“I was saying,” he said, drawing her down the hall, “that I hadn’t realized the potential of this mirror until earlier this evening.” Standing behind her, he closed his fingers on the zipper tab of her dress and slowly pulled it down. The heavy fabric fell away under its own weight, revealing her smooth, creamy shoulders and arms, the tiny lavender ribbons supporting the silky slip she wore underneath. Adam let the sparkling material puddle at their feet. “You could have worn just this tonight,” he suggested, running his hand over the swell of her breast, the plane of her belly, the curve of her hip.
She let her head drop back against his shoulder. “I would have been cold.”
“Those of us men who saw you would’ve been very, very warm.” He laughed as he dragged his mouth along the column of her throat. “On second thought, I’m glad I’m the only one who knows how beautiful you are.”
“Adam…” She tried to face him.
“N-not yet.” He looked into the mirror as he slipped his fingertips under those lavender ribbons and pulled them over the curve of her shoulders. The silk whispered down her body, leaving her wearing the soft light of the hallway and very little else. “S-so b-beautiful.” He retraced the path of his hands, shaking with the need to possess.
Phoebe said his name again, and whirled in his arms before he could stop her. “Let’s be f-fair about this,” she whispered, and reached for his tie. Adam watched the mirror as she undressed him, aroused by the arch of her spine, the strength in her arms and legs, the contrast of his darkness and her light.
Finally, they stood flesh against flesh, and sight became less revealing than sound, less meaningful than scent, less imperative than touch. Passion sent them to his bed, a place where gravity had no real power, a refuge where the physical and the spiritual beings joined as one.
Much later, as they lay together on the verge of sleep, Adam remembered that moment in the garden. “Phoebe?”
“Mmm?”
“You didn’t tell me what you were thinking about when I found you.”
Again, she hesitated. Again, he felt her searching for the way to say something important.
“Don’t w-worry,” she murmured, her voice drowsy. “It’ll keep till later.”
He tried to take her at her word. But he couldn’t shake a sense of impending disaster. Whatever might happen in the next two weeks, Adam fell asleep with the overwhelming impression that tonight he’d fought the most important battle of his life.
And lost.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DURING ITS LAST WEEK, Adam’s campaign reminded Phoebe of a runaway train—horn blaring, brakes screeching, passengers screaming, and a prevailing expectation of imminent doom. Not that Adam seemed destined to lose the election—in fact, the polls showed him pulling ahead slightly, with a good chance of winning.
For Phoebe, though, time was running out. Every day closer to the election was one day less in her time with Adam. She wanted to hoard the minutes, treasure the hours, cherish his voice and his body and his mind, giving herself a wealth of memories to draw on for solace in the lonely days to come.
These memories, though, would mostly recall the hours they spent together shaking hands in parking lots during high school football games and Saturday morning grocery shopping. On Halloween, they walked the streets of downtown, talking with parents about school issues while the kids trick-or-treated at the different shops. Their time alone occurred in the truck, driving from one event to the next, or late at night when they made love if they could stay awake long enough. Which wasn’t often.
She met him—and Tommy, of course—for breakfast at the diner on the Friday before the election to plan the final campaign push. “This weekend, we breathe, eat, sleep getting out the vote,” Tommy decreed. “Gotta bring people to the polls.”
Adam glanced at Phoebe and rolled his eyes. “Like we haven’t been d-doing that already? I look in the m-mirror to sh-shave and s-start out with, ‘You know, Tuesday is election day. Are you planning to v-vote?’”
“I’ve got the horses convinced,” Phoebe said. “I figure I’ll put a hat over their ears and a coat over their tails and nobody’ll notice the four hooves.”
“Very funny.” Tommy had picked up a copy of the daily paper. “I keep waiting for Tate to spring some kind of last minute trap, but I think he’s decided that he’ll stay in his hole until the shooting’s all over.”
