I was fishing, but it was the best I could do without coming out and asking who he had on the Clayton campaign.
Sean’s eyes gleamed. “You were wrong about him, by the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is seeing someone.”
Dread filled me. This was bad—very, very bad. “Excuse me?” I squeaked.
“I told you there was dirt there. We got it.” He grinned like a man who’d just bagged big game. “You’ll never believe who it is. Guess we now know the real reason behind the broken engagement. She was probably doing Clayton the whole time. It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.”
I blinked, my brain struggling to comprehend the words coming out of his mouth. “What are you talking about?”
“Take a look. Will Clayton and Blair Reynolds. If that’s not fucking political royalty, I don’t know what is. It’s a smart move for someone like him; Senator Reynolds can make his career. Not to mention Blair’s fucking gorgeous.”
I walked behind his desk, staring at the Capital Confessions page on his screen. The top headline was a picture of Will and Blair, his arms around her, her body plastered against his, with the headline—
A New Camelot? Blair Reynolds And Will Clayton In Love
I stared at the screen, my body growing numb as I took the mouse and scrolled down. There were more pictures—images of them sharing a cozy lunch . . . him holding her hand . . . of them staring at each other, love in their eyes.
My heart fucking broke.
The picture quality wasn’t great, but it was enough. I read the post, each word a knife stabbing me in the heart.
Apparently they’d shared a pizza, drinking and talking for over an hour. Witnesses said they’d picked a secluded table and spent the lunch in hushed conversation. They looked perfect together. She was blinding in her beauty—delicate, classy, everything I could never be. Will looked so protective . . . so golden.
My eyes blurred with tears. He’d tried to talk to me about her yesterday; he’d just never mentioned that they were more than friends, that he loved her. Maybe he was the reason she’d broken her engagement. The wedding was, what, over two weeks ago? Right around the time he’d met me.
And the whole time he’d been in love with her.
“I have to go.”
“Okay, but I need you for another week or so. It’ll take me a bit to find someone to cover you.”
“Sure.” I had to get out of there before I broke down in tears. I left his office, shoving my sunglasses on my face, my head bent as I walked toward the elevator. With each step, I came that much closer to losing it.
It was a smart play for Will. An alliance with Reynolds would take his career to new levels. And Blair was the perfect person to be seen on his arm. She was as close to royalty as you could get in America. She was used to the attention, to the media pressure, knew her way around campaigns. Besides her broken engagement, I’d never seen her take a wrong step. She was flawless. Perfect.
I walked out to the street, my heart racing, pain filling me as the first tears began to fall. No wonder he’d been so accepting when I’d said I wanted time. Finding out who my father was, my connection to Blair, probably hit too close to home.
Blair was his future; I was the girl he fucked in the bathroom at work.
• • •
I’d stopped crying by the time I got to the office. Part of me wanted to go home, put on sweats, get drunk, and eat a carton of ice cream, but fuck if I was going to fall apart over this. There was no crying in politics.
New plan: I was going to do my job, tell Will I knew about him and Blair after work, and end this thing. And then at the end of the day I would go home, put on sweats, get drunk, and eat a carton of ice cream.
My resolve wavered a bit as I walked through the front doors, taking the elevator up to the main floor. I didn’t know how I would handle facing him without breaking down. I couldn’t cry at work, couldn’t risk my future more than I already had. It’d been a mistake to fall for him, to get involved with him, a mistake to think things could be different.
It was still early, early enough that hopefully I could avoid seeing too many people before I got to my desk. I wanted to hide out in my cubicle, needed the privacy and sanctuary of those walls to shelter me from prying eyes.
The elevator pinged and I stepped off at my floor . . . and froze.
Mitch walked toward me, talking to the man beside him. “He should be in soon. You can wait, if you’d like.”
I didn’t hear the man’s response, didn’t hear anything. My entire world stopped at the sight of my father walking through the office, talking to Mitch. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. They were on a straight path toward me, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Mitch looked up, his gaze meeting mine, and he stopped in his tracks. Horror filled me as my father’s attention shifted from Mitch to me. We all stood there, staring at each other like deer caught in the headlights. It was the first time I’d come face-to-face with him since that day at the Hay-Adams, thirteen years ago. I’d always been careful to avoid having to speak with him, careful to avoid catching more than glimpses of him—and now this.
The office was quiet, but there were still people here. I couldn’t afford to make a scene, couldn’t afford for the whispers to start. So I plastered on my fakest “don’t fuck with me” smile. I nodded at Mitch and walked past them.
My legs shook as I walked the rest of the way to my desk, barely resisting the urge to turn around.
Why was he here? Was he here because of Will and Blair? Did he recognize me? Did he know I was his daughter?
I hated him, and I had too low of an opinion of him to really care what he thought, and yet he was my father. And he’d looked through me as though I was invisible.
I sunk into my chair, putting my elbows onto my desk, holding my head in my hands. What else was waiting for me today? Locusts? A biblical plague?
