Slice of Life
Phoebe Murdoch looked up from her computer as Jake and Adam stood in her doorway. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
The two men crowded inside. Tristan held Adam’s hand while Jake cradled their daughter in his arms. Both men looked completely harried.
“Serena’s car broke down and then some asshole arrested her, but only because his wife is a huge fan and now they’re going to Misery her. I just know it,” Adam said, his voice breathless.
“I don’t want them to Misery my momma,” Tristan said, his eyes wide with tears.
Jake sent Adam a look that could have frozen fire. “Don’t be such a dramatic idiot. I talked to her. She’s fine. Tris, buddy, Mommy’s perfectly fine. I talked to a very nice lady named Nell who thinks it would be nice for Daddy and Papa to go spend a day with Mommy and then bring her home.”
Jesse stepped up, leaning against the doorway. His long, lean body caught her eye, but then it always did. Her husband had the single brightest smile she’d ever seen, and it never failed to make her day better. “So you’ve come begging for babysitting? Is that why Big Tag ran out of here like his freaking pants were on fire?”
She’d heard Ian had surprise plans for Charlotte tonight. Big Tag would definitely try to avoid anything that would put their date night in jeopardy. She was amazed he hadn’t asked her to watch their monsters. They got along well with Jamie. He’d probably asked Alex and Eve. And it was a good thing because apparently they were taking in the Dean-Miles kiddos.
“I suspect so,” she said. There was something playing around in the back of her mind. Some illusive thought that she couldn’t quite catch. It had plagued her all day. She’d started the stuffed bell peppers in the slow cooker this morning and tried to figure out what she was missing. She’d even gone over the ingredients three times to make sure she hadn’t left one out. It had to be something else. Or it was absolutely nothing, since she hadn’t caught it all damn day. “So you’re asking us if we can watch Brianna and Tris while you run away to Colorado to save Serena from some crazy fans?”
“I believe they are,” Jesse said, winking her way.
Damn that man was hot. How long had it been since they threw down? Too long. Jamie was a handful. She adored their son, but parenthood played hell on more babymaking. Still, they wouldn’t turn down their friends. “We left Jamie with a sitter because he said he didn’t feel well this morning, but she says he hasn’t run a fever and he’s seemed fine all day. If you’re okay with that, of course, we can keep them. Do they have all their things?”
Jake took that moment to bundle Brianna into Jesse’s arms. “Excellent. We have to go home and pack quickly. I’ll drop off some clothes for tomorrow on our way to the airport.”
“I don’t know why we have to pack,” Adam said. “According to the crazy lady, they’re holding Serena at a nudist resort.”
“What’s a nudist?” Tristan asked.
Jake frowned his partner’s way. “You get that one.”
Adam sighed and dropped to one knee, looking his son in the face. “It’s nothing to worry about, Tris. Like Daddy said, Mommy’s taking a little break, but we’ll bring her back very soon and it’s going to be okay.”
Jake leaned over and kissed Brianna before picking Tristan up for a hug. “Love you, son. And seriously, your mom is fine. I just talked to her and she’s better than she’s been in months. She’s good, buddy. And I’m going to bring you back something cool.”
Tristan’s eyes lit up. “Okay, Daddy.”
When Jake straightened up, he shook his head Adam’s way but said nothing.
Adam looked a bit sheepish. “Sorry. I freaked out a little. It’s not every day I find out my wife has been kidnapped and taken to a…place like that.” He looked back at Phoebe. “And I was never for leaving the kids with Big Tag. The last time we did Tristan came home and used his bedsheets to rappel down from the first floor to the kitchen because Tag’s tiny criminals taught him how.”
Tris smiled. “It’s more fun than stairs.”
Adam shook his head. “Besides, I’m trusting you to run the whole company I’ve got everything I own invested in. I think I can trust you with my kids.”
She stopped. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
But they were already hurrying out. Jake waved. “He said we trust you two implicitly. We’ll call you when we get in.”
“If they have phones there,” Adam said with a shake of his head. “I’ve heard it’s weird.”
They were gone.
Jesse smiled down at Brianna. “Your dads are crazy, little girl.”
She was stuck on something Adam had said. That whole thing about being in charge of everything… “What did he mean about trusting me with his office?”
Jesse’s smile brightened further. “Didn’t I tell you about that? We voted to make you the CFO and head up the actual business end of the company. We took the vote at the meeting today. You should have been there. It’s going to be awesome, baby. I think this means you’re my boss now. I wonder what’s going to happen if I miss a meeting.”
