by Mary Whitney
Pleased with the warm acceptance in the judge’s voice, Stephen quieted for a moment while his mind sped ahead. “I’m glad to hear it. In fact, I wonder if you’d be willing to do a favor for me one day.”
Chapter 19
The energy debate raged on in the Senate through February, which forced Stephen once again to keep long hours, and after the previous close call with Helen, Anne rarely stayed late at work. The office was particularly quiet at night since Megan cut back her hours. Her pregnancy had brought joy to the whole family as well as exhaustion and morning sickness for her.
One evening, Greg watched as Helen again strode through the office as if it were her own; he was alone as he chased after her. “Senator Sanders! Senator, can I help you?”
She made it to Stephen’s office door, turned, and smiled. “No. I need to talk to Stephen.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry. It’s an urgent Intelligence Committee matter; it’s classified. You understand.” She slipped into the office and shut the door in Greg’s face.
When he saw Helen open the door, Stephen quickly told Anne he’d call her back. He put on his suit coat as if it were a flak jacket and mentally prepared himself for whatever Helen might be up to. “Good evening, Helen. I’m in a hurry. I was just about to get a Coke with Greg. Do you want to join us?”
“Not really.” She smiled as she slowly took off her own suit jacket and threw it on a chair.
“I’m very sorry,” he said with a smile, hoping to charm his way out of the situation. “I don’t have time. I need to return a call.” He pointed to his phone on the desk.
“Oh, you have time.” She unbuttoned her blouse.
“I really don’t.” He soon realized what she was doing and panicked at the thought of being alone with her. “Helen, stop. You shouldn’t do this.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t, but you know you want it.” She let the blouse drop off her shoulders, exposing a black lace bra which barely covered her nipples.
Stupefied into silence, his mind reeled at the scene playing out before him; it was one he had seen before—but not recently. More than once in the past, Helen had pranced into his office and shed all her clothes, while he’d drawn the curtains and unbuckled his belt for their usual office quickie. This time, he closed his eyes and exhaled his words in a punctuated cadence. “Helen, please put your clothes on. This isn’t happening.”
“Why not?”
He opened his eyes to see Helen standing with one hand on her hip and the other dangling her bra as if she were in a burlesque show. Objectively, she was a titillating sight. She was a beautiful woman wearing a form-fitting—if conservative—skirt with sheer stockings and high heels, and she was naked from the waist up. Only months earlier, Stephen would have eagerly explored her body, bringing them both pleasure. That night, though, he found nothing appealing about her. He only wanted her to leave.
Yet Stephen knew better. She was a dangerous woman who’d made herself vulnerable before him. While he’d like nothing better than to toss her out on her ear, he had to walk a delicate line. What he’d initially said wasn’t helpful to his cause. He needed to backtrack and let her down gently—and believably, as if he were the Stephen of old.
“Baby, you know I want it, but I can’t,” he said in a smooth voice. “You’re so fucking hot. But you’re engaged, and I’m up this year. I can’t have any scandal and neither can you.”
“Oh, no one will ever know.” She tossed her bra over the chair where her blouse and jacket rested, and came closer. “It’s just like old times.”
As she neared him, Stephen backed up and to the side. He decided he had no choice but to be firm. “It’s not like old times, Helen. Things have changed. I asked you to put your clothes on.”
Her demeanor stiffened immediately, and she took a step back. Arching an eyebrow, she put a hand to her hip. “Exactly how have things changed, Stephen?”
“There’s too much at stake for both of us. It’s more than just my election. You’re engaged. You’re exposed now, too. “
“But this is private.” She gave him a brief smile and reminded him of their common predicament. “And more to the point, we’ve always had mutually assured destruction. Both of us lose if this gets out, so neither one of us will let it happen.”
“Come on. That doesn’t mean others aren’t ready to pounce on anything they can get on me, even if you’re collateral damage in the process.”
“You’re talking about Walter, aren’t you?” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t jeopardize my seat just to get Dan Langford elected. Besides, he’s a friend of mine.”
Stephen frowned at how she’d called Walter a “friend”; it sounded like they’d been more than friends. He covered up his concern with a quick retort. “That may be the case, but anyone could hurt us—not just Walter. I’m not going to risk it . . . for both of our sakes.”
“Humph.” Her eyes narrowed, and her voice became accusatory. “You say you’re worried about things between us getting out, but I think there’s something more. You’re seeing someone else. I can tell. And that’s the reason you won’t touch me.”
“Of course, I’m seeing someone else. I always am.” His mouth twitched as he said it, betraying his assertion that nothing had changed for him. He worried he’d given something away, so he waved his hand in nonchalance. “So what?”
“No. This is different. If you were only screwing someone else, you’d at least touch me. I’m standing in front of you half naked, and you’ve done everything to keep looking me in the eye instead of my breasts. I know you—that’s not normal.”
“I told you—”
“I’m not buying it.” She crossed her arms so her breasts rested on them. “Who are you seeing?”
“We’ve never asked that of one another. Why start now?” He felt like he was losing control of the conversation.
“Because I want to know about this woman,” she said with determination. “You’re acting differently. She must be special.”
