In fact, there was nothing wrong with her except for his lack of love for her. He still loved her—how could he not when she was the mother of his children? However, he wasn’t in love with her any longer.
“It’s been treating me just fine, darling.” He smiled in her direction. “Am I missing anything in Annapolis?”
Her blue-green eyes sparkled with merriment. “Not really. Politics is politics regardless. Our family has been through a lot, what with the Mayoral race and then Governor. I’m anxious for this all finally to be over and done with.”
Peter stood from the hotel suite bed they shared and walked over to the patio doors. He wore a pair of boxer-briefs and nothing else.
“What does that mean exactly, Liz?”
She padded toward him and leaned her head against his back. “You know what I mean, Pete. I hope you win but there’s a good chance the Democrat party might not even pick you to represent the people in the twenty sixteen Presidential election. If that happens then I hope you finish out your term as Governor and maybe write your memoirs but…allow us all to rest. Surely you must understand how taxing this is on your children…and on me too.”
He turned his head though he couldn’t see his wife’s face. “What exactly do you want me to do? This has been a life long dream for my family and me—”
“Yes, your family, but what about the children and me, Pete? We’re your immediate family, not your parents.” Elizabeth touched his shoulders lightly with gentle hands. “To be honest, it’s a nightmare for me. I’m okay in Maryland and I love it there. This is not my dream. I don’t want the children subjected to Secret Servicemen and I’m not ready to not be able to go anywhere without protection. It’s scary and frankly, I don’t think you’ve thought this through very much.”
Peter turned around to face his wife. Her chestnut hair, short and sleek against her face, reminded him of a younger, attractive Anna Wintour. She wore a slinky scarlet negligee, which showed off her gorgeous figure, still lean and in shape despite the birth of twins.
“I have thought about it and I thought it’s what you wanted too. Can you honestly tell me how our life changes from the way it is now?”
“Well, for one, when I accompany my parents to our country home in the south of France every summer, no one knows who I am. This won’t be the case if I’m the First Lady of the United States. Do you think the First Husband is allowed to go anywhere on his own?”
“No…but it’s something you learn to deal with, sweetheart.” He brought his hands to her cheeks and kissed her gently on the mouth. “I wouldn’t do anything to put our family in jeopardy. If you don’t want me to run for President, please say so now. It will save me a lot of humiliation farther down the line.”
Peter instantly wished he could take the words back. The last sentences he wanted to hear leave Elizabeth’s mouth were pleas for him to back out. He’d come so far and even if his wife wasn’t completely on board, she couldn’t do that to him. It would be anathema to the plan he’d cultivated so carefully in his life.
He wanted to go all the way regardless whether he ultimately lost the election or not. At least he could say he tried. His ambition truly was one of the few parts of his life he explicitly fell in love with wholeheartedly. How could he not when he’d grown up in a household where failure wasn’t an option and his parents always stressed for him to be the best at what he did. That included every government office he’d ever pursued during his career.
Elizabeth folded her arms against her breasts. Her forehead creased slightly as her patrician features pinched in anger. She would never raise her voice but her face was more expressive to her moods than any tone she could ever use.
“I’m not going to do that, Pete. I can see the look of trepidation in your face right now. You’re terrified I’m going to dash your hopes when our family should be the only important part of our lives. Your children should always come before your ambition. Didn’t we both agree to that? If you’re not willing to sacrifice for them then…what are you willing to sacrifice for? If you dare say the good of this nation, I’ll bash your head in with a paperweight.”
Peter stepped back instinctively.
Elizabeth had never been violent but he’d never seen her as pissed off as she was now. This was a slight unfortunate turn of events.
His cell phone rang and his wife turned toward the bed. “Don’t you dare answer that!”
“Why don’t you answer it instead,” he offered in a low voice.
She turned her back on him and quickly snatched up the phone. “Hello? Mrs. Peter Coburn speaking.”
He watched her face change from pissed off to slightly annoyed as she listened to the caller.
“Thank you, Kylie, I’ll be sure to let my husband know.” Elizabeth ended the call and tossed his phone on the bed. “Your campaign manager wanted me to inform you Sigourney Stewart has been called and notified of her new position in your campaign.”
“Thanks,” he replied before he made several quick strides to the bar and fixed himself a straight whiskey.
“You see? How are you supposed to throw in the towel when you’re hiring additional aides and what not? All those people would be out of a job and I would inadvertently contribute to the nation’s unemployment rate. You’re such a shit sometimes, you know that?”
Peter swigged from his whiskey. “Does it matter? Everyone I’m hiring is highly educated. Ms. Stewart graduated from Georgetown with a Law degree and attended Harvard for her undergraduate degree. If I hadn’t hired her, she’d take the bar exam, Liz.”
“Mmm, you know a lot about this young woman, don’t you? Does your knowledge extend beyond her in a less than professional sense? You promised me after we moved to Annapolis you would leave all that shit behind in Baltimore.”