She sat there as Jesse got on the phone to let their babysitter know they would be just a tiny bit late.
CFO? In charge of all business matters? She’d thought she would have the same job she had here at McKay-Taggart. Accounting. She was a good accounting manager.
She was a good spy.
She’d never been a freaking CFO.
Tristan looked at her with wide eyes. “Auntie Phoebe, what’s a nudist?”
Yeah, that was about how her day had gone…
“Baby, what’s wrong?” Jesse asked, turning slightly in the seat of their SUV. “You’ve been tense all day.”
She was beyond tense now. Now her head wasn’t trying to remember what she’d forgotten. It was worse. She was trying to process what Adam had said. “I didn’t realize he was looking for an office manager. I thought I would do accounting. Like I do at MT.”
Jesse’s eyes drifted back to the road. The kids had almost immediately fallen asleep, which was good because they were stuck in traffic on 75. “It’s going to start out with only eight to ten employees, depending on who we decide to hire. You have a killer automated billing system. I don’t know how much there would be for you to do with accounting. I’m sure if we grow the business enough, there will be a place for a dedicated accounting person, but it would be too small-time for you. And it’s not office management. It’s full-on company management.”
She hadn’t imagined it when she’d agreed to go with Jesse. The Miles-Dean, Weston and Murdoch Investigative Services firm intended to specialize in missing persons and criminal identification. Adam Miles and Chelsea Weston had been working on the software that would not only move facial recognition software to a new level, but also new procedures and processes that would track persons of interest through everyday media.
Leaving McKay-Taggart felt weird, but she’d been willing to because it made Jesse happy to stay with his partner, Simon. They’d been best friends for years, watching each other’s back in the field. She’d known when Simon followed his wife to the new firm that Jesse wouldn’t be far behind.
It wasn’t that they didn’t love their work at MT, but this was a whole new challenge. It didn’t hurt that they weren’t going too far away. They had leased the floor below MT so they didn’t even have to find new childcare. It was perfect. They could stay in the family, but follow their passion for finding the missing.
So much time and money had been put into this company.
She could fuck it all up. There was no way Adam and Chelsea’s software didn’t work. Jake, Simon, and Jesse had been in the field forever.
She was the wild card here. If it all failed, it would likely be her fault.
Jesse’s hand came out, covering hers. “Baby, what scares you about this?”
“I have a degree in accounting, but that was a cover.” She’d been a spy working for the CIA. The accounting degree gave her access to companies the Agency was interested in. She’d spent years undercover in Asia, keeping watch over some of the world’s worst threats.
She’d never managed an office. Never even thought about it.
She’d spent all her time thinking about gathering the intel she needed. Well, that and staying alive. She’d thought a lot about that, and then she’d thought about dying after she’d lost her first husband.
She’d spent so much time thinking about taking things apart she wasn’t sure she could keep something together.
Before she could answer Jesse, her phone rang. She looked at the ID. Jake. “Hey, Jake. What’s going on?”
“I need to know if we have a travel agent right now. I’ve tried everything and can’t get a flight out tonight, Phoebe. Look, I didn’t want to say this around the kids, but Serena’s been going through some things and it seems like it’s all coming to a tipping point out in that little town.”
She knew Serena’s problems well. Phoebe felt for her, and now Serena was stuck in small town Colorado and Jake and Adam couldn’t get there. “I’ll get back to you in a few minutes. Don’t freak out. It’s going to be all right.”
“Can’t get a flight out?” Jesse asked as she hung up and started punching in another number.
“I’ll get them where they need to go. Hey, Mia. It’s Phoebe. I have to ask a favor of you,” she began.
Twenty minutes later she hung up with Jake after setting up an elaborate line of dominoes that ended with Jake and Adam getting into tiny Bliss, Colorado, sometime in the early morning hours.
She glanced up and saw they were turning on to the street where they lived.
How far she’d come from that little lost girl who’d met Ten and Jamie all those years ago. She glanced around the suburban neighborhood they’d moved to before Jamie was born. She’d grown up in dirty tenement buildings because her mother had been addicted to drugs. After she’d died, Phoebe had spent her time in foster care. Even there, even when she’d found a small family, there had been expectations. She had never truly felt at home in Franklin Grant’s privileged world.
