Conflict of Interest

If Kaelnino Nathaniel de Cruz doesn’t show up in the next two minutes, I’m selling his family’s oil company on Craigslist.

I haven’t decided on the price yet. Maybe two hundred dollars and a pack of Marlboros, just to make it insulting.

“Maya.”

I looked up from my tablet and found Mr. Harrison, the nearly sixty-year-old CFO who had been working for the de Cruz family since before I was legally old enough to drink, staring at me from across a conference table roughly the length of a rich man’s list of sins.

“What?”

“Don’t sell the company.”

“I haven’t hit post yet.”

“Good.”

“Because I’m still choosing the pics.”

Two people beside him fought back smiles. Mr. Harrison rubbed his temple.

The conference room on the forty-seventh floor of Cruz Petroleum was already packed with eleven people whose schedules were probably worth more than my apartment, three screens displaying the quarterly presentation, coffee that had started going cold, and one empty chair at the head of the table because the owner of said chair apparently believed the concept of time had been invented specifically to inconvenience him.

I checked the clock. “Eighteen minutes.”

“He’s the CEO,” someone reminded me.

“Yes, I know. I’m the one who types his title on all the letters.”

“Maya.” Mr. Harrison winced.

“I’m being patient.” I smiled sweetly.

He sighed.

I really should’ve been used to this by now.

I’d been working for Kaelnino Nathaniel de Cruz for eleven months, and in those eleven months, I’d learned a few important things.

First, Kael was never on time unless there was a plane he had to catch.

Second, he went through women at a rate that gave the PR department concerning blood pressure.

Third, he treated most company rules the way people treated serving-size recommendations on the back of cereal boxes.

And fourth, which was considerably more inconvenient, I’m in love with him.

That last part was not included in my employment contract.

I’d only planned to stay for six months when I first came to New York. Six months, long enough to disappear gracefully, figure out what I wanted to do with my life besides being the granddaughter of the de Castello family, where apparently every breath I took had been scheduled since birth, and then maybe move to another city before my family in Europe managed to track me down.

I arrived with a passport, a credit card I never used because it could be traced, and a lie that sounded more and more like the synopsis of a terrible movie every time I repeated it.

My name is Maya Klein.

My parents are dead.

I don’t have a home.

I don’t have a family.

I practically own nothing except the bra and underwear I’m currently wearing.

Kael believed all of it.

Ironically, the last part was almost true.

The conference room door opened.

Kael walked in wearing a charcoal suit that should’ve looked too formal with his slightly messy black hair, but somehow only made him look like he’d just stepped out of an ad for something too expensive to bother listing the price. His black tie was loosened by maybe half an inch, the top button of his shirt undone, his phone in one hand while the other rested casually in his trouser pocket.

Kael didn’t even bother speeding up. “Morning.”

I checked the time again. “Optimistic.”

The corner of his mouth lifted as he walked past me, then stopped behind my chair, leaned down slightly, and picked up the coffee sitting right beside my hand.

My coffee, the one I’d already drunk half of.

He took a sip.

I stared at him.

“You know what,” I said, “statistically speaking, with your sex life, this is a very efficient way to give me herpes.”

Someone on the right side of the table choked on a breath and one of the directors actually dropped his pen.

Kael lowered the cup slowly and dragged his thumb across the corner of his mouth as though we were alone instead of standing in the middle of an executive meeting.

“If I had herpes, sweetheart, you would’ve known months ago.”

The silence changed shape.

I propped my chin on my hand. “Thank you for making the entire board of directors picture my sex life before ten in the morning.”

“Anytime.” He took another sip of my coffee before finally sitting down.

I hated him.

I also knew exactly what his hair looked like wet after a shower and how his voice changed when he’d just woken up.

This is a problem.

The meeting started nineteen minutes late and ended forty-three minutes later with Kael making three decisions that should’ve taken two weeks, rejecting one acquisition because “their numbers are ugly and the CEO annoys me,” and changing the entire expansion strategy after listening to less than seven minutes of the presentation.

It was deeply annoying to watch someone be that intelligent while knowing he had once spent twenty minutes looking for his phone when it was in his hand the entire time.

As people started filing out, I was loading files onto my tablet when a finger tapped twice against the table in front of me.

“No.” I huffed.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“Statistics.”

Kael leaned against the table beside me, close enough that his cologne mixed with the coffee he’d stolen earlier. “Foundation Gala tonight.”

I finally looked at him. “What about it?”

