“You want us to part friends?” She yanked hard on the zipper. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? As your friend, I’d feel obligated to toss some juicy insider stories your way.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
She was glad that she’d finally provoked his anger because it made everything easier. “You don’t want to know what I think of you.”
She grabbed the suitcase and tried to push past him, but he shoved it aside and crushed her to his chest. “Damn it, Nealy!”
His mouth descended on hers. The kiss was painful, a travesty of what they’d shared just that morning. He seemed to realize it, too, and he stopped, rested his forehead against hers. “Don’t do this, Nealy. Don’t let it end like this.”
She pulled away, needing to hurt him as badly as he’d hurt her. “You were a diversion, Mat. Now it’s over.”
The motor home burst open, and Lucy rushed in, too caught up in her own excitement to notice anything was wrong. “Ohmygod, Nell! There are two police cars out there now, and these television guys just showed up! And Toni said they’ve got a helicopter coming in to a field not too far away. Are we going to ride in it? Ohmygod, I’ve never been in a helicopter! Do you think Button will get scared? You’re going to have to hold her, Mat. Maybe she won’t be scared if —”
Right then, it hit her.
She stared at Mat, her mouth still partially open, and even as she asked the question, she seemed to know the answer because she was shaking her head. “You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”
“No. No, I’m not.”
All the light went out of her eyes. “You have to! Tell him, Nell. Tell him he has to!”
“Lucy, you know Mat can’t come with us. He has a job. Another life.”
“But . . . I guess you can’t live with us, but you’ll come visit us all the time, won’t you? You’ll come see us next week or something.”
He took a ragged breath. “Sorry, Luce. I’m afraid not.”
“What do you mean? You have to! Not to see me, but Button . . . you know how she is. She doesn’t understand things, and . . .” She drew a jagged breath. “She thinks you’re her dad.”
His voice sounded hoarse. “She’ll forget about me.”
Lucy spun toward Nealy. “Tell him he can’t do this, Nell. I know you’re mad at him, but tell him he can’t just go away like this.”
Nealy wouldn’t let her own bitterness spoil Lucy’s memories of Mat. “He has things he needs to do, Lucy. He’s busy, and he has to get back to his real life.”
“But—” Her eyes returned to him. “But you two guys love each other. I know you’ve been fighting a lot lately, but everybody fights. It doesn’t mean anything. You’re gonna want to see each other again.”
Nealy barely managed to keep her voice steady. “We don’t love each other. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but we’re very different people. We just happened to have been thrown together by peculiar circumstances.”
“I’ll write you letters,” Mat said. “I’ll write you a lot.”
“I don’t want your dumb letters!” Her face contorted. “Don’t even bother sending them! If you don’t want to come see us, then I won’t ever talk to you again!”
Eyes brimming with tears, she ran from the motor home.
Even though Nealy wanted him to hurt, she didn’t want it to be like this. “I’m sure she’ll change her mind.”
His expression was stony. “It’s better this way.”
While Nealy made her final preparations, Mat stood in the yard engaged in an angry conversation with Jason Williams about the circus that was gathering. She hadn’t spoken to him since he’d stormed out of the motor home half an hour earlier. There was nothing left to say.
Through the living room window, she saw curious neighbors crowding their front yards trying to see why the street had been blocked off. Even though only one television news crew had been lucky enough to be close by, she knew it wouldn’t be long before the small town was invaded by media representatives from all over the world.
Their shabby suitcases had been loaded into one of the patrol cars, along with several plastic grocery sacks filled with Lucy’s Walkman, Button’s toys, and other precious objects that couldn’t be left behind. Unfortunately, that included Squid.
Nealy walked toward Lucy, who was holding Button, while Bertis and Charlie hovered nearby. Her conscience urged her to make one last attempt. “Take a look out the window, Luce. This is what you’re getting yourself into.”
“I already looked, and I don’t care.” Despite her brave words, she was obviously shaken, and she drew Button closer.
