Each Precious Hour

by Gayle Wilson

  “I ate with Whitt.”

  “I see.” That sounded like what some idiot on TV would say, he thought. I see. What the hell did it mean? All he was sure of was the surge of jealousy her comment had excited.

  Whitt was McCord’s campaign manager, she’d told him. Just a business meeting probably, but Jared almost asked if he should be jealous. Robin would have laughed, because he had no right to be jealous, of course. No right to question whom she was with. No rights at all where she was concerned. Not anymore.

  “How about dinner?” he asked, bracing himself for refusal. She didn’t disappoint him.

  “Actually...I’m pretty snowed under,” she said. “We’ve got a lot to do between now and New Year’s Eve.”

  He nodded, not trusting himself to make a verbal response, after the plural pronoun. “We’ve got a lot to do...”

  It was obvious that as far as Robin was concerned, Jared was the past. She had moved on to other things. Maybe other people. That was something he needed to get used to.

  “Are you going home for Christmas?” she asked softly.

  She sounded as if she gave a damn. She had gone home with him last year. He had thought it was serious enough that maybe she ought to meet his family. That they ought to meet her.

  “Not this year,” he said. No details. No explanation about not being able to face his folks. Because they would ask about Robin. About his job. And he had no answers about either.

  She nodded, her eyes holding his. There were more questions in them, but neither of them said anything else for a few minutes. The strain was awkward and somehow sad.

  “Thank you for rescuing me,” she said finally.

  “I’d like to see you again.” He couldn’t seem to keep his mouth from saying the things he knew would get his teeth kicked in. Figuratively kicked in. And maybe not his teeth.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I told you why.” He had. He didn’t see any point in saying it again. He loved her, and he had just told her so.

  “But that doesn’t just...make it all right,” Robin said. “We both know that. Nothing has changed.”

  The words hung in the air between them. There was something strange about them. The feeling was like the one he got with explosives. A prickle of unease. The knowledge that there was something going on below the surface. This was more subtle, but whatever was wrong with those words seemed to be reflected in her eyes. Nothing has changed. Except in his case...

  “What are you doing for Christmas?” he asked.

  And he knew, when she hesitated a long, slow heartbeat before she answered, that she didn’t really have any plans.

  “I’m not sure,” she said finally.

  “Spend it with me.”

  Begging? Maybe. He supposed that depended on your perspective. Or on your lack of pride.

  “What’s the point?” she asked, her eyes pained.

  “Think about it,” he urged. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  And she was. He could see that in her eyes as well.

  At last she nodded. “I’ll think about it,” she said. And then spoiled her reluctant agreement by adding, “I have a meeting, and I’m already late. I really have to go.”

  “It’s okay. Thanks for the doctoring.”

  Her eyes found the cut. “I didn’t even put a bandage on that. Want me to?”

  He shook his head. “You think anyone will believe I nicked myself shaving?” he asked, smiling at her. Wanting her so much he ached again.

  “Probably not.”

  Another silence. Stretching too long. He could hear the maid moving around in the bathroom.

  “I’ll call you,” he offered, half expecting Robin to tell him not to bother, in spite of her agreement to think about spending Christmas with him.

  “I’ll be in and out,” she said. He drew a breath, feeling despair until she added, her voice very soft, “Leave a message if I’m not here.”

  “Okay.”

  He turned, about to step out of the door she’d been holding open since the maid had come in. Instead, acting on impulse, he bent and kissed her forehead. It was quick, dispassionate, almost brotherly. More a gesture of thanksgiving that she was all right than a come-on or an appeal to memory.

  He was surprised when she leaned forward, laying her cheek against his chest. Her breasts rested against the front of his body and her hands gripped his forearms before she stepped back, breaking the unexpected contact. She didn’t meet his eyes again. Hers seemed focused on the buttons on the front of his shirt.

  He waited, long enough that if she wanted to say anything else, she could. And then he stepped out into the hall. He didn’t look back, but it was a few seconds before he heard the door close behind him. A few more before he remembered to take another breath. He could still smell the familiar, evocative scent of her perfume.

  “...THE ARRANGEMENTS for the senator’s speech to the veterans’ conference, Robin?”

  Whitt, Robin realized, jerked out of the fog of memory that kept intruding on the staff meeting. She tried to reconstruct his sentence from the few words of it she’d heard. Something about Uncle Jim’s appearance at the Vietnam veterans’ convention.

  “I’m working on that,” she said, hoping her noncommittal comment would cover anything he had asked.

  She hadn’t been able to get her mind wrapped around any of the things she was supposed to be thinking about today. And she knew why. It kept tracking back to the events of this morning. Not so much to the near riot, although that had made the evening news, so everyone had wanted to talk about it at this late-night strategy session. She had thought more about the aftermath. About Jared. About the things he had said.

  Things like “I love you.” Somehow, although she had always known deep inside that he did, it was the last thing she’d expected him to tell her. Jared had a hard time with words, a problem with expressing what he was feeling. Most of the time she had had to figure out what he was trying to tell her from all those subtle, masculine clues. Body language. Expression. Questions he chose not to answer. What was in his eyes.

