“I’m not close to my family. They don’t like me, and I don’t like them. I wish I could say that we keep it civil, but we don’t.”
“That’s sad.”
“I don’t know. I guess it seems like that if you grew up with parents like yours. But I’ve never had that. Family or home has never been synonymous with love or safety to me.”
They were by the car, and Mace stopped and made her look at him.
“It is sad. Family should be synonymous with love.”
“But it isn’t to a lot of people, and some of us survived that, too.”
He gave her a kiss.
“Since we’re going steady, can I buy you dinner and then you can tell me more about why you’re not civil with your family?”
“They’re idiots. Not sure what else to tell you.”
He pulled her closer and held her flush against him with an arm around her waist. “So how about I buy you dinner so I don’t have to eat another one of those fucking Lean Cuisines?”
“Okay. I’ll even tell you about my family. Not sure why you’d want to know anything about them, though,” she muttered and got into the car.
She’d never been embarrassed about where she came from. She couldn’t help being born into a wealthy family any more than she could help being born with brown hair. Some had tried throwing it in her face, but she’d never understood why, and it had never gotten to her. The only reason she didn’t like talking about her family was simply that she didn’t like them.
Mace took her to a local restaurant, and by the time they were seated it dawned on her that it was their first date. They’d been having sex for months, they’d even had time to break up, but they’d never been on a date. They’d never even met outside her house other than by chance. As comfortable as she’d been with that arrangement, she was a bit excited about where they were heading now.
Kathleen looked through the menu and at the plates of those around them.
“The steak, medium rare, with risotto, and a mineral water, please,” she said to the waiter and handed him the menu.
“Steak, rare, with fries and a Guinness,” Mace said, and when the waiter was gone he leaned closer. “Mineral water?”
“I don’t drink,” she said, and then she sighed. “I guess you could say it has to do with why I’m not close to my family.”
“Alcoholics?”
“My mom, think my dad is, too. He just handles it nicer. No passing out in his own puke, and so on, but he drinks a lot.”
“Siblings?”
“Two. Both are older. I’m the youngest.”
“The spoiled baby.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. By the time I was born, my parents hated each other. According to Mom, the only reason they had me was that they were visiting her parents and were bored. Other times she said Dad was so drunk he mistook her for the nanny.”
Kathleen had known her entire life that she wasn’t a planned child. They’d managed to get their son and daughter, and then she’d come along. She assumed a lot of people knew they weren’t planned children, but she was sure some still felt welcome.
“I was raised by nannies. Mom was lost in her alcohol haze by the time I was five. Dad was barely around and reeked of alcohol whenever he was… I think I just got scared it would be the same for me when I grew up, so I never started drinking.”
By the time they got their food, she’d told him about as much as she thought was worth telling about her family. Her brother, who was taking over the business, her sister, who was following in their mother’s footsteps both as a housewife and as a raging alcoholic, and why her latest visit at her parents’ had been the worst ever.
“So you never drink?” he asked.
“No.”
“Never have?”
“No. Not once.”
“Smoked pot?”
“No. Never smoked at all.”
“You’re a good girl,” he smiled.
“Or just scared shitless,” she admitted. “I just never saw the appeal, and in combination with coming from a family where becoming an alcoholic is about as common as having a driver’s license… It seemed stupid to gamble.”
Mace was about to say something when they were interrupted.
“I never thought you cared about the media, Vince.”
“Vic,” Mace said, and she could see his jaws clenching. He turned to Kathleen. “This is my brother Victor and his wife Joyce.”
Kathleen hadn’t noticed the woman, and she was quite surprised by Mace’s introduction despite Pamela’s earlier comment about the brothers not getting along. If she looked carefully, she could see the resemblance between Mace and his brother, but she would’ve never guessed if she’d seen him. The tall woman next to Vincent, Joyce, looked like most women who were standing half a step behind their men in both the literal and figurative way. Her eyes were fixed on Kathleen, and Kathleen stood up to shake both their hands.
“Kathleen Keegan,” she introduced herself.
“Pleasure,” Victor said, and Joyce simply gave her a nod with a big, stiff smile.
She sat back down and listened to Mace and Victor’s very forced conversation, and then said goodbye when they left.
Mace watched them leave. “Ten dollars says he’ll call you within a week.”
“Politician?” she asked. Victor had a politician’s smile. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“He wants to be.” Mace looked at her. “We’ll do my family some other day, let’s keep talking about you.”
“I’m not sure there’s much else to say.”
“Okay.” Mace always knew when he couldn’t push anymore, and it was one of the reasons she was so comfortable with him. “Enough about your family. What are you going to do next?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t want to be here, you hate it, and you definitely don’t want to work at G.O., so I’m kind of wondering what you want to do.”
“I’m stuck here, at the moment. I’m sure you know the basics.”
“I do.” He hesitated. “But that doesn’t meant you can’t move on.”
“No other news corporation would touch me.”
