Choices (A Woman's Life)

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Not a word. Now that he’s won the primary, he’s undoubtedly too busy with his election campaign.” She thought of Liz Conway. Talk had it that the woman had been replaced, both as Jordan’s campaign secretary and his lover. Shanna found no solace, no feeling of revenge in the information. “Or his women.”

  Brady placed his hand on top of his daughter’s, trying to offer her as much comfort as he could. “He wasn’t worthy of you, Shanna.”

  Shanna raised her chin. “Not for a moment,” she agreed, an easy smile on her lips. It was nice having her father in her corner.

  She was going to be all right, he thought, relieved. Remembering his appointment, Brady looked down at his watch to check the time. It was getting late. “Well, I’d better be going.”

  She walked him to the door. “Thanks for stopping by, Dad.” He turned and looked at her, a puzzled expression on his face. “I really mean it.”

  His visits shouldn’t come as such a surprise. There were years to make up for, he thought. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

  She didn’t understand his meaning. “For what?”

  “For me to become a father.”

  She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, deeply touched. Then she jumped back, afraid she’d wrinkled his suit. He had a dapper reputation to maintain. With a fond smile, she straightened his collar. “Better late than never, Dad.”

  He touched her cheek, grateful for this second chance. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “And send me a few of the reports on my pet project, will you, Dad? I’m getting restless. I need something to do.”

  “With a newborn around?” he asked skeptically. Rheena, of course, had never gotten immersed in motherhood for one moment, but that was Rheena. Shanna was an entirely different matter.

  Shanna glanced back toward her daughter’s room. “She sleeps a lot. Besides, I don’t ever want to become part of the idle rich again.”

  “Whatever you want. I’ll send them over with Haggerty. He’s looking for an excuse to come by and visit you, anyway. This’ll give him one.”

  Shanna smiled to herself as she closed the door. She tried to picture the hulking manager of her father’s office acting like a common messenger boy and failed.

  Chapter 18

  It had been a long haul, Reid thought, to get to this point in time. It was almost 9:00 a.m. and he was on his way to a brand-new job. Anticipation and excitement rippled through him. He quickly walked up the stairs leading to the Senate building, smiling to himself. A long haul, but he was finally here, after one false start, on the threshold.

  His professor had turned out to be a great deal more understanding than Reid would have thought he’d be that night he missed his final. After leaving the hospital, Reid had raced home to change out of his bloodied clothes, dropped off the taxi, and taken the metro to school. He had made a last-minute decision to try to catch his teacher.

  Professor Howard was just locking the classroom door when Reid came hurrying down the hall. There had been nothing beyond an icy silence while Howard had listened to Reid relate his story. And then, for the first time, Reid actually saw the wizened old man smile.

  Howard unlocked the door and motioned him inside. While the professor sat at his desk, reading the evening edition of the Washington Post, he allowed Reid to take the test he had given the rest of the class earlier. Reid graduated with his class that summer.

  It seemed hard to believe that a year had passed since that night. A year since he had helped Shanna give birth to her daughter. He thought of her occasionally, wondering where she was and if she ever thought of him at all. He had wanted to visit her at the hospital, but what would have been the point? He found her very attractive. He had the first time he saw her on the beach. But she was married. The feeling pulsing through him when he looked at her was far too sexual, at least for him, to believe that only friendship would be at the end of the line. Besides, he had never learned her last name and he couldn’t have very well gone from room to room on the maternity floor, looking for her.

  He knew he would have, if she had been single. But the fact remained that she wasn’t single. Some things, he knew as he walked to the first bank of elevators, were better left alone.

  The elevator arrived and he moved just inside it, to the right of the door. Six other people quickly filed in behind him, jockeying for position in the small cubicle. He recognized a congressman from a newscast the other day. It felt good to be here.