“Not quite.” Sam arrived and scooted into the booth next to Tommy. “Look at the letters to the editor. Tate wrote to announce he’s donating the car to an orphanage northwest of here. Says he doesn’t need it and wants some good to come of the prize.”
Tommy flipped to the back page of the section and hooted with laughter. “Damn. You gotta give the guy credit—he’s a canny political animal.” When his comment met with cold, offended silence, he looked at Adam and Phoebe and shrugged. “Well, he is.”
Tired and stressed, Phoebe didn’t bother to mince words. “Since you’re such an admirer, maybe you should run that campaign.”
Adam put a hand over hers. “It’s okay, Phoebe.”
“No, it’s not.” She freed her hands and used them to rub her eyes. “I’m sick of being measured against some mythical political standard and always found wanting. I’m sick of hearing that we’re not doing enough, that we could be smarter, quicker, sneakier…whatever. Adam is good enough to be mayor without changing so much as his socks. I’d think you, as his campaign manager, would recognize that fact.”
“It’s a game,” Tommy said. “There are rules—”
“Damn your rules.” She slapped her palms on the table. “And it’s not a g-game. It’s a serious endeavor, the process of choosing the person who will l-lead the community in some pretty desperate times. While you’re playing angles and creating sound bites, people are l-losing j-j-jobs and h-health care, wondering h-how they’re going to pay for their medicine and buy food, too. Adam went into this campaign to deal with those issues, and you’ve perverted his effort into some kind of-of pissing contest. Who can shoot f-f-farther?” Using both hands, she pushed on Adam’s shoulder. “L-let me out, please. L-l-let me out.”
In the ladies’ rest room, she locked the door, then leaned back against the panel, crying. Mourning.
“Phoebe?” Abby knocked on the door. “Phoebe, sweetheart, are you okay?”
“No.” Phoebe tried to swallow the sobs. “I’ll clear out of here in a minute.”
“Take your time. And if you want to leave by the kitchen door, be my guest.”
“Thanks.” She shouldn’t sneak out. Tommy deserved an apology…or did he? And what did Adam deserve?
Leaving through the kitchen door a few minutes later, she carried a foam cup of hot tea and the bag of biscuits Charlie Brannon handed her. “I always like a woman who tells it the way she sees it,” he said with a wink. “My Abby’s as straight-shooting as they come. You, too.”
Dry grass crunched under her feet as she walked along the side of the building to the parking lot in front. November had blown in chilly and brittle this year, with unusually low temperatures. Bad weather would keep attendance at the polls down….
“Damn.” They had her thinking just like them. Calculating the effect of the weather on the election, instead of accepting what came and being grateful for the beauty in even the worst storm. Jacquie and Erin were seeing more of her animals than she did these days. She hadn’t had time to clean a stall in weeks. And she enjoyed cleaning stalls.
The end is near, she promised herself as she started the car. Wednesday, she would once again be simply Phoebe Moss—the speech therapist with a severely diminished practice to build up again and a farm she planned to use for the benefit of battered and abused animals. No more politics, no more campaigns or fundraisers in her life.
No more Adam DeVries.
With that thought, Phoebe pulled off the road and stopped in the parking lot of the Pentecostal Holiness Church…because she couldn’t see through her tears to drive.
A GENTLEMAN SIMPLY DID not pound on the rest room door, demanding that a woman emerge before she was ready. His mother had taught him that rule, he was sure.
So Adam waited, even though he figured Phoebe would escape by the back door of the diner. Sure enough, when he glanced out the window, he caught a glimpse of her green Beetle leaving the parking lot.
“You p-pushed too hard,” he told Tommy. Standing by the table, he took up the bill for a breakfast neither he nor Phoebe had touched. “She d-didn’t want to do this in the first pl-place, and you d-drove her to the breaking p-point.”
Tommy set his mug down with a jolt that sloshed coffee on the table. “When you’re looking in that mirror in the morning, see if you can’t catch a glimpse of the guy who started this whole shebang, who agreed with the decisions and fronted the operation. Then we’ll talk.” His face was closed, his eyes hard, but he couldn’t leave with Sam seated beside him on the outside.
