Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Seb
I check another item off my list for the day and decide it’s time for a break.
I lock the computer—even though I’m the only one in the house, it’s habit—grab my phone, and on my way through the kitchen, I snag my jacket from the chair where I left it.
I’ll walk down to the stables and stick my nose in until Chris yells at me, and then I’ll visit Stark for a bit.
It’d be nice if I could sneak in a ride, but that would be too long away from my desk.
The stables are as soothing as always—the smell of horse, hay, and even horseshit just makes something in me relax.
At this time on a weekday, things are pretty quiet.
The stablehands are exercising the horses that aren’t assigned for classes later in the afternoon, and one of the instructors is doing a one-on-one lesson with a fiftyish matron who decided to fulfill her childhood dream of learning to ride but doesn’t want to be the oldest in a class.
If I remember right, Chris has a lesson soon with one of his Olympic-hopeful students, but he should be around somewhere now.
I find him in one of the stalls, mucking out while the horse is being exercised.
“Don’t we have students for this?” I joke.
Warwick insisted that a part of learning proper horsemanship is learning to care for your mount, which means all students are required to tack up and untack their horses, groom them after every ride, and take a turn mucking out and cleaning tack at least once a week.
There’s still tons to do, including supervising the beginner riders to make sure they’re doing things right, but it’s a running joke that the worst jobs got left for students.
Chris laughs. “You wanna help?”
For a split second, I consider it.
Mucking out isn’t my favorite thing to do, but there’s something satisfying about it.
It’s a job that has a definite outcome—you do the job, you see the result.
And knowing that the horses have a clean, comfortable, welcoming place to be because you made it that way feels good.
But I don’t have a lot of time, and I’m not dressed to muck out—I have a meeting later with someone at the local council to discuss a license to open the house and gardens to visitors.
If I start mucking out, I’ll need to shower, change, and iron another shirt.
“Can’t today,” I say, almost regretfully.
“If you need more hands, though?—”
“Nah, we’re good,” Chris promises.
“Jen had to call in because her kid is sick, otherwise she’d be doing this. It won’t hurt me to work hard for one day.” Ironically, he leans on his shovel as he says it.
“What brings you down here?”
“Needed a break from the computer,” I tell him.
“Numbers will be the cause of my death.”
Chris nods sympathetically.
He’s a brilliant instructor and could have opened his own riding school but has no desire to bog himself down with the details of running a business on that scale.
He told me once that it’s bad enough doing the bookkeeping and paperwork for the select clients he takes on.
“The boss coming down this week? Any chance you can palm some of it off on him?” He winks, and I snort.
“I wish. He’ll be down Thursday night.” It’s been six weeks since Jack’s first visit, and for five of them, he’s been working from the estate two, sometimes three days every week.
He usually comes down on a Thursday night and goes back on Tuesday morning.
I’ve been surprised by how nice it is to have someone else in the house on a regular basis.
Technically, Jack being here means an increase to my workload, but I don’t care.
Jack’s good company, a considerate housemate—even though he owns the house—and I look forward to his arrival every week.
It’s probably a sign that I need to do something about my social life.
In fact, come to think of it, when’s the last time I went out for fun?
A date, a hookup, or even with friends to the pub?
I can’t remember.
That’s sad.
“Earth to Seb.” Chris’s voice breaks into my introspection, and I blink.
“Sorry. Hey, when was Jen’s birthday?” We all went out for drinks that night, and I’m pretty sure it’s the last time I was social.
“Ah… May? Yeah, I remember because it was so warm, and we were all saying how warm it was for May. Why?”
I shake my head.
Three months is way too long.
“Not important. You doing anything tonight? Wanna go to the pub?”
Chris looks at me like I’m losing my marbles.
“Sure. Can I ask Lisa to join us?”
“Yeah, no worries.” Chris’s girlfriend is awesome, another competition-level rider from a wealthy family, but totally down-to-earth and a lot of fun at a party.
A dinging from Chris’s pocket interrupts us, and Chris pulls out his phone and silences it.
“Fifteen-minute warning,” he says, and I remember that he has a client coming.
“Right. I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to give Stark some love, then get back to work.”
I wander through the stable to my horse’s stall.
Stark’s happy to see me, as always, and I promise myself I’ll make more time for us to spend together.
Does hanging out with my horse count as a social activity?
Laughing, I lift my glass and drain it.
I was right to do this—get out of the house, away from the Vale.
Going forward, I’ll make an effort to reconnect with my friends.
“Coming out tonight was a great idea, Seb,” Lisa says, as though reading my mind.
“I forget sometimes how important it is to blow off steam midweek.” She refills our glasses from the pitcher.
“To Seb’s brilliant idea,” Chris toasts, and we drink.
“Although, gotta ask, what brought it on, mate?”
I shake my head.
“I realized how long it had been since I’d actually done this.” I wave a hand to encompass the bar.
“I’m turning into a hermit.”
“Is that why you asked me about Jen’s birthday? Wow. That’s a long time.”
“Yep. But that’s gonna change,” I declare.
Chris makes a doubting face, and Lisa laughs.
“You guys suck,” I tell them, which makes them both laugh.
“Why have you been hibernating?” Lisa asks, and I shrug.
“No idea. I didn’t even realize I’d been doing it until Chris asked me about Jack and it occurred to me that his arrival is the most exciting part of my week.” It’s my turn to laugh, and it takes me a moment to notice they’re not laughing with me.
In fact, they’re giving me funny looks.
“Guys?”
They exchange glances, doing some kind of couple communication, and I sigh.
That never bodes well for the single person.
“What?”
“Nothing, really,” Chris says.
“Just… well, you and Jack seem to be getting close.”
I have the sneaking suspicion I’m missing something, that Chris’s statement has some kind of subtext I’m just not getting.
