Choices (A Woman's Life)

by Marie Ferrarella

  She was acting like someone on her first flight. “I thought you flew frequently.” It wasn’t a question. He knew she did. Bryan had told him.

  Shanna was aware that he was keeping tabs on her. Shirley had gleefully informed her of the fact when the woman had overheard Reid talking to Bryan. Shirley obviously saw a match here. It was one of the reasons Shanna had been uncomfortable when Reid offered to take Bryan’s place on this trip. That, and the fact that when he looked at her, something unraveled within her, a little more each time.

  Shanna kept her face forward. The Dramamine was taking its time kicking in. “I do.”

  He studied her profile. Her jawline was rigid. “But you’re still afraid.”

  She shrugged. There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”

  “Then why do it?” He still didn’t fully comprehend the reason she worked so hard when she didn’t have to work at all. “There’re other people on the staff who could be doing this in your place. Why put yourself through all this agony each time?”

  Agony. He’d certainly picked the right word. She turned to look at him. She knew she didn’t have to answer, but she wanted to. It seemed important for him to understand. “I like to think I can do it better than the other people. Maybe it’s vain, but I am striving to be the best that I can be, and sitting in this box, thousands of feet above the ground unfortunately is part of that program.”

  “The best that you can be,” Reid repeated, shaking his head with a bemused smile. “You sound like a poster for army recruiters.”

  She laughed. Maybe she did at that, it still didn’t diminish the fact that she was striving to achieve a level of perfection. “And you sound like a cynic.”

  He was trying to blunt those edges these days, but it wasn’t always easy. “You get that way, after the age of ten.”

  There was a note in his voice she wanted to explore, a core of pain she hadn’t heard before. Suddenly, after keeping her distance so carefully, she found herself wanting to know things about this man. She tried to ignore the fact that knowing was always the first step to real intimacy.

  “What happened at to you at that age?” she asked softly.

  “My father died.” It was twenty years in the past. Saying the words still hurt.

  “I’m sorry.” She reached out and placed her hand on top of his, purely in a gesture of comfort. The contact rippled through both of them. There was nothing comfortable about it. Shanna pulled her hand away, momentarily disoriented and confused.

  He’d felt it, too, and it had him slightly unsteady. And curious as all hell. Reid cleared his throat. “Yeah, so am I. He was a great old man.” He reflected on his unconscious choice of words and laughed. “Actually he wasn’t all that old. Thirty-nine. It just seemed old to me at the time.” Reid thought back, remembering, and wished for just a moment of that time back, when he was young and his father was still there. “I just don’t think it was fair.”

  She felt a touch of envy at the faraway look on his face. His expression was sad, yet oddly happy, too. “Good memories?”

  The smile spread until it took over his whole face. “Yeah.”

  She’d guessed right. In a way, it made him wealthier than she was. She had numbers in a bank account, what he had was priceless. “You’re one up on me.”

  “You and your father don’t get along?” It was a natural assumption to make because of the tone she had used. Up to now, Reid was under the impression that she and her father were friends. There seemed to be a genuine bond between them the few times he had seen them together. Was it just for show?

  “No, it’s not that. I really love my father.” Her warmest memory of her childhood was the birthday party her father did make on time. “I just didn’t get much of an opportunity to know the busy senator until the last eighteen months.”

  “Is that why you joined the office? To get to know your father?” What sort of person was Shanna Brady? he wondered not for the first time. What made her tick?

  “No, it was because I discovered that I enjoyed the work. Getting to know my dad was a bonus. I enjoy politics.” She saw that her remark amused him. “It doesn’t have to be a dirty game, you know.” She remembered what she had heard Whitney say a long time ago. “Representatives are supposed to be, and can be, the servants of the people. It’s a pretty damn good system, when it works right.” She smiled as another faraway memory floated to her. “When I was a child, I’d sometimes sit at the top of the stairs, listening to my father and his friends talk about different issues, bills that were up for a vote. What could be done if they could just find a way to bring a stubborn ‘so-and-so’ around.”

  Shanna glanced out the airplane window. The sky was a crystal blue, except for one pure white cloud. It was so close, she felt she could just open the window and touch it. There was a serenity to flying, if you didn’t think about the fact that your life depended on a piece of machinery. And a thousand gears and whatnot. She shuddered slightly and looked away.

  “I liked those times a lot better than having to endure my mother’s parties.” She sighed, remembering the endless boredom, the artificial airs. “All that vacant talk, who owned what, who was going where. Even at that level, it was always a game of one-upmanship. It doesn’t interest me in the slightest, not then, not now.”

  Reid remembered the way Judy had talked about marrying into the Poole family the night she had jilted him. Being invited to dinner parties where women drifted in and out of conversations wearing expensive designer originals had been something Judy had aspired to desperately. How different they were, he thought. Judy had been shallow, easily led astray. There was a strength about Shanna he found very attractive. And very sexy.

  “You know, you’re one unique lady, Shanna Brady.”

  He could have sworn her complexion turned a deeper shade of pink at the simple compliment.

