Choices (A Woman's Life)

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I’ll think about the proposition,” she promised, touched.

  Reid waited until after dinner when they were in her living room. She had been in a pensive mood all evening. It had begun in the office. He had hoped she’d volunteer the information on her own. When she didn’t, it bothered him that he had to ask. She still didn’t trust him enough to share her feelings, though she was sharing his bed and he hers on a regular basis. There were still barriers between them, barriers because of who and what she was and who and what she had been.

  He waited until she sat down on the sofa beside him. “Something’s been on your mind all day, what is it?” As if to emphasize his point, he traced a swirl of hair at her temple.

  Shanna frowned, working her lower lip. She should have known he’d realize that something was wrong. He always seemed to know. It was a comforting thought, as long as she didn’t allow herself to get carried away and fall into the tender trap. “Brideen’s retiring.”

  He waited. It wasn’t enough to put her in this mood. “I heard the rumor.”

  She laced her fingers together and took a deep breath. “My father thinks that I stand a good chance of taking his place.” Her words had all come out in a rush, as if it was too fantastic to say slowly. She looked at Reid, expecting to see the same shock she had felt at the suggestion. It wasn’t there. “He seems so keen on it, I don’t know how to let him down.”

  “Simple,” Reid told her. “Don’t.”

  Shanna stared at him. Had he lost his mind, too? “What?”

  He didn’t see her problem. Since the day she had told him how she felt about politics, he had seen this coming. He was amazed that she hadn’t, that she actually needed convincing. “I think you should try for it.”

  “Not you, too,” she groaned.

  “Yes, me, too.” He swept her hair away from her neck and lightly glided his tongue along the sensitive area. She shivered. “Maybe then you’ll stop running,” he murmured against her skin.

  She pulled away. “Running?”

  “Yes, running.” He wasn’t about to match her annoyed tone, even though the way she acted at times did annoy him. She worked too hard, tried too hard. It was, as someone had once commented about her, as if she was trying to validate her existence on this planet. “From demons and shadows. If you win, and you will”— he laid a finger to her lips to stop her protest—“you’ll have your own shadow to cast. You already do, but maybe this’ll prove it to you.” He shrugged, leaning back on the sofa. “The choice is yours.”

  Choice. It had a familiar ring. She smiled fondly. “My grandmother told me that the last time I saw her.”

  Her eyes softened when she spoke about the other woman. This was someone, he thought, who had meant a great deal to Shanna. “She wanted you to run for office?”

  “No.” Shanna laughed. “She talked to me about making choices, the right choices.” She studied his face intently. “You really think I have a chance?”

  All she needed was a push. Well, he could certainly give her that. “Sure. You actually believe in the system, you’re dedicated, and you have me in your corner. What more do you need?”

  He made it sound so incredibly simple. But he had never been through a campaign before. She had. “A miracle.”

  “We make our own miracles, Shanna.” He took her into his arms. “Each and every day, choosing the right path, we make our own miracles.”

  Leaning over, he nibbled on her ear and watched with pleasure as her eyes fluttered shut. They’d been lovers now for three months, ever since that night in the hotel, and he still hadn’t gotten enough of her. He doubted that he ever would.

  Reid slid her onto his lap. “Now, if I could interest you in making a little magic, all my prayers would be answered. At least for the night.”

  She could already feel her pulse beginning to escalate. “Wait,” she said with effort. “I want to talk.” And she knew she couldn’t if he turned her mind into mush.

  “I can talk and nuzzle at the same time.” Watching her eyes, he licked the tip of his finger, then slowly slid it along the outline of her ear. “I’m very talented that way.”

  Her limbs were starting to rebel against the calm she was trying to maintain. “No one’s arguing with your talent, Reid, but I’m serious.”

  “So am I, a serious nuzzler.” As he moved to kiss her again he saw the plea in her eyes. “Okay, first talk, then nuzzle.” He let her slide off his lap. “So, what’s bothering you?”

  The whole idea. It was so frightening. “Will you really be in my corner?”

  The question hurt. When would she ever trust him?

  “You have to ask?”

  She shrugged. She hadn’t meant for it to cause a rift. “It’s just that it would mean leaving my father’s office.” She was thinking of his career, not hers.

  “Not really. I can still continue working for your father and be there for you when you’re giving your own speeches.” Now that he was finally on his way up within the senator’s staff, he didn’t want to let that opportunity slip through his fingers. But he intended to be there for Shanna when she needed him. That was important in a very private way. “It won’t be easy, but it can be done. The senator would probably encourage me with his blessings,” he pointed out. “This was his idea, remember? I can lend you a hand with your speeches when you need it.” He grinned at the thought. It was, after all, his goal. “I think I’d like that.”

  She chewed on a corner of her lip. She knew she wanted him with her on this, that she would feel better knowing he was there. But there were risks for both of them. “Are you sure? What would it do to your career to be associated with a loser—if we lose?”

  She needed a severe dose of confidence. “Who says you’re going to lose?”

  Shanna studied his face, expecting to see a teasing grin. Instead his expression was one of encouragement. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

  “I told you once that I didn’t play games, Shanna. I believe in you, in that big heart of yours that seems to have room for everyone.” Except, at times he thought, for him.

