Conservative Affairs

by Scott, Riley

  Picking her phone up from the floor, Jacquelyn again called Jo. Again, there was no answer; it just rolled over to voice mail. Having no other choice, she sent an email to Ian and Gabe.

  We have an emergency, need senior staff meeting NOW. Meet in Ian’s office in 30 minutes. THIS IS URGENT!

  Gabe replied almost immediately.

  Still at the office. I’ll be there. What about you, Ian?

  A few minutes later, Jacquelyn was dressed and ready to head out the door. Ian hadn’t responded yet, but this needed to be dealt with immediately. Even if he couldn’t get there, she and Gabe could hash out some of the details. Per office protocol, she would wait a few more minutes before giving him an after-hours phone call.

  She would fill in Jo and Madeline later—if that was what they all decided. As it was, she didn’t want to see either of them. They had made this mess, were forcing everyone else to scramble around at lightning speed to clean it up while continuing to withhold details.

  Her BlackBerry beeped with a message from Ian. I went to grab dinner, but I’ll be back in a few. Meet you both there.

  Grabbing her briefcase, she headed to the office. Gabe greeted her at the door.

  “What’s going on? Is everything okay? What is all of this about?” He shot the questions at her, one after the other, like machine gun fire.

  She held up her hands to slow him down. “It’s about Jo and Madeline and a phone call I got from John Stratton.”

  Ian came through the doors then, and Jacquelyn stopped speaking. He took one look at her face and suggested they go to the conference room. The staff had all gone home, but there was less chance they’d be overheard there by a custodian or someone coming back for something they’d forgotten than if they met in his office.

  Suddenly, Jacquelyn questioned her judgment in calling them. She didn’t want to reveal what she had heard, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure she would be able to find the right words. When they got to the room, she seated herself and let out a deep breath.

  “Okay, Jacquelyn,” Ian said. “What’s going on?” He and Gabe were sitting straight up in their chairs, their eyes glued on her.

  “That’s the thing,” Jacquelyn began, “I don’t really know. I got a strange call this afternoon from John Stratton. He warned me that if I didn’t get a message to Madeline that the woman he had been sleeping with—Natalie—had something she was going to tell the press about Madeline.”

  Their eyes widened, and Ian held up his hand to stop her. “I thought Madeline didn’t know Natalie Longworth. That’s what she told us when her picture was splashed all over the press. Is something else going on there? Or was she threatening to go to the press with something new about her affair with John?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first, but I wanted to avoid a press firestorm. So I called Madeline. I asked her if she knew what this was about. She said she did and she’d take care of it. She must have gotten it all straightened out, because nothing has hit the news yet. When I followed up with John, though, he said something that I think we need to figure out how to deal with.”

  Jacquelyn’s hands were shaking, so she set them in her lap. She was about to throw her colleagues a curveball, and she wasn’t sure how it would go over. Their jobs would hang in the balance too.

  “What did he say?” Gabe pressed.

  “Neither of you are going to like this answer,” Jacquelyn warned.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ian said, now impatient. “Spit it out.”

  “I called him to ask what issue Natalie was taking to the press, and he said I should ask Jo, the ‘pretty brunette’ who had gone to the house with Madeline to pick up her things.”

  “We know that. Jo hasn’t been back, has she? Hasn’t mentioned anything about having some kind of interaction with John while she was there, has she?” Gabe asked, looking around the table for answers.

  “No,” Jacquelyn answered. “It wasn’t that. He said I should ask Jo whether or not Madeline has been…um, ‘sleeping’ with anyone else. Apparently, for some reason he believes that she’s sleeping with—or…um…has slept with women. I’m guessing Natalie is privy to that information, somehow, and so is Jo. He also insinuated that she and Jo seemed ‘cozy’ and that by now Jo probably knew all Madeline’s secrets. I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to find out, so we don’t get a bomb dropped on us by the nightly news.”

