Kimberly #2
It wasn’t hard to see why the staff worshipped him.
He shared the same bloodline, the same elite last name, the same mother who had loved them both without reservation, and yet one brother made you want to lean in, while the other made you immediately locate the nearest fire exit.
It was baffling how the same ingredients could come out of the oven so completely different.
Friday arrived, bringing a downpour that wasn’t Seattle’s usual artistic drizzle, but torrential sheets of water that turned the asphalt into rivers and made everyone in the lobby glare at the sky like it owed them money.
I’d stayed late because Jackson was still locked in his office, and the golden, unwritten rule, which Sophie delivered like she was sharing the one piece of advice that could save your life, was that the secretary did not leave before the dictator.
By the time he finally stalked past my desk a little after seven, coat slung over his forearm and not a single word of dismissal, the storm had been raging for two hours.
I stood under the glass awning outside the tower, watching the deluge bounce off the pavement, mentally calculating the exact level of hypothermia I’d achieve walking the three blocks to my bus stop. The consensus was total saturation.
"You're going to dissolve out here, Kimberly."
Logan appeared beside me, his coat collar flipped up, car keys dangling from his index finger. He’d exited through the private side doors, and the mist was already dampening the shoulders of his jacket.
"I’ll be fine," I said, shielding my eyes from the wind. "I’m built for the Pacific Northwest. Plus, I have a bus pass."
"And I have a German SUV with heated seats and a functioning roof." He jingled the keys enticingly. "Come on. I swear on my life I won’t bring up the Q3 budget projections."
I smiled, but I shook my head, tightening my grip on my purse. Stepping into a Whitlock’s private car felt like crossing a line I wouldn’t be able to map my way back over. It wasn't that Logan wasn't charming; it was that my budget for complications was already maxed out for the year.
"Really, I’m okay. Thank you, Logan."
He looked at me for a second, his brown eyes reading the exact hesitation I’d tried to hide, before he turned to the shadows behind him. "Derek, throw me the golf umbrella from the back seat."
Derek jogged to the idling car and returned with a massive black umbrella featuring a heavy, polished wood handle. Logan took it and held it out to me like a scepter.
"Take it."
"I can’t steal your umbrella."
"You absolutely can, because I’m about to step into a climate-controlled vehicle and you are standing here looking like a very proud, very wet penguin. My conscience won’t survive the drive home." He pressed the handle into my palm.
Before I could protest, his phone lit up in his pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the caller ID, and his whole face warmed.
"Hey, sweetie," Logan said into the phone, turning his back slightly to shield the audio from the wind. "Yeah, I’m leaving now. I know. I know, I promised. I’m on my way right now, I swear."
He ended the call and turned back to me. The grin was still there, but it didn't reach the rest of his face. "Take the bus. Don’t drown. See you Monday, Kimberly."
He jogged through the downpour to his car, and I stood there under the massive canopy of his umbrella, watching his taillights bleed into the red haze of the rainy traffic.
I walked to the bus stop entirely dry from the shoulders down, wondering what kind of phone call could put that look in Logan Whitlock's eyes.
The weekend usually meant a quiet apartment, but Saturday morning was an exception.
Katelyn had practically dragged Penny out of bed to go to the community library, mostly to force her out of her bedroom cave, and partly because she knew the arrival of a new graphic novel shipment would be bait Penny couldn’t resist.
I was left alone in the kitchen, nursing a mug of peppermint tea and listening to the rhythmic thrum of the rain against the glass, when my phone lit up with an unfamiliar local number.
"Hello?"
"Is this Ms. Kimberly Bishop?" The voice on the other end was clipped, razor-sharp, and formal. "My name is Walter Hines. I am the senior attorney representing the estate of the late Greta Whitlock."
I set my mug down on the counter. "I think you have the wrong number, Mr. Hines. I was just Mrs. Whitlock’s housekeeper and gardener before she passed."
"There is no administrative error, Ms. Bishop.
" A brief, clinical pause followed, precise enough to have been timed on a stopwatch.
"Mrs. Whitlock’s last will and testament names you specifically as a beneficiary, and by law, I am barred from reading the terms without you present in the room.
We have scheduled the formal reading for tomorrow evening, five o'clock, at the primary Whitlock estate. Your attendance is mandatory."
I sat there in the silence of my kitchen, the phone pressed hard against my ear while the rain drummed against the window and my tea went cold.
Try as I might, I couldn’t wrap my head around why a woman of immense wealth and power had deliberately written my name into the very last document of her life.