The idea that Samantha might struggle bothered him greatly. She was mother and father to her daughter and worked a full-time job with hours that extended beyond the normal school day. She was such a happy, vibrant people person with more responsibility than many. How did she do it?
As they entered the building and he reached for his non-existent tie for the tenth time, Jen stuck close to his side and told him what she was doing when her phone came out and she started texting.
“Let me find out where they are so we don’t wander aimlessly.”
He kept her in his line of vision but moved to a digital screen with a video presentation of the museum’s current exhibits. Seeing that the Gregory Lloyd Foundation sponsored one of the permanent displays surprised John, though he knew his mom and aunt were active in philanthropy. What better way to do good and spend a fortune of their husbands’ money?
“Okay. Second floor. Behind the rainforest adventure.”
He was a nervous wreck by the time they found the rainforest and started searching in earnest.
Ryan was the first to come into view. He looked up as they approached, and John noted the warm smile he gave Jen.
“Over here,” he called out.
A woman nearby with long, wavy hair turned when Ryan spoke. It was Samantha—only a version of the woman he’d never seen before.
Nearly stumbling over his own feet, John was sure his face froze in shock when he got a good look at her.
At the office, she was always neat as a pin and looking exactly as you’d expect someone who worked on the executive floor. Hell, until now, he hadn’t even known how long her hair was. Even at the casual business events they took part in, she was in control of her situation. The woman in front of him gaping with flabbergasted shock was another thing entirely.
Dressed in jeans that threatened his sanity and a clingy t-shirt, he didn’t know where to look and not end up getting his face slapped because the curves that usually left him hot and bothered now robbed his brain of polite activity.
Her boobs in the plain white shirt gave off an in-your-face vibe that scrambled his thoughts. And holy god. Those hips. That ass.
John gritted his teeth. How long had it been since he got laid? A year? Two? He couldn’t remember. No stranger to sexual impulses, he simply prioritized his sexual needs rather far down on the list, preferring the uncomplicated and straightforward relationship he had with his hand. Right this second, though, that option held little appeal. Not when a veritable goddess was right in front of him.
“Oh, Mr. Lloyd,” she stammered. Biting her lip, she blushed and curved some hair behind her ear. “This is a surprise.”
Feeling awkward and tongue-tied when it hit home that she wasn’t expecting him, Jen slid in with an enthusiastic comeback and saved him from twisting in the wind.
“A good one, I hope! The foundation is thinking about funding an educational program. John and I stopped by to get a sense of the current exhibits. Imagine our surprise when Ryan texted to say he was here.”
His assistant stepped back as if she’d just delivered her lines in a play and pushed him forward with nothing but a look. It was his turn at bat.
He took a deep breath and hoped he wasn’t making a mistake. “Samantha, how nice. Please, call me John.” The sound of Jen’s reminder to smile exploded in his head, so he tried for something suave, but the look on Ryan’s face suggested he hadn’t even gotten close.
Goddammit. He ran a global company. People quaked in their shoes when he took over a deal. A simple, human conversation shouldn’t be that hard. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Um, where’s Chelsea? She’s here too, right?”
Thinking he was clever lasted two seconds, and then Samantha’s face froze. She arched a brow at Jen, and then gave Ryan a withering stare.
Okay. Shit. Where was the miscalculation? John rewound every word and looked for the blunder. When he found it, his inner narrator scoffed at his stupidity. How the hell would he know Chelsea was at the museum too if this was a surprise encounter?
Ryan took over and acted like nothing was amiss.
“She’s in front of the green screen right now so the digital techs can drop her into a video showing her running from dinosaurs. Not enough room for all of us, so we’re waiting here.”
“Dinosaurs?” Jen laughed. “Do they have a video for grown-ups? Maybe running from an overflowing laundry basket?”
Samantha laughed, and the amusing comment broke the ice. But he wasn’t fooled. For now, he was there on sufferance.
