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Chapter One
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Kensley Reid, but you are going to die a virgin.”
“Seriously? You’re going to do this now?” Kensley whispered, entirely too distracted with worry but knowing full well that once her self-appointed best friend Marcy Jensen started on that particular subject matter, she would only get more zealous.
“Yes, seriously, I'm doing this now because I’m tired of literally having to haul you out of your apartment by your hair,” Marcy said, her hand gestures as animated as her words. “I then take you to the hottest... THE hottest new clubs in town, where a slew of beefcakes will prostrate themselves at your feet and worship your Mistress of Pleasure. And by 'mistress of pleasure,' I mean your cl—”
“I know what you meant,” Kensley hurriedly said before Marcy could finish saying the word.
“Did you really?” Marcy asked as she folded her arms, sarcasm etched into her face. Marcy had always been very vocal about her lack of faith in Kensley’s ability to grasp sexual innuendo. She wasn’t entirely wrong.
She also wasn’t wrong about having to wrestle Kensley into one of her dresses, and yes, the word dress was used sparingly given its sparseness, then having to shove her into a cab and drag her into some hot nightclub where she hoped Kensley would get herself some guy action.
“Then the sexiest guy I had ever seen in a while gives you his number, and what do you do?” Marcy grumbled, stamping her pink platform heels into the rough gray office carpet that sent her plaid skirt twirling around her thighs. Marcy took full advantage of the fact that High Cloud Advertising, a hip marketing company, didn't have any dress rules, one miniskirt at a time. She also had the body of a model, so she pulled it off simply fine. Kensley preferred her skirts to reach her knees to signify her personality. Strict and boring. Just the way she liked it.
As for the number from the hot guy, Kensley had deleted it from her phone. It looked out of place and cluttered her contacts. That was a valid enough reason. Except, Marcy didn’t think so, which explained why she had predicted, rather theatrically, that Kensley would die a virgin, despite the fact that it sounded more like an accusation.
Kensley’s virginity and her tardiness in losing it were a hot topic of discussion for the redheaded, blue-eyed Marcy. Well, at least since the day Marcy lost her own, seven years before. And it's not like she was frantically dating guys herself. Currently, she had a mad crushes on a few men, who didn’t even know she existed.
But really, Kensley just had bigger things to worry about than her hymen. She'd had so many problems in the last six months that it felt like she was juggling grenades while walking a tightrope drunk.
She stuffed a mini-donut into her mouth and reached for another. She wasn’t the only one stress-eating at that very moment. Her co-workers were presently slurping down free canapés as if there was no tomorrow. Given the bombshell their boss had just dropped on them, she could hardly blame them.
…Just one more thing added to her list of troubles. She now had to worry about keeping her job.
What had been an ordinary day at the office where she worked as a junior public relations manager—yes, she was responsible for keeping the small company on the straight and narrow, an easy feat being the serial killer of all joy—had been quickly turned on its head. Ellis Callahan, their boss, told them, not even an hour into the morning, that he had just sold High Cloud Advertising with immediate effect and was retiring to go fly-fishing in Alaska.
All members of staff, accordingly stunned, were then ushered into the boardroom for coffee and hors d'oeuvres, which he had splurged on, so he could introduce them to their new boss, scheduled to arrive soon.
A new boss sounded like an omen to Kensley. Why couldn’t things just stay the way they were?
She fought the urge to bite her lips and instead pushed down on her fear until it made her throat thicken. It was way too early in the day to deal with things like this.
All they knew about the new owner was that he owned multi-billion-dollar conglomerates with almost half of the world already conquered and was currently blazing through the Eastern Seaboard. He had paid Ellis such a colossal sum of money for his company that Kensley decided that it had to be incorrect. He had added one too many zeros to his offer. And he went by the name of Hunter McLeod. What kind of name was that, anyway?
There were no guarantees that this Hunter McLeod wouldn't decide to fire everyone at High Cloud, demolish the old stone building, and erect some other space-age cloud-kissing edifice in its wake. She loved working at the advertising company. It had been her first job since getting out of college, and she was months away from getting a promotion where she would lose the word ‘junior’ in her title. Heralda Dawson, the woman she reported to and who was on maternity leave, had confided in Kensley that she was going to quit working. While she was absolutely sure Ellis would promote Kensley into her position, she planned to motivate the heck out of it anyway.
“What if I lose my job, Marcy? What if we all lose our jobs?”
“You worry too much, babe. Ellis assured us that the new old fart has no plans to change anything around here. “That means no one is getting fired,” Marcy said, her usual casual confidence shining through. “But I'm dead serious, Kens. You're going to die a virgin. Do you understand that?”
There really was no stopping Marcy. Using her friend’s prophecy about the intactness of her virginity as a segue to escape, she slipped out of the boardroom. She didn’t want half the office to know she was still a virgin, but also, her apprehension had skyrocketed. She hated change.
“Hey, where are you going?” Marcy asked, following her out still with her glass in hand.
“To my office. I have work to do, and there’s still fifteen minutes before the new boss arrives.” It was fine. Her office was right next to the boardroom, and she would hear the elevator ping, giving her enough time to slip back into the boardroom.
“You’re not going to start knitting again, are you?” Marcy groaned.
Crap.
Knitting calmed her nerves. She wasn’t even good at it. She had no idea how to read a pattern. She knew only two types of stitches, pearl and plain, and all twelve of her meter-long scarves had holes in them. She had only taken up the hobby six months ago after spotting her gran’s unused knitting basket in the corner of her grandparents’ apartment.
“No, I’m not going to knit, Marcy,” she said and opened her laptop instead with a defensive shake of her head because that was exactly what she had intended to do. She had a small stash of needles and yarn at work. So sue her.
“Kensley, babe, I’m worried about you. Your ex-fiancé was a cheating, stupid dumbass son of a bitch. He didn't deserve you, and you didn't love him, but out there is some super-hot, sexy guy—and I’m not talking about the guy from the club—he was a mistake, I realized too late, but some guy more your type, is just waiting for you to come his way. Emphasis oncome.”
Oh, yes, there had been that. One of Kenley’s juggling grenades had been her fiancé. There she had been, stupidly spending her whole salary on a designer gold dress for one of his many work dinners, only to accidentally peek at an incoming message on his phone, only then to discover he had been cheating on her the whole time.
