Finished folding, she went to her purse, got the Kafka novel and brought it to the bookcase. She’d show Brady it was here, but she doubted he recalled that particular memory. Her own recollections called to her, although from a different time. She traced her fingers over her scrapbook in the top corner—the mementos she’d kept from DC.
Opening its dusty cover, she paged through the items she’d kept—articles, photos, her acceptance letter into the program, a letter of recommendation from Congressman Dawes. She’d made several copies, even sent one in when she’d applied to that job. His marks of high praise and signature were all that remained of her short stint as a member of his staff.
Being a staffer wasn’t exactly the greatest gig. It was the lowest rung on the totem pole, and her salary was absolute shit. But she’d loved it, and Dawes had been her dream boss. An old, balding man with warm, steady eyes, he was gentle on the outside but ruthless when he needed to be. Whenever she was lucky enough to spend some time with him, he’d given her advice on a life in politics. He’d instructed her to learn the landscape, to figure out who had power and who didn’t, to find out what people wanted. They’d trade Machiavellian quotes. She’d say it was better to be feared than loved if you couldn’t be both. He’d answer that politics had no relation to morals.
It was true. Because when the boss was wheels-up back to the district, that was when things got wild.
If she were a different kind of woman, she’d be having a cigarette or a drink right now.
Sam paged through photos of her younger self, holding drinks, thin and beautiful, smiling with people whose names she didn’t remember and had lost track of over the years. Her life there had been all-consuming and exciting, a frenetic pace that ran around the clock. There were parties and fundraisers, drinks when no one could wind down. Every night, there was that edgy feeling that anything could happen, that a conversation could yield you a powerful ally or a sweaty night in bed. It was a constant power game, in a world of public service. There were people who liked to serve, people who liked to be served, and others who liked the hunt.
She’d learned how to play those games, though, had been so confident she’d earned herself the staffer nickname of the Boston Bombshell. She was always surrounded by overly ambitious men in suits; charming, witty men who flouted their power and took what they wanted without apology, but they didn’t intimidate her.
She wasn’t interested in any of them either—her heart was in her job. But she had enjoyed flirting, the attention she’d received, enjoyed the nights when she’d kissed more than one person, and one night more than one gender.
Sam’s skin went hot. She’d never gone that way before, never had a threesome or been with a girl. She’d been curious that night, and wanted to indulge in that curiosity, but backed out of the chance.
She put the scrapbook away with a sigh.
Brady didn’t know much about Sam’s life there. She had a feeling he didn’t want to.
She took the basket upstairs and into the girls’ rooms. Brady had been happy for her when she’d gotten the Washington internship, even emailed her daily. He hadn’t been as enthusiastic when she’d made the decision to go back, his bright blue eyes cast away when he wished her all the best. It was his eyes that caught Sam when she’d run into him again in a bar years later. His beard had filled out—he was more of a man than the boy she’d left behind, but those eyes hadn’t changed.
They picked up where they’d left off. He’d asked if she was seeing anyone, and her “no” had been enough. She’d edited out the things she’d done in DC, because she’d never dated anyone and hadn’t wanted to hear about Brady’s sexual exploits either. She just wanted the ease of being with him. He’d been an amazing support when she was taking care of Mom, showing up with takeout when she was too tired to cook. Flowers because it had been a long week and he’d wanted to see her smile. He’d noticed her then, and it wasn’t long after that when he got on one knee, held out a ring and said if she stayed, he’d take care of her the rest of his life.
She’d wanted to take care of him, too. That was the inscription inside their wedding bands. She felt it now between her finger and the handle of the basket, the words pressing into her skin.
But she hadn’t only stayed because he’d asked her to. She’d stayed because she loved him. Because she knew he would always be there for her, a protector, a fierce defender of her no matter what.
He certainly had been back at school.
Everyone had known what happened. The incident in the locker room when Nick Sterling, Boston Terriers’ star quarterback, had been attacked by his teammates. The campus paper had covered the beating, but only whispers among students had divulged the reasons behind it. Nick was gay, a dangerous thing to say out loud back then, when queer youth were getting beaten up or killed.
