CHAPTER SEVEN
Chapter Four
Vanessa
The wine wasn't quite going to cut it tonight so I opted for the bottle of pre-made margarita and promised myself I'd just have one. Which turned out to be an easy promise to keep, as the bottle was pretty much empty as there was less than half a glass left.
"Evening!" My overly cheerful flatmate banged the door closed and sighed happily. I knew that noise; I recognized it and its meaning like a dog knew the sound of cheese wrappers.
"I don't need an explanation. I know where you've been and who you've been doing. What I want to know is why there's less than a mouthful of Margarita left and what you're going to do about it?" I wasn't just frustrated at the lack of my alcohol of choice: Jackson Callaghan's naked torso was plastered all over my retinas and I had no idea what to do about it, other than accosting him in his office gym and demand he took me in the shower.
"Well, someone's not playing with her vibrator today." Sophie smiled knowingly and opened the fridge, pulling out another bottle of the pre-mixed margarita, this one full. "It's a school night, so just one for you. Drink that is. Not orgasm." She topped my glass up until it was full and returned the bottle to the back of the fridge.
"I've met someone who's attractive. Hot too," I confessed, staring at the drink.
"Finally. You're considering dusting off your lady parts. Do you want the number of my waxologist?" She sat down on a bar stool and smiled over at me like only someone who has just been freshly fucked can. Sophie was one of my oldest friends. She now ran a growing chain of beauty salons in central London and really didn't need the rent I'd given her since I left Richard the dick. She was currently seeing her personal trainer, who was around ten years younger than her and she appreciated the fact he was only interested in one thing.
"I've kept on top of that," I told her. "And it doesn't matter anyway as he's never going to get to inspect how the grass isn't growing."
"He's not the bloody client, is he?" She lost some of the freshly fucked look.
I said nothing.
"Van! Do you think you find him attractive because he's safe? You know, because you can't actually do anything about it given your 'no having sex with a client policy'?"
"No. I find him attractive because he's tall, has arms to die for and I want to trace my tongue over every one of his tattoos multiple times. And he's intelligent and he has long hair that he puts up in one of those man bun things when he's working out..."
"You've seen him working out? When?"
"This morning. Early. I've been using the gym in the office. He had no top on and sweet mother Mary... we're going out for dinner tomorrow but it's just as my client and..." I picked up the nearby pair of over gloves and half growled, half screamed into them. "He's going to help me with getting away from Richard too. I've got to send him some information over but he's offered to work on it from a legal perspective."
"Which you should've started on months ago," Sophie said. "In all seriousness, you shouldn't even dream of sleeping with him until you've cleaned Richard out of every speck of ownership. Or he's paid you off well enough so you can start your own firm. If Mr. Bicep has managed to get you to start proceedings, then he really is your penis in shining armor. Here's your mail," she passed me two envelopes. One was a letter from my gran, who, despite being able to work a computer and send emails just fine, liked to send me postcards of famous Derbyshire beauty spots. She refused to send them without an envelope just in case they were censored. The other was a statement from the bank. I opened it without thinking, listening to Sophie's brief outline of the training she'd had before she hit the gym with her latest boy-toy.
I didn't hear the conclusion.
"The complete..." I stared at the piece of paper in my hand, words escaping my clutches.
"Vanessa?"
"Richard... he's..."
"What's he done, honey. Try to breathe. It's good for you." She held my shoulders and shook them slightly.
"He's transferred four grand from our office account to his personal..." I went straight to my phone and logged into my digital banking app. I hadn't paid attention to one particular office account as it was what we called the slush fund, containing about ten thousand pounds should we need it in an emergency if something dire occurred to the business. Nothing came out of the account, which Richard knew. I immediately moved four thousand into my personal account and then concentrated on breathing. The rest of the accounts were currently where they should've been.
"I think you need to call him," Sophie said, looking irate. She'd never liked Richard. I had a sneaking suspicion that at some point, before I got together with him, she may have sampled some of his goods. I'd never asked. I really didn't want to know.
"Richard. I'm going to call him in the morning. Not now, he'll probably let the floozy answer just to piss me off."
"No, not Richard."
"Then who?"
"Your penis in shining armor, of course."
***
It was just after nine when I plucked up the courage to phone Jackson, my pulse rate akin to someone who had just won gold in an Olympic sprint and similar to when I'd first noticed what Richard had done. My FitBit thought I'd been exercising hard for about forty minutes even though 'anxious and stressed' wasn't a workout option. I pushed aside the butterflies in my stomach that made me feel as if I was fourteen again and about to have my first kiss in some woods with a boy called Mark and instead focused on the fact that I was calling my lawyer. At 9 pm on a Thursday night. Not exactly business hours.
