Oh, Wes, what did you do?
There were a thousand things she wanted to say and do, like ask him about his sister and brush that hair off his forehead, or cup that dimple in the palm of her hand the way she had that night.
And all of those things would tie this moment, this place, the two of them, back to that hotel room and maybe erase some of the anger on his face. This distrust that radiated from him.
She imagined a smile from her might set them down in this conversation with a kinder, gentler hand.
But there was nothing kind and gentle about Harrison at the moment. He looked like retribution dressed in a thousand-dollar suit.
And Ryan had been pushed into plenty of corners, so she knew when to come out swinging.
“Harry,” she said, and his lip lifted, not quite a smile. No. It was far too mean to be a smile. “How did you get in?”
“Your landlord is very bribable.”
“Well, that’s troubling.”
“You’re lucky it’s just me in here.”
Considering the photographer standing outside her door, that was shockingly true.
“Did you give him your real name or your alias?”
“I gave him a hundred dollars and he didn’t ask any questions.”
“And I should have asked you a few more.” That came out heavier than she’d intended. Hurt. Angry. Her swing had lost its power and she stepped over to the kitchen to set the milk on the counter.
He was watching her; she could feel the icy-hot touch of his blue eyes against her bare shoulder, the long revealed length of her legs, and she wished she had on more clothes. A snowsuit, maybe. Or one of those burka things.
Because she felt utterly naked in her cut-off jeans and thin red halter top, her hair piled on her head in a messy knot.
A bra would have been nice.
“That night,” he asked, “did you know who I was?”
“No, Harry. I didn’t.” The plastic cap came off the milk jug with a loud snap.
“I don’t know if I believe you.”
“I don’t know that I care.” She took one of her red teacups and filled it with chocolate milk, not offering him any. Because that would be ridiculous, offering chocolate milk in a chipped teacup to future congressman Harrison Montgomery.
And because he’s had enough, she thought. More than enough of me.
“This is quite an apartment.” His tone was one shade away from a sneer.
Oh, could you be any more predictable? she thought.
“You like it? My uncle lived in his car in front of our house for a year. He had a microwave under his front seat. A foldout bed in the back. I learned everything about space-saving from him.”
Her words were met with crackling hostile silence, so she turned and saw Harrison looking over her bookshelves.
The problem with living a stripped-down existence was that the things she did keep around, that did survive the form-and-function test—they were precious. Tiny windows into her soul, and she wanted to grab all the psychology textbooks she’d gotten at the used bookstore and her mother’s Lucite jewelry and stuff them out of sight.
“You have some interesting reading material for a bartender. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Social Psychology and Human Nature?”
“Came with the apartment,” she lied.
The look he sent her was scrutinizing and uncomfortable.
“Your sister,” she said, and he stiffened, and she recognized the protective-older-brother stance. She’d seen it a million times before. “You did help her. In the end.”
“I did.”
“I’m glad.” She lifted the cup to take a sip, but the smell made the tension in her stomach worse. The last thing she needed was to throw up in front of him. She lowered the cup but held onto it, so she had something to do with her hands. “When you said she was in trouble you weren’t kidding. But I suppose the Montgomery family does things on a larger scale than average humans.”
Silent, he just stared at her, his eyebrow arched, his electric-blue eyes soulless and dead.
Ugh. Enough.
“Why are you here, Harrison Montgomery?”
“Your brother came to see me.” He stepped closer. The apartment—already small—was claustrophobic now. “He says you’re pregnant.”
She lifted her chin against his icy gaze. Her heart hammering at her rib cage. “So I am.”
“Your brother seems to think it’s mine.”
“It is.”
The muscles in his jaw flexed as if he were making gravel out of his teeth. That night they’d shared, the way he’d grabbed her hand like a lifeline, the way his cheek had felt against her palm, the way he’d kissed her like she was property he needed to know every inch of—it was gone. The sweetness. The kindness. The mutual respect.
That small slip into infatuation.
It was all gone.
All that was left was hostility and a baby.
Worst one-night stand. Ever.
“I don’t care if you don’t believe me,” she said, setting down the cup with great care because she felt as if she were shaking apart. “I don’t want a single thing from you. Not money. Not anything.”
“That’s certainly independent of you, Ryan. But it’s too late for that. The press won’t care. They will form their own opinions. And all they need for confirmation is to talk to the other girl behind the bar that night. Or perhaps the manager. A patron. Anyone who saw us.”
“All they saw was us talking.”
“It doesn’t matter. Your brother stormed into my parents’ home while my family was conducting an interview, flashed his badge around—”
“Badge? What badge?”
He blinked. “Homeland Security.”
She laughed. Her brother ran in secret circles, but not that secret. “My brother is a computer hacker, Harrison. The badge was undoubtedly fake.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. He’s fooled smarter men than you. When he was in high school—”
“Stop, Ryan. Stop with the charming tales of poverty and petty crime. We have a real problem here.”
