He kissed her cheek. “I’ll ask her to stay.”
Jack found Clementine in the library. She was running her finger along a row of bound spines. The room smelled of resin and lemon floor cleaner, mingling with her freshly showered scent. His mother’s linen pants hung loosely on her, the blue T-shirt snug enough to emphasize her lack of bra. He swallowed a groan. “Find something you like?”
She spun and faced him, eyes wide. “It’s a tad overwhelming.”
“You say that a lot around me.”
“You’re overwhelming.”
He could say the same about her. “The room doesn’t get used much.”
She tipped her head back and scanned the upper shelves. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Except in movies.”
Like with the bathroom, he tried to see the library from her perspective: thousands of books no one read, a piano that gathered dust, velvet couches and ornate curtains better suited to a Baroque era, brash in their extravagance. “My father wasn’t wealthy as a kid. He built David Industries from the ground up, and all he wanted was to give my mother a palace. It’s excessive, but it came from his heart.”
She walked behind a couch and traced the gold-trimmed detailing. “Right. The heart.”
Her judgmental tone cut. There was a time when his wealth had embarrassed him. On top of his stutter and awkwardness, he’d also been ostracized for his posh upbringing. They’d called him Caviar and Richie Rich and other inventive slurs. That was then. This was now. His confidence wasn’t top notch with the opposite sex, unless they were in bed, but he wouldn’t apologize for his money or how it was spent. Or how it wasn’t spent, as was the case these days, too worried he’d need to liquidate his assets eventually.
Those facts didn’t change her judgment. “My father likes to spoil my mother. He likes nice things, as do I. It’s all been hard earned.”
“Do you give to charity?”
“Several.” He didn’t elaborate on Marco’s work.
At Jack’s urging, his best friend had grown their philanthropy tenfold the last five years, always looking for new ways to give back locally and abroad…before David Industries was faced with economic disaster. If Jack failed, the charity work would suffer. Marco’s job security would vanish. He quickly silenced those thoughts. Failure wasn’t an option, and if Clementine liked him, she’d have to like him as he was. High school had taught him pretending to be something you weren’t was a fast track to misery…and jail.
She didn’t push him or ask other questions. She gathered her wet hair over her shoulder, waiting on the explanation he’d promised.
“Do you want to sit?” he asked.
“Think I’ll stand, thanks.”
She was either worried about wetting the couches or spending too much time with him. Probably the latter.
He leaned against the mahogany desk and gripped the edge. “I’m sorry I missed our running date.”
She shrugged one shoulder, still quiet. All he could do was look at her head on and hope she saw sincerity in his openness. “My father isn’t traveling. He’s here, and he’s very sick.”
She made a tiny sound, the sucking in of a shocked breath. “I didn’t know.”
“No one knows.”
“Like, no one?”
He shook his head. “You’re the first person I’ve told. Our former floor manager stole company secrets. I have no clue if he decided to do it on his own or if our competitors baited him with cash. Either way, with the setup they have, they’re able to use our formulas to increase their productivity at massively reduced costs. Once they’re up and running, they’ll undercut us so spectacularly our customers will flock to them. Luckily, I started working on a new technology over a year ago, before this shit storm.”
“Because you knew something like this would happen?”
He wished he’d known Gunther Doright would do wrong and stab him in the back. He’d been utterly clueless. “Because I’m always striving to better our business. And I’m close. Unbelievably close, but I messed up a project a few years back, and our board of directors limited the funds for this research. They’re conservative, and the issue wasn’t pressing at the time. So I raised money through investors and got some recent bank loans. But if they get a whiff of my father’s illness and learn our current technology is about to be undercut, they’ll get spooked. They could pull funding. If we lose that and it takes longer to complete our experiments, we’re screwed, and the board will have to cover those losses.”
He explained how much the town relied on them to maintain their living conditions and support their families, how tough it had been keeping the secret, and how helpless he’d felt when his much younger sister had called him last night, frantic with worry. “It’s also why the festival is a bigger deal than usual. There’s one tribute artist I’d very much like to squash, but this could be my father’s last year, and my singing always meant so much to him. So I set myself this deadline, to complete our research by the festival’s final performance, so we could quit lying and my father could attend the show. I can’t cure his cancer or make his treatments less horrific, but I can do this. I can control this one silly thing.”
He wasn’t sure when Clementine had moved in front him, or when he’d dropped his focus to the ground. She pressed two fingers under his chin and lifted his head. “It’s not silly. It’s beautiful.”
“Or I’m acting like a child hoping to impress his father.”
“Beautiful,” she whispered, the same word he’d used when he’d learned she wrote emails to her late father. He liked the feel of her fingers on his face and the fact that he wouldn’t have to lie to her any longer. Still, sharing the burden made him feel both lighter and heavier.
Her fingers drifted off his chin and lowered to her side. “Why tell me these secrets and not a friend?”
It was an excellent question, one he didn’t quite comprehend. All he knew was he’d hated saying goodbye to her Friday night, had despised sleeping in his bed alone. He’d been excited for their run until his sister’s worrying call. He’d begun to feel more comfortable around Clementine, and life was short and some chances were worth taking. “There’s something about you, Clementine. And I can’t date you with lies between us. It’s why I froze when you showed up here.”
Again with that sweet little sound, the hissing of her breath. “Now I’m really overwhelmed.”
“Why?”
She backed away slightly, creating space between them. “I’m only here a short while.”
“I know.”
“And there’s the judging.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“It was supposed to be a non-date kiss.” Panic was written all over her beautiful face, her freckles bright on her flushed skin.
He wanted her face flushed for different reasons. “It never was and you know it. So I’ll ask what I should have asked that night. Will you go on a date with me? A proper one.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t what?”