Lisa
"I'm fine." Jennie's voice was weak but pissed off from my passenger seat.
Good. Fine. I was pissed off, too.
"When is the last time you ate a proper meal?" I asked, turning onto the causeway, leaving downtown Miami behind us. The back door to the white contractor van in front of us flew open, and a stack of empty paint-splattered cans fell out. I swerved around it and rolled the passenger window down.
"Back door," I yelled to the other driver.
"Sorry, buddy. I'm not into that," he shouted back.
"Freaking Miami." Jennie sighed, sitting up straighter. "Where are we going? Also, what exactly happened?"
"You fainted in your office because you're a stubborn idiot," I explained. "I'm taking you home."
She'd gone ghostly pale and glassy-eyed before slumping gracefully into a dead faint. It had taken five years off my life.
"The reports," she said, looking down in her lap and then craning her neck to see into the back seat. "The social media team needs my input tomorrow morning. I have to reschedule the new chemist's onboarding tour. I didn't call her back. And there should be an end-of-day report from legal."
She was working herself into a righteous lather. How dare I drag her away from her work.
"Everything that can be handed off has been. Anything left can wait until tomorrow," I snapped.
"You don't get to call the shots, Manoban. You have no idea what it takes to hold a corporation this size together," she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest and scowling through the windshield.
"You don't get to scare the life out of me by rolling your eyes back in your head and passing out on your feet because you're too fucking stubborn to offload tasks you should have handed off years ago."
There was probably a rule somewhere about shouting at a woman who had recently regained consciousness. But I was a rule-breaker at heart. "This is your fault entirely. You know that you can tell me when you need a break. When you need a moment. A fucking meal. Yet you martyr your way through a packed schedule because you can't bear to be honest about your own limits."
She opened her mouth on a righteous gasp of indignation.
"Everyone has limits, Jennie. You don't get bonus points for pretending you're exempt."
We rode in hard, angry silence for several minutes until my phone rang through the SUV's speakers.
"Alison," I said, by way of a greeting.
"Is the boss okay? Do you want me to babysit tonight?"
"The boss is right here, and since when do you do what Lisa asks you?" Jennie snipped, grumpily.
"Hi, boss," Alison said, remarkably unconcerned.
"I pulled babysitting duty tonight," I told Alison. "Rest up. I'm sure she'll be a nightmare to deal with tomorrow."
"Copy that."
"You both are fired," Jennie said.
"Be a good girl for the nice one," Alison told her. "Good luck, Tea and Crumpets."
"Thanks," I said dryly. I clicked off and made the turn into Bluewater. The guard waved us through, and we returned to our stony silence. She was putting on a good show of anger, but I knew she was shaken, too.
"Stay," I told her when I pulled up to the front of her house.
I got out and came around to her side of the SUV. She opened her own door, uselessly proving that she was capable of it. But I had the last laugh when her knees buckled. "Not so tough now, are you, love?"
"Shut up, Tea and Crumpets."
I made a move to scoop her up, but she stopped me.
"Don't. You. Dare. I will accept a steadying arm, but that is it," she insisted firmly.
Rolling my eyes, I slid my arm around her waist and offered her my free hand. She took it in a death grip, and together we made our way to her front door.
I keyed in the code while she complained about needing to change it again and how I needed to stop hacking into her security system.
"Where are we going?" she demanded when I steered her past the kitchen.
"To bed."
"Lisa, I'm starving." I heard the raw need in her voice and softened ever so slightly.
"And I will see to that in a minute. For once in your life, just do what you're told." I pushed her not very gently down onto the bed and then made my way into her closet. I pawed through a few drawers before I found her blasted other man's boxers and a soft tank.
"Here," I said, returning and tossing them at her. "Change. And do not leave this room."
"Bossy," she muttered under her breath as I left.
