“Because I know Tom and there’s no reason for him to do that with Amelia.”
“Obviously, you didn’t know about it and are finding it hard to believe. But, it’s true.”
Kip thrust the car in drive, letting gravel fly as they pulled out of the marina. Why the hell was Annie stirring up trouble? They have enough trouble as it is. “She’s twice his age.”
“With more money than God.”
“So, you think Mrs. Wentworth is paying him to have sex with her?” The traffic light turned from yellow to red, but Kip blazed right through the intersection.
“I don’t know what their arrangement is, but they definitely have one. You better look into this, Porter. This whole thing could come back to bite you.”
“I can handle my own staff, thank you.”
“Apparently you can’t because your chief of staff is screwing around with a very wealthy donor—one I’ve noticed has been very generous with your campaign.”
Kip swerved the car into a no-parking zone and killed the engine. “What are you trying to say? That I’ve pimped out my chief of staff to bring in donations?”
“Oh, my God, of course not. But, it’s evident you didn’t know anything about this and it wouldn’t be the first time a congressman got in hot water over shady dealings going on behind his back.” It finally hit Kip like a ten-pound sledge hammer right between the eyes. Tom did have something going on with Amelia. It made perfect sense. But, what exactly? Tom had been hell-bent on getting the pipeline contract to Wentworth Global and lately had been completely unreasonable when it came to the bill. What was in it for him?
“I don’t want to see you get in trouble because of something Tom did,” Annie said.
“I’ll talk to him.” Kip merged back into the heavy Saturday night traffic, figuring out the best way to handle Tom.
“Here we are.” Annie pointed toward an open parking space. Kip pulled the Lexus to the curb outside her apartment and cut the engine. He reached behind her head and pulled her in for a long, gut-wrenching kiss. All week he’d dreamed of this moment when he’d take her home, kiss her deeply, and then ask to come in. They’d go upstairs and finally follow through with what he was sure they both wanted. Now that Annie had exposed Tom and Amelia, all Kip could do was think of how he planned to handle it. His dream of waking up in Annie’s arms evaporated.
“Would you like to come up?” Annie’s playful tone nearly brought him out of his rage.
“Babe.” Kip sighed. “Any other night, believe me, I’d love to come up.” He brushed a dark tendril behind her ear and drank in her natural beauty. Damn it, he was falling and didn’t know how to stop it. “Can I have a rain check? I have to talk to Tom.”
“So you’d rather spend time with your chief of staff over your campaign manager, huh? Okay, Porter. Don’t let it be said I didn’t offer.” Annie chuckled and reached for the door handle.
“Hey.” Kip reached for her hand and tugged her into a tight embrace. “I’m sorry. I’ll make this right. You’ll see.” And, he would. He’d get himself out of this mess with the Wentworths and do his best to win over Annie.
“So serious.” She pouted like a child and then laughed. “It’s okay, Porter. We’ll get together another time. No worries.” Annie rubbed the wrinkle between his brow with the pad of her thumb and then pecked a kiss on his lips. “I’ll see you on Monday.”
Seventeen
“Good morning.” Annie breezed through the office toward the conference room when she was stopped by Kip’s assistant.
“Kip postponed the staff meeting. Didn’t you get the text?”
“I don’t think so.” She frantically scrolled through her texts and emails. “Isn’t he here?”
“He’s in with Tom, but asked that you wait for him in his office.”
Annie and the receptionist snapped their attention toward Tom’s door when a loud shout came from within. Indecipherable, but clearly angry, Tom’s voice traveled through the heavy wooden door. Annie shrugged her shoulders and walked into Kip’s office. Obviously, he was confronting Tom with what Annie witnessed at the yacht party and it wasn’t going over well. She sat on the office couch and flipped open her laptop, ready to go over debate questions with Kip.
“See if you can get me an appointment with the speaker,” Kip barked at his assistant as he entered his office. He closed the door with force and stalked across his office without speaking to Annie.
