Chapter 14 Jackson
Jackson
Perched at the top of an extra-tall stepladder ordered specially for the job, Jackson was surprised at how excited he felt about ripping down a ceiling.
He put his cordless drill into the first screw hole and undid the fixings.
Awake early and keen to get a swift start, he’d left Niamh undisturbed in her own room to sleep in.
By the time he’d freed the first three planks, Jackson was able to take a look inside the cavity above the false ceiling with the light from his phone.
“Any bodies?” came a voice from down below.
“You’re obsessed.” He pulled his head and shoulders back through the gap. Looking down, Leah appeared even smaller from his vantage point on top of the ladder. “There’s none I can see. Although it would be a dumb place to hide a corpse. Fuckloads of upper-body strength required.”
“Is the molding intact?”
He poked his head through the hole again and felt a small thrill.
“As far as I can tell it is.” His voice was muffled inside the cavity.
“There’s a little damage but not too much.
And it’s quite ornate.” He ducked down once more.
“I’m guessing someone put the false ceiling up to make it feel warmer.
Or maybe because it suited the fashion at the time. ” Jackson undid another two screws.
“Hmm.” He felt Leah’s gaze on him, but when he turned to carry the next board down, she’d gone again. Hardly surprising, since the weekend hadn’t gotten off to the best start. He only had himself to blame for that.
The exertion was welcome after a long week of desk work.
It was mentally restful, enjoyably physical, and Jackson knew he’d feel it in his muscles later.
As he worked, he found himself wishing he could take on other renovations like this with Hale Evolution, but his dad vetoed the suggestion every time he brought it up.
Lowering another board five minutes later, Jackson found Leah waiting at the base of the stepladder, arms outstretched. She’d changed into a ratty pair of ripped jeans and a green tank top. Her hair was tied into an efficient ponytail and she wore gardening gloves on her hands.
“A pot for the screws.” She waggled an empty carton. It looked a little like a white flag.
He reached down to take it, spat out the ones between his lips, and gathered up the rest from the top of the ladder. “Thanks.”
“Where are you planning to stack the boards?”
“Outside the back door for now. Then I’ll cart them over to the clearing behind the beech tree later.”
“Bonfire?” The single word was hopeful.
Jackson nodded. He was already looking forward to it.
“With marshmallows?” There was a breathless plea in Leah’s voice.
“Don’t see why not.”
Her smile felt like a searchlight on his soul. It sent a surge of warmth through Jackson’s veins. Leah’s happiness was the caffeine for his system on this strangely satisfying Sunday morning—who knew?
Fortunately, she moved first because suddenly he couldn’t look away.
Lifting one of the boards he’d laid on the floor in her gloved hands, she headed for the door.
Once she’d maneuvered it outside, Leah returned for another and Jackson forced his attention back to the ceiling.
They worked to the backing track of his cordless drill for the next half hour.
Their labored breath, the slap of wood on floorboards, and an occasional question were the only additional sounds in the room.
Leah’s grit impressed him. She was small and the boards were unwieldy, but she tackled the job with relentless enthusiasm, unfazed by the dust and dirt of unknown years.
Her face and arms began to glisten as she sweated, color highlighting her cheekbones.
And a damp V darkened the scooped neck of her top.
Jackson hadn’t been aware of Leah’s body before now.
The bulky sweatshirts, baggy knitted sweaters, and multiple layers had successfully hidden what he now saw was a bombshell package of killer curves.
When she bent forward, he found himself fighting not to gawp down the valley between her breasts.
Facing away from him to pick up another board, the soft, rounded cheeks of her denim-covered ass were just as distracting, and he had to drag his focus back to the job at hand, tightening his grip on the drill.
As Jackson undid the last screw on the next board and pulled it away from the ceiling, something slid along the length of the wood. It fell to the floor, bouncing off Leah on the way down; she crouched to pick it up.
“Looks like you were wrong about the bodies.” Leah lifted her hands.
Cupped in her palms was the dried corpse of a mouse, decades old and completely desiccated.
A rigid, miniature skeleton with ears and a tail, held together with skin like the yellowed paper from an antique book.
Grotesque but weirdly fascinating. Jackson climbed down the ladder for a closer look.
“He fell on my head.” She examined the tiny body in her hands with interest. Most of the people Jackson knew would have been repulsed, but of course the girl who had rejected the job of “serial killer” due to a lack of upper-body strength was never going to be like most people.
His phone rang in his pocket and, automatically, he pulled it out and answered, while his attention was still fixated on the mouse-from-the-past. “Yes?”
Leah lay the little corpse on one of the windowsills. He hoped she’d remember to move it before Niamh woke up. Something told him Niamh wasn’t going to be quite as interested in a mummified mouse.
“Have you called the granite suppliers again or shall I get Florian on it?”
Damn. One sentence and Jackson’s mood fell off a cliff.
“It’s Sunday, Dad.”
His father huffed down the line. “Don’t be a smartass, Jackson. I didn’t mean today. But I need to know we’re back on track for next week, since you told Rufus you’d deal with it and now you’re off playing houses again.”
“I told Rufus I’d deal with it because I am dealing with it.” Jackson wiped his face with the shoulder of his t-shirt. “I spoke with them on Friday and I’ll be back in the office tomorrow.”