  Gabe and Ian stared at her, completely perplexed.

  “Are you saying Madeline is a lesbian?” Gabe asked.

  Ian shrugged, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Is Jo?” Gabe asked, still trying to make sense of it all.

  Ian shrugged. “I never would have guessed,” he said in astonishment.

  Gabe glared at Jacquelyn, demanding an answer.

  “I don’t know,” she finally answered. “But these are some pretty heavy accusations, and John seemed convinced that Madeline was. And I’ve had my suspicions about Jo. Either way, we’ve got to figure out how to move forward.”

  “Do you think that’s why she stayed at Jo’s place?” Gabe asked, his eyes wider than Jacquelyn had ever seen them. “Are they sleeping together?”

  Jacquelyn didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. But in light of everything they couldn’t afford to give them the benefit of the doubt right now.

  “It would make sense, if it’s all true,” she said.

  “If this gets out, it’s the end—true or not,” Ian said. “Madeline was elected on the basis of being a social and fiscal conservative. She’s actively stood against gay marriage and made numerous speeches on traditional family values. If there is even any speculation about her sexuality, she is ruined. Aside from that, while I’d like to steer clear of the gossip mill, if she’s accused of sleeping with a staff member, there’s no coming back from that.”

  Ian wasn’t usually one to jump to worst-case scenarios, and his doing so made Jacquelyn’s heart race. He was voicing her deepest fears.

  Ian put his head in his hands, and when he looked back up at them, his face was ashen. “I was going to tell you this at the staff meeting tomorrow, but Jo resigned this morning. It’s all making sense now. If all this is true, she could have been doing that to protect Madeline.”

  Gabe looked as if he had bit into something rotten and Jacquelyn felt like she had as well. As they sat around the conference room, discussing options, Jacquelyn refreshed the news pages on her phone, hoping the news wouldn’t drop.

  Ian was already on his phone, dialing both Jo’s and Madeline’s numbers repeatedly. After the fifth try to each, he left voice mails and shook his head.

  “They could at least have the decency to answer their damn phones.”

  Determined to get a jump on things, he decided that a call to the media from the mayor’s chief of staff might yield more results than one from Jacquelyn. As quickly as possible, he placed calls to his contacts at the major media outlets in Oklahoma City, requesting that they call him before they ran anything on his boss so they’d have the opportunity to respond.

  When he finally set his phone down, he let out a long sigh.

  “They all said that they haven’t heard anything, but gave me their word they’d alert me if they did so we could issue a statement. It roused their curiosity, but I don’t think we had much choice. Didn’t stop the damn vultures from prying for information, of course.”

  Jacquelyn texted Isaac again, but got no answer. It was a busy hour of the workday for him, she knew, but she wished he could at least reply and set her mind at ease.

  “I guess if nobody’s heard anything yet, John and his mistress are holding off,” Jacquelyn said, though she couldn’t stop the churning in her stomach.

  Around the table, they fell silent for a while, all still weathering the shock. Finally, Ian slapped his legal pad down on the desk and began drawing out a timeline. Per his direction, they decided that if something got leaked—which they would desperately try to avoid—there was little they could do at this
point. It was impossible to make plans when they didn’t know what was going on. If any media queries came to them, they should forward them to him. With luck, they’d find out more tomorrow and be able to put together an action plan.

  At the end of the meeting, Ian stood and hugged Jacquelyn. “We’ll figure it out,” he told her. He shook Gabe’s hand. “Either way, know that both of you can expect a solid recommendation from me if this heads south.”

  He walked out, leaving Gabe and Jacquelyn alone.

  “Do you really think she’s a lesbian?” Gabe asked, looking like a child who’d had his favorite toy ripped from his hands.

  “Gabe, is that all you’ve been able to focus on tonight? Forget about Jo, okay? Even if she isn’t a lesbian, she isn’t interested in you. And if she is, well, isn’t it reassuring to know that isn’t your fault?”

