Romance: The CEO by Emily Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

interview. I said I would take it under advisement only if he sent you.”
    “Okay. But why me?”
    “Because I wanted it to be someone who would tell things to me straight and judge me accordingly. What better person than the beautiful journalist who thinks I’m one of the most evil men in the world.”
    “I don’t think you’re evil,” I barely whisper, tears beginning to form in my eyes, but Jackson is already walking away again, observably uninterested in anything else I have to say.
    “Go home, Claire. Write what you want about me,” he shouts back.
    I contemplate going after him, but it’s pointless.
    He’s made it clear how he feels.
    He wants to stay here with just his canvases for company whilst the rest of the world breathes on around him.
    After walking along the cliff’s edge myself for a while, I manage to clear my head.
    I return to the mansion with the intention of sitting down with Jackson so that the both of us can figure out a plan of action for this damn interview.
    But when I find him shut away in his room, refusing to answer my gentle taps on the door, I am once torn between staying and going.
    As another hour passes and only more silence from his bedroom, I choose to leave him to it.
    I don’t know Jackson well enough to do anything more than that.
    Before yesterday I was just a stranger to him.
    No, I was worse than that.
    I was a stranger trying to depict him in my articles as an evil rich industrialist, hiding himself away from the world because he knew he was guilty of a crime.
    But really he’s just a lonely billionaire with a virulent secret that he doesn’t deserve to be burdened with.
    He’s repented enough for what wasn’t even his fault to begin with.
    I scribble a note for him before I leave, carefully placing it down on the kitchen counter where I know he’ll see it:
     
     

Dear Jackson,
     
    It wasn’t your fault. You’re a good man. I know that sounds ironic coming for me, given our history and all, but please believe me when I say that the world will forgive you for what happened in Zimbabwe. Just as I have forgiven you for it.
     
    Your artwork is haunting and inspirational. It deserves to be seen. Regardless of whether you show it to anyone else ever again, I hope you never stop painting.
     
    I’m glad I got the chance to meet you. I won’t ever forget the brief time we spent together.
    Yours truly,
    Claire
     

I wonder if Jackson can see the black BMW as I gradually make my way down the long and windy driveway, and back out to greater Vancouver Island.
    My eyes are glued to the rear vision mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of him from one of the windows of the second story, or see his figure running out after me, shouting that he’s changed his mind.
    But the strange billionaire that I have gotten to know over the last day or so never appears.
    Soon the mansion becomes merely a blur, sinking back in the wooded landscape once more, an exodus that dares me to wonder if it had even existed at all.
     
     

12
     
     
     
     
     
     

One week later…
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
    “So what are you going to do?”
    Sophia is staring at me with her wide brown eyes, her cute mouse smile drawn in a theatrical round O.
    “I don’t know,” I sigh dejectedly. “What would you do?”
    But the only answer she’s willing to give me is a mere shrug of her shoulders.
    It’s only been a week since I left Canada and Jackson’s mansion by the sea, but boy does it feel like longer.
    They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I’ve never truly understood that expression.
    Until now.
    It’s not that I’m in love with Jackson.
    I mean, how can you love someone after only a few days, right?
    And more significantly how can you be in love with someone who you have loathed in the past?
    There is something there though, some elusive feeling that I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try.
    Have I fallen for him?
    Perhaps.
    Would I be with him if I had the