  Lowering his head, he pressed a kiss to her breasts. Even through the clothing, she could still feel the burning effects.

  “You’ll make a terrific congresswoman. And all those homeless people that we registered. Who do you think they’ll vote for?”

  She hadn’t worked so hard to organize the committee to register the homeless for her own personal gain. That was for self-centered people like Jordan. And she didn’t want to run on a platform that made them believe she could do things she couldn’t. “I can’t make their life better single-handedly.”

  “No, but you can try. And you can give them hope.” He began to undress her as he talked. “Nobody can ask for more than that of anyone. You’ll do it?”

  She gave him the same answer she gave her father, though the words hadn’t come out as breathlessly the first time. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good. Now here’s something to do while you’re thinking.” He slipped his hand beneath her skirt as he teased her lips with his mouth.

  Shanna struggled to hang on to her senses. He could wipe them out faster than she would have believed possible. “Reid, Jane might come out.”

  “I paid her off. She’s in her room until the turn of the next century.” He rose, then lifted her up in his arms. “Destination, bedroom. Any more arguments?”

  She laughed as she laced her arms around his neck. “Not a one.”

  But it wasn’t Reid who made up Shanna’s mind for her, or even her father. It was Erikka.

  She was a small, dirty child of about five or six, hanging on to her mother’s torn coat as the woman stood on a busy street corner. In the woman’s dirty hands she held a sign that read “we’re hungry, will work for food”. The woman had that faded, permanently brown, dirty look that people who lived on the street acquired.

  There was still a pinkness to her daughter’s cheeks, but color had long since fled from the
woman’s.

  Shanna was driving by in her sedan when she saw them. They were standing on the opposite side of the street. Glancing to see that there weren’t any cars in the way, Shanna made a U-turn and doubled back.

  When Shanna pulled her car up at the curb, the woman shuffled over to her. She was twenty or perhaps thirty, and her red hair was matted against her scalp. A small tongue licked along lips that were cracked. “Do you have a job for me?”

  The woman’s voice was raspy, as if she was suffering from a deep chest cold. Shanna opened the passenger side. “I have a place for you to go.”

  The woman looked at Shanna suspiciously, obviously distrustful. She pushed her daughter behind her protectively. “I don’t want no charity. Me and Erikka don’t need handouts.” The woman pulled her shoulders back beneath the baggy overcoat that hung about her like a cast-off gray tent. It had never been her size. Charity took away choices. You took what you were given, Shanna thought. “I’m strong. I can work.”

  “We’ll find you something, I promise,” Shanna said softly, looking at the little girl. “Come with me.”

  The woman still hung back, but Erikka, with bright, dark eyes that still hadn’t lost their hope, climbed into the car and smiled shyly at Shanna. The woman had no choice but to follow.

  If she was a congresswoman, perhaps she could help a lot of Erikkas keep their pride and get the simple things they were entitled to.

  She would tell her father, she decided, that she was going to run in the primary. Right after she took Erikka and her mother to a homeless shelter she knew of.

  Chapter 25

  She couldn’t imagine that a body could feel this exhausted and live if she hadn’t gone through labor. When Reid had unlocked the hotel door for her, it was all Shanna could do to put one foot in front of the other until she reached the nearest chair. She collapsed into it, barely having enough energy to kick off her shoes. Her right forearm felt as if it was cramping up and her fingers were painfully stiff from shaking what must have been an ocean of hands. The muscles in her cheeks felt as if they’d frozen in place permanently.

  At least she would die smiling, she thought.

  Reid had flown in last night to be at her side and he had endured today with her. He popped the top of her favorite diet drink she kept stocked in the hotel room and handed it to her. “Here, I think you might like this.”

  It was hard to get her fingers around the can. “Thank you.” She closed her eyes and drank, as if the effort to keep them open was too much for her. She let out a long sigh and then drank again.

  Reid sat on the arm of her chair. “You look wiped out,” he said.

  She handed the can back to him. Her eyelids slipped closed again. “You are an extremely intuitive person.”

  He grinned. “It’s a gift.”

  Whenever he could get away, he’d been at her side these last few months, editing her speeches and holding her hand when she needed it. The primaries were less than five weeks away, and though she appeared to be her party’s front-runner, she took nothing for granted. She continued giving speeches to organizations, visiting shelters for the homeless, the abused, and the forgotten. Both ends of the spectrum. The message was always the same. Raising social consciousness and promoting education were the only keys to end morally embarrassing situations. People had to pitch in to help people. The government should be there to give them a start, but not to fix everything, for a government that controlled everything could someday take everything away.

  It was an odd feeling, he thought as he looked down at her, being in love with a crusader. Well, he admitted to himself, there it was. He was in love with her. He hadn’t planned on this happening, wasn’t completely certain that she could even return his love. But it didn’t alter the way he felt about her. For better or for worse, he was in love with her.

  Right now he was in love with a woman under a great deal of stress, a woman who desperately needed to relax before the next round got under way. There wasn’t much time. “Want me to draw you a hot bath?” Reid offered.