It wasn’t until she came to Dallas and met Jesse Murdoch that she truly found her place in the world.
Was she ready for that to change?
Jesse pulled the car into the driveway, bringing it to a stop. “So tell me why you don’t want the job. If we wait until we walk in the door, Tristan and Brianna will wake up, and Tris is going to need supervision because no matter what Adam says about Tag’s kids, Tris is a hell-raiser, too. He’s already started pulling apart electronics to try to figure out how they work. I’ll spend all night trying to save our remote controls. So I’m going to need an answer now, baby. I’m worried about you.”
How to make him understand? “I’ve only ever run an accounting department, Jesse. This is a huge change. It’s all a huge change. Adam and Chelsea are basically putting their life’s work into my hands, and it scares the crap out of me.”
He reached out, his big palm covering the side of her face. “I know exactly what you mean. I’ve never been anything but cannon fodder…”
“Jesse.” She couldn’t let him go down that road again.
He shook his head. “Sorry. Force of habit. Before I came to McKay- Taggart, I was nothing but cannon fodder. I was there to take the bullets, and I didn’t think I could do anything else with my life. You are way bigger than the box the CIA put you in, Phoebe Murdoch. You can handle this. There was never any question who they wanted running the business end of this company. It was always you. And I am going to stretch myself and use my brain. Turns out it’s not half bad when I trust my instincts. We’re going to do some good in this world, you and I. You’ll be magnificent. You always are.”
He leaned over and pressed his lips to hers, heat rising inside her the way it always did when Jesse touched her. He’d changed so much since they’d first met, his confidence soaring as he came into his own.
Perhaps it was time to come into hers. Or it was time to make out in the car.
“I think I want to be a nudist, too. Like my momma,” a sleepy voice said. “I don’t like clothes. They’re scratchy.”
Jesse grinned against her lips. She was so going to kill Adam.
Phoebe opened the door and glanced around, horror dawning. It was like something had exploded all over her previously perfect living room. There were magazines and books all over the floor and everything was wet. The cushions were knocked out of the couch and her lamp was on the floor.
Tristan grinned like the imp he was. “This is awesome.”
“Wow,” Jesse managed as he put Brianna’s car seat down. “What the hell happened here?”
It was a disaster area.
“Mrs. Murdoch, I’m so sorry,” a familiar voice said. Normally Phoebe took James to work with her, but when he was sick she left him with her retired trauma nurse neighbor. Janie Slater had retired at the age of forty- nine because her husband had hit it wealthy in the real-estate game, but she still missed having kiddos around. Now it looked like she would rather be in the middle of a bloody life or death trauma than where she was. “Dumbledore didn’t like his bath. He got into a mud puddle in the back and was too dirty to come in the house. I tried to hose him down but he got away and somehow he got into the house.”
Janie was standing in the hallway, James on her hip. Phoebe’s baby boy was giggling at the chaos as though it was all he could have asked for.
“I can guess how,” she said, eyeing her son, who was often the dog’s greatest partner in crime.
Mrs. Slater set Jamie down, her face pale enough that Phoebe worried she’d lost her babysitter. “It was terrible. The dog ran through the house and somehow he knocked over the slow cooker and it went everywhere. No one was hurt, but it’s all over the kitchen floor. Well, the parts the dog didn’t eat.”
Ah, her stuffed bell peppers were trash. And later on there would be other repercussions because the dog had a sensitive stomach. She quickly went through the ingredients to ensure there was nothing that would truly hurt the massive puppy.
The aforementioned criminal sat his hairy butt down next to Jamie. Dumbledore was the sweetest rescue anyone could have found, but he didn’t like baths. He was a gorgeous Labrador-Great Dane-Saint Bernard mixed breed. Not that she’d known that little piece of information at the time. He came up to Janie’s waist and he was barely nine months old.
The shelter had convinced Phoebe he would be a lap dog when she’d gotten him at the tender age of eight weeks old.
He’d been so small then. So incapable of causing true destruction.
Now he was a massive dog who looked up at her with big old sad and guilty doggy eyes. Like she was going to force him right back out into the streets because of his transgressions.
James reached down to Dumbie, his best friend. Tristan ran toward Dumbie at the exact moment the dog realized he was truly wet and it was time to body shake.
Water went everywhere. And not exactly clean water. Tristan and Jamie seemed to think it was some sort of dance party move. The boys laughed hysterically and the dog continued as though he knew he was performing and the crowd loved him.