“You still have time to change your mind. I’ll do everything I can to make certain both of you are placed with a good family.”
Lucy gazed up, her expression imploring. “Please, Nell. Don’t give us back.”
Nealy surrendered. “I won’t, kiddo. From now on, both of you are mine. For better or for worse.”
“Now, Lucy, don’t you forget to write,” Bertis said. “And you need to start eating more vegetables. I should have made you my green bean casserole.”
Nealy tried not to think about the man she’d fallen in love with as she gave them a hug. “Thank you for everything. I’ll call. Are you ready, Luce?”
Lucy swallowed hard and nodded.
“We can do this one of two ways. We can make a run for the car, so we don’t have to face anybody right now, or we can hold up our heads, smile at the cameras, and show the world that we don’t have anything to hide.”
“Da!”
Mat came in the front door. Nealy wasn’t going to be spared.
His eyes found hers—the same gray eyes she’d gazed into this morning as his body moved inside her own. She wanted to cry until she couldn’t cry anymore, to scream at him because she loved him and he didn’t love her back. Instead, she arranged her features in a blank, polite mask.
He flinched, then went to Lucy and Button. Brushing his thumb over the baby’s cheek, he said, “You give ’em hell, Demon.”
He gazed down at Lucy, but her expression was a heartbreak happening and he didn’t try to touch her. Nealy swallowed and looked away.
“You watch out for yourself, ace. And try to behave.”
Lucy bit down on her lip and looked away.
Finally he moved toward Nealy, but everyone was watching them, and there was nothing left to say. His eyes clouded, and his voice had a rasp. “Have a good life, Nealy.”
She managed a stiff nod, turned to Lucy, and took the baby. Then she stepped back into the world she knew too well.
Cornelia Case had come in from the cold.
21
“HOLLINGS HAS BEEN in the Senate for twelve years, Cornelia! I forbid you to go any farther with this nonsense.”
Nealy rubbed her eyes wearily, then looked up from her satinwood desk at James Litchfield. Her office was located in a sunny room at the rear of the Georgian home that had once belonged to Dennis, but now belonged to her. The estate sat on twenty wooded acres in Middleburg, the heart of Virginia hunt country. She’d always loved the place more than Dennis, who’d preferred Washington, and now she’d made it her permanent home.
The office was one of her favorite rooms—creamy walls with chalk-white trim, a mishmash of good antiques, and a cozy fireplace. Soft floral draperies hung at long, rectangular windows that looked out over a lush stretch of trees just beginning to wear fall colors.
She set down her pen. “Hollings is an idiot, and the people of Virginia deserve better. What did you put in your mouth, you little dickens?”
Button had been playing on the English needlepoint rug. Its delicate moss and rose pattern was strewn with a collection of her toys, along with a cardboard toilet paper roll, an empty oatmeal box, and kitchen measuring cups. Her eyes were innocent as she returned Nealy’s gaze, but her cheeks bulged with contraband, probably part of the dinner roll she’d been carrying around the day before.
“Take
that away from her, Dad.”
Litchfield regarded the baby severely. “Give it to me, Beatrice.”
“Nah!”
Fortunately, Button’s exclamation discharged the chunk of roll. In a motion as elegant as the sweep of a polo mallet, Litchfield whipped a snowy handkerchief from the pocket of his slacks, picked up the gummy dough, and deposited it in the wastebasket that sat on top of Nealy’s credenza, away from toddler temptation.
“Hollings may not be the best senator we have, but he’s always been loyal to the party, and he’s extremely upset.”
She and her father had been arguing over her decision to run for the Senate ever since she’d made up her mind last month. Now she leaned back in her chair and propped one of her stockinged feet on Squid, who was curled beneath her desk. “Then find some other way to reward him because I’m going after his seat in the primary.”
“Not without my support, you won’t!”
“Dad,” she said, as gently as she could, “I don’t need your support.”
The office door banged open and Lucy rushed in—teenage cavalry to the rescue. “I’m home.”
“So I see.” Nealy smiled at her very protective new daughter-to-be.