I was about to hang up when the ringing stopped.
"Hello?" he sounded sleepy. Shit. He was jetlagged and I was waking him up. Really good way to get him to give recommendations for my firm.
"I'm so sorry, Jackson. I forgot what time it was, and you've just traveled back. I'll see you tomorrow..."
"Hey, it's fine. I fell asleep on the couch so it's a good thing you've woken me else I'll be stiff as a board in the morning. What's the matter?" He sounded soft and reassuring. Nothing like the man I heard speaking to Seph this afternoon.
"It's... shit. It's not the job I'm doing for you. I was panicking and I'm still panicking, I guess and now I'm waffling..." I mentally kicked myself in the shins for sounding so moronic.
"You want me to come over?" He sounded more awake, as if he had just sat up. I looked around the lounge of Sophie's apartment. It was beautiful; Sophie had taste and money but it wasn't mine and I didn't want to have what was technically a business conversation here.
"No, it's too much trouble. Look, the short of it is, Richard transferred four thousand pounds from one of our accounts to his personal one a few days ago. This was without asking me. I've just checked the statement this evening. I've gone in and moved the same amount to my personal account – not to spite him, just to stop him moving more..." I felt like I was blathering on even more.
"What's your address? I'm coming to you."
"You don't need to. I'm fine, honestly. This can wait until tomorrow. My friend Sophie's here and..."
"Your address, Vanessa."
His tone of voice knocked me to the ground with its quiet, strong insistence and I passed on the information. I suddenly felt tired and I realized that I was in need of someone to help fight the battle with Richard the dick.
"You're about ten minutes from me."
He was there in less than that, dressed in jeans, a plain white t-shirt, and a leather jacket, carrying a motorcycle helmet. His hair was mussed and I could see the lines on his face from where he'd been asleep. He looked rumpled and delicious, a controlled mess of unshaven man and determined lion.
Sophie eyeballed me, said hello and made a discreet exit, claiming she was meeting a friend for drinks. I was unsure whether to believe her, or whether she was meeting the trainer again for another round of cardio. Or, knowing Sophie, reacquainting herself with her ex-husband.
Jackson sat on the sofa, a white leather affair that would never have been my choice but I had still managed to doze off on it a fair few times. He put a rough hand through his hair and grinned, looking ten years younger than I knew he actually was.
"How long have you lived here?" he said, looking around. "It's in a great location."
He was right, it was. Set in the heart of Southwark, a stone's throw from all the places you'd like to be and a few minutes' walk from her flagship salon, Sophie had done very well for herself. "I moved in with Sophie a couple of months after Richard and I split up. At some point, we have to sell the apartment we have together, but we've not properly had that discussion yet."
Jackson nodded. "He's not exactly short of money, Vanessa. I did a few checks on him and your company this afternoon. Why would he want to take money out of your business?"
"I'm not sure. It could be because he's trying to push my buttons. It could be his father has stopped his allowance or his current girlfriend could've moved it over. All she'd need is to have her fingerprint recognized on his phone." I shrugged, sitting down on the loveseat opposite Jackson, not trusting myself to be next to him.
"Do you have enough money in your own personal account to cover you for a few weeks if needs be?" he said after a moment's pause.
"Yes, why?" I did. I was good with money. I didn't deprive myself of things I wanted, but neither was I a spendthrift. We'd not been rich when I was growing up, living in a small village, my dad an odd job man and my gran running the local post office. No one in my family had ever stayed in school past sixteen, so I'd been an anomaly going to university. My family hadn't known how to support me; higher education wasn't something they were familiar with, so I'd learned to figure things out for myself, including finances.
"Transfer back what you've moved. I'll have the accounts frozen first thing tomorrow so he can't touch anything else without the court getting involved. We'll start moving things on and you don't need to worry. We'll bring a petition for unfair prejudice and have the business valued – I don't need to bore you with the details, all you have to do is trust me." He relaxed back against the sofa, ruffling his hair once more. I was aware of him watching me, especially my lips and I couldn't resist licking them. I was also suddenly aware that I was wearing yoga pants and a very old t-shirt, having changed as soon as I got in from the office and forgetting how I looked due to Richard the dick being, yet again, a dick.
I stood up, needing to fill the room with some noise, action even. "Would you like a drink? I'm sorry you've come all this way – you could've just helped over the phone."
"Just water would be good," he said. "I could've told you over the phone, you're right, but I'm literally half a dozen streets away and I wanted to check to make sure you were okay."
