Choices (A Woman's Life)

by Marie Ferrarella

  He deserved that, he reasoned. That and more. He turned to look at her. She looked a little frazzled. And incredibly sexy. The dress, though simple, flattered every curve and the color brought out her eyes. He thought of how good she had looked on the beach that day almost eighteen months ago now. He found himself wondering what she looked like without that dress on. A slight smile creased his face. Thank God humans weren’t telepathic or he’d be in a lot more trouble than he was already.

  The way he was appraising her didn’t go unnoticed. It made her feel nervous, yet in a way she liked it. Now he was smiling. No, it looked as if he was trying to stifle a grin.

  “Do you find something amusing?”

  “No, not amusing.” He looked down at his offerings, suddenly remembering the reason for his visit. “I came to give you these.”

  “These” were two boxes. One was wrapped very attractively with a huge multicolored bow and a tiny teddy bear attached to it. The other was far less fancy. His handiwork, no doubt, she thought. The slightly wrinkled shiny green paper was taped around what appeared to be, judging from the shape, a shoe box. He held them both out, waiting for Shanna to take them. She could have sworn he felt awkward about it.

  Shoe on the other foot, she thought. Good.

  Shanna raised her eyes to his face, perplexed. She didn’t want gifts. She wanted an apology.

  “The pretty one’s for Jessica,” he explained. “The other one’s for you. I wrapped that one,” he added needlessly.

  She stared down at the packages. Did he think he could buy off rude behavior with gifts? Yet not to accept them would be just as rude. “I guess that means I should open it.”

  “Actually I wish you would. It’s rather important for a couple of reasons.”

  Doubly confused, Shanna sat down on the sofa and gestured Reid toward a chair opposite the coffee table. “Sit down if you like.”

  Instead of the chair, he sat down beside her on the sofa, his eyes watching her face as she neatly, slowly removed the wrapping from the box.

  “You must have been a lot of fun at Christmas,” he murmured, impatient for her to be done.

  She raised her eyes, but not her head. He felt a dryness in his mouth. “I like to savor things.”

  “Nice to know,” he said softly, almost to himself. Shanna lowered her eyes again, vaguely unsettled by his comment.

  Laying the neatly removed paper aside, she stared down at the gift. It was a shoe box. A man’s shoe box.

  Was this a joke? She lilted the lid. There was a single black loafer inside. It was worn, but freshly polished.

  Setting the box aside on the coffee table, Shanna held the shoe aloft and looked expectantly at Reid. He didn’t look weird, but looks were deceiving. Jordan had looked like an angel and he was clever as the devil and twice as heartless. “What’s this?”

  “This is the shoe that fell off my foot when I had it surgically removed from my mouth this afternoon.”

  She laughed and shook her head as she handed the shoe back to him. She nodded at it. “Is that your way of apologizing?”

  He looked chagrined. “That’s my way of saying I’d like to start over.”

  She forgave him. Temporarily. It was in return for the compassion he had once shown her. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Oh.” He supposed he deserved that, too.

  She smiled. It appeared that for just one moment she held the upper hand, yet she felt shy. Nothing more than a paper tiger, she mused. Perhaps she hadn’t changed as much as she had thought. Dismayed, she took a deep breath. No more shy, shrinking violet, not for her. Not ever.

  “We already have a history, Reid, and I don’t particularly want to erase that.” She saw the relieved look in his eyes and it made her smile widen. “What I do want is an explanation.”

  He owed that to her. It didn’t make the telling any easier. “For this morning,”

  She nodded. “Good guess. What made you change direction, midstream? You looked like you hated me.”

  “Not you, exactly.” It was hard looking into her eyes and remembering the feelings he had had this morning. “What you stood for.”

  “Which is?” she asked quietly. Even though she suspected she might not like what she was about to hear, it had to be said in order to be cleared away.

  Reid avoided her eyes and looked down at the shoe he was holding in his hand. All at once he felt extremely foolish. He wanted to get up and leave. No, he needed to make amends with this woman. He had hurt her and she hadn’t deserved it.