Nick hadn’t cared. He’d had the courage to be honest about who he was and had been beaten to a pulp because of it. As had Brady, Terriers’ linebacker and Nick’s best friend, for trying to defend him.
Brady had still been on crutches when Sam was assigned as his tutor, and she’d wanted to tuck him away someplace safe, to hunt down those bigoted rednecks and claw them to shreds. But all Brady had wanted was her attention, and he’d hung on her every word, from her teaching him about literature to the basics of American government to her last gasping moans in bed.
The memories popped like firecrackers. How she’d been able to feel his gaze, a sparkling blue heat that had tracked her across the library floor. The way he’d try to convince her into going for coffee after their session was up, finally sweet-talking her weeks later into a date. How he’d stood outside her dorm room after that first kiss, his body on a razor’s edge, vibrating with the need for more. They were desperate for each other then, tearing one another’s clothes off whenever they got the chance. But they’d never recovered that kind of crackling desire, and there didn’t seem any way to rekindle things. They barely even said I love you to each other anymore.
She put the rest of the laundry away, then went back to her bedroom. She didn’t know what to say to Brady these days. Of course she still loved him, but it was hard to remember that when she was a control-freak planner in an out-of-control existence, stuck between impulsive parents and an even more impulsive child, one child who barely talked and a husband who barely listened to her.
Was it possible to love your husband but hate your marriage? To love your kids but hate what motherhood had turned you into?
Sam dropped the empty basket onto her bed, flopped onto her back next to it and stared at the ceiling. She didn’t want to hate anything. She wanted to be happy. To be desired by her husband. To not fall down on the job as a parent. To feel like she was someone, instead of the Finder of All the Things, The Kisser of Boo-Boos, the Resident Responsible Adult. She’d been someone once, but that someone was gone.
The once striking, once passionate, once brilliant, and now invisible, Samantha Archer.
Her phone rang. Sam pulled it from her back pocket and accepted the call with a smile.
“Lilly Sterling-Archer, why are you calling me the first day of your honeymoon?”
“I’m not on my honeymoon yet. The flight doesn’t leave until tonight.”
“Flight shmight. Shouldn’t you be in the throes of wedded bliss?”
Lilly laughed. “No bliss at the moment. I’m reading my emails and packing, and Jack is napping.”
Sam had to smirk. “You tired him out last night?”
“The wedding tired him out, not me.”
“Uh-huh.”
Sam wasn’t intentionally giving her brand-new sister-in-law a hard time. They’d become friends over the last year, and Lilly’s presence in Jack’s life had given Sam one less person to look after. It helped that the girl was a fantastic cook. Sam had brought over trays of food in the months after Jack’s first wife’s death, when he was too mired in grief to care for himself, but Lilly’s youthful, freckled face had brought him back from the grave.
And if Brady and Nick hadn’t stayed as thick as thieves, it might never have happened.
Lilly was Nick’s younger sister, and despite a hefty age gap between her and Jack, they were starting their own happily ever after.
“You’ll have plenty of time for bliss in Aruba,” Sam said.
“Yeah, I don’t think Jack’s gonna let me out of the room much.”
It was the word let that had Sam stifling a laugh. Lilly had never admitted it, but Sam hadn’t needed an announcement to pick up on the newlyweds’ dynamic. It was obvious from Jack’s attentiveness, how he always seemed intrinsically aware and protective of her. It was like the characters in her books come to life—the way Lilly blushed when he stared at her, and the bratty way she sometimes toyed with him.
The heart-shaped padlock necklace Lilly wore was a dead giveaway, too.
“Will you need his permission?” Sam asked. She was nothing if not curious, and it didn’t hurt to push a little to get at the truth.
“I have a feeling Jack might be a bit—” Lilly breathed in, “—controlling this week.”
Sam snorted. “And I have a feeling you won’t mind at all.”
“Not really,” Lilly said meekly.
