Romance: The CEO (5 page)

11

“What do you mean that’s not why you asked me here? If I’m not here for an exposé, then what am I here for?”

Jackson gives a long, drawn out sigh, running a hand through his hair apprehensively.

“Your editor, Hank, is an old family friend. I contacted him a few days ago and told him I was lonely. He suggested I consider doing the interview. I said I would take it under advisement only if he sent you.”

“Okay. But why me?”

“Because I wanted it to be someone who would tell things to me straight and judge me accordingly. What better person than the beautiful journalist who thinks I’m one of the most evil men in the world.”

“I don’t think you’re evil,” I barely whisper, tears beginning to form in my eyes, but Jackson is already walking away again, observably uninterested in anything else I have to say.

“Go home, Claire. Write what you want about me,” he shouts back.

I contemplate going after him, but it’s pointless.

He’s made it clear how he feels.

He wants to stay here with just his canvases for company whilst the rest of the world breathes on around him.

After walking along the cliff’s edge myself for a while, I manage to clear my head.

I return to the mansion with the intention of sitting down with Jackson so that the both of us can figure out a plan of action for this damn interview.

But when I find him shut away in his room, refusing to answer my gentle taps on the door, I am once torn between staying and going.

As another hour passes and only more silence from his bedroom, I choose to leave him to it.

I don’t know Jackson well enough to do anything more than that.

Before yesterday I was just a stranger to him.

No, I was worse than that.

I was a stranger trying to depict him in my articles as an evil rich industrialist, hiding himself away from the world because he knew he was guilty of a crime.

But really he’s just a lonely billionaire with a virulent secret that he doesn’t deserve to be burdened with.

He’s repented enough for what wasn’t even his fault to begin with.

I scribble a note for him before I leave, carefully placing it down on the kitchen counter where I know he’ll see it:

Dear Jackson,

It wasn’t your fault. You’re a good man. I know that sounds ironic coming for me, given our history and all, but please believe me when I say that the world will forgive you for what happened in Zimbabwe. Just as I have forgiven you for it.

Your artwork is haunting and inspirational. It deserves to be seen. Regardless of whether you show it to anyone else ever again, I hope you never stop painting.

I’m glad I got the chance to meet you. I won’t ever forget the brief time we spent together.

Yours truly,

Claire

I wonder if Jackson can see the black BMW as I gradually make my way down the long and windy driveway, and back out to greater Vancouver Island.

My eyes are glued to the rear vision mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of him from one of the windows of the second story, or see his figure running out after me, shouting that he’s changed his mind.

But the strange billionaire that I have gotten to know over the last day or so never appears.

Soon the mansion becomes merely a blur, sinking back in the wooded landscape once more, an exodus that dares me to wonder if it had even existed at all.

12

One week later…

“So what are you going to do?”

Sophia is staring at me with her wide brown eyes, her cute mouse smile drawn in a theatrical round O.

“I don’t know,” I sigh dejectedly. “What would you do?”

But the only answer she’s willing to give me is a mere shrug of her shoulders.

It’s only been a week since I left Canada and Jackson’s mansion by the sea, but boy does it feel like longer.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I’ve never truly understood that expression.

Until now.

It’s not that I’m in
love
with Jackson.

I mean, how can you love someone after only a few days, right?

And more significantly how can you be in love with someone who you have loathed in the past?

There is something there though, some elusive feeling that I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try.

Have I fallen for him?

Perhaps.

Would I be with him if I had the chance?

Possibly…

And that’s about as much as I can figure out right now.

In front of me the first draft of the story glows on the computer screen, the battle now over between the journalist and her conscience, with the underdog coming out on top:

The Silent Painter

I would be the last person to say that the billionaire recluse Jackson Windsor is a good guy.

I have always said just the opposite.

Up until recently I didn’t know anything else about him except for his sordid past.

A past that is laden with alleged involvements in illegal diamond mining, forced labor and torture camps.  Jackson Windsor might be one of the richest and most mysterious men in the world, but the high flying and handsome tycoon also has a secret...a deep, dark secret that I was determined to uncover as soon as I stepped through the grand doorway of his lavish cedar mansion on an isolated coastline of Vancouver Island…

I’ll never forget the moment when I first saw those magnificent walls, the beautiful array of canvases adorning them that had instantly taken my breath away.

There’s an unusual scope of genius in his artwork that many artists only aspire to achieve.

A genius that I also hope Windsor will one day choose to share and entrust to the world.

Thus, instead of a young, greedy and guilty tyrant, I found a lonely billionaire.

His dark secret…merely an ability to paint…

And so the article goes on, everything there in full detail except for what I went to the mansion to find out in the first place.

My conscience is what ultimately swayed me.

I just couldn’t do it to Jackson.

I just couldn’t write the whole story without his permission.

So I published it void of the mine collapse and the deaths of the three hundred miners, focusing instead on a forlorn billionaire who prefers to live out his days as a brilliant artist in seclusion.

A billionaire whom I also hope will one day share his mastery with the rest of us, entrusting the meaning of his canvases to the world.

In the end it is Jackson’s story to tell.

Not mine.

