Chapter 6
ROURKE
The sea bass arrives without capers.
The last time Carmichael Catering sent it up, I spent twenty minutes scraping the little green bullets out of the sauce while Jocelyn watched from across a conference table and said, with the flat precision of a court stenographer, "Noted."
Now the plate appears on the low table in my office with lemon, fennel, roasted potatoes, and no capers.
"Better?" Jocelyn asks.
"Better." I look up from the Ridgeline financing schedule.
The office is quiet around us, the executive floor mostly dark beyond the glass wall. Legal is downstairs. Finance is remote. Everyone with sense has gone home to people who expect them there.
Jocelyn reaches across me to scroll the laptop screen down. Her sleeve brushes my cuff. Her perfume is clean and expensive, and my brain files it with the other objects in the room.
"Here," she says. "If we revise the roadwork concession before Moreland hears the seller is nervous, we control the conversation."
"We can't show too much appetite."
"We won't." Her phone rings. She answers before the second buzz. "No, he won't take that meeting tomorrow. Move it to Thursday and send the revised deck to me first." A pause. "Because if you send it to him with that typo in the fourth slide, he'll never trust your numbers again."
I glance at her.
Jocelyn ends the call, sets her phone facedown, and lifts my coffee cup. Empty. She stands without asking, crosses to the service cart, and fills it the way I take it when the night has gone too long.
No sugar. A little milk. Not enough to cool it completely.
She puts it by my hand, and I take it.
Easy.
"Speaking of roadwork," Jocelyn says, and turns her phone toward me.
The Ridgeline photo fills the screen.
Fire behind us. Wine on the table. My shirtsleeves rolled up. Jocelyn's hair loosened from the storm, her shoulder nearly touching mine because she leaned in to fit us both in the frame.
It looks softer than the night felt. Warmer.
I take the phone and look at the evidence of that night. There's no masking that the photo makes it look like more went on than it did.
"No one needs to see this," I say, then pull back because it sounds guilty. "My hair looks like a raccoon slept in it."
"Fortunately, this never made it into the official deal file," she says.
I hand back the phone. The image is ridiculous. We were tired. Stranded. Irritated by flooded roads and bad food.
Firelight lies.
Jocelyn sets the phone down without turning the screen off.
"Rourke."
Her voice changes just enough that I look over.
She has a box in her hands. Slim. Black. No logo on the outside, which usually means whatever is inside is expensive enough to be embarrassed about itself.
"What is that?"
"A thank-you."
"No."
"You haven't opened it."
"I like keeping it that way."
She gives me a look and lifts the lid herself.
A watch rests inside, steel and dark blue, clean enough to look simple until the light catches the face. I know watches. I know Swiss when I see it. I also know waiting-list money when it is pretending to be understated.
"Jocelyn."
"Before you start measuring propriety with a ruler, don't." She removes it from the box. "Executives exchange gifts after major wins constantly."
"Ridgeline isn't closed."
"It will be." Her eyes hold mine. "You trusted my judgment when half the room wanted to wait. You stood in that lodge with rain coming down sideways and still found leverage. When this closes, it's yours, yes. But it's mine too. Ours."
Ours.
The deal. The pressure. The months of late nights, revised numbers, and too many people expecting me to be a sharper, colder version of my father.
"It's too much," I say.
She steps closer, the watch open between her fingers. "Let me mark the moment."
I sigh and hold out my wrist because refusal suddenly feels like I'm making more of it than it should be, and I have no energy left for drama.
Jocelyn stands between me and the desk. Her fingers circle my wrist, cool and careful. She lays the watch against my skin, threads the clasp, adjusts it once, then again. Her thumb smooths over the metal after it is fastened.
The touch lasts long enough that I look down. I pull back.
The watch sits well.
"It suits you," she says.
I turn my wrist. "It's a very generous gift."
"You carry more than people see." Her voice is softer now. "I wanted you to have something that acknowledges that."
Something in my chest tightens.
I remove the watch to examine the back. The engraving is small, centered, precise.
For the man who carries everything. - J
I stare at it longer than I mean to.
"This is too much, Jocelyn," I say. It's not what I mean to say. What I want to say is, "Take it back." But then I look back up and she honestly looks like she might crack if I give it back.
I swallow a sigh. "Thank you."
"You do carry everything, Rourke. Your family name. The board. The expansion. The name on every building. It's time someone notices."
Mallory notices me.
The thought comes fast. Reflexive. Almost defensive.