“Fine,” she snapped. She loved her tales of poverty and petty crime. It was all she had left of her family. “I didn’t know who you were. I did not set out to get pregnant.”
“The condom was yours.”
Lindsey’s, actually; not that it mattered, but it meant she didn’t know how old it was, or if it had been compromised in some way. All things she didn’t care about that night.
“You think I sabotaged it?”
“I think desperate women have done worse.”
“I’m far from desperate, Harrison.”
He glanced around her apartment, all her meager possessions on display.
“What a snob you are,” she laughed. If he thought she was desperate, he had no clue what desperation really was. Living in a car with a broken microwave under the front seat wasn’t even the most desperate thing she’d seen. “Look, let’s just be done with the slut-shaming portion of the evening. I’m not interested in anything you have to give me. I will not talk to the press. I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone! So you can take your accusations and your curled lip and get lost.”
For emphasis she opened the door to the hallway, but Harrison stepped forward and shut the door. He kept his hand braced on the door and leaned over her, close enough that she felt his breath against her exposed chest. Close enough that she could feel the heat from his body.
Memories, unwanted and uncomfortable, settled over her, sunk into her.
She might not like this man, but for one night she had really liked his body.
“I credited you with a great deal of insight that night at the hotel,” he said with withering disdain. “I am shocked to learn how wrong I was.”
Breathlessly stung, she ducked away from him, but there was no room to run in this apartment.
“Whether the badge was real, whether or not you set out to tra
p me, none of it matters. If we don’t address this situation now, it will only get worse. Tomorrow there will be five men with cameras out there.”
“I think you’re exaggerating.”
“I’m a Montgomery, Ryan. My sister has been the top of every news update for weeks. My father is destroying the state he’s the governor of and I’m running for Congress. We are the goddamn news. And if the story breaks now that I had sex with a bartender and got her pregnant? Your life—to say nothing of mine—will be hell. But I have the resources, the legal help and money, to handle it. What do you have?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“That bravery is very endearing. But you have a sister in high school, another one who works as an ER nurse. Do you really want to do this to them?”
“How do you know about them?” she breathed, torn open and vulnerable.
“A preliminary investigation into your life. Right now there are dozens of journalists doing the exact same thing.”
“I’m going to kill my brother.” God, she could just shake Wes and his overblown sense of justice.
“A sentiment I share, but that won’t help us survive this kind of sex scandal.”
“Oh my God.” She fell back against the counter, the reality of what was happening to them crashing down hard around her. “I’m a part of a sex scandal.”
“I see you are starting to get the picture.”
“And you’re running for Congress.”
“I am.”
“You’re falling behind in the polls.”
“Delighted to see you’re doing your homework.”
His sarcasm was elegant. One of those fencing swords against her raw fists. She didn’t stand a chance, and so she gave up the fight.
“All right … how do we get out of this?”
“Did you meet Wallace downstairs?” he asked.
“Yes. He doesn’t like me.”
“No. He doesn’t.” Harrison laughed. “In fact, he says I should simply ignore the rumors. Ignore you. Ignore your child and just bow out of the race, let Glendale take the seat, and lie low for a few years.”
She jumped at this solution because it required nothing of her. “Sounds reasonable.”
“But I don’t want to bow out of this election. I would like to win it and get to work.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
“But you are. If I ignore this story, it will eat my career alive. For the rest of my life I’ll be the Montgomery who had the sex scandal.”
“What do you want me to do about that?”
“Marry me.”
Chapter 9
She laughed. She laughed so hard she had to brace her hand against the counter, accidentally knocking her pretty red teacup into the sink, where it shattered. But even that didn’t stop her from laughing.
“I’m not kidding.”
“And that makes it even more funny. Listen, Harrison, you broke into my apartment. Called me stupid. All but accused me of being a gold-digging whore. I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.”
He nodded as if he accepted that. “You would not be my first choice either. It would be more of a proposition, really. Business.”
“You’re making it sound worse.”
“You’ve been married once before,” he said. “A union you barely survived, if the hospital records are to be believed.”
Her ribs caved in on her heart, and for a moment she could not breathe through the shock of having that thrown in her face.
“Those records are confidential,” she whispered, wishing she sounded stronger. Tougher.
“To everyone else, yes.”
But not to me. That was what he was implying. He was the kind of special and powerful and rich that could reach into her life and shake out every skeleton.
She blanched, getting light-headed.
He reached out to help her and she smacked his hands away. And it felt good, so good that she looked him in the eye and smacked his cheek hard enough that his head snapped sideways.
Her heartbeat pounded in the silence that followed.
“I deserved that,” he murmured.
“Damn right you did.”
“But it’s the only one you’ll get.”
