Chapter 6

6

Rex calls me at the crack of dawn the next morning. “Sorry.” He’s so gruff he could pass for his grandfather. He even harrumphs like Arthur. “Listen, you don’t have to plan anything for the foundation or make a template. And you absolutely don’t need to work with Reece, either. I just?—”

“Had too much Prosecco to think straight? Poor planning before an early morning flight home. It would be tragic if you had loads of turbulence, which I definitely didn’t spend all night manifesting.”

He chuffs out a laugh. “It would serve me right, but I am sorry. It’s just that I really want?—”

“To go to a party where Timothy Smallbone can lord it over you for a whole evening?”

“Fuck, no.” He’s brutally honest. “I want to keep you, Jack. The foundation needs you. I went entirely the wrong way about trying to give you the time to see how much Reece needs you too. And I’m really sorry that I put you on the spot with him right there. I know better. Especially after...”

I know who he’s about to mention.

He doesn’t need to.

Comparing Reece to my last employer would be like comparing a marshmallow to a nail bomb. I don’t get a chance to say so. Rex is too busy falling on his sword to listen.

“Of course you couldn’t say no to PA-ing for Reece when he was right there listening. You can now, Jack. I’ll fix it, I promise.” He huffs out a huge sigh. “Only he really does need?—”

“Help.”

“Yes. But that’s no excuse for making a decision for you. I had this wild idea that you two might actually be good together. At work,” he quickly adds, as if he didn’t see both of us covered in glitter and jump to an uncomfortably accurate conclusion.

Sirens scream past my bedroom window. I have to pull the duvet over my head to hear Rex ask, “Forgive me?”

“Nothing to forgive.”

He’s relieved. “But seriously, think it over this weekend while he’s busy on rescue duty, and it will be busy. Pops says the radar is already pinging. Just message me by Sunday evening if you want me to cancel London for him. I’ll prove I meant what I said.” He ends his call with a promise. “I can fix everything, even from the island.”

He isn’t the only foundation partner intent on proving something.

Reece keeps his word too, only in a way I don’t like.

He doesn’t text me.

I tell myself it is understandable. He’s busy. Or it would be understandable if a small voice didn’t whisper that Reece had plenty of busy times before, yet still wanted to wake up with me each morning. All I’m truly missing on Saturday and Sunday are a few nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. Their non-appearance shouldn’t leave a noticeable gap in my schedule.

The Reece-related part of my brain doesn’t get that message, like it also won’t let me message Rex to cancel my week of having a brand-new boss. It actually kicks into a higher gear than ever on the first day I’ll officially be Reece’s PA, starting from the moment my gaze lands on a thesaurus Calum gave me as an apology for dropping out of our one-word group chat, blaming his hockey-season time zones.

Now that Reece has stopped playing as well, that book, which has been part of my morning routine for what feels like forever, is redundant, unnecessary, and every other synonym for what used to start so many of my mornings.

Yes, I know leafing through its pages wasn’t necessary when my phone is a pocket-size supercomputer. And paging through a thesaurus also wasn’t technically in the spirit of Reece’s see word, say feeling rule, but it did give me lots of other options other than typing happy each time my phone pinged.

I haven’t needed to pull that book into bed with me since Friday, and no one else should notice that shift in my habits early on Monday morning.

Tell that to Sebastian. He can be as tenacious as a terrier when it comes to his work. Today, he’s a bloodhound at our breakfast table, sniffing out that I’m out of sorts, which is lunacy when Reece has only stopped what we both acknowledged shouldn’t continue.

And yet…

Which word would he have typed this morning?

That’s what I’ve woken up wondering for three days running, ever since leaving a dinner that ended with a formal handshake instead of the kind of kiss we shared in Rex’s study, so my heart surges at my phone pinging as I try to eat my breakfast.

It slumps again just as quickly.

Rex: I didn’t hear from you, so I’ve gone ahead and switched shifts with Reece. Be gentle with him. Had a hell of a weekend down here.

I huff out a sigh and lower my phone to find Sebastian squinting across the table.

“What’s wrong?” He leans over to feel my forehead, scattering toast crumbs and slopping chocolatey milk from his cereal bowl in the process. “You not feeling well? Want me to call in sick for you at the office?”

“No. I’m fine. And I’m not working out of the office today. I’m working from Rex’s place.”

He squints again. “Well, if you aren’t sick, someone must have peed in your Coco Pops this morning. Who was it?”