  This morning she hadn’t had to. He had asked her out to dinner, and he had asked her to spend Christmas with him. Again she found herself wondering if that meant he was thinking about doing what she had begged him so often to do. Or if he thought eventually she would give in, as she had the night—

  “Working on it?” Whitt repeated, apparently in disbelief. “I thought we had agreed that the arrangements would be completed by today. We have a lot to do between now and New Year’s Eve.”

  Robin ignored the criticism. “I’m not sure the timing on that is such a good idea.”

  “On the conference?” Whitt asked, puzzled.

  “On the millennium thing. Doing the kickoff speech on New Year’s Eve.”

  There was a murmur of surprise. Or maybe protest. The other two members of the senator’s small and newly organized inner circle were listening, of course. Robin couldn’t tell which of them had made the noise. She didn’t release Whitt’s eyes to look at the others, but she was aware that tension had suddenly moved into what had been a very low-key, end-of-a-long-day meeting.

  She really wasn’t concerned about what anyone else thought. None of them had been in the middle of that mob this morning. They hadn’t seen what she had seen, except on the news, and those few shots couldn’t possibly convey the anger or the weirdness of the demonstrators. Not like being in the midst of them had.

  “Moving the country forward into the new millennium is the keystone of the entire campaign,” Emory said. “That whole image conveys change, new ideas, a fresh approach, an anti-status quo, anti-Washington establishment. And best of all, it does that without our having to say a word about any of them.”

  “The new millennium also says ‘end of the world as we know it’ to a lot of people,” she warned.

  “Maybe to the kooks,” Katie Chang interjected, “but it’s a good gimmick. And we thought of it first.” She shook her
head, glossy black hair brushing her shoulders. “You don’t toss an established theme because a few people pervert its meaning.”

  “I just hate to see Uncle Jim connected to that fear. And especially now. Especially on top of the other.”

  “What happened in Vietnam has not hurt the senator,” Paul Farley said emphatically. “We haven’t come up with one poll that indicates damage, not to his credibility or to his popularity.”

  “No one’s attempted to exploit the issue yet,” Whitt warned. “They will. Before this is over, someone will. Last ditch shot maybe, but it could still have an effect down the road.”

  “Most people think what McCord did was the right thing under the circumstances. The brave thing. That old leadership thing.”

  Katie’s voice was only the slightest bit sardonic, but the fact that it was at all bothered Robin. Jim McCord had killed his team leader for the best of reasons: to protect the men under him from someone who had lost his sense of direction, maybe even lost his mind, in the terror and madness of that war-torn jungle.

  In Robin’s opinion, it really had been the right thing to do. To save lives. That old leadership thing. She had been the one who had first talked publicly about McCord being a man who was able to make the hard decisions. The kind of leader who could handle any crisis. Hearing Katie mock her own thinking, and indirectly mock McCord, rankled.

  “Vietnam didn’t hurt Clinton,” Paul reminded them.

  “There’s still the possibility this could come back to haunt us,” Whitt said. “A lot of people have very strong feelings about the war. Clinton was somehow able to overcome them.”

  “Charisma,” Katie suggested. “Looks. Sex appeal.”

  “And very good spin,” Whitt added softly. “Which is your job, Robin. At least it is right now. When McCord declares, the campaign will attract someone who has more experience in media relations. Until then, we do just what we’ve been doing.”

  “It’s not Vietnam I’m worried about,” Robin said. “If you had seen those people—”

  “Is it possible you’re overreacting?” Paul interrupted. “Because you were...personally involved?”

  Was it? Entirely possible, Robin admitted, remembering her sense of panic and her desperation to get her baby out of that mob. It was ironic that somehow in the midst of that, the baby she carried had become more real to her than it had ever been before. It had finally become a baby, she realized. Her baby. And Jared’s. Someone to be protected and to be loved.

  Until this morning her pregnancy had been a problem to be solved. A series of problems. What was she going to tell Whitt about the coming campaign? What should she tell Uncle Jim about why she couldn’t marry Jared? The new millennium might be approaching, but Jim McCord had very old-millennium ideas about right and wrong. About personal conduct and responsibility. And about babies being born out of wedlock.

  And of course, there was also the greater problem of what to do about telling Jared. Robin had even worried that he would think she had deliberately planned this pregnancy as a way to force him to give up his job. She hadn’t, of course.

  It had instead been the result of a failure to renew her prescription for birth control pills when she knew she’d have no need for them. Not until she had ended up in New York four months ago, in Jared’s apartment, back in his arms. All definitely unplanned.

  Until the riot she had managed to keep the thought of baby almost at a distance, the whole notion a little removed from reality. Suddenly, in the midst of that mindless melee, this small life had become the very center of her world. At the same moment she had made that realization, Jared had shown up. Had those things combined to make her overreact? Was it hormones, stress, memories, desire? Certainly enough to throw her judgment off.

  She recreated the bearded man’s face in her mind’s eye. His anger. His warning. And then the face of the man who had struck out at her before he even turned to see who had touched him. Avamore’s religious fanaticism. The shouts of the protesters. The hate messages on the signs. Those weren’t the products of her emotions. Those people were real. And they were terrifying.

