught my attention on the shelf behind her. One looked like her, and one looked like her husband. Mini-me’s. “Your father’s never cared about corporate giving—you have. All he wanted was a tax write-off. You know this.”
She was right. About all of it.
“Well, hopefully Grey isn’t the selfish jackass many people think he is,” I added with a weak smile.
“He’s definitely not. And I think you already know that.”
I stood up, trying to hide my hot cheeks. “I’d better go. He’ll be looking for me. He probably has a toilet that needs scrubbing.”
Nessa got up and walked around her desk to give me a tight hug. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing,” she whispered as she held me. The familiar embrace was a comfort. I appreciated the friendship we’d managed to have all these years since reconnecting.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, teasing. “Am I that good in bed?”
She pulled back and winked at me. “Second-best, maybe.”
I laughed and turned around, almost colliding with a solid, broad chest. Grey’s hands shot out to keep me from running into him, and I caught a quick whiff of his apple scent. It didn’t smell like any of the fancy scents offered in his guest bathroom at the apartment, and it made me wonder idly what it was.
“Sorry,” I grunted, fighting the heat of embarrassment.
“I need you,” he said gruffly before clearing his throat. “There’s been a change in the dinner arrangements.”
He had his stoic mask on, but I also sensed he was a little bit ruffled beneath his put-together veneer. I nodded and agreed to follow him back to the conference room, throwing a quick wave back to Nessa before leaving.
When we got back to the conference room that was serving as Grey’s office, I asked what change was needed to the reservation.
“I didn’t realize Vanessa Roberts worked here. Your Vanessa.” Grey looked frustrated for some reason. The fact he thought of her as mine, that he knew my history with her, made me feel a strange kind of satisfaction.
“Her name is Vanessa Worden now,” I corrected.
His eyes blinked over at me. “She’s married?” Was that relief I saw on his face? Surely not.
“Yes, for at least eight years. They have two kids.”
“Ah, well. Glad to know she’s… settled, then. We need to add a few extra people to our dinner reservation,” Grey said, changing the subject.
He explained Ben Aldeen’s request to bring along a couple of additional people, and I proceeded to change the reservation. When I was done, I noticed Grey frowning.