Here he was a superhero.
He stopped Paul before the guy ran out of air.
“I think you might be right.” There was a bug on a site they were building for a big client, an auto-fill issue on the shopping cart, and Paul might’ve cracked through the problem. “It means we’ll have to rebuild using a different checkout extension. Think you can get on that before the next team meeting?”
Paul looked like he’d won the lottery or discovered free porn on the Internet.
“Yes! Thank you, Mr. Ar—Brady. Thank you. I’ll get on it right away.”
He turned and jogged down the ramp. Brady treaded the rest of the way up to the main floor, then climbed three flights on the wire, open-air staircase that led to the offices. The twelve-thousand-square-foot industrial complex that had once housed a textile mill was cheap as shit to buy and a good space for the business to grow in. It was also close enough to home that he could work late or early when he needed to, which was often.
That was part of being the boss. He was often up around the clock monitoring site launches or doing damage control. He’d spent vacations glued to his emails and had nearly missed an entire Red Sox game last spring because he’d been dealing with client complaints. To be honest he was exhausted, but he needed to work this hard with Sam not bringing in any income.
It was why he’d gone downstairs to lift an hour ago. It wasn’t just to shed some of yesterday’s meal. Every once in a while he needed a reboot—to shut down and recharge.
Reaching his office, Brady closed the door, stripped off his sweaty T-shirt and exchanged it for the Batman one he had hanging on a hook on the back of his door. Sometimes he felt like too much of a geek—like his love of Marvel movies, Twitter list that followed the films’ actors, and comic-book character shirts made him a giant nerd, a six-foot-five dork who didn’t play football anymore to beef up his testosterone, but whatever. He liked the tees, and this was the last clean shirt from the load Sam had done for him, something she probably knew without having to check. Every other week, a bag of freshly folded tees was by the door, waiting for him to take in without him having to ask.
He didn’t know how she did it.
Sinking into his chair, Brady stared at the site he’d been on earlier. It wasn’t a Helios project, and not one he had to test for bugs. No, he was testing for his own issues. The title itself sounded like a bad download for virus detection.
“Self-Quiz: Do You Have Adult ADHD/ADD?”
Brady twisted his wedding ring, rubbing it between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. Diagnosing shit online was never a good idea. But since no one else had ever done the job, he’d asked Google.
He grabbed the mouse and scrolled to review the questions he’d answered.
“Do you often lose track of what you’re supposed to be doing? Forget dates or make mistakes because you’re not paying attention?”
The last twenty-four hours was a friggin’ case study on that.
“Are you distracted by noise or activity around you? When people are talking, do you drift off or tune out?”
Affirmative, especially when it came to Sam.
“Do you have a hard time remembering appointments or obligations?”
He almost had to snort. Double yes on that one.
“Do you misplace things, or have difficulty finding things at home or at work?”
At work, never. He had a support ticket system to keep track of stuff, things he could search or review if he needed. At home, his brain was like a junk drawer—everything got thrown into it, and he could never find anything when he wanted to. But he’d had to pick an answer, so he’d gone with yes.
It was hard to make a call with some of these questions. They ranged from things he did so often it was ridiculous to things he almost never did—“Do you often make decisions and act on them impulsively? Do you procrastinate? Fidget and squirm?”—so he was second-guessing himself with every yes or no box he checked.
He brought the cursor over the submit button and clicked. The page refreshed, and the results came out in bold at the top of the screen:
“Your score suggests INATTENTION is a problem for you.”
Really? Ya think? No shit.
He frowned at the screen. The results were rebroadcasts of things he’d heard from teachers as a kid: he was forgetful, distracted, a poor listener overwhelmed by hectic situations. He glossed over the part that talked about ADHD as a spectrum disorder. He’d seen those words over Sam’s shoulder back when she was getting Allegra tested. He hadn’t wanted to deal with it then. He didn’t want to now.
He looked out the window and toward the direction of home. He let Sam deal with Allegra’s issues, not because he didn’t want to help but because it killed him to see it. It made him feel like he’d passed on something defective to her and not just the Archer curls.
He didn’t have a clue how to help her, either.
Brady closed the site after reading how ADHD wasn’t an illness, because that shit wasn’t helping. An illness came and went. You could cure an illness. ADHD was ongoing, and if he couldn’t be cured, what was the point of going to a doctor?
He’d seen firsthand what the process of finding the right meds had done to Allegra. Brady couldn’t risk that for himself. Not with everything that rode on him at work.
And he could always focus when it came to computers.
That was why his father bought him a laptop back when the Internet was brand new. Dad declared it a toy, no better than his Nintendo 64, but Brady had been fascinated with the Internet and barely left his room for anything other than JV practice because of it. Good thing Jack was already out of the house then, or Brady would’ve felt even more inferior.