  “No.” She tried to wave her hand at the suggestion and only managed to move her wrist slightly. “I’ll probably slide under the water, not have enough strength in my arms to pull myself out and drown.”

  He placed the can of soda down on the coffee table. “I never noticed, were you always this cheerful?”

  She laughed weakly. How had she gotten herself talked into this madness? “Cheerful is for people who don’t have to visit every single nook and cranny in the sixth district.”

  She rotated her neck, trying to work the kink out. It felt stiff and painful. When she felt his fingers on her back, she almost cried out. And then he began to massage, slowly, gently, working on her shoulders, her neck. She would have purred if she had enough strength. Heaven had come to claim her. Her head dropped back as the tension slowly ebbed away. “Oh, please, don’t stop.”

  Reid laughed, slowly kneading the muscles along her spine. “Funny, that’s what all the beautiful congress-women say.”

  “They’d better not. I’ll scratch their eyes out.”

  “Why, Ms. Brady, I never knew you to be territorial.”

  She sighed as his fingers worked magic. “You haven’t been paying attention, then.”

  Bending, he was about to kiss her when there was a knock on the door. Shanna groaned. “If that’s anyone from the press, tell them I died. Story and photos at eleven.”

  “Not after all the work we’ve put in on your campaign, you don’t.” He kissed the top of her head like a child who needed encouragement before crossing to the door. “Die after the election.”

  All she could manage at the moment was to turn her head in his direction. Where was she going to get the energy to go to the next event? “That’s just what I’m afraid of,” she murmured as Reid opened the door.

  “Afraid?” Doreen Priestly asked, her well-shaped eyebrows raised as she walked in.

  Tall, stately, with short-cropped silver grey hair, Doreen had been Brideen’s campaign manager for his last three successful bids for Congress. She had reluctantly agreed to offer her services to Shanna when she had come out and announced her candidacy. It had begun strictly as a favor to Brideen and Brady. She was going to see what she could do to tailor Shanna’s image for the public, then hand over the reins to someone else.

  But after observing Shanna address several groups, after listening to her speak, Doreen had become a convert. Shanna, she felt, had something new and fresh to offer. Enthusiasm. Genuine enthusiasm. And she definitely wasn’t of the “government owes me a living” persuasion. Doreen respected that. She gladly began to shape the rest of Shanna’s campaign.

  Doreen breezed into the room, stopping to take a sip of the soda on the coffee table. Her ever-present time-management gray binder was clutched against her perfectly flat bosom. She favored gray, all shades of gray, but there was nothing gray or subdued about her approach to things.

  She looked down a long, angular nose that gave her face a sharp, birdlike look and had eluded the surgeon’s scalpel despite her late mother’s pleas.

  “Successful candidates for office aren’t afraid, Shanna,” she chided. “They’re supposed to fearlessly stand up against the odds.” They had done well with the crowds today and Doreen was exceptionally pleased with the latest polls. They gave Shanna a six-percent edge over her closest opponent. Doreen planned to see that it stayed that way.

  Shanna looked down at her bare toes. “Right now I’m not sure if standing up is in my repertoire.”

  Doreen flipped open her eight-by-eleven binder to the page marked Friday and tapped a line in the middle of it.

  “You have an hour before your speech at the Wainwright Women’s Club. Get it into your repertoire.”

  Shanna sat up, struggling to be alert. “Women’s club? Weren’t we supposed to stop at the homeless shelter next?”

  Doreen shook her head, wide gold hoop earrings swinging back and forth in rhythm. She checked th
e schedule again before shutting the gray padded book. “We were, but this fell into our lap. I thought I told Claire to call you about it.” She shrugged, annoyed at her assistant, but not really worried. “You’re good on your feet. Use the speech you used for the Elks Club and change it where it needs it.”

  “What about the shelter?” Shanna persisted. She had made all the arrangements for the official visit herself.

  “Only time for one, sugar. Even you can’t be in two places at once. You’ve got a press conference right after that.”

  It would be a lot easier standing before a roomful of smiling women than facing the heartbreak, the hopelessness that always resided within homeless shelters. But she hadn’t started on this road to take the easy way out. She made her decision. It wasn’t even close. “Okay, reschedule the women’s club.”

  Reid would have placed money that she was going to say that. The woman had a one-track mind. Too bad, he thought, that he couldn’t divert the track in his direction a little more often. But that, he had come to accept, was what made her Shanna. And what made him love her. It was the way she cared, her steadfast loyalty and principles, even if they weren’t popular. He admired the fact that she was so independent, yet worried that perhaps that would be the very thing that would come between them eventually. Only time would tell.

  “No can do.” There was a note of finality in Doreen’s voice. She knew what worked for candidates and where the important votes were to be found. The president of the Wainwright Women’s Club was an influential woman in the area. A large fish in a small pond, Doreen thought with a smile. If she backed Shanna, it would have a rippling effect, like a stone cast in the water, creating rings that reach farther and farther out. People like that couldn’t be ignored.

  Reid glanced at Shanna, waiting. He knew what was coming next. “All right,” Shanna agreed, “move the press conference.”