“But me?” Joanna asked softly. “I would never have told anyone.”
“You’re right. I’m so sorry, Jo. I messed up. I know that now. I’ve never really tried anything like this—a serious relationship with a grown up man.” She laughed self-deprecatingly, her brain trying to sift through the lies mixed with so much truth.
Jo had then been quiet for a moment before she asked the crucial question. “Does this mean you’re not working anymore?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what it means. Once I met Derek and we wanted to pursue a real relationship, it was clear I couldn’t go on working. Now I have to figure out what to do with myself. Luckily I have resources that will last me awhile until I decide.”
Joanna had grinned in triumph then. “You have to tell me everything. How did you meet him? What did he say to get you to go out with him? Is he as delicious as I’m imagining?”
London breathed a sigh of relief for her best friend’s sweet generous nature. Joanna was spunky, but also didn’t have a mean bone in her body and London was the beneficiary of that innate goodness.
“First of all, I’m not certain that you should be imagining the man I’m dating—delicious or otherwise—” London shouldn’t care, but something about Joanna noticing Derek’s assets rubbed her the wrong way.
Joanna snorted.
“We met at a charity function. He was never a client—I swear. He didn’t give me much choice about going out with him, and yes—” London raised her eyes to the ceiling above her wishing like hell this wasn’t the truest thing she’d say all day,”—he is as delicious as you’re imagining.”
London had cut the interrogation short at that point, telling Joanna that she had to get ready for the press conference. Joanna had been supportive of the move as it might give Melville’s campaign a fighting chance, and thus her husband’s chances at a diplomatic post as well.
Now, London was spending the drive to the hotel regretting the brand new set of lies she’d told her friends. She had long ago resigned herself to the lies about her job, but this new layer of deception was something she detested. She had a close circle of friends, more family really, since she had no other. She cared deeply about them—Joanna, her neighbor Rafe and his husband Kevin. Carlotta, the wife of an Argentine diplomat that she’d met at a party several years earlier. These people mattered to London, and it made her physically ill to shut them out of her life more than she already had. But if she was going to keep them, the lies were necessary, and so she bit her tongue, plastered a smile on her face, and prepared to present the new and improved London to the world.
The Town Car pulled up to the curb of the Renaissance Hotel and London shook herself out of the maudlin thoughts. What was done was done, and the best she could hope for was that Derek’s gamble would pay off. She took a deep breath and readied herself. As she stepped out flashes blinded her, voices shouted, and hands grabbed. She cringed back against the side of the car while the chauffeur worked to shove the reporters out of her way. Just when she thought she’d be consumed by their hysteria a big, strong hand locked onto her elbow and the sea of journalists parted like something in the Old Testament.
She looked at a broad chest and then up into Derek’s eyes. He grimaced at her before pulling her closer and tucking her into his side as he maneuvered them both through the throng and into the large glass doors at the front of the hotel. The noise from the reporters faded as they entered the lobby and London shook her head trying to clear it.
“Are you okay?” Derek asked as he kept his arm around her, walking her through the lobby.
“Yes. A little overwhelmed is all.”
“Sorry about that.” He gestured for her to enter a large meeting room while he held the door open for her. “We wanted to have a big turnout so we had to leak enough information to spark their interest.”
She walked into the room, obviously set up for a press conference, a podium at the head, rows of folding chairs taking up the rest of the space.
In the front row, five men were lounging, each of them with an air of Washington’s elite wafting off of them.
“Come meet my friends,” Derek told her with his trademark wink before he leaned in to her ear and whispered, “I paid them to pretend we were friends so you’d be impressed.” London struggled not to laugh. Devil. He was the devil in disguise, she knew it.
“They’re like a pack of piranhas out there,” Derek said as they approached the group of men. All five stood when they saw London.
“You wanted results,” a lean man with light brown hair and amazing green eyes said, smiling.
“That I did,” Derek answered, pulling London to a halt in front of the group and putting his arm around her shoulders.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’d like to introduce you to my girlfriend. Honey, these are the guys.” Derek’s tongue in cheek remarks helped alleviate some of London’s panic, and she shoved at him and frowned. His hold on her only tightened. “Play nice,” he whispered in her ear, earning a smirk from a mocha-skinned hottie in a designer suit standing closest to them.
“Now,” Derek said, gesturing to the designer suit guy, “this is Teague Roberts, partner at Guildhurst, Crandall, and Roberts. Mr. Cheerful there is Colonel Jefferson Thibedeux, Director of Domestic Operations for the Pentagon Next to him is Scott Campbell, Chief of Staff to Senator Hugh Carries.” All three men said their hellos and shook her hand politely.
“The one who needs a haircut,” Derek continued, “is Kamal Masri, Ambassador to the U.S. from Egypt, and the best damn left outside mid the Cornell soccer team’s ever had.” Kamal gave her a charming smile and shook her hand. Her heart clutched briefly, his dark features and warm eyes bringing back memories of other people and other times in her life.
