Campaign For Seduction

by Ann Christopher

  Seeing the world in black and white was a natural side effect of being a man with strong convictions, and he couldn’t have come this far in his career without believing in a few core values.

  Sure, he was happy to work with his colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and he had a well-earned reputation in the Senate as a consensus builder, but he never lost sight of the big picture, or of the things that were important to his agenda for the country.

  He was always clear on where he stood, where he needed to be and how he needed to get there.

  Until it came to Liza Wilson, the woman who made him feel like a junior varsity basketball player who’d accidentally wandered onto the court with the Celtics team during the finals: overmatched, outwitted and in serious danger of getting hurt. Until Liza Wilson planted the unwelcome thought in his brain that there could be more to life than work.

  The situation was his damn fault. He should’ve ignored his attraction to the woman. Shouldn’t’ve dreamt up the whole misguided Inside Sitchroo thing. Sure as hell shouldn’t’ve selected Liza for the project. Shouldn’t’ve talked to her alone that night, shouldn’t seek her out, like he’d done at the pancake breakfast, and shouldn’t be straining his brain, right this very second, to manufacture a reason and opportunity to spend time alone with her again as soon as possible.

  Yeah, he shouldn’t. But he would. He couldn’t help himself.

  There was something irresistible about the keen intelligence in her cool dark eyes, something about her unexpected flashes of warmth that lured him like a bear to an open jar of marshmallow fluff.

  What would it take to make her warm up to him all the time? How could he get her to look at him the way she had that first night when they were alone?

  Why was he even asking himself questions like this?

  Because at some point during this interminable day he’d decided that they were going to be lovers.

  Crazy? Yeah. Risky? You betcha. But that’s what he was going to do.

  The competitor in him couldn’t resist a challenge or a puzzle. She was both. The strategist in him needed to tackle complex problems, and structuring an affair with a woman covering his campaign without blowing up both their careers was as tricky a situation as he was likely to get this side of a set of peace talks.

  The man in him just wanted her.

  Her smile, her warmth, her laughter. Her strength and intelligence.

  Most of all he wanted her willing body in his arms.

  With careful planning he could have it all. He was nothing if not a careful planner, and there was no time like the present to start.

  John headed to the back corner of the conference room, where two chairs sat facing each other in front of a blue backdrop with the lighting umbrella overhead. As usual, Takashi looked around and acted as if he cared that John had arrived. Liza, who was now stooped over her open laptop on the conference table, didn’t.

  Liza’s fierce insistence on ignoring him gave John a perverse satisfaction, and he had to stifle his Cheshire cat grin. He must really get to her if she had to work so hard to feign indifference whenever he showed up.

  “We’re starting at five-thirty tomorrow.” John shook Takashi’s hand. “Busy day.”

  “How nice.” Liza snapped her computer closed. “We get to sleep almost as late as the roosters do.”

  John and Takashi both laughed, to her apparent irritation. At last she looked up at John, her brown eyes flinty.

  “Are you ready, Senator? I’ve got some questions for you, and then I’d like to eat a whole yak because I’m starving.”

  “Liza’s a people person, Senator.” Takashi grinned. “Just so you know.”

  John gave her a grave look. “I’m sorry that covering my campaign is such an inconvenience for you, Liza.”

  “Oh, don’t worry.” She brightened a little and one corner of her mouth turned up in about a fourth of a smile. “I keep thinking about the Emmy I’ll probably win for campaign coverage, and that keeps me going. Are we ready?”

  John sat down and braced himself for a barrage of questions about his personal life, which the press had been hammering relentlessly. The interlude with the widow at the breakfast a while back had opened the whole can of worms and he hadn’t managed to get the lid back on, but he was trying. Not everything should be trotted out and used as a campaign issue when convenient. Some things were personal and sacrosanct, such as his memories of his wife.

  Even if the outlines of those precious recollections were growing vague.

  Fearing the worst, John squared his shoulders, then realized he was doing it and forced himself to relax. The last thing he wanted was to look constipated during this interview, even if every on-camera encounter with Liza did shorten his life by a year.

  Liza smiled her shrewd journalist’s smile at him and opened her mouth, and he felt as though he’d been caught squarely in the sights of a hunter’s rifle. But then, once again, Liza surprised him.

  “Senator, you come from a wealthy family and you had an Ivy League education. You’ve been dogged almost from the first moment you entered public life with complaints that you’re out of touch with the working-class people who form your voting base and—”

  John raised an eyebrow.

  “—this morning, you played water polo with your staff, which is a sport a lot of folks are unfamiliar with. On the other hand, you’ve met with factory workers all over the country and worked the grill at a pancake breakfast. Senator Fitzgerald’s chief of staff has already called the pancake breakfast a—and I’m quoting here, Senator—” Liza glanced down at her notes, then back up at him “—‘stunt designed to show the voters that he was born with a plastic spoon in his mouth rather than a platinum spoon.’”

  Plastic spoon? That was a new one. Pretty funny, actually.

  “Senator, is there anything you can do to get past these ongoing claims that you’re an elitist who’s out of touch with the common voter?”

