CHAPTER 13 Kimberly #2
I spent four days trapped in that bedroom, and by the end of it, I had read three Victorian novels, memorized every single creak in the floorboards of the east wing, and consumed more liquid sodium than any human should.
I finally dragged myself out of bed and walked around the house.
Movement outside caught my eye. Through the massive glass windows, I saw Jackson out in the formal gardens.
He was on his knees in the dark earth, directly in the center of Greta’s prized rose beds that had gone wild since I’d been too exhausted to maintain them.
He was wearing an old, oil-stained shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his forearms bare and streaked with earth.
He had a pair of rusted pruning shears in one gloved hand, cutting back the dead, winter-killed canes with absolute focus.
I pushed open the terrace doors and walked out into the crisp morning air.
He looked up at the sound of my steps, his shears pausing. The morning sun caught his dark hair and turned his eyes a striking, metallic silver. There was a smear of dark soil right across his forearm.
"How did you know how to angle the cuts?" I asked, leaning against the stone balustrade.
"My mother used to drag us out here," he said simply, his voice carrying no defensive edge as he looked down at a thick cane. "Every single Saturday morning from April to October. She’d line Logan and me up with galvanized buckets and force us to prune the hybrid teas. Logan always cut too close to the lateral buds, and she’d stand over him and curse at him in low German. "
He froze. His brother's name hung in the crisp air between us like a physical object. I watched him register it. A hard, stormy look flashed through his eyes, fast as a cloud blocking the sun, and his jaw instantly locked into its familiar, rigid line.
I thought about Lily and a brother who couldn’t mention Jackson without his voice dropping an octave. Whatever ancient war had fractured them was still burning, hot and toxic, and neither of them knew how to build the bridge.
I stepped off the terrace, knelt down directly in the dirt beside him, and inspected the branch he had just cleared. He’d done it flawlessly. A clean, forty-five-degree angle, exactly a quarter-inch above the outward-facing eye.
"You did an excellent job," I said softly, looking up at him through the curl falling across my temple. "I didn’t peg you for someone with patience for living things."
"There is an extraordinary amount of data about me you don’t possess, Ms. Bishop," he said. He wasn’t looking at the roses anymore.
He was looking directly at me, his gaze holding me pinned against the earth.
The morning sun was warm on the back of my neck, and the scent of rich soil and his skin was suddenly entirely too close.
I stood up quickly, brushing the loose dirt off my trousers to break the pull. "The cold. I should probably head inside before my nose starts running again and ruins this highly civilized moment."
"It would be a tragedy," he murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching.
That evening, the house was completely silent. Hollis had left early, and the massive kitchen felt strangely intimate in the twilight. I decided to cook. Cooking had always been the only way I knew how to quiet the noise in my own head.
I made a simple rustic pasta—crushed garlic, olive oil, cherry tomatoes blistered in a hot pan until they burst, and a handful of fresh sweet basil from the pots Greta kept on the windowsill. The rich, savory aroma filled the entire first floor.
I heard his footsteps before I saw him.
Jackson walked in, his tie already gone, the top two buttons of his dress shirt undone. He looked at the smoking pan, then at me, and then at the two identical plates I’d set up at the marble island.
"You cook," he observed.
"I’m a woman who lives with two younger sisters, Mr. Whitlock. You either learn how to cook or you eat cardboard. Sound familiar?"
A low, genuine chuckle escaped him. "Vaguely."
We ate in the formal dining room, sitting at the opposite ends of a table designed for a fourteen-person board of trustees. The pasta was excellent, and he actually said so—exactly once, as if compliments were heavily rationed assets he had to account for. But he cleaned his plate entirely.
When we finished, the silence between us didn’t feel like a weapon anymore.
I moved to the sink and turned on the water, scraping the plates. Jackson stood too, rolled his sleeves back with meticulous precision, and stepped right into my space. He took the sponge directly from my hand, his knuckles brushing my palm. I felt it all the way up my arm.
"I’ll rinse," he said, his shoulder nearly pressed against mine as we worked over the sink.
We did the dishes together. Jackson Whitlock, rinsing ceramic plates while I dried them with a linen towel. Every time his arm moved, I caught the scent of his skin. Every time I reached for a plate, our fingers hovered fractions of an inch apart.