She looked like most of the other fourteen-year-olds in the private school the two of them had chosen for its excellent academics and democratic atmosphere: draw-string pants, skimpy dark brown sweater, ugly thick-soled shoes, and too many ear-pierces. But Lucy’s fresh young beauty shone through.
She wore her shiny brown hair in a funky little cut with a pair of small oval barrettes holding back her bangs. The complexion problems that tormented so many girls her age had passed Lucy by, and her sweet, smooth skin was mercifully free of the thick cosmetics she’d once hidden behind. Her fingernails were no longer bitten to the quick, and she held herself with new assurance. Nealy’s heart swelled with pride.
Lucy studiously ignored James Litchfield as she marched over to stand next to her. “So . . . do you want to come listen to my new CD?”
Nealy had already listened to Lucy’s new CD, and she wasn’t fooled. “Later, honey. Dad and I are discussing my political future.” And then, just to stir things up . . . “He’s still fighting me about going after Hollings’s seat.”
“Really, Cornelia, Lucille’s much too young to understand this. I hardly think she’s interested.”
“I’m very interested,” Lucille shot back. “I even get to work on the campaign.”
He gave a dismissive sniff. “You know nothing at all about campaigning.”
“I know that some of the seniors at my school are eighteen, which means they can vote. And all the kids my age have parents who vote. Me and Mom are working on a brochure just for teenagers so they’ll understand what their senator does.”
Nealy still wasn’t used to having Lucy call her Mom instead of Nell. It had only started a few weeks ago, and Lucy had never talked to her about it or asked permission, she’d just started doing it. Button, on the other hand, had been calling her ma—usually shrieked at the top of her lungs—since that day three months ago when they’d all walked out of the house in Iowa.
Not all of them, she reminded herself. One member of their makeshift, not-quite-a-family had stayed behind.
But Nealy had learned not to think about Mat unless she was alone, and she forced her attention back to the battle of wits going on between Lucy and her father.
“. . . so I asked Lardbutt—”
“Lucy . . .” Nealy’s voiced sounded a warning note.
“I asked Mrs. Fegan if Mom could come in and talk at a school assembly, not about her campaign—that’d be so obvious even a moron could see through it—but about the contributions of First Ladies. Mom’s got lots of good stories, like how Abigail Adams was a women’s libber, and Nellie Taft got the cherry blossoms planted in Washington, and Edith Wilson ran the country when Woodrow was sick.”
“That wasn’t exactly a contribution,” Nealy reminded her. “Edith Wilson nearly drove the country into a constitutional crisis.”
“I still think it was cool.”
“You would.”
Lucy folded into her favorite place, the easy chair across from Nealy’s desk, and spoke with all the aplomb of a seasoned campaign manager. “We’re going to whip Hollings’s a—butt in the primary.”
James Litchfield narrowed his eyes, but he was too cagey to openly reprimand Lucy. At the very beginning, Nealy had made it clear that was her job, and he’d quickly discovered that she meant what she said. The fastest way out of her life was to show open hostility toward either of her girls.
Her poor father. She’d actually begun to feel sorry for him. The girls had been a bitter pill for him to swallow, but swallow it he had. At the same time, he’d also been forced to deal with the unrelenting publicity her disappearance had caused.
For the past three months, Nealy had been subjected to the type of tabloid scrutiny usually reserved for drugged-out movie stars. Everyone she’d come into contact with during her seven days on the road had been interviewed. Bertis and Charlie had done her proud, and Nico hadn’t been the disaster she’d feared. Even the Celebrity Lookalike Contest organizers had received their fifteen minutes of fame. Everyone had been interviewed except Mat, who’d told the story in his own way and, to this day, refused to appear on camera.
Nealy had gone public only twice—in an obligatory Barbara Walters television interview and in a Woman’s Day feature that had been accompanied by informal photographs of her with the girls. Exposing them had been a difficult decision, but she knew they’d be hounded by paparazzi if she didn’t, and Woman’s Day was the perfect forum. Besides, Lucy thought it was cool.