We’d had sort of a truce in place—at least I had. I stayed away from political firms affiliated with my father, made sure to keep that part of my life separate.
Why would he show up here? Did he know I worked here? Did he even fucking care?
“Are you okay?”
I looked up. Mitch stood in the entryway of my cubicle, concern in his gaze.
His voice lowered. “I didn’t know he was coming today. He just stopped by looking for Will. I would have warned you if I’d known.”
I shook my head like it was nothing, like my insides weren’t a jumbled-up mess. “No need. I’m fine.”
“You really do have steel balls, don’t you?”
I laughed despite the horribleness of today. “God, I hope not.”
His expression sobered. “If you need a moment, you could run and pick some stuff up from the printer. I was going to send someone else, but you look like you could use some fresh air.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” He hesitated. “I saw Capital Confessions this morning.”
I didn’t have a response for that one.
“For what it’s worth, I think it’s a bullshit story. You know him. He wouldn’t do that. It’s not his style.”
I was close to tears again. I could deal with jokes, could handle casual conversation. I couldn’t talk about the thing currently splintering through my heart. I couldn’t talk about Will. My father was an old wound, one I’d dealt with years ago. But this thing with Will . . . I couldn’t brush it off. Not yet.
“I’m fine.”
Mitch sighed. “Go to the printer.”
“I’m fine.”
Mitch leaned in closer to me. “We don’t need a scene here. Go to the printer. Get yourself together. Give me a chance to get ahold of Will.”
Fuck. “Fine.”
“Good girl.”
• • •
I came back to the office an hour later feeling a little bit calmer. The fresh air had helped. Not seeing W
ill helped more. Now I just had to keep my composure for the rest of the day.
I kept going back and forth on whether I wanted to confront him or not. Sad disappeared somewhere between leaving the office and buying myself a donut on the way to the printer. Now I was just pissed off and spoiling for a fight. And yet part of me didn’t even want to give him that.
I walked back into the office, my head ducked, dropping the mailers off on Mitch’s desk. I didn’t see Will anywhere. I tried to remember his schedule, if he had any morning meetings or anything, but I came up blank.
I went over my mantra in my head. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth it.
I sank down into my chair, staring at my computer screen, and caught sight of a muffin sitting on my desk, a Starbucks coffee next to it.
I saw red.
Chapter Twenty-three
Rumor has it there’s discord at the Clayton campaign offices. Was it insults that were thrown around? This blogger has it on good authority it was actually baked goods.
—Capital Confessions blog
Will
My office door slammed open.
Jackie walked in, dressed to kill in a red dress and heels. I grinned. “Hey—”
A muffin sailed past my head, nearly grazing me, hitting the wall behind my desk.
“Fuck you and your fucking muffin.”
My jaw dropped. “What?” I bent down, picking the muffin up off the floor, turning back to face her. Pissed off would have been a mild way to describe her expression. The fury in her eyes was ball-shriveling.
“Is everything okay?” I walked around my desk, moving toward her, muffin in hand, feeling like I was in a bizarre comedy.
Who threw muffins?
“Don’t touch me.” She pulled away from me. “Don’t you ever touch me again. I know exactly what you’ve been doing. I’ve figured out your game. You pretend to be this nice, trustworthy guy, and in reality you’re just another asshole lying to get what you want.” She moved forward, shoving me slightly against the desk. “I can’t fucking believe I trusted you after everything.”
I grabbed onto her wrists, holding her in place, struggling to keep up with the words coming out of her mouth. I couldn’t catch up.
“What’s going on?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Are you really going to ask me that? You know perfectly well what’s going on.”
I stared at the baked good sitting on my desk. “Are you pissed I bought you a muffin?”
“This isn’t about the fucking muffin.”
Frustration filled me. “Well, you’re the one who came into my office raving about a muffin, so how the hell am I supposed to know what you’re pissed about? I’m not a mind reader, Jackie. When I left your place on Saturday I thought things were okay between us. What happened?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You haven’t seen Capital Confessions or talked to Mitch?”
I shook my head, panic filling me. “Did they leak your name? God, I’m so sorry. I know it’s horrible, but we’ll fix it—”
“They didn’t leak my name.” She stalked toward my desk, moving over to the computer. I walked over to where she stood, watching while she pulled up the Capital Confessions site . . . and froze.
My lunch with Blair was all over the front page.
Shit.
“Do you still think I’m pissed about a muffin?”
I’d planned on telling her about the lunch, planned on convincing her to give Blair a shot. I’d hoped to try, at least. By the look on her face, my odds seemed pretty dismal.
“I was going to tell you.”
“Really? When?”
“Tonight.” I ran a hand through my hair, struggling to fight the rising fear that I’d betrayed her trust.
“Bullshit. You’re just saying that now that you’ve been caught.”
“No. I was going to tell you tonight. I wanted to talk to you about it.”
“Talk to me about what?” Her voice cracked. “How we can fuck on the side, as long as Blair doesn’t find out? How we have to be discreet, because nothing can screw up your relationship with your future father-in-law? Save it. Believe me, I know exactly what being a political mistress entails, and I want no part of it.”