That was the confirmation she’d been looking for. Sam smiled in triumph. Lilly’s necklace was a collar, something that showed her deference and submission to Jack. Sam had often witnessed Jack brushing his fingers over the locket in a tender, yet possessive move as well.
“Well that’s the point of honeymoons, babycakes. You’re not supposed to see anything but each other.”
A pang of sadness tugged at Sam’s heart. But she wasn’t jealous. Lilly might’ve been living out something Sam had only read about, but Sam had discovered she preferred the stories when the tables were turned. When the men were the ones on their knees and the women wielded instruments of pain and pleasure.
She’d considered showing Brady the scenes she liked. She’d even thought of taking charge herself, of pinning him down and making things happen. But that hadn’t been possible with two kids in the house and fifty extra pounds around her middle. Besides, her husband barely relinquished the remote, let alone power in the bedroom.
“Anyway,” Lilly said. “You know that position you applied for at the firm?”
“You mean le phone interview that went le nowhere?” Sam asked grimly. Lilly was an attorney at Forrester, Schaeffer and Pierce, the biggest law firm in Boston. She’d been the one who let Sam know about the receptionist opening there. “I recall it.”
“They didn’t end up hiring anyone.”
“So?” Wow, she’d succeeded in sounding disinterested.
“So didn’t you tell Cassie and me that you couldn’t do full time?”
Cassie was a former associate at the firm, now working for the governor. She was the only other friend Sam had, and was dating Jack’s best friend, Patrick. Cassie and Patrick had fought constantly but had finally gotten past their I-hate-you-I-want-you tug-of-war that had gone on for the better part of the last year. They also had their own brand of kinky shit going on between them, something Sam had sussed out of Cassie before the holidays as well.
She wasn’t jealous of Cassie either. She wasn’t.
“That’s what I said. I can’t do a nine-to-five. Someone’s gotta be home to meet the bus.” And to shuttle Hope and Allegra to dance and appointments, and help with homework afterward.
“What about eight to two?”
A buzz started in Sam’s gut. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I called HR. They made it into a part-time job-share position.”
The buzzing got louder. “Why would they have done that?”
“I dunno. I think someone might be gunning for you.”
“Gabe?” Nick’s husband was a partner at the firm, but Sam didn’t think he had that kind of clout.
“Nah. Gotta be someone higher up.”
Reaching for the charm at her throat, Sam rolled it back and forth along the chain. “Still, they didn’t call me.”
Ugh, where was her confidence? The part of her that had barreled into Dawes’ office and told him she was going to be the best intern he’d ever seen?
“Things move kinda slow at that place,” a different, lower voice unexpectedly chimed in. “They haven’t even found a replacement for me yet.”
“Cassie!” Sam dropped her hand and scowled. “Why didn’t you tell me you were both on the phone?”
“Because then you’d feel like this was an intervention,” Cassie said. “Which it is. You’re calling the firm. We just wanted you to come to the decision on your own.”
Sam’s scowl went deeper. She was at the same time annoyed at them for not being honest with her, grateful they cared enough to do what they were doing and embarrassed she hadn’t picked up on it beforehand. Stupid mute button.
“I haven’t made any decisions yet.”
“Yes you have,” Cassie said. “You have no reason not to.”
“How about I’ve never worked at a law firm before?”
“You worked in Congress. And phones work the same everywhere.”
“Have you looked at the receptionist’s phone there?”
“No—”
“Then how do you know they’re the same?”
Cassie laughed. “Jesus, Sam. You argue like a lawyer.”
“She does,” Lilly added. “You sure you don’t want to be an attorney?”
“Laws change the world, not lawyers,” Sam said.
It was something Dawes had said, one of the pieces of wisdom she’d collected and repeated to sound important. That was all she had now—outdated quotes from a mentor who’d lost his seat, retired and passed away.
“We’re not changing the world. We’re getting you a job,” Cassie said. “Lilly, get off the phone and go to Aruba. Sam, call the firm. We know you want to.”