“If they all know what happened, why wouldn’t they?”
She didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t so much what they knew, but what the readers thought. If they didn’t think she was an honest reporter she was of no value, but she didn’t get a chance to try before he continued.
“I mean, do you know, or do you just assume?”
Kathleen laughed. “I’m assuming, but I think I need to prove something to myself first, too. I need to find my mojo.”
“Your mojo?”
“I need to trust my own instincts again.”
The second she’d said it, she knew it was the truth. It had, to some extent, been a way to deflect his questions, but that was actually the problem. It wasn’t only that she didn’t know what to write or didn’t feel the rage she used to; she didn’t trust herself anymore, and she was scared. Before, she’d never been scared, and she’d instinctively known what a good angle and a good story could be, but she wasn’t seeing it anymore. That was what she needed to find, not just a good story.
“And I don’t hate it here,” she continued.
“Liar.”
“No.” She thought about it for a few moments. “Okay, I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it anymore.”
He eyed her with a big smile. “Liar.”
“Okay, it’s just so small. I haven’t even been able to find good coffee, and it’s… people are… It’s driving me nuts.”
“You need a trip.”
“Yeah. That would help. I tried, but I went to see my parents.”
“No. You need a real vacation. If you get out of here for a while, it might seem better when you come back.”
He could be right, and even if he wasn’t, it couldn’t make it worse.
“And you need to meet more people,” he continued. “In short
, you need a fucking life.”
He was definitely right about that, but probably not in the way he thought, and she’d never felt a need to have a lot of people around her. She’d had a few friends, but never a lot of them. Her life had been her job, and she’d been fine with that. It probably wasn’t healthy, but it had worked for her. So, when Mace told her she needed a life, it wasn’t just about finding friends or meeting people, it was a lot more than that. She was leaving that for a later day, though. She didn’t want him to think she was planning on making him and his friends her life, because that wasn’t going to happen, and that was most definitely not her plan.
“Maybe.”
“Ever gonna tell me what happened?”
She shook her head with a smile. “Yes, but not today. I think I’ve shared enough for one day.”
“We’ll do more sharing some other day.”
“Yes. Some other day.”
CHAPTER TEN
I Have a Brain
o0o
MACE DRAGGED HIS ASS into the bar at the clubhouse and poured himself a cup of coffee. Bull was sitting at the bar, and Mace laughed when he noticed what he was reading.
“Is it the G.O.?”
“Yeah.”
“Since when do you read that?”
“Since your woman started writing in it.”
“Really?” He could’ve commented on Bull calling Kathleen ‘his woman,’ but he liked it and didn’t feel like correcting him. Besides, it was true. He just hadn’t told the club about it yet. “Do you want me to get you her autograph?”
“Fuck you,” Bull muttered. He turned the paper around for Mace to see. “I like this.”
‘New in Greenville’ was the headline, and Mace reached for the paper.
“It’s good?”
“Yeah. It’s about her first months in Greenville, an outsider’s view kind of thing. She’s bashing some local politicians, but she’s writing a lot of good things about Greenville, too, and about the people here. They’ll like her for it.”
“Going after the right people?”
“She always does,” Bull said.
“Are you crushing on my woman?”
“A little,” he admitted.
Mace read the article, and he liked it, too. It was good, and surprisingly funny in Kathleen’s dry humor sort of way. Bull was right, she raised some complaints about some of the local politicians, but at the same time admitted she might be unfair since she compared them to the full-time politicians in Washington. She praised them, too, though, by saying it was refreshing to see that there still were politicians in the US who had opinions of their own, and to see politicians whose main concern were the people who had elected them. Bull was right; it was a nice ‘outsider looking in’ view.
Taking Kathleen to see his mom could’ve been a disaster, but she’d opened up, and she’d told him a lot more about herself than he’d ever expected her to. He’d been surprised that she didn’t drink. He hadn’t met many people who’d never touched alcohol, she could actually be the only one, but it made sense when she told him about her family.
When he’d finished reading, he changed his clothes and went to see what work they had coming in during the day.
“Hey, hottie,” he said when he opened the door to Mel’s office and chuckled when Brick gave him a glare. “Sorry.”
“See,” Mel said, “This is how they talk to me.”
“Then stop wearing fuck-me shoes and clothes, because they make you look like a hottie.”
“You like my shoes and clothes.”
“I love them,” Brick admitted and gave Mace the finger. “Stop hitting on my old lady.”
“I’m not hitting on her. Merely appreciating her features.”
“Speaking of features,” Mel said, “you’ve lost weight.”
“Yeah…” He’d noticed that, too. His jeans were looser, and he’d gone down a hole on his belt. “I’ve had a lot of TV dinners lately.”
Both Mel and Brick’s eyes grew wide. “Why would you do that to yourself?” Mel exclaimed.
“She doesn’t cook. Might be exercise, too. We fuck a lot.”
“You’ve always fucked a lot,” Brick pointed out.
