Somehow, I’ve managed to go full-circle, I thought an hour later as I ran a comb through freshly showered hair. Somehow, I found myself attending a weekend meeting with the district superintendent as she launched a new literacy program. In addition to my computer classes, I’d now be co-hosting a fundraising gala. Not exactly my idea of fun, but it was for a worthy cause.
It was 8:15, just enough time to get dressed, call my driver, and swing by the coffee shop on the way in. The best coffee in the city came from the precision-calibrated machine in my own kitchen, thank you very much, but I’d pick up a double-chocolate mocha for Superintendent Lawson. How she drank that much sugar so early in the morning was beyond me, but it probably had something to do with being around kids for most of her career. I leaned closer to the mirror to apply my morning moisturizer–I didn’t have time to shave, so scruff it would have to be–and saw, with a churning in my gut, the faintest bruise on my neck, just barely pink against my tan skin. I frowned.
Last nighthadn’tbeen a strange dream. Shehadbeen there with me in that hotel room, all soft skin and smoldering eyes and hot, tight flesh around my cock. Sharp white teeth that snagged on my bottom lip as she kissed me, lips that sought out mine relentlessly, and a tongue from which words likeyesandharderrolled so easily. It had felt soreal… And then I’d awakened from the dream in which Sami and I were something and back into the waking world, and instead ofyesshe’d saidyou’re not Jamesand I’d saidI hope your husband fucks his secretaryanddamn, was it any wonder she hated me? I hatedmyselffor that one–but it had gotten her to look at me, gotten her ice-cold control to slip for a moment, even if it was to curse me out. I ran my hands through my neatly combed hair, letting a growl of frustration escape my chest.
Fifteen years ago, I thought that maybe, Samantha would be mine.
I stared at the mirror, the faint bruise on my neck staring back at me.
I should have learned my lesson.
But I hadn’t, and now I was going to school–my old school, my alma mater–with ahickey. I sighed.
Maybe Samantha was right. Despite the money, the power, maybe I was immature–but if I was, it was her that made me this way.
The stupid hickey on my neck was proof enough of that.
* * *
“Charlie, you charmer,” Superintendent Lawson said as I passed over her coffee–if you could call the sugary concoction that. “You shouldn’t have.”
She’d met me at the door of the high school, unlocking the heavy chain that looped through the door handles on off-hours. I followed her through the school’s main lobby, my footfalls loud across the gaudy crest inlaid in the travertine floor, a slim laptop bag in one hand, a carrier of three coffees in the other.
“So who am I meeting today?” I asked. Lawson–Elena, she always asked me to call her, though I never did–smiled over her shoulder at me as she used one sturdy hip to push open the next door, her hands full of coffee and folders. I reached over her to hold it open.
“You’ll see,” she said mysteriously. “But I think you’ll be impressed. It would have been better to havebothof the Martin boys for our littledynamic duo”–she chuckled, and I gave her a polite smile–“but we have someone nearly as good… You’ve done so much for the schools’ media departments, I’m really looking forward to expanding this year. A dual literacy program to get kids excited about readingandcoding?” She tastefully didn’t mention my real purpose: to raise money off of my connections. I’d been teaching coding for a year already. “We’resohappy you were willing to take on the challenge, Charlie.”
The smile I had for her this time was real. “You know I love working with your crew, Ms. Law–”
“Elena, Charlie, I’m sure I’ve told you to call me Elena,” shetsked.
“Elena. And I’ve told you:youknow best what your students need. You’re the one with the instructional knowledge,” I said, waiting for her to nod in agreement. “I’m just a guy with a tech company.So. When you say code, I code. You say you need computers, I find computers. You say you want to go back to the basics, expand the program to print literacy as well as tech literacy, I say…”
She pushed open the door to the school’s media center, and what I had been about to say… I couldn’t remember it any more.
And what I wanted to say…
Well, those words were not appropriate for school.
Because sitting very straight at a table in my–our–alma mater’s school library, a smile frozen on her perfect, ice-cold face, was Samantha Scott.
That same familiar twist of frustration in my stomach only made it through half a rotation before I got a hold on myself.
“Charlie,” Superintendent Lawson said, “may I introduce you to your co-lead? One of our distinguished alumni and one of the city’s top literary agents–”
“Oh,” I said, forcing a smile to my face, “we’ve met.”
“How wonderful!” the superintendent said.
Samantha stared at me, her expression perfectly,frostilyblank.
“Yes,” I said. “How wonderful.”
CHAPTER6
Samantha
“Thisistheworkyou had to do?” Charlie hissed as he took a seat–the one right next to me–in the school media center.
