by Melanie Rawn
“We smoke the same cigars,” Evan said serenely, with a nod at Cam’s shirt pocket, from which protruded two sleek cylinders of tobacco, each circled by a Cohiba label with its distinctive solid red O. “And we like hugging the same girl.”
“Nice work, Freckles,” Cam remarked. “He’s more than just a pretty face.”
“Be nice to your elders, sonny,” Holly admonished. “We’ve got four years on you.” She considered him with a frown. “Although to judge by your hairline, you’re working on catching up. Who’s running you ragged these days?”
He shrugged. “Just the usual Beltway Follies.”
“Cam is a constitutional lawyer,” Holly explained. “But don’t hold it against him. He’s really kind of likable—in a frenetic, unraveling-even-as-we-speak sort of way.”
“A ringing endorsement,” her cousin shot back. “You forgot to mention that I make the meanest julep north of Atlanta, I’m loved by children and dogs and dirty old ladies, and Republicans crawl into corners and whimper when they hear my name.”
Evan said, “And you have a personal interest in watching Rausche Junior give a concession speech in November.”
Watching them react, he reflected that they really didn’t look much alike. Having seen photographs of both Flynn sisters and their husbands, it was obvious that whereas with Holly the sturdy McClures had dominated, Cam’s finer bones were directly traceable to his mother. Bella had the same light build. Neither cousin had inherited the aggressive jawline of the McNichol kin. What they shared was the hair, the eyes, the scattering of freckles, and the ruler-straight nose. At the moment, they also shared an imitation of Thumper, astonished by the headlights of an approaching semi.
Evan smiled his sweetest smile. “More than just a pretty face,” he reminded Holly, and toasted her with his Scotch.
“Geeze,” Cam muttered. “Ya think? Where’d you find him, eBay?”
“Under a rock in Central Park.”
“How do you know that I hate Rick?” Cam demanded of Evan. “How do you even know that I know Rick?”
“I know that Rick knows you. He said so a few weeks ago. His exact words were, ‘You better tell that cousin of your wife’s to mind his manners if he comes back around here, Mr. New York City Liberal. I don’t have no soft spot for queers.’ ”
“To which you replied . . . ?” Holly prompted—knowing him, knowing there was more.
“That I hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting my wife’s cousin, but if he is in fact gay, Rick’s soft spots are the last thing he’d be interested in.”
Cam nodded slowly. “Okay, Holly, it’s official. You can keep him.”
“I thought you might like him,” she said. “Where are you staying? And you’d better say ‘With you at Woodhush, Holly darling,’ or—”
“With you at Woodhush, Holly darling,” he singsonged obediently. “After I repack my suitcase, that is. I’m about fifty yards over and three flights up. Room 314.”
Evan couldn’t help a startled blink. “You’re actually staying here?”
“No,” Holly said, “he’s staying with us.” To her cousin: “Don’t mind him, he thinks this place is creepy.”
“As a matter of fact . . .” Cam began thoughtfully.
“Oh, don’t encourage him!” Holly interrupted.
“I’m just trying to tell you,” he protested. “I got in today around noon, and settled down for a nap—”
“Noon? Why didn’t you call?”
Evan gave her ribs a squeeze. “Shush. I want to hear this.”
Cam hesitated as if waiting for something, then widened his eyes. “ ‘Shush’? That’s all it takes?”
“In public, during an election year. Private’s another story. So you couldn’t sleep this afternoon?”
“I kept almost drifting off, then jerking awake—”
“Jerk is right,” Holly muttered.
“—and it was like sparks hovering just off my skin, all along my face and neck, and my hands. Weird.”
Lachlan mused for a moment. “You’re the one with the fabric thing, right?”
“Yeah. Nothing man-made—no polyester, no nylon, anything like that. Silk, cotton, wool, any kind of natural textiles—plus leather—”
“You were touching the bedspread, the blanket?”
“Bedspread,” Cam affirmed. “I was lying on my stomach. I had on a long-sleeved t-shirt, and I took off my shoes but not my socks. You think I was picking something up right through the skin?”