  There was no reason to feel flustered. She wasn’t a child anymore and he was just making conversation. People did that all the time, she told herself.

  “Tell that to my mother sometime. She thinks her only daughter is some sort of a social mutant. I think she was hoping for a crown princess to help her reign over charities and gala social events.” Abruptly Shanna remembered the concern on her mother’s face at the hospital after the accident. “Maybe that’s a little too harsh,” she amended. “I think she is coming around a little. She did come to Jessica’s birthday party even after I refused to have it at the house.”

  “The house?” he echoed.

  “The mausoleum in Georgetown where I spent most of my childhood. It never looked as if people were actually living in it, just passing through. The maids kept it much too clean.”

  He thought of her life in comparison to his. He’d had to work hard for everything he had, but there had always been love, if not enough to eat. He realized now that it made up for a lot of deficiencies. “Not like your place.”

  She grinned. “It doesn’t always look as if a tornado hit it, you know. You’ve only seen it at its worst.”

  Reid spread his hands wide, palms up. “I’m an open sort of guy. I’m willing to reevaluate my opinion, given the opportunity.”

  She couldn’t help being amused at his playful tone. “Are you asking for an invitation?”

  “In the clumsiest way I know.”

  But it worked. She had to admit she liked the soft, unhurried approach, coupled as it was with a very persuasive pair of green eyes. She hesitated only for a second, the memory of another evening holding her back. But this wasn’t some wild madness sweeping her off her feet. This was just friends, sharing a meal. She wasn’t going to let Jordan’s memory ruin the rest of her life, the way it had two years. Besides, there wasn’t anything romantic about what she proposed. People saw each other socially all the time without it meaning anything. “Dinner, Friday?”

  “You cook, too?”

  She wasn’t exactly qualified to undertake a cooking show on public television. “I put things in the oven. After that,
they’re on their own.”

  “You certainly know how to tempt a guy.” The smile on his lips softened as he looked at her, her head framed with the bright sunlight shining in through the small window on her right. Yes, he thought, she certainly knew how to tempt a guy, probably without realizing it. “I’ll be there,” he promised.

  Shanna stifled a shudder that nudged at her spine.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have done that after all.

  She was backing away. He changed subjects. “So, what’s on the agenda for today after we land?”

  Work. A nice, safe topic. An area in which she was secure. “We check in with my father’s office in Chicago, see what’s going on. Then we go to the homeless center. There are a lot of programs in the works that still have to be implemented.”

  He had wondered about the center Brady had helped build. A lot of politicians gave a great deal of lip service to how they felt about the poor. Like the weather, they talked about the subject, but did nothing. Brady seemed to be actively involved in the issue. Reid wanted to know more. “About this homeless center your father’s back—“

  She could see Reid’s questions forming. He probably wanted to know if this was a sham, strictly just for show. She supposed it was a legitimate question.

  “It’s tax-funded, nonprofit.” She thought of the almost constant scrambling for money. There were five on staff that handled only that and they were woefully overworked. “God, is it nonprofit. Dad does what he can to get government funding for it, though that keeps eroding. Mother’s fund-raisers help out as well. Private contributions have been plugging the hole so far.” She realized that this was the first and possibly only project that the Bradys had undertaken freely as a family. Maybe there was hope for them as a unit after all.

  “It’s going pretty well, actually. It’s gone from being a run-down storefront shelter that was barely twelve by twenty, to a two-story building with facilities to house a hundred people, and more important, to educate them.” She was warming to her subject. Of all her father’s projects, this is what interested her the most, helping the homeless stand up for themselves. “Do you know how many homeless people are illiterate? The hope is that if we can teach them the basics, they can go on to help themselves. Education still is a powerful tool. Do you know how many of them don’t know they can vote?”

  Reid looked at her in surprise. He’d been under the same impression. “I thought you couldn’t vote if you didn’t have a permanent address.”

  She thought of Jordan’s snide remark when she had wanted to give the vagrant money. “Why bother? He can’t vote.” Joke’s on you, Jordan. He can.

  She looked at Reid. “A lot of people make the same mistake. But homeless people can vote. They just need to be registered. They need to know they have a say in their own lives.” She could well identify with that. It had taken her twenty-six years to realize. “It’s a beginning.”

  “Why don’t you quit politics and get into charity work completely? The National Alliance to End Homelessness is based in D.C. Why not join them? Or do you want to run for office?”

  Though she was light-years away from the shy young woman she had been when she had first begun to work with Jordan on his campaign, the idea of standing before crowds of people, trying to convince them to vote for her did not appeal to Shanna.

  “Not me. But I do think that government, eventually, can be moved to do something about this homeless issue. You have to make a noise on every level you can to be noticed, really noticed. But in the long run, you’ve made no progress unless things are changed legally. It’s how our country works.”

  He crossed his arms before him as he smiled, bemused. He believed that he was actually in the presence of an idealist. “You really buy into that, don’t you?”

  “The entire apple pie,” she answered. “Don’t you?”

  He thought about it. He had left Jordan because of his own principles, hadn’t he? And the chances of advancing quickly had been great, if he played it Jordan’s way. “Yeah, I guess I do at that.”