  Still, Reid mused as the doors closed, he did think about her, especially when the winter nights had stretched out endlessly until morning’s first light. He thought about the way she had looked when he first saw her on the beach, the way she had raised her eyes to his when he had placed her baby in her arms. No, there was nothing platonic at work here. What he felt when he thought of Shanna came strictly under the heading of desire.

  The elevator opened on the third floor. This was it. He got out. A sign on the wall pointed him down the right corridor. Before applying for this position, he had spent a total of ten months working for Congressman Calhoun. Young, dynamic, and an obvious winner, at first glance Jordan Calhoun seemed to be the type of up-and-coming politician Reid wanted to be associated with. Since Calhoun’s office was almost as new to the scene as Reid was, he’d thought it was a good place for him to start and get himself oriented to the ins and outs of the political world in Washington, D.C.

  But Reid found that he didn’t really care for Jordan. It wasn’t actually something he could put his finger on. The words were sincere, the grip was warm, the smile bright. But there was something lacking about the man, something in the eyes that told Reid he was in the presence of a great showman and nothing more. It was like looking into a window of a store and seeing a host of wonderful goods, only to discover that it was nothing more than a cardboard mock-up. Calhoun gave him that impression.

  Principles were something that could be easily bought and sold, but Reid wanted to hold on to his for a while. Naive though he knew it might sound, he didn’t want to work for someone he didn’t really believe in. He couldn’t write speeches for a man like that and know it was only so much rhetoric, said only because the people wanted to hear it, not because the speaker believed in the words.

  So when a friend of a friend told him that there was an opening in Senator Brady’s office, he had jumped at the chance. The position wasn’t what he wanted, but there was no doubt in Reid’s mind that, given time, he would work himself up to being one of Senator Brady’s speech writers. And Reid wasn’t afraid to work.

  It would actually help him in the long run, he thought, to learn the daily routine of the Senator’s office. Eventually it would all dovetail with his goal of being a political speech writer. Admiring Brady the way he did, Reid now felt he should have set his sights on getting a job at the man’s office to begin with.

  Part of Reid felt as if things were happening too slowly for him. He was almost thirty, and at thirty, a lot of men already had a family and had spent five years at their chosen career. Still, some never got the opportunity to follow their dreams at all and he was getting his chance. That was something. He realized that he was, in a roundabout fashion, building his success due to a tragedy. He hadn’t wanted it that way, but he had always tried to make the best of everything.

  Except once.

  Then he had almost succeeded, he thought wryly, in getting himself killed. He had had no intention of getting killed at the time. It was Tyler Poole he had wanted dead. Even now, eleven years later, when he thought of the spoiled, only son of Hemitsville’s first family, he felt his fingers curl the way they had that night around Tyler’s throat. He supposed in a macabre sort of way, he had Tyler to thank for getting him to this point. If Tyler hadn’t showered Judy with gifts and attention, if he hadn’t turned her head and won her away from him, maybe things would have turned out differently for everyone concerned.

  The memory still left a bitter taste in his mouth, like spoiled almonds. He
had loved Judy, really loved her. And they would have been married if it weren’t for Tyler. There had always been an inherent rivalry between them and Tyler had enjoyed stealing Judy’s affections away from him. It was done with no more thought, no more sense of responsibility than he would have used if he was choosing a shirt to wear for the day.

  Judy, captivated, overwhelmed, had fallen completely under Tyler’s spell. Within a month she was pregnant. Tyler had denied the baby was his, saying she was just after his family’s money. His parents had been quick to echo the sentiment. Tyler had even gone so far as to spread lies that Judy had gone to bed with half a dozen other men during the time he had been seeing her. Judy had been totally shattered. She felt that she had no other way out except to take her own life. Reid had been the one to find her, lying on the floor of her room, blood flowing from the wrists she had slashed in a frenzy of despair. He had frantically tried to bind up her wounds. It had been no use.