“Do you have any idea how much chemicals and crap they put into those meals?” Mel continued without taking any notice about them. “You need food, real food.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he said. “I just need to know what we’ve got coming up today.”
She was still muttering about food dye and preservatives when she handed him a list. It wasn’t like he was fading away, he’d had some to take from, and he still wasn’t very skinny. In fact, he kind of like what he looked like now. Besides, Kathleen was worth some crap food. She always made it up to him.
At lunch, Brick came to sit down next to him.
“You should bring her to dinner,” he said.
Mace turned his head and looked at Brick. “Is this you or your old lady speaking?”
“It’s me.” He shrugged. “And my old lady,” he added with a laugh.
“I can ask her, but I’m not sure she’s all that interested.” He hesitated, and then he decided to be honest about it. No point in starting to lie to Brick now. “She knows why I started seeing her to begin with, and I don’t think she’d feel very welcome. Or be very comfortable with a bunch of bikers.”
The better he got to know Kathleen and the more she opened up, the more he noticed those small signs that she was from a whole different world than he was. She might not look like it, but she had some of those traits all rich bitches had. It was embedded in her. It wasn’t bad things, just things that made her different, and he was sure she wasn’t even aware of them herself. They were simply her natural state of being.
“Is this your worries or hers?”
The week before, he’d found her articles from her D.C. years and he’d read them. The others had been right, she was good, and he was very glad she’d hadn’t been able to find her mojo to write about them, but that wasn’t why he was hesitating, either. Actually, he wasn’t sure why he hesitated.
“I’ll ask,” he said again.
“We’ll go easy on her.”
Mace stood and chuckled. “You’ve never gone easy on anyone in your entire life.”
o0o
“Fuck,” Kathleen exhaled and lay down next to him. “That was good.”
“Very good,” he agreed and made sure her wrists were okay.
When he’d complained about her trying to take over the night’s fuck, she’d suggested tying her up, and he’d jumped the chance. At first he hadn’t been sure she was serious, but she had been, and it had been just fucking amazing.
She stayed silent for a while, just taking deep breathes. “This freaks me out.”
“What. That I tied you up or that you liked it?”
“What? No,” she laughed. “It’s not the first time, and I like what I like. I don’t worry about it, and I’m not embarrassed about any of it.”
“Thought maybe feminists weren’t supposed to like rough sex and being tied up.”
“Nope. First rule of feminism is that no one has any right to judge another woman. If I like to be tied up and dominated in bed, that’s my business. Or wear a deep cleavage and loads of makeup, or whatever. It’s up to me.” She turned over to her side and held him. “That’s not what it’s about. But what’s freaking me out is how comfortable I’m getting here.”
“In Greenville?” he asked, and she nodded. “I still think you could find something else if you tried.”
“Maybe, but I need to…” she drifted off and stared into the air.
“Find your mojo?” he tried.
“Yeah.”
“What was it before?” He’d wanted to ask since he’d read her articles, and this was his chance. She was in a good mood, and he thought he could get an honest answer out of her. “What drove you?”
“Anger,” she answered without hesitating. She moved from him with a sigh. “Or more lik
e rage.”
“Rage?”
She was on her back, and she was staring at the ceiling while playing with a lock of her hair. Her eyes were still there when she started talking.
“You know the saying ‘nothing is certain but death and taxes?’”
“Yeah.”
“In the 2008 financial crisis the congress passed the TARP, the Trouble Asset Relief Program. In the end, over 400 billion dollars was given to some of the biggest companies in the US, mostly to banks and insurance companies—one of them Bank of America. It was taxpayers’ money that ensured that those companies could keep going.”
“I remember.” Mace had never paid much attention to what was going on in D.C., and he had no interest whatsoever in politics. He’d noticed the financial crisis, though. It had been hard to miss, if for no other reason than how it had struck the people in Greenville. He’d found it fucking nauseating that, as always, the small people had had to pay for the big people’s mistakes, while the big people had walked away no worse for wear.
“In 2010, Bank of America had a profit of 4.4 billion. Guess how much they paid in taxes.”
“I assume it’s not the regular 35-percent business tax.”
“Zero. They didn’t pay any tax at all. Not one single dollar.”
“That can’t be right.”
“It’s the same with most of those bigger companies. GE, Exxon, Chevron, and Citigroup—none of them paid a single dollar despite making billions in profit. A couple of companies even managed to get a negative tax and received money from the government. Since the early Sixties, the amount of tax money from corporations decreased with fifty percent, and it’s not because they’re making less money. They move the money around, and they’re able to do so because most of them actually get to have opinions on the tax laws each year, and because they can afford to pay the right people to do their taxes for them. The notion that America is broke is unbelievable bullshit. We’re not, the government is just not getting the money they’re entitled to, and the politicians are too scared to do anything about it, since these are the very companies that pay for their election campaigns.”
Speed of Light (Marauders #3.5) Page 12