On My Knees (Stark International Trilogy 2)

Frustrated, I tilt my face up and let the spray wash over me. Then I step out of the shower, dry off, and wrap the towel around me as I head back into the bedroom.

I get dressed quietly, careful not to wake Jackson. I know he must still be exhausted—god knows, I am—but I also don’t want to say goodbye. Not when I’m heading off to a job we should be going to together. And yes, I realize that’s stupid because this is reality now, and we are going to have to deal with it, but I’m not ready to face that reality yet. And if I don’t say goodbye, then maybe I can pretend that I’m at my desk on twenty-seven and he’s in his area on twenty-six, and everything is chugging along just fine.

God, I’m pathetic.

I push aside a pile of clean laundry so that I can sit in the blue upholstered chair by the window to put on my shoes. I bend over and tackle the tiny buckle on the tiny straps, and when I sit back up, I see Jackson watching me.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey yourself.” He pats the spot next to him. “Come here.”

I do, perching on the edge of the bed beside him as he props himself up on an elbow. I bend over and brush a kiss over his lips. “You should sleep.” I trace my fingers lightly over the bruises on his chest. “The rest will do you good.”

“You did me good,” he says, the words so heavy with meaning that they seem to fill me up.

“I’m glad.”

“And now you were going to sneak out without even saying goodbye.”

“No,” I say, but then blush when his brows rise with obvious disbelief. “Only because you were dead to the world, and I figured you needed the sleep.”

“Bullshit,” he says.

I lift a shoulder, looking not at him but at the bed. “Fine. It’s weird going without you.”

He’s silent a moment, then he tilts my chin up and looks at me. “Go,” he says. “And when you get home tonight, I’ll take you out for dinner. Deal?”

“Deal,” I agree, then laugh when he kisses my knuckles.

My mood stays light all the way to the office, but shifts toward gray when I meet with Damien to go over some of the pending details for the resort, including replacing Jackson. It’s the longest forty-seven minutes of my life, and I’m not sure how I manage to keep my mouth shut and not tell Damien that he is making a huge, huge, huge mistake.

“Under the circumstances, I think Glau is our best bet for a replacement,” Damien says. “I’m willing to consider other candidates, if you have them, but it’s going to have to be a perfect storm of availability, skill, and reputation to make it work.”

Other candidates.

As in, not Jackson.

As in, another architect that I will be working with. Because as much as I want Jackson Steele on this project, I don’t want it enough to walk away from the project manager position.

And that is the real elephant in the room. The monkey in my wrench. The worm in my candy bar—I haven’t told Jackson I feel guilty as shit for not quitting the resort. And he hasn’t told me that he doesn’t blame me for doing so.

But I know that he must, because how on earth can he not be pissed? Maybe not that I’m the one who fired him, because that really is on Damien’s shoulders. But that I stayed when I could have walked.

The gray cloud that had settled over me turns stormy, and it’s not even soothed by a double latte and chocolate croissant from Java B’s, the coffee shop in the Stark Tower lobby.

Nor does being at my desk on twenty-seven improve my mood, and for the first time in a long time I wish that I was sitting at the desk outside Damien’s office on thirty-five, and not here in the real estate department. Because every piece of paper I put my finger on reminds me of Jackson.

That’s especially true when I pull Glau’s preliminary sketches from the file and start to study them.

And goddammit, there is no comparison.

Everything about Jackson’s work is better. The presentation. The layout. The flow.

Where the resort that Glau had envisioned is undeniably dramatic, what Jackson has put on paper enhances the beauty of the island. Instead of using Santa Cortez as the equivalent of a concrete slab upon which to plunk an architectural masterpiece, Jackson has incorporated the island into his design. He used the tide pools, the inlets, the hills, and the valleys to define the layout, making the structures seem organic, as if they were part of the land and the sea.

Glau’s resort could be built as easily in Idaho as on Santa Cortez. But Jackson’s vision is inextricably intertwined with the island, so much so that I can imagine no other architect coming close to creating such a sweetly perfect design.