Sam didn’t know what she wanted. She’d let go of her career goals around when Britney Spears shaved her head, stopped keeping track of the news because it depressed her, and hid her depression behind a veneer of pithy comments. But there was no reason she shouldn’t at least find out if she was still in the running. It fit in her schedule, and it was a chance to get out of the house. To be someone again.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll call.”
5
“Excuse me, Mr. Archer?”
Halfway up the ramp, Brady turned around. One of his newer programmers jogged up behind him, out of breath with pit stains on his shirt.
“Paul, we use first names here, remember?”
“Right,” Paul said on a laugh that turned into a wheeze.
“You okay?”
Paul nodded, then doubled over to catch his breath. Brady wasn’t sure if he should be dialing 9-1-1 or not, but Paul held up a hand waving that he was okay. This was why there was a workout area in Helios’ basement—part of their employee benefit package. Most developers spent too much time sitting on their asses, and Brady wanted his people both well-paid and healthy.
Paul righted himself. “So, Mr.—”
“Brady.”
“Brady,” Paul repeated. Another thing about Helios—no one was superior to anyone else. They were a team. It was part of the company dynamic, and keeping everyone on a first-name basis backed that shit up.
“That’s me.” Brady crossed his arms and smiled. “What’s up?”
Paul had to crane his neck to look Brady in the eye. Then again, so did almost everyone. “I think I know why the customer info is missing from those test orders.”
“Oh yeah? Shoot.”
Paul launched into an idea on the project he’d been assigned to, words crashing together in his excitement to have one of the bosses’ ears. Brady smiled. He’d been a CTO since they opened this place, but it was still entertaining to be treated like this. He’d been a junior programmer too once, before he’d gotten past his hacker phase.
Sam had been in DC then, gone for good as far as Brady had known. The do
t-com bubble had burst, and he couldn’t get a job, so he freelanced as a web developer and tried to break into small business sites to see if he could. One night when he was up late and bored, he found the security hole in a local ecommerce site and backed off fast. He’d done it on a whim; he never expected to succeed.
He also hadn’t known what he’d done could’ve been a crime.
Dad was furious. They went into the company together, and Brady explained the relatively low level of effort it had taken to gain unauthorized access. The owners were shocked they’d been outdone by a kid and offered him a job as a developer specializing in cyber security. Penetration testing, they called it. A funny-ass name for poking at a user interface and seeing what areas had flaws or holes.
Who knew people got paid for that shit?
Turned out there was such a thing as ethical hacking. White hats, they were called. Black hats did the bad stuff, and discovering that shored up Brady’s ethics. He wasn’t doing that again without permission. Or money. While he was getting his feet wet as a developer, he started winning hacking challenges. Companies set up servers with vulnerabilities, awarding money to people who got in. He made a bit of an underground name for himself, went to a DefCon hacker conference and met Myles and Wendell.
Bostonians themselves, Myles was a whiz in phone apps, and Wendell was a game-designer legend. After a lengthy discussion about the ThunderCats and the realization that they knew more than their bosses, they decided to join forces. A healthy investment from their fathers and over a decade later, they were the Super Friends of the New England Internet-based business scene.
They called themselves Helios, mostly because it sounded cool, although Wendell had come up with a great PR reason: Helios was the personification of the sun, bringing light to the earth. Anything could be done when the right light was shed on it, and that’s what they put out there—ingenuity, imagination. If what a client wanted wasn’t built, they would create it. And if there was no way to create it, they would create the way to create it.
They were gods here, Titans of the web, app and gaming world. Brady’s experience with mythology was limited to watching Disney’s Hercules with his kids. But when it came to work, he didn’t feel like a giant bumbling through his life. At Helios, his ability to be a superhuman lifesaver amounted to more than his collection of shirts. Here, he could sit in on a Dev Team meeting and fill the whiteboard with new ideas. He could go to the gamer den, play the games they were making and fix things when they’d run into a wall.
Their Discovery (Legally Bound Book 3) Page 5
