The Phoenix Candidate

by Heidi Joy Tretheway

  I pick up a paddle and begin his lesson. “It’s not hard.”

  “It will be.” His eyes twinkle with the double entendre.

  “It won’t work if you force it. Technique matters more than muscle. You’ve got to get the stroke right.” I ignore his smirk when I say technique and stroke.

  I show him the right paddle orientation, how far apart to space his hands, and how to get the most from each stroke by using the opposite hand to lever the paddle through the water.

  He listens and seems willing to follow directions. I’m the mature one here. Then I jump in the boat and push us off without a second paddle.

  “Don’t you need one, too?”

  “Why? I thought you were supposed to be learning.”

  “So you’re going to sit there and just … hang out while I row your ass all over the river?”

  “Sounds about right to me.” I slouch in my seat, tip down the brim of my hat and let my fingers trail through the cool river. “And it’s called paddling, not rowing.”

  Jared paddles hard from his seat behind me, huffing and puffing, until I tell him to chill out and just let us glide.

  And we do. Under the Marquam Bridge and the new Tilikum Bridge, across the river through steady weekend traffic, and around the east side of Ross Island, a thin gravel bar in the center of the Willamette River. It’s topped with trees and inaccessible except by boat.

  I turn around and see the rudder still up on the kayak’s stern. “Pull that cord, the one behind you on your right.”

  Jared does and the rudder flips into the water. “Do you mean to say all this time I’ve been pushing the foot pedals and they’ve done nothing?”

  I shrug. “It taught you how to control the boat with just your paddle. Most kayaks don’t have rudders anyway. Like this so far?”

  In the slender waterway between the island and the Willamette’s east bank, there are no waves, no other boats. Bird calls accent the silence.

  “It’s peaceful,” Jared admits.

  “Great. Time to shake it up.” I push myself up, plant one foot on my seat and the other on the side of the boat, then grasp the opposite edge with both hands and tug.

  We roll.

  Chapter Nine

  Jared comes up a sputtering, bewildered wreck. “What the fuck, Grace?”

  I swim a couple of strokes toward his paddle to keep it from floating away. “Rule one, don’t let go of your boat. Rule two, don’t let go of your paddle.”

  “That’s kind of hard to do when I’m trying to swim out of the boat to avoid drowning.” His face betrays a shadow of panic.

  I roll my eyes and swim back to the boat, where I give it a shove to roll it right side up again. “So melodramatic. You’re fine. You didn’t even have a spray skirt on. The river’s cold, but you’re not going to die.”

  “How do you expect me to hang onto the boat and the paddle and get my head above water?”

  “You’ll figure it out. You can handle multitasking, can’t you?” I bob in the water next to him, letting my life jacket hold me up. “I mean, you were busy consulting with me while you were also seducing me. That’s multitasking.”

  And here I am multitasking, too: simultaneously teaching him and punishing him. I smirk.

  Jared shakes his head vigorously, emptying water from his ears. “That’s the good kind of multitasking. This is just cruel.”

  “You said to give you a kayak lesson. The tippy test is part of the lesson. You’ve got to flip and right yourself.” I pull a paddle float from beneath the elastic cords crisscrossing the kayak. “Stuff the paddle in that and latch it. Then blow it up.”

  Jared fumbles with the yellow bag, finds the opening, and slips it over his paddle. He secures it and inflates the float so his paddle looks like a big yellow lollipop.

  “Now you’ve got a pontoon.” I show him how to lever himself back into the boat while leaning on his paddle pontoon for balance. He doesn’t trust me when I tell him to go belly-first, but he makes a mess of getting back in and curses in frustration.

  Then he listens. And learns. And following my directions, he manages to twist himself back to sitting upright, paddle in his hands.

  “Deflate your paddle float and follow me.” I swim toward the island, leaving him in the middle of the channel with a float-crippled paddle. I force myself not to look back, trusting that he’ll get it eventually. Trust is part of the learning—trusting him to fail and figure it out.

  When my sandals hit the gravel river bottom, I walk up to the shore, dripping and shivering but invigorated. I take off my life jacket and use it as a cushion as I watch Jared paddle in to shore, nearly tipping himself over again as he tries to figure out how to exit the boat.

  “This is harder than it looks.” A frown still mars his face and his hair is almost black with water, curling on his forehead.

  I sit and wrap my arms around my knees, letting the sun heat my shoulders and dry me off. Jared whips off his T-shirt and wrings it out, then drapes it on a log next to us to dry.