He knew this drill. When Jen looked at him and fiddled with her earring, he was supposed to make conversation.
“Does Chelsea’s school take field trips? Has she been here before?”
The hallelujah chorus rang out in John’s heart when Samantha lost her aggravation at being so obviously ambushed and offered a genuine smile.
“I’m on the field trip committee! It’s our job to find stuff the kids will enjoy while they learn too. We went to the pretzel factory at the start of the school year and twisted our own knots. The rainforest exhibit here is so popular that large groups have to book far in advance.”
Two swinging doors flew open and a bundle of excitement came barreling toward them while a museum staffer followed.
“Mommy, Mommy! I had to run and run. Like this!”
John chuckled when the exuberant seven-year-old demonstrated running in place while she waved her arms in terror. Ryan joined and made a howling noise and pretended to be the animal chasing her. Chelsea giggled hysterically as her mother looked on with a wide, happy smile.
“I remember you,” she said to him when the giggling stopped.
Some part of him did a touchdown dance that the little girl remembered him from a company gathering.
Samantha stepped up to her daughter and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Sweetie, this is Mr. Lloyd. He’s Mommy’s boss.”
Needing no prompting before stepping forward to shake his hand, the young child impressed John. Wow. Did kids still do that? He was glad because nothing irritated him more in business than a limp handshake and dodgy eye contact.
“Hi,” she said. “You gave me my bowling trophy. It’s on the mantle at home.”
He shook her little hand and struggled to keep a rein on his composure. Chelsea Matthews was a charming miniature of her mother. The only difference was eye color. Samantha had warm brown eyes, but her daughter had dusty blues.
“John likes to bowl too,” Ryan told her. Chelsea looked back and forth between them curiously. Ryan laughed and said, “Oh, hey! Didn’t we tell you? John is my brother.”
“That’s so cool,” she chirped with real glee, thereby causing his nervous stomach to calm.
And just like that, the kid forgot all about him and concentrated on her mom as she launched into an exuberant explanation of how a green screen works. Samantha listened attentively. The indulgent mom-smile when she swept Chelsea’s hair off her face struck John straight in his heart.
A museum employee came bustling toward them wearing a broad smile and waving something in her hand. “You’re all set!” She handed something hanging from a museum lanyard to the excited child. “This is a flash drive,” she told her. “Your dinosaur adventure is on it.”
Chelsea proudly declared she knew what a flash drive was and thanked the pleased museum worker so effusively that the woman bent over chuckling and gave the kid a hug.
When she straightened and looked at the adult squad, she made a face and drily murmured, “I wish all the kids who came through here had half her enthusiasm.”
From there, they moved from exhibit to exhibit, stopping along the way for visits to the museum’s workrooms and holding spaces. At first, Ryan kept the conversation going, but slowly, the atmosphere thawed, and before too long, they were all acting like kids. Even Jen. His surprise reminded John to stop making blanket assumptions about people. Those impressions overrode his natural curiosity and kept him from bei
ng friendlier. If he wanted to know more about his assistant or Samantha, all he had to do was be good-natured and engage in human-to-human conversation.
Decked out in protective gloves and shoe covers, they got an astonishing behind-the-scenes look at the impressive dinosaur exhibit. Chelsea’s long-drawn-out, “Wow,” was filled with wonder when they each got an opportunity to touch a real dinosaur bone, and he had to admit he had the same reaction. One simply didn’t get a chance to fondle dinosaur bones every day.
Samantha remained close to him while Jen and Ryan straggled behind. He caught himself in a stuffy, unapproachable Prince Philip moment with his hands clasped behind his back and quickly adopted a friendlier pose after detecting Jen’s polite but obvious cough. Despite some minor gaffes, he’d chatted amiably throughout the morning with everyone in their group and anybody they interacted with. He was feeling mighty good about it, too.
