Page 40 of Love JD

Pushing those thoughts aside, I sniffed back my tears and heated up the breakfast he had made me. It tasted amazing, of course. He’d made the oatmeal with butter, brown sugar, walnuts, and spices like cardamom and cinnamon to compliment the saltiness. Ordinarily, I ate everything without complaint because tagging along with my dad all over the world had given me a varied palate. But even I could admit that he’d put extra care into making sure it tasted good.

Feeling a little better after breakfast, I slid across the polished floors in my ankle socks back to the bedroom and set up my laptop and textbooks to study for my tests. I wasn’t sure when Zev planned to “proctor” these exams, but I wanted to be prepared for whenever he had the time.

If there was anything I knew I could get right, it was ecology. Specifically, forest ecology. I always had a knack for classes like biology and chemistry even if my math limped to catch up, and my love for the smallest living things came about from my travels.

When I was fourteen, I’d been in Finland with Dad while he visited with ecologists studying phytoplankton, and I remembered giggling at the idea that a bunch of brainy scientists would study something that featured as a nemesis in SpongeBob SquarePants. But then I’d found out that the littlest organism found in wide patches throughout our oceans was responsible for more than half of our oxygen supply. We were alive because of them.

It had stunned me—and inspired me. I had realized that our grandest achievements rested on the smallest of miracles, and that gift deserved to be protected. Forest ecology wouldn’t study phytoplankton, of course, but it did study lichen. And fungi. I smiled to myself at the thought, remembering Zev’s insistence that they were the same thing when we’d first met. Hopefully, if he was proctoring my final exam, he would re-think that when he graded my answers.

I crammed as much chemistry into my brain as I felt I could stand, getting up every fifteen minutes to keep the blood flowing and keep my blood pressure from taking a dive. Eventually, I couldn’t look at another equation or I was going to pass out from actual boredom instead of a syncope episode, so I stood carefully and made my way down the hallway. As I walked, I tapped through a shopping app so I could order groceries to be delivered. I meandered into the front room, which looked out over the front yard and quiet street. I perched on a window bench while I placed my order, and then I figured I should call Tristan to update him about my “kidnapping.”

I would probably leave out the kissing deal, though. Definitely. On second thought, it was probably best to pretend that deal hadn’t been made at all, going forward.

A car drove slowly around the cul-de-sac, its tires sticking to the warm asphalt as it rolled to a stop outside Zev’s house. I glanced at it, wondering if Zev had more ex-girlfriends who intended to humiliate me. It did seem to be a girl, but she looked down at her phone, up at the house, and then rolled away again. Shrugging, I grabbed a throw from the couch and shuffled back through the house to the sliding glass door near the sunroom.

Zev had a stunning backyard, and I felt a pang of jealousy over the mature trees, soft grass, and general feel of secluded sanctuary of it all. If I had a yard like this, I’d probably spend eighty percent of my time in it. I found a bench near a cluster of rose bushes by the far right fence and pulled up Tristan’s number as I sat on it. I had no idea how he would react to me staying with Zev, but I knew for sure if he thought I was kissing said guy, he would blow a gasket.

Kissed, I reminded myself, picturing the elegant vision who had waltzed into Zev’s kitchen last night and reminded me that I was an inchworm to her graceful leopard. Past tense. You are an idiot for letting yourself get as attached as you are. I tapped Tristan’s number with unnecessary force.

He answered with a hushed, “Hey, kid.”

Was “kid” a universal vibe I put off? Jesus. “Ugh, not you, too,” I griped.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” I rolled my eyes and stood from the seat. I teetered on my feet as black spots danced in my vision. “Oh shit.”

“Isla?”

I knew I managed to catch my fall when my forearm slammed into something hard, but that was it. The ineluctable fist of unconsciousness closed its fingers over my mind, and I lost myself to it.

Chapter thirteen

Zev

I faced the COO of GreenTech across the boardroom table and exercised the greatest restraint not to wrinkle my nose. A sculpture made of ground beef stuffed into his Armani three-piece suit would have been a more appealing sight than the bloated, snuffling creature in the chair opposite from me. He kept blowing his sodden nose into the same handkerchief that had gone limp with moisture an hour ago, and his complexion ranged from mottled chipped beef to gangrene depending on how angry I’d made him.

Which, as it turned out, was a lot.

“The FTC has already signed off on this,” he insisted, his voice gargled with what I could only assume was phlegm.

I leaned away from him. “I’m aware, but I cannot, in good conscience, go forward with this merger knowing what I do about your company’s unethical practices, Mr. Ferguson.”

“Lies,” he gurgled out, his eyes—as nondescript as his hair and wheat cracker personality—bounced from the paperwork between us and back to my face. “Those are fabrications. Falsehoods.”

“Fake news, I get it,” I drawled. “Regardless, even scandalous suspicions must be brought to Earth Care. If not, you could be held legally and fiscally responsible in ways I’m not sure even I could wriggle you out of.”

“It’s about the bottom line,” he insisted, and using the same handkerchief he’d emptied buckets of snot into, he wiped at the perspiration on his forehead.

I gagged in my mouth. “Your interests are my interests, Mr. Ferguson,” I replied calmly. “And deception is not in either of our best interests.”

“You tell me this ten minutes before we meet to finalize the SEC filings?” he asked with breathy anger.

Truthfully, that had been my bad. I’d taken too long to dither about how to handle the situation when I knew, ethically, I couldn’t compromise what I believed. Even for a merger that would save mine and Azura’s jobs. “I did hesitate,” I replied honestly, lifting my hands from their folded position under my chin. “But the truth remains the same.”

Mr. Ferguson chewed on his lip, pulling it through his teeth like a piece of salmon taffy. After thinking for a moment, which I allowed despite my conviction to not capitulate on this, he slapped a meaty hand on the table and turned back to me. “Talk to their lawyer first. Ask if they know.”

A frighteningly competent suggestion. “Alright,” I replied slowly. “That’s fair enough. I can pull Ms. West aside when she arrives.”

---