So Adam did.
He checked for Phoebe’s car at her office, to be sure she’d arrived safely, and was relieved to find the Beetle in its usual spot. Much as he wanted to talk to her, he knew her well enough to accept that she wouldn’t want to see him right now. That damn independence would keep her from accepting his comfort, or even his thanks for her defense of him against Tommy’s relentless criticism.
Besides, his own work waited—a desk full of papers to be dealt with and projects all over town needing his supervision. Jody had run through a dozen message pads this fall, waiting for him to show up and take his phone calls.
Instead of heading to the office, though, he drove through downtown New Skye and up the Hill, to a street he hadn’t visited for more than a month, to a house where he was no longer sure of his welcome.
His mother wasn’t sure, either. She stared at him for a speechless moment after she opened the door. “Come in,” she said finally, and moved back.
With the door closed, they faced each other across the entry hall. Cynthia looked…small. Beautiful, well dressed, but diminished.
“How are you, Mother?”
“Well enough. Would you like some coffee?”
“Sounds good, thanks.” He didn’t need coffee, but maybe they both needed a minute to get their balance back.
She brought a tray into the living room, where he’d settled on one of the armchairs, then sat on the end of the sofa farthest away from him. “I’ll let you fix your own.” As he added sugar and milk to his cup, she said, “Why are you here?”
His mother was nothing if not direct. Adam sat back in his chair, leaving the coffee cup on the tray. “Because I care about you.”
“After…” She pressed her lips together and fingered the cording on the cushion beside her.
“Even though I don’t like what you did, and I hate the way you treated Phoebe, you’re important to me.” The words sounded lukewarm, but “I love you” had never been part of the family dialogue.
“Your father is still furious.”
Adam grinned. “Ten grand is a lot of money to donate to a political campaign in this town. You should have talked with him first.”
“I didn’t want to be…dissuaded.”
No surprise there. “He’ll forgive you. He always does.”
Cynthia smiled and Adam recognized the expression as one of his own—a one-sided tilt of her mouth that conveyed her doubts, her regrets. “Do you?”
He thought for a minute. “Yes, as far as I’m concerned. You’re entitled to your own political opinions, and you’re not required to vote for me just because I’m your son.” By the lift of her eyebrows, he saw that she heard his “but” before he said it. “But with respect to Phoebe, I think you have an apology to make. You were cruel and thoughtless, trying to turn people against her with no reason beyond a need to demonstrate your personal power.”
His mother sat motionless, staring down at her hands, folded in her lap. As Adam watched, a tear splashed onto one of her rings.
“If you can approach Phoebe, I believe we can become a family again.” He got to his feet and, after a moment, stepped close enough to put a hand on her shoulder. “I hope that’s possible.” Bending, he kissed her soft silver hair.
He’d crossed the room and reached the front door before she spoke. “Adam?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You don’t…stutter…much anymore.”
He grinned. “Maybe you could thank Phoebe for that, while you’re talking.”
“I will.”
The concession was as much as he could have asked for. “Take care,” he told her, and closed the door to his childhood home behind him.
FRIDAY…SATURDAY…Sunday…a hurried, nonstop attempt to reach every citizen with the message. Adam got no time to talk to Phoebe—Tommy had set up schedules that kept the three of them working in different parts of town all weekend long. Monday, they campaigned together, hitting all the shopping centers and the mall as a couple, arms around each other and smiles wide as they posed with the constituents. Otherwise, Phoebe remained out of reach. She didn’t answer her phone late at night or early in the morning.
This was some engagement—his fiancée seemed engaged in an effort to avoid talking with him at all.
Election day dawned clear and cold, but Adam had stumbled out of bed even before the stars left the sky. A shower woke him up without restoring his energy, and the search for matching socks—in the drawer he hadn’t had time to sort for weeks now—took ten frustrating minutes. He sat on the side of the bed for a long time, elbows on his knees and head propped in his hands, seeking the incentive to get through just one more day. Win or lose, tonight would end the campaign. And he could hardly wait.
