by Lynne Silver
“Wow,” she murmured. “Deep.”
“There are a few folks who haven’t found their cross yet. You know those folks. They tend to be overbearing know-it-alls. Carrying a burden around gives you empathy,” Sam said.
“You’re amazing,” she said, wondering what his cross was, and staring at him as he drove through a dark suburban neighborhood of D.C. “I wish I hadn’t turned on you freshman year. Maybe you would’ve helped me be less intimidated when we started Montgomery Prep. God, everyone there was smart and wealthy. And skinny.”
He glanced over at her emphasis on the word skinny.
“I remember the smart and wealthy. The skinny not so much.”
“Well, you were the skinniest, smallest boy,” she said, realizing that had been his cross to bear. He’d had four years, maybe more, of taunts and being the runt of the pack. “You were probably wishing to gain some weight, right?”
“Would’ve come in handy against Eric Cohen,” he said, shrugging.
They shared a moment of weighty silence in memory of Eric Cohen and the people they’d both been ten years ago.
Before Casey could think of something else to say, Sam turned onto a small side street and parallel parked in front of a typical D.C. row home.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“This is my house.”
“Why are we here?”
“Because our date isn’t over yet, and I’m not taking you to another restaurant or a bar where it’s too loud to talk.”
“Sam, I don’t go to a man’s house on the first date. That’s asking for trouble.”
“So you admit it is a date.” His grin was infectious, and she shook her head as she exited his car and followed him into his home.
“You’re making me break all my rules,” she said, but she was too curious about how Sam lived to insist he drive her back to her car.
“Live a little. Rule breaking’s fun,” he said.
“This from the FBI agent.”
He grinned and ushered her into the entry of his home. She looked around curiously, but it was hard to see much until Sam walked through the darkness and snapped on a table lamp, which illuminated the dingy couch next to it. A floor lamp came on next, and she felt safe enough to walk deeper into the room without tripping on anything. Though there wasn’t much to trip on.
There was no clutter lying around Sam’s home. On her left, past the front door, was a tiny coat closet and then the space opened up into a nice size living room. A couch was in the center of the room facing a wall, which housed—well, Casey wasn’t sure how to describe it—some kind of hybrid desk–wall unit. Three computer monitors were spaced along the main shelf. Books and other pieces of technology such as cables and metal black boxes were scattered along the upper shelves.
“No television?” she asked.
He pointed to one of the monitors. “I stream everything.”
“You don’t entertain much?” she asked as she stepped fully into the living room.
“Nah. I bought the house last year. It was a bank foreclosure. I haven’t had time to do much to it, and it’s not like my degree is in decorating. I want it to look nice, but don’t have a clue of what to buy.”
“It has potential,” she said. “The space is nice and open, but that desk is the kind of piece that belongs in an upstairs office.”
He followed her gaze back to all the computer monitors on the wall. “Probably,” he said.
She followed him through the living room to a narrow kitchen that was left over from a decade past. It wasn’t quite avocado-colored appliances, but close. If this were her house, she’d tear out the wall and open the kitchen to the living room. It’d be gorgeous.
“Want a drink?” he asked. “Water? Soda?” He opened the fridge, and she saw some sugar-free flavored water.
“Yes, please.” They both reached for a grapefruit-flavored sparkling water and bumped heads. “Ouch.” She rubbed her scalp and let him get her drink.
“Sorry. Can I kiss it better?” He smirked at her and gave her the drink. As she sipped, she felt his gaze on her, watching her as if he wanted to say something but kept his mouth shut.
“What?”
“I want to ask you something, but I also want to be sensitive to your feelings.”
“You can ask, Sam.”
“Are you hungry?”
“What?”
“You didn’t eat much at the restaurant, and you’ve got to be hungry. I’m a pretty good cook, and I can whip something up for us if you want. But I now understand that food is a sensitive subject for you, and I want to be a helpful friend but not an overbearing one.”
Her automatic rejection of food was quick on her lips, but she saw the sincerity within Sam, and she nodded. “Yes, I am hungry.”
“Great, how does an omelet sound? With a little goat cheese and mushrooms?”
“You really can cook,” she said in slight amazement as she watched him grab ingredients from the fridge with practiced skill.
“Of course. My mother taught me and my sister. She said she refused to send two adults out into the world without life skills. I took to it and ended up enjoying cooking. My sister is pretty hopeless. I think it’s her politics.” He pointed to a tall, weathered wooden bar stool sitting out of the way. “Get comfortable.”
Casey obeyed and kicked off her heels to scooch up onto the bar stool and watch as Sam cracked eggs expertly into a glass bowl. “Your sister’s politics make her a bad cook?” She vaguely remembered that Sam had a younger sister. Maybe five years younger, so she’d been an ignorable age when they’d been together in high school.
“Everything’s a cause to her,” Sam said, whisking the eggs until they were frothy. “Produce needs to be picked by laborers that are paid a fair wage on land that has never seen pesticides and is within three hundred miles of her location. It needs to be purchased at a store where workers are given benefits, and, well, you get my point. She’s the reason I drive a hybrid.”