  “How about you?” she wanted to know. “Any political aspirations?”

  He shook his head. Running for office was the furthest thing from his mind. “No. I have absolutely no desire to constantly try and get myself reelected. I’d much rather be working behind the scenes. There’s a lot of satisfaction in that.”

  There were many men who chose to stay out of the limelight for one reason or another and exercise control indirectly. Power for them was the main thing. Power was a mistress, an aphrodisiac that few could resist. “Like Richelieu with the king?”

  Writing had always been his main passion. Writing with a purpose. “No, more like Will Rogers on salary. People need to hear language they can understand, statements that say something. Usually it’s one or the other, not both. Not everyone has William Buckley’s vocabulary. That doesn’t mean they should be handed a bunch of platitudes that promise roses and say absolutely nothing about how those roses will be earned.” The inflammatory speeches were like that, words that build on other words, images that fed into images. Beneath them all, upon close examination, was nothing more than air.

  “And you’re the man to write the speeches, make it all clear and good?”

  He grinned. She was teasing him, but he played along. “I’m the man to do it.”

  Shanna grew serious. “Why did you choose to come to work for my father?”

  “Because I like the guys in the white hats. Because he uses his own plane.”

  Her smile was warm and unsuspectingly seductive because of its genuineness. “I see.”

  Chapter 22

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Brady, but there’s no way we can take off in this storm. I’m afraid we’re grounded for the night.”

  Shanna looked away from the large bay window of the Ambassador Hotel. Shanna had made reservations for the three of them here, near the airport, when the storm gave no signs of relenting. Outside, the sky was a dark, oppressive gray. It appeared to be dusk, yet sunset wasn’t due for another two hours. Rain was beating a fast, furious tattoo against the glass, like an angry hand trying to make her retreat from the window.

  She nodded at the pilot’s words, disheartened. There wasn’t anything he could do about the weather. The rain had been threatening to come since they’d landed early this morning in Chicago. She had hoped it would hold off just long enough for them to leave. At two o’clock, her hopes had been squelched.

  It was coming down in endless sheets, rattling the window and howling mournfully. Shanna shivered and wondered how many homeless people hadn’t gotten shelter tonight.

  “Thanks, Bill.” She turned away from the window. She really hated not being with her daughter, but standing here, wishing it would stop, wasn’t going to change anything. “It’s not your fault.” She sighed, running a hand through the blond hair that had curled quickly. Humidity always tangled it, giving her an almost frail, waif-like appearance. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  Reid wondered what she meant as the pilot left them alone in the lobby. It was rather an odd thing to say. Maybe she was planning to burn the midnight oil again once she got back and felt thwarted.

  He leaned against one of the chairs in the lobby, studying her. It had quickly become one of his favorite pastimes. He had memorized every curve of her body, every expression she had. They hadn’t been alone together since the night of Jessica’s birthday party, yet he felt at ease with Shanna. The silence between them was a comfortable silence. He didn’t feel the need to weigh his words with her. There was no performing, no games. Everything was natural. He wondered if she felt the same way.

  “Looks like you’re finally being forced to kick back a little.”

  She smiled vaguely, her thoughts centering on Jessica, not on the conversation at hand. I’m sorry, honey. The storm kept Mommy from you.

  “I have my laptop.”

  They’d been given this evening by a whim of fate and the weather, he thought, and
he intended to make the most of it. He wanted to talk with her, not watch her fingers fly over a keyboard while she unconsciously worked her lower lip. “What if I steal your plug?”

  She looked at him blankly, then realized what he was talking about. “My laptop runs on batteries.”

  She was incorrigible, but they couldn’t kill a guy for trying. “So do you, apparently.”

  She turned toward the window again, fervently wishing for a clear sky. She shivered as she ran her hands up and down her arms. The plum-colored sleeves crinkled slightly beneath her fingers. “It’s not the work I’m concerned about.”

  Having watched Shanna in action and been told about her dedication, he naturally assumed that her main concern was the project she was putting together for her father. He drew a little closer to her. “What, then?”

  She sighed. She was being foolish. Still, she couldn’t help the way she felt. “I don’t like being separated from Jessica at night. She needs me there to tuck her into bed.”

  He wanted to smooth away the furrow in her brow with his fingertips, to touch her soft, inviting skin. “You must have missed some nights.”

  “Not a one,” she answered proudly. It hadn’t been easy, but she had managed. And it had been worth every effort.

  Reid looked at her, awe mingled with disbelief. “Since Jessica was born, you’ve never been away overnight?” It seemed almost impossible to believe, given her breakneck schedule.

  Shanna shook her head. “Never.” She shoved her fisted hands into her tailored skirt. “It’s important for children to feel secure, to know they can depend on someone.” She clenched and unclenched her hands, frustrated. But there was absolutely nothing she could do. “To be able to see the same face above them at night, when everything is dark and scary.”

  Her voice had grown wistful as she spoke. He suddenly wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her, but it wouldn’t be right. “You speak from experience?”