Bringing Down Sam

by Leslie Kelly

  Finally, recalling more of what his father had actually said, he’d typed in, “Evie, leave.” He’d thought he was remembering it correctly. “Leave” had also netted many sites, including one dedicated to telling people how to get lost. Sam noted the url, wanting to check it out and see if any quotes from 101 Ways To Avoid Commitment appeared. There were literally dozens more he hadn’t had time to look at yet. It would likely prove to be a long day...and he certainly had other things he should be working on.

  “Why don’t you just type in ‘Snuggle Bottoms’?” James asked as he read the contents of the Google search box.

  Sam narrowed his eyes. “Huh?”

  “You know, the Snuggle Bottoms training pants TV commercials with Little Evie. Isn’t that what you’re checking out?”

  Sam stared hard at the other man. “TV commercial?”

  “You know the one,” the other man said with a sigh of exasperation. He pitched his voice up and did an imitation—a bad one—of a young girl. “Little Evie wants to leavie.”

  Sam still didn’t get it.

  “Oh come on, you’re not that much older than me. My mother credits Little Evie with finally getting my sister toilet trained! Remember? The cute little blue-eyed blonde who’s wearing training pants instead of diapers for the first time. And her mother tells her at the beginning of the commercial, ‘Just come to me and tell me when you have to go’.”

  Sam closed his eyes, trying to remember. A memory danced on the edges of his brain, but he couldn’t grasp it.

  “Little Evie forgets what she’s supposed to say,” James continued. “While they’re at a party, she keeps tugging at her mother, whispering ‘Little Evie wants to leavie.’ Until finally her mother figures out she’s trying to say she has to go!”

  The picture suddenly popped into place in Sam’s head. “And her mother leads her to the bathroom.”

  “When they come out, the kid winks and says...”

  “Little Evie left!” They both laughed out loud as they recited the end of the commercial in unison.

  What a vivid childhood memory. Sam could picture it clearly. In the annals of childhood TV promotions, Little Evie in that Snuggle Bottoms commercial had been his generation’s version of Mikey the Life cereal hater and the kids who knew how to spell Oscar Mayer bologna.

  “Little Evie,” he said softly, unable to shake the mental picture of her sweet, angelic face.

  “She went on to do a lot of other commercials, too. I remember there being a stink over one she did for some soap company, when she was in a bubble bath, supposedly naked. She was like twelve and some people thought it was too suggestive for a young girl.”

  Sam nodded slowly, vaguely remembering, even as wonder filled his mind. Could it be? Could Eve Barret really be the Little Evie of his childhood—of the childhoods of most thirty-something Americans? If so, why would she hide it? And where had she been all these years?

  “Well, gotta get back to work. Have fun and let me know if you hear anything on your father’s plans,” James said as he got up and walked out of the office.

  Sam waved and quickly swiveled his chair around to face his computer. Now his curiosity wasn’t just aroused, it was on full alert. His journalistic instincts were pinging and he could no more forget about James’s revelation than he could have ignored a lead on a major story.

  So he went to work. And within seconds—just by connecting Little Evie and Snuggle Bottoms, he hit pay dirt. He was easily able to find out everything the public knew about Little Evie…and her rocky road to modeling stardom.

  Two hours later Sam printed out the last of the articles he’d found. He tucked them all into a manila envelope, then stared at a grainy black and white photo still displayed on his computer monitor. It was Eve, a beautiful teenager, her stricken face wearing a haunted look.

  The picture had been snapped as she exited a courthouse where her father, who’d marketed himself as a shrewd talent agent, had been convicted of fraud and embezzlement. Behind her, at the edge of the picture, a prosecutor held a press conference. The article quoted him dropping hints of Eve’s alleged involvement in her father’s illegal activities.

  Sam didn’t believe it for a second. But he was sure many people who didn’t know her had.

  “Where did you go then?” he asked out loud. “What did you do next, Eve?”