As I set the last glass down, the air in the kitchen completely thinned out.
Jackson turned off the tap. He dried his hands slowly, then turned toward me, leaning his hip against the marble counter. He looked down at me, his gray eyes incredibly dark, filled with an intense focus that made my breath catch.
"I have something for you," he said.
My heart skipped. "What is it?"
He reached into the deep pocket of his trousers, pulled out a small silver key, and opened the locked pantry drawer where high-value estate documents were kept.
He pulled out a heavy, rectangular package wrapped in thick, brown butcher paper and tied with a clean twine knot. He walked back to me and held it out.
I took it from his hands, my brow furrowing. I pulled the twine loose and peeled back the heavy paper.
It was the calligraphy painting set.
I looked up, my chest aching with a sudden, overwhelming wave of emotion. "You did this? For Penny?"
"I mean, fixing my mistakes is the right thing to do," he said softly. His face had changed. The armor was gone. He reached back to the counter and picked up a second, smaller black box, placing it gently on top of the book in my hands. "And this is from me. To her. For her birthday."
I looked down at the smaller box. Inside was a set of custom-milled, hand-turned sable detail brushes with sterling silver ferrules. The absolute highest tier of professional artistry tools in the world.
"Do you think she’d like it?" he murmured.
Our gazes locked.
The distance between us vanished. Standing this close, in just the white shirt, he was hard to look at and harder to look away from.
I leaned in before I meant to. My eyes dropped to his mouth. His chest rose and fell in a sharp, shallow breath, his hand lifting slightly toward my waist—
His phone rang.
The spell broke instantly. Jackson blinked, a dark flush mounting on his cheekbones as he tore his gaze from mine. He pulled the phone from his pocket, checked the screen, and swore under his breath in a low, vicious murmur.
"I have to take this," he said, his voice rough and uneven. "It’s Tokyo."
"Of course," I choked out, my hands trembling as I gripped the heavy book against my chest. "Go. Take it."
He turned and walked out of the kitchen, his voice instantly shifting back into its crisp, executive cadence as he answered the call, leaving me standing alone in the warm light, shivering as if I’d been thrown back into the rain.
An hour later, I was up in my bedroom, my heart still refusing to return to its normal rhythm. I was desperate for a distraction.
I grabbed my phone and dialed Katelyn.
"Please tell me you’re alive," Katelyn answered on the first ring, her voice muffled by what sounded like a handful of popcorn. "Did the tech dictator finally sacrifice you to the corporate gods?"
"I’m alive, Kate," I said, throwing myself onto the bed and staring at the ceiling. "I’ve been sick, actually. A brutal cold."
"Wait, hold on." There was a rustle of blankets on her end as she sat up. "Your voice sounds… weird. It’s lower. And you’re breathing like you just ran a marathon up a flight of stairs. What happened? Did he yell at you again?"
"No," I mumbled, my mind instantly flashing to the image of Jackson’s wet shirt sticking to his chest in the sandbox, and then to the cool touch of his hand against my forehead. "He didn’t yell. He… he actually got Penny’s birthday present replaced.
And another gift. A rare first edition. Signed.
And he bought her sterling silver brushes. "
An absolute, dead silence fell over the line.
"Katelyn?"
"Kimberly Bishop," Katelyn said, her voice dropping into a terrifyingly sharp, forensic register. "Are you telling me the ice prince went full billionaire-romance-novel on you? Are you starting to like him?"
"Absolutely not!" I shot upright on the mattress, my face instantly burning. "Are you completely insane? I feel absolutely zero things for Jackson Whitlock. He is a cold, controlling machine who spends his free time auditing spreadsheets. The man is essentially a robot with an expensive haircut."
"Uh-huh," Katelyn snorted. "Then why does your voice sound like you’re currently melting into a puddle of warm butter?"
"It’s residual febrile congestion!" I snapped, throwing a pillow across the room.
"I am simply thinking about fulfilling the deathbed decree of our late, beloved employer. I am staying in this house to honor Greta’s memory, and that is the entirety of it.
Now, are you going to help me with this strategy to get him and Logan into the same room next week, or am I going to have to execute this corporate coup by myself? "
"Oh, I’m helping," Katelyn laughed, her voice humming with pure, chaotic delight. "But for the record? If the robot with the haircut offers to check your temperature again? You let him."