For the next four minutes, he bit the inside of his cheek as his father listed all the ways in which he had taken his eye off the ball, was failing to keep his boots on the ground and give one hundred and ten percent to their current portfolio, plus a ton of other business-related clichés.
Jackson was treated to some version of this lecture on a regular basis and yet, every time, it grated like a hyena gnawing on a carcass.
Even now, when his dad was relying on Amity Court to get them out of the hole he’d gotten them into, there was nothing conciliatory in his attitude.
Alistair Hale was an attack dog by nature, Hale Evolution his premier focus.
Any hope of gaining his respect meant adopting the same principles, and Jackson was well used to tuning out the majority of these diatribes, providing his dad didn’t step over that one line in the sand.
Don’t fucking mention Dominic. Don’t you dare.
“Your brother always understood that duty comes before pleasure.” His father’s words bit with the lash of a whip.
“I’m not here stripping down a ceiling for my health!” Jackson snapped. “I’m doing whatever I can to make this place more saleable for you. The site work is in hand, the granite delivery is sorted, the end dates are achievable, and I’m not a fucking slacker.”
“There’s no need—”
“There’s every need.” He forced the emotion out of his voice and continued, cold and controlled. That was the only way to handle his father. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”
Jackson hung up without waiting for a reply. Picking up his drill, he forced himself to relax his jaw; his teeth hurt, he was clenching so tightly. Storm clouds, which had seeped insidiously through the 5G connection, settled above his head, obscuring any enjoyment he’d found in the morning’s work.
When Leah appeared from the kitchen with two mugs of coffee and held one out to him, he was still rattled and raging.
Taking it without a word, he swallowed a big, burning gulp before leaving it on the mantelpiece.
He climbed the ladder again. They worked on in a stiff silence while his dad’s “duty before pleasure” dig tumbled, washing machine–style, around the inside of Jackson’s head.
“My car needs a couple of new tires. I thought I’d get it sorted now I’ve been paid.” Leah spoke suddenly, as she rested a board in the crook of her elbow, one end on the floor. “Is it better to go to a shop or get someone to come out here, d’you think?”
He considered not answering; blanking people was his superpower.
Persistence, however, was one of Leah’s, and he sensed the clunky segue was her attempt to ease the billowing tension within the room.
Undaunted by his brooding, he felt her studying his back with an intensity that suggested she could read his every thought—something that incensed and unsettled him in equal measure.
“There are mobile tire fitters who might come to the house,” he growled eventually. “You’d have to check if they cover this area. If they do, you can order the tires you need and book online.”
“I want black ones.” He could hear the smile in her voice, and irritation rippled under his skin.
“There are different sizes and standards.”
“Tires come in sizes?”
Jackson shot a glance at her and found Leah’s eyebrows kinked, pure interest lighting up her face.
“Some Queen of Research. You realize you just set feminism back thirty years with that comment?”
“Maya Angelou would be so disappointed.” With a roll of her eyes, she laughed at herself.
Who the fuck is Maya Angelou? Jackson knew his face had gone blank. And that Leah had noticed.
She reached for her coffee, and took another sip.
“I mainly rode a bike or took the bus when I was growing up. I bought my car after moving in with Esther. I’ve always wanted to walk into an auto shop, wait for someone to try to mansplain my carburetor to me, and blind them with my superior knowledge of a choke valve—see, I even got as far as looking up the parts.
But I never followed it through. I’m not interested enough.
I know a carburetor has a choke valve but I don’t know what it does, and I didn’t know tires came in sizes.
Even though it stands to reason they do.
I’ll need to find another way to smash oppressive gender roles.
” A lightning grin flashed over her face, there and then gone.
Jackson’s head spun a little; it was a challenge to follow her chaotic thought patterns. But what he did grasp was that Leah had spotted the gap in his own knowledge and skated right over it to poke fun at her own. There wasn’t much he hated more than feeling stupid.
“Christ, you use a whole load of words to say very little sometimes.”
Leah twisted the plank she held in her hands, flipping it over and over—varnished side to unvarnished side and back around again.
“That sounds like something my ex-boyfriend would have said,” she murmured finally.
Her lips, tighter than normal, still turned up at the corners, but it was a ghost smile.
And, once again, Jackson felt like a dick.
The doorbell rang in the foyer.
Hefting the board, Leah turned away without another word. He heard her wrench the front door free from its frame. There was an instant barrage of indistinct chatter and Sam appeared in the doorway to the living room, Kash following behind.
“Reinforcements have arrived! I’ve brought the wit, good looks, and encouragement. Kash has some proper tools and actual know-how.”
Both were dressed down in scruffy jeans and old t-shirts.
“What are you doing here?” He wondered if Leah had called them.
“You said yesterday you planned to tackle the ceiling and we thought some extra muscle wouldn’t hurt.
” Sam grinned up at him. “If we’d known you had Wonder Woman on hand, we’d have left you to it and gone for a drink.
” He gave Leah a wink as she came back into the room and Jackson watched the full-strength smile return to her lips.
“Happy to be in charge of the music, if you want.”
Kash smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I’d have left him at home but he chews the furniture if I’m out too long.”