Through it all, her father had stood relentlessly behind her. His teeth had been clenched, his jaw rigid, but he’d been there for her, even six weeks ago when she’d finally stepped aside as Lester Vandervort’s First Lady.
Taking her place were the three women she’d hand-picked for the job. Two of them were longtime congressional wives wise to the ways of Washington. The third was Lester’s feisty twenty-two-year-old niece, an outspoken Ivy League graduate who provided a perfect contrast to the older women and the stuffy president. Although Nealy continued to advise the triumvirate, they were growing more confident in their job, which gave Nealy time to concentrate on her own future.
The girls were her first priority. She knew she had to have help with Button if she was to run for the Senate, but it wasn’t easy finding what she was looking for. She and Lucy had interviewed dozens of candidates before they’d found Tamarah, a nineteen-year-old single mother with a nose ring, a ready laugh, and a determination to finish her education.
Tamarah and her six-month-old baby Andre now lived in a small apartment over the kitchen. Nealy and Lucy had been a little jealous of how quickly Button, Tamarah, and Andre had taken to each other. But even with child care, Nealy tried to make the majority of her phone calls during her toddler’s naptime, then do her planning and paperwork late at night. It left her bone-tired, humble, and even more committed to helping single mothers who didn’t have her financial resources.
“I still can’t believe you’re serious about this,” her father said.
“She’s . . . like . . . so serious.”
“I’m not addressing you.”
“Like, I have opinions, y’know.”
“Far more opinions than a child needs.”
Lucy was too shrewd to make the insolent response that would force Nealy to send her to her room. Instead, she gave him a wily smile. “In four years, I’ll be a voting citizen. And so will all my friends.”
“Doubtless the republic will survive.”
“And the Democrats, too.”
Oh, this was too rich. Nealy had grown to enjoy watching the two of them go at it.
In the beginning, she’d counted on Button’s baby charm to win over her father, but he’d been far more interested in Lucy. Her father loved a worthy opponent, and the fact that Lucy had dec
lared herself his mortal enemy before they’d ever met had whetted his competitive instincts.
Nealy had recently begun to wonder if they didn’t look forward to their sparring matches. They had the oddest similarities. Each was stubborn, crafty, manipulative, and absolutely loyal to her.
Squid stirred beneath her feet. “I’m going to make a formal announcement in ten days. Terry’s setting up the press conference now.”
As soon as she’d confided her plans to Terry, he’d asked to be appointed her press secretary. She’d been touched and delighted.
“Dad, I understand this puts you in an impossible position, and I know you have to stay out of it, so I’m not planning to—”
“Stay out of it?” He assumed his Prince Philip posture and gazed at her from beneath his noble brow. “My daughter, the former First Lady of the United States, is running for the Senate, and you expect me to stay out of it? I hardly think so. I’ll have Jim Millington contact you tomorrow. Ackerman’s good, but he’ll need help.”
She couldn’t believe her father, after all his posturing, had finally backed down. Jim Millington was the best campaign manager in the business.
Lucy needed to make sure she could relax her guard. “So you’re not going to give her any more crap about this, right?”
“Lucille, this is not your concern. I’ve done my best to dissuade her, but since she’s refused to listen, I have no choice but to support the campaign.”
Lucy grinned at him. “Awesome!”
Nealy smiled and rose. “Why don’t you stay for dinner, Dad? It’s pizza night.”
Something that almost looked like disappointment passed over his stern features. “Some other time. Your stepmother and I are meeting the Ambersons for cocktails. Don’t forget that she expects all of you for Sunday brunch.”
“She expects Button, you mean,” Lucy muttered.
Nealy’s stepmother was horrified by Lucy, but she adored Button, who was currently wearing one of the outrageously expensive outfits she’d bought her.
“That’s because Beatrice has never cursed at her dinner table.”
“It was an accident. And this time could you ask her to, like, please buy some Dunkin’ Donuts or something?”
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