Thus, between the two legal maneuvers they had four days, five tops. He’d get less than a week to find some way to stay in business and keep London too. The press would flay him, implying that he was guilty of lying to them simply because he didn’t respond immediately. He gave Teague a sharp nod. “Do it,” he instructed.
“And you think she and Melville will agree to this?” Teague asked.
No. “I’ll make sure they do,” Derek answered.
“All right then,” Teague said grinning. The man did love to file legal actions. “Let’s get to work. Renee!” he bellowed. “Order up a car, I’m going to the courthouse.”
It was all over. The truth was out. London was free. Why didn’t she feel like it then? Why did it feel as though that headline had crushed all the hope in her world? Her messy bun shifting awkwardly on top of her head, London sifted another cup of flour into the bowl before stirring it thoroughly. She didn’t have a recipe for the cake, but she didn’t need one. She had watched her mother bake Persian love cake dozens of times over the course of her childhood. Persian cuisine didn’t include many sugary items, but her mother’s refrigerator had always contained a platter of baghlava, the Persian variety of baklava, and on special occasions, a Persian love cake was always on the menu.
She whipped the egg whites, her mind preoccupied by the tangle of emotions that raced through her. It was a relief in one sense, knowing that she didn’t have to pretend at all anymore, that she could return to the life she’d built for herself over so many years. It could never be exactly the same, but she could survive it, and most importantly she would once again be in total control.
However, relief was only one side of the coin, because there was also fear. She’d lied to Joanna—again—and she was afraid even Jo couldn’t forgive her this time. She’d persisted in telling Jo that Melville hadn’t been a client. Now Jo knew the truth just like the rest of the world, and it would be rough going to justify this latest in a long list of untruths and half-truths.
But both the relief and the fear were awash in something entirely different—regret. Yes, London had to admit to herself that she regretted the fact that she no longer had a reason to be connected to Derek Ambrose. She’d rebuffed his advances, and she knew she’d done what she had to, but the man was addictive, and she could tell that she’d already been hooked.
She sighed as she folded the flour mixture and egg white mixture together. For those brief moments—on his arm at events, in his car in the dark of night, when his bare skin brushed hers—she’d had a glimpse of another life, a life she hadn’t dared to dream about in a decade. Her heart hurt with the regret that a life like that would never be hers, and now she couldn’t even pretend anymore.
Thirty minutes and a batch of homemade hummus later her doorbell rang. She brushed the excess flour off of her yoga pants and tank top and walked to the front door. Standing on her front porch was the man who’d spurred all of that regret.
“May I come in?” he asked, his eyes a deeper blue than usual to match his cornflower blue t-shirt. He was dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him, a pair of well-worn jeans hugging him in all the right places. All the right big, hard places. Her throat went dry as her eyes raked over him involuntarily.
She snapped her gaze to his face when she realized she was gawking. His lips quirked up on one side as though he was able to see exactly what she’d been thinking.
“Yes, of course,” she finally answered, stepping aside so he could enter.
He smiled and her heart skipped a beat.
“Something smells delicious,” he said.
“It’s a cake,” she answered as she led him to the living room. “I’d offer you some but it’s still baking. Would you like a glass of water or a cup of tea, perhaps?”
He shook his head. “No, but I’m hoping we can talk.”
She sat on the far end of the sofa from him. “Of course.”
He leaned forward, leaning his elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch this morning when the news broke. It’s been a crazy day, but I should have made the time to speak with you much earlier.”
“I assumed that there wasn’t much to talk about really,” she said. “With everything out in public we’re done with our little charade.”
His eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together in a tight line. “And if I say no?”
She blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”
He ran a hand through his hair, his brows drawn down. “I’m exploring options for the next few days. I don’t want to give up on this campaign yet. I’ve never been in a spot this tight before, but I’ve been close, and I worked things out then, I’m not convinced I can’t do the same here.”
Those conflicting feelings churned inside of her again, but he continued before she could formulate a response.
“I know you haven’t enjoyed this, the pretending and deception…” His voice faded away and he looked at her inquiringly.
Her cheeks heated and she dropped her gaze for a moment. “It’s actually been better than I would have predicted. I don’t like to lie, but the break from work has been nice I guess.”
His jaw clenched before he continued. “Maybe you won’t be opposed to a few more days then? I don’t want to put anything out to the press. I’ve got my attorney working on some things—suits against the newspapers, trying to discover where they got their information. I’ve been talking to Melville most of the day and he’s finally agreed to wait a few days before saying anything publicly. I’d like to ask you to do the same.”
Her heart fluttered, and she remembered her mother’s saying, Be careful what you ask for. Only an hour ago she’d been thinking how she would miss pretending to belong to Derek Ambrose, and now he was here asking her to do it for a few more days.
“But if everyone knows that Melville was actually involved with me, what purpose can it be for us to continue this pretend relationship?” she asked.