  Sam now understood why he hadn’t seen anything of her in several years. The media coverage of her father’s trial had been intense, even by New York standards. Eve had been such a famous young person, and some of her father’s accusers had had powerful stories. One of those swindled had been an elderly grandmother who’d spent her life savings trying to promote her young grandchild, and had suffered a major heart attack when she learned she was penniless.

  There had even been a spread in People magazine, filled with photos of Eve as a child, then snapshots of her life as a cover model on teen magazines. The article had been cruelly titled “Little Evie: Not So Sweet Anymore!”

  Sam didn’t wonder why she’d dropped out of sight, and started using her mother’s maiden name, Barret. Her mother, per one article, had walked out on Eve’s father when Eve was just a little girl. There was no mention of what had become of her. Hopefully she’d helped Eve through the difficulty of her father’s arrest. He sincerely hoped Eve had not been cut off, adrift and alone, scorned by the public who’d adored her and abandoned by the father who had exploited her, all at the tender age of seventeen.

  His heart twisted in his chest as he grieved for her lost childhood, her stolen youth. She’d faced the kind of obstacles most adults never had to deal with, and she’d had to survive on her own after her world had been ripped apart by people he suspected she’d trusted.

  More than anything, he wanted to find her, pull her into his arms, tell her how damn sorry he was for what she’d gone through.

  Shortly after five, Sam gathered his briefcase, and the articles, and left his office, anxious to see her face and hear her voice. He had only spoken to Eve once all day. Wanting to hear her voice again, he’d tried calling her this afternoon, but hadn’t been able to reach her. When he’d bumped into Diana Girard, he’d asked her if she knew what Eve was doing today. The woman had given him a quizzical look, saying she had no idea, but that look on her face said she knew something he didn’t.

  Well, he did now. He knew Eve’s secrets. And he wasn’t the least bit deterred by them.

  Nobody could help who their parents were. Heaven knew, his own father was probably hated by a lot of people…sometimes even by Sam himself. No way did Sam believe Eve had been part of any fraud or embezzlement schemes and she had paid long enough for the sins of her father.

  Now he knew what she’d wanted to talk to him about, what she’d needed to clear the air about. Some old scandal over which she’d had no control.

  Not a problem.

  Frankly, if that was the worst secret she had to share, he had the feeling their relationship was going to be just fine.

  Eve hadn’t been ducking Sam’s calls all day, she’d simply had to drive back home to take care of a few things. She’d forgotten to have someone water her plants and had neglected to pay a bill that needed to get out today. Nothing major, there had been nobody she needed to talk to or see. Her job kept her rooted in the small Pennsylvania town where she lived for nine months out of the year, but she didn’t feel terribly connected to it when school wasn’t in session. With the entire summer off, if she’d had one-tenth of the income she’d made at the age of seven, she could have afforded to spend a couple of months on some beach, with few to miss her and fewer to care.

  Her sudden depression had nothing to do with the loss of all her money. It was the loneliness of her daily life that seemed so pathetic. A daily life that seemed to pale in comparison to the last few days she’d spent in Philadelphia with Sam.

  Not because of where she was staying. But because of the company.

  Eve used the drive time to clear her head a
nd prepare for her next conversation with Sam. The big conversation. The one where she confessed she’d lied to him and set out to humiliate him. It never sounded any better, no matter how she worded it.

  One thing she could do easily enough, though, was straighten out her friends. She’d already called Diana, explaining the truth of Sam’s character. Her friend had seemed skeptical at first, but had finally, grudgingly, allowed herself to believe Eve was correct. Sam was actually an all right guy whose humor book had been taken literally by some readers.

  When she got back to the city, she let herself back into the company penthouse, remembering, as she turned the key, that Sam’s own father now owned the place. Huh. She wondered what Jacob Kenneman would think if he had any idea who she really was.

  He does.

