It could have been Sabrina’s imagination, but he looked slightly relieved.
“D’you mean to tell me that Jill didn’t fall into your arms when you revealed your xeriscaping plans?” she asked. “I don’t see how your personal decisions are any of my business, Theo.”
The words came out more pointed than she intended, but she was still smarting over the Hon. Rep.’s “own private Iowa” remark. He appeared not to notice.
“On the contrary, they are,” Theo went on. “I’m going to run in the next election. It might be a bumpier rodeo, because voters favor a married candidate over a single one, even if the single candidate is an incumbent. A divorce could hurt me in the polls, and if it hurts me, it hurts you. You like being my Chief of Staff, don’t you, Sabrina?”
“It’s pure magic.”
“Great!” Theo slapped his hands on his desk, immune to the wariness in her voice. “We need to work on our game. Increase the visibility of our platform. Why, this could be a real challenge!”
“We could refile my omnibus bill,” Sabrina suggested, struggling to keep her hope in check. “Pep it up with a catchy campaign slogan, something voters can’t forget. How ’bout ‘Women and Children First’?”
“No, no, we need new ideas,” Theo said with a dismissive wave. “According to some political consultants, the whole ‘eco-friendly’ craze will have run its course by then. Of course, we’ll want to keep up the whole green image — that can’t hurt us, Chief. But ‘urban revitalization’ is a lot sexier. That’s what we should run with. Speaking of which, I’ve arranged a supporter meeting for you with Jed and Josiah Tide tomorrow so you can all do some brainstorming. Stylus that into your smart phone. The rest of the builders’ association members want face time with you too, of course. You meet with—”
Suddenly, the room began to sway. The office looked much smaller, most of its free space engulfed by the large expanse of Theo’s desk. Sabrina could feel the triple latte she’d gulped down that morning eating away at the tender lining of her stomach.
I probably should have eaten that empanada …
She tried to keep her eyes trained on Theo. She could see a man’s lips moving, but they didn’t belong to the Hon. Rep.; Jackson’s face filtered into her mind with dizzying clarity, as did the decisive tone in his voice. I’ll want at least two children. We’ll start trying immediately, given your age. I’ll tell Theo that you’re resigning if you don’t want to do it yourself. Sabrina? Are you listening to me?
“Sabrina.” Theo clapped his hands to get her attention. “Earth to Chief!”
She still felt a little out of it from the intensity of the flashback. With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, she shoved the memory and all of the feelings it evoked back down into the unreachable recesses of her mind. Finally, she found her voice.
“No,” she said firmly.
Theo straightened himself in his chair and squinted at her. “The hell—? What do you mean, no?”
“No to the meetings. No to the Tides. No to everything.” Sabrina felt her mouth moving, her words directed from a part of her that had long been dormant. “If I’m in any way, shape or form forging public policy for the state of Texas, it’s going to benefit the people, not the Tide Brothers’ wallets, and I’m claiming ownership of it, too. I’ve just made a big decision, Theo.”
“When?” He looked perplexed.
“Thirty seconds ago.” Sabrina took the deepest breath she had ever taken and said, “I’m running for your seat in the next election.”
An amused smile played on his lips. “Good one, Chief. For a second there, I could have sworn you were serious. Joke’s on me, right? Now let’s get back to—”
“—I’m not joking, Hon. Rep.,” Sabrina cut in firmly. “I think you know me well enough to know that I’d never joke about something like this.”
The astonishment on Theo’s face was replaced with displeasure. He pushed his chair away from his desk slightly to survey her critically.
“I’m gonna shoot straight with you,” he said. “You’ve been ornery as hell lately — more ornery than me, and I’m the one getting phone calls from that viper, Terry Benold. Now you walk into my office and spout some nonsense about usurping my position in this legislature? What the hell happened in Iowa?”
“This has nothing to do with Iowa.” Sabrina didn’t know if that was entirely true, but even if it wasn’t, Theo had no business knowing about it. “And I’m not trying to usurp you, Theo. I’m going to put myself out there and let the voters decide if they want me to represent them.”