I made my way back to the kitchen. It was pristine without being stark. White-washed cabinets were complemented by glossy blue marble counters. The ceiling was done in a driftwood gray that suited the space. Like most of the rest of the house, glass doors opened up to the view of Biscayne Bay.
I moved to the pantry. One could learn all one needed to know about someone with a peek in their medicine cabinet or their pantry.
Jennie's pantry, disguised by two doors matching the rest of the cabinetry, revealed that she was obsessively organized and had absolutely zero imagination when it came to food.
It was roughly the size of my own master bedroom. But there were no convenience foods or treats. No bags of chips. No microwavable popcorn or Red Dye No. 52 marshmallow cereal. No secret stashes of chocolate. There were shelves with meticulously lined glass jars filled with oats, flour, and chia seeds. Smaller kitchen appliances and larger pots and pans lived behind closed glass doors, all so spotless I wasn't sure if they'd ever been used.
Finding nothing useful, I ventured back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Aha! Portioned prepared meals were neatly packed and stacked in glass containers. I opened one, sniffed, and deemed it acceptable. Some kind of Thai chicken dish with vegetables and rice. I helped myself to a second container of the same and popped them both into the microwave.
Minutes later, I returned to Jennie's room with a tray, food, and my briefcase.
She eyed the food hungrily from the bed. "Thank God, you picked these. Cristoff gets unbearably annoyed when I don't eat every last morsel he leaves me."
I settled the tray over her lap and kicked my shoes off. "Cristoff? Is he another three-legged alligator in your care?"
She snorted inelegantly. "He's worse than an alligator. More cantankerous, too. Nayeon and I share him."
I arched an eyebrow in jest. "How very nouveau."
"He's a chef, not a gigolo. Which, by the way, is what Chaeyoung thought you were. Cristoff is a crabby, loud, terrifying chef who makes divine creations and throws violent temper tantrums."
"He sounds delightful."
She dug into her chicken. "Mmm." She rolled her eyes back in her head. "Delicious."
I rounded the bed and slid onto the mattress on the opposite side.
"What are you doing?" she asked with her mouth full.
Fluffing the pillows behind my head—why did women insist on having a phalanx of pillows on their beds—I reached for the second dish of chicken.
"I'm babysitting you."
"I'm fed. I'm in bed. Your job is done," she said.
I gave her a long, steely look. "Clearly, it's not. I'm staying right here and making sure you get at least nine hours of sleep and a hearty breakfast. You running yourself into the ground is not part of my plan."
"You can't be serious," Jennie said, neatly scooping up a bite of rice.
"Deadly, darling."
"Fine. But we're not having sex," she insisted.
"Right now, I'm more inclined to strangle you than have sex with you." I found the remote on the side table and turned the TV on. "Now, let's see what the lovely Jennie Kim watches when she's in bed."
I scrolled through her recently watched shows and grinned.
"I refuse to be embarrassed by my viewing habits," she sniffed as I clicked on a tiny home builder reality show.
"You can't expect me to not comment on the irony," I said dryly. "I had to drop breadcrumbs just to find my way from your kitchen to your bedroom."
"Shut up, Manoban."
"It's nice to see it's not all documentaries and biopics," I mused.
"You make me sound so boring," she complained.
But there was nothing boring about the woman in bed next to me.
"Well, this is cozy. And confusing."
Jisoo Kim, aerospace billionaire and next-door neighbor, poked her head in the open bedroom doors.
"Chu!" Jennie said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"I saw Captain Chivalry here half dragging you into the house. You looked sick or something. Are you feeling okay?"
"She is not," I said at the same time Jennie said, "I'm fine."
"Uh-huh."
"Jennie decided to run herself into the ground on no food for who knows how long," I informed her.
"I can report that she also hasn't been sleeping. Her home office lights aren't going out until three the past several nights," Chu said.
"Here's an idea, how about you all butt your pretty little noses out of my life?" Jennie grumbled.
I glared at her.
