Ivy sat with the offer for a long moment, the particular tangled complexity of it settling slowly into place, professional opportunity and personal entanglement colliding in a way none of her careful boundary setting over the past months had quite prepared her for.

"I don't know if I can take this," she said finally. "Sterling's my fiancé. Working on his family foundation's launch feels like exactly the kind of conflict I've been avoiding since I started here."

"I thought you might say that." Kennedy leaned back, studying her thoughtfully. "For what it's worth, I disagree, though I want you to make the call yourself, not because I'm pressuring you into...