Underneath his polish lurked something wild. And she remembered in painful clarity how she’d felt both menaced and safe that night in his hotel room. How exciting that had been. But there was nothing safe about him now. Nothing at all. He was all menace.
Harrison took a deep breath and when he smiled at her, she saw a glimmer of Harry. Slightly abashed. Fully human. Reachable. Touchable. More safety than menace.
A lie. She understood that now. It was a persona he could turn on and off at will. A trick, one that no doubt was highly effective with the voters. It had been highly effective with her.
“Let me … let me start again,” he murmured, leading her toward the couch. She shrugged away from his touch but sat all the same, because she was feeling weak and awful and the soft edge of her red chenille blanket was a small anchor in her reality.
He turned toward the sink, got down another of her red teacups, and poured her some more chocolate milk. After handing it to her, he sat on her little square storage ottoman that was full of her running gear. The fan between them blew in the scent of hot asphalt and grilled meat.
She moaned, low in her throat, turning away from him and the smell and the hot air.
“I haven’t even asked how you’re feeling,” he whispered, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.
She put her hand over her flat stomach as if to protect the baby from this man’s duplicity. This Ken Doll with all that hidden grief, his kindness and coldness. She’d come to terms with this baby, had started to find joy in this little life, started to build fantasies about their future. And he was going to pull all that apart. Change it all.
It was time to get this guy back out of her life.
“The baby is not yours. This whole thing is moot. You can go.”
She wanted to press the cool cup to her forehead, but instead she just held it in her hands, meeting his warm gaze with her own hate-filled one.
“It doesn’t matter, Ryan. It’s only a matter of time before the press finds out you’re pregnant, and you are already linked to me.” She didn’t say anything, staring instead over his shoulder at the copy of Dulcan’s Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry she’d been so excited to find on a half-price rack at The Strand. “It doesn’t matter whose baby it is.”
She sniffed and took a sip of milk. “The baby is mine.”
“What I am suggesting is not a marriage in the typical sense. I am suggesting a proposal. A business arrangement.”
“If it includes sucking your dick—”
His head jerked back, his cheeks red. Oh, Harry was embarrassed. She was small enough to be pleased with that.
“It doesn’t. That … that night will not happen again. It’s not a part of the agreement.”
“I’m not interested in your agreement.” She stood, but he grabbed her wrist. The warmth of his palm sent something sizzling up her nerves. Something—when he was looking at her like that—that made no sense. She shook off his touch.
“Let me explain, Ryan. And then I’ll leave and give you a chance to think about it.”
She sat back down, because it was the quickest way to get rid of him.
“We will get married as soon as possible. If I win the election, we’ll stay married. If after two years you no longer want to be married—”
“What about you? Are you saying you might want to be married after two years?”
“The best thing for my career is if we get married and stay married.”
“Sounds happy.”
“I’m not looking for happy. I’m looking for a way to keep doing the work I want to do. But after two years if you want out, we will quietly get divorced after the next election. After which I will buy you a house, anywhere you want. And we will go o
ur separate ways.”
“And cut all ties? What about the baby?”
“What about it?”
She gaped. “What about it? You will have spent two years pretending to be a father and then you just … vanish?”
“I will also send you monthly alimony and child support checks. The sum of which you can dictate. Within reason. I suppose there might be times I will need to see the child.”
Need to see the child. Oh my God, is this really happening?
“You are a cold man, Harrison Montgomery.”
“I’m a practical one. Embroiled in a situation that requires me to be as clear as possible. Furthermore, as my wife you will agree to help me campaign; appear in public with me as my doting and totally supportive partner. If at any point word of our agreement is leaked to the press, you and the child will get no money from me.”
“What if you don’t win?”
“I’m not entertaining that option yet.”
“Well, I’m not entertaining any of this yet.”
Harrison sat back. “I understand you have your pride. I … admire that about you, Ryan. And despite my awful comment earlier, I know you’re smart.” He glanced around her tiny apartment, including the psychology books on the shelf, before looking back at her. “There must be something you want. Something I can give you to make this rather indecent proposal of interest to you.”
She was silent. Overwhelmed. Exhausted and angry. Sad and ashamed.
He took her cell phone from the edge of the bookshelf behind him.
“I’m putting in my cell phone number,” he said. “This is my direct line. You have forty-eight hours to give me an answer.”
“Or what?”
“Or I am forced to make a statement about you. I would like to make the statement that we’ve been secretly falling in love and have gotten married in a small private ceremony at the Georgia Governor’s Mansion.”
“And if I don’t agree to your proposal?”
“Then you are a former bartender at The Cobalt Hotel who, with the help of your brother, a dubious DHS agent, is trying to blackmail me.”
“That will ruin his career.”
“Undoubtedly. It’s not like I want any of this, Ryan. He has forced both of our hands.”
Indecent Proposal (Boys of Bishop) Page 8