Close to You

by Christina Dodd

  "Lovely," Kate said sincerely. So she had imagined his interest.

  "There's been maneuvering to get him nominated to the U.S. Senate, but he keeps saying he wants to stay in Texas."

  "Hm." The wisdom about state politicians asserted that they stayed local only if they were hiding a scandal big enough to keep them out of a federal position.

  Linda read her mind. "No scandals. I think he's got plans to make an announcement at the appropriate moment.

  "All right." Kate glanced back to see him, trim and fit in an Armani suit.

  He stood still, his hands on his hips under the elegant cut of his suit coat, and watched them walk away.

  And again she dismissed the stirring of unease. "I'll remember him."

  THREE

  It was Wednesday. Kate had been on the job three days.

  During the daylight hours, she smiled so much her lips felt frozen. At night, she studied everything about the special session: school funding, who was voting for what, what the teachers were saying, what the governor was saying. She discovered Linda wasn't particularly well liked at the capitol, not because she got the facts wrong, but because she got them right and gave them to the public without resorting to high-flown rhetoric.

  Kate felt as if she'd stepped into a different world; she also felt as if she'd come home.

  In the early afternoon she called for a cameraman, and Brad sent her Cathy Stone, a tall, broad-shouldered woman who wore a baseball cap and handled the camera with a careful efficiency. In Zen-like silence, she watched Kate line up her interviews in the capitol rotunda.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Linda hurried toward them wearing the highest heels and the tightest skirt Kate had ever seen. "Where are you going with my cameraman? Why?"

  "Legislator Howell says the Republicans had a secret meeting about changing the school district structure for the state." Kate directed Legislator Howell on where to stand while she asked him questions.

  "It's a lie," Linda said automatically. With a glance at Legislator Howell, she corrected herself. "It's an exaggeration."

  "Mr. Duarte sneaked me into the meeting. I've got photos. Now if you'll excuse me." Kate produced an insincere smile for Linda, then turned back to her task.

  During each interview, she could feel the heat of Linda's glare between her shoulder blades until at last, when she had drawn every bit of information from her sources, she turned to glare back at Linda.

  But Linda wasn't there. Instead, the inevitable crowd of people hoping to get on camera had gathered. There was a wide-eyed child and its mother, two Japanese gentlemen carrying briefcases, a thin young woman in a mechanical wheelchair, and slouching in the background was a tall man, Hispanic, about twenty-five years old. He wore dirty jeans that clung low on his lean hips. His black T-shirt had cutoff sleeves that displayed tanned skin, heavily muscled arms, and broad shoulders. He'd tied a gaudy purple-and-red silk jacket around his waist. His dark hair hung around his neck. He had a white scar that slashed across his brown cheek and a mustache, and his eyes . . . he had the most beautiful rich golden-brown eyes Kate had ever seen in her life. Beautiful—and cold. Cruel. They were narrowed on her now.

  Twenty-five years old? No. She changed her estimate. Thirty, perhaps older, and tough. Frightening. Too old to be a gang leader. Drug dealer? No, that jacket was too bright for someone who wanted to remain in the shadows.

  Then he smiled, a sharp slice of danger.

  Her breath caught.

  Without saying a word, he offered her sex. Without pretty words, without any words, he offered their two naked bodies intertwined in steamy passion.

  And without words, she knew that sex with this— this brute would be a blast of heat, swiftly done, swiftly over. Satisfying. And when they were done, they would do it again. Something about the way he stood, the shape of his broad torso, the mocking lift of his smile, told her that he would be insatiable.

  With him, she would be insatiable, too.

  Her face flooded with heat. She wasn't that kind of woman. Strange men didn't appeal to her. She didn't understand raw sexuality. She was untouched by grand passion. Modest, disciplined . . . normal. So very, very normal.

  She turned her shoulder to him and thanked everyone who had talked to her. When she glanced back in his direction, he was gone.