  Yes, that little comment he’d made yesterday said he did. But he hadn’t outed her to his son, at least not as far as she could tell. The optimist in her said it was because he was too focused on mending his relationship with his son to worry about her. The suspicious side was thinking blackmail.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she mumbled aloud.

  Because blackmail wouldn’t work, anyway. The brief phone calls she and Sam had shared—about his sister last night, and this morning when he was at work—hadn’t revealed anything, in tone or word, that said Sam knew the truth. But he would, very soon. Because he was on his way over as soon as he got off. He owed her that dinner and she was going to take him up on it, once the air was cleared.

  Kicking off her shoes, she pulled out her phone and looked up the number to a nearby Chinese restaurant that delivered. Sam might be springing for dinner, but she didn’t want to have their conversation in a busy restaurant.

  Groveling required privacy.

  Before she’d even dialed the first few digits, she heard a knock from the front door. Taking a deep breath, she crossed the living room, squared her shoulders, and let him in.

  “Hey,” he said with a simple smile.

  That smile lit up her entire being, made her heart flutter, made her stomach somersault.

  Damn, she’d missed him. It had only been twenty-four hours since she’d seen him, but she had been truly starving for his company.

  “Hi, Sam,” she murmured, stepping back when he leaned forward as if to kiss her.

  One simple kiss would lead to a deeper one. One deep kiss would lead to an embrace. One embrace would lead to her bedroom.

  No kissing.

  “Ah, so that’s how we’re playing it, huh?” he said, easily reading her.

  She nodded. “Yeah. That’s how we’re playing it. For now.”

  “Can I at least come in?”

  She gestured him toward the living room, telling him, “Of course. It’s your family’s condo, after all.”

  That surprised a laugh out of him, and he looked around the place. “I guess you’re right!” He dropped a manila envelope on the coffee table and tossed his jacket over the arm of the sofa. Crossing his arms over his chest and eyeing the furniture and the view, he added, “Might have to get the old man to redecorate. I’m not into all this modernist glass and black leather.”

  She smiled slightly. “Me neither. So, you two are getting along?” she asked, more in a stall for time than anything else.

  Sam nodded slowly, looking almost surprised himself. “We really are. I don’t know why, exactly, but he’s been talking more than blustering lately.”

  “Did you get along before…everything?”

  “Yeah, we were actually pretty close,” he admitted, swiping a hand through his thick hair, the topic obviously a frustrating one. “I guess that’s what made it so much harder—the disappointment that he wasn’t the man I’d always thought him to be.”

  Understanding how that could feel, given her own father’s activities, she mused, “We all tend to put our parents on a pedestal when we’re young. He proved himself human—fallible—and I know that must have been tough to take.”

  But, unlike her situation, it wasn’t insurmountable. At least, she hoped not, for Sam’s sake. Sam’s father had done something he regretted and had paid the price with the loss of his family. He’d been trying to make up for it ever since. Eve’s father had only regretted getting caught and hadn’t learned one damn thing during his incarceration. She suspected he’d gone back to his old tricks the moment he’d been released. There was really no comparison.

  So while she didn’t ever see things working out in her situation, she did see a possible path to reconciliation for the Kennemans. Because the tone in Sam’s voice when he talked about the way he and his father had once been said he mourned the loss of that relationship. She knew he still loved the older man, even if Jacob Kenneman was pushy and arrogant.

  “I hope you two can find your way back to one another,” she murmured.

  Sam nodded once, gruffly muttering, “Thanks. So, how was your day?”

  “Fine.” Knowing he wanted to change the subject, she added, “I was about to order Chinese. Okay with you?”

  “Dining in?” he asked, sounding oh-so-innocent, though the sparkle in his expressive green eyes was incredibly sexy, in a playful way.

  She swallowed, feeling the heat of that innuendo clear down to her toes. “Yes.”