  He looked around at the living room, noting the different scraps of wrapping paper and boxes that hadn’t been cleared away. As he did so he listed Tyler’s offenses out loud. “Privileged class, having everything handed to you. Never having to work for anything. Taking unfair advantage of situations.” He thought of Judy. “Of people.”

  Nothing new. She’d heard all that before, loudly, unjustly whispered behind her back. “I’ve been fighting against that sort of stereotyping all my life. That and shadows.” Shanna paused, replacing the lid on the empty box. “Who did you know like that?” He spoke with too much feeling for this to be just a random opinion he harbored. He’d been hurt, somehow, made to bleed.

  Though he thought he was able to do it, Reid found that he didn’t want to talk about it. He shrugged. “Someone in my past.” He looked away. “It was a long time ago.”

  “A woman?”

  “A man.” Who took away my woman.

  She suspected he wasn’t about to tell her anything further and perhaps she didn’t want to know. She was too tired for long stories, too tired to look into someone else’s bedeviled life. She was carrying too much emotional luggage from her own.

  She changed the subject. “I’ve got some birthday cake left over in the kitchen. Would you like some?”

  Nervously she rose and started for the kitchen before Reid gave his answer.

  Reid got to his feet. He was grateful for the respite. If she had pushed, he wasn’t certain what he would have said. The wound was still too private to share, still too raw to expose. He hadn’t realized that until this moment. “That’d be nice, but I’d like to ask a favor, first.”

  She stopped, waiting. She couldn’t help the suspicion that sprang up within her. Jordan had done that to her, she thought. He had taken away her innocence, her trust. And inadvertently made her find her backbone. But he had stripped her of an important part of her soul. She could forgive him more for his infidelity than for that.

  “I’d like to see Jessica.”

  Then why didn’t you come to the party? Shanna found she couldn’t make the accusation. Instead she motioned for Reid to follow her. “You’ll have to be quiet. She’s asleep.”

  He crept softly behind her, watching the way her body moved seductively without her even knowing it. “It’s eleven-thirty at night, what else would she be?”

  Shanna looked over her shoulder. “You don’t know much about children, do you?”

  “Just how to deliver them.”

  She turned at the bedroom door right next to hers. “You said you only knew how to deliver puppies.” She recalled what he had told her just before Jessica had fought her way into the world.

  He grinned. “You expanded my repertoire.”

  Shanna cracked the door open slightly, then tiptoed in. A small night-light in the shape of a smiling fairy cast a cozy, warm glow within the room. Jessica was lying in her crib, fast asleep and madly working her pacifier.

  Reid pointed it out to Shanna--energy temporarily on hold. He bet Jessica was more than a handful awake. “She’s like you.”

  “No,” Shanna whispered, love shining in her eyes as she looked down at her daughter. “Not like me. She’s beautiful.”

  Reid wondered if Shanna ever took a real look in the mirror.

  Shanna led the way into the kitchen. She cut a large piece of cake for Reid, placing it on one of the few remaining clean plates she had, then went back to stacking the dishes.

  R
eid took a forkful of the fudge marble cake as he watched her work. He wondered if she was doing it on purpose, to make him feel even worse for his remark. Did she really work this hard? He remembered what Bryan had told him. “Don’t you have help?”

  She pushed a fistful of forks together on the counter. “I have a nurse for the baby.”

  He shook his head, indicating the dishes and surrounding bedlam in the blue-and-white room. “I mean a housekeeper or something.”

  His words echoed her mother’s lament. “I like doing for myself.” She looked for room on the counter to make another stack. Forks, glasses, and plates littered the area like toy soldiers in the aftermath of an imaginary battle. There was no space to be had. She turned her attention to the dishwasher rack and placed the plates there. “Too many people tend to get in the way.”