  “I didn’t overreact,” she said hotly. “These people just...don’t seem to be normal. Their view of the world is distorted. And McCord has become a lightning rod for all the fringe movements connected with the coming millennium. They’re at every speech he makes. And their numbers have been growing.”

  “They don’t seem to bother him,” Whitt said.

  “Nothing bothers him,” Robin admitted. “Not if he thinks he’s doing the right thing. But it seems to me our job should be to protect him from the crazies. Not to encourage them. Not to attract them with this countdown to the millennium deal.”

  Her voice had grown impassioned as she argued. Of course, she had a more personal stake in this than any of the others. This was her family being threatened. Just as it had been her baby’s life in danger this morning.

  “We all agreed to tie the senator’s kickoff to the new millennium. The senator’s decision to be here on New Year’s Eve made that a natural. The TV and radio spots have already been written. The signs have been printed.”

  As far as Whitt was concerned, money would be a deciding factor. He controlled the campaign purse strings. He knew what they had raised and what they could afford to spend. Robin didn’t have any idea about that, of course. Uncle Jim had told her that they were doing very well, however. Texans had deep pockets, especially McCord’s wealthy rancher friends, and he had a lot of those. And people were excited about the campaign.

  Maybe that was due to Whitt’s idea. To make McCord the symbol of change. Like the millennium. The end of the old order and the beginning of the new. It had sounded wonderful.

  “I still think we ought to be paying more attention to these people than we have been. We should ask the FBI to check out their leaders,” she suggested. “At least those that keep showing up everywhere Uncle Jim does.”

  “I can talk to the bureau,” Emory said.

  “I think we’re blowing this out of proportion,” Katie said dismissively, laying her pen down on her notebook with more force than was necessary. “Way out of proportion,” she repeated.

  “You weren’t there,” Robin said. “You didn’t see them.”

  “If you feel this way, maybe you shouldn’t have been there, either,” Katie suggested.

  “Katie,” Whitt said warningly.

  Katie’s eyes swung briefly to Whitt’s face and then came back to Robin’s. “I’m just saying that if you aren’t sure about all this...” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’m sure about my uncle’s campaign. And sure he’s the best candidate. I’m not sure about this particular theme we’ve tied him to. It’s dangerous. I had first-hand experience with how dangerous this morning.”

  “We’ve staked our claim to the slogan,” Whitt reminded her. “I think we’d be foolish to discard an idea that seems to have caught on. However...” he went on after a small pause “...if anyone else feels the way Robin does, now’s the time to say so.”

  His eyes considered each of them in turn—the select members of the McCord inner circle. At least at this point. If they did well in the early primaries, the staff would grow with the addition of a lot of experienced people. People who would be needed to carry the campaign forward to the November elections. And if they didn’t do well...

  Then they wouldn’t need anyone. It would all be over, and she and Jim McCord could go back to Texas. Robin wasn’t sure right now that that would be such a terrible thing.

  “I like what we’ve done,” Katie said. “It hits all the right notes.”

  “Our polling shows the concept is popular,” Paul said, referring to his notebook. “Moving into the new millennium. A man with the leadership skills to take us there. A man of courage who can make the hard decisions that will have to be made. That was your spin, Robin. But all of it seems to resonate with the voters. I think we’d be making a mistake to change the emphasis now. Not
this close to the speech.”

  “It seems you’re outvoted, Robin.”

  “Don’t take those people lightly,” she warned, recognizing that she had lost.

  “I’ll talk to the bureau,” Whitt promised again, smiling at her. “And considering the events of the last few weeks, things couldn’t be going better right now. Don’t worry so much.”

  Don’t worry... Following his advice wouldn’t be easy, Robin thought. However, right now she had enough personal problems without taking on responsibilities that quite rightly belonged to someone else. She would have to leave security concerns to those who knew more about them than she did. And in all honesty, that probably included the other three people who were seated around this table.

  She needed to concentrate on what Whitt had asked her to do: put the best possible face on Jim McCord’s recently exposed past when she dealt with the press. And while she was doing that, her only assigned job, she also needed to figure out what she was going to do about Jared. And about their baby.

  Chapter Four

  “You look tired,” Jared said. He was sitting in the chair in her room, thumbing through the entertainment guide the hotel had provided. He had looked up when she opened the door.

  “Thanks,” Robin said. “How very nice to hear.” She shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the closet. “And if one more person tells me I look tired...”

  She stopped, too exhausted to come up with anything witty to threaten him with. She wasn’t sure she was up to dealing with Jared. Apparently, she wasn’t going to have a choice, and that made her angry. After all, she had told him that she was going to be tied up tonight.

  “How did you get in?” she asked, not hiding her displeasure.

  “The maid remembered me from this morning. And I showed her my badge. Guess she figured since I’m a cop and since I was in your room then, letting me in now was harmless.”

  Jared was wearing charcoal slacks and a blue sweater that emphasized the darkness of his skin and eyes. She had always liked Jared in blue.

  “So who else told you you look tired?” he asked.