  He waited while she made the call, watching from a few feet away. When she’d finished and disconnected, Sam didn’t even wait for her to put the phone down. As if he just couldn’t help himself any longer, he slipped his hand around the side of her neck. Lightly brushing the rough pad of his thumb across the tender skin of her throat, he pulled her forward. “Damn I’ve missed you,” he said before his mouth caught hers in a kiss that was oh, so loving, so sweet. Not chaste—not restrained—but simple and gentle. His lips slid across hers and his tongue slipped between them as if to taste her in tiny sips.

  Eve forgot about her resolution to keep a good two feet of distance between them until after they’d talked and let herself melt into him. His tenderness got to her where overt passion might not have. She dropped what was left of her guard and slid her arms across his shoulders to pull him tighter against her. She gave herself over to the languorous kiss, loving the silky way his tongue felt against hers. And his arms held her loosely, leaving his hands free to stroke her from shoulder to hip, and up again, so that even through the cotton fabric of her shirt she could feel the warmth of his fingers.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you,” he finally said when their lips parted.

  “I’m sorry. I had some errands to run.”

  He frowned at her, then turned and slid an arm across her shoulders to lead her to the couch. “Work stuff, I assume? Where are you heading next?”

  “Umm, we’ll see,” she said, hedging.

  He sat on the sofa, pulling her down as if wanting her on his lap. Eve resisted, and, in doing so, bumped into the coffee table, causing the envelope he’d deposited there to spill onto the floor.

  Mumbling an apology, she bent down to reach for it. She and Sam comically bumped heads as he went to do the same thing. She rubbed her forehead, laughter on her lips, about to make a Three Stooges joke. Before she could, she spied the items that had slid out of that unsealed envelope. There were photos, copies of articles, magazine covers and screenshots, a lifetime of accusation in black-and-white and full color spilling across the carpet. All with one subject.

  Her.

  Sucking in a shocked breath, she sat back on her heels. Her hand shook as she reached for the nearest photo—the one taken of her outside the courtroom right after her father had been convicted. As always, when she saw it, she was swamped with emotions—anger, hurt, humiliation, resentment, betrayal. Only this time, she had to deal with them in front of someone she’d begun to care all too much about.

  She finally raised her eyes to gaze at Sam, knowing they were moist with both embarrassment and hurt. The feelings weren’t merely residual, the same ones she always experienced when she thought about that period of her life. These were fresh and raw,
the truth punching her square in the chest.

  He’d researched her. Sam had pried open all the secrets the Internet had to offer, printed them out and made up some kind of dossier on her.

  Eve’s heart twisted and her throat closed up until she thought she’d choke on the emotions she tried to swallow down. She’d been prepared to explain and apologize about what she was really doing here and had known all of this would probably come out as a result of that conversation. She hadn’t been prepared for him to do some kind of journalistic background check on her. Though, being honest with herself, she knew she probably deserved it, at least a little. She’d been playing him from the start—he had obviously been suspicious and had done the rational, normal thing: investigate.

  But knowing it had been rational and normal didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell.

  Sam watched her absorb the truth, remorse flooding him. This much-needed conversation was not starting out the way he’d intended it to. “Eve, it’s not what you think.”

  “Of course it’s what I think.” Her face flushing, she scooped up the articles and thrust them into his arms. “You could have just asked.” As if something had just occurred to her, she gasped and quickly said, “Tell me you’re not planning on writing some kind of where-is-she-now article.”

  He winced, knowing he deserved the mistrust. “I promise you, I’m not.” Sam dropped the envelope and all its contents onto the table. “Yes, I researched you. But there’s no story, I swear. I was just trying to understand why you seemed to back away from me yesterday, after what happened between us. Why you seemed so mysterious. I think I get it now."

  She didn’t look convinced.

  “Eve, I know it’s tough on you, trying to rebuild your career without letting anyone know who you are. The public has a long memory. Avoiding personal relationships has been the price you’ve paid, hasn’t it? The way you’ve kept your privacy?”