He’d worshipped his big brother as a kid; nine years Jack’s junior, Brady had wanted to be like him in every way. But Jack was the genius, the one Dad sent to Harvard and invited to be a lawyer in his own firm. The youngest hotshot attorney to be offered partner, Jack turned it down for a professorship at Harvard Law. No wonder it had barely mattered that Brady could code a website as easily as he could tackle a running back, or that his talent on the field had gotten him recruited to play at B.U.
Football had been the only thing he had over Jack—that and three inches of height. The game gave Brady confidence, too. Made him feel his size was good for something, and he’d liked being on a team. He’d had hopes of going pro—a pipe dream of being drafted to his beloved Patriots. Sure, he liked computers, but his major was background noise to his focus on the Terriers and their all-time record year. Then the team was terminated, the ninety-first year of B.U. football coming to a painful end.
More painful for him and Nick than a few others.
Brady ran his fingertips along the scar above his right ear, the line fifteen stitches had left behind. It didn’t hurt the way his knee did sometimes—aching when the weather got bad or when he kept it in one position for too long—but the scar was still there, a reminder etched in his skin.
One move. One body slam that drove his skull against the concrete and his knee to the floor, blowing it out in one shot and ending his athletic career.
He’d never regretted that day. He’d stand in traffic for his friends, and he hadn’t given a crap that Nick was gay. The guy could run plays and throw like it was his X-Men mutant skill, and always laughed at Brady’s jokes. Why should he care what turned Nick’s crank?
Their teammates cared. It had only taken one second with Brady’s back turned before they were pummeling Nick’s head.
He’d jumped in, trying to be the peacemaker. He hated fights. It was why he never fought with Sam. He was more like Hope—passive and wanting to please.
His football career was a casualty of that event. Dad said he was too passive, not wanting to press charges, but lawsuits had a tendency to be long and drawn out, and if Nick wanted it all in his rearview mirror, then Brady was sticking by his buddy’s side.
The guys who’d done it got expelled, the team
disbanded, even though the administration’s party line on banning the game was financial issues and “the changing needs of the institution.”
Brady knew bullshit when he saw it. The university was saving its ass, dumping the sport to hide the fact that half the team had beat up their star quarterback because he liked boys instead of girls. But losing football stuck with Brady, made him feel like he’d lost a limb even after he’d ditched the crutches. Without sports, what was his size for? Instead of making him stronger, it made him vulnerable.
Which was the state he’d been in when he met Sam.
His grades were slipping, and the last thing he’d wanted was to lose football and flunk out, so he’d signed up for peer tutoring. He still remembered how it felt to watch her crossing the room and coming to his table, his bad leg propped up on the chair next to him. Sweaty palms. Heart palpitations. And a more-than-obvious boner that made him swear he’d never wear track pants to a tutoring session again.
But it wasn’t just her gorgeous red hair and phenomenal body that had him hobbling back to his room and rubbing one off. Even at nineteen, she’d radiated a sense of intellect and superiority, and something in him had loved the feeling that she was smarter, higher than him somehow.
He hadn’t known what that meant, then.
When he’d finally won her over, she’d taken him out to meet her friends and fawned over him like he was a new toy—a shiny object to be shown off. He’d been embarrassed, but then she’d looked at him with a gaze so pleased and approving, he was rock hard and ready to worship her in seconds.
Now she only looked at him with impatience and disappointment.
Brady fiddled with his ring again. It had been good for a while when the girls were young, when he could still make her laugh and they’d be too tired to cook so they’d have Lucky Charms for dinner. That was before Sam changed her eating habits. He was thankful for it—they were all healthier because of it—but sometimes he missed that sugary cereal, so sweet it made his teeth ache.
It was her who’d come up with the green marshmallow thing. She’d believed in him, told him he could do more than football, and when his grades improved he’d called her his good luck charm. She left a box with him on exam days, and it became a private joke he loved. It was why he’d given her that necklace. A white-gold four-leaf clover, it had two closed petals for the girls, one covered in diamonds for Sam, and an open one for him, symbolizing how empty he’d be without her.
He hadn’t said that at the time.
He didn’t say a lot out loud, like the fact that he was always walking on eggshells, that he was petrified to forget the next damn thing or the crippling fear that one wrong step would end his marriage forever. He’d watched Sam walk out of his life twice and hoped putting that ring on her finger meant she wasn’t going anywhere again. Now he wasn’t so sure.
If only he could hit some kind of magical Ctrl-Alt-Delete on her life, or find her something to do up here. His suggestion last year that she turn her Instagram posts into a published book had been a colossal failure. He’d wanted her to have something of her own, but Sam didn’t belong hidden behind the pages of a book. She belonged someplace exciting, doing something important.
He blamed himself, blamed the fact that he’d been two feet deep into this place when they’d found each other again. If she hadn’t run into him in that bar, she could’ve gone back to Washington. It would’ve meant they’d never have gotten married or had the girls, but maybe she would’ve been happier.
God, he hated the idea that she’d be better off without him. The fear that it was true made it hard to breathe. Was there a test online to see if you could fix a crumbling marriage? He’d search for one, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to see the answer.