  “Well, I don’t think there’s anything I can do to convince Senator Fitzgerald’s chief of staff that I’m not an elitist, so I’m not going to try to win that battle.” He shrugged. “But I don’t think there’s a kid anywhere who’s ever been in a pool and not tossed around the ball with his or her friends and tried to score a goal. You can call it water polo or you can call it tossing around a ball in the pool. It’s the same thing.”

  Liza, as usual, was not to be diverted. “True, but Senator, you had your own pool in your backyard when you grew up. Most people can’t say that. Most people don’t have servants or a prepaid higher education. Is there something to Senator Fitzgerald’s claims that she can better understand the problems of the working class?”

  “Liza, just because I had a pool growing up doesn’t mean I can’t look around and take an interest in working Americans. Going to a good college didn’t make me deaf, dumb and blind. I want every American to have the same sorts of privileges—for themselves and for their children—that I had growing up. That’s my bottom line.”

  Liza followed up by asking a couple of questions about his schedule for the week. John answered, still feeling tense, until he belatedly realized that Liza had no intention of asking him about his personal life or lack thereof.

  Why? Did a woman’s tender heart beat for him underneath all that journalistic armor? Was Liza respecting his zone of privacy?

  “Thanks, Senator.”

  Liza stood and gave him that distant smile, the one that always said she was finished with him and hoped she wouldn’t have to deal with him again anytime soon—the one that drove John out of his freaking mind. Turning away, she went back to her laptop.

  Irritation prickled John’s throat. Dismissed again. You’d think he’d be used to it by now, but no. Here he was, a United States Senator and presidential candidate, and it didn’t mean jack to Liza. He wondered if the sitting president would receive better treatment from her and decided he probably wouldn’t.

  At least he was in good company, eh?r />
  The enormous conference room was quieter now, with only Barbara off in a corner talking with Adena and Takashi making a phone call. Edging closer to Liza, John leaned a hip against the table and indulged his curiosity.

  “Why haven’t you asked me about my personal life?”

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 8

  L iza straightened. One side of her hair had slipped over her face, giving her that deliciously sexy, rumpled look, as though she’d just risen from bed after a long afternoon of making love. But her eyes were not the sultry, half-lowered eyes of a well-satisfied woman; they were the troubled eyes of a person who’d been asked a difficult question she preferred not to answer.

  “I haven’t seen the need.” Fidgeting, she smoothed her hair behind her ear and then checked her watch and tried to look bored. John wasn’t fooled for a minute. “I’m happy to ask you about it now, if you want. Since you seem so disappointed in my interviewing skills today.”

  So, she was sensitive to his feelings. A surge of satisfaction ran through him at the discovery that Liza Wilson did have a heart even if she kept it encased behind several layers of stone, barbed wire and cut glass.

  “You’ve never asked me about my wife, either,” he continued.

  She looked up, exasperation etched in every line of her pursed lips. “Maybe you’d like to submit a list of questions for me to ask you next time, Senator?…Then you can be officially in charge. How would that be?”

  “I think it’s worth noting that you’re not as prickly as you act.”

  Liza didn’t like this. Shooting a death ray or two at him from her narrowed eyes, she squared her shoulders. “I’m prickly enough, Senator.”

  Maybe, but he could deal with a few jabs from her spiny barbs when the payoff promised to be so spectacular. It was time for him to start working on the wall between them, remove a brick or two.

  If he opened up a little, maybe she would, too.

  “Camille’s been dead for a long time now,” he said softly. “It’s hard to picture her face sometimes.” Because he didn’t want to scare Liza, he left out the part about his memory of Camille receding faster the more time he spent with Liza.

  “Oh,” Liza said.

  He waited and his patience was rewarded when something wonderful happened: Liza edged closer to him, a look of concern and understanding in her eyes. And he couldn’t have been happier even if the party suddenly decided to forgo the nomination process and declare him the presumptive nominee right now.

  “That’s normal,” she told him. “It doesn’t mean that you’re a terrible person or that you didn’t love her.”

  “No?”

  “No. She didn’t want you to die with her, did she?”

  Of course not. Camille was the soul of generosity and had encouraged him to find someone else after she died. He’d just never wanted to.

  “I wasn’t a perfect husband,” he said, the understatement of the millennium.

  “I’m sure you weren’t, but imperfection from you is probably better than perfection from someone else.”

  They stared at each other while he struggled with the unruly urge to touch her, to announce his intentions outright. “I, ah,” he said, his thought process trailing well behind the words coming out of his mouth because of the way she was looking at him, “I don’t know what made me tell you that. You’re probably going to ask to be switched to Senator Fitzgerald’s campaign now. Then you’d only have to listen to her chatter about her cats.”

  Liza struggled for a minute. He could tell that she didn’t want to relax and lower her barriers against him, even if it was only for this one brief second, but in the end she couldn’t help it. Her grin, when it came, nearly knocked the breath out of him.

  He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  “I’m not big on cats,” she told him.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “What about you?” he asked, deciding to push his luck a little. “You’ve been divorced for a long time, right?”