“No one, but thank you very much for that charming visual.” I push my own breakfast away, unable to face solid food. I also can’t face the liquid version Patrick slides in front of me. I’m not sure anything so green as this smoothie belongs on a breakfast table. Or in my stomach. I’d much rather chug a Red Bull, but Patrick has weaned me off them, saying he wants me to be fit and well forever, which only confirms what he chalks as today’s affirmation.

I am loved.

I love him too, so I do my best to sip around lumps of protein powder.

My stomach still churns at what a weekend of silence has left me convinced of.

Work is going to be so awkward.

It’s my own fault for doing exactly what I always told myself I wouldn’t, even if Reece wasn’t technically my boss when things got a tiny bit out of control between us. And I didn’t actually bang him, did I? But truthfully, we did come closer to that than I have before throwing a frog back.

Closer?

You virtually humped him on a hairy sofa .

Sebastian squints at me some more. “Has someone at the bank been giving you a hard time about working from Rex’s place?”

“No. I’ve worked from there plenty of times before.” I practically lived in Kensington when he first set up the foundation. “There’s nothing for anyone at the bank to give me a hard time about. Technically, they don’t employ me.”

This smoothie isn’t getting any easier to swallow, so I get busy clearing breakfast debris with a damp cloth. “I work for Rex.” I correct myself just as quickly. “I mean, I’m Reece’s.”

I don’t mean to omit the words personal assistant from that description. It’s impossible to ignore how it sounds like a complete sentence.

I’m Reece’s.

I don’t need a thesaurus to mentally add what I think next.

And I’m embarrassed.

That’s the long and the short of what I’ve replayed more times than I ever watched a video of me on YouTube. I am embarrassed about a slide-show of moments that have graced my bedroom ceiling since late on Friday.

Me spinning on marble tile is only one example. I cackled like a loon at getting dizzy, didn’t I? Then I stuck my tongue down his throat and climbed him. Don’t even get me started on how he’d had to make sure I didn’t walk into a restaurant with my fly down.

My throat heats, and Sebastian must notice colour creeping upwards. “Seriously, what’s wrong?”

Not even Patrick in his undies distracts him, and that’s a whole lot of near-naked Trelawney mid-yoga flow, so I guess Sebastian won’t quit until he gets an answer. “I didn’t sleep well, that’s all.”

I catch a glimpse of sympathy from Patrick between the spread of his downward-dog legs. “You got first-day-of-school nerves, babe?”

“Hardly.” I’m twenty-four, not an infant. Although…

This feeling is reminiscent of walking into a classroom after putting on an unthinking show in the playground. I feel as exposed now, so covering my face is instinctive, which is a mistake when holding a crumb-covered cloth, but I do have to admit this. “Actually, yes. I am a little bit anxious.”

“Anxious? Why?” For once, it’s Sebastian who wipes crumbs instead of being the cause of their distribution. He brushes them away with gentle fingers, no lint roller needed.

Usually, Patrick is king of any cuddling that happens in this kitchen. This morning, a social-justice warrior wraps me up and won’t let me go. “If it helps, Reece is nervous as well. He must be. He keeps asking about you.”

His dressing gown muffles me asking a startled, “When?”

“This weekend. I saw his texts to Pat.”

“Nosy, babe,” Patrick rumbles in a reminder of Reece, who sounded similarly husky before signing those reorganisation papers. No repeats , he’d stated. Now I ask his youngest brother to do just that. “What did he ask about me?”

“Who, Reece?” Patrick stands in tree position, not even wobbling a little. “Just stuff like how you were doing. Whether you’re looking forward to working with him. What can he do to make it easy for you. Things like that.”

Sebastian pulls back from our cuddle, adding a little distance. He studies me first, his next eye contact pinning Patrick. “And he wants to know if Pat is any closer to coming home to Cornwall for good instead of only at Christmas.”

There’s no chance of that. London is life, and everyone knows it, but Patrick breaks his yoga flow to join in the only kind of three-way that happens in this home we’ve made together.

His arms envelop us both, and now isn’t the time to compare this hug to one that I can’t let myself reprise in Rex’s study later. For now, I soak up this contact until Patrick rumbles again. “Where is home?”

Sebastian answers. “Wherever we are together.” He means him and Patrick, and yet both sets of arms tighten around me as Sebastian blurts a bullet-fast offer scarily like Rex’s. “It isn’t too late to change your mind, Jack. We won’t advertise your room yet.”

