Chapter 11
Samantha
I was at the airport early, but Aidan was earlier. I walked to our gate at La Guardia to see Aidan already there, sitting in one of the hard chairs, his laptop open on his lap. He was somewhat casual, but he was still the Man in Black: he wore black jeans and a black sweater, expensive and molded perfectly to his body. He was clean-shaven, his gaze fixed on the screen in front of him as one hand absently rubbed his chin. He didn’t notice me until I stood in front of him.
He looked up at me and blinked. He’d been so engrossed he was surprised to see me. His dark eyes quickly took in what I was wearing, then looked back to my face again. Right. Because he wasn’t supposed to be looking at me.
I was wearing loose linen-blend pants and a dark gray tank top. I had ballet flats on my feet and a slouchy cardigan wrapped around me like a shawl, my hair tied up in a ponytail. It was an outfit meant to be comfortable on a cramped airplane, with the extra layer for the plane’s cold air. As an added bonus, it was an outfit that covered all body parts without being fussy or easily wrinkled. It was rather different than what I usually wore to the office, and for a second I wondered if he liked it or not.
Then I remembered I didn’t care.
“Samantha,” Aidan said. “Hello. Did you have a nice weekend?”
I remembered my Sunday afternoon orgasm indulgence, thinking of him, and fought the urge to blush. “It was fine, thank you. And you?”
His schedule for the weekend had been blank, as it usually was. Aidan’s off hours were still a mystery. “It was very restful,” he said vaguely, then gestured to the seat next to him. “Make yourself comfortable. We board in forty minutes.”
“What’s so fascinating?” I asked, taking the seat next to him and putting down my bags. “You barely noticed my existence just now.”
“I always notice your existence,” he said, though his tone wasn’t flirtatious. He paged through the document on his laptop. “This is a report I asked for.”
“From who?” It wasn’t a nosy question. I knew every report due to Aidan, and when it was due. It was my job to make sure every one of them was submitted on time. I’d seen nothing come into his email inbox, so this must have come to his personal account.
“No one you know,” Aidan said, frowning a little. “More of an external thing.”
“Oh.” I crossed my legs and pulled my purse onto my lap. This was fine; we were fine. Everything was fine. Just a girl and her boss in the airport on a business trip. Friday—whatever that had been—was in the past. My strange thoughts of yesterday were in the past. This was business.
I was digging in my purse for my phone when Aidan held up a hand. His watch was silver and black and gorgeous, and it glinted against the soft wool of his sweater. “Okay, okay,” he said with aggrieved humor. “I’ll tell you if you’ll just top badgering me. I can’t take it anymore.”
I smiled. “I knew I could make you give in.”
“You can.” He frowned again. “Truth be told, it’s a report about the Egerton brothers.”
I put my purse down and looked at him. “The Egerton brothers?”
“Yes. Specifically, their history.” He clicked through a few more pages. “This was originally a revenge thing for me, but now I’m finding interesting information.”
I stared at him. My hands had gone cold.
He looked away from the document and at me. “I suppose you should know this about me, Samantha,” he said. “I am not a very nice person, especially in business. You’re going to learn that, since you’re going to be meeting my partners.”
I blinked, my eyes dry. Revenge. He was talking about revenge for someone making a comment about my pussy and my ass. “You mean because your partners know you so well,” I said.
Aidan nodded. “We’ve known each other since we were fifteen. I suppose you’ve heard the story of how Tower VC was started?”
“Dane Scotland invented a database software, and you sold it for millions of dollars.”
“Forty-six million, to be exact. We were twenty-one. I don’t know much about software, but what Dane created had something to do with making databases easier to crawl and access, even across multiple platforms. Very big databases. So a company like Apple, for example, could look at what was selling in every store across the country—updated by the minute.”
“Impressive,” I said.
Aidan smiled. “Dane’s mind is impressive. The rest of him is a little rough around the edges.”
I nodded. I’d never seen a photo of Dane Scotland. He was based in Chicago, and he wasn’t a gossip media darling like Aidan was. “What about the others?” I asked.
Aidan scratched his chin. “I’ll give you the honest answer, I suppose. Noah is our partner in L.A., which works for him because he is deeply devoted to sleeping with models and movie stars. Alex is our Dallas partner. He’s the only one of us with a criminal record.”
My lips parted in surprise, but I tried to keep my composure. “Oh?”
“He was eighteen,” Aidan said. “He was in a fight that went wrong and got too violent. Unfortunately, that fight was with his own brother.”
“I see.”
Aidan smiled again at my politeness. “We all grew up in Chicago. Our home lives were difficult in different ways, for different reasons. When we left home, we moved in together in a run-down old apartment that cost us four hundred dollars a month. We lived there while we finished school, and we all worked menial jobs while Dane built the software. When we sold it, we used the money to start Tower VC. The rest is history.”
I thought about that, four teenaged boys living in an old apartment that was better than home, trying to make a better life. “It’s a good story,” I said.
Aidan shrugged. “My point is that even though I have money now, it doesn’t change my roots. I’ve fought for everything I have, and I’ll keep fighting if I have to. I may wear nice clothes, but I basically come from nothing.”
“I know that feeling,” I said. “I come from nothing, too. Though I also come from something.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Please explain.”
I bit my lip, hesitating. It wasn’t a story I told many people. But I had the urge to tell it now. “You know my sister, Emma? I think you met her when you hired Executive Ranks.”
Aidan nodded.
“Well, Emma and I are adopted. We were found abandoned outside the doors of a hospital. I was a baby, and Emma was one.”
“Jesus,” he said softly.
I nodded. “From the way the story was told to me, we weren’t hurt. It didn’t look like we were starved or abused. We were just… left.” I let out a breath. “Anyway, we were adopted together by our parents—our adoptive parents—and they took good care of us. Emma and I grew up in a safe, loving home with parents who wanted us. So that’s what I mean when I say I came from nothing, and also from something.”
He was watching me, his dark eyes unflinching. “I’m glad it turned out so well for you. But it must be a strange piece of your life, not knowing who your parents are.”
He’d gotten right to the heart of it, as usual. “I love my parents. And they handled it the right way, telling me about the adoption when I was ready. But it makes me think differently about myself, I think. I’ve had to make my own identity, create who I am, in a way that others don’t. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what parts of me are me, and what parts of me are my biological parents. If any parts are me at all.”
I’d never spoken like this to anyone, but Aidan didn’t flinch. “I know that feeling,” he said.
I wanted to hear what he meant by that, but they called us to board the flight. We took our seats in business class, and Aidan went back to his laptop, the conversation apparently over.
I thought about working, too—I should work. I had lots to do.
But somehow, unburdening myself had made me both light-headed and exhausted. Just a few words, a few sentences, bottled up for so long and finally spoken aloud. It made me feel like I’d climbed uphill at a run.
I laid my head back against the seat, and I was asleep by the time takeoff was finished.