by Emily Snow
“He’s … something.” I race my tongue over dry lips. “Very Delaney.”
“We’re an adjective now,” he muses. “I’ll have to tell my father what you’ve said. He’ll be so proud.”
“Does he … does your father know about your mother?”
“Of course. They’re equally fucked. I could tell you stories about them that would leave you clutching your pearls, dove.”
And that—that explains so much. Zach’s friends were always around when we were growing up, but I can’t imagine Mom making a pass at any of them. I clear my throat and take a breath before I say, “I’m sorry, Graham.”
“Why? I’m even more fucked,” he drawls, tilting his face from mine to cast a smile at the redhead sauntering toward us. He looks at me out the corner of his eye. “Of course, unlike my parents, I admit my shortcomings—or in our case, long ones.”
Smartass. As he speaks in a mix of English and French to the redhead, I wander off, exploring the open areas of Bennett’s apartment. Everything about it is the opposite of Graham’s. It's light and airy, not the wall to ceiling sterile, minimalist look of the place on Fifth Avenue. This has a woman’s touch, so when Vero finds me examining the wall of black and white photos behind the baby grand piano, I point out how beautiful the place is.
“Wrong wife.” She taps a rounded fingernail on an image of Bennett with a tiny, model-esque blonde. “This is the most recent ex. The one who did the decorating. I’m guessing he just hasn’t gotten around to taking her pictures down.”
Bitterness laces her voice, but then she laughs when I tilt my head to the side and glance back at her. She looks nothing like the uptight woman who’d dropped me into Graham’s lap the night of his proposition in an off-the-shoulder red ruffle dress, but her expression is just as guarded. “How was your holiday?” I tentatively ask.
“Peaceful.” She relaxes a little. “After all, there was no Graham.” When I laugh, her stance loosens a bit more. Which probably has something to do with the half-empty wine glass she’s toting around. After she tells me it's her fourth glass, she casually asks, “Are you staying much longer? In New York, I mean.”
“No. I have to work tomorrow, so I'm leaving in the morning.”
“You work?”
I nod. “I just started at The Capitol Buzz, and—”
Her icy gray eyes widen. “The gossip rag?” At my flush, she chokes down more wine and clears her throat. “I love The Capitol Buzz—I just didn’t picture you as the type to work through school, especially there.”
At least she’s blunt. “I don’t like to rely on my dad.”
“Hmm.” She drinks more wine like she’s auditioning to be Cersei Lannister’s Game of Thrones body double. “I like that. I like that a lot, Eleanor. I think we’re the only two people in this room who can say that without twitching.”
I wait for her to point out that I’m relying on Graham for my tuition this semester, but that doesn’t come. This woman knows the ins and outs of his life. The fact she has no clue about my situation, or the role he played in fixing it, fills my lungs with relief. Clearing my throat, I turn my attention to the photos on the wall.
“I'm going to guess this is Graham.” I point to the boy in the middle of the beach picture. He's casting a missing tooth smile at the camera, all the cynicism of the man he’s become missing. The arrogance is still there, though. I’d be willing to bet he was born with that.
“The cocky grin gives it away, doesn’t it?” Laughing, she points to the boy on his right and then to his left. “And that’s Cain and this one—that’s Bennett.” The edge is back in her voice and she blinks down at her glass when I look up to meet her gaze.
Graham’s only mentioned his brother’s marriage to Vero once, saying it was over before it began several years ago, but she’s still in love with him. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. It’s all there, from the way she darts her gaze across the room at him. She flinches when she spots him with his mouth buried against another woman’s ear.
Her smile twists my stomach into knots that take my breath away. “And once again, I question why I do this shit.” She fluffs her hand through her short blond hair, her motions so jerky some of the wine sloshes out of the glass. “Be careful with Graham, Ms. Courtney. The Delaney boys range from not-giving-a-fuck to sadistic.”
“Veronica—”
Sharp gray eyes lower to mine. “At least Graham’s a mixture of the two,” she says dryly.