“I don’t know . . .” He shrugged.
“Then why won’t you tell me who she is?”
He grasped for a reason. “Maybe you could say I don’t want to jinx it.”
She gave him a cold stare. After a moment, she sneered and huffed. “Fine.”
The look in Helen’s eye left him unsettled. He couldn’t trust her at all anymore, and he needed to salvage the situation. “Baby, I’m sorry,” he said as he stroked her naked forearms while avoiding her breasts. “We had a good thing. Let’s not wreck it right now.” For good measure, he stepped back and gazed at her. Despite her singular self-confidence, she had always responded to a well-timed appeal to her vanity. “And you’re still gorgeous.”
She smiled and sighed as she reached to the chair for her bra. “Oh, all right. I’ll leave you alone. For now . . .” Placing the bra over her breasts, she turned around. “Can you help me with the hooks?”
Facing her back, Stephen rolled his eyes undetected. “Sure,” he crooned. Once her bra was hooked, he patted the closure, hoping to put the matter to rest for good.
“So you’re really worried about keeping your seat?” she asked as she found her blouse.
“Of course. You’ve seen the polls. I was ahead but now we’re dead even. Add that to the fact that it’s a bad year for my party, and it doesn’t look good.” Lines of worry creased his brow.
“Well, if they ask . . . and they probably will, I won’t go to Colorado and campaign for Langford. I’ll sit this one out. It’ll piss off the party, but I’ll make an excuse.”
“I appreciate that, Helen. I’d do the same for you.” Stephen wasn’t lying, but after he said it, he wondered if she was being truthful.
She tugged the ends of her jacket straight and stepped closer. With greed in her eyes, she placed her index finger on the center of his tie and grinned. “I know you would. And I expect this,” she said, waving her finger between the two of them, “to resume the day after the election
. Think about it.”
She abruptly turned and strutted away without looking back. “I’m very curious about this woman. You know I’ll find out who she is.” As she placed her hand on the doorknob, she turned and smiled. “And she can’t be as good as me.”
“Well, you’re right about that,” he replied with a nervous snicker. As she closed the door behind her, he muttered, “She’s better.”
His feigned good humor instantly vanished as he sank into the nearest chair he could find. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he grappled the impending disaster. He stewed on the matter only a few seconds before yelling, “Fuck!”
Straightaway he furiously pressed numbers on his phone. He skipped all pleasantries when Patty greeted him on the other line. “I need to talk now.”
“I’m getting ready for bed. Whatever it is can wait until the morning. I’ll see you in the office early, if you want.”
“No. It can’t wait”
“Why not?”
He relayed a twenty-second, yet still graphic, synopsis of his encounter with Helen.
After hearing the words “Helen” and “tits,” Patty responded, “Eww. Gross.”
“Can we skip the commentary?”
“Hardly! Wait ’til everybody else hears. So, did you and she—”
“No! Of course not. I can’t believe you’d even ask me. I’d never do that to Anne, nor do I have any desire to.”
“Cut to the chase, then. Besides having to stare at her boobs, what happened?”
He relayed the entire tawdry tale, focusing on the fact Helen was determined to discover Anne.
As soon as he finished, Patty announced, “I’m calling Phillip. I want a private investigator put on her tomorrow.”
“You want a P.I.? What? No. There’s no reason for anything like that.”
“Like hell I’m not. We can’t be caught unprepared. Somehow, someway, she’s going to put two and two together about you and Anne, and she’ll leak it. I want some ammunition to keep her quiet. She’s such a slut. I’m sure there’s some nice dirt we can use against her. Let’s keep up this game of—what do you two call it? Mutually assured destruction?”
“Well, I know one of the men she’s been with lately,” he said as he tugged at his tie in frustration. “It’s Senator Anderson. I don’t like him, but I’m not sure if even he deserves to be caught up in a mess with her.”
“Anderson? Whatever. I couldn’t care less about him. This is great because two Republican seats could be in trouble if this got out.”
“Wait. This isn’t the way we treat innocent people. I can’t believe you. We’re not like that. Dad would never have approved of this.”
“Are you nuts?” Patty exclaimed. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Dad would have stopped at nothing to protect us. Helen is out to get you. Do you think that for one second Helen would do anything differently if she was in your situation? Do you think the Republican Party would act any differently? Don’t be naïve.”
A few moments passed before Stephen responded, his voice full of regret. “Talk to Grayson. He probably knows something.”
“Thank you,” she said, her voice filled with self-satisfaction. She waited a moment and ventured, “So, are you going to tell Anne?”
“Of course,” he grumbled as dread overcame him.
Chapter 20
The following night, Stephen was so grumpy Anne could tell something was wrong. His cranky behavior was like none she’d seen, and when he brought her into the library to be alone, she was worried.
“Anne, I have to tell you about a predicament we’re in,” he said as he reached for her hand.
“What’s that?”
“I just want you to know it’s entirely my fault due to my past mistakes.”
“Okay . . .”
Stephen’s expression was full of regret. “They’re mistakes that are now haunting me. I’m sorry, but someone is suspicious about me—and about whom I’m seeing. This someone is very tenacious. We could be exposed.”