Some of the water hit Brianna in her car seat and she began to wail.
Pure chaos. Jesse started to try to reach for the dog, but that wasn’t going to work. Mrs. Slater attempted to corral the boys, but they were now trying to shake even harder than the dog.
Phoebe stepped up. “Everyone quiet.”
The world seemed to stop. Well, everyone except Brianna, who Phoebe picked up and started to rock. She looked around, quickly forming a plan. “Tristan and Jamie, to the bath, both of you.” Jamie’s bottom lip poked out, but she was having none of it. “You are covered in dog water, young man.”
Mrs. Slater’s eyes lit up as though she was happy she could do anything at all to help. “Come along, boys. I’ll draw you a bath and get you both in PJs.”
“If your bath goes better than Dumbie’s, you can have mac and cheese and ice cream and watch a thirty-minute show before bed.” Sometimes compromise was necessary to keep things running smoothly.
“Boats! I gots boats, Tris,” Jamie promised. “Play!”
The boys ran off, happy with the idea of a bath now.
Mrs. Slater turned. “Mrs. Murdoch, I can’t tell you how sorry…”
Phoebe held up a hand. “Don’t you even finish that sentence. You are the best thing that’s happened to us. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you helping us with Jamie. Neither Jesse nor I have our moms with us anymore, so you are the closest thing to a grandmother he has. I only hope this craziness doesn’t scare you off.”
A brilliant smile crossed the older woman’s face. “Not at all. It was actually quite invigorating. I miss having little ones. Boys, no running on the stairs. And you could wait until you get to the bathroom to take off your clothes, Tristan.”
“I’m a nudist!” Tristan was yelling.
Oh, Serena was going to have fun when she came home. Two problems down.
She turned to her husband. “Would you please grab one of the beach towels and try to get whatever water you can off Dumbledore because Jesse, baby, I’m going to need you to take him to the vet. We can’t be certain he didn’t wolf down some glass or ceramic pieces when he ate our supper.”
Jesse groaned.
She was having none of that either. He was her partner and she managed the house, so he had to take it when she bossed him around. He felt free to do it in the bedroom. “When we took that hairy beast on, he became part of our family, and not allowing him to die because he’s a dumbass is our highest priority as pet owners.”
Brianna was calming down as Phoebe moved with her. Ah, multitasking at its finest.
Jesse sighed. “Is there even a vet open now?”
How little he knew. “There’s an emergency clinic on Maple. He’s already registered there. I took him after he ate your tube sock. His leash is on the entryway table and I’ll call it all in so they know you’re coming. For now I’m going to feed this one and then I’m going to clean up the kitchen, make the mac and cheese, get Brianna ready for bed, and call in a pizza for the two of us.”
Jesse leaned over and kissed her. “And you think you can’t run a business? Baby, you can do anything. I’ll be back after spending a god- awful amount of money getting x-rays of our dog’s never-ending gut.”
Phoebe stood in the middle of the chaos with a smile.
Mischief managed.
* * * *
Three hours later, Phoebe sank onto the sofa beside her husband. He had the news on, two plates with fully loaded pizza slices, and he’d poured her a glass of wine and opened a beer for himself.
She was going to be okay. She could handle everything they threw at her.
“I like that smile on your face,” Jesse said. “Is it because the dog managed to survive?”
She cuddled up close to him. This was where she needed to be at the end of a day. A crazy, glorious, wacky day. That was what was ahead of them. Family days. “This is the smile of a confident business woman.”
He kissed her, his lips moving briefly on hers. “That’s my wife.”
His wife. Jamie’s mom. The head of an up-and-coming business. It would be hard. It would be imperfect. It would sometimes feel impossible.
And she would manage it.
“Oh, we got a card. It looks like it’s from Charlotte.” Jesse handed her a pretty red envelope.
Oh, shit. She just remembered what she’d forgotten.
“Babe, it’s our anniversary.”
Jesse’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”
Well, at least they were in it together.
“Maybe I should be in charge of everything except the calendar.” She picked up her wine glass. “To us.”
Jesse grinned and grabbed his beer. “To us. Always.”
Phoebe sat back. It didn’t matter that they’d forgotten. The day was here, one that simply marked the formal date of their union, but she knew it was in the everyday motions that they truly honored their love.
Jesse picked up the remote. “You wanna put on Harry Potter and fool around?”
Yes. Yes, she did.