Page 21 of His Until Christmas

“To Jack.” Then he tags on an addendum. “And to Reece. I’ll swap shifts with him on Monday so he can learn from the best of the best while we still have him.”

He raises his glass one more time, and Rex’s eyes don’t only sparkle. They glitter.

“Congrats, Reece. Jack’s all yours until Christmas.”

6

Rex callsme at the crack of dawn the next morning. “Sorry.” He’s so gruff he could pass for his grandfather. He even harrumphs like Arthur. “Listen, you don’t have to plan anything for the foundation or make a template. And you absolutely don’t need to work with Reece, either. I just?—”

“Had too much Prosecco to think straight? Poor planning before an early morning flight home. It would be tragic if you had loads of turbulence, which I definitely didn’t spend all night manifesting.”

He chuffs out a laugh. “It would serve me right, but Iamsorry. It’s just that I really want?—”

“To go to a party where Timothy Smallbone can lord it over you for a whole evening?”

“Fuck, no.” He’s brutally honest. “I want to keep you, Jack. The foundation needs you. I went entirely the wrong way about trying to give you the time to see how much Reece needs you too. And I’m really sorry that I put you on the spot with him right there. I know better. Especially after...”

I know who he’s about to mention.

He doesn’t need to.

Comparing Reece to my last employer would be like comparing a marshmallow to a nail bomb. I don’t get a chance to say so. Rex is too busy falling on his sword to listen.

“Of course you couldn’t say no to PA-ing for Reece when he was right there listening. You can now, Jack. I’ll fix it, I promise.” He huffs out a huge sigh. “Only he really does need?—”

“Help.”

“Yes. But that’s no excuse for making a decision for you. I had this wild idea that you two might actually be good together. At work,” he quickly adds, as if he didn’t see both of us covered in glitter and jump to an uncomfortably accurate conclusion.

Sirens scream past my bedroom window. I have to pull the duvet over my head to hear Rex ask, “Forgive me?”

“Nothing to forgive.”

He’s relieved. “But seriously, think it over this weekend while he’s busy on rescue duty, and itwillbe busy. Pops says the radar is already pinging. Just message me by Sunday evening if you want me to cancel London for him. I’ll prove I meant what I said.” He ends his call with a promise. “Icanfix everything, even from the island.”

He isn’t the only foundation partner intent on proving something.

Reece keeps his word too, only in a way I don’t like.

He doesn’t text me.

I tell myself it is understandable. He’s busy. Or it would be understandable if a small voice didn’t whisper that Reece had plenty of busy times before, yet still wanted to wake up with me each morning. All I’m truly missing on Saturday and Sunday are a few nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. Their non-appearance shouldn’t leave a noticeable gap in my schedule.

The Reece-related part of my brain doesn’t get that message, like it also won’t let me message Rex to cancel my week of having a brand-new boss. It actually kicks into a higher gear than everon the first day I’ll officially be Reece’s PA, starting from the moment my gaze lands on a thesaurus Calum gave me as an apology for dropping out of our one-word group chat, blaming his hockey-season time zones.

Now that Reece has stopped playing as well, that book, which has been part of my morning routine for what feels like forever, is redundant, unnecessary, and every other synonym for what used to start so many of my mornings.

Yes, I know leafing through its pages wasn’t necessary when my phone is a pocket-size supercomputer. And paging through a thesaurus also wasn’t technically in the spirit of Reece’ssee word, say feelingrule, but it did give me lots of other options other than typinghappyeach time my phone pinged.

I haven’t needed to pull that book into bed with me since Friday, and no one else should notice that shift in my habits early on Monday morning.

Tell that to Sebastian. He can be as tenacious as a terrier when it comes to his work. Today, he’s a bloodhound at our breakfast table, sniffing out that I’m out of sorts, which is lunacy when Reece has only stopped what we both acknowledged shouldn’t continue.

And yet…

Which word would he have typed this morning?

That’s what I’ve woken up wondering for three days running, ever since leaving a dinner that ended with a formal handshake instead of the kind of kiss we shared in Rex’s study, so my heart surges at my phone pinging as I try to eat my breakfast.