“Dear lord,” he groaned. “Next I suppose you’ll tell me that you’re jumping party lines.”
“Didn’t even cross my mind, actually,” she said, her voice still cool. “I’m running as an Independent candidate.”
“Say what—? An Independ—? Are you out of your ever-loving—?” At a loss for words, Theo opened and closed his mouth a few times, then shook his head in disbelief. “Excuse me, hello?” He gave her a look to indicate that she was clearly off her rocker. “You do know how politics work, right? Men like the Tide Brothers, they’re the ones who decide who can run for office, and I can assure you, they’ve already laid their bets on a known quantity. So who’s going to fund your war chest?”
“The people who want to see me get elected.” Sabrina realized how naïve the words probably sounded as soon as they were out of her mouth. “I’ll take my campaign grass roots. I have friends and neighbors who’ll support me. I have a lot of them, in fact. I’ll throw fundraisers. I’ll appeal to advocacy groups. I’ll go door to door if I have to. If I still don’t raise enough money, I’ll take out a second mortgage.”
“Just to be clear, you do not have my blessing to run for my seat,” Theo told her mindfully through gritted teeth.
She shrugged. “I didn’t expect you’d give it to me.”
“I guess that means we won’t be working together anymore.” He put on his downtrodden face, having decided to try a different tactic. “Oh, well. We had ten long years. Most marriages don’t even last that long.” He looked up at her hopefully. “You’ll at least stay until the end of session?”
Sabrina sighed. “Jesus, Theo. I’m not so cold that I’d leave my coworkers in a lurch.”
“Good, then.” He seemed relieved. “After that, we’ll say our goodbyes and go our separate paths. I wish you well in your future endeavors, Sabrina.” He stood up and extended his hand. Sabrina stepped forward and gave it a firm shake.
“I suppose I should say thank you,” she said, immediately suspicious. He was “validating” her feelings again. To what end?
“But about this whole Independent candidate idea of yours?” he went on, shaking his head. “You don’t have the reputation or the clout, Chief. You’ll never be able to pull it off.” He retracted his hand and flicked imaginary dust from the cuff of his jacket.
Up until that point, Sabrina had been ready to take back everything she had said. To tell the Hon. Rep. that she had been kidding around after all. But his final statement, punctuated with a gesture so cursory and dismissive, steadied her resolve.
She looked him square in the eye without blinking and said, “Yes, I will.”
She didn’t bother to wait around for his response. Instead, she turned around and strode toward the door.
“Sabrina, wait just a minute here!” Theo bawled from behind her.
But she was already out of the room. She gathered her coat and bag hastily before he could tag her on her way out of the office. Nothing more needed to be said. Not that she trusted herself to speak, at least not to Theo. She needed to be away from everything and everyone.
Legislators and their staffers loitered in the Annex talking. Committee hearings were just letting out for the day. Sabrina spotted Carlton and Moira trudging down the hall. She started to lift a hand to get their attention but stopped. She wasn’t in the mood to fill them in on what just went down in Theo’s office. Then she noticed that the
loiterers were staring into the fishbowl.
Was it—? Really? Surely it couldn’t be. There was nothing in the weather forecast that hinted at this. Sabrina walked up to the glass and marveled at the large flakes of snow that drifted down into the outdoor rotunda like feathers. If the weather held out all night, tomorrow would be one of Austin’s rare snow days.
She took the elevator to the main rotunda. Pushing open the heavy doors of the Capitol’s grand south entrance, she was greeted with a blast of frigid air that she hadn’t felt since she’d left Iowa. She pulled her coat around her tighter and walked down the steps that led to the majestic grounds. She paused and looked behind her. The sight of the snowfall cast against the dusky pink Capitol and a deep bluish-gray sky filled her with awe and melancholy.
Nola would have stood up and cheered, Sabrina thought. But she didn’t feel like patting herself on the back. She’d actually gone and done it. She’d tossed away an established career as Theo’s Chief of Staff as though it meant no more to her than one of his biodegradable cups. He had been right about a couple of things. She didn’t have his reputation or his clout. But she had announced that she was running for his seat, and she wouldn’t back down. Couldn’t. At least Carlton and Violetta would get behind her, and possibly Moira too.