Mallory sees the man under the name. She saw him first, actually, on a coastal resort beach with a scavenger hunt list in her hand and sand on her legs, making jokes about how I dressed like a mafia don.
Right now, I feel like one.
I put the watch back on because that's easier than voicing whatever objection is moving around in the back of my mind. I'll wear it for a few days and then hope she forgets about it. That seems like the safest bet.
"Thank you," I say.
Jocelyn's satisfaction is quiet. A sip of water. A settled shoulder. A look at the watch before she looks at me.
Then the outer office door opens.
Beatrice walks in with a folder held to her chest and stops abruptly.
"What is that?"
I look at the folder. "I'm going to need more context."
"On your wrist."
"A Ridgeline gift."
Her eyes move to Jocelyn, then back to me. "From who?"
Jocelyn begins, "Beatrice."
I answer because it's a simple question. "From Jocelyn."
"Personally?"
"Yes."
Beatrice's mouth flattens. I stand.
"It's a watch."
"I can see that."
"Then why do you sound like I've been handed contraband?"
"Because some contraband ticks." She crosses the office and holds out her hand. "Let me see it."
"This is absurd."
"Then indulge an old woman."
"You are not old."
"You're making me older by the second."
Jocelyn gathers the empty dinner plates with careful calm. "I'll check on legal."
She disappears without another word.
I unfasten the watch and hand it over. Beatrice turns it in her palm. Her eyes drop to the engraving.
The temperature in the room seems to shift around her.
"The price is not the problem," she says, as if responding to a phantom voice only she can hear.
"I didn't ask."
"The message is."
I take the watch back. "It's just a gift." I lower my voice and look behind Beatrice, searching for any sign of Jocelyn. "Refusing it outright would have been rude."
"You want to know what's rude?" Beatrice asks, staring over the top of her glasses at me.
"Grilling your employer over a gifted watch?"
Beatrice watches me for a moment and then reaches into her jacket and removes the small notebook.
"Not that damned notebook."
She clicks her pen.
"Beatrice."
She writes anyway.
"What are you recording?"
"Just notations."
My laugh comes harder this time. "I'd love to get a peek into that notebook one day."
She closes it. "Something tells me you will sooner rather than later."
Heat moves up the back of my neck.
"You should watch just how much rope you give that woman." She doesn't have to say who she means, and that bothers me more than I care to admit.
"There's nothing between us."
"I believe that you believe that."
"That's insulting."
"Yes," she says. "Sometimes facts lack manners."
I turn toward the window. Rain webs down the glass, turning the city into streaks of white and red. My wrist feels heavier than it did ten minutes ago.
A watch.
Gratitude made of steel and components.
Nothing more.
Beatrice waits with the patience of someone who has buried better men than me in administrative consequences.
"I know Mallory has been quiet," I say, because it's been sitting there all night.
Beatrice says nothing.
"I'm handling it."
Her eyebrow lifts.
"I am."
I reach for my phone. "The coastal property. The one where we met. I want a private weekend after Ridgeline closes. No investors. No calls."
Something in Beatrice's face changes, but not enough to call softness.
I type while I speak. "Same beach. Dinner on the terrace, but not formal."
I can see it.
Mallory barefoot in the sand, laughing despite herself. Mallory eating pasta or grilled fish without checking a seating chart. Mallory looking at me without that careful stillness she's started wearing at breakfast.
"After Ridgeline closes," Beatrice says.
"It has to be."
"Does it?" I look at her. She glances at the watch. "Will you tell her you plan to be unavailable for several more late evenings before this grand restoration of marital attention?"
"It will make up for it."
Beatrice's face goes very still.
She doesn't argue.
With anyone else, that might feel like a victory. With Beatrice, it feels like I'm simply waiting for the moment she drops the hammer.
My phone rings in my hand.
Jocelyn.
I answer immediately, putting it on speaker. "What happened?"
"Moreland's people asked for updated traffic projections," she says. "They're closer than we thought. We should handle it tonight. Private dinner tomorrow? We'll move faster without ten people proving they know how to breathe."
I look at Beatrice.
Her expression gives me nothing.
"Fine," I say, looking away from her. "Set it."
By the time I reach the penthouse, the bedroom is dark except for Mallory's lamp.
She isn't in bed.
Bathroom, maybe. Kitchen. Somewhere in the quiet life I keep entering late.
I remove the watch and set it on the nightstand beside her reading glasses.
Then I go to shower, humming under my breath while hot water starts behind the glass.