  Gabe shook his head, clearly incapable of grasping the concept.

  “C’mon. Get it together. We have bigger fish to fry—like the fact that we all may be jobless come election time—or sooner—if this leaks.”

  “We won’t be. This is all a lie,” Gabe said. “I have plenty of gay friends—family members even—and Jo just doesn’t fit the bill.”

  “Denial is all very well, Gabe. We need to find out for sure. How do we go about that?”

  “Maybe the two of us should just go and ask them,” he suggested. “I could go to Jo’s house, and you could try Madeline’s hotel.”

  “No,” she said. “Only one of us needs to go. If we go together, it’ll look like an ambush.”

  He nodded his head. She was about to let him volunteer, when she remembered the last time she had handed off a task like this. Jo Carson had stepped up to the plate, and now look where they were.

  “I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll be the one to ask.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Since the phone call with Maddie earlier in the afternoon, Natalie had been a bundle of nerves. Which outfit should she wear? She had flipped through her closet, dismissing each choice. Too slutty. Too grungy. Too casual. Too dressy. Finally, she had slipped into a pair of jeans and a tight-fitting shirt. She wanted to stay away from clothing that would remind Maddie that Natalie had slept with John, but she also wanted to remind Maddie of the great sex they used to have.

  It was a lifetime ago, but she wanted Maddie to remember the good times as well as the bad. She hoped it would help open her to Natalie’s apologies.

  On the drive over to Maddie’s hotel room, all Natalie could think was how out of line she was acting. She had been the one to screw up and the one threatening to go to the press. That was only a tactic to get John to get in touch with Maddie, though. She had promised Maddie during their phone call that she wouldn’t go to the press if she would meet with her, and she meant it.

  Wouldn’t want to mess up John’s scheme, after all. He wanted to have the power to go to the press, and she was content to give it to him. As long as she could get what she wanted by dangling her threats over his head. Early on, that had been money—now it was Maddie.

  She pulled into the parking lot and sighed. For a brief second, she considered peeling out of the lot, pointing the wheels west, and not stopping until she was a world away in California. Instead, she steadied herself.

  “It’s now or never,” she said, giving herself a little pep talk.

  She checked her reflection in the vanity mirror one last time. For an aging mistress, she didn’t look too bad, she thought. She got out of the car and walked toward the hotel. It was time to face her past and her future all in one evening.

  * * *

  Madeline paced back and forth in front of the couch in the living room of her suite. Perhaps they should have chosen a different meeting place, she thought as she looked around. This place was tiny. Panic engulfed her. There would be no way to escape Natalie—or the rush of memories—once she got here.

  There was a knock on the door, and she thought her heart might explode. Jo took her hand to keep her calm. She was thankful that Jo had come back, but it was a little unnerving to have her past and her present colliding in such dramatic form.

  Jo kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be in the bathroom if you need anything, but for now I’ll give you two some time alone.” She looked as if she was torn between doing that and staying to fight Natalie, but after a pause she turned and walked away, leaving Madeline more nervous than ever.

  She walked cautiously to the door, aware that behind it stood a threat to all the happiness she had so recently found. She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  That is one beautiful threat, she thought. Even after all these years, Natalie Longworth was a knockout.

  A knockout who slept with my husband, Madeline reminded herself.

  For a moment she didn’t speak, and neither did Natalie. It was like seeing a ghost. Until the moment passed Madeline allowed herself to relive every bit of their shared history.

  “Do you want to come inside?” Madeline asked, breaking the silence.

  “If that is okay with you.”

  Madeline stepped aside, allowing her to enter, careful to maintain as much distance from her as the room would allow.

  “What is it you wanted to talk about?” Madeline asked, suddenly regretting inviting this woman into her room. Natalie was not some innocent bystander. She was someone who had wrecked Madeline’s life not once but twice. The bitterness that rose in her heart must have shown on her face, because Natalie took a step back.