Otherwise, she was on her own.
The Capitol building was rapidly emptying as people made a beeline toward the parking garage. Between the sound of doors opening and closing, she could hear the soft sound of snowflakes hitting her shoulders. Now the stuff was coming down faster, salting the grounds and its monuments white.
Sabrina couldn’t bear the thought of going home to an empty house one more time. Or watching television in Gage’s room with her cup of tea and a carton of whatever takeout food happened to suit her fancy. Most of the local restaurants would be closing up shop because of the inclement weather anyway.
A long-ago memory suddenly swept into her mind so fleetingly she had to cling to it tightly before it blew through her like the March wind. It was a mild spring day, and everyone in the Corners community had gathered at Ella’s to celebrate the Fontaines’ sixtieth wedding anniversary. Some of Grandma Ella’s former boarders, now elderly themselves, had even showed up. Nola had brought a large dish of her chicken and dumplings to contribute to the potluck dinner. The neighborhood children gave Ike and Ella handmade cards drawn in crayon and fistfuls of flowers plucked from their parents’ gardens.
At some point while everyone at the party was conversing, Sabrina remembered that Ike Fontaine had quietly reached over the table with a shaking hand and placed it over his wife’s protectively. Then the couple, white-haired, spectacled and weathered by time, had smiled and looked into each other’s eyes, still besotted.
Just like newlyweds.
Sabrina swallowed the lump that was lodged in her throat. Unless she planned to live to a healthy hundred, there would be no diamond anniversary for her. No husband to take her hand, gaze into her eyes and appreciate her shiniest facets, as well as her flaws.
She realized she’d been standing in front of a monument of a Texas Ranger for several minutes with the top of her head collecting snow. A trio of passing legislative staffers turned to look at her curiously, but she didn’t care. She fastened the top button of her coat to ward away the chill and walked toward the parking garage.
There were far better places to be on days like this.
She had to find just one.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The old house felt lonely.
Lonely, dark and cold.
Gage turned on a lamp and looked around him. For once, the place actually looked lived-in but not necessarily in a good way. Several empty cups with spent tea bags had collected on the coffee table, and Sabrina’s sweatshirts and running pants had been haphazardly flung over various pieces of furniture. The trash bin in the kitchen overflowed with takeout containers, and a few weeks’ worth of unopened mail had cascaded over the coffee table and onto the floor. The sheets and comforter on his bed were rumpled. A mascara-streaked pillowcase testified to many tearful nights.
Gage went back into the living room and began tidying up. As he picked up Sabrina’s gym clothes, he had a sudden vision of her sitting on the sofa cross-legged, meticulously opening her mail with that silly letter opener. He had ribbed and baited her, seduced her to the point where she seduced him. He never expected that a woman like Sabrina could dissolve; there had been a desolate tone in her voice when she called up the station. He hadn’t imagined it. Everything she’d said on air pointed to a single conclusion: she was lost without him.
It can’t be over.
But nothing explained why her behavior contradicted everything she’d told him. Or how she could share his bed, gaze at him with unmasked adoration, tell him she loved him, and then …
Vanish from his life like a practiced escape artist.
Gage took the dirty clothes to the laundry room and cleared the tables of mugs and cups. The sound of the dishwasher swooshing around broke the silence as he sifted through the mail to sort out the junk. When he came back inside from taking out the trash, he still felt chilly. He nudged the dial on the thermostat until the heat clicked on. He found it amusing that businesses and government agencies in Texas battened down the hatches at the first sight of snow flurries. Sabrina definitely wouldn’t still be at work, he reasoned; he’d heard the radio jock on the afternoon shift announcing various closings, including the entire Capitol complex.
He got out his cell phone and started to call Sebastian. Then he looked around him at the bleak, empty house. His nose detected the faint smell of lilies and incense, Sabrina’s perfume. Or maybe he was only imagining it. Screw it, he thought, putting the phone back in his pocket. If he were going to be confined to the house because of the crappy weather, he’d rather it be someone else’s house.
