“Honestly, I send you to work nice and relaxed and you come back tight as a drum. What’s been going on?”
“Don’t even ask.” He shook his head, reaching for her again, but she ducked out of his grasp and plopped herself onto one end of the couch.
“Lie down.” Leah patted her lap. “Put your head here.” Without taking his eyes from her face, Jackson tugged at his laces, toed off his shoes, and stretched out on the cushions. His feet and ankles hung over the opposite arm of the couch. She snorted. “I forgot you’re a sky-high swizzle stick who needs giant furniture for his giant body.”
Jackson’s mouth quirked at the corners as he rested his head on her thighs. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never been so comfortable. You’ll get no complaints from me.” At the first touch of her hands in his hair, his eyes fluttered closed and he moaned. Leah felt the sound between her legs. She ran her fingers over his forehead and temples exactly as she had during his migraine, drawing them lightly through his hair and down the sides of his neck.
Though the searing heat was beginning to tail off, the early-evening sun poured in through the dusty windows, and the silence was restful.
“The decorators are getting on well.” He ran his eyes over the room.
“That’s an understatement.” The woodwork and high ceiling, with two topcoats of bright white, gleamed. Once the smoky blue-gray went up on the walls, it would be stunning.
“My guys OK to have around?”
“They’re great. They work hard, keep the music down. Only forty-seven cups of coffee each, per day. Low-maintenance.”
He grunted. Leah moved her hands from Jackson’s scalp and ground her thumbs experimentally into the bunched mass of his shoulders. A layer of tension coated the powerful muscles she’d spent indeterminate hours ogling—it would never be enough. “Gym rat or sports jock?”
“Hmm?” The noise from Jackson’s throat was a peaceful rumble.
“Your physique isn’t entirely hideous, so you must work out in some way or other.” Leah took advantage of his eyes being closed to drink him in. “I’ve never asked what you do.”
“I run and swim.”
“Swim?”
“Yeah, my building has a pool.”
“Of course it does.” Leah rolled her eyes.
“I heard that eye roll.” Jackson smiled, his own eyelids still closed. “I usually run in the mornings, maybe three times a week, and swim every evening.” He was quiet for a couple of minutes. “Swimming helps me switch off.”
“Yes?” She encouraged him to continue while she dug her fingers into the knots at the base of his neck.
Jackson squinted up at her through one eye. “You might not have noticed but I find it hard to unwind.”
“No way.”
He reached down to pinch her calf. “When I swim, my brain goes into standby mode. I don’t have to think about anything.”
She pictured him cutting through the water in an effortless front crawl, length after length. No wonder his shoulders were so broad.
“Even if you put in a full day of hard work here, you don’t seem drained.”
Jackson closed his eyes again. “The business is a whole different layer of stress. There’s a lot of shit going on right now and the constant emails and messages are draining. Even using the dictation option on my computer, I have to read everything through multiple times to make sure I haven’t said something stupid, and the more I read it the more confused I feel...” His sigh was cool against her wrist. “I’d take a physical task over an email any day.”
Leah marveled at the whirlpool of doubt beneath his outwardly steely facade. No one would guess Jackson Hale was anything other than completely in control. “It’s good you’ve found something that helps you chill out then. I can’t remember the last time I swam.”
“I had a feeling that might be the case.” Jackson’s eyelashes lifted, the intense blue of his irises softened by a new lazy calm. “How do you feel about a trip to the beach?”
“For real?” Leah blinked. “This weekend? Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
She leaned down and kissed him hard, breathless with excitement. “Oh, yes, please! Yes, yes, yes!”
“I think I’ll enjoy seeing you in a bikini, since your physique is not entirely hideous either.”
