“It’s like how colonel is pronounced KER-nal.” Stephen draws out the last two syllables for the benefit of my tiny female mind. “Even though there isn’t an ‘R’ in there.”

I blink, stunned.

This guy can’t possibly be for real. Can he?

It’s hard to believe that just a week ago, I was thrilled at the prospect of spending time in a normal work environment. One where people don’t sit at their desk in wrinkled pajamas with bed head, surrounded by coffee cups they haven’t gotten around to washing even though their kitchen is three feet from their work station.

I have good housekeeping intentions, I really do, but it’s hard to care about a mess when there’s never anyone around to see it. It’s like the tree in the forest. If a mug—or a freelance journalist—goes unwashed in the privacy of her tiny Queens apartment, does she make a smell? I think not.

“You get it?” Stephen continues with a patronizing squeeze of my upper arm.

I nod, lips pressed together to keep from saying something I shouldn’t.

This is my brother’s investment company—he and his partner Jack built it from the ground up. And Stephen is apparently a valuable member of their brokerage team, no matter how hard it is for me to imagine this douchebag closing a financial deal with anyone, let alone a famous athlete accustomed to a certain amount of deference.

“So Seyfried is like that.” Stephen lifts his hands into the air, fingers spread wide in a ta-da motion. “You pronounce the ‘G’ before the ‘F’ even though it’s not there. Because Seyfried and Siegfried are actually the same name if you look at it from an etymological standpoint.”

I shake my head, dumbfounded. “Wow.”

He grins. “Blew your mind a little, didn’t I, slugger? Bam!” He reaches for my head, but I duck, avoiding further fondling by drawing my cell from my purse.

“You did, Stephen. You really did.” I glance out across the open plan office, praying to see Ian’s head bobbing above the crowd of people packing up for the day.

I’m not sure how much more I can handle. If my brother doesn’t show in the next two minutes, I’ll make a run for it and text him to call me when his plane touches down in Portland.

I’ve suffered through my fair share of mansplaining, but this is the first time I’ve had a guy explain to me how I’m mispronouncing my own last name.

Yes.

My. Own. Last. Name.

I’ve been Eleanor Seyfried—pronounced SIGH-fred, not SIG-freed—for twenty-eight years. One would assume I know how to pronounce it. Unless one were Stephen, or one of the other Wall Street dude-bros who make Seyfried & Holt a challenging place to work for anyone without a Y chromosome.

I would bet a thousand dollars Stephen has never dared to tell my brother that he’s mispronouncing the name etched in gold outside his office door.

“Have you explained this to Ian?” I blink innocently as I point toward his office.

“Nah.” Stephen’s lips pucker and his brows dip into a V. “Ian knows. He’s a shark, your brother. Never stops swimming. Always thinking.” He snaps his fingers several times, the sharp snick making my teeth itch. “Synapses always firing.”

I’m about to tell Stephen that I understand Ian’s nimble brain well, because I also scored high on my GMATs—one hundred points higher than my brother, in fact. But before I can speak, Ian emerges from the executive lounge.

“Ian! There you are.” My arm surges into the air, fingers wiggling. “Glad I caught you. I need a word before you leave for the airport.”

“Sure thing, but I’ve only got five, ten minutes, tops.” Ian’s brown eyes flick from me to Stephen and back again, a distracted smile on his face. “Hey, Rictor, how’s the Cruise account going? You seal the deal?”

“Not yet, but I’m close,” Stephen says, his chest puffing up. “Should have him on the hook by the end of the month.”

“All right, but let’s keep in touch on this one,” Ian says, throwing the rest over his shoulder as he pops into his office. “I’m meeting with Cruise in Portland. I want to be sure we’re all on the same page about what Seyfried and Holt can offer him that other wealth management companies can’t.”

“Gotcha, chief,” Stephen says before winking and adding in a voice for my ears only, “Gonna miss your pretty face around the office, slugger. Don’t be a stranger, okay?” He backs away, pointing at my chest. “And send us a copy of your article, when you’re finished. My mom loves that stuff. She takes all my press mentions to church to show her friends. It’s super cute.”

“Super cute,” I echo with a queasy smile as I lunge after Ian, shutting his office door behind me with a combination sigh-groan that makes my brother laugh.

“A week out of your writer cave that rough on you, sis?” He smiles at me from across his massive oak desk, where he’s busily tucking folders into his briefcase. “You appear to have showered several days in a row. I’m impressed. Surprised…but impressed.”

“Very funny. Yes, I’ve been showering daily, but that’s not the problem.”