  But as she and Cathy walked toward the station truck to edit the tape, Cathy said, "Not that there weren't the usual quota of vidiots there, but that one guy—he starqd at you. I'd keep an eye out over the next few days, and if he shows up again, I'd talk to the police."

  "So it wasn't my imagination?" Kate knew it wasn't.

  "Shit, no, and he looked like he can hold his own in a knife fight." Cathy looked down at Kate. "He scared the crap out of me, and you're a lot smaller."

  "Then he officially scares me, too," Kate declared.

  Linda was already in the station truck editing her piece, and Kate had to wait until it was almost too late to get hers done. But she did, and sent it to the station. Brad approved it so quickly Linda almost audibly gnashed her teeth, and Kate caught Cathy grinning. Then Kate went back inside the capitol, gave the live report, and went back to the station to watch as the e-mails flooded in.

  Who's the new girl?

  She looks stupid.

  She looks smart.

  She needs a makeover. May I suggest Luella's House of Beauty on the corner of Pine and Third?

  Kate's first real day of reporting for the Austin station had been a success. She smiled at the tight-lipped crew at the station, then drifted home, knowing that she'd done a good job.

  The next day, to celebrate, she watched everything go to hell in a handbasket.

  In the morning, Senator Richardson started a filibuster that ran thirteen hours. Linda, who obviously saw the handwriting on the wall, went home sick. The other reporters for the other stations drifted away as the day wore on, but then they had nothing to prove. Kate covered the whole, dreadful pile of stinking rhetoric, hoping for a breakthrough that no one else was there to catch, and when she finished she had not one viable moment of tape.

  She staggered out of the capitol building at nine. Twilight was fading, the streetlights were on, and all she wanted was to go home and soak in a hot tub until her poor feet no longer resembled Barbie's feet in heels. She walked alone, but she wasn't fearful. She had lived in so many countries, gone to so many different schools, and made so many different friends, she was confident in almost every situation.

  But when she got to her car, it was sitting crooked. It took a minute before she realized—she had a flat. And another minute before she realized—someone had slashed her tire.

  She stood staring in disbelief at the rubbery shreds, and her mind, numbed by hours of oratory, leaped and twisted in sudden fear.

  She was alone in the parking lot.

  A man had watched her the day before, a Hispanic man with eyes so cold she had flinched from their cruelty and their sexuality. Kate was startled by the clarity with which she remembered him—the height, the sensuality, the menace.

  Maybe he hadn't slit her tire with the express purpose of finding and raping her, or murdering her, but she wasn't taking any chances. In the gathering darkness, she pulled her cell phone from the inner pocket of her jacket.

  While she dialed, she dug through her purse for her Mace. She was going to call the police, and if anyone tried to hurt her, she was going to spray the bastard right between the eyes.

  "Miss Montgomery? Is something wrong?"

  She turned too quickly, the Mace clutched in her upraised fingers.

  "Whoa!" Senator Oberlin stopped five feet away, his hands upraised. "I didn't mean to startle you."

  "No. You didn't. That is . . ." It wasn't the man with the cold eyes, yet in the twilight and the loneliness, the shape of him seemed menacing and overbearing.

  Then, as he spoke, the illusion dissolved. "That's your car?" He tsked in disgust. "I've been telling the legislature we need some pr
otection out here for our reporters, but nothing will happen. Those guys understand concealed weapons but not common sense.

  Kate leaned a hand against the hood. Her imagination, usually so inactive, had transferred guilt to Senator Oberlin. Senator Oberlin, the man who had made her uncomfortable with his attentions and his touch that had lingered too long. "It would be better if there was a guard," she said.

  "Since nine-eleven, the capitol has a contract with a private security company." He discarded his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. "They supply undercover guards who patrol the capitol. But they patrol only the buildings, and that leaves me out here to protect you. Now, Miss Montgomery, when I was a teenager, I worked in a gas station. I haven't changed a tire in about thirty years, but I bet I remember how."

  Now her hand did go to her phone. "Senator, please, let me call a service to change it."