When he and Ryan with Chelsea in the middle approached some scaffolding around an archaeological simulation, he saw Jen and Samantha wave for their attention, point at the restrooms, and dash off.
John smiled. His mom said that women took bathroom breaks in pairs for a reason. He wasn’t sure what she meant or what the reason was, but that didn’t stop him from finding some circumstantial humor to laugh about.
The door to the ladies’ room wasn’t completely shut before Samantha pinned Jen to the spot with a blazing glare.
“What the hell, Jen!”
She didn’t hide her sigh or pretend not to know exactly what had upset Samantha.
“Are you mad? Shit. You are, aren’t you?” She answered her own question and winced. “I’m not usually so clumsy about these things, but dammit, John makes my job so hard with all his issues.”
“This is part of your job?” Samantha jeered. “Stalking employees on their days off?”
“What? No!” She suddenly laughed and pulled the confused receptionist in for a hug. “Sorry. I didn’t think about how this would look.”
“Ryan, is he in on it too?”
“Well, not to begin with,” she quickly assured the angry mom. “Even though this is a setup, it wasn’t a setup if you follow my winding logic. Ryan did a good thing for Chelsea, and I’m the one who pushed our way in uninvited.”
Samantha threw her hands up, and in an exasperated tone, she cried, “Am I missing something?”
Time for a tiny arrow, Jen thought as she searched for the easiest way to explain. John’s quirks required so much patience that it seemed only fair to bring Samantha up to speed and hope she wasn’t deploying this arrow too soon.
“Do you like John, Samantha? And I don’t mean as a boss. He’s a man. A slightly awkward, good-hearted, unaware grown-up. Does any of that float your boat?”
Samantha’s startled gaze and immediate blush was the only answer she needed. Bull’s-eye!
“Jen, come on. He’s John Lloyd, for heaven’s sake.”
“Yeah? So?”
“I don’t know what to say,” Samantha murmured.
She laughed. “Is this is where you hand me a bunch of drivel about being a single mom and how he’s out of your league?”
Samantha shrugged. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
With a drawn-out sigh, Jen lowered her voice and asked a straightforward question.
“When is the last time you went on a date?”
“I think you already know the answer,” was her terse, sad reply.
She nodded her understanding. It was just as Jen thought. After her the untimely passing of Chelsea’s father, Samantha had more than likely channeled her grief into a source of strength so she could survive a lonely delivery and an uncertain future. Being young, pregnant, and alone by no fault of her own had to have sucked, big time.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Samantha. You’re a big girl, and I think you can handle some bold truth. Am I right?”
“Go for it,” the brunette said with a smirk.
“I don’t think John Lloyd has ever been on a date. Not in the classic sense but you catch my drift, right?” She didn’t wait for a reaction and plowed ahead.
“He likes you. More than a lot. But he’s a freakin’ mess on his best day.”
Samantha sniggered, crossed her arms, and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’ve noticed how you coach him.”
She laughed too. “Actually, I’m just trying to teach him the rules of the road. He’s not a moron, Sam. He knows how to drive, but his mind is so focused on the practical stuff that he totally misses all the road signs.”
“Wow. Nobody ever calls me Sam anymore.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. It slipped out. My bad.”
“No, no. It’s okay,” she assured Jen. “I like hearing it. Sometimes we have to be so rigid and uncompromising to get ahead. The cards are stacked against us. As women, nicknames can sometimes hinder any hope of being taken seriously.”
“Truth.” Jen snorted.
Samantha leaned her hips against the vanity counter and studied her feet for a minute. “Okay. Let me see if I have this straight.”
She chortled at the pithy, dry tone Samantha used. Jen inspected her appearance in the mirror. Decked out in standard office attire, she was overdressed for a museum crawl and her feet were killing her. It was one thing to navigate a regular day in heels, and another thing altogether to tromp around a huge museum in the unsuitable footwear. She glanced sideways at Samantha and noted her stern but amused expression as she laid out the facts as she saw them.
