Exposed (Ethan Frost 3)

For the first time since I picked up the phone, a frisson of unease works its way down my spine. “Are you threatening me, Mom?”

“I’m reminding you that you aren’t the only one in this family who has political and economic capital to spend. You might be the son of a hero, but I was married to one. Remember that.”

“You divorced my father in the middle of the whole PTSD thing. I think that ship has sailed.”

“I divorced him because he asked me to. The PTSD was so bad he was worried about hurting you and he begged me to take you away so you would be safe. Leaving him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

I have to admit it’s a good story. Maybe even a great story, if I’m being honest. But that’s all it is, though. A story. “You don’t actually think that will fly, do you? You know, there’s this new thing called the internet. It lets you look up just about anything in the course of a couple minutes. Your story won’t survive the first spin.”

“You’d be surprised. The tearful widow of an American hero gets a lot of sympathy—even years later. And when her son has obviously lost his mind over a whore who tried once before to ruin his family…” The implied threat hangs in the air before she continues, “You obviously aren’t afraid to use your influence to cause damage. Don’t think for one second that I’ll be afraid to use mine to clean up after you. I’ll give you forty-eight hours to fix this mess.”

“Or what?”

Jesus. Every time I think I can breathe, every time I think the rage has calmed down enough that I can function, one of them does something like this and any false calm I’ve managed to talk myself into goes up in flames.

“Or I’ll do it for you. And I won’t be nearly as discriminating as you are about who gets hurt.”

“This isn’t going to end the way you want it to, Mom.” Unconsciously, I echo Chloe’s words.

“Funny, Ethan, I was just about to tell you the same thing. Fix it.”

And then she’s gone, and I’m left staring into the night, hands clenched on the steering wheel, brain circling through a million different scenarios—none of them good.

This, I want to tell Chloe, is what I get for doing things her way. For not hitting Brandon with everything I have and basically presenting it to my mother—and the world—as a fait accompli.

This, I want to tell Chloe, isn’t the end. It’s only the opening salvo.

Chapter 17

I’m at work early today. It’s partly because I’m overloaded—my boss’s way of dealing with the mess that is my employment history for the last couple of months (the fact that I slept with the boss, broke up with the boss, quit, came back and am now Ethan’s wife) is apparently to drown me in work and see if I complain—and partly because I miss Ethan. The house feels too big without him in it. Big and empty and off. So off.

I hate that I feel that way. After all, I never thought I’d be one of those women who slept better simply because she had a man beside her in bed. One of those women who needed a man to function. I never used to be that kind of woman. And I never wanted to be.

To put it in perspective, though, none of this is about having a man. All of it is about having my man. It’s an important distinction. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself.

Ethan called me from the airpor

t in the middle of the night, right before his plane took off at four a.m. Boston time. They were supposed to leave earlier—he’d promised yesterday morning that he’d be home to wake me up today—but a storm rolled in right before midnight and it kept them grounded until conditions cleared.

It should have put my mind at ease that his pilot was being so careful—too many people die in small plane crashes—and it did, on that front. But after his call, I just couldn’t sleep. I ended up aimlessly wandering his house for hours, trying to figure out why I felt so unsettled. Ethan had sounded fine. He’d said all the right things, done all the right things. Had sounded happy to be talking to me, and even happier to be coming home. And still, there’s a part of me even now, hours later, that’s rattled and uncertain. A part that knows something isn’t quite right.

It’s not a stretch, I don’t think, that I immediately thought of Brandon. I tried to ask him how his meeting with his brother went, but he brushed me off. Told me everything was fine. I would have pushed a little more if he was alone, but I knew he had a number of his executives on board with him and the last thing he needed was to discuss this whole mess in front of them.

So I hung up the phone and roamed the halls of Ethan’s—of our—too big house, worried and waiting for the other shoe to drop. So far it hasn’t, but it’s barely seven a.m. There’s a lot of day left to burn.

Not that I’m going to let myself dwell on that, any more than I’m going to watch the clock count down the minutes until I can see Ethan. He should have landed a little while ago and I’m sure I’ll be the first one to know when he gets to Frost Industries. Not that I can take off work to go see him, because the last thing I need is one more strike against me with my boss and the other interns, but if he gets here early enough—before the office fills up—maybe I can steal a couple minutes with him.

Still, it’s nerve-wracking sitting here, jumping at every sound and watching the minute hand move slowly around the dial of my watch. So I do my best to concentrate on work instead. Now that the Trifecta merger I spent my first weeks of employment working on is pretty much a done deal, I’ve got a new case to research. Well, several new cases. But only one that really excites me.

A case of patent infringement is being leveled against Frost Industries by a group of people I am pretty sure are patent trolls, looking for nothing so much as a quick payoff before moving on to file a case against the next company. I’ve done some research on them, and though this grouping of people is brand new, each member of the plaintiff’s suit has been involved in at least one other lawsuit in the last two years. Four of them have been involved in three or more.

The lawsuit in question claims that a medical software program created by Frost Industries’s software R&D department infringes on ideas that they had already patented. Which is ridiculous on so many levels—the most important being that it’s impossible to patent abstract ideas. People have been trying to do it for generations and they’ve been slapped down over it again and again and again by district courts, by federal courts of Appeals, and—as recently as 2013—by the US Supreme Court itself. Many of the recent decisions have dealt, specifically, with software claims just like this one.

And still Ethan has to defend himself against the lawsuit, which means copious hours of research and depositions and court time. Since I’m not a lawyer, I won’t get to see most of what goes on—unless Ethan shares it with me. However, I’ve got mad research skills, so I’m one of two interns in charge of researching precedent for this case.

On the plus side, it’s interesting work that engages my mind, keeps me busy and helps me to protect my husband. On the downside, the other intern I’m working with—Rick—hates me and has pretty much from the day I walked into this place and ended up landing the Trifecta merger that he so badly wanted. Now that I’m Ethan’s wife, things have only gotten worse between us. I try to ignore him, to keep my head up and my ire down, but some days it’s not so easy. Especially when he takes potshots, not just at me, but at Ethan as well.

But I can’t do anything about that, I tell myself viciously as I settle down to work. Any more than I can will Ethan’s plane to land faster or his car to get here more quickly. Or Brandon to disappear off the face of the fucking earth. Believe me, I’ve tried that one before, about a million and one times. All to no avail.