your move or what?”
It was Kennedy’s turn to narrow his eyes. “Don’t order me around the way you do everyone else.”
“Trust me, I’ve never thought I could order you around,” she snapped back. “You’re more stubborn than Ian and Matt combined.”
“Right, and you’re so easygoing and agreeable,” he muttered, moving a piece forward at random, then wincing when he realized he’d just set up his knight to be taken.
Luckily, their argument seemed to have distracted Kate from the game, too. She was glaring at him, a little line between her dark eyebrows. “Why her?”
“What?” Kennedy resisted the urge to rub his forehead. He didn’t enjoy complicated conversations, and this was turning into one of them. And yet, he didn’t want to walk away, either. It had always been that way with Kate. She demanded so damn much from everyone around her, and as someone who liked everything in order, his way, all of that stubborn energy made him wary. And yet he was never quite able to walk away, either.
“Why Claudia?” she specified.
“Why not Claudia?” he replied automatically.
Kate’s eyebrows lifted. “Wow. Romantic.”
“You know what I mean,” he said, feeling oddly self-conscious, looking down, studying the chessboard for his next move rather than facing her prying gaze.
“No, I don’t really,” Kate said with her usual forthrightness. “When I find The One, he will have a reason better than ‘why not’ for being with me.”
He smiled a little at her unshakable confidence. When she found the guy, he would have a better reason. Then a mental image of Kate and Jack laughing together flashed in his mind, and Kennedy’s smile dropped.
“What’s wrong with Claudia?” he asked. To his surprise, it came out as a genuine question, and he realized he actually did want Kate’s opinion. And God knew she had one. She had an opinion on everything.
“Nothing. She’s a genuinely nice person. But you hardly seem besotted with her.”
He let out a startled laugh. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been besotted with anyone.”
“Well, that’s your problem, then.” She took his knight, though he barely noticed.
“Have you?” he blurted out. It was suddenly vitally important to Kennedy that he know every detail about what sort of man could woo the no-nonsense Kate.
Kate smiled, a smile both secretive and a little sad. “Once.”
Kennedy swallowed the sour taste in his mouth. He moved a pawn, then looked up. “What happened?”
She shrugged indifferently but didn’t meet his eyes. “It wasn’t mutual, so I moved on.”
“To whom?”
“What?” She glanced up.
“You said you moved on. Who’d you move on to? When was this?”
“Oh.” She looked uncharacteristically flustered. “I just meant I moved on from him. Not necessarily to someone else, specifically.”
“But you’ve dated,” he said, not really sure how he’d gotten himself into this conversation but not quite wanting to turn back, either.
“Yes. I’ve dated.” Her tone was clipped and just a bit defensive.
“When was your last relationship? What was your longest?”
“None of your freaking business.”
“Says the woman who helped my girlfriend plan my birthday party.”
“All part of the job,” she said smoothly, moving one of her pawns to counter his last move.
Kennedy felt a stab of something that felt suspiciously like hurt at the fact that she’d helped plan his birthday party only out of duty.
“Maybe Jack will be the next guy?” he said, keeping his voice indifferent as he moved his queen on the board.
“Maybe.” She immediately moved her queen in a hasty move that told him she’d lost her focus on the game. Just as he had.
Kennedy looked at her. “He’s not the right guy for you.”
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