“Come with me.”

I stopped.

He said it far too casually, like he was asking me to get sushi after work instead of attend the annual Cruz Foundation gala, the kind of event whose photos usually took up half the society section the next morning.

“In what capacity?”

He smiled. “Dress.”

“That’s not a capacity.”

“Wear the black one.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You haven’t even seen the dress.”

“I like you in black.”

“Kael.”

He straightened and picked up his phone from the table. “Seven.”

Then he walked away.

I sat there a few seconds longer than I should have.

Seven o’clock.

The Foundation Gala.

Not his penthouse.

Not the private elevator after all the staff had gone home. Not eleven p.m. dinners with sushi still sitting in the takeout boxes because we were too lazy to put it on plates. Not mornings when I walked out of his bedroom wearing his shirt while avoiding the household staff, who had become exceptionally good at pretending they didn’t see me.

An actual event.

With his family.

With people who knew him.

With cameras.

I closed my tablet slowly.

Don’t be stupid, Maya.

Sadly, I’m twenty-two and had been sleeping with the man long enough to know he didn’t like the crusts on his bread, that he read business reports when insomnia hit, that he secretly called his grandmother every Sunday afternoon, and that when he was truly exhausted, he would put his head in my lap without saying a word and fall asleep there like I’m the only place in the world that didn’t ask anything from him.

So, yeahh...well.

I’m stupid.

>>> 

The black dress turned out to be a terrible idea because Kael had been right.

I looked good in black.

Good enough that the woman at the coat check looked at me twice before taking my coat.

The dress was simple, no sequins, no strange cutouts screaming for attention. Black silk followed my body all the way to my ankles, the back dipped low enough to become a problem, and I’d left my dark brown hair loose in waves past my shoulders. The small diamond earrings I wore were the only things from my old life I’d kept.

The hotel ballroom was filled with men in tuxedos and women carrying last names like genetic inheritances.

Vanderbilt. Astor. Whitmore. Harrington. A world that should’ve been foreign to Maya Klein.

“Maya.” The voice came from close to my ear.

I turned and nearly spilled my champagne because Kael was standing far too close in a black tuxedo.

There was no reason any human being should look like that.

His hair had been brushed back, though a few strands had already fallen over his forehead, his black bow tie sat perfectly in place, and there was something about the line of his shoulders beneath the jacket that made the entire concept of professionalism feel deeply theoretical.

His gaze moved slowly over me, then back to my eyes. “Jesus.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that the traditional de Cruz greeting?”

“You look fucking hot.”

“Better.”

His hand brushed the small of my back, light enough to look perfectly polite to anyone watching and familiar enough to remind me of everywhere that hand had been last night.

“I told you black.”

“You also said you’d be on time this morning.”

“I never said that.”

“True. You’re not brave enough to tell a lie that big.”

Kael laughed softly, and before I could enjoy the fact that he was standing beside me out in the open, two men approached us.

“Nathaniel.”

“Don’t call me that.”

The blond man who’d said it grinned. “Still sensitive.”

Kael introduced them as Julian Ashford and Theo Mercer, two names I’d heard come out of his mouth whenever he complained about poker, yachts, and poor decisions in Ibiza.

Julian kissed the back of my hand with theatrical flair. “So you’re Maya.”

I glanced at Kael. “I’m afraid to ask for context.”

“He talks about you a lot,” Theo said.

“Really?”

Kael took a glass of champagne from a passing server. “Don’t push your luck.”

I smiled into my drink.

The four of us stood there for almost ten minutes, talking about Julian’s trip to Monaco, Theo’s project in London, and a story about Kael nearly getting arrested in Capri when he was twenty-one that Kael insisted was “slander with too many witnesses.”

I relaxed because, for the first time, standing beside him didn’t feel like something we were supposed to hide.

Kael touched my waist when someone almost bumped into me. He took my glass when I needed to fix the strap on my heel. He even leaned down to whisper an inappropriate comment about one donor’s dress that made me bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

Julian looked between the two of us, and his smile changed. “Okay,” he said. “I’m curious.”

Kael sighed. “It usually ends badly.”

“What exactly are you two?”

I held my breath.

Julian gestured between us with his glass. “Because you look very…”

“Disgusting?” I offered.

“Couple-y,” Theo said with a laugh.

And me...apparently an idiot who had learned absolutely nothing, I could already feel a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

I still didn’t look at Kael because looking at him now would feel too close to hoping, and I don’t want to turn this moment into something he had to carry or explain.

