A/N- Much adoration to M for her wonderful beta and enthusiasm. As always, love to Maple Street.
Continued from chapter five.
Chapter Six:
Samantha had never played the role of home wrecker.
She, of course, realized how it must look to observers. A young, blonde, stereotypically pretty agent on the rise sleeping with her older, married boss. She was the villain in every Lifetime movie, the antagonist in every novel. The story always went the same way: the woman sleeps with her unhappily married supervisor. Wracked with guilt, the unhappily married supervisor tells his wife, sending the marriage on a slippery slope to divorce. The mistress, not content to wait for the ramifications of her actions, pressures the unhappily married supervisor to commit. When it appears he and his wife are on the road to reconciliation, the young, blonde, stereotypically pretty woman attempts to kill the wife, the resulting angst reaffirming the bond of marriage and leaving the mistress in a jail cell or the morgue.
Her affair with Jack had gone off that track shortly after the second plot point. The problem with fiction is that it never shows the other side.
The mistress was never supposed to fall in love with her boss; it was only supposed to be about sex and advancement. The boss wasn't supposed to give her gifts on her birthday or hold her hand while they watched a video together in her apartment. And she imagined that was her mistake, letting herself become a plot device in the most significant relationship of her life.
It hadn't started that way, exactly. At least not in any way to which Jack would readily admit. Despite the fact that their attraction was never just about the physical, that didn't stop him from telling her that what they had done was stupid. A miscalculation on his part and that he didn't want to bring down her career.
Her career. Not his own, not his marriage, but her job. He was being selfless and she hated him for it; hated him because it laid all the responsibility at her feet while making her wonder: was she just a cliche? Had he slept with her because his marriage was failing? Desperate for intimacy, as Farrell had said?
The second night they slept together, he had taken it back.
Lying in bed that night, she had watched him sleep. Wondering if he was going to wake up and express the same regrets, leave her like he did just the week before. He did wake up and she tentatively told him her own reservations, about his family and how she didn't want to be the catalyst for its unraveling. He had remained silent for several minutes before he ran a hand through her hair and told her that his marriage had started to come apart long before she had walked into his office.
His office. It always came back to work.
It did relieve her of some guilt, however. All the signs of a fractured marriage had been there; she had seen him ignore his pages and head in the opposite direction of his home after work. She knew that in many ways he was trying to make it work with Marie, and in an ironic way, it helped to justify their own relationship. He wasn't with her because he was escaping his marriage; he was with her despite his attempts to catch back up with it.
So, she had never played the role of home wrecker, and she wasn't about to start now.
Jack had asked her to dinner on the phone, from a hotel where he was staying at so he didn't have to go home and share a bed with his wife. Didn't have to go home and work on the marriage that he had seemed so reinvested in before she had left for Washington.
It begged the question: Had her absence somehow idealized what they had in Jack's eyes, or had he and Marie fought because sometimes, despite the best intentions, it just isn't meant to be?
Ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach, she picked up the phone. Getting his voicemail, she left a message telling him that she would be unavailable Friday night, that she was sorry, and that maybe they could catch up another time.
Maybe she wouldn't have played the role of home wrecker, but she didn't want to take that chance.
The message hadn't surprised him as much as her tone.
It had been clipped, professional. Almost as though she had been calling to cancel a dentist's appointment rather than canceling a dinner with someone with whom she had once been intimately acquainted. Confused, he ran through the potential reasons. A meeting was unlikely; no one would schedule a briefing for a Friday night this far in advance. Samantha herself had vented about little she had to do in the new assignment, so to credit a backlog of work would seem to be a reach.
Their phone call the other night was awkward. It had been cordial, but he had sensed that she was making small talk to avoid something more consequential. Had she been upset that he hadn't called earlier? In retrospect, he probably should have, but they were both trying to get on with their lives and create some distance emotionally just as the FBI had done physically by shipping her to another office. Giving her a new career path, a new life. Getting her away from him.
Maybe she was drawing the line in the sand.
Marie had drawn her own that morning, asking him not to come back until he could show he was serious about being a part of their marriage. The relief he felt had brought with it a fresh wave of guilt.
"Jack, I was just about to leave for the day." It was Martin.
"Did you finish the report on the Gordine case?"
He looked at the floor. "No, but the filing date isn't until Tuesday, so I figured it could wait until I got back in here tomorrow."
"Today, please."
His eyes lifted in surprise. "It's already getting pretty late and I wanted to get a night off this week."
The pressure behind Jack's eyes was building and he suddenly wanted to be anywhere but there. "And I wanted to close this case. Finish the goddamned report." He didn't have the energy to yell.
Melissa had chosen that instant to walk into the office and witness the exchange; Jack saw her trade a look with Martin and immediately exit, with him following quickly behind.
The door slammed and he was left alone. In all respects.
"I know I haven't been working here long, but he has issues."
Melissa and Martin sat at the table, files spread between them. Looking at her, he spoke guardedly. "He's had a rough year."
"His marriage?"
Martin stared at her.
"I know the signs."
"He and his wife have been having some problems. There have been issues here; just political stuff with some old cases. Samantha leaving didn't help." Wondering already if he had overstepped his bounds, he clarified. "The upheaval in the team."
She nodded. "She worked here awhile, it's to be expected."
They worked in silence for several minutes before she tried again. "Why did she get transferred?"
The question surprised Martin, only because it was the one subject that hadn't been broached since Samantha left. There were rumors and even a consensus around the office, but no one had dared to speak openly about it. He gave her a look of practiced indifference. "She was promoted."
"Jack seems to be taking her absence pretty hard," she said with an odd tone.
He put down his pen. "What are you getting at?"
"I've been here long enough to hear people talk. It just seems like his behavior can be attributed more than just to 'upheaval in the team.'"
"They were close, yes, but her promotion was on her own merit, I'm sure."
"I'm sure."
Was that sarcasm? "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I just hate to see this unit compromised because the lead is still getting over the loss of an agent with notoriously loose morals and a so-so service record."
"That's very judgmental of you." He hadn't seen this side of her before. "Where did you hear that, the secretarial pool? You're basing your opinion of a great agent on a bunch of innuendo. Jack and Samantha worked together well, but there's nothing to support that it was anything more than that."
And that was true. There wasn't anything to prove that their relationship had ever gone beyond that of two colleagues, on the record at least. He knew, but that was based on the most circumstantial of evidence. An overheard conversation and a quick moment on a bench before a SWAT team had come to take her away. The latter had made him feel like a voyeur.
Standing, Melissa pushed her chair back under the table. "You're probably right. All I'm saying is that the working environment needs to get a little better around here if you don't want another transfer."
Martin watched her leave, at that moment not caring if there was another transfer and wondering how one person could cause such turmoil from 600 miles away.
TBC