  Grief-stricken, he drove around looking for Tyler. He found him in one of his father’s clubs. Tyler was there, surrounded by his hangers-on, boasting about his sexual prowess. Confronting him, Reid had almost lost control when Tyler pulled out a knife and slashed him, leaving a long, bloodied line along the right half of his torso. Enraged, knocking the knife from Tyler’s hand, Reid would have killed him if the others hadn’t pulled him off Tyler’s battered body.

  Tyler swore revenge. There was no doubt that the Poole family had enough power to have Reid put away for a long time, if not killed while he was behind bars. Reid’s mother had begged her only son to leave town. He joined the army the next day and never came back.

  Yes, he supposed he had Tyler Poole to thank for all this, but the words wouldn’t be coming soon. Reid had no use for the spoiled, indulged offspring of rich parents.

  Shanna peered over her assistant’s shoulder as the older woman sat at her computer. On the screen was a colorful spreadsheet depicting, in bar graph form, statistics it had taken Shanna and her committee three months of research to compile. It was all to go into a booklet Brady wanted to have distributed in order to gain support for a new bill he was proposing to curb taxation. It was a lofty proposition at best, popular with the people, unpopular with legislators and government departments that survived on continually increasing budgets.

  “Looks good, Shirley.” It would be a good addition to the report. “Now I need those graphs finished and on my desk by noon. Otherwise I won’t have time to go over them today.”

  Shirley turned from her computer and looked at Shanna, clearly bewildered. Shanna was amused by the woman’s expression. She knew exactly what Shirley was thinking. Shanna had steadily built up a reputation for being a workaholic. She always had time to look into another source, to revise another report, interview another person. It was sleep she never had time to catch up on. Everything else she managed to juggle, including always finding a way to fit her daughter into the scheme of things, no matter how hectic things became.

  Shirley turned the swivel chair to face her supervisor completely. “You mean you’re not going to burn the midnight oil for a change?”

  Mentally Shanna was already halfway to the printer’s with the pages that were available. “Nope.”

  Shirley splayed a hand over her ample bosom. “Shanna, I’m shocked. What’s the matter, you have to go in for your hundred-thousand-mile tune-up?”

  Shanna took no offense at the teasing words. When she had returned from maternity leave, it was Shirley who had turned down a promotion to offer her services to Shanna. Shirley who mothered her on the very few occasions that she needed someone to listen. The older woman could have easily resented her for coming in and taking over, but she didn’t. Shirley was a loyal friend and Shanna was grateful to her.

  Shanna crossed her arms before her and leaned her hip against the edge of the desk. “Don’t you remember about the party?”

  “Another political fund-raiser?” Shirley guessed, failing to recall what Shanna was referring to.

  “Birthday party,” Shanna corrected. “My daughter’s one year old today.”

  God, it had gone so fast. A whole year. A year of first smiles, first words, and first teeth. And she had been there for almost all of it. Jessica was the only reason Shanna ever slowed down. She made sure that Jessica would never once, even now at this tender age, question whether her driven mother loved her. Shanna swore to herself daily that though the pace she had chosen for herself kept her racing madly through life, Jessica would never feel neglected. Her determination to keep her promise was the main reason Shanna stopped every afternoon at four to go home and have dinner with her baby before coming back to work. Right now Jessica might be too young to appreciate the fact, but Shanna knew. And that was what counted.

  Shanna looked down at Shirley’s soft brown eyes. “So, are you coming?”

  Shirley Sinclaire was fifteen years older than Shanna. She had worked at the office for nine years, content with her position. There were a lot of people who worked for the senator with ambitions to rise eventually to a high position within the political hierarchy. Shirley’s ambition was to do her job well and collect her paycheck. Her husband was a bus driver and she had no desire to attain a loftier position than he held. She was, as Senator Whitney liked to term it, “good people.” It was one of the reasons Shanna enjoyed her company so much.

  Though she had visited Shanna’s apartment on several occasions, Shirley had never socialized with the Brady family beyond the gatherings on election night. She frowned skeptically at Shanna. “Me? I don’t think I have anything suitable to wear—“

  It was a strange comment, coming from Shirley. As far as Shanna was aware, Shirley didn’t really care about making any sort of a fashion statement. “What’s wrong with what you have on?”