I filled up a glass from the filtered water tap. Sophie's specialty was skin; there's no way she wouldn't have filtered water instantly. It gave me a chance to make sure I was pulling myself together; no one had checked I was okay in a long time and I was holding on to that thought to deal with when I was on my own later. "I know I probably sounded fragile. I've been burying my head in the sand with Richard," I said, confession coming far too easily. "It's been a big change."
He nodded, accepting the drink. "Change isn't a bad thing. I feel apprehensive about my dad officially retiring and leaving me running the firm. Part of me's excited and looking forward to it and then another part is thinking 'god, how many ways are there to fuck this up?'"
I laughed quietly, sitting down with a glass of water for myself. The margarita was room temperature and I wasn't in the mood for alcohol now. "You'll do fine. You've been pretty much running the place for over a year and the company's growing. And you have support from your family. That counts for a lot."
He looked at the glass in his hand, avoiding my eye contact and clearly thinking. He had trimmed his beard since this morning and part of me missed the slightly unkempt look. "It does. They're good people, Max and Claire especially. And Payton. She's..." He stopped himself, shaking his head. "You don't want to hear me go on about my brothers and sisters while you're just drinking water."
I smiled, shaking my head. The atmosphere in the room felt thick and I realized I was clutching at my glass with both hands. I hadn't felt like this in a long time, if ever. Nervous, happy, curious and affected by the man in front of me in many ways. Certainly not when I met Richard. "Your family that I've met so far have all been lovely," I said. "Even Seph. I'm not sure if he's your brother anymore after you tore him a new one this afternoon though."
"You heard that?" He looked perturbed. "Shit."
"I was in the copying room at the time." It was next to Seph's office. I may or may not have been hoping that Jackson would have needed to photocopy something after yelling at his brother. "I doubt anyone else heard."
"No, trust me, lots of people will have heard and if they didn't hear, someone will have told them." He sighed, looking tired again. "Seph's girlfriend finished with him a few months ago and he's not managing well. I don't think it's a bad thing – I know that sounds harsh. She was his first proper girlfriend but there never seemed to be much, I don't know, chemistry between them. They were more like friends who I assume slept together."
"I've seen him out in a couple of the bars near Borough Market before I started at your place," I said. "He hasn't looked too wasted, or out of control but he's always had a different couple of girls with him and been the center of attention." Seph was hard to miss. Out of the three brothers, I had met so far, he was the most gorgeous. He'd been featured in a gossip column in one of the weekly magazines for being seen with an up and coming actress and there was speculation that he was about to be offered a modeling contract, which was just speculation. I suspected he would become of the most eligible bachelor types, arm candy for socialites, and Callahan Green would need someone to deal with the publicity from that.
Jackson held my eyes, almost scowling. He wasn't stupid, he'd get the possibility for adverse publicity. "Is there a finishing school for lawyers I could send him to somewhere?"
"You could enforce a leave of absence until he sorts himself out," I suggested. "I've had to do that with one of my employees after she lost her mum. She was determined to keep working but it was detrimental to everything else."
"I could and I've thought about it, but his work isn't suffering and I think taking that routine away will make him worse." He finished the water, holding the empty glass on the arm of the sofa.
"I'll put together a general protocol for when staff appears in the media outside of work. You have some fairly young employees so you should have that in place anyway and it'll give Kirsty some guidance as to what to do if anything negative comes up," I gulped down what was left of my drink. "You look tired, Jackson. I feel bad enough you've come over to check I'm okay."
"You promise me you won't worry about this?" he said, gesturing to the bank statement and leaning forward. "I honestly don't think you have anything to worry about with Richard. It's an easy case for me to get you the best outcome possible."
I stood up and went to the floor to ceiling window that overlooked London. From here I could see Tower Bridge, The Shard, the continuum of lights that told me I was never alone in this place. I didn't want to look at Jackson, because as well as every cell in my body telling me that sex with this man would be a homecoming like no other, they were also telling me I could trust him, something that was unknown to me unless it was my dad and gran back in Derbyshire.
"Van," he said and I realized he was standing behind me. I felt the pressure of his hands-on top of my shoulders. "He's going to know by Monday at the latest that you've hired your current client as your lawyer. There is nothing he can do about that, it's not a wrong thing to do. I will tell his solicitor all communication has to go through me and he is not to contact you directly if you like. Does he have any clients at the moment? Is there any reason he would need to speak with you about work?"