“And last, and probably least, is Gage Warner, the president of the Workers’ United League of North America. That’s right,” Derek deadpanned, “he gets Canada and Mexico too.”
The dark-haired, gray-eyed man flipped a finger at Derek before reaching out and lifting London’s fingers to his lips. “It’s truly a pleasure to meet the woman who’s finally tamed our boy,” he teased. London couldn’t help but smile back at him, and Derek stiffened at her side, his voice brusque when he next spoke.
“All right, enough with the introductions, let’s run through this performance to make sure we’ve smoothed out the rough edges.”
Forty minutes later the conference room was packed with reporters, cameras and microphones. Derek stood at the podium with Senator Melville on one side of him and London on the other.
“Good afternoon everyone,” he rumbled into the microphone. “If you could quiet down we’ll get started.” The room went silent almost instantly and London looked to Derek, marveling at how well he controlled the crowd of hungry newspeople.
“Thank you for coming,” Derek began. “You’ve heard the reports this morning regarding Senator Melville and a mysterious woman who visited his hotel suite yesterday a few hours before he announced his candidacy.”
Derek paused, looking around the room with a stern expression.
“You all know that my heart generally beats only for you.” The reporters chuckled and a couple wolf-whistled. “But I have to admit I’ve been unfaithful.” More laughs from the audience. “The mystery woman visiting the Senator’s hotel suite was there to see me, and she is not—let me be very clear about that—not involved with Senator Melville.” He gave the room his meanest glare, and London noticed some of the audience balked.
“This lovely woman on my right is London Sharpe. My girlfriend. We hadn’t taken our relationship public yet because she has indeed, in the past, worked as an escort. I did not want her very private history to become public gossip and impact the important work we’re doing with this campaign. I did approach Senator Melville when Ms. Sharpe and I started our relationship, and I received his blessing. The Senator is a strong advocate for women in all walks of life, including those who need our protection from human traf
ficking and sexual exploitation.”
There were murmurs throughout the audience. Derek silenced them with another of his icy stares. “Since we started dating, Ms. Sharpe and I have been enjoying getting to know each other without any pressure from the more public parts of my life, but obviously we have to come clean at this point.”
Shouts and chaos erupted, but Derek put a halt to it with a hand held up and a look of impatience. “Hold on, we’ll get there.” Then he winked, and London swore every female reporter in the room sighed in unison.
“Ms. Sharpe is not a public figure, so I’m not going to let you at her, but I will give you a brief bio so you’ll at least get your facts straight. London was born in Iran and immigrated to the U.S. as a child. She is an American citizen for those of you who seem preoccupied with such things.” He nodded at the reporter from Channel F-News who smirked in response.
“London is a volunteer and advocate for several organizations devoted to women’s and children’s issues. She and I met at an event benefitting the Greater D.C. Children’s Farm.”
London bit her lip, remembering how she’d sat on the phone for forty-five minutes with Derek’s secretary going over their calendars from the last six months to find an event they might both have attended and could claim as their “meet-cute” spot. A flash going off reminded her to relax her expression, and she experimented with a small smile, trying not to let her discomfort with all of this show.
“And that’s all you’re getting from me this morning,” Derek concluded. “I’m going to turn this over to the Senator now, and he’s going to discuss his proposal for a new funding structure for the Pentagon’s weapons purchases. Let’s put this one to rest, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.”
The room exploded, reporters shouting things at both Derek and London. He took her elbow and guided her out a door behind them as Senator Melville stepped to the podium and said, “You guys got me into some really hot water at home.” That stopped the shouts and the entire room broke into laughter.
When they reached the lobby, Derek’s friends were waiting.
“How’d it go?” Scott asked.
“Fine. Melville can handle it from here. Jeff, can I get the security escort back to London’s place to make sure no one follows us?”
“Yep, they’re waiting by the Town Car in the underground.”
“I think it’s a wrap, gentlemen. Thanks for your help.” Derek shook everyone’s hands and the group dispersed.
London watched the men walk away and a sudden rush of exhaustion hit her, as though the adrenaline coursing through her since she’d been wakened by Derek that morning suddenly poured out all at once. She was left feeling vaguely dissatisfied and questioning her own sanity.
As much as she tried not to engage with D.C. politics, London was hardly ignorant of the game and its power brokers. Derek’s friends were every bit as significant and powerful as him. London dealt with men like them in her job every day, but when they entered a hotel room with her she was actually the one with the power. London had learned early in her career exactly how much control she actually held over men in the bedroom. She was blessed with the looks and a body that men desired, and she used it to her full advantage. By the time they’d been alone with her for ten minutes they’d do virtually anything she asked in order to have her, and she preferred it that way.
But this wasn’t the bedroom, it was the pressroom, and now she was in the opposite position. Outside of the bedroom with men like these she had no power, and it made her twitchy, reminding her of days long ago when she had no control over her history, no control over how she became who she was. And like in those days when she was London Amid instead of London Sharpe, she suddenly felt trapped, used, and disposable.