I don't know how to respond. On one hand, she’s tipsy. And she’s obviously upset because who the hell wants to see the man they care about whispering filthy nothings in another woman’s ear? But I’m also wise enough to take her warning to heart. I already know Graham’s capable of screwing me over.
I’m just the right amount of fool to hope that doesn’t happen again.
I nod my head. Swallow hard to get rid of some of the dryness in my throat. Desperate to tug this conversation away from Graham, I glance over at Cain. “What's his story?”
“He owns a nightclub.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “In a church.”
My brows arch. “He's a priest?” Because that's the only scenario I can think of. Some nightclub to introduce a younger crowd to religion. It would also explain him wanting to separate himself from his parents and Graham’s immediate shoot down of whatever invitation he was prepared to issue me. I’ve got a feeling a church would burst into flames the second Senator Sexy-Ass stepped through the doors.
“I’m sure they have a Catholic school girl night at Eden, but no. He’s not a priest.” The confusion must be written all over my features because she explains, “He and Graham bought an old church in Brooklyn several years back and Cain turned it into a nightclub. Pissed a few people off.”
That’s something else that hadn't shown up when I look Graham. I let out a low breath, watching as he says something to the Delaney spokeswoman that makes her blush. “I bet,” I say huskily.
Silence falls over us as we return to looking at the photos Bennett’s ex had hung. I hear Graham call my name, and I'm about to turn from the wall and join him, but then one of the pictures near the top of the group stops me. I recognize a younger version of Bennett and Graham, but there's something about the pretty brunette with them that sounds an alarm in my head.
She's sitting on Graham’s lap, one slim arm draped around his shoulders, and the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end as I study her bright smile. “Hey Vero? Who’s that?” I tap a finger against her face.
Vero’s eyes shift from me to the picture. I feel Graham’s body heat behind me, and as I arch into his touch as his hand finds my hip, Vero looks up at him, too. “I have no clue,” she says, but her face is frozen.
He tilts his head to one side. “V likes to play games with her job by talking too much.” But he grins. “What has she told you?”
Only that I should be careful around you. And what you’ve already assured me—that you, and your brothers, are screwed up. “Nothing. I mean, we were talking about the pictures. I swear I know this woman from somewhere.” He follows my finger to the picture in question, and every inch of his body seizes. Slowly, so slowly it makes my neck hurt, I tilt my eyes up to him to find a smile plastered in place.
“Graham?” I say, voice hitching hesitantly.
“She’s—” His jaw clenches. “Bennett’s last bitch has bad taste in home décor because she’s nobody.”
“Okay,” I breathe. “But I recognize her.” From where I have no idea, but I remember smiles. And I won’t be able to erase that woman’s out of my brain anytime soon.
“You don’t. And we’re leaving. Vero, call a car.”
She licks her lips and starts to say something but he jerks his head and she slinks off, cursing under her breath. “She’s on vacation,” I rasp, and he gives me a look that cuts right through me. “Is everything—” My words die on my lips when I touch his arm and he pulls away.
“I should get your coat,”
he says, confusing the hell out of me.
For a man who speaks about filters, who calls me out on my bullshit at every turn, he has no problem avoiding his truth. Whatever the hell that is. We sit with a giant void between us on the way to his apartment. We take the elevator upstairs with an even bigger space separating us. And I almost expect he’ll tell me to pack my shit and leave the second we step over the threshold and into his foyer, but he doesn’t.
He pulls me to him, his mouth searing mine as he shoves me against the wall. I hear and feel the panties he gave me ripping. And my body reacts—God, it can’t help but respond to him—but my head is elsewhere. On a photo hanging above a piano in the Upper East Side. And the fact that it has broken down the most self-assured man I’ve ever met.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ELLE
That photo still haunts me two days later, when I come in from work and find my roommate with her legs tucked under her on the couch. She’s tuned into CNN, pausing and rewinding Don Lemon interviewing some suit.