His thumb and fingers started to meld into my shoulders and I wished I wore a padded bra rather than the old and comfy thing I had on because my nipples were erect and the window at night made a good mirror. But he was holding my eyes through our reflections, not looking down and his hands felt so good, like heat against my skin on a cold day. "He doesn't have clients. I'm the creative partner– my role has always been to head up that team. He should have been running the business side, dealing with clients and managing workload and time expectations but wasn't much involved after the initial year or so. He runs another company as well, one he started himself with some start-up capital from his trust fund."
"Okay. So he's no reason to contact you," he said. His thumbs were now pressing towards my spine and I didn't care about my ex or website design or engagement rates, I just want to melt into this man and for him not to be my client. I wanted his hands under my clothes and mine under his, discovering new territories like two seventeenth-century explorers. "He probably will though."
"Yes. I've tried to speak to him about buying him out or the other way around and I've made some reasonable proposals, really reasonable as I just want him out of my life but his response has always been rather outlandish." I realized the back of my head was leaning against his chest and didn't bother to lift it away. "I don't think he wants to sell the apartment or the business or have me leave. He wants me on the side as a backup plan. I don't even think he's told his father I've moved out."
"Why the hell did you start seeing him in the first place? I shouldn't criticise as I've known you less than a day, but he seems a complete idiot." His fingers pointed towards my scalp and pressed lightly into my hair. My eyes closed, no shits were given about how visible my hard nipples might be now.
"I was young and the idea of being a power couple was attractive. He could be charming too and I could manipulate him to take on board my ideas. He was the perfect career opportunity and a relationship with him seemed sensible, although Sophie did say at the time I should keep work and my love life separate." His hands paused, as if he's considering the last thing I said and I wished I could take it back.
"I think that's difficult. Lots of people meet their partner through work. Maybe working with them on a daily basis is more complicated but it sounds like you were going to have different roles in the business anyway. And hindsight's a bitch." His left hand dropped to my waist. I wanted to turn around and face him, to see what was in his eyes without using our reflection. I wanted to feel his beard against my face and touch his arms, trace his tattoos and know what his skin felt like against mine.
The click of the front door broke the silence that had fallen, gentle strumming of undoubtedly expensive heels against the hardwood flooring echoing through the rooms.
"Fucking bastard shoes."
I started to laugh quietly, my shoulders shaking. Jackson's hands remained where they were and I could feel him laughing too.
"Why do we put ourselves through the pain of looking good for fucking men who are nothing but..."
"Hi, Sophie!" I decided now was a good time to interrupt her diatribe. "How were your drinks?"
"Oh shit, sorry." She walked around to where we were, eyes like slits, studying. Jackson's hands were by his sides but we were still too close for just business – depending on the business, of course. "Excuse my language," she looked at Jackson. "I'm not usually as colorful."
"She is." I couldn't help it.
Sophie glared at me. "And besides, I thought either your meeting would be over by now or you'd be in the bedroom." She grinned wickedly and walked away. "Drink?"
I felt blood rush into my cheeks and I forced myself to look up at Jackson. "Sorry," I mouthed. He smiled, coffee eyes sparkling. "No thanks," I called to Sophie. "I'm going to have an early night."
Jackson headed into the living room, exchanging pleasantries with Sophie and picking up his jacket and helmet. I waited impatiently near the front door, knowing that the night was over and wishing it wasn't, wondering what would've happened if Sophie had been back later.
Maybe it was for the best. The Callaghan's were becoming media fodder; seven beautiful siblings from a wealthy background, all of whom were intelligent, single and successful. I certainly wouldn't do anything to enhance either of our reputations, business or personal, by starting something off with Jackson – if he was interested, and I had the feeling he was.
"I'll see you tomorrow. Are you using the gym in the morning?" he said, pulling on his jacket which looked slightly beaten up and well used.
"Probably," I said. "I'll try not to swear too much this time."
"Nothing I haven't heard before, just not from a pretty girl doing pull-ups better than I've seen some men do. You were impressive." He was interested, there was a husky sound to his voice and I was aware that his gaze had dropped to my chest.
"Thank you," I said, trying not to stick the girls out a little more. I wasn't sure what I was thanking him for so I tried to rein the hormones back in. "And thanks for coming around to check on me. I'm not used to that and it was nice."
He bent down and kissed my cheek. I breathed in the scent of his aftershave, musky and male, and imprinted it in my memory. By morning he might well have removed himself back into the client zone – where he needed to be – and I couldn't manage another disappointment right now.
"'Night, Van," he said, opening the door.
"'Night." I closed it behind him, bolting it securely and adding the extra lock so if I decided to chase after him I'd be slowed down enough so I'd come to my senses.
Only I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to come to my senses.