After several silent minutes, Annie said, “I take it things didn’t go well with Tom this morning.” Annie set her laptop on the coffee table and moved to the chair in front of Kip’s desk. He didn’t reply, still fuming from his encounter with Tom. Instead, he tapped away on his keyboard and kept his gaze directed at the computer screen. She wasn’t sure if she should stay or go. After several minutes, Kip hit the send button and settled back into his leather chair with a heavy sigh.
“Hi.” He gave Annie a small grin as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Bad morning?”
“Something like that.”
“If you want me to go, we can talk later.” Annie rose from her chair and Kip rushed around his desk, pulling her into his arms.
“Don’t go.” His request was more of a plea and Annie sensed he needed her to stay. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held tight. Kip sighed, lightened his hold, and then pressed a tender kiss on her lips. He kissed her hesitantly, as if he were asking permission, pain showing in his eyes. Whatever had happened between him and Tom, it had obviously left him upset. Annie wanted to kiss away his stress and disappointment. She rubbed the tension in his neck while capturing his mouth, letting him know with her kiss she was there for him. He was hurting, she could see it, and she wanted more than anything to be the one to help.
“Do you want to talk about what happened with Tom?” Annie feathered delicate kisses on his cheeks, his forehead, and his nose as she offered her support. Kip sagged in her arms, gliding his hands lower.
“No. Just kiss me.” Kip palmed her bottom, pressing her tightly against him as he plunged his tongue between her lips. He kissed her as if he drew strength from her exhaled breath.
“Kip,” Annie murmured against his lips. “I’m here for you.”
Lifting her feet off the floor, Kip carried Annie to the leather couch along the wall where he laid her against the armrest and settled his heavy body beside hers. He smothered her lips against his in a feverish kiss and slipped his hand under her skirt, massaging her thigh as his hand trailed higher. Her thoughts screamed, “Stop,” but her hands operated of their own volition. He needed her and she couldn’t resist him. She tugged at his shirt hem, freeing the fabric from his pants so she could run her hands over his taut back and contoured chest.
Kip leaned up, locking her eyes with his, and slowly unbuttoned her blouse. “I need you, Annie.” The desire in his eyes melted Annie’s reserve, sending a deep aching need inside her. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him tenderly. Kip unhooked her bra, shoving it aside, and covered her breasts with his mouth, devouring each hungrily. She looked up at the coffered ceiling as he nibbled down her neck, reminding herself this shouldn’t be happening, but she was too weak to stop it. When Kip’s hand slid higher up her thigh, the war was over and Annie’s desire had won. She quickly unbuttoned Kip’s shirt and felt her breath hitch in her throat at the sight of his magnificently firm body. He’d obviously kept in shape since his football days and Annie couldn’t resist pressing her mouth against his thick pecs, tasting the sweetness of his skin.
Kip tugged down her panties and gently slid his finger inside, and Annie gasped from the sensation.
“You can tell me to stop,” Kip murmured against her mouth, but Annie shook her head while unlatching his belt buckle. “Thank God.” Kip laughed and sucked her into a lusciously suffocating kiss. He reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet and from it, a condom. He sat up to roll it on and then reached behind Annie, lifting her onto his lap. While she straddled him, Kip ra
ised the mass of curls from her neck, grazing his lips down her tingling skin to her aching breasts. She couldn’t wait much longer and was relieved when he lifted her hips and entered her. With her heart pounding out of her chest and desire pulsing throughout her body, Annie gave herself completely to Kip, all inhibitions and concerns thrown to the wind. Resting on his sinewy thighs, with his hands and mouth all over her body and her hands gripping his strong shoulders, Kip and Annie were in perfect sync, riding the wave of ecstasy together. They muffled their screams with a deep kiss and Annie collapsed in his arms.