  This topic stripped the smile right off her face. “Not long enough.”

  Careful, Warner. Don’t scare her off. “What happened?”

  Something bad judging by her scowl. Predictably, she tried to put the brakes on the whole conversation. “I’m sorry,” she said sweetly, “but when did we start playing twenty questions?”

  “I just told you something personal. This is only fair.”

  Worry lines creased her forehead as she gave him a wary once-over.

  “What are all these personal details leading to, Senator?”

  Oh, no. He wasn’t about to show his hand. Yet.

  “To a conversation, Liza. That’s where two people talk, information is exchanged and fun is periodically had. Maybe you’ve heard of the concept?…So what happened with your husband?”

  After another hesitation, she apparently decided the easiest thing to do was to answer his question and get it over with.

  “He cheated on me while I was on assignment. He had several affairs.”

  She told him with a bare minimum of inflection, but the naked pain in her eyes said it all. John wanted to kill the SOB for hurting her and for making John’s job in gaining her trust that much more difficult.

  On the other hand, if the idiot had been a great husband, then John wouldn’t be here with Liza now, so it was all good.

  Well…No. He’d still like to hurt the man. Maybe if he won the election, he’d sic the IRS on the punk for a thorough audit. That could be fun.

  “The last time with his boss’s wife,” Liza added.

  John reined in his temper, hard. “Ouch.”

  “Oh, don’t worry.” She flashed a smile vindictive enough to shrink the testicles of the nearest male wrongdoer. “I hired a detective, who got all kinds of pictures for me. You’d be surprised how generous my husband was with the settlement after that.”

  John wasn’t surprised; he’d expected this kind of painful fate for a man stupid enough to throw Liza away and foolish enough to underestimate her. He laughed.

  “Good for you.”

  Liza’s brow furrowed with open suspicion. “Don’t you want to stick up for the Universal Brotherhood of Men?”

  “I’d rather stick up for you. Tell me,” he said quickly, changing the subject to keep her off guard and talking for as long as possible, “what’re you doing during the break next week? It’s our last chance to relax before Super Tuesday. I’ll be spending time with my sister.”

  She blinked, looking unsettled by the sudden change of subject. “I, ah…I’ll be cooking dinner with my father at my house. He doesn’t get out much, and I’ve been traveling, so I want to spend some time with him.”

  “What’ll you cook?”

  “Chinese, probably. It’s his favorite. He’ll probably bake molasses cookies. They’re my favorite.”

  A violent pang of longing caught John unawares, hitting him right in the chest, and it wasn’t about the cookies. “Sounds like fun.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sure he’s looking forward to it.”

  “Yeah, well. If he remembers. I don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to leave the home to spend time with me, so I want to do it while we can.”

  John nodded and absorbed this information, filing it away for later. “All your travel must make that hard for you.”

  Liza gave him an accusatory scowl. “If only you presidential candidates would stay in Washington all the time and make my life easier.”

  “Don’t worry.” John laughed. “I plan to stay in Washington. You can look for me at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  “There’s that ego again.”

  The muttering didn’t fool him—not with the smile playing around her lips. “But what about when you get the anchor’s chair? Won’t you have to move to New York? What’ll you do with your father then?”

  A shadow crossed her face. “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

  “What about the travel? It won’t le
t up much, will it?”

  “No. I’ll still be on the road way too much.”

  John filed all of this away for later too. “Hmm.”

  The conversation trailed off. Some distant corner of his mind warned that he might be staring and, worse, might have some sort of goofy heart-on-his-sleeve expression on his face, but those things were beyond his control with Liza around.

  He could have stood like that forever, marveling at the thrill of having a plain-vanilla conversation with her without jockeying or bickering, when someone put a light hand on his arm, jarring him back to the real world.

  Damn.

  Why couldn’t people just leave him alone?

  Irritated, he looked around and saw his younger sister, Jillian, her brows quirked with bemusement. As always, her short black curls provided a pretty frame for her heart-shaped face, and her light brown eyes sparkled up at him.

  John was glad to see her, this interruption notwithstanding. She’d met up with the group after campaigning for him out west and had been making calls down the hall in his office.

  “John?” She spoke gently, as though waking a sleepwalker. “Should I come back later, or—?

  “You’re fine.”

  Jillian turned to Liza, her eyes wide with speculation and interest. Extending a hand, she smiled. “Liza, it’s so nice to finally meet you. I’ve watched you for years.”

  They shook hands and John belatedly remembered his manners. “Liza, this is my sister—”

  “Jillian Warner Taylor.” Liza shot him a tart look. “First lady of Virginia. Married to the governor, whom she met when they were both in law school. I’ve heard of her once or twice, Senator.”

  Jillian, who’d never met a person who didn’t become an instant friend, laughed. “I like her, John.”

  “Great,” John muttered.

  Liza pursed her lips at him before turning to Jillian. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’d better grab Takashi and get out of here. We start early tomorrow.”

  She left. Jillian stared after her, looking speculative. Finally, she turned to John and the knowing light in her eyes was so bright that he almost wanted to reach for sunglasses.