“I’ve got it narrowed down,” she calls out. She doesn’t turn around to look at me. It’s either this guy.” She wiggles the remote to the man on screen. I squint and read his name. Calder Michaels, a New Hampshire Democrat in the House. “Franklin Padick, Boyd Woodfield, or Graham Delaney.”
I’m thankful she’s not looking at me. Otherwise, my body language would have given everything away the second she said his name. I haven’t spoken to him since he took me to the airport two days ago. It’s not like it’s the first time he’s gone days without contacting me, but there was something about his detached smile that had left me dazed.
“But I really hope it’s not this one,” Blake continues. When I come around to the side of the couch and drop my keys on the end table, she scrunches her nose. “He sniffles so much on camera that I swear he’s about to snort a line off the back of his hand before the interview is done.”
“Maybe he has a cold,” I laugh. She rolls her eyes. “And you’ve never touched that shit in your life, so how do you know?”
“I grew up in Boston, Elle. The seventy-year-old cat lady next door probably did coke.” She hits the play button on the remote and cocks her head as she finishes listening to Calder’s interview. I’ve got to admit, he does sniff a little too frequently. Once he’s done talking to the reporter—to probably go do a line, Blake says—she swings her legs off the couch and pads into the kitchen. “So, am I right about any of them? Because this guessing game’s starting to give me anxiety issues.”
She’s been at this since I came back from New York, trying to figure out who I was with and everything I did while I was there, and I can tell it’s driving her crazy. Blake and I don’t keep much from each other. When I turn toward her, and she gives me a hopeful look, I sag my shoulders, relenting.
“It’s not Michaels,” I admit, then throw in a sniff.
She raises her hands in the air and closes her eyes. “Thank God. I was starting to get worried you’d gone full bad girl.” As she pours herself a glass of water, she wiggles her pale eyebrows. “And then, there were three.”
“You should be a detective,” I say dryly as she drops a piece of lemon into her glass.
“I’m like Veronica Mars but even shorter.”
I roll my eyes. That show—and the movie—is the last thing I want to bring up since we can’t discuss it without arguing. She’s Team Piz and I’m Team Logan. Because I have a thing for the jackasses. “I’m going to shower.”
“If you’re having phone sex with Woodfield, Delaney or Padick in there, make sure you do it loudly and scream his name so I can find out who he is.”
Yeah, I don’t see that happening when the man hasn’t even thought to pick up his phone and call me in two days, but I grant Blake a thin-lipped smile as I walk toward my bedroom to get undressed. I’m in the process of grabbing a change of clothes when my phone vibrates on my dresser. I grin when Zach’s smiling picture flashes on my screen.
“My favorite person!” I answer breathlessly, and he snorts.
“You’re so full of it, Elle.” He says something to someone with him in the room—“calm down, I’m telling her now”—and I arch my brows.
“Is everything all right?”
“It’s … good. Really good, Elle. Have you been on Facebook or Instagram lately?”
No, but I’m already opening the laptop on my bed and hastily bringing up my Facebook profile to look at the picture Zach tagged me in a few hours ago. “I hate when you send me on a scavenger hunt to find—” My breath catches in my throat when I reach the image of my brother and Jameson. Holding a toddler, big pink bow and all. “Oh my god, you’re adopting?” I squeal.
He chuckles. “No, we’re fostering Natalie. But there’s … there’s a good chance she might end up here for good. We’re not getting our hopes up yet.”
I ease down on my bed, a soft smile playing on my lips. Zach’s always liked kids. Even when he was younger and Dad tried to guilt trip him into volunteer work, he’d loved working with kids around the area. “I’m so happy for you guys,” I whisper, my chest swelling. I swallow back the emotion and wipe my face. “She’s beautiful and now you have my broke ass wanting to hop on the first flight to Newport.”
He makes a noise that lets me know he wants to finish the conversation we started at Monroe’s when he found out what Dad did, but when I ask him not to ruin the moment, he sighs. “Say the word and I’ll buy you a ticket right now.”
“Work,” I say, “but, God, I wish I could.”
