“I figured it was too late for coffee.” He had removed his suit coat and released the top buttons on his dress shirt. Her eyes fixated on a dark tuft of chest hair.

“You figured right. Fat free, calorie free, I hope.” Swirling her tongue over the dollop of whipped cream on top, she took a moment to appreciate the taste. Looking up at him again, she found his hazel eyes locked on her. “What?” she asked, her voice shakier than she intended it to be.

“It’s just…you…and whipped cream. It’s giving me ideas.”

She swallowed, hard.

“I like your hair down like that,” he added.

Choosing to ignore the comments and the flush of heat that went rippling through her body, she returned her attention to the book John had dedicated to his father. A photo slid out from between the pages and fell to the floor. Sam put her mug on the desk and leaned over to retrieve the picture of a strapping blond boy of about sixteen in a football uniform.

“What’ve you got there?” Nick asked.

“Looks like a photo of John when he was in high school.” She turned it over to find the initials “TJO” and a date from four years earlier. “Oh. It’s not him. Who’s TJO?”

Nick took the photo from her, studied the likeness, and then turned it over. “I have no idea, but he could be John when I first met him.”

“Did he have a son, Nick?” She thought of Patricia Donaldson and the three-thousand-dollar-a-month payments.

“Of course not.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I’m positive,” he said hotly. “I’ve known him since he was eighteen. If he had a son, I’d know it.”

“Well, if that’s not his son, whoever he is, he bears a striking resemblance to John.” Sam tucked the photo into her bag with plans to ask the senator’s parents about it in the morning. “He had quite a thing for Spider-Man, huh?” She gestured to the shelves in the corner that housed John’s extensive stash of Spiderman collectibles.

Nick smiled. “He was obsessed.”

She picked up a carved placard from the desk that bore Spider-Man’s signature saying, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Studying it for a long moment, she glanced at Nick. “Did he believe this?”

“Very much so. Despite his sometimes lackadaisical approach to his job, he took his responsibilities as seriously as he was able to.”

“But not as seriously as you would have.”

“Let’s just say if our roles had been reversed, I would’ve done a lot of things differently.”

“Have you ever wanted to be the one in the corner office?”

“God no,” he said with a guffaw. “I work much better as the guy behind the guy.” He seemed to sober when he remembered he had lost his guy when John died.