I don’t need the girlfriend label. I don’t need some grand announcement, and I don’t even need him to suddenly decide we had to become something he could parade around in front of other people.

I just wanted a little more than this, something meaningful enough to prove I’m not just the woman who occasionally left her heels under his bed.

Then Kael laughed lightly. His hand was still resting on my waist. “Maya? She’s a friend.”

My smile stayed in place.

A friend.

I didn’t immediately understand why such a simple word sounded so loud.

Julian raised an eyebrow like he didn’t believe him, while Theo looked from Kael to me, probably waiting for the punchline.

There wasn’t one.

Kael’s fingers were still resting against my waist. I lowered my glass before my hand could do something embarrassing, then forced the corners of my mouth to stay exactly where they were.

Friend.

Okay.

I knew Kael slept naked because he hated fabric twisting around his legs.

I knew he would drink black coffee for three days straight, then suddenly order a caramel latte and deny ever liking it.

I knew his mother made him nervous in a way he would never admit.

I knew the small scar beneath his ribs came from falling off a horse when he was nine.

But I’m just his friend.

“Maya Klein,” I said brightly to Julian, lifting my glass slightly. “Professional friend. Comes with dental.”

Theo laughed.

Julian smiled too, though his eyes stayed on my face a little too long.

Kael looked at me and I didn’t look back.

“Nathaniel.” An older man’s voice cut through our conversation.

Kael’s father stood a few feet away.  “Dad.”

“A minute.”

Kael nodded, then touched the inside of my elbow. “I’ll be back.”

“Take your time.”

He paused.

Maybe he heard something in my voice, but maybe he didn’t because, hell, who am I? I’m just his friend.

Kael followed his father across the ballroom, and I watched his back disappear into the crowd while taking a sip of champagne that suddenly tasted far too sweet.

Friend.

I wanted to laugh.

And then, the ballroom lights dimmed.

Conversation slowly died down as someone tapped the microphone onstage. I’m still standing with Julian and Theo when the applause started, and I turned without really paying attention until I saw Kael walk onto the stage beside his father.

Then a woman followed them.

Blonde.

Tall.

Champagne-colored gown.

Beautiful in the kind of way that looked like she’d been trained from birth to photograph perfectly from every angle.

She stood beside Kael.

Too close.

One hand touched his arm and Kael didn’t move away.

Kael’s father took the microphone with a broad smile I had never once seen on his face while discussing quarterly numbers.

“Thank you all for joining our family tonight. The Foundation has always meant a great deal to us, but this year, we also have a personal reason to celebrate.”

A few delighted murmurs moved through the room.

The woman beside Kael smiled.

Then Kael took her hand.

I stopped breathing.

Maybe she was part of the Foundation. Maybe their families were announcing some kind of partnership. Maybe the woman had just donated a hospital or a school or an island somewhere.

People like this always seemed to have reasons to hold hands onstage while smiling for cameras.

The hand holding my champagne started trembling slightly, so I switched the glass to my other hand as though the problem were nothing more than the position of my fingers.

Kael was still holding her hand.

Nope.

No.

No, that doesn’t mean anything.

I knew him. I knew how Kael touched people when he was playing a role for the public. A hand at someone’s back. A kiss on the cheek. A smile capable of making a woman forget her own middle name.

This could be one of those things.

...but why my stomach started to feel strange...?

I swallowed, then looked at their hands again as though maybe, if I stared long enough, their fingers would separate and everything would start making sense again.

Julian shifted slightly beside me.

I don’t look at him.

Don’t.

Don’t think about it, Maya.

Don’t even let the possibility take shape in your head.

Maybe it was a birthday.

Maybe some family announcement.

Maybe whatever-her-name-was was marrying Kael’s cousin, his brother, someone who wasn’t currently standing there with her hand inside Kael’s.

“We’re incredibly happy to finally announce the engagement of our son, Kaelnino Nathaniel de Cruz, to Samantha Whitmore,” Kael’s father said, sounding so damn happy.

Applause exploded across the ballroom.

Julian swore quietly beside me.

I froze.

My blood froze.

My brain froze.

Onstage, Samantha looked at Kael with a smile, and Kael smiled back.

A few hours ago, I’d wondered if tonight would finally be the night I stopped being the woman who entered Kael’s life through the private elevator.

Turns out I am right.

Now, I finally learned the front door had never been meant for me.