Fuck, Liz was still was upset. She rarely ever cursed for fear it made her seem uncultured and crass.
He finished his drink and did a mental count from one to ten. “I can assure you there will be no impropriety between my new campaign aide and I.”
Peter faced his wife, and she still looked unconvinced with the smirk she wore on her face. “Oh, really? Well, be sure to try to keep that promise, Pete. It would be…highly unfortunate if you proved yourself to be nothing more than another George Riley clone. Then again, we often dislike the people who most remind us of ourselves. You would be wise to remember that.”
“Yes, darling.”
He watched her walk into the bathroom and close the door behind herself with a soft click. This evening had to get better. Hopefully the AIDS Fundraiser wouldn’t be too much of a bore.
Kylie turned to him with a smile on her face.
She looked beautiful and elegant in a little black cocktail dress and matching sky-high designer heels. Her hair, swept up into an elaborate chignon, complimented her subdued makeup with the exception of the bright red lipstick she wore.
She wasn’t a natural at small talk and therefore, listened attentively as Peter described the incident that had transpired between him and his wife.
“What do you think I should do?”
Kylie glanced into his gray eyes and smiled brightly. “Well, we’ve come too far to back out now but if you do plan to work with this…woman, you need to keep your libido under control. It wouldn’t help any of us if you were to allow a few moments of pleasure to trump everything you’ve worked so hard for.”
“Yeah, I know.” He swigged from an expensive whisky on the rocks and sighed. “Liz completely took me by surprise this evening. If I knew she’d felt this way, why have we come all this way?”
His campaign manager glanced at him with cold green eyes. “I speak now as your friend and confidante. I don’t think she knew what you planned. She was okay with being a mayor’s wife and then the governor’s wife but she isn’t okay with being the First Lady. That is something you’re going to have to come to terms with. It’s the only way.”
Peter’s steel-gray eyes danced around the elegant cro
wd. Most of the people in the room were at least his parents’ age if not older. He felt positively young though Generation X politicians were slowly making headway.
“Listen,” he began in a quiet voice. “I have enough to deal with. Everyone is going to grill me about my age as it is. I’m one of the youngest mayors and governors in modern history and although I’m over thirty-five, it is virtually unheard of for a candidate to run for the office of President before the age of forty. Hell, Nyongo-Rice is still quite young and at fifty, she’s only six years younger than my mother. There’s a good chance I won’t make it anyway but I still want to try.”
Kylie smiled in his direction though it never reached her pale green eyes. “Then you need to explain that to your wife, not me. Chances are she may or may not ever be First Lady but the probability of it happening in the next two years is doubtful. If another Democrat wins then that puts you out of the running until twenty-twenty-four unless something life changing happens between twenty sixteen and twenty-twenty. As it is, you have pointed out the obvious. You will only be thirty-nine were you to win the Democrat ticket and run for President a year and a half from now.”
He shook his head. “I need a cigarette—”
“I thought you told me you quit.”
“Get off my back, Kylie. You’re just as bad as my wife.”
Peter walked off and joined a handful of senators, representatives and various other professional law-makers on an elaborate set up in one of the White House gardens. He lit a Marlboro, pacing back and forth as he dragged on his cigarette.
He wasn’t a fool. His life had always been relatively easy when compared to ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world but for once he wondered if he should have questioned his parents’ decision. Maybe Elizabeth wasn’t the woman for him. How the hell did he get out of his marriage without costing himself the whole election, his dignity and pride?
The more he thought about it, the more his brain seemed to go around in circles. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t know what to do and didn’t have a clue how to go about changing anything in his life.
Peter’s thoughts drifted off to Sigourney and he smiled, albeit reluctantly. She knew the score, and maybe she could help him figure out his situation, if only to give him some much needed advice.
There were problems with that scenario though. She was a good girl, the type who might not be attracted to someone who had a wife and children. He’d never taken his relationship status into consideration when thinking about his attraction to her but this was a mistake on his part.
Not only was there a vast age difference between them but it might not seem very professional for a politician to be courting a woman who was so much younger than him. She’d barely graduated from Harvard at the ripe age of twenty-six. What the hell had taken her so long? What kind of demons was she hiding? Was she the gold digging type only looking for a man to marry her? He wondered if this was the reason why she wanted the campaign aide job so badly.
Women like Sigourney were dangerous for a reason. She made Peter feel young and inspired him to long for a future that might not have any part of his life. Perhaps he should wonder what his chances were with the two ambitions that clouded his judgment: the Presidential race and risking it all for a one night with one of his campaign aides.
Chapter Five
Sigourney
Adjusting to my new position of campaign aide was easier than I thought it would be. I was lucky because at least I was older than the average age of the people who worked around me and I also had a very good friend in Andrea.
I didn’t see much of Governor Coburn the first few weeks I worked in the office due to him spending most of his time in Annapolis. Occasionally, he would fly to Washington on a Friday and visit the campaign office but those times were few and far between.
