Episode One: Look Back in Anger Read Online Free PDF Page A

then insist that he didn’t need a doctor—he had her. If Dad had been a poodle with a hemorrhoid, or a horse with a mangled foot, he might have had a point, and she’d told him that hundreds of times. Besides, most of her expertise these days lay in synthetics. Even though Daddy worked like a machine, she couldn’t very well take him apart and fix what was malfunctioning. But if she could, she knew where she’d start—his damn aversion to contacting the doctor on his own behalf.
    Finding herself summoned to his office for the third time in a month had her strongly considering supergluing a little cone collar to his neck. At least that way he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to go into work day after day despite his ailing health. If she’d her way, he would have retired long ago. She’d even promised to move back home, if only he’d listen to reason and hand the management of the company to someone healthier. Of course, he wouldn’t hear of it. Daddy was as ornery as a randy hound and as sturdy as a bear, or at least he seemed to think so. She hoped he’d eventually see he was an old bear, in need of nothing more strenuous than golf outings and country club visits, before he planted himself in the ground with his foolishness.
    She loved him, but it was exhausting running out of the clinic in a panic, ditching service calls, and letting her own work pile up, to rush to his side every week. She was a heartbeat away from exploding on the man for thoroughly hijacking her life. It wouldn’t hurt him to take care of himself, to lay off the cigars and his nightly doses of brandy. It certainly wouldn’t kill him to call his own doctor every now and again, or to ferry himself to the appointments. And it would be nice if every time he called her, it wasn’t to as her to come to that towering monstrosity of an office building right smack in the center of rush-hour traffic. Sam was brimming on a revolt. A revolution that said, Daddy, I have a life too! Sorta.
    Only she would never say anything of the kind. Sam would grit her teeth, admit there was no way she would ever find a parking space at the office this time of day, even if she turned off the car’s navigator and searched manually, and park two city blocks away in public parking. A half mile from Colfter’s headquarters. The rain was coming down hard now, and despite her umbrella being in shreds from where a couple of feisty perma-pups had gotten hold of it during an early-morning house call, she trudged out into the veritable monsoon on foot.
    She wasn’t given a second glance as she made her way into the company lobby, dripping wet from her pastel-pink lab coat to her Your dog ate what ?! aluminum breast pin. It wasn’t the first time they’d seen her so—a near drowned synthtech sloshing in from the rain to rescue her dad, their boss. Though Sam longed for the days when she could just go home to a quiet cup of cocoa and her cats, she knew today’s visit wouldn’t be her last.
    Yup, this was it. This was the usual. This was what passed for her life.
    A full and rich existence of dealing with assholes, executing adorable animals, and force-feeding her stubborn father his pills. She was almost stoically accepting of it in the elevator, and comically prepared by the time she reached the door with his name etched in gold on it, but no amount of sardonic humor could ready her for the sight within.
    Arles Colfter leaned against the window behind her father, viciously candid for one who could never be up to any good.
    When her thoughts had turned to him in the past, and they inevitably did, the Arles in her dreams tended more toward similar fashions as the grim reaper—complete with wicked scythe. The suit he wore now somehow fit well into her vision. It was tailored for him, as everything in his life was, and fit him so nicely it seemed to wear him as a mere accessory. It might have been an odd thing for one to focus on, the man’s suit, but it was far better