“Babe,” Patrick quietly warns in the closest he ever comes to censuring his boyfriend. “What don’t we ever do to Jack?”

I can’t pull away fast enough to miss Sebastian’s muttered answer.

“Make him feel like he should do what we want.” He instantly does the opposite by issuing an order. “Just don’t go kissing any more frogs while we’re in Cornwall.” He tilts his head at bags packed for their early Christmas celebration. He also offers a helpful solution. “Unless they’re like Pat. Then go ahead and snog them.”

I leave then, in a hurry.

Or at least, I try to.

Crowds of commuters slow my journey even more than usual. Underground trains hum and rattle, making my still-empty stomach queasy when I reach Kensington, where I emerge into a crisp, bright December morning and to the sight of the foundation Land Rover already parked outside the townhouse.

I’m early, but Reece must have left Cornwall at dawn to get here before me. I see that when I let myself in. My new boss fills the study doorway, only today’s brightness means there are no shadows to hide that I haven’t been alone in going sleepless.

He’s grey. So are the smudges under his eyes, confirming that the rescue arm of the foundation has been busy. This morning, Reece looks like he just stepped off a lifeboat. He’s rumpled— crumpled —and if he has caught any sleep since driving up to London, I bet it was snatched on a dog-hair-covered sofa.

Who knew the sight of him looking this wiped out and scruffy would flip a switch inside me from anxious to all business, but, just like that, I drop my worries. And I definitely don’t slide across glossy floor tile in a fuckwit reminder of the last time we were in this hallway together. I glide into work mode instead, and it’s as easy as breathing.

Out comes my lint roller.

I don’t hesitate or even try to stifle that reflex, and it’s the right decision. Yes, he does bat away my roller, but he does it while grinning, which is so much better than my first impression.

He was worried.

That uneasiness returns the moment we sit opposite each other at the partners’ desk I usually share with Rex. “Right,” he says. “Let’s think about how to organise a party.”

“I can do better than only thinking.” I show him his schedule. “I got your name subbed for Rex’s on an invitation to London’s biggest banking ball tonight and another party tomorrow. You can research from the ground up.”

“Tonight and tomorrow?”

I don’t know how to describe what I see flicker. I’m used to reading Rex who, for all his financial brilliance, is as complex as a canine—as long as he is in Cornwall with his dogs and family, he’s happy.

Reece is different.

I can’t read him, so I keep talking and aim for brightness. “What better way to make contacts than wining and dining with real moneymakers? It’s a big part of what Rex does for the foundation.”

Reece is back to grey in an instant.

No.

He isn’t only grey now, like those smudges under his eyes. I’m pretty sure my thesaurus would fall open on to the word haggard, which is why I repeat what Sebastian asked only an hour ago.

“What’s wrong?”

He blinks. “Wrong? Nothing. I’m fine.”

Reece sits on the edge of the same chair Rex would usually tilt back in, ready to have a good long gossip, all loose-limbed and easy in his skin. If he were here, his feet would be up on the desk already. My new boss sits stiff-backed under a portrait of the island castle where Rex grew up, and perhaps today’s bright sunlight is why I notice the artist didn’t only paint a castle above a harbour. They also captured a boat race in progress.

Men pull hard together on oars like Rex and I pulled together right here in this room when he started the foundation. Now his chair squeaks as uneasily as Reece sounds. “Actually, that was a lie. Sorry, Jack.” He scrubs his face and gets more honest than I did this morning over a green and lumpy smoothie. “Nothing is fine. Absolutely everything went wrong this weekend, and I don’t see this week going any better if it involves partying instead of what I should be doing.”

He meets my eyes, his as stormy as the sky painted behind him, and I’ve spent three years facing this artwork. Today is the first time I grasp that it might not actually feature a boat race. Those men pulling on oars might not be desperate to win a medal or a trophy. They could be setting out on a shipwreck rescue mission, and that’s what Reece describes next by telling me what has happened since he last saw me.

It’s brutal.

“Got to an incident too late. We weren’t fast enough. The boat—” He seems to change his mind mid-sentence about sharing. “Sorry, sorry. It was shit, but it isn’t your job to deal with it.”

“Not my job?” It’s my turn to blink. I reopen the calendar on my tablet and pass it over the desk between us. “See how these slots are blanked out? They’re the transition periods I built in for Rex after his shifts on rescue duty.”