“We have a few kids like that at school,” Casey said. “I love their idealism.”
“Me too, and I love my sister, but sometimes it’s exhausting being with her. If she were here, I’d have to examine my carton of eggs to make sure the chickens were never caged against their will. I’d also better make sure my pots and pans are from democratic countries.”
“Sounds exhausting,” Casey said. “Where is she now?”
“She graduated college last year. She’s off in Ghana with Doctors Without Borders.”
He deftly flipped the omelet in half, and her mouth started to water, both at the smell of the food and at the sight of a tall, muscular man at ease in the kitchen. The cheese was added last, and she watched with relief as he plated the omelet, cut it in half, then put that half on a another plate. Eating alone while someone watched her would have triggered all kinds of issues in her.
He placed her plate near her and lowered onto the stool facing hers. She sipped her grapefruit drink, which she didn’t like all that much, but it kept her mouth occupied. She needed her mouth busy to keep from blurting things out, like how sexy she thought Sam was now.
He forked a mouthful of omelet into his mouth and chewed. He didn’t say anything, but he glanced at her food, which was still untouched.
“Do you cook?” he asked.
“Not really.” She reached for the plate, which had a little wisp of steam rising from the fluffy yellow omelet. “I make a mean salad from the bag.”
“You should learn to cook. Besides the fact that it’s fun, it could give you total control over what you eat, and I know how you like control.”
She glanced sharply at him around a mouthful of egg and saw that he was smiling at her as if he loved and admired the fact that she was a control freak. Most men hated that aspect of her personality. Sam had always respected her need to lead, and anytime they’d had to work on a class project in school, he’d let her take the reins, offering her support but never trying to take over simply
because he had a penis.
“I’ve been told that learning to cook would be a healthy way to heal. Kind of like therapy,” she admitted, “but I haven’t made time.”
“Make time,” Sam said. “I’m going to teach you. I also want to take you out on a date again; therefore we’re going to hang out here and talk so I can learn more about what would be a fun date for you and what is going to push your buttons.”
“We’re going on another date?” She hadn’t meant to add that saucy tone, but it came out on its own. Here was the chemistry she’d been missing in her date with Matt Melles. He’d emailed to say he had a nice time at dinner, but he hadn’t asked her out again, which maybe meant he was too busy at work or feeling the lack of chemistry. Fine with her, especially since she was finding chemistry with Sam.
He nodded and placed his empty plate on the counter. He stood, got in her space, and wrapped a long strand of her hair around his finger. “Yeah, Casey. We are. I let you get your way in high school, and I gave up on you in college, and then I tried to forget about you the last six years. I’m done. I’ve wanted this for a long time, and now it’s going to happen.”
Words failed her, and her heart pounded at his nearness. She’d suspected—no, she’d known—throughout high school that Sam had a crush on her, and she’d wrecked him for it, mocking him and letting him know he didn’t have a shot. If she’d had an inkling he would grow up to be this tall, smart, compelling man, maybe she would’ve paid attention when he was a teenager.
“We’ll see,” was all she allowed. She didn’t know how to react when he laughed.
“Can’t let me win, can you, Case?” He leaned in, making their lips inches apart. “It’s okay. I like a challenge.”
And then he kissed her.
His lips were soft but intent on hers, and her neck bent back as she craned for more of his taste. It was as if she’d been waiting her whole life to be kissed by Sam Cooper, which was ridiculous, since she’d been avoiding his advances long enough to have an advanced degree in it.
Yet he was the one graduating with honors in how to kiss your high school crush. His touch was gentle, and her body ached to be held, yet he kept space between them, allowing only their lips to connect. Their tongues brushed briefly and gloriously, then he pulled back to nibble at her lower lip and give attention to a different part of her mouth. Their breaths mingled as they tasted grapefruit on each other. Her body felt as if it were floating toward him, though she remained anchored on her chair. She hadn’t realized how many sensitive spots there were on her lips, yet Sam unerringly found them all. The man could kiss. He’d learned a thing or two million since they’d last locked lips after graduation.
How did he have the patience to keep the kiss this slow? It was a prelude, an interlude, and she’d be thinking about it all night, she realized when he suddenly pulled back.
“Sam,” she said on an exhale, and it sounded as if she was asking for more, but he was helping her off her stool and leading her into the living room and onto the couch. He took a seat in the rolling computer desk chair, keeping his distance from her, which was probably a good thing, because she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t jump on him and invite further intimacy.
She needed time and space to think about this new development in her long history with Sam. And her mom was having a bad week. She didn’t have time to get fired or mess around.
Chapter Five
University of Maryland, Fall 2005
Casey,” Sam shouted across the large, crowded campus food court. He was sitting with a group of his new friends, all from his C++ coding class, and thought he saw Casey Cooper’s doppelgänger until he realized it actually was Casey Cooper. What was she doing here? She was supposed to be at Williams.
Casey didn’t turn around, and so Sam ditched his lunch, asking his tablemates to watch it for a second, then sprinted out of the building. It was too late; she was gone. Sam squinted into the bright sun and then went back to his meal. He’d just joined MySpace, and he could log in later and check to see if Casey was on there too.