  “You have every right to hate me and never want to see me again,” Natalie began. “But I wanted to see you—to apologize to you in person.”

  “Apology not accepted. Is there anything else?” It wasn’t the smart response, Madeline knew, but the unresolved feelings, the fear of being exposed, the plan to mollify Natalie and convince her to remain silent—they had all evaporated. It was clear to Madeline that she had all she needed now and that Natalie was nothing more than a distraction.

  “I wanted to set the record straight,” Natalie said.

  Madeline waited. Natalie would try to sugarcoat it, but she couldn’t change the facts. During college, she had wanted to live wild and free. She had “explored her options,” unbeknownst to Madeline, and in the process shattered her heart. And now she had destroyed her marriage. She had to have known who John was—everyone in the state did—yet she had slept with him anyway.

  Natalie cleared her throat. “I didn’t sleep with John to get back at you. It wasn’t for revenge or anything.”

  “Revenge?” Madeline laughed bitterly. “Why on earth would you need to get revenge on me? You were the one who felt the need to sleep around, remember? If anyone was left shattered by our past, it was me. I would have been the one seeking revenge.”

  “Okay, well, what I’m saying is that I didn’t seek him out,” Natalie tried again.

  “So you wanted to see me in person to tell me that my husband was the filthy cheater, and you were just a poor girl who fell prey to his charms?” Madeline retorted.

  “No,” Natalie lowered her gaze so she didn’t have to meet Madeline’s stare. “I am at fault here. I just—well, I did it for the money.”

  “He paid you?” If Natalie thought that this meeting was helping, she was dead wrong. With every sentence out of her mouth, she was making a bad situation worse.

  “No, well, yes…” She hung her head again, searching for the right words. “He didn’t pay me for sex. None of them do, but when my career as an artist fell through, I didn’t have a whole lot going for me. I had an art degree and a failed dream. What do you do with that?”

  When she didn’t continue, Madeline threw out, “Fuck for money?”

  “Maddie, please let me finish,” Natalie said.

  “Don’t call me Maddie. I hate being called that. My name is Madeline. Maddie was the name of a stupid college girl who was mistaken in thinking that sex meant love. Madeline is a woman who knows what real love is.”

  “Okay, Madeline.”
Natalie pronounced each syllable carefully. “What I’m saying is that I made some poor choices. I started sleeping with rich men. Some would pay me to keep quiet, some would pay to keep me around for a while. John paid me to keep my mouth quiet about you and me.”

  “Yeah, he wanted to keep that secret all to himself so he could blackmail me for my money,” Madeline said, irritated at both of them. “Maybe you should just stay with him. You make a good little, deceitful couple.” She wanted to drive the knife a little deeper. “You’re both whores who would rather fuck someone new and exciting than stick around and hold onto something real.”

  Natalie reached out and placed her hand on Madeline’s shoulder.

  “Don’t fucking touch me,” Madeline said. “I think it’s time for you to go. I never want to see you again.”

  “Wait,” Natalie said. “I’m not done.”

  “Yes. You are. You have nothing to say to me that I want to hear. Whatever you came here for, you can forget it. I want nothing to do with you.”

  Natalie didn’t move.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Madeline screamed, her body shaking from years of pent-up anger and resentment.

  “Why?” Natalie shot back, her frustration showing—and something else Madeline couldn’t quite identify. “Do you have someplace to be? That’s the way it always was. Little Miss Popular, with all the money and the promising future. You’ve still got better things to do than sit around and listen to me. Is that it?” Bitterness shone through every word, as she too brought up unsettled fights from decades ago. “Or is there someone else? You’ve always moved on pretty fast, haven’t you? Do you have some new, hot little number waiting to come over?”

  Madeline tried to hide the surprise on her face. No one knew about Jo—at least she didn’t think there was any way they could. Maybe Natalie was just calling her bluff.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Madeline said.