Terrified of what might come next, she swallowed hard.
When she gave him an anxious glance, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hair in reassurance. “But I need you to know it doesn’t matter. I don’t want anything to change between us. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. That’s all that matters.”
Nestling into her favorite crook between his arm and chest, she was still despondent. “I don’t want to change anything either, but what’s going on? Who is this ‘someone?’ What’s happened?”
“It’s Senator Sanders. Before you came along, Helen and I were together for a while and . . .”
She stared off as she listened to Stephen recount his history with Helen. Of course she knew Stephen had been with many women before her, and she hated it when the subject came up. Having to hear in depth about his time with Helen was particularly difficult. She listened, though, resigned to the facts as he laid them out.
It was only when Stephen told her about the prior evening that she ripped herself away and exclaimed, “She did what? And in your office? Who would do that?”
“She would.” He winced. “It wasn’t uncommon for us to . . . uh . . . meet in my office.”
“Oh.” The thought made her stomach turn. Anxious about what was coming next, she pursed her lips. “Okay. Move on. She’s standing half-naked in front of you. And . . .” Before she finished sentence, her heart started beating double time; her speech became wobbly. “And what did you do? Did you . . . touch her?”
“No.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I realize that I deserve to be asked that, but the answer is no. I mean it every time I say I don’t want to be with anyone else.”
“That’s good to hear.” It was an understatement. She was ecstatic to hear him say it again, and she gave him a kiss which reassured them both.
He smiled afterward and shrugged. “Let me tell you the rest.”
As he gave her a blow-by-blow account of the remainder of his encounter with Helen, Anne cringed. She was angry and sad and without any means to respond. She wanted to claw Helen’s eyes out and expose her to the world for what she truly was, yet even the simplest rebuke like a slap or a snide remark was out of the question. Anne was powerless as a senator pursued her boyfriend. It was a crushing feeling. And after hearing the whole story, she came to the same conclusion as Patty—they needed to protect themselves from Helen.
At the end of their discussion, he faced her and said emphatically, “I have to say it again—I’m sorry. I love you. I want you to be happy.”
More than anything, Anne wanted Stephen to be happy as well. After such a difficult conversation, she needed to comfort him. “I’m okay,” she said, even though she really wasn’t. She wrinkled her nose with a grimace. “Though, I don’t like that she stripped in front of you.”
“Don’t worry.” He kissed her forehead. “I didn’t like it either.”
“Good.”
He winked. “On the other hand, if you want to show up in my office one day and strip for me, that would be a total turn-on.”
“Humph.” She smirked and reached up for a kiss. “We’ll see.”
Later, in the middle of the night, Anne woke in a panic. She sat up and looked around Stephen’s dark room, trying to get her bearings.
Because he was a light sleeper, her stirring woke him. “What? What is it?”
Emotions she’d stuffed away earlier in the evening came bubbling through. She blurted out, “I’m ending my internship. Right now.”
Stephen groaned into his pillow. “We’ve been through this. It doesn’t help. We got together while you worked in my office. Who cares if it was one week or three months?”
She shook her head. “I don’t care. And we should stop seeing each other . . . until the election is over.”
Not speaking, he sat up and pulled her tightly to his chest. “That I will not let happen.”
Adrenaline coursed through her. Anne wasn’t ready for t
he conversation, but she knew they had to have it. She leaned into the warmth of his arms. “No, I think it’s the only way. So far, we’ve managed to keep everything quiet. No one knows, and if anyone suspects, we have a good alibi. Let’s quit while we’re ahead.”
He squinted, appearing confused and half-asleep. Despite her confidence in her proposal’s logic, her voice became quieter and more hesitant as she continued. “We could just take a break. The election is only nine months away. That’s not so long. We could still talk.”
When he didn’t respond immediately, the same panic hit her, as it had for some time. She worried that, though they loved each other, if he lost the election, things might change between them.
“And in November, maybe we could pick up where we left off.” The fear bubbling inside her chest made it sound more like a hopeful question.
Stephen’s expression slowly changed to one of full comprehension. He was incredulous. “What do you mean by ‘maybe we could pick up where we left off?’ I hate your idea about not seeing one another, but I’m more concerned by what you just said.” He blinked rapidly. “Are you having doubts . . . about us? Is that why you’re proposing this?”
“No. No. Not at all. I don’t have any doubts.” She was relieved he’d picked up on what she said, and it opened the floodgates of her pent-up emotions. She wrapped her arms around him. “It’s just overwhelming. I feel guilty. And I worry what’s going to happen between us if you lose.”
He shook his head. “Anne, I love you. I want to marry you. I’d ask you at this very moment if I thought you’d say yes. What happens with this election has nothing to do with how I feel about you. I’ll love you the same regardless of whether I win or lose.”
“But if—”
“No. No buts. And please don’t feel guilty. Listen to me. Say that we are exposed, and it’s ugly, and I do lose the election. The truth is I’ll be a happier man if I lose and we’re together than if I win and we’re apart.”
His words soothed her, and she gave him a tender kiss. “I love you.”