Derek looked uncomfortable, something that didn’t happen often to a man so innately comfortable in his own skin. He rubbed the back of his neck and cleared his throat.
“I can’t give you an answer to that yet, but I want to keep all of our options open until I figure this out.” He looked at her earnestly then, his voice low, “Just a few more days. Please.”
She knew there wasn’t much logic at play in what he wanted. Wondered what his real reason was for asking her to hang around a bit longer. She also recognized a danger when she saw one. She’d feared the additional scrutiny of the press and what they would find out if she continued to associate with Derek. Her best bet at this point was simply to go back to her life and let the story run its course, which she doubted would take much longer. As soon as Melville officially withdrew the press would move on.
But now Derek was refusing to let him withdraw and on top of it he was asking her to sit around while the press chomped at the bit for more dirt, and it could very well end up being her dirt. The dirt that had ruined her life once already, and she’d sworn would never ruin it again.
As much as her chest hurt when she thought of never seeing Derek again, she knew it was utter foolishness to continue to be part of his world.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” he asked, his expression not that different than a toddler having a cookie taken from them.
“I don’t want to remain under scrutiny from the press. If we acknowledge that it happened—Melville and I—they’ll move on and I can go back to my life.”
He stood, frustration rolling off of him like heat off of a radiator. “And that’s really what you want?” he asked as he paced across the room and stopped, facing the fireplace, his broad, muscular back to her. “You want to go back to sleeping with those men, hiding in the shadows, lying to the people around you?”
She lifted her chin, trying to fight the shame that burned through her at his easy dismissal of everything she’d built over eight years.
�
��No, I want to go back to my high-paying job, my privacy, and having the choice of what to share and with whom.”
He was across the room and kneeling before her in seconds, hands planted on either side of her hips on the sofa, his eyes pleading, his face fierce with emotion.
“Don’t,” he demanded. “Don’t tell me that you want those men to touch you again. Don’t tell me that you’d turn me down, but let them—” His voice cracked and he swallowed. “All I’m asking is a few more days.”
She could feel the burning behind her eyes, and steeled herself against the onslaught of feelings that threatened to burst out of her. Feelings that made people do and say things they could never take back, feelings that included hope, and joy, and other words that she couldn’t imagine thinking, much less feeling.
“A few more days to save the campaign? Or a few more days to try to save me?” she asked bluntly.
He watched her for a moment, his face a play of exhaustion, desperation, and something else that she couldn’t quite place.
“Both,” he finally answered.
She told him ‘no’. He was angry, he was exasperated, he was frustrated. He left, and she sat, immobile, on her living room sofa for what seemed like hours. She knew it was the right thing to do, there was no point in continuing their involvement with one another, but it left her cold, and unsure, and alone. She didn’t realize that the game—the one where she pretended to be Derek Ambrose’s girlfriend—had given her days a purpose that wasn’t there before. For the first time in so long she’d had someone she was waiting to talk to, wanting to see, worried about knowing.
And then she’d sent him away. It was so simple and yet so incredibly complicated. He couldn’t save her, she didn’t want to be saved. And as she told it to herself over and over again the doubts chipped away at the conviction. But even if she did want him—his salvation, his companionship—she couldn’t have it. How long did she have? Hours? Days? Maybe a few weeks if she was exceptionally lucky. Then the press would find out about her family and she’d be right back where she started, but even more disdained than she was now. And while Derek seemed as though he could get past prostitution if it was only in her past, she knew he’d never get past her father. Hell, she’d never gotten past her father and it had been ten years since she’d found out about him.
And that was the real reason why she’d told him she was done—he would never get past her father, and she couldn’t bear to see that in his eyes. The way the warmth and affection would drain out, the disappointment, the disgust. A few more hours, or days, or weeks with Derek Ambrose and she’d be thoroughly absorbed by him, then thoroughly destroyed by him as well.
As the sky outside her front windows grew dark, London finally pushed up off her sofa, carefully stepping around the place Derek had kneeled when he asked her to be someone she could never be. She ignored the taut tug inside her chest, and went to remove the charred Persian love cake from the oven.
Derek stood on the balcony of the Powerplay condo and watched the city lights glitter in the night. He’d shown up here after the debacle with London, sickened by her refusal to agree to his timetable, unable to think about what he could possibly do to save the campaign, unable to stop thinking about her. He was now four double scotches the worse for wear, and his chest still ached like a bitch.
“You going to tell us what happened?” Kamal asked as he stepped out onto the balcony.
“When did you come in?” Derek asked, noticing that his words were slightly slurred.
“Just got here. I figured this is where I’d find you.”
“Teague coming next?” Derek took the last swig of amber liquid from his glass before dangling it from his fingertips over the edge of the railing he leaned on.
“No,” Kamal answered succinctly. “Seems like he’s done plenty of damage for today by indulging your stalling tactics.”