“Don’t worry, as soon as DSS gives us the okay, we’ll come to you. I can already picture Mom’s face.”
“Hmm. Passive and looking at Dad for the okay to comment?” I sigh and take one last look at the three beaming faces in the photo and tap the escape key, exiting to other photos he’s recently tagged me in. “I swear I really will never talk to him again if he acts like a shit about Natalie. I mean, I haven’t talked to him since—”
I pause when my gaze locks on to the smile that’s bothered me since my last night in New York, and the air floats right out of my lungs. My fingers shake as I click on it and lean so close the glow from the screen makes my eyes water.
“Talked to him since when?” my brother probes.
“Christmas,” I say numbly, studying all the faces on the screen. I remember this. Can vividly recall the night ten years ago when it was taken. After all, I’m right in the center of my family and Dad’s staff. Dressed like Holiday Barbie and making a face because Mom had told me to smile big for the camera because the Courtney’s New Year’s Eve bash always—always—made the front page. “The picture that you shared the other day at that New Year’s party … do you remember it?”
“Other than hating the night it was taken?” he teases. “Of course, I remember it. It came up in my timeline and I couldn’t resist sharing it because of that look on your face and that shit buzz cut Dad talked me into. Why? What’s up?”
“The brunette,” I breathe. I press my hand to my chest, digging my fingertips into the plush fabric of my bathrobe. “The one standing four people to your left. Do you know who that is?”
He tells me to hold on, and I feel like my heart is about to beat right out of my ribcage as I wait. I hear his fingers tapping swiftly on his phone as he pulls up the picture, then he returns. “One of Dad’s old interns, I think. I never really talked to them because Dad always thought I was trying to cop a feel.” He snorts. “Shows how observant he is.”
My response sounds forced, numb. “That’s because he’s an idiot.”
Zach agrees, easing the conversation into his plans to visit the area soon, but I can barely hear him. Blood seems to pump through my ears, numbing every other sense but sight. And the only thing I can see is the brunette’s smile. I was right about recognizing her. If Graham had just brushed her off without such a violent reaction, I would have never noticed this. Would have pushed her out of my mind the second we left Bennett’s apartment.
Now, I’m curious because I’m one hundred percent sure she’s the reason he’s so … him. And now, I know the one person who can shed some light on the other woman. Even if he’s the last person I want to see.
My father meets me at Monroe’s late the next afternoon after I leave work. His expression is smug when he sits down across from me, straightening his slim tie. I can’t remember the last time we had lunch without an assistant in tow, but I’m grateful it’s just us today. That way, he won’t brush off anything I say for the sake of propriety.
He orders a glass of water and twists his lips in disdain when I ask for a blackberry bramble. “It’s too early for cocktails, Eleanor,” he admonishes, giving our waitress a smile. “She’ll have water as well.”
“I’d prefer the cocktail,” I say.
The waitress’s eyes shift between us like she’s waiting for him to give her the thumbs up on my decision. When he simply looks at me, stonily, she creeps away, promising she’ll return shortly to take our order.
“You enjoy doing this,” he says, unfolding his linen napkin. “Making a spectacle of yourself?”
“Oh, yes.” I jerk my napkin into my lap, my hands trembling with fury as I smooth it over my high-waisted, blush pink pants. “I’m making such a spectacle of myself by having a mind of my own and ordering a drink. Maybe after I’m done here, I’ll go and drink a forty out of a brown paper bag at the bus stop near your office.”
At least then, maybe I’ll run into Graham. And hopefully, I’ll be able to face him with new knowledge.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop talking.” Our eyes go to war for a long pause—a clash of blue versus blue—but then Dad smirks. “I’m assuming you called because you need money. Classes resume in—what?—two weeks?”
“I’ve already told you that it’s covered. That hasn’t changed,” I say through my teeth. I murmur my appreciation when the waitress returns with my drink. I know it’s petty, but I take my time savoring the first sip, smiling at Dad over the rim of the glass. I wait until she leaves again to speak. “Plus, I have a job.”