  She certainly didn’t think like any of the wealthy people he had ever known. He pushed the subject a little further to see how she would respond. “There doesn’t seem to be much point in having all that money and not enjoying it properly.” Finished, he placed his plate on the nearest stack.

  She wondered if he had a hang-up about wealth or if this was all just a ruse to throw her off her guard. It would have been a lot simpler being born to some average, middle-class couple who enjoyed summer barbecues and went to baseball games instead of “gala events of the season” and political rallies.

  “It’s my parents’ money, not mine. I want to earn my own way.”

  He looked around pointedly. “Seems like a very nice apartment for someone on an aide’s salary,” he said innocently.

  “Chief aide,” she corrected. “And the co-op was bought with my inheritance from my grandmother.” She threw her towel on top of the counter and looked at him. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  He had gone too far again in testing her. He’d really have to watch that if he didn’t want to set her off. “No, I have a problem with someone named Tyler Poole. And myself,” he admitted.

  The way he said it had her softening. Maybe she wasn’t too tired for a long story. “Want to tell me about it?”

  Yes, but he couldn’t. “Someday, when we know each other better.”

  “We know each other now.”

  And she had no intention of knowing him, or anyone else for that matter, more intimately than she did right now at this moment. She had her work and her daughter and enough responsibilities to fill a thirty-hour day. She didn’t want any more complications than she had. And certainly not the complications she suddenly saw in Reid’s eyes.

  Unable to resist any longer, Reid reached and touched her hair. “There’re a lot of blanks to be filled in.”

  She moved aside. “I’ll have an office bio printed up for you.”

  Now it was her turn to back off and grow cold, he thought. But he wasn’t easily put off, though he did know the wisdom of an occasional retreat. He nodded at the large white box on the table. “Good cake.”

  She smiled, relaxing. “Want more?”

  He shook his head. What he wanted wasn’t on the menu. And at the moment, he had a feeling, wasn’t allowed. “Need help with that?” He nodded at the dishes.

  “No, I’ll leave it all for the morning. I’m suddenly very tired. Besides, the noise might wake up Jane. Jessica’s nurse,” she clarified when Reid raised a quizzical brow.

  It was late. They both needed their sleep. “I’d better be going, then.”

  Shanna followed him to the living room. “Thanks for Jessica’s present. She’ll love opening it in the morning. Unlike me, she rips into things.”

  Reid wondered if she was that cautious about life as well. She gave every indication that she was, except that she had been married to Calhoun.

  Maybe that was the reason for her caution.

  Shanna picked up Reid’s loafer from the coffee table. “Oh, don’t forget your shoe.” She looked it over again. “Or should I have it bronzed?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.” He opened the box and Shanna placed the shoe inside. “It would make it kind of hard to walk in.” He glanced down at the loafers on his feet. “I’ve only got the two pairs.”

  Obviously not a clotheshorse, she thought, remembering Jordan’s obsession with buying expensive clothing and then treating it like thrift-shop specials.

  Reid turned at the door. “Friends?”

  “Why not?” Shanna placed her hand into his. When he enveloped it, a strange feeling she couldn’t describe briefly swept over her. She only knew it frightened her. She tried to keep the tension at bay. “No one’s ever given me a single shoe before.”

  “At your age, I find that hard to believe.”

  The laughter that punctuated the absurdity of the remark died away abruptly as he looked at her. Old habits were hard to break, as were old prejudices, but he should have given her a chance before casting her in the mold. The fault was all his.

  “I’m sorry, Shanna, really sorry for the way I acted. It’s just that you stirred up a lot of old memories, none of which had anything to do with you.”

  “I understand.”

  He tucked the shoe box under his arm, not really wanting to leave. He wanted to stay and talk. To get to really know her. But she was already stepping behind the door. He wondered if he had ruined his chances, being hotheaded. “Good night, Shanna.”

  “Good night.”

  She closed the door, locking him away from view, and then leaned against it. There was absolutely no reason in the world, she told herself sternly, for her heart to be doing double time.