“And your face,” Holly said, and looked up at Evan. “He said he felt it on his face. That had to be because of the pillow.”
“He was lying on his stomach,” Evan objected. “It had to’ve been just one side of his face, right?”
“Nope. And I’m guessing it wasn’t so much your palms as the backs of your hands, right?” When Cam nodded, she looked smug. “He sleeps with his face scrunched right down into a pillow—nobody can ever figure out how he manages to breathe—and his hands tucked against his stomach. He’s done it since he was little. Nobody knows why. Well, except that he’s weird, of course.”
“Bite me, Freckles,” Cam said sweetly.
“God, I love my in-laws,” Lachlan grinned. “The point to all this is that Lulah did a spa thing with Holly when the place first opened, and she won’t come back. Said she felt blind the whole time she was here.”
“What?” Holly scowled. “She never told me that.”
“She didn’t want to freak you out. Lulah Sees pretty good, Cam.”
“Yes, she does.” He chewed his lower lip. “And she said she felt blind? You discuss this yet with the rest of the family?”
That Cam automatically included him in their massive kin network made him smile. Some of the relatives had been a little dubious about him. Being Irish Catholic had been recommendation enough for most of them, but a few eyebrows had arched over his being from New York. And one or two of the cousins weren’t happy that Holly had married outside her magical ethnicity.
She was talking again—big surprise. “I can’t believe you two are discussing this! If anything really was strange, one of us would have known about it long before now.”
“Nobody’s said anything,” Lachlan admitted. “But I don’t know how many of them have been here.”
“Or how many of those went past the front desk to the rooms or the spa,” Cam added. “Y’know, Evan, I may need some help with my suitcase later on.”
He felt his smile widen to a grin. “I like him, too, Holly. If he follows us home, let’s keep him.”
“Fine,” she retorted, “but you’re assuming he’s housebroken.”
“And this would make him different from the twins how, exactly? Cam, let’s say ten or so.”
“Meet you by the lobby stairs?”
“I’ll just happen to run into you while you’re checking out,” Evan agreed.
Holly did the follow-the-bouncing-conversation thing. “You guys are really going to sneak around upstairs? You’re crazy. Besides, if anybody’s going to sneak into a hotel room with my husband, it’s gonna be me.”
“We won’t be sneaking,” Cam corrected. “I have a key, legitimately paid for.” He paused. “And—meaning no offense, Evan—not only is he not my type, I’m damned sure I’m not his type.”
“None taken,” Lachlan replied serenely. “So—ten, okay? You have a car?”
“Westmoreland has a courtesy van from Shenandoah Regional—which reminds me, Holly, did I hear right and Gib Ayala is running the airport now?”
She nodded. “Yeah, he moved back into the area last October. He and his wife are here tonight, in fact. If you don’t have a ride, then I guess you’re going home with me—and don’t get me started on why we have both cars tonight, okay? You can help me carry the kids back from Lulah’s.”
“They’ll be asleep,” Lachlan said. “Which is the only time they shut up.”
Cam grinned. “Take after Holly, do they?”
She gave him ano
ther thwack on the arm. “For that, Peaches, you get to baby-sit.”
“If you don’t stop calling me that—”
“Get over it,” she advised. Glancing up at Evan, she added, “It’s from when he was little—”
“Aw, c’mon!” Cam whined.
“When he was little,” she repeated forbiddingly, “and Aunt Lulah used to say he was all cinnamon curls and a peaches-and-cream complexion and sweet as pecan pie. Of course, he never kicked her in the shins. Or tried to spook every horse she got on when he was around—”
“I was sweet,” Cam protested, blue eyes big and innocent. “I was adorable. I still am. Ask anybody.”
She grinned. “Anybody outside the Beltway, you mean?”
“Pretty much. And speaking of your infants, I haven’t congratulated you yet.”
“Thanks,” Evan said. “She did all the work.”
“And bitched about it for the whole nine months, right? You don’t change, do you, Freckles?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Be nice,” Lachlan advised. “I bet he knows things about you that would surprise even me.”