Kylie and I became closer than I thought we would but eventually, I got the hang of her personality and I began to like her. She was prickly but her strength and will to succeed had gotten her to the position she held. I respected that a lot.
The last Friday of June came around quicker than I expected. Governor Coburn planned to stop by and Kylie’s assistant, Russell, who’d been conspicuously absent up until that time finally breezed into work.
I didn’t really consider him my type since he was too tall at almost six feet four and extremely fit with an athletic build. With his dirty-blond hair, blue-green eyes, lightly tanned skin and casual wear attire, I could see how other women in the office found him attractive and swooned accordingly.
“So, that is the infamous Russell Berkeley?” I asked another campaign aide, Claudia, while we stood in the break room. “I thought he was made up since I haven’t met him the whole time I’ve been working here.”
Claudia glanced at me before she added two percent milk to her coffee. “His mother died in a freak car accident. I think she almost had her head decapitated or somethin’ grossly macabre like that. It was gory. Kylie let him take some time off so he could fly back to Manhattan to help his dad settle her estate.”
“Oh, don’t I feel stupid? Open mouth, insert foot.”
“You didn’t know, after all, no one bothered to tell you. He’s a nice guy but once you have a chance to talk to him, you’ll understand perfectly why he’s Kylie’s assistant. You know that sayin’, ‘The apple never falls too far from the tree?’ Well, it makes a lot of sense where those two are concerned.”
“I’m confused.” I sipped from my black coffee and grimaced before I added two percent milk.
“Kylie and Russell are half-siblings. Their mom ran off with some investment shark that worked on Wall Street. Anyway, Hugh Berkeley is Russell’s dad. She refused to attend her own mother’s funeral.”
I tried not to show my displeasure with office gossip. Instead, I smiled at Claudia and walked back to my desk. Unfortunately, Kylie sat on my desk and glanced at my open laptop.
“Nice to know you lock your Mac when you walk away. Can you drill that into everyone else’s heads around here?” She greeted casually.
I smiled brightly. “I could try.”
“Good. Russell would like to take you to lunch.”
The look on my face must have been priceless. “Excuse me?”
“Not on a date, Sigourney. Do I look like a pimp to you? He merely wants to go over some more sensitive information. As my number three after him, you are very important. I expect you to supervise all the aides as we grow and expand. That means you can’t chat with them like they’re your equals when they aren’t. You must maintain a certain…professional demeanor with them at all times,” Kylie further explained as she stood up.
“Fine. Just so you know, I’m not all that close to anyone in this office. I keep to myself and I live with my best friend,” I offered as an excuse.
“Interesting. How long have you known this best friend of yours?”
What the hell did this have to do with my job?
“Since we were in grade school, why? We also attended Georgetown together.”
“I thought you attended Harvard for your undergraduate degree in Political Science?”
“I did.”
“Why did it take you six years to get a four year degree?”
“I took two years off and bummed around Europe. My mom is Norwegian and although they aren’t part of the European Union, they’re part of the European Economic Community. I have a Norwegian passport. I lived for a year in Spain and a year in France. What’s your point with us playing Twenty Questions?”
Kylie smirked. “So you know Spanish and French fluently?”
“I never said that,” I replied. “Quiet as it’s kept, you don’t need to know a language fluently to live somewhere foreign, especially when there are expats, Canadians, Brits, Aussies and Kiwis about…they all speak some form of English you know.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m intermediate in both Catalan and French. I spent most of my time in Catalo
nia when I lived in Spain and divided my time between Paris and Nice when I lived in France,” I elucidated.
“You see? That wasn’t so hard.” Kylie checked the cell phone in her hand with sudden interest. “Governor Coburn was concerned about the two years you were off the radar. Anything we should know about? A child you secretly gave birth to or a scorned boyfriend?”
Now it was my time to smirk and I did so with gusto. “No, I’m actually pro-life when it comes to myself, and if I had a child, he or she would be in my life right now. I had boyfriends in both places but they aren’t scorned as far as I know. Ramon is now married to a French Canadian and I don’t know what happened to Daniel. We didn’t end on exactly friendly terms but neither of us hate one another either.”
“What if Ramon approached you now? Still married and with children? Would you have one last fling with him?”
I sometimes didn’t understand Kylie’s motivations though this particular time wasn’t one of them. Her inquisition of me could be seen through so easily, I had to bury a laugh I wanted so badly to express.
“No, I wouldn’t. I wasn’t raised particularly religious but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about a relationship. Sleeping with someone who is married just seems wrong to me.”
“If you say so.” Kylie walked off and I breathed out loud before unlocking my laptop.
I wanted to believe the Governor had put her up to her questions but at the same time, they felt so perverse, I had a sneaking suspicion she would have asked them whether he asked her to or not.
Time was not on my side that day. I’d barely gathered my thoughts and began working again when Russell came by and smiled brightly in my direction.
“Sigourney Stewart? I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Russell Berkeley, Kylie’s assistant. How are you?”
DC Affairs Page 3