The fact was, if Derek and his friends decided to jettison her, they could so very easily. They could also find out her deepest secret—the one that her mother had told her when she was seventeen, the one that she had never come to terms with since.
“Let’s get you home,” Derek said placing his hand on the small of her back and directing her toward the elevators to the parking garage.
She deliberately stepped away from his hand, irrationally irritated that any of this had happened, that she’d lost all the control in the blink of an eye.
He glanced at her but didn’t remark at her rejection.
The enormity of what she’d just done seemed to settle on her all at once. In the last twelve hours she’d allowed a man—a man she hardly knew—to completely dismantle the life she’d so carefully constructed over the last eight years. She’d just gone on national television and tied herself to a stranger for God knows how long. In only a few hours he’d completely taken over her life. London Sharpe didn’t let anyone take over her fate. The speed at which things had transpired over the last day made London dizzy. If she could only get a few moments to breathe, think about what was going on, regain her senses.
They entered the elevator and he turned to her. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she clipped out.
He scowled. “I might not be an expert on relationships, but even I know when a woman’s ‘fine’ means anything but,” he chided.
She took a step away from him. “It’s been a long day, Mr. Ambrose. I’m tired and my feet hurt. I just want to go home now.”
He leaned closer to her and put a finger under her chin, forcing her gaze up to his. “Mr. Ambrose, hmm. You’re going to have to call me Derek if you expect anyone to believe what we’ve just told them.” He paused, his voice low and gentle. “You did well today. I know it’s not easy, and I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry Melville got you into this mess.”
She sighed, turning her eyes back to the lights in the elevator as he released her jaw from his touch. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Yes, you will. Because I’ll make sure of it,” he added quietly.
She wondered how he could make such a promise. Even Derek Ambrose couldn’t replace the life she’d so carefully constructed, and she was terrified that life was about to explode into a million pieces.
Chapter 5
Derek leaned back in his large office chair, resting an elbow on the supple leather armrest as he pressed his forehead into his palm. His head throbbed, and his mind wandered more than it focused. He’d been staring at a speech he was drafting for Melville for forty-five minutes and hadn’t been able to complete one coherent sentence in all that time.
He closed his eyes and all he could see were ruby lips, amber eyes and a rack that would make an angel weep. London Sharpe, his so-called girlfriend who he’d neither seen, nor spoken with in three days. They were scheduled to attend a fundraising event for Melville this evening, and the anticipation was eating him up inside. Try hard as he might, he was going to have to admit—to himself anyway—that he was intensely attracted to the woman.
“Dammit,” he muttered as he swiveled around to face the window. His office had a clear line of sight to the dome of the Capitol Building, and it served as a reminder of what he had always wanted most in this life—the power to influence a nation. He didn’t feel he needed elected office to do that, it wasn’t Derek’s style. He knew that many times the politicians themselves were gnarled masses of ego and neediness topped off with a healthy dose of delusions of immortality.
He didn’t need to make speeches, get fan mail, and be interviewed to feel like he was loved. He didn’t need those things to know he wielded influence either. And he sure as hell didn’t have any half-cocked ideas that he would be remembered by generations in the future. No, Derek just wanted to be the man who pulled the strings so that he could help the world reach its potential.
For as long as he could remember, Derek had held a rather unique perspective on life and the world around him. At the age of five he’d come home from playing at the neighbor’s house and asked his mother, “Why do Erik’s parents keep grounding him when he doesn’t clean his room? If they would give him ice cream for cleaning he’d do i
t right away. He’d do anything for ice cream.” If Derek had one exceptional talent it was the ability to see how to wield influence.
He’d majored in Political Science in college and begun working on campaigns as early as his sophomore year. His talent and unflagging work ethic propelled him to leadership roles on national level campaigns by his twenty-fifth birthday. By thirty he’d formed his own political consulting firm, masterminded some of the biggest and costliest senatorial campaigns in history, and made a boatload of money in the process.
As a trusted advisor to several of the candidates he put in office he’d been able to influence their policy platforms, steering them toward issues close to his own heart. His father worked the line at an auto factory in Detroit, pushing his body to its limits every day. As the U.S. auto industry had suffered a long and painful death, Derek’s family had struggled to maintain the solid working class lifestyle they’d had when he was a child. Luckily, once his big paychecks started to come in he was able to help his parents and now had them settled into a lovely retirement house in Boca Raton.
But he’d never forgotten the razor’s edge that hard-working Americans often walked in the new millennium. His push to gain entry to the White House stemmed from both the urge to wield influence, and to direct the policies of the country where he saw such important need. His special ability was that he saw how to do that in ways others didn’t.
Now he was sitting at his desk, on the cusp of everything he’d been working towards for the last ten years, and all he could think about was that face, those legs, and the luscious pair of tits that fell midway between the two.
The Kingmaker (Powerplay #1) Page 6