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Trinity nodded. "Good idea. I can handle the soft-skills stuff in the meantime. Shouldn't be that difficult, considering Eddie is Eddie…and not you, for example."
Sam took the jab in stride. He leaned back in his leather chair, and tried to suppress the smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he watched her. He couldn't remember the last time he had smiled—an admission he doubted would come as a surprise to anyone—but seeing Trinity thawed his heart. It always did. He wondered if William had orchestrated their project partnership with that goal in mind, and found that he simply didn't care. He could watch the way her sensuous lips shaped every corporate word all day long.
"Look, Sam." Trinity interrupted herself suddenly and sat back, crossing her arms. She always did that when she was about to shoot straight with him. "You've had one too many write-ups for being cold and distant with your division heads," she stated. Sam winced. He thought he detected an unvoiced accusation in her tone, but she carried on before he could unpack it. "Our H.R. department is at their wit's end. Onboarding your own brother isn't only good optics for the company, but it shouldn't be that hard for you to muster up a little familial warmth in the process. Everyone wins."
"And I'm back in L.A. in time for a work thing," he agreed. "Everyone wins."
He had meant to sound casual—calling an advertising launch party a "work thing" was something he would never dream of doing outside of Trinity's presence. But he could see immediately that it had been a mistake. The animation in her eyes, the light, went abruptly dark; her energized posture stiffened. Too late, he recalled what he had said to her on the night of their five year anniversary, after he had sent his secretary in his stead to explain his absence from dinner. The night—and his failed marriage, it had turned out—imploded as soon as he got back to the apartment, and uttered those dismissive, fatal words:
I had a work thing.
He wondered if she would throw the memory back in his face now. It was the least he deserved for being careless. He had been caught up in the moment—caught up in the feeling of being partners again, and working together toward a solution. Instead, Trinity offered a smile as matte as a magazine ad. She gathered all her documents back together and straightened them briskly. "Wonderful. William will be delighted to know we're on the same page. Thanks for meeting with me today, Samson. I'll be seeing you at our official first meeting with Eddie tomorrow. Same time, same room."
When she rose, Sam reached for her out of habit. He was a creature of order, not routine, but somehow in the five years they had been married he had managed to develop a compulsion. He liked to hold onto Trinity, just a moment more, before they broke to pursue their separate tasks.
His fingers encircled her wrist, and she didn't pull away immediately. Sam felt encouraged. He stood and took a step nearer to her, letting his fingers slide from the delicate bones of her wrist to her open palm. They were almost holding hands.
"Trinity." He kept his voice low, almost afraid they would be overheard. "It's good to see you again. I've…missed you." He took another chance. He squeezed her hand. He thought he felt the faintest reciprocating pressure, and forged on quickly. "When are you off tonight? W
e should grab a drink and catch up."
Trinity yanked her hand from his suddenly as if he'd scalded her. "I have a date tonight." The words tumbled from her lips; Sam couldn't decide if they were improvised or rehearsed. If it was a lie, he couldn't read it in her face. He had always been able to in the past. "And I think…the onboarding process is what's most important right now. Getting Eddie situated in his role is my number one priority. I consider anything else a distraction that neither of us can afford."
Trinity turned and walked briskly from the room. As she passed back by the conference room window, Sam could clearly see the stormy look on her face: her eyebrows were furrowed in anger, and her eyes sparked like there was lightning behind them just waiting to be unbottled.
"Shit," Sam swore below his breath. What the hell had possessed him? He took a moment to compose himself. He straightened his cuffs. He tried to smooth the persistent wrinkle from his sleeve and came away with half a dozen more.
"Shit," he said again.
Chapter Two
Trinity
The infuriatingly gorgeous face at the head of the table looked gorgeously infuriated, and Trinity was loving every second of it.
She rearranged her space at the conference room table for the third time in the past twenty minutes, and politely pretended not to notice when Sam lurched out of his chair to take another turn around the room. He paced like a Siberian tiger, his blue eyes flashing, but Trinity found herself more amused than afraid of his display. It was good to see that the Ice King's patience could still steam away on occasion.
"A half hour," Sam said. "He's a full half hour late. Make a note of it. I want William to know."
"I'm not your personal secretary," Trinity reminded him. "Or your watch. And you're exaggerating. Eddie's only twenty minutes late."
Sam rounded on her like she had just suggested the New York Yankees were underfunded hacks. His palms hit the table. "You see?" he demanded. "This is exactly the indulgent approach Eddie's used to receiving! The fact that he'll be forgiven is the reason he thinks it's acceptable to be late to a meeting in the first place!"
"Why don't you just say what you mean?" Trinity's voice was all sweetness. "You don't mean 'indulgence'; you mean 'coddling bullshit'." She let the words hang between them, enjoying the way their roughness stung Sam enough to momentarily pull him out of his self-righteous rant. "If anyone's had an unfair shake in this family, it's Eddie. There's never been a moment when he's been 'indulged' or 'coddled' any more than you or William has. He's been trying for years to claw his way back into favor, and what does your father do? He passes away without letting Eddie know his sins are forgiven."
Sam compressed his lips into a tight, bloodless line, and turned away.
Privately, Trinity wondered if Sam ever showed this side of himself to anyone but her. How did his feelings manifest when she wasn't around? Did he give into them at all? Or did he just bottle them up and place them on whatever dusty shelf housed his compassion; his humanity; his failing marriage?
It was also worth wondering if she might have crossed a line by mentioning his father. Even in death, the ghost of Richard Jameson ruled his family with an iron fist. Sam was more like him than he would readily admit—and the worst of it was, he knew it. He couldn't eradicate that side of himself as easily as he could a bad deal brought to the table. Trinity still found plenty of reasons to adore that side of Sam: she loved his focus, his unyielding ability to negotiate, his strength. She just wished he knew how to turn it off every once in a while.
"Speaking of unforgivable sins," Trinity said off-hand, trying her best to segue out of rocky Jameson family territory, "you should have seen the specimen that took me out last night. Didn't hold the door for me, but he certainly fell all over himself trying to order for me. I thought we were going to get into an actual brawl when the waiter finally brought us the check—after I asked for it fifteen minutes into our date."
Should have been five minutes max, Trinity thought sourly, although she didn't regret being able to tell the story now. She had even left out the part where her date—whose name was either Darius or Marcus, she couldn't remember which—had suggested she go to the "powder room" while he took a call from his bookie.
She pressed her lips together and toyed with her pen as she watched Sam's face. They had always taken turns ordering for one another as a sort of game. It was something she had started when it became clear to her that Sam always ordered one thing at any given restaurant, and one thing only. She had forced him to branch out, and it had become an inside joke of theirs. The waiter always looked appalled when Trinity took the lead; Sam only ever looked amused.
"So I'm guessing the date was a bust?"