Or he could email some high school friends who might know why she was at U.M. with him. Maybe she’d made the same financial decision he’d made. Although he’d received financial aid from MIT, he still would have ended college in serious debt. He and his parents had made the mutual decision that it was smarter to go to his state university and graduate with honors and no debt.
Casey had been on scholarship, same as him, back at Montgomery Prep. Perhaps her mother had crunched the numbers of a prestigious private university over the summer and given the command for a public university.
“Where’d you go?” his roommate, Kevin, asked as Sam rejoined his lunch mates.
“Thought I saw a high school friend,” Sam replied. “No worries. I’ll find her later.”
“That skinny chick? She was hot.”
“You were friends with her?”
Sam could understand the disbelief. Now that he was out of a small high school, he’d discovered the world was a big place with lots of kids who preferred HTML to hockey. “Uh, yeah, sort of. My high school was a small place. Everyone knew each other.”
“Well, introduce me,” Kevin said and made some kind of weird huffing noise crossed with a laugh.
Sam gave a noncommittal smile. First he had to find Casey and discover what she was doing here.
Sam stared at the email he’d typed and hovered his mouse over the Send button. It had been exactly seventeen hours since he’d driven Casey back to her car at Montgomery Prep and roughly eighteen hours since he’d kissed her.
Man, his lips still tingled from the taste and the sheer glory of finally kissing her and having her reciprocate. His stupid senior year graduation impulse didn’t count. He’d been at a graduation party, one of the few class parties he’d attended, and chased after Casey as she’d been leaving. In his mind he was never going to see her again and he wanted to do something crazy.
So he’d run outside after her, called her name, congratulated her on graduating, and he’d kissed her. A quick peck on the lips—nothing like last night’s sexy torture—and then he’d congratulated himself on being Mr. Cool as he’d turned and walked back into the party. He hadn’t dreamed that over the summer she’d change her mind about attending Williams College and would instead enroll at the University of Maryland, same as him.
Sam reread the email and then hit Save As Draft instead of selecting Send. He’d spent several hours into the early morning researching eating disorders, and he realized how little he knew about Casey Cooper. If there had been a high school poll about which student had life the most together, she would have won, hands down. She had, in fact, won Girl Most Likely to Succeed in their senior year and was pictured in their yearbook smiling with an arm around Ian Hochstein, who, last Sam had heard, was just out of medical residency.
Casey’s life had all been a front, a façade to hide her deep insecurity about her body image. Never in a million years would Sam have guessed that the most popular girl in school, and, in his opinion, the prettiest, would be anything less than one hundred percent confident.
It might make him a horrible person, but he actually liked her better because of her eating disorder. Her condition made her real, and while he absolutely wanted her physically and emotionally healthy, he liked knowing she wasn’t actually as perfect as she pretended.
He also understood that he had to go slowly with Casey. If he was going to earn a relationship with her, he couldn’t play games. Not that he normally played games in his dating life, but Casey had trusted him with her biggest secret last night and now he had to prove he was worthy of her gift.
Therefore, the email he’d typed early this morning was on hold. It was the kind of email he typically sent the morning after a good first date. He never wanted to keep women guessing, so he always sent a quick I had fun, hope to see you soon email or text if he wanted to see a woman again. If they responded, great, and if they ignored him, either th
ey were playing a head game and he had no inclination to pursue them or they weren’t interested, and better he should know early.
After he’d dropped off Casey last night, he’d had to force himself to drive home and not text her from the parking lot to tell her he had a good time and wanted to see her again. For one, it was borderline stalker behavior, and two, he’d made his intentions pretty clear in his kitchen. Casey had liked his declaration if the hitch in her breath and body language had been any indication.
Sam had had a little training on body language and facial clues, and Casey had given clear signals that she liked when he got in her face and told her they were going to date. She’d more than liked his kiss. It had taken all of Sam’s willpower to back off the kiss and not take it further. He’d purposely sat on his office chair, leaving her alone on the couch, even knowing that he likely could have gotten a lot further with her if he’d tried.
It would have been a one-night thing. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he knew if he’d let Casey share the ugly details of her eating disorder with him and then he’d taken advantage of her vulnerability and their mutual attraction, it would have been a great night, but it would have been the only one with her. He wanted more; he wanted it all.
It was going to take planning and finesse. His usual post-date one-line email wasn’t going to cut it. She needed a phone call, and it was one he didn’t want to make from the non-privacy of his work cubicle. And then he smiled, because he knew exactly how to communicate with Casey: the same way he had all through high school—with a note, but this time, instead of her locker, on her desk at work.
Speaking of work, another private school had been hit. Sam had done his best to track the source of the hack, but the guy was good. Russian mafia good. None of it made sense. With all the multibillion-dollar corporations and banks out there, why waste time and energy hitting small private schools? Someone this good at infiltrating was wasting his talents. The question was why.
He picked up the phone to tap his usual source when a hack had him stumped, and set an appointment for ten the next morning to give him time to drive out to West Virginia.