  But it was.

  Chapter 21

  Reid strapped himself into the seat next to hers, still somewhat surprised to find himself here. They were on their way to Illinois to do some legislative research. He’d only been in the senator’s office a little more than a week. A week in which he had tried to absorb everything that was going on around him. A week in which he was always aware of Shanna’s presence the moment she stepped into the room.

  Uncustomarily unsure of himself, he had been attempting to work up enough courage to find an excuse to be alone with her. And then fate had taken over.

  Bryan, who normally went as her assistant, had come down with a stomach ailment at the last minute, leaving an opening. Reid had happily volunteered to fill it. Shanna, at first, had hesitated, as if something was warning her not to accept. There was something different about Reid that set him apart from the other men she worked with, the other men who populated her life in various capacities. She had been aware of it from the beginning. But work came first and she had no right to let her personal insecurities get in the way. She had agreed to his taking Bryan’s place.

  The plane’s engines began to rumble and so did Shanna’s stomach. From anticipation, not hunger. A haze dropped its shroud about her, encasing her. It was the same one that always overtook her at takeoff. And landings. And sometimes entire flights. Shanna gripped both armrests as the small aircraft began taxiing down one of Washington National Airport’s runways. She knew that statistically, she was supposedly safer in an airplane, even a small one like this, than on the ground, in a car. It did nothing to hearten her. She absolutely hated flying, but taking a train to Chicago would require entirely too much time. And time was the only thing she couldn’t afford.

  It’s going to be fine, just fine. You’ve done this almost a hundred times now. Nothing’s happened yet, right?

  But it only takes once.

  “How much do these research trips you go on cost the taxpaying public?” Reid asked absently.

  She forced herself to turn her head slightly and look at Reid. Anything to take her mind off the takeoff. Bryan had always tried to distract her with card tricks that were miserably poor. She usually laughed so hard at his ineptness that she forgot to worry about the flight.

  She wished Bryan was here now.

  Shanna tried to focus on Reid’s question. Was he trying to bait her, or was she reading more into the question than was there? In the last week she
had purposely avoided being around him. There was a strong physical pull that she was trying to ignore. It made her keep her distance from him. One didn’t tempt the gods.

  “You sound more like an investigative reporter than a senatorial aide.”

  He supposed it was rather a crass question, but he was curious about Brady. Was the senator as altruistic as he sometimes seemed, or just a very good politician? Who better to shed light on the subject than his daughter? “Just wondering.”

  Reid’s tone was inoffensive, so she took no offense. “Put your mind at rest. ‘Citizen’ Brady pays for the flight, not the public via a whim on ‘Senator’ Brady’s part. This is his private plane, his private pilot.” They were leveling off a little. She wished her stomach was. It was insisting on scrambling the light breakfast she’d consumed hours ago. “There are some advantages to being a millionaire in office.”

  He knew of a lot of wealthy men who were tightwads and relished saving even a small sum of money. Many of them, Reid was slowly becoming aware, held office. “Why does he do it?”

  She would have thought it was self-evident. “To keep fingers from being pointed at him snidely, the way you were just doing.” Reid shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat at her remark, but strictly for her benefit. “He doesn’t want anything to get in the way of the good that’s coming out of these projects he’s backing. No dark shadows to obscure the light.”

  The plane dipped slightly before regaining altitude. Shanna’s eyes widened as she swallowed a gasp. She didn’t want Reid to hear her cry out. If she was going to die, there was nothing to be gained by having him think of her as a frightened fool.

  Damn, why was she being such a baby about this?

  She’d turned two shades paler. He glanced down at her hands. They held on to the armrests like claws belonging to a desperate animal about to lose its hold on a piece of driftwood and slip into the sea forever. “Do you know that your knuckles are turning white?”

  The seat-belt sign had gone out and she sighed. Bill had gotten them airborne again. Here was hoping that he kept the trick up. She eased her hands off the armrests and into her lap. “They tend to do that on flights.”