On impulse, he took hold of the phone and dialed Phoebe’s number. He had no reason to expect this day to be different, but—
“Hello?” She sounded as tired as he felt.
“Hey, there, sleepyhead. You still under the covers?”
“Mmm.” He could picture her stretching, as he’d seen her stretch when she lay beside him in the mornings they spent together. “I think I threw the alarm clock at the wall when it rang this morning.”
“Don’t blame you. It’s cold outside.”
“And the polls open in an hour.”
“Your horses need their grain. And the dogs want to go outside.”
“How’d you know? They’re standing here beside the bed, panting at me. All right, guys,” she said to Lance and Gally and Gawain. “You can go freeze your tails off if that’s what you want.” The sound of the door opening came through the phone, and the slap of the screened porch door as she let the dogs out. “There. Now everybody’s happy. Have you had your coffee yet?”
Adam pulled himself back from imagining Phoebe in her kitchen, wearing that favorite flannel nightgown, her hair down and her feet bare, her face all sweet and sleepy and sexy. “N-nope. I’ll get some at the diner.”
“I’m having hazelnut cream coffee. You can’t get that at the diner.”
“There are a lot of things I want I can’t get at the d-diner.”
Phoebe was quiet for a long minute. He heard her sigh. And then she seemed to switch mental gears. “So today’s the big day. Any new surveys out? Are the numbers still good?”
She’d put him at a distance. Again. Adam resolved that this would be the last time. After tonight, they would have the time to work out whatever stood between them and then move forward. Together.
“The numbers that count will come in at the end of the day. You’ll be at the party, right?” The candidates and their staffs for all the races would gather tonight in the ballroom of the Highlander Hotel, waiting for the vote count. Adam had reserved rooms for himself and Phoebe and Tommy, so they’d have somewhere private to retreat to if the tension got too high.
“I’ll come home to take care of the horses and then drive back,” Phoebe told him. “I wouldn’t miss watching you get elected mayor of New Skye for anything.”
“Then I guess I
’ll see you tonight.” He hadn’t said the words before, but this morning, they seemed especially important. “Have a good day, Phoebe. I love you.”
Hearing the words, Phoebe closed her eyes against tears. “You, too,” she managed to say, though she knew that wasn’t what he wanted her to say. “Take care.”
Adam had made her day a thousand times harder with those three simple words. She met her campaign responsibilities, saw three new patients in the office, and all the while the sound of his “I love you” burned like a brand on her heart. She voted on the way home from work, taking immense pride in the opportunity to mark her choice for mayor: Adam DeVries.
Out at the farm, she fed the horses and played with the dogs until the light failed, then spent a long time in the barn, dusting, tidying, coiling ropes and straightening halters as they hung on the racks, even going so far as to clean Marian’s bridle. Maybe tomorrow she’d get home in time to ride. Both Brady and Cristal were looking a little chubby, in need of more exercise.
Finally, though, a fat white moon rose over the trees and Phoebe knew she couldn’t delay the inevitable. She changed into her election-night outfit, a black pantsuit with a sparkly top underneath, and donned her heavy jewelry. There would be pictures, and she wanted the last one of her to be decent.
Heading into town, she noticed L. T. LaRue’s construction site, and the huge stack of pine logs left over when his bulldozers mowed down all the beautiful trees. The tobacco field had become an ugly square of flat, bare dirt. She doubted his buildings would be an improvement.
The Highlander Hotel bulged at the doors and windows in an effort to contain the election night crowd. Balloons were tied to every available anchor along the hallway—doorknobs, table legs, potted plants, bobbing in Phoebe’s face as she eased through the press of people. Streamers hung in the air, or flew at her from unseen directions.
The crush in the huge ballroom was just as dense, and she began to despair of ever finding Adam.
The Last Honest Man Page 24