When I’d given Hank the final draft of the story along with a half forged interview transcript, I was prepared for the fallout.

I’d already decided that if he were going to demote me back to being a
‘How To’
girl, then my time at
Leading Edge Press
would be over.

I’d simply walk out and never look back.

But when it came down to the crunch, Hank didn’t have the balls to do it.

In fact, he barely said a word for the entire time I was sitting in his office.

He just took the story from me, made a few grammatical corrections and an extra paragraph break, and then handed it back.

Not one comment on its content.

It was very un-Hank like and rather unsettling, to be honest.

“Maybe Hank’s wife left him?” Sophia suggests, handing me the mug of steaming hot coffee.

We’re taking some time out on one of the lime green sofas to find our “inner inspiration.” Well, that’s what we’re masking our gossip session as anyway.

“No. I don’t think it’s that,” I say, blowing on the coffee before taking a sip. “I got the impression it was something work-related. He didn’t seem sad, just indifferent. It was weird.”

“Yeah, it sounds it. I haven’t seen him this morning yet, but he cancelled the staff meeting for today.”

“What? Why?”

“No idea. He just sent an email saying there were changes happening and it was TBC.”

Changes happened?

To be confirmed?

Hank didn’t mention any of that earlier.

What the hell is going on?

I’m about to question Sophia further about it when I notice him like a shadow out of the corner of my eye.

No, it can’t be.

Not here.

13

“Whoa. Is that who I think it is?” I hear Sophia ask, but I’m already standing, the tall and navy blue pinstripe suit gaiting towards me.

He stops just a few steps away, his warm hazel eyes beaming at mine.

“Hello, Claire,” he states indubitably, a classic smirk carved on his lips.

It takes me a few moments to process that he’s really here, that he’s really towering in front of me in all his handsome grandeur.

“Hello, Jackson,” I say softly, unable to break away from his cavernous gaze. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to stop by and ah—” he pauses when he notices Sophia eavesdropping on the couch behind me, along with about ten other people who are dotted around the communal workspace.

“I wanted to see if you were free for lunch,” he continues in a lower octave.

Lunch?

Something tells me he hasn’t flown all the way over from Canada just for that.

“Lunch? Um…sure. Wait. No, I can’t,” I sigh. “Hank won’t let me. He’s a real stickler for breaks outside allocated hours.”

“Oh that’s not a problem,” Jackson says with a toss of his head. “Hank’s been fired.”

“What? Hank’s been fired? How do you know that?”

“Because I’m the one who fired him.”

“But, how could you possibly have been able to do that?”

“Because I bought the paper.”

“You bought the paper? As in this paper,
Leading Edge Press
?”

“Yes, Claire,” he says, the grin on his face making me feel a little stupid, although, on the other hand, I had absolutely no idea that any of this was even going on.

I throw him a look of open confusion. “Sorry, I’m not sure I’m processing all this right. I thought Hank was an old family friend of yours?”

“He is.”

“So why would you fire him?”

“It wasn’t a personal decision, Claire. It was business. He wasn’t the right fit for here. You said back at the mansion that you didn’t like the direction he was taking the paper in. It turns out a few other managerial staff members didn’t either. So I negotiated with the owner and here we are. I thought you’d be happy about the change?”

“I am. But, I mean…it’s just that…Hank was a good editor. I don’t think he deserved to be fired.”

“Don’t you worry about Hank. I gave him a job at another magazine I own – he’ll be fine. And it’s better than anyone else would have offered him.”

“Right,” I nod, still letting it all sink in. 

No more Hank.

No more sexism.

No more old-school ways of thinking affecting the news stories.

Wow, things will certainly be different around here.

“So who’s running the paper now. You?” I ask Jackson hesitantly.

“Me? Run a paper? I don’t know the first thing about journalism let alone how to be an editor. I was going to offer you the job actually,” he pronounces, his eyes dancing on mine.

“Me?” I practically squeak. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly,” he says with a wink.

“And so I’ll just be corresponding with you via video link from Canada?”

“From Canada? Oh, I won’t be in Canada.”

I feel my heart drop into my stomach.

He won’t be in Canada?

Why?

Where’s he going?

“I’ll be here in New York,” he carries on. “I’m moving back here, Claire.”

I feel the relief surge through me instantly, a wide smile carving onto my face.

“You’re moving to New York?” I reiterate, making sure I’ve heard him right so I don’t get my hopes up.

“Yes.”

“Why? I mean, what made you change your mind?”

“You,” he states clearly, like he suddenly doesn’t care who can hear us. “You were right about me being too cooped up in that mansion. It wasn’t good for me. I was long overdue for a breather.”

“It makes me really happy to hear you say that,” I tell him, still beaming from ear to ear.

“I’m going to hold an art exhibition too in a couple of months. I’m going to ‘
entrust my genius to the world’
.”

“You ready my article?” I laugh at him, my jaw starting to get sore from all the smiling.

“Of course I read your article. What do you think got me on the plane over here in the first place?”

He takes a step forward to fill the space between us, tenderly cupping my face in his hands and gazing deeply into my eyes like he’s finally found what he’s been searching for in them.

“So how about that lunch date, Miss Hudson?”