“Glad to hear it.” He taps at his cell, attention fixed on the screen. “Just in case you need to look for a job outside your lair, showering is a good life skill to keep in your arsenal.”

“Again. Hysterical. You should do stand-up in your spare time.” I keep my tone light, though the reminder of the tenuous nature of my freelance writing gig compared to Ian’s high-salaried, big-bonus position isn’t the most welcome at the moment. Especially considering I might have to cancel the “Not Your Mother’s Wall Street” article I’ve been working on for the editor at Barrington Beat, and the week I spent here will have been a waste of time. “But I need the not-funny Ian right now. Seriously. There’s a problem.”

He looks up, his smile fading. “Is Dad okay?”

“Dad’s fine,” I say, with a frustrated huff. “Which you would know if you called him every Sunday. You know he wants you to call, too. It’s family check-in, not Ellie check-in.”

“But he keeps me on the hook for hours, El, and you make sure I stay abreast of all the news that’s fit to print,” Ian says, his golden boy grin coming out to play.

“Speaking of fit to print… I can’t write the article, Ian. At least not the way I pitched it. It’s not going to work.”

His brow furrows. “What? Why not?”

“Because this is still our mother’s Wall Street, or more like our father’s.” I wave my hand toward the world on the other side of his door. “Different technology, different slang, but it’s still the same ol’ boys’ club underneath.”

“What?” He props his hands on his hips. “But you said it yourself—we have more women working for S and H than any other financial firm our size. We’ve stepped up our recruiting efforts for female candidates, revamped our family leave policies… We’re almost at a fifty-fifty male to female ratio for new hires, El. What other firm can say that?”

“Yes, and that’s all great. But most of the female hires are making less money for the same jobs, or they’re starting from the bottom while the men—many of them with less experience—are going straight to management positions,” I explain. I can’t believe my detail-obsessed brother has managed to overlook these facts. “And a lot of the women are only part-time. They don’t have benefits, job security, or—”

“That can’t be right,” Ian says with a shake of his head. “Have you talked to our hiring manager? Blair’s been doing an amazing job.”

“Blair’s very busy,” I say diplomatically, not wanting to get Blair in hot water, no matter what an uncooperative B-word she’s been all week.

Being unable to get one of the two women in management positions at S&H to answer my questions hasn’t made my job any easier, but I don’t want to make unnecessary waves.

“You should pin Blair down before you leave.” Ian taps two fingers on his desk. “I haven’t heard a single complaint from the new people. We’re running like a well-oiled machine.”

I sigh. “People aren’t going to risk their already uncertain positions by complaining to the boss, Ian, but I’ve definitely heard rumblings of discontent.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing I’m ready to share,” I hedge, “but enough that I can’t in good conscience write an article about my brother’s ground-breakingly-awesome-for-ladies workplace at this juncture. I need time to dig deeper.”

“Then take it,” Ian says. “If we’ve got parity issues, I want to know about it. That’s not the kind of company I want to run, El. I hope you know that.”

“Of course I do.” A rush of warmth fills my chest. With his good looks, razor-sharp mind, and Chosen One energy, Ian could have become another entitled jerk like so many of his Harvard friends.

But that isn’t my brother. He’s a good man with a great heart, which is one of the major reasons I needed to have this conversation with him before my research goes any further.

“But if I’m going to keep digging, I need to have something to show for it,” I continue. “Eventually I have to deliver a piece to Barrington, positive or negative. Are you okay with that?”

To his credit, Ian hesitates only a second before nodding. “But I think you’ll come to see this in a different light. Jack and I are pro-diversity and pro-equality.” His glance shifts to the door behind me. “Right, Jack?”

“Indeed.” Jack’s laid-back drawl rumbles through the room like a soothing roll of distant thunder as the door snicks shut behind him.

But, as always, the presence of Ian’s partner and best friend is anything but soothing. I don’t know what it is about the man, but Jack Edward Holt brings out my awkward, twitchy introvert like no one else.

I spin on my heel with a nervous laugh and a jerky wave. “Hey, how’s it going, Jack? Didn’t hear you come in.”

His lips curve in his signature smirk, the one that assures you he’s always in on the joke. “Going good, Ellie. Get everything you needed for your article?”

“She needs more time,” Ian says, answering for me in a big brotherly fashion that nevertheless rubs me the wrong way after spending a week with the patronizing and/or oblivious men on his staff.

They aren’t all bad guys, for sure, but most of them could use a course in not interrupting their female colleagues while they’re speaking and keeping jokes appropriate for the workplace. There’s also the matter of the exotic odor emanating from the men’s locker room in the company gym.