Anyplace but here.
**
Gage lifted his hand to knock on the front door and then hesitated. What the hell had he been thinking, showing up at the Parker-Cole house in the middle of a snowstorm without calling first? The large picture window was framed with multicolored outdoor lights. The twin strands blinked in tandem, a bright, cheerful counterpoint to his low, sustained gloom.
Only Molly and Sebastian would keep their Christmas lights up in February.
Nothing his friends could say or do could possibly cheer him up. Not now. He’d just have to work through it himself, like he always did. Gage retrieved his car keys from his coat pocket. He was halfway down the front steps when the front door flew open behind him.
“Good lord, Gage,” Molly said, her eyes wide with concern. “Come on in before you catch your death from the cold.”
“I thought maybe Sebastian would be home by now.” He glanced at the empty driveway. “Because he’s not, I’ll just be on my way. Just tell him I’ll call him—”
“—Oh, shush,” she interrupted staunchly, ushering him in by the arm. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Not in this weather. Sebastian had to give his teaching assistants a ride home, so it might be a while before he gets here.”
Gage stomped the crust of snow from his boots on the front mat and looked around him. The house had changed very little since he’d last been by. The huge juniper Christmas tree had been taken down, but there were still rolls of wrapping paper in the corner, and empty gift boxes were still strewn about. The coffee table was littered with numerous glass bowls filled with ribbon candy, chocolate kisses and mints. Molly wore jeans, her fluffy pink slippers and a terrible red sweater with Scottish Terriers on the front. It practically had gift-from-my-in-laws appliqued all over it.
“You need a good feeding up,” she said, giving the gap between his belt buckle and his jeans a critical look. “You could have told us you were back in town, you know.” Her tone was gently chiding, but he could hear the genuine worry in her voice.
“Don’t take it personally, Molly,” he told her, following her toward the kitchen. “Trust me, I
’m not good company for anyone right now.”
“That’s because you’ve been starving yourself at … wherever you’ve been hiding out. Now indulge me and sit.” Molly jerked her head at the table. “I’ll bring out a plate. We won’t say a word until after you’ve eaten. Agreed?”
Gage did as he was told and sat. A few minutes later, Molly came back in with the biggest platter of food he had ever seen. He hadn’t even thought about food until the savory smell of chicken and cornmeal dumplings wafted his way. Accompanying the main dish was a side of spiced baby carrots and some kind of complex green salad that involved goat cheese, walnuts and dried cranberries. He was definitely hungry. Ravenous, in fact. On first bite, his taste buds went into sensory overload. Damn. Food had never tasted so good.
Molly sat across from him, drinking her tea and watching him quietly. When he was finally finished, she cleared the table without a word and brought out two pieces of chocolate icebox pie.
“Now we can talk,” she told him, picking up her fork. “How come you didn’t call us when you got back in town?”
“I didn’t want to come around when I still felt like venting,” Gage told her. “I needed some time to get my thoughts under control.”
“Hmm. I don’t suppose some of those thoughts are of a certain mutual acquaintance of ours,” she responded dryly. He noticed that Molly didn’t mention Sabrina by name.
“Are we talking about the mutual acquaintance who can be a pain in the ass?” he asked.
“Yup, that would be the one,” Molly sighed. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, said acquaintance has wrapped herself in a hair shirt and disappeared deep into a cave of self-loathing. Where have you been staying, Gage?”
“Around,” Gage hedged, taking a bite of the pie. Like all of Molly’s confections, it was delicious. He didn’t want to think of the dismal South Congress motel room with dark carpeting so old and dirty he couldn’t ascertain its original color. “Did our, ah, mutual acquaintance happen to come by today?”
Molly sighed. “No, Gage. Sabrina’s been MIA for the past month too. And Sebastian’s right. I should stop meddling before both of you decide to stop speaking to us for good.” She laughed dryly. “I really thought that if I could get you and Sabrina under the same roof, you’d realize how wonderful you are together. How ridiculous was that?”
Something About You (Just Me & You) Page 39