  Faintly, she could see that his eyes twinkled. "I suppose you think I'm too old to use a jack."

  "No, sir! That's not what I thought at all. You're in great shape." He was. She'd noted that. Not an ounce of fat around his belly, and his bare forearms were strongly muscled. "But you're dressed too well to be kneeling in a parking lot."

  Opening the trunk, he extracted the jack and the tire. "Consider it a favor done with the express purpose of having you return the favor."

  She must be really tired, for again the image of rape and murder rampaged through her mind, and Linda's warning—Don't go into a hearing room with a senator unless you want to wrestle for your virtue—rang in her mind.

  "Someday I'll need some coverage for one of my bills." Kneeling beside her tire, he efficiently removed the nuts.

  Relief filled her, then dismay. "Sir, I can't promise that," she said faintly.

  "Then you can go out and get me a hamburger next time there's a filibuster." He wrestled the flat off and replaced it with the spare. He worked efficiently, spinning the wheel and tightening the nuts with the tire iron.

  She relaxed. That Hispanic man yesterday had gotten under her skin. Everywhere she looked she saw trouble, even when none existed. "Wendy's or McDonald's?"

  "I've got a better idea. My wife and I are giving a party next week. Perhaps you can come. September nineteenth. It's our anniversary, our twenty-fifth, and we're planning a big bash." He sounded genial, hospitable. He lowered the jack, threw the slashed tire into the trunk, and used his handkerchief to clean his fingers. "Bring a friend."

  She couldn't think of a reason why not. Didn't see any harm in going to a party that would undoubtedly include other reporters and perhaps contacts that would help her. Plus, she really did owe him. She wouldn't have wanted to wait alone for the auto club to come out and change her tire. "I'd be delighted to attend. Thank you, Senator—for everything."

  "I don't know, Mom." Kate cleared the dirty dishes off the carved Indonesian table in her mother's elegant high-rise town house. "In Houston, the station manager was a jerk and everyone else was nice. At KTTV, the station manager is fine, and all the reporters treat me like dirt."

  "Is he cute?" her mother asked automatically. She had cooked one of her fabulous dinners to celebrate Kate's first week on the job, and now she let Kate do the cleanup while she sipped a small glass of port.

  "Who?"

  "The station manager."

  "Brad? E-uw, no." Kate thought of the thick scent of tobacco that hung in the air around Brad, and reiterated, "E-uw."

  "Too bad." Her mother reacted to Kate's single status like a bull to a red flag. "You need to have a social life."

  "No, I need to find enough stories so that bitch Linda Nguyen has to be nice to me." Kate piled the silverware onto the plates with a little too much vigor.

  "Don't say 'bitch.' If you're going to abuse the china, you can leave the dishes for the housekeeper tomorrow. And . . . wait . . . Linda Nguyen?" Mom was diverted. "I've seen her reports. I like her a lot."

  "Well, she doesn't like me." Kate handled the dishes with a little more care.

  "You'll win her over." The two women shared a smile. A handsome woman of fifty-eight, Marilyn Montgomery was a slender, well-groomed brunette who kept herself in shape by working out at the gym and doing fund-raising for every charity that sent her an appeal. She was good at it, too, organizing parties ruthlessly and squeezing money out of corporations with finesse and charm. She served on the board for the Austin Symphony and as the chairman of the Breadwinner's Shelter for Homeless Children.

  Her mother had always believed in her. Her father had always believed in her. Believed she could do whatever she wanted, be whatever she wanted. That was the real reason Kate had to succeed. She wanted to fulfill their faith in her—and her own faith in herself. She might be an orphan. She might be the daughter of a frightened teenager or a prostitute. But she was strong. She would succeed. "If I don't win them over, I'll still do my job."

  "Of course. You are your father's daughter."

  It was the pain and tragedy of Skeeter Montgomery's death that had brought about the extremely close relationship between Kate and her mother. No two women could go through the agony of knowing the man they loved had been captured by terrorists, was perhaps being tortured, was perhaps being killed . . . When, after two months of waiting, his body had been found, it had almost been a relief to know for sure.