As Cam’s fiendish grin produced a pair of dimples more or less the depth of the Grand Canyon, Holly gave a superior sort of sniff and retorted, “Not a concern, lover man. He knows that I know what his real name is.”
Lachlan had on occasion simultaneously admired and deplored that his wife showed scant delicacy of feeling for those she vanquished. He wondered if it was cowardly to enjoy the unholy glitter in her eyes as long as it wasn’t directed at him. But a glance at Cam did not show him the queasy expression he expected; the next instant demonstrated how vast had been his underestimation of her cousin. And, not incidentally, redefined unholy glitter.
“Holly,” Cam purred. “Darling. You also know what I can do, and that I don’t need potions, lotions, notions, shiny rocks—or even, sugar lump, you—in order to do it. Or have you forgotten who I used to practice on?”
Lachlan discovered that watching Holly splutter with incoherent outrage was even more rewarding than watching her win. Stifling laughter as best he could while winking his congratulations at Cam, he wisely excused himself to go schmooze Mrs. Paulet—without whose support nobody in PoCo got elected to anything from prom queen to Congress.
“TWERP,” HOLLY SNARLED.
“Cleaned up your language, I see,” Cam remarked.
“Asshole,” she shot back at once.
“Now, that’s the Holly I remember.”
“I will tell him your real name—see if I don’t!” When he stuck out his tongue at her, she succumbed to a fit of the giggles. “Oh, knock it off! You look ridiculous when you do that.”
“Not the image of the savvy, sophisticated, ruthless attorney terrorizing all who dare to oppose him?”
“Dream on,” she advised, but he was no longer paying attention. She followed his line of sight to Evan, who was charming Mrs. Paulet. “My guy’s not bad, huh?”
“Not bad at all. A second ago she was playing hard to get, but look at how he’s got her leaning a shoulder toward him, just a little. The way he’s tilting his head as he smiles—Holly, that’s absolute art.”
“Oh, it’s nothing to do with art or craft. It’s all instinct. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it.” She linked elbows with him and coaxed him on a casual stroll around the edge of the crowded ballroom. “He’s male, she’s female. What he’s actually doing is flirting.”
“That’s what all politicians do: seduce the voters.”
“What is it about a Y chromosome that makes men think everything has to do with sex?”
“I said ‘seduce,’ not ‘consummate.’ It’s the allure of being around somebody powerful. Somebody who can convince you that he or she can get things done that you can’t. Your husband is quite obviously a powerful man. Of course, it helps that the guy’s a hunk. Nowhere near my type, but a hunk all the same.”
“I reiterate: men think everything has to do with sex!”
“And who was the one making salacious advances to her own husband not ten minutes ago? By the way, if you were thinking of doing to him what you were probably thinking of doing to him, it’s not illegal in any of the states—unless you’re in the military.”
“Huh?”
Cam gave a little shrug. “It’s a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for a soldier to have sex in any way that isn’t genital-to-genital intercourse.”
“We’re talking about a sexual position usually indicated by a two-digit number?”
“Yep,” he replied with a blithe and entirely fake smile. “The Manual for Courts-Martial says it’s unnatural. It comes under the general heading of ‘Sodomy.’ ”
Holly took a healthy swig of vodka. “Weren’t the sodomy laws repealed?”
“Lawrence v. Texas,” he supplied immediately. “Sex between consenting adults ain’t nobody’s business but theirs. But Article 125, the applicable section of the Uniform Code, means the military can prosecute. The results can be dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for five years—”
“—in a lovely garden suite at Fort Leavenworth,” she finished for him. “But gays are the only ones they apply it to.”
“Yep,” he said again, with the same smile. “When you sign the enlistment papers, do you also sign away all the rights stipulated in the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? It would appear so.”
She thought some more. “Only until somebody challenges it in court. I mean, it’s discriminatory—not to mention hypocritical—to apply Article whatever only to gays and not to straights.” Suddenly she latched onto his arm. “Cam—”
He nodded. “And the penny drops.”