“So John Lloyd ... THE John Lloyd ... likes me. Do I have that part right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied. “More than a lot. Don’t forget that part.”
“Right,” Samantha murmured. “He likes me a lot. And he’s a bit of a Sheldon in public.”
“Sheldon?”
“Yeah. The nerdy physicist in Big Bang? The one who doesn’t do well in social settings?”
“Oh, right, right. Ah, ha-ha! That’s funny.”
“And for reasons I’ll never understand, you say he doesn’t date even though he’s easy on the eyes.”
She arched a brow and mockingly reminded Samantha that even with all his issues, John was a man. He wasn’t a man-whore—though she didn’t use that word— but he had a never-ending choice of society cougars and scheming gold diggers to meet his needs. No matter how you put it, that stuff wasn’t dating. Period.
When she was sure Samantha understood what she was saying, she gave her an important piece of information and waited for her reaction.
“We ambushed you today because when John didn’t find you at work, he became rather agitated.”
When Samantha’s expression mirrored shock and interest, Jen decided to focus on John and kept to herself that she and Ryan had conspired prior to this morning.
“And so you know, Samantha. He’s very aware of Chelsea. He was beside himself with worry on the way over here because he thought she wouldn’t like him.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“So you tracked us down when John got, um, agitated?”
Fast thinking saved the day. “Actually, I’d texted Ryan earlier to ask a question, and he volunteered the details of your outing. It was all me after that.”
“I see.”
The single mom hadn’t run screaming, and so far, she hadn’t tried to rip Jen’s face off, so she tossed out a quick couple of fact bombs to sweeten Samantha’s perspective.
“When I told him we could tag along on Ryan’s field trip, he spent ten minutes in the restroom deciding between tie or no tie.” She held up her hand and said, “Truth,” when Samantha snorted in disbelief.
“And he barely blinked when I had his secretary,Anne, push off an important lunch meeting. For John, that says a lot.”
“Oh, Jen. Dammit,” Samantha cried. “I like him too but there’s Chelsea and work and well, his mom. I’m a receptionist with a community college degree. I’ve got a seven-year-old and have never owned a new car let alone a house
. I clip coupons and sold my grandmother’s fancy china to afford a trip to Disneyworld. All I see are roadblocks, and to be honest, I’m a giant coward. Love and heartache? I can write the damn book. I’m not sure I have what it takes.”
The poor woman’s voice had risen steadily until it shook with emotion. Jen was even more sure her cupid instincts were on target because from her spot in the cheap seats, John and Samantha were a perfect match.
“You need to relax,” she chided. With a sly chuckle, she asked, “Did you notice how easily John and Chelsea hit it off?” Jen elbowed Samantha teasingly. “Chelsea’s natural curiosity and John’s straightforward pragmatism found common ground in the museum.”
“That’s true,” Samantha murmured. Her voice expressed a feeble hope that made Jen’s heart sing with joy.
With no prelude, Samantha gathered her into a big hug. “Thank you. Even if this is a huge disaster, thank you for caring.”
Chapter 7
Ryan looked around and concluded Applebee’s might never recover from the sprawling takeover their party of five visited on the dining room. He and John shoved tables around as the girls gave directions and the wait staff chuckled. And that was just the start.
When it was time to order, he and his brother did dueling menus and ended up getting a little of everything. Before long, appetizers, salads, and burgers crowded their table, as well as a family-size platter of nachos that was devoured to the last piece.
Swirling a straw in his glass of iced tea, Ryan thought, This is good. Seeing John loosen up and really enjoy himself gave him a great deal of satisfaction.
His eyes slid to the woman seated between him and John. From all outward appearances, Jen Carlton seemed calm and collected. Not a single strand of hair was out of place, and though the rest of them were lounging around doing the ‘I ate too much’ slouch, she was her usual prim, proper self.
Enduring (Family Justice Book 8) Page 52