"Stop looking at me like that," Jennie complained. "I'm trying to run my business and appease the board and make nice with the media and win over the public. I am trying to do everything."
"Maybe you should stop," Chu suggested. Clearly, at home here, she crossed to the bed and flopped down at Jennie's feet. She was wearing a tailored pantsuit and flip-flops, which I assumed she'd donned after shedding some spectacular pair of stilettos.
"I would expect you of all people to support me here, Chu," she said.
"Hey, I'm not the one passing out at work. When I do, you can come over and rub my face in it."
"Alison has a big, fat mouth."
"Ladies, ladies. Let's not fight while we're all in bed together," I said, helping myself to more chicken. I wanted to meet this Cristoff. He was excellent with poultry.
Chu sniffed the air and stuck her face in Jennie's dinner. "That smells divine."
"There's another one in the fridge," I told her.
"I shall return," Cam said, sliding off the bed and strolling out of the room.
"Cristoff will be very happy," Jennie sighed.
When Chu returned with her own dinner, I opened my laptop to tackle some work while the girls watched a couple from Seattle construct a six-hundred square foot shed in a forest.
"Digging the reading glasses," Chu said approvingly.
"Right? It gives him this nerdy sex god vibe, doesn't it?" Jennie yawned.
I ignored them.
I had my own game of catch up to play. My business was small but full-service. When we had a client such as Jennie, my team worked around the clock doing whatever was necessary to achieve the desired outcome. Seulgi was digging into Junhoe Koo's background as well as that of his immediate family.
Lance was ghost-writing glowing posts and articles about Jennie, Flawless, and Bluewater and spreading them far and wide within our network of friendly media. My other clients were being "fixed" by my small team of junior associates. We had a B-list sex tape scandal that was proving to be a bit tricky and a messy divorce that needed decluttering.
But Jennie Kim's situation was currently my firm's main priority.
I had the email from Flawless's publicist who forwarded the daily list of media requests. Most of which were tabloids and gossip blogs hoping to nail our lovely leader to the cross in the name of clicks and advertising. But today, there was an interesting request. I forwarded it to Seulgi and requested an in-depth dig.
The latest numbers were showing a slow but significant upswing. If I could keep Jennie on her feet and lovely for another few weeks, I was confident the entire thing would be behind her.
I handled a number of emails, requests, and the drudgery that comes with running a business. The numbers and dollar signs didn't excite me the way stats on a viral story did. But I recognized their value and did what I could with them. I relied on accountants and bookkeepers to handle the more boring details. But I knew where every penny came from and where it was going.
Jennie yawned again next to me. Her color was better, her body fueled. If I could just force a good night's sleep on her, we would begin fresh in the morning. And I would monitor her more closely since she was apparently incapable of taking care of herself.
Chu finished her meal and the show and got ready to head home. But not without first forcing a promise out of Jennie to check in repeatedly tomorrow.
"Take good care of her," Chu ordered from the doorway.
"I promise."
I took the tray of dirty dishes into the kitchen and loaded them into one of the two dishwashers. I reset the security alarm and took a quick tour of the first floor, making sure doors and windows were locked.
Returning to the bedroom, I found Jennie sound asleep beneath the duvet. The TV screen flashed, and I turned it off. I was sure there were motorized blinds of some sort to cover the French doors leading to the terrace, but I couldn't figure out how they worked. There were worse things than waking with the sunrise, I decided.
I stripped to my underwear and pulled back the covers on what I now considered my side of the bed. Finding a phone charger in my nightstand's drawer, I wondered how many guests there had been to make use of it. Though it didn't really matter since I planned to make sure I was the most memorable.
Sliding between the silky linens, I settled back on the pillows.
Next to me, Jennie breathed slow, even breaths. I tucked my hands beneath my head and contemplated the hand-painted abstract mural in glowing shades of rose and blue on Jennie's bedroom ceiling.
Yes, a number of things were going to change starting tomorrow.