I stared at her, flabbergasted, each word out of her mouth confusing me even more.
“What are you talking about?”
She glared at me. “I’m talking about the fact that the whole time you’ve been fucking me, you’ve apparently been fucking my perfect half sister on the side.”
“I have not been fucking Blair!” I didn’t mean to shout, but I’d lost control of this conversation, of her, long ago. “Sit down.”
“You can’t just order me around.”
“Yeah, I think I can. Last time I checked, you do kind of work for me. Sit down.”
“No.”
I closed my eyes, the beginnings of a migraine coming on. “Jesus, Jackie. Give me a fucking second. Sit down. If you want to have a discussion about this like adults, then fine. But I’m not going to sit here and listen to you yell at me if you won’t give me a chance to defend myself.”
“There’s no defense to what you did.”
“I didn’t have sex with Blair! I’ve never had sex with Blair. I’ve never even wanted to. Not even a little bit.”
She pointed at the computer. “The pictures suggest otherwise.”
I sank down in my desk chair, burying my head in my hands. “She’s a friend. She’s going through a rough time and I tried to make her feel better. Nothing happened at lunch. Come on. You work on campaigns; you know how this works. They wanted a story so they chose pictures that made it look like there was more to my lunch with Blair.”
“I don’t believe you.”
That was the problem. I saw the doubt and anger in her eyes, and I didn’t know how to erase them. And it pissed me off that she could think I was that guy, that I was capable of cheating on her or lying to her.
Maybe it had been stupid to have lunch with Blair in the first place; maybe I should have run it by Jackie first. I could understand her being mad about the lunch, but I couldn’t understand her questioning who I was or how I felt about her. I couldn’t understand her not trusting me.
I met her gaze across the desk. She sank down into the chair opposite mine, staring down at the floor.
“It had to be her.” Jackie looked up at me, pain in her voice, hurt in her eyes. “Maybe I could have handled seeing those pictures if it were someone else; maybe we could have worked through that. But not her. Not Blair. My father was here earlier. Did you know that?”
Shit. “No, I didn’t. Did you see him?”
“Yeah, I did.”
I hated that he’d come here, hated that I hadn’t been here for her.
“Why do you think he was here? Do you think it was a coincidence? Or do you think he saw Capital Confessions, and found a chance to gain some political capital and create a dynasty of his own? He never had a son, what better than to marry you to his perfect daughter? The one he actually acknowledges.”
“Who gives a shit why he was here? Nothing he can say is going to change a damn thing. Do you think I’m such a coward that I would let someone tell me who to love?”
She laughed, the sound broken, hollow, a shell of the laugh I adored.
“I think he can be very persuasive when he wants to be.” She rose to her feet. “You’re a smart guy, Will. A smart guy with a big future. You’re not going to throw that away because we’re good in bed. I wouldn’t either.” Her voice cracked, and I watched, horrified, as a tear slid down her cheek. “It doesn’t matter if there was something between you and Blair. It doesn’t matter, because the reality is, Blair’s your future. She’s your ticket to getting ahead.”
“It fucking matters to me.” My jaw clenched as anger and hurt wound their way through me like twin snakes. “It matters to me whether the woman I love thinks I’m some kind of asshole who would lie and cheat to get ahead. It matters to me that you
’ve held my fucking heart in your hand for weeks now, and you don’t even know who the hell I am. So don’t tell me it doesn’t fucking matter, Jackie. Maybe nothing matters to you, but don’t you dare act like it doesn’t matter to me.”
She went pale, the blood draining from her face with every angry word I hurled at her. I struggled for calm, trying to harness the emotions raging through me. The quieter she got, the angrier I became.
“I’m sick of this. Sick of you freaking out, of you trying to pretend there’s nothing between us. Sick of you treating me like I’m just some guy you screw around with, like I’m your fucking father. I’m not your father, and you’re not your mother, and it’s time for you to grow up, and stop acting like this is simply history repeating itself. It’s not. I love you. I’m not another thing for you to fucking compartmentalize—sex with Will, fine. Anything else, not a chance in hell.”
She let out a strangled noise, sinking back down into the chair.
I couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn it off. She sat there, putting this bullshit label on me, every word another knife in my heart. I loved her—and what? If she loved me, then she would trust me. She would know I’d sooner cut off my own arm than betray her.
Any hope I had of her loving me back died with the accusation in her eyes. She never even gave me a fucking chance. Maybe it was my fault for letting her set the tone of our relationship from the beginning, my fault for not trying harder to make it more.
I’d been arrogant; I’d assumed she was falling in love with me just like I was falling in love with her. I’d never considered the possibility that maybe I was someone she could never love. Someone she would never trust enough to let inside.
I shoved my hand in my trouser pocket, trying to get my temper in check, struggling to figure out what to do next. But my hand grazed the velvet box in my pocket, and the last nail drove into the coffin.
“Do you want to know where I was this morning?”
She didn’t answer me. She just sat there, her face pale.
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