“Yeah. He’s a nice guy. We get along well. He’s letting me go ahead with my plans for making the estate more profitable, which is good for all of us. Why? Do you not like him?” That can’t be right.
I’ve seen Jack and Chris yukking it up more than once over the last month or so.
“Nah, he’s great,” Chris assures me.
“I— we just wondered if maybe there was something more there. With Jack. And you.”
The penny finally drops.
“Me and Jack? Like… together? No!” Is that what people think?
The other employees?
The students? Oh my God!
“Why would you think that?” Is it because we’re both gay?
I always thought Chris was more open-minded than that.
“Don’t make it sound like it’s a terrible thing,” Lisa says.
“You guys get along really well. You said it yourself. Whenever we see you together, you’re either talking up a storm or laughing. There’s just something about you that seems… I don’t know. In sync?”
“He’s my employer,” I say firmly, ignoring the tiny part of myself that seems to love the idea of something more with Jack.
It’s not like I haven’t thought of Jack that way—he’s hot, after all, in a way that always revs my engines.
He’s a great guy, a lot of fun, and he has his own file in my spank bank that gets used occasionally.
Well, more than occasionally.
But that’s fantasy , for fuck’s sake.
Like fantasizing about a movie star—nobody really wants a relationship with someone whose every move is tabloid fodder, but it’s fun to imagine what it could be like.
“So?” Chris shrugs. “It’s not like he’s the CEO and you’re the intern. You’re the most senior employee he has—well, here, anyway. I doubt he could run this place without you. There’s a power imbalance between you, sure, but it’s so small as to be negligible. Unless you think he’d?—”
“No,” I interrupt, because there’s no way Jack would ever do anything to take advantage of an employee.
He just isn’t that kind of guy.
“Look, I guess I get what you’re saying, but you’re off base. There’s nothing like that between Jack and me. He doesn’t think of me that way.” The second I say it, I know I’ve made a mistake.
Lisa pounces. “Are you sure? I’ve only met him a couple times, but both those times, he looked at you like you were an ice cream he wanted to lick all over.”
Chris and I both stare at her, and she grimaces.
“Sorry. It seemed like a good metaphor at the time. And I kind of want ice cream right now.”
“I don’t think they serve any here,” I say, then shake my head.
“And he does not look at me like—that way.”
“He kind of does,” Chris admits.
“Although I wouldn’t have phrased it like that. Look,” he leans forward and looks me right in the eye, “we’re not trying to freak you out. If you genuinely have no interest that way in Jack, fine. No problem. But if you are attracted to him… why not have a bat? I mean, you said yourself that the most exciting part of your week is when he comes down. Maybe this whole hermit thing wasn’t really an accident. Maybe you’re just enjoying the time you can spend with him so much that you don’t bother with anything else.”
I stare at him wordlessly, then pick up my glass and drain it.
“I’ll think about it.”
Hours later, lying sleepless in bed, I stare at the ceiling, unable to do anything but think about it.
About Jack.
Good-looking Jack.
Nice Jack.
Funny Jack.
Jack, who cares about his employees and gives generous birthday gifts.
Jack, who loves horses and makes sure to ride every day when he’s at the Vale.
Jack, who got genuinely excited about my plans for Bliss Vale.
On paper, Jack’s perfect for me.
The only downside is that he’s my boss.
It would be weird to date him.
Wrong. The boss thing outweighs all the positives.
Right?
On the flip side, being perfect on paper doesn’t mean anything if there’s no attraction.
No spark. No chemistry.
So this is all a moot point.
It doesn’t matter that Jack’s profile on a dating site would likely be a 99.
99 percent match for me.
Without a spark, it’s empty.
So I’m fine.
There’s nothing to worry about.
Groaning, I sit up and put my face in my hands.
Who am I kidding? If I’d first seen Jack in a bar, or met him through friends, or met him before Warwick died, when he was just my boss’s nephew, I would have flirted.
Asked him out. After a few hours in his company, I would have been planning our fifth date.
I would have been thinking about how to get around the commute between us.
I’d have been looking to the future.
Because Jack’s awesome, and I want him.
I just made myself not think of him that way.
In the “boss” box, he’s safe.
But would it really be that bad to open the box?
Ugh. Open the box? What the hell is wrong with me?
I lean back against the headboard, huffing in disbelief.
Okay. I have to be logical about this.
Jack’s a great guy, and I’m attracted to him.
Maybe Jack isn’t attracted to me, though, which would make this whole thing a nonissue.
Except that Chris and Lisa think he is.
And then a thought strikes that has all the night’s beer curdling in my stomach.
Is that why Jack gave me Stark?
No. No, Sarah told me Jack’s always generous with employee birthday gifts.
She flashed that diamond bracelet.
A horse isn’t out of the ordinary.
And Warwick was generous too—the Nespresso machine is just one example of that.
So I’m pretty sure Jack isn’t trying to bribe me or buy me or whatever.
But maybe I’ll call Sarah in the morning, feel her out about those gifts.
Just in case.
It’s not like I actually have to do anything, right?
Things can keep on the way they are, even if I’ve admitted to myself that I have a thing for Jack.
It won’t kill me to keep a lid on it.
I can start going out a bit more, though, instead of sticking around and spending every weekend with Jack, even if the idea sends a pang of disappointment through me.
Maybe I’ll just wait and see.
Jack’s arriving in two days.
I can look at him with new, unblinkered eyes.
Spend this weekend like usual, see if I gain new perspective now that I’m not kidding myself anymore.
I can take my time, see if Jack really is into me, think about the implications of dating my boss.
Make an informed decision.
And in the meantime, there are ways to relax before sleep that involve Jack but don’t require his presence.