I fill Reece in on why I guarded those time slots so fiercely. I also make a mental note to add this task to a column headed vital in the handover chart I’ll make for my replacement.

“Rex needed time to get his head straight. Because it often wasn’t, Reece, not even a little. I mean, he’d be hauling kids out of the sea one minute and then flying to tax havens for billionaire clients the next. That’s the actual definition of a mindfuck. Do you know what I did schedule for him?” I touch my tablet to show what those blank slots in Rex’s diary kept hidden.

Debrief with Reece.

I turn the screen to face him. “Have you spoken to Rex about how the weekend went?”

He shakes his head. “No. I came straight here, and?—”

“And nothing.”

We’re alone, no reason for me to speak this quietly, as if someone might eavesdrop. This conversation feels intensely private.

I want to protect it.

And him.

“What do you do when Rex calls you?” I go ahead and answer for him. “You listen.”

I sum up what I’ve witnessed. “You listen to every single person on the foundation payroll. When someone needs to get a disaster off their chest, you’re the first port of call for them. For everybody.”

I can’t help how softly this question slips out.

“When rescues go wrong, who listens to you, Reece?”

He doesn’t reply, which is enough of an answer, so I place a call to Cornwall and pass Reece the phone. He takes it from me. He also says, “Hey, Rex,” quietly as I close the study door behind me, and when Reece finds me a half hour later, he looks better.

I mean, he’s still rumpled and crumpled. Still most likely hairy, but much less grey, which feels like the first win of this long week we’ll spend together. It’s one problem solved, which is still my favourite occupation. I aim for solving another by barking an order like I’m the boss here instead of the assistant.

“Get your coat.”

“Why?”

“Because a debrief was only phase one of Rex getting his head on straight after a rescue went wrong.” He doesn’t move, so I grab his coat from the stand for him, and he only fights me a little about putting it on when we should be working on our party planning. I even get as far as fastening his buttons for him before he covers my hands with his.

This look he gives me?

This small smile, which isn’t exactly happy, but is aimed directly at me?

It only means a wild urge to give him a good long hug almost swamps me. But we’ve been here before, haven’t we?

No repeats, I tell myself, and I slide my hands from underneath his in order to loop my own scarf around his neck.

“No,” he insists. “I don’t need this. You wear it.”

“I’m fine.” I straighten its tassels until they’re perfect. Doing that doesn’t usually take me long. Today, I’m unable to make myself hurry while he watches. I only get my shit together when a siren screams past, then I hold the front door open. “Come on.”

He doesn’t.

His feet stay planted on marble floor tile, only now more light floods inside, I can read his expression.

He’s surprised, so I hurry back and give a tassel one last straighten and mutter, “Honestly, you’re acting like no one ever took care of you. You’re a partner in a prestigious foundation. That’s important. You’re important. Of course I want all of London to see how much you matter.”

Perhaps it’s good I didn’t ditch Calum’s thesaurus. This floods out as if I turn its pages.

“You’re fundamental to everything the foundation stands for. Vital. Who set up our new play projects on French beaches to keep kids busy while you signposted their parents to safer options than illegal sea crossings?”

“Me,” he murmurs.

“And who suggested Rex hire the most amazing artist to share that workload?”

“Me.”

“You,” I agree. I also take a stab at why else he arrived here looking this drawn and haggard. “You are not out of your depth. You created a third of what we do. Rescues, play therapy, and signposting parents to safer options? You’re a natural leader. Don’t you dare forget it when you’re at parties surrounded by moneymakers.”

He blinks, silent for a long moment, before he glances over his shoulder at the study doorway. “But shouldn’t we?—”

“Hurry up and plan a party for people who could buy a fleet of lifeboats if they wanted? Who maybe shouldn’t need a party to persuade them a speedboat or two could save actual human beings?”

He neither nods nor shakes his head, so I keep going.

“Put it this way. Are you really telling me you’re in the right headspace to stroke Timothy Smallbone’s ego?”

Reece presses his lips together as if he can’t let himself lie. I know that’s what he’s doing—Rex often wears the same tight-lipped expression, which makes it a doddle to solve a second problem for him.

“Phase two of getting Rex’s head on straight involves reminding him of what really matters.” I go ahead and do that with my phone by sending a quick email before I step outside into icy crispness. “It always works for Rex. It might work for you too. How about you trust me?”

Reece must do.

Instead of getting down to business, I lead him through central London, and like a lamb, he follows.