If only it could be the way it was back in college, when things were fucking simpler. When she’d help him with the stuff he’d forget, writing reminders on little heart-shaped Post-it Notes. When she’d call him to her room and tell him what he was allowed to touch and what he wasn’t until he was so twisted up with wanting her, he couldn’t think straight.
She’d let him have her in bits and pieces then, sometimes sending him back to his dorm without any relief at all. The anticipation of wondering when he’d get to be with her again was almost better than coming himself.
He’d always enjoyed giving pleasure, liked it better when he was told what to do. Football was like that in a way. The coach gave instructions, he listened—pass, tackle, defend. But with Sam it had always been different. She doled out orders, and he craved her satisfaction. He’d never pieced together what that meant until she read those books and BDSM became a thing everyone talked about. One night searching the web had him staring at a list of kink terminology and breathing uncomfortably hard.
Submission and humiliation were keywords that hit at him, turned him on and made him queasy and on edge all at once. He’d let himself think about it the last time he and Sam had sex—a time so long ago he didn’t want to think about it—and it had been like a light bulb turning on, like the whole damn B.U. stadium floodlights blinding him right in the face.
But he couldn’t tell her the idea of her controlling him, of her laughing at his desperate thrusts and pointing out how close to orgasm he was had made him come like a damn rocket, or why he’d turned away in shame afterward.
Brady didn’t doubt his masculinity, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t manly to willingly forfeit power. It felt like a sign of weakness, to want to be on your knees for your wife instead of the other way around. Sam was frustrated enough with his shortcomings, so he bottled up those fantasies and desires, kept them a secret, convinced they’d push her away even more. The fact that he’d kept her from her dreams was bad enough. The shit he wanted in bed? That made it even worse.
His computer chimed with an incoming chat. Brady lifted his head.
“So, I did a thing today…” Sam’s message began.
Brady’s heart sped up.
“A thing, huh?” He could see her typing in response but raced his fingers over the keys to get ahead of her. “Wait, let me guess. You robbed the bank on Federal Street. No, wait—you signed up for the Iron Man Challenge.”
Sam stopped typing. An emoticon with rolled eyes popped up in his chat window.
He grinned. Maybe that test was right and he was a bit impulsive. But humor was the best weapon to combat feeling awkward.
“They still want me at Forrester. I have an in-person interview tomorrow.”
His brows shot up. “The reception gig?”
Had Gabe helped with this? Had Lilly?
“They changed it to a part-time role. I’d start early but be home by three.”
“That’s great,” he typed, but a million questions crackled through his mind, a string of explosives on a line. Was she nervous? Were they telling the kids?
The kids—crap. Brady moused over to his browser and typed care.com into the address bar, because of course, he’d forgotten about the stupid posting. He’d hit the snooze button on the calendar reminder he’d set that morning, turning it off by accident during a meeting and never got back to it.
“How do you want to celebrate?”
The dots beneath her name bounced in his chat window. He stared at them even as his phone buzzed with notifications about his three o’clock meeting.
“Let’s save celebrating for if I get the job. But maybe we could get takeout tomorrow, so I don’t have to cook and do the dishes, too?”
Brady frowned, confused. “I thought you liked cooking.”
She’d taken it on like the next Food Network star when she’d started losing weight, making healthy and delicious things he never imagined eating, like kale chips and zucchini fries.
The last one still shocked him.
“I do…”
More dings. More emails. But he needed to focus on her.
“It’s the cleaning up I hate.”
Well, if something as simple as that would make her
happy, no problemo. “Takeout tomorrow night it is,” he typed. “And I’ll do all the dishes.”
He couldn’t do it the way she did. Sam had a system for stacking the bowls and containers that he blanked out on every time she showed him. How important was it to know how to load the dishwasher properly when he had sixteen projects and thirty developers to juggle? Just throw the plates in there. They’ll still get clean.
“Hell, maybe I’ll even do the laundry, too.”
That eye-rolling emoticon appeared again. “I won’t push my luck.”
Brady grinned and closed the chat. Standing, he left his screen open to the childcare site, then headed out to his meeting. He could do what she needed. It was just remembering a few things.
If he could manage to do that, things between them might magically get better.
6
The conference room Sam was sitting in was spotless.
Not sterile like a doctor’s office, but perfectly organized, not a speck out of place. The gleaming glass table didn’t have a single smudge. Legal pads and pens sat neatly in the center. Fresh flowers were in the corner. Bookshelves framed the walls, filled with legal volumes in matching colors, and in the middle, a span of windows looked out over the Boston skyline.
The firm’s lobby had been as pristine, with the names Forrester, Schaeffer and Pierce on the wall in bold red letters and a portrait of the three name partners beside it.
Her resume on crisp paper in front of her and the firm application already filled out, Sam fingered her necklace, thumbed the bottom edge of the clover’s stem before stopping herself and smoothing down her blouse, skirt and matching wool crepe blazer.
Their Discovery (Legally Bound Book 3) Page 6