  That was the worst part of all, that the confirmation of his death was a relief.

  Since her father had been killed five years ago, her mother had been prone to anxiety. She had made a home for them in Nashville while Kate attended Vanderbilt. Kate had never admitted it, but having her mother keeping track of her so closely during her college years had felt restrictive. When Kate landed the job in Houston, her mother's decision to return to her hometown of Austin had come as a complete surprise. "You're going to be okay living by yourself now, won't you, honey?" her mother had asked. "You're not afraid anymore, are you?"

  And Kate had realized that she had been afraid . . . and that the time with her mother had healed her.

  Her mom was the greatest, smartest person in the world.

  "I'm my mother's daughter, too." Kate headed for the kitchen with the stack of dishes. "If you hadn't taught me how to break someone's kneecaps with a velvet stick, I wouldn't have done nearly so well this week. The capitol is everything I expected."

  "Corrupt?" Mom followed, amused.

  "And fascinating." The committee rooms with their seal of Texas at the head of the room, the broad staircases curving up and down, the official bustle of the Senate in session. "I've met so many people. Only a few even stand out. I did meet Senator Martinez. And Senator Oberlin. Do you know him?"

  Her mom shook her head. "No, but government bores me. Is he important?"

  "Linda says he has a lot of power."

  "Is he cute?"

  Kate rolled her eyes. "Old and married for twenty-five years."

  "Oh." Mom subsided. "If you're not going to find yourself a nice boy, I'll have to do it for you. Dean Sanders is quite the catch. He's handsome. He's a lawyer with MacMillan and Anderson. He knows his way around Austin society."

  "And?" Kate waited for the other shoe to drop.

  "He's divorced, but his mother says that his wife caused the problems and that he's ready to date again."

  "No. Please, no." Going to her mother, Kate wrapped her arms around her and gave her a hug. "Really, Mom. No. I don't want a guy who's getting over a divorce."

  "But his mother says—"

  "She's lying. You know she is."

  "I suppose," her mom said irritably. "But he's a good man. He deserves someone like you."

  "There's only one of me," Kate said with humor. "Not all the men can be lucky."

  She left by nine—"Tomorrow's a workday, Mom." Darkness had fallen by the time she hurried to her car, which was parked in a visitor's space at the front of the building.

  She heard a sound behind her. A hushed step, a brief brush of cloth against metal. She turned, expecting to see her mother hurrying
after her with an extra helping of Cornish hen.

  She saw no movement. A few parked cars, some nicely planted bushes, a few flowers . . .

  A cat, perhaps. Or a squirrel. Something.

  Still she scanned the sidewalk behind her.

  There was nothing there. With a shrug, she got into her car and drove home.

  That night, Kate's phone rang at two A.M. Barely awake, she fumbled for the receiver, her heart pounding in her throat.

  Was it Mom? Had they gotten Mom, too?

  When she picked it up, no one was there. The line was open, but no one spoke, no one breathed. She hung up and got out of bed.

  Caller ID showed: "Private caller."

  She dismissed the call as a mistake.

  She got a drink of water and looked at herself in the mirror.

  She hated this. One call in the middle of the night, and all the fear and anguish of her dad's kidnapping came rushing back. All the memories paraded through her mind. They were nightmares come to life, and no matter how hard she tried, nothing could erase them.

  She went back to bed, and an hour later, she had just drifted back to sleep when her cell phone rang. She got up and looked at the phone, but she didn't answer this time. Again it read: "Private caller."

  Coincidence, probably. A bad coincidence since both numbers were unlisted and unpublished, but a coincidence nevertheless.

  When her home phone rang again at five A.M., she let the answering machine pick it up. A low, growly, disguised voice said, "Leave, bitch."

  And quietly hung up.

  That day, to cover the dark circles under her eyes, Kate wore extra makeup.