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Chapter One
Sam
His favorite suit was wrinkled. It didn't matter if there was only one: the wrinkle was there, leering up at him like a lopsided, mocking smile.
Sam Jameson shook out his sleeve, but the minor imperfection remained. Minor, he thought to himself in consolation. A wrinkle that wouldn't smooth was the least of his problems today; still, it lingered in the back of his mind as much as it lingered on the otherwise crisp fabric of his suit.
Sam distracted himself by gazing about the familiar waiting room of the New York office. He missed the East Coast more than he could express, and he wasn't an expressive man by nature—but even he could appreciate the familiar, sanitized smell of the office, the classic wooden furnishings, and the precision of the New York City skyline just outside the high window. The L.A. office always smelled like someone was secretly giving manicures in the staff kitchen, and the West Coast skyline was…quirky. Slipshod. Obscured by a permanent haze and decidedly not up to code.
L.A. was to blame for Sam's current predicament, of that he had no doubt. Who the hell lodged a complaint about "annoying perfectionism" and took their business elsewhere? Apparently L.A. clients did. Sam blamed the strange holistic culture that had seized the West Coast—the culture of "mistakes are successes that haven't happened yet," or whatever inane philosophy Californians liked to paste on the bumpers of their hybrid cars—but his older brother William didn't see things the way he did. That was partly why William was CEO, and Sam was COO, of Jameson Advertising Agency: it wasn't just a matter of age, but perspective…or so their father had once explained it.
If only Sam could give William a momentary demotion and make him see things from his point of view. This move to onboard Eddie was a mistake. More than that, it was far below Sam's paygrade—but even he wasn't so callous as to say as much out loud. He had learned early on that when it came to family, talking in strictly business terms wasn't exactly smiled upon.
But surely even William could see, from his lofty vantage as CEO, that bringing Eddie any closer in the family business was a mistake. Their father had certainly thought so. The youngest Jameson simply wasn't cut out for more than wining and dining clients.
Inviting the family screw-up back into the fold didn't seem like a wise move to Sam—but who was he to protest it? He would get in, do the job to a more than acceptable degree, and get out, the same as he always did. William wouldn't be able to argue with the results, and then Sam could get the hell back to L.A. and move onto better things.
The door opened and Sam rose, applying one last swipe to the wrinkle. He raised his gaze, expecting to find Eddie's lopsided grin and ridiculous eyebrows waggling a greeting.
Instead, it was his own ex-wife he found staring back at him.
"Trinity." He hated how out of practice he suddenly sounded saying her name out loud. Not a day had passed since their separation that it didn't enter his head on a repeating loop, always in threes: Trinity. Trinity. Trinity. "What are you doing here?"
His ex-wife blinked her gorgeous doe eyes like he had her caught in a crosshairs. Obviously his presence in the room wasn't a surprise to her, but maybe seeing an estranged spouse in the flesh shook her as much as it shook him. His eyes dropped at once to take in the form-fitting pencil skirt and matching blazer. Only Trinity could make such an uninspired shade of gray look borderline sultry. Not a wrinkle in sight. He noticed she was parting her hair differently; the line combed into her scalp was off-center, and her honey-brown hair spilled in one thick wave down the left side of her face. The asymmetry should have bothered him more than it did, but all Sam could think in that moment was how strikingly well-suited she was to the style. The elegant curl hugged her cheekbone while exposing the other one, making them appe
ar even more pronounced than usual.
"Where's Eddie?" He hadn't expected himself to be the one to break the silence. Trinity blinked again, and shook her head to dispel whatever thought it was that had frozen her in the first place.
"Hello, Samson. Your brother asked me to meet with you. Not Eddie," she qualified. "William."
"I see."
"He wants me to assist you in onboarding Eddie. William, that is. But I guess you knew which of your brothers I was referring to that time."
Sam nodded. Trinity's sudden appearance had thrown him into turmoil on the inside, but he was used to masking pressure indicators in high-stress situations. There was a reason his coworkers all called him a machine. "Where is Eddie these days?" he asked her.
"Barbados. Last I heard." Trinity swept her clipboard toward the conference hallway, and Sam rose at her invitation. He followed behind her, despite knowing the way, and watched her graceful balancing act. If she wore silk stockings with her heels, Sam couldn't perceive them at this distance. Only running a hand up one of those elegant calves would reveal the truth to him….
"In here." Trinity waved him on into one of the rooms. Her face looked a little flushed, and Sam wondered how loudly he had been broadcasting his thoughts…then again, maybe they were simply on the same wavelength, as they had so often been when they were married.
In those first years, anyway.
He would never show it, but Sam was still reeling from the divorce. It had been almost a year since he signed the papers Trinity wordlessly pushed across his desk, and he still didn't know what the hell had happened between the two of them. Hadn't they always shared ambitions? Work ethic? Not to mention great, great sex? He knew from all the divorce studies he had read that he should have at least started entertaining the idea of dating other women by now, but he couldn't even bring himself to set up a simple online dating profile…and the Millennials at the L.A. office had certainly volunteered to help.
Sam took a seat at the head of the table out of habit. He pulled out the chair beside him, and Trinity's mouth quirked a little in wry amusement. She bypassed Sam's offered chair to pull out her own. She sat down, and began to array her files as Sam studied her. Maybe having Trinity around to assist with the onboarding would be a good thing…professionally-speaking, of course. Surely he had no better ally in all this than his own ex-wife, who knew his preferred method of running things. Trinity was familiar with every nuance of his personality—hell, she was one of the few who would vouch for him even having one.
Right?
Trinity was the people-person. She understood the needs of others in a way Sam could never wrap his head around outside of the business boardroom. Corporations were straightforward, and most of them desired the same thing: damn good advertising. That he and his brothers could deliver. He had been raised to understand the cold, calculating terms of business minutiae; not the far less black-and-white terms of the people who stood behind the businesses.
"I figured we'd just take a few minutes to go over everything," Trinity said. "Sort of a pre-meeting meeting. Nothing about our approach needs to be set in stone just yet. In fact, I think we should leave ourselves plenty of room to be flexible throughout this entire process. Eddie's a special case."
"He certainly is," Sam allowed. He tried to ignore her use of the word "flexible". In business, he absolutely loathed the term—but when confronted with memories of his ex-wife's uncommon talents in the bedroom, it was even more distracting.
"I mean that he's not nearly as underqualified as you or your brother like to think," Trinity said sharply. "He may have made mistakes in the past, but Eddie's a good kid."
"He's only two years younger than you are," Sam pointed out, "so your use of the word 'kid' is revealing. Eddie's twenty-eight, Trinity —like it or not, he isn't a kid anymore. What he is is an immature adult who, when he isn't off partying on an island somewhere, likes to sleep around with high-powered clients' daughters."
"One daughter. So far as I'm aware." Sam thought even Trinity looked unconvinced of this, but she pressed her lips together to stifle anything else she might say on the matter. "Anyway, I know Eddie and I would both appreciate it if the past didn't come up in tomorrow's meeting. I'd like to focus on the future—his future with the company—if it's all the same to you."
"You have my word."
He'd only broken one vow in his life, and only because the woman sitting across from him had asked him to.
"Good." Trinity pushed a copy of the first meeting itinerary his way. "Like I said, nothing about the agenda for tomorrow is set in stone. I'd prefer to look at this sheet as more of a working checklist. If you have any idea of how you would like to begin…."
"Well, I can start by getting him up to speed on all the company directives he's been ignoring," Sam said.