  Shirley looked down. She was wearing a simple black skirt with a raspberry-colored silk blouse she’d gotten on sale. “This isn’t exactly what you’d wear to hobnob with socialites.”

  Shanna shrugged. “It is when you’re coming to my place.”

  Shirley looked surprised. “The party’s at your apartment?” She had naturally assumed that since Jessica was the senator’s granddaughter, the celebration would be at the Brady house.

  “Sure.”

  Shanna had politely but firmly scotched her mother’s original plans to hold Jessica’s birthday party at the house. There were to be clowns, balloons, and a pony. And a host of people who belonged to Rheena’s far-reaching circle of acquaintances. Shanna vividly remembered parties like that from her own childhood. She had gotten lost amid a forest of people, all ignoring her except to give her an occasional, fleeting smile before returning to their conversations. She didn’t want more of the same for her daughter. Things were going to be different for Jessica, right from the beginning. Rheena had fussed and fumed and, eventually, agreed reluctantly.

  “Well, if it’s at your place,” Shirley answered, “count me in.”

  Shanna nodded, pleased. “Terrific. It’s at six.” She rose. “Bring Robert.”

  It was going to be a terrific party, she thought happily. She had to remember to stop at the bakery on her way home to pick up Jessica’s cake. Jane had volunteered, but Shanna had turned the nurse down. She enjoyed doing these little things herself. It made her feel as if her life was real. Sometimes she needed that, needed to find reasons for her existence. Her work at the office was part of it, as was Jessica. If there were times in the middle of the night when she woke up, yearning to have someone there next to her, someone who would love her just because she was there, just because she was Shanna, well, no one ever had everything they wanted. And she came pretty close.

  As she turned to hurry on her way she collided with a muscular wall. As she sprang back, mumbling, “I’m sorry,” her eyes grew wide.

  Reid.

  Haggerty saw the strange, dazed expression on Shanna’s face and wondered if she wasn’t feeling well. He was taking the new man and introducing him around the office. Tho
ugh he could easily have delegated the job to an underling, Haggerty enjoyed doing things like this personally. It kept him visible and aware of what was going on. “Shanna, I’d like you to meet—“

  “Reid—-“ she said, her voice low and breathy with surprise.

  “—Kincannon,” Haggerty finished. He looked from the new man to Shanna. “You two know each other?” Reid hadn’t indicated that he knew the senator’s daughter when they had spoken during the interview last week. The fact that he had refrained from name-dropping reinforced Haggerty’s feelings that he had made the right choice in hiring him. He liked his staff unassuming.

  Reid smiled. Yeah, Ma, destiny does exist.

  “In a way,” he told Haggerty, his eyes on Shanna. She had grown thinner since the last time he saw her, he thought. It wasn’t just her body, it was her face. She was almost gaunt. It gave her one hell of a sexy air.

  Instinctively he looked down at her hand, She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring anymore. And the rock she had flashed at him on the beach to ward him off was gone as well. All he saw was a small, delicate hand with neatly pared fingernails and no jewelry whatsoever.

  Destiny, he thought, was looking very good indeed.

  “We’ve just hired Reid on to take Edwards’s place. He came with some pretty strong letters of recommendations,” Haggerty told Shanna. He was getting the feeling that he was inadvertently intruding on something very personal, judging by the look that passed between the two people. “He’s starting out as an aide until he gets himself oriented with the senator’s platform. Reid’s eventually going to write a few earth-moving speeches for your father.”

  Reid’s smile faded slightly, giving way to confusion. He looked questioningly at Haggerty. What was he talking about? “Her father? I thought that I’d be working for Senator Brady.”

  Haggerty looked at Reid. Was it possible that he didn’t know? “You will be. Senator Brady’s Shanna’s father.”