Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 248: 248 | I’m Processing

Jordan looked down at the top of Chloe’s head. She could feel his chest expand with a careful breath.

"Chloe."

"I’m not mad."

"Your fingernails are digging into my back."

She loosened her grip by exactly one degree. "I’m processing."

"You’re being possessive."

"I’m being reasonable." She pulled back enough to look up at his face, her chin resting against his sternum. "You own a spa staffed by women who look like that, and the manager calls you Master, and she gave you a massage while I was driving here, and you want me to process this calmly."

Jordan’s hand settled on the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair in the way he did when he wanted her to feel safe. The blue streak slipped between his index and middle fingers.

"You’re the first person I called. The second I saw this place, I called you."

"That’s not the point."

"What’s the point?"

Chloe pressed her face back into his chest. The robe was thick and warm and she hated how comfortable it felt against her cheek. She hated more that the oil on his skin smelled expensive and that Ayaka’s hands had put it there. She hated most of all that the logical part of her brain, the Nami part, the part that ran spreadsheets and tracked income and calculated risk, understood that this place was an incredible asset and that Jordan owning it represented a massive financial opportunity.

But the rest of her, the part that had spent the last two weeks learning his body by heart, wanted to go back to the lobby and tell Ayaka Tachibana that the man she called Master slept in Chloe’s bed and wore hickeys that Chloe put there.

"The point," Chloe said against his chest, "is that you could have warned me."

"I found out an hour ago."

"You could have warned me faster."

His laugh rumbled through his ribs and into her cheekbone. She refused to smile.

"Jordan."

"Yeah."

"If she touches you again I want to know about it first."

"It was a professional massage, Chloe."

"I don’t care what it was professionally. I care what it was when her hands were on you and I wasn’t here."

A beat of silence. His arms tightened around her shoulders, pulling her closer until she had to tilt her head back to breathe.

"Okay." His voice was lower now. Serious. "You’re right. I should have texted you before the massage. I wasn’t thinking."

"You weren’t thinking because your brain turned off the second a beautiful woman offered to put her hands on you."

"My brain turned off because Maya Santos hit me in the ribs six times and I could barely walk."

Chloe searched his face for deception. She had gotten very good at reading Jordan McKnight over the past two weeks. She knew the eye twitch that meant he was hiding something. She knew the jaw clench that meant he was stressed. She knew the way his adam’s apple moved when he swallowed a lie.

Right now his face held nothing except genuine concern that he had upset her, which was both reassuring and infuriating in equal measure.

"Fine." She released him. Stepped back. Straightened her crop top and pushed the blue streak behind her ear. "Explain to me how you own a spa in Newport Beach."

Jordan leaned against the corridor wall and crossed his arms over the robe. "I don’t. Not fully. Not yet."

"What does that mean?"

"The inheritance. My grandfather’s will." Jordan’s eyes found a spot on the wall behind her left shoulder, the way they always did when he was navigating around something he couldn’t say directly. "This property is part of the estate. It transfers to me when I complete the conditions. Until then, I’m technically the designated successor. The staff knows I’m next in line, so they treat me as the owner."

"Hence the Master thing."

"Hence the Master thing."

Chloe filed this information into the mental folder labeled THINGS JORDAN SAYS ABOUT HIS INHERITANCE THAT DON’T QUITE ADD UP. The folder was getting thick. The timeline of his grandfather’s will, the conditions involving multiple girlfriends, the sudden appearance of a luxury property in Newport Beach.

None of these pieces fit together in a way that satisfied her analytical mind. But Jordan’s face held that particular expression he wore when the truth was complicated and the full version would take longer than a hallway conversation to explain.

"So when you finish the inheritance conditions, this place becomes yours."

"Yeah."

"And the staff."

"They stay. They’re loyal to the position, not the person."

"Ayaka seems pretty loyal to the person."

Jordan’s ears turned pink. "She’s... traditional."

"Traditional." Chloe repeated the word like she was tasting something sour. "Is that what we’re calling it."

"JORDAN-KUN!"

Kumiko’s voice preceded her body by approximately three seconds, enough time for Chloe to compose her expression before her best friend barreled around the corner at full velocity.

Kumiko’s platform sneakers provided no traction on the polished wood, and she slid the final four feet into Jordan’s chest like a runner stealing home. His arms caught her automatically, her twin tails whipping against his robe as the impact drove him half a step backward.

"Jordan-kun this place is amazing, the koi pond has actual koi and one of them is orange with white spots and I named him Mochi, and Tomoe-san showed me the garden and there’s a real bamboo grove, and did you know the stone pathway is arranged according to traditional tea garden principles, and the water feature uses a shishi-odoshi which is that bamboo thing that goes clonk and—"

"Kumi."

"—I also met Kaori-san in the kitchen and she gave me mochi, actual mochi, not the fish, which is where I got the name for the fish, and it was the best mochi I’ve ever eaten and she said she’d teach me how to make it if I come back, and also there is a girl hiding behind a pillar near the changing room who I think is scared of me—"

"That’s probably Yumi." Jordan patted the top of Kumiko’s head between her twin tails, and Chloe watched her friend’s entire nervous system shut down like a computer entering sleep mode. Kumiko’s rapid-fire monologue dissolved into a soft, contented hum. Her shoulders dropped. Her grip on Jordan’s robe loosened. Her eyes went half-lidded and dreamy.

Chloe had seen this exact response multiple times now. Whatever Jordan did with his hands produced a reaction in Kumiko that bordered on pharmaceutical. The first time Chloe witnessed it, she’d felt jealousy. The second time, curiosity. Now, watching Kumiko melt against Jordan’s chest like a cat in a sunbeam, Chloe felt something closer to protective fondness.

Kumiko needed this. Needed someone whose touch made the noise in her head go quiet. Chloe understood that need because she felt her own version of it every time Jordan’s arms closed around her in the dark of her bedroom.

But understanding a thing and watching it happen in front of you were different animals entirely.