“It won’t be a court-martial of a gay soldier that will overturn Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It’ll be when a married heterosexual couple gets prosecuted—”
“Like that’s ever gonna happen.” He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You wouldn’t have made a bad lawyer.”
“There’s no call to insult me,” she retorted at once. “So what brings you back home to Virginia?”
“Allergies. Have to breathe some home-cooked air for a while.”
Holly gave a knowing sigh. “Where’d you get kicked out of this time?”
“That was Lebanon, and it was a long time ago, and it hasn’t happened since. Actually, I’ve been over in Uncle Nicky’s part of the world, advising their lawyers on our laws so they can use the same twisted logic on their own laws.”
“And yet she is unconvinced of your cynicism,” Holly remarked. “How’s the democracy thing working out, anyway?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” he retorted. “You live here.”
“If you came home because you’ve been missing it—I have to tell you, so have we.” She caught sight of Evan again, working the crowd. More: she saw the glint in his eyes that meant Cute Girl Alert. She recognized the young lady: with her newly minted real estate license, Shawntel had found Jamey Stirling his house last year. She was very cute indeed, with strawberry blond hair and her very own original, perky, twenty-six-year-old breasts. Holly smiled to herself and poked Cam in the ribs with one finger, nodding in Evan’s direction. “Watch and learn.”
Lachlan leaned over a little, just enough to indicate interest, not enough to intimidate with his height and heft. As Holly had known he would, he smiled a slow, almost lazy smile. The girl responded—a woman would have to be dead for three weeks not to respond to Evan Lachlan in predator mode—and canted a glance up at him through her eyelashes. He looked down her blouse, then into her eyes, then said something that made her smile. It wasn’t her professional smile—the one that looked borrowed from a synchronized swimmer. This one was real.
“You gonna let him get away with that?”
She didn’t take her gaze from Evan and Shawntel as she answered. “I enjoy watching an expert at work.” Evan’s smile had widened to a grin; the girl actually gulped. Hol
ly stifled a snicker.
Cam’s tone conveyed honest confusion. “You don’t get even the least bit jealous?”
“And this would be productive how, exactly? He’s having a good time. Why should I spoil it for him?”
“Some men like it when their wives get possessive.”
“Some men like it when their wives indicate they remember their existence.” She shrugged and sipped at her drink. Shawntel was getting less than the full wattage of those hazel-green eyes; Evan had done his looking and was growing bored. Holly could remember the first time she’d been on the receiving end of the complete treatment—the grin, the eyes, the voice, the leaning in, the glance down her cleavage, plus the throaty chuckle and a quick brush of fingertips across her arm—and decided Shawntel probably wouldn’t have survived it anyway. Still without glancing at her cousin, she slipped her arm around his waist and said, “Okay, Cam-my-man, suppose I do huff my way over there and drag him off. This would embarrass me, annoy him, make her insufferably smug that I felt threatened. It would be admitting that she is, in fact, a threat. And that’s just not the way it is.”
“Well, no,” he mused. “I can’t see anybody you married being stupid enough to risk not being married to you. What I mean is that any man for whom you wouldn’t be enough isn’t a man worth having.”
“What an adorable thing to say!” She grinned up at him. “Although I have to admit it appalls me that I understood the way you said it.”
“I’m still not understanding you on this.”
“I know he’s a hunk, he knows he’s a hunk, everybody with eyes to look knows he’s a hunk. Flirting with other women only makes him more conceited than he already is—and that’s sayin’ something, believe me.” She laughed to herself as Evan’s head tilted slightly to one side, a posture that in anyone else would indicate careful concentration. But with him, when a corner of his mouth did that odd little quirk—yeah, he was bored, and just being polite, waiting for Shawntel to finish talking so he could escape. “Let me put it this way,” she told Cam. “How colossally stupid would somebody have to be to pay attention in public to someone they want to sleep with? It’s the ones they glance at sidelong—the ones they make a point of not noticing—that their partner has to worry about.”