But hey, one battle at a time…

“And someone at the top to make sure she gets access,” Ian continues. “Can you handle that for me, Jack? I’m in Portland for the rest of the month.”

“I don’t know, I’ve got a lot going on,” Jack says at the same time I blurt out, “Jesus, Ian, I don’t need a babysitter.”

Jack and I turn, gazes bumping as I try not to let my aversion to Ian’s proposal show. For his part, Jack looks uncharacteristically surprised.

But then, having his company rebuffed is probably a rare event for Mr. Holt. With his artistically mussed sandy-brown hair, sleepy green eyes, and long, lean, I-hit-the-gym-like-most-New-Yorkers-hit-the-coffee-shop frame, Jack is even more stupidly handsome than my brother. If Ian is the golden boy next door, Jack is the bad boy with a voice like whiskey and a “let’s break the rules” glint in his eye.

According to my brother—and the media who flock his way whenever the financial markets are making waves—Jack is a top-notch investor with the instincts of a man with twice the experience. But I’ll never forget the Jack who got me stoned for the first time when I was twenty and then teased me mercilessly for the next two hours as I vacillated between laughing at his moaning zombie impression and clutching his arm in skin-crawling paranoia, terrified that my father was going to come downstairs and catch me being less than perfect.

And we won’t even go into how mortifying it was to eat an entire bag of Cheetos in front of a person who has probably never had orange fingertips in his life. Even in his early twenties, Jack was too classy for Cheetos.

“I know you don’t need a babysitter,” Ian says. “But you do need someone to make sure people answer your questions. And I know you’re busting your ass with broker interviews, Jack, but surely you can spare some time. If members of our team are unhappy, I’d rather know about it sooner than later.”

“Unhappy?” Jack’s brow furrows as his gaze shifts my way. “Who’s unhappy?”

“That’s not something I’m ready to discuss.” I stand up straighter, tugging the bottom of my slightly-too-large red blouse down over the top of my a-bit-too-small pin-striped skirt, acutely aware of how dumpy I look compared to the custom-made suits in the room.

“This is coming out of left field, isn’t it?” Jack’s tone isn’t unkind, but I’m losing patience, and I’ve got two minutes left to convince Ian to let me do this my way—sans babysitter.

“No, it’s not coming out of left field,” I say. “It’s coming from the pitcher’s mound, straight at your head. You know why Stephen calls me slugger? Because I asked why there are no women in the office fantasy baseball league and he told me none of them were interested. And I said, ‘have you asked them?’ And he just laughed and said, ‘easy there, slugger,’ and the name stuck.”

Jack rolls a shoulder in something too elegant to be called a shrug. “Well, Rictor’s a dick. Everyone knows that.”

Ian chuckles in agreement, making my blood pressure spike.

“It’s not about a random dick,” I say, voice rising. “It’s about the very real fucking difference in the way men experience things in this office versus women.”

Jack’s eyes narrow thoughtfully on my mouth. “I’ve never heard you curse before.”

“Well, I curse sometimes.” My lips prickle, a buzzing sensation that intensifies the longer Jack stares. “When I’m passionate about something.”

“Passionate is good,” Jack says in his whiskey voice. “I respect passion.”

“Good. That’s g-good,” I stammer, feeling twenty years old with Cheetos fingers again.

How does this man always manage to throw me off with no more than a word? A look? A blink of those snakeskin-green eyes that makes me feel like butterflies are dancing in my stomach?

Of course, I know why. It’s because he’s ridiculously sexy and I’m a lair-dwelling, loner writer weirdo who doesn’t spend enough time around attractive men—or any men who aren’t my neighbors or blood relatives, for that matter.

Jack would be so much easier to handle if I’d been that second son my father wanted. But that’s the story of my life. If only I’d been a boy, Mom dying when I was a toddler and me being raised in a bachelor’s house—and everything that came after—would have been so much easier.

For everyone.

If only I’d been a boy…

An idea leaps suddenly into my brain, fully formed, like Athena ready to burst from Zeus’s forehead.

But unlike Athena, my idea doesn’t arrive draped in a Grecian tunic or carrying a brass shield. My idea is dressed in a three-piece suit and sporting a pair of swanky Italian leather dress shoes.

“So, it’s settled?” Ian shoots Jack a look that leaves no room for argument.

“Sure,” Jack says, gaze sliding my way. “We’ll start tomorrow, Ellie?”

I look up, so excited by my shiny new idea that I can’t help the giddy smile that spreads across my face. “Perfect.”

Oh, yes. We’ll start tomorrow, Jack. And you won’t even know what hit you.