Saving the CEO(72)

He didn’t give her one. “This is the night sky as it would be tonight. After this, there’s a show we can play. It’s about the formation of stars.”

She tried to talk, to express incredulity, but he kept talking over her.

“I want to kiss you. Hell, I want to…do things to you. But there’s some stuff I have to tell you first.” He gestured to the other side of a small projector set up in the center of the space, which was the source of the stars on the ceiling. She followed him around to a blanket that was set up on the floor. A picnic basket sat next to a bottle of scotch.

“Oh my God,” she said.

Tugging her to the floor to sit beside him, he opened the basket and handed her a Chinese takeout container. “First, about the Wexler deal.”

Yes! Even amidst her grief this past week, she’d been dying to know for sure that Wexler had sold. Jack handed her a fork. She stabbed a bit of the food—he seemed to want her to eat, though dinner was the last thing on her mind. She brought the fork to her mouth. It looked like shredded chicken breast in some kind of sauce. She ventured a taste. “Oh! This is…awful!” He handed her a thick napkin, almost as if he knew her reflex would be to spit out the food, which she did not waste any time doing. “What is that?”

“Pork with preserved lemons.”

She laughed then. A real, unbridled, full belly laugh. It felt so good after her week of tears. Strange, but good. “So?” she asked when she’d composed herself. “Did he sell?”

Jack lay on his back, hands clasped at the back of his head as if he were reclined in a meadow somewhere in the country, taking in the night sky. “He did, but had one condition. Insisted it be written into the documentation.”

“What was it?”

“I get Wexler Construction and the island, but two weeks a year the resort is reserved for math camp.”

“What?” she shrieked, throwing herself down next to him and swatting his shoulder. “Shut up!”

“I told him fine, but I had no idea who was going to run the thing.” He shot her a wry smile. “It sure as hell isn’t going to be me.”

“Shut up!” She didn’t seem to be capable of saying anything else.

“I did promise you a bonus if the deal went through. What do you say? Camp Cassie? It has a certain ring to it, no?”

Her throat felt like it was closing, so she took a moment to arrange herself next to him, lying on her back the same way he was. Looking up, she could easily spot the Big and Little Dipper, Orion, Draco—all the constellations she knew from books. When she’d gotten control of her voice, she said, “What happened with Carl?”

Jack turned over so he was lying on his side. “I showed him the email—the email I suspect you sent—and he admitted everything. I’m not going to press charges in exchange for him going into treatment.”

“Did you fire him?”

“Yeah. I might hire him back, though. We’ll see.”

“So Carl and my mother are both in rehab for Christmas,” Cassie said. “Kind of ironic, huh?”

He reared back a little, almost involuntarily, it seemed. “Your mom showed up again?” His tone had turned cold.

“Don’t worry, I’m not paying for it this time. I finally see that there’s no point in continuing to pay for these gold-plated programs if she’s going to keep skipping out.” She shrugged. “Who knows, maybe the seventh time’s the charm.”

“For her sake, I hope so.”

God. How did he do that? All he’d done was touch her arm and breathe near her ear, and everything inside her came alive. The urge to burrow into his arms was almost overwhelming. But how often did a girl get a private planetarium show? She snuggled into the crook of his arm and whispered, “So let’s see this show of yours.”

“Oh,” Jack mock-groaned. “I knew it. You’re going to want to pay attention, aren’t you?”

“I’m not even going to ask how you did this.”

He grinned as he got up and went to the projector. “I know people.”

“Of course you do.” She smiled as he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and surreptitiously studied it as if he were cheating on an exam.

Once the show got going, he moved back to stretch out next to her. After a minute or so, he began inching closer.

“No way!” said Cassie, scooting away from him. “I want to see the show.”

Jack made a strangled, vaguely frustrated noise, but planted a quick kiss on her neck and rolled over onto his back so that he wasn’t touching her at all.

They spent the next twenty minutes marveling over the universe as it unfolded before them. Well, Cassie did. Jack watched her more than he watched the show. She could feel his attention as surely as if he’d been shining a spotlight on her, but she kept her eyes trained upward, watching gasses condense and explode, throwing out new elements into the heavens, the elements that would, over billions of years, go on to make everything in the universe.