For a few minutes, they lay chest-to-chest, trying to catch their breath, gently stroking each other’s damp skin. Kip planted several tiny kisses on her shoulder while caressing her back as Annie nuzzled her face in the crook of his neck, drinking in his masculine smell. A loud shrill noise snapped their languor and Kip reached behind Annie to his cell phone on the coffee table.
He tapped on the screen and blurted, “Damn it. I have a hearing in ten minutes.”
Kip lifted Annie off of his lap and deposited her on the end of the couch like a sack of potatoes being dropped off the back of a truck. He grabbed his pants from where they’d puddled at his feet and walked to his adjoining bathroom without casting Annie so much as a backward glance. In an instant, the needful, sensuous, connection between them evaporated and Annie felt deflated.
As if in a trance, she grabbed her panties off the floor and slowly pulled them up under her skirt. One by one she buttoned her blouse, then lifted her hips to tuck it into her waistband. She shrunk against the arm of the couch and threw her arm over her eyes, releasing a quivering sigh. What had just happened? Annie lifted herself off the sofa, feeling the afterglow of great sex, but totally humiliated. She pulled a hair band out of her purse, gathered her thick curls into a ponytail, and checked her reflection in her compact mirror. Her lipstick was smudged and her mascara had smeared, but quick action with a tissue had her looking as she had before walking into his office.
Annie lifted her satchel strap onto her shoulder and smiled as Kip rushed out of the bathroom, hoping their earlier passion wasn’t forgotten. He brushed a kiss across her temple and said “I’ll call you,” then left the door standing open as he hurried out of his office.
With a loud bang, Annie slammed the oven door closed and picked up the large stainless bowl. She stirred the thick batter with a wooden spoon, periodically dipping in a finger and extracting a large glob of cookie dough, which she promptly inserted in her mouth.
“Will there be enough dough left to even bake the cookies?” Emberly’s voice echoed through the laptop. As soon as Annie walked into her apartment, she had put in a Skype call to her old friend, knowing it was late afternoon in Rome. After Kip’s brush off, she couldn’t face the day, so she called Pam in the campaign office and told her she wasn’t feeling well. Instead, she retreated to her apartment and went into a baking frenzy. A pan of brownies baked in the oven while she prepared a double batch of peanut butter cookies.
Annie shouted from the kitchen, “If not, I’ll make some more.” She laughed and then slapped her hands down on the counter, looking at Emberly’s face on the screen. “Maybe I should travel the world with you and Nico.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d be away from all this.”
“What happened? Why are you home baking like a fiend instead of working at the campaign office?”
While Annie filled Emberly in on her morning, she furiously plopped large spoonfuls of dough on a cookie sheet. “He just left me standing there while his staff stared at me, knowing I’d just screwed my boss on his leather couch.” She walked to the other side of the counter and dropped onto a bar stool, dragging the laptop around to face her. She swiped a cookie dough ball off the metal pan, leaned her elbows on the counter, and chewed the sweet concoction. “I’m no better than the sluts you see on TV, forever scandalized because of an affair with a politician. I’m no better than the woman my father was caught with. God, what was I thinking?”
“I think you’re exaggerating.” Emberly held up her finger when her desk phone rang. “Hold on. I need to take this.”
“Just wait until the news gets out,” Annie mumbled to herself, as she scooped up another tablespoon of dough.
While Emberly took her call, Annie dropped her head in her hands, remembering the humiliation she felt after Kip had walked out. Three sets of eyes had stared accusingly back at her. She was certain they knew after he left her standing all flushed in his office. She dragged her fingers through her hair, pulling the strands away from her face, making her eyebrows lift painfully.
“What are you doing?” Emberly had returned.
“Maybe I can have plastic surgery. I’ve changed my last name, maybe I can change my face and move to Alaska, where no one will know me or recognize me. If I show my face on Capitol Hill again, they’ll all whisper behind my back, ‘There’s that skank, Annie. Wonder which congressman she’s planning to do today?’.”
“Annie, come on.” Emberly laughed. “You’re making too much out of this. I’m sure his staff didn’t know what went on in the office. From everything you’ve told me, he sounds like a nice guy.”