Derek spun around, his icy gaze landing on Kamal, who leaned against the wall, arms crossed, chest straining beneath his expensive dress shirt.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that I don’t buy you’re doing this to save the campaign. I know you. You’re a realist. You’ve never pushed a candidate to stay in a race when it was obvious he needed to get out.”
“I’ve never had a candidate who needed to get out,” Derek snapped.
“Is that what it is? You can’t stand to lose that badly? So badly you’d try to jumpstart a candidate whose career is in ruins and a campaign that’s a cold corpse beginning to rot? Or is it that you don’t want to let the woman go?”
“I put eighteen months into prepping for this campaign,” Derek said without answering Kamal’s question.
“And now you’re going to spend another eighteen beating a dead horse for a woman you hardly know, a woman who is a prostitute, Derek. She would do anything, including sell her damn body, to make a buck. She’s not operating from a place of principles or a party platform of ideology. She’s doing whatever it takes to make her next dollar, and I’m not convinced she didn’t make some extra money by ratting out Melville to the press.”
“Stop it.” Derek’s voice cut through the humid air like a knife through soft flesh. “What the hell happened to thinking it was Ryan Williams? He’s by far the most likely culprit. Is it that you can’t get any decent intel on him? You feel like you have to shift blame to someone else because you haven’t been able to figure this out? I can assure you, that it isn’t her. But it could very well be Williams, and you’re wasting valuable time chasing after the wrong person.”
“I’m following up on Williams. I’m not an idiot. This is what I do, and I’m damn good at it. I’ve got information on him, just nothing definitive yet. What worries me a lot more than that is the fact that I don’t have information on her. She’s a blank card until she’s two years old. There’s something wrong with that picture.”
“So she’s guilty simply because you don’t know anything about her.”
“Neither do you,” Kamal hissed back.
“How can you not see that this has damaged her as much or more than it’s damaged me? She’s been exposed in front of the entire nation. She’ll go down in American history as a notorious hooker. She can never have a normal life again, and believe it or not, she had one before this.”
“I don’t believe it, because she was living a lie, and that’s the proof of what an accomplished liar she is. She’s taken you for a ride, my friend. I don’t trust her, I don’t trust that we know what we need to about her, and the longer you associate with her the bigger the risk that you’ll be damaged more than you already have been.”
Derek gritted his teeth, restraining the urge to punch the concern off his friend’s face. “It’s all to save the campaign.”
“Stop it.” Kamal looked less than amused, shaggy hair falling down over one eye, turning him from an uptight international diplomat into a swarthy pirate ready to kidnap and torture the innocents on shore. “The fact that you think this campaign can be saved at this point is proof of how far gone you are. You had one path to follow here—have Melville drop out. But instead of following that path you’ve gone off-road. Far off-road. And it’s because you’re letting some part of your anatomy other than your brain do the navigating.”
“Go to hell,” Derek answered pushing past his friend and going inside. “I’ll repeat myself—this isn’t about some sort of hang up I have for London. It’s about saving the campaign that we’ve spent eighteen months preparing for. Do I want to sleep with her? Yes. But that doesn’t have anything to do with all of this. I’m able to separate sex from business decisions.”
Kamal followed, shutting the door behind him and mumbling a string of curses that clearly communicated he was not convinced, which was no surprise, since neither was Derek. Not even close.
Before Derek could make it to the bar to refill his glass, the front door slammed open, and Jeff burst in, dressed in uniform, a military guard behind him on full alert.
/> “Jesus, you need to answer your phone,” he snarled.
“Sorry. It’s been a shitty day,” Derek answered, glaring at the colonel.
“Well, it just got shittier,” Jeff said, crossing his arms as the guard stepped into the condo and assumed a position of protection alongside the doorway. “Melville’s been shot.”
Chapter 8
Derek shouted into his phone as the doors to the Emergency Room slid open before him. Jeff flanked him on one side, the military guard on the other, and Kamal followed close behind.
“I don’t care what you have to do, Marcus,” Derek commanded. “Make sure it’s you who gets here first. The press are going to go ballistic over this and I need someone I can trust to get the information correct.”
Jeff and the other two men elbowed people aside as Derek strode through the crowded room, unaware of anything around him, his focus solely on the admissions desk in front of them.
“I have to go,” he spat into the phone. “Get here. Now.”
“We’re here for Senator Melville,” Jeff said as they reached the admissions desk.
As Jeff dealt with the nurses to get information on Melville’s location, Kamal put a hand on Derek’s shoulder. “Breathe for a second. They got him here in minutes, it was a single shot. My bet is he’s going to be just fine.”
“He’s got two little kids,” Derek said, his brow wrinkled in distress. His gaze shot to Kamal’s. “No matter what, I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”
“I know.” Kamal sighed. “I know.”
“All right.” Jeff rejoined them. “They can’t tell us where he is, but they’re taking us to the waiting room with the family.” They started moving to the end of the adjacent hallway where the elevator waited. “And Derek? You need to know that she’s okay, but his wife was standing next to him when it happened.”
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