Beginner's Luck. Kate Clayborn
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that Alex worked as a spy for the Russian government.
The easiest moves were the ones that kept me in the same school district, the same few-mile radius. By the time I started high school, Alex was working, and he could do more to control where we went—but for most of my childhood, I learned to anticipate the upheaval of meeting a new teacher mid-year, a new set of students, a new route to school, everything. My teachers praised me, complimenting me on my adaptability, or, on the occasions when I’d come in having learned more than where the current class was, on how patiently I waited for other kids to grasp concepts I’d mastered.
With each move, my father, stinking of booze and cigarettes, would make promises, telling us this would be the last time. But for the most part, we were mostly invisible to him, especially me—a living reminder only of that desperate time after his first wife, Alex’s mom, had died, and he’d tried to recreate the love he’d had for her with a young, quiet waitress he’d met on a riverboat casino.
Good free counseling services in college helped, but it was moving here—working with Dr. Singh, meeting Zoe and Greer, falling in love with this town—that made me feel as if I’d found my stopping place, the place where maybe I wouldn’t always have to work so hard at staying put, the place where I could stop obsessively counting sidewalk cracks between my bus stop and whatever crappy apartment building I was sleeping in. To be here, in my own home—to me, it’s a miracle.
“God, you’re so lucky,” Zoe says as one of the movers comes in, hauling another two boxes upstairs. “You’re going to have hot contractors here all the time. Can I come over? I could hang out while you’re at work. I could supervise.”
I laugh at the way she waggles her eyebrows up and down. “No. You’re not going to sexually harass my contractors.”
“Spoilsport,” she says, watching as another mover climbs the stairs.
“My favorite thing about this,” Greer says, leaning against the bay window’s ledge, “is that it’ll give you something to focus on other than work.”
“Yes!” Zoe exclaims, clapping her hands together.
“I’m still going to work, you guys.” This is a common refrain, the concern about my working too much. I don’t think either of them really thinks I’ll ever change, but I suspect it’s turned into a sort of shorthand for us all, them expressing affection for me this way, and me secretly relishing their concern. Meeting Zoe and Greer, keeping up with the traditions we’d built over the years we’ve known each other, probably protected me from what might have been a worrying inclination to work too hard, to let my research consume me. I’d seen the single-minded focus that had overtaken some of my peers, had seen the way work had dictated the lives of many of my professors. One of the reasons I’d made the choices I had—to stay small, to stay on as a lab tech—had been to avoid that fate. Of course, there’d been other reasons too, reasons like the ones I’d told Ben Tucker yesterday.
Unexpectedly, I feel my face heat at the thought of him. That dimple. Those eyelashes for days.
I clear my throat, ignoring these stray, unwanted thoughts. “I am going to do some of this myself, though,” I say. “Easy stuff, maybe some of the yard work. And working with the contractors is sort of a job in itself.”
“We’ll help,” says Greer. “Anything you need.”
“Anything that doesn’t involve me wearing a hazmat suit,” Zoe adds, looking suspiciously at a patch of moldy wall near the radiator. “But everything else, obviously.”
Right then, there’s a little creak and Greer tips forward a bit from where she’s sitting. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, leaping up from where the sill has separated a bit from the window. We all three look at it, at where the wood is rotting a little, at where another repair will have to be made.
But I have to smile. A problem in my own house, one that I can solve, with my best friends here to help? I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like a millionaire.
Chapter 2
Ben
I’ve got a job for you, he’d said.
I pull another stack of slate from the bed of the truck, trying not to slam it down onto the pallet, which is what my hands are itching to do.
It’ll be easy, he’d said. Won’t even take a full day.
Another stack, another half-hearted attempt not to be aggressive with it. We’ve already made contact several times, he’d assured me. The groundwork has already been laid.
I straighten the pieces I’ve put down and turn back to the truck bed, still half-full. Fuck, I think. I’ll be out here all morning. I’m restless and pissed, and doing this kind of work should help, but so far, it’s not doing shit. I’m mad about yesterday, I’m worried about my dad, and I’ve been up since four a.m. so I could drive the fifty miles I needed to go to pick up all this slate and bring it back here. It’s almost funny—thirty-one years old, and I’m home to take care of him, but my dad still bosses me around this yard like I’m his fifty-dollars-per-week employee.
Strangely, though, I don’t feel like laughing.
I hear the muffled sound of my phone ringing from my back pocket, and I already know it’s Jasper, because he’s called three times since yesterday, and I haven’t picked up once. It’s hot as hell out here already, only ten a.m., and my arms are tired from all the lifting.
Might as well get this over with, I decide, and yank off my gloves, tossing them on the truck bed before yanking out my phone. Just to make sure, I check the screen before saying, “Jasper, you are an asshole.”
“That’s some greeting for your best friend, Tucker.”
“It’s what you deserve. I’m fucking pissed, Jas.” I resist the urge to kick at the pallet beside me. Though I’ve been keeping it together in front of my dad, being back here seems to rouse all my adolescent instincts.
“I’m guessing it didn’t go well with Averin.”
“You’re guessing right.”
“Goddammit. Global Chem got to him first,” Jasper says, his voice frustrated. Global Chem is our biggest competitor, and we’re always chasing down the same talent.
I snort a sarcastic laugh. That would maybe be easier. I could play good cop if I was up against Global Chem. But what happened yesterday—there’d be no way E.R. Averin was ever going to see me as a good anything. “She’s not a him,” I snap. “I mean, she’s—Ms. Averin, she’s a she.” I sound ridiculous.
“Oh,” Jasper says, and I’m surprised to feel annoyed on her behalf. I’ve been annoyed with myself since yesterday, having blown it so thoroughly with her, but Jasper can take most of the blame on this one, as far as I’m concerned.
“You should have done your research,” I say to him.
“That’s your area.”
“Not right fucking now, it’s not. I told you, I needed a couple months here to deal with my dad. You call me, you want me to deal with a recruit that’s in town, fine. But you needed to do the legwork.”
I exhale a frustrated breath, hunch my shoulder to hold the phone against my ear so I can tug on one of my gloves. I’m too mad to be standing here doing nothing. What I said to Jasper, it’s only partially true. I am on family leave while Dad recovers, and Jasper was asking me to do a special favor in going out on the job while I’m here. But I’d agreed before I left to stay in the loop, to telecommute as much as possible, and if I’d agreed to go out on a job, I should have been as careful as I usually am when I approach a new recruit. All I had before going to see Averin was what Jasper told me—master’s degree in materials science, working as a full-time lab tech at the university, impressive publication record in the area Beaumont was after, high tensile strength metal alloys, the kind of stuff we could use in our building materials division in particular—and the small additional