“Nice guy?” Annie dropped her hair and snapped to attention. “The guy has his way with me in his office—on a Monday morning, mind you—and then throws out the old ‘I’ll call you’ line, and you say he sounds pretty nice? It’s time to call it quits and find a job far, far from Washington.”
“Wait.” Emberly held up her hand to the screen and Annie saw the concern in her eyes. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the best time or place for—well—you know, but you’re both single. There’s nothing in the manual that says you can’t date your boss.”
“You sound like Kate. But, FYI, I don’t think he had dating on his mind.”
“Why he rushed out of there, I can’t say. But, give it a day or two and see what happens. It’s not like he’s going to leak it to the press.”
“God, I hope not. That would be the worst publicity.”
“See. No one will know.”
“But that doesn’t answer why he rushed out of there the way he did.”
Annie picked up the cookie sheet, cleared off a row of dough, and held the blob up to her lips.
“Some advice?” Emberly tapped her fingertip against the screen. “I’d drop that dough back on the tray. If he does call, hoping to see you tonight, you’ll want to still fit in your clothes.”
“Good point.” The dough landed with a plop on the tray.
Eighteen
Kip didn’t make the call until noon on Tuesday. On Monday he had rushed from a hearing to a committee meeting to a press conference, with no time for lunch or even a quick call to Annie.
At least that’s what he’d been telling himself.
He’d spent his evening making fundraising calls on behalf of the party and then immersed himself in reading some pending bills before collapsing on his office couch. At midnight he was still wide awake thinking about what had transpired that morning. He hadn’t intended on having sex with her in his office— but, after his fight with Tom, he couldn’t resist her tender, caring touch. With each kiss and caress, he knew he couldn’t hold back. Then again, maybe Tom’s words—fuck her if you have to—were the reason he’d taken advantage of her, and now he felt like a heel. The truth was, if he had it all to do again, he wouldn’t. Annie was too sweet, too clever, too damned wonderful to be treated that way. As soon as he had rushed out of his office, the guilt started eating away at him.
Kip rolled on his side and punched the pillow several times until he flopped back on the couch. He couldn’t believe he had gotten himself in this mess. If only Tom hadn’t met her in that bar and convinced him they should hire her to get to her dad. But if Tom hadn’t met her, Kip wouldn’t have either. This whole plot was screwed up. Tomorrow he’d quit being a coward and tell Annie the truth about knowing her identity. And then maybe his conscience would leave him alone.
“What are you doing sleeping in your office? Haven’t you been home?”
Swinging his legs to the floor while flinging off the plaid fleece throw, Kip yawned deeply and then rested his elbows on his knees. “Yeah, I wanted to get caught up on some stuff and it got late. Didn’t feel like driving back to my apartment.”
“You look like hell. Better get moving.”
“What time is it?” Kip stood and reached for the shirt and pants he had flung across the coffee table.
“It’s seven and we have a meeting with the speaker at nine,” Tom said. He walked out of Kip’s office and started a pot of coffee in the reception area. As he dumped a bag of grounds into the machine, he said over his shoulder, “I think the speaker wants to talk about the Appropriations Committee position that’s coming available. When we get the pipeline bill passed, you should gain some real clout—be able to name your positions.”
“I’ll be glad when it’s over.”
When Tom came back into the office and handed Kip a mug of coffee, he stared at the cup and thought about Annie and her love of tea cups. He shook his head slightly and grinned at the memory of her long explanation of the benefit of china. Kip picked up his phone, quickly scrolling through his messages.
“I’m going to tell her,” Kip said, finally looking clearly at Tom.
“Tell who what?”
“I’m going to tell Annie the truth—that we’ve known who she is from the beginning.”
“You can’t.” Tom stepped closer to Kip—only the coffee table stood between them.
“Why? You said the other day we need to do whatever it takes, even if that means telling her the truth.”
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