He must have made a noise, or maybe she just sensed his presence as strongly as he felt hers, because she turned her head suddenly and her mouth formed into a perfect little O even as her pen tumbled from her hand.
“Jackson! I didn’t—I mean, I wondered—” She frowned as she cut off her words.
He understood her dilemma. When he’d left her condo, he’d told her where he was going. And yet she’d arrived long before he had. She’d probably assumed that he’d changed his mind, and expected to hear why when they met back up at her place.
Now here he was, and they were both surprised.
“—has something he wants to talk with you about tonight.” Nikki’s words filtered into Jackson’s head, and he realized that he’d been so absorbed in watching Sylvia that he’d tuned out everything else around him. “You were engrossed in maxing out Syl’s to-do list,” Nikki said to Stark, “so I went ahead and cleared him to come up.”
Stark turned from the window, smiling at Nikki as he did. But the smile faded when his eyes met Jackson’s. “I thought we were meeting in the morning.”
“That’s when the appointment is,” Jackson said. “But there are things we should talk about now.”
Stark studied him a minute, then nodded. “All right.” He moved across the room toward Sylvia and held out his hand for something. Her eyes cut quickly to Jackson, and he could see the tension in her shoulders, but her professionalism never slipped as she reached for an electronic tablet that sat near her on the coffee table.
He wondered if Stark noticed the way her fingers shook just slightly as she navigated over the tablet screen. But she held it together.
What she didn’t do was look at Jackson.
After a moment, she passed the tablet to Stark. He glanced at it, then handed it to Jackson. “You’ve had an interesting few days,” he said as Jackson looked down at the photo of him being led away from Reed’s house in handcuffs.
Jackson swiped his finger across the surface and scrolled through the rest of the images. News coverage from all over the country. Most focused entirely on him—Starchitect Jackson Steele arrested!—but some tied Stark and The Resort at Cortez in to the story.
He kept his posture straight and his face impassive. If Stark thought he was going to get a rise out of Jackson by showing him the coverage that Jackson had already seen, he was going to be sorely disappointed.
“Did you come here to tell me why you spent a perfectly fine Saturday evening beating the shit out of some pissant film director?”
Jackson cocked his head at the pejorative, but in response said only, “No. I really didn’t.”
Stark’s brow lifted almost imperceptibly, and Jackson stiffened, prepared to accept the brunt of his half-brother’s famous temper. It was, he thought wryly, something they shared. But all Stark did was tilt his head, glance toward Nikki, then nod. “Fair enough.” He gestured toward an armchair. “Have a seat.”
“I’m fine standing. Thanks.”
“Have it your way.” Stark returned to the window, then stood with his back to the room. From Jackson’s position, he could see Stark’s face reflected in the glass, the lights of the city spread out behind him. Appropriate, Jackson supposed, since Stark owned half the fucking world, and most of Los Angeles. “This has the potential to turn into a clusterfuck,” Stark said. “A public relations nightmare. I’m surprised we don’t already have the damn tabloid reporters camped out in front of the building.”
Jackson said nothing. Stark was right, so what was there to say?
“They’ve called me. Hell, they’ve called Sylvia,” he added, and Jackson immediately turned to Syl. Her eyes flicked to his, sad and a little lost, before she looked down again at her notepad. She hadn’t told him the press had contacted her, and that new reality made his stomach twist.
“‘No comment’ is the official response of this office,” Stark continued. He turned to face Jackson, his dual-colored eyes burning into him. “But it’s only going to get worse. That’s the bad news. The good news is that scandal doesn’t scare me. I’ve lived with it my entire life. Neither does temper. I’ve met Reed, and I can only assume he pissed you off royally. It happens.”
The corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been an effort to hold back a smile. “Arrest, scandal, uncomfortable press coverage—none of those things shake the foundation around here, and they don’t put your job at risk. Not unless it affects your work. So tell me, Steele. Is this bullshit going to affect your work?”