  I can’t not look at his chest. The curls I explored in the dim light of his hotel room last night are glistening where the sun hits water droplets. His nipples are tight little buds from the cold, his stomach firm, and a trail of black hair leads from his navel south.

  And it occurs to me that I never got a good look at him last night. Never explored him as intimately as I might have with other, more conventional lovers.

  He flipped me and bent me over, and it was hot and hard and primal and intense. It made me forget all of those little things in the multi-step program that is foreplay: kiss, lick, suck, grasp, tease, take, thrust, release.

  Especially that first one. The kiss. His lips have been all over my body, but never on my mouth. What the hell is that about? My eyes drop to his mouth, tracing the angles of his lips.

  “You’re thinking dangerous thoughts, Grace. I can tell.” His hand skates along my lower back, stroking a sliver of exposed skin between my tank and shorts.

  “Maybe I’m just thinking about the campaign. What it could be like.”

  “It’s good to anticipate,” he says, and a hand darts out and flicks my nipple.

  I pull back, trying to muster a little outrage. “What was that for?”

  “Anticipation. I can see your thoughts. When your nipples got hard just looking at me.”

  I drop my gaze to his chest, his stomach, and the obvious bulge in his shorts. I swallow and lick my lips. “You’re turning me into a horny teenager.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” His hand returns to my breast, making little circles over my tank top. “As long as you can maintain some self-control…”

  I gasp as he plucks my nipple into a hard bud, then his hand moves lower, over my stomach, flicking open the top button of my shorts.

  “Self-control?” I manage through gritted teeth. “What is this? You’ve got no…”

  I can’t make any more words, not when his fingers find me. Not when my moisture slicks my cleft as his fingers dive between my legs. He reignites the flame that’s been on a slow burn all day, the one that’s been denied not once but twice.

  “We’re in public,” I hiss, fearful a kayaker or paddle boarder will navigate down the narrow channel and find us like this.

  “We’re almost fully clothed.” Jared’s fingers move faster, twisting and plunging, flicking my clit so hard I squirm. “And you’ve earned a little agony after dumping me in the river.”

  “Oh no.” I grab his hand a split second before he pulls it away. I force it back between my legs, grinding against his fingers, demanding. “You will finish what you fucking started.”

  My breath comes in sharp pants and my nails dig into his arm where I’ve anchored him in place. His fingers move, no longer a tease but a lusty, demanding dance. I bite down on my lip and squeeze my eyes shut, feeling the exact moment when my spiral winds tight enough, when his frenzied flicking tips me over the edge, when I come undone.

  I
gasp and clench and hold him against me until my breathing slows. Then I open my eyes, staring into his liquid brown ones, a hint of amusement playing on his lips. “Don’t you dare tease me again,” I growl.

  “Is that a threat?” He withdraws his hand from my shorts, skimming it up my belly, across my breasts. He opens his mouth and sucks, licking my taste off of them. “If this is what happens when I tease you, I’d like to see what happens when I give you everything you want.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Earth tones,” Jared mutters, tossing another suit onto the growing stack on my bed. He’s making a wreck of my closet as he builds two piles of clothes.

  “Exactly what am I supposed to do with these?”

  “Those you hang back up,” he says, pointing to one pile of clothes. “These”—he points to the other, larger pile—“you retire to storage. They’re not what’s going to work on the campaign.”

  “But I love this dress!” I say, pulling a graphic-print Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress from the “store” pile. Paired with heeled boots, it’s easy and chic.

  “It’s too low-cut in front, not structured enough compared to a suit, and the print isn’t going to look good on TV,” Jared says.

  “What’s wrong with this one?” I grab a lavender dress with black pick-stitching.

  “Too frilly. Unless you’re hosting the Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn, it’s not appropriate for a VP. It’s a first lady dress.”

  “Noted.” My mouth forms a thin line. I hold up the next offending garment. “And this green?”

  “Green’s tricky—sometimes it suggests jealousy or greed, sometimes it suggests money or nature. That green’s too much of a jewel tone. You need more earth tones.”

  “Well, thank you Mr. Fashion Consultant.” My voice drips with sarcasm. “So you hate some green, most purple, prints, stripes, metallics, and … gray’s an earth tone. What’s wrong with this?” I point to a pale gray suit.

  “That suit will wash you out.”

  “And this black one?”

  “Doesn’t photograph well. The suit with the white piping works because it defines your lapel. But the all-black one is just going to look like a blob.”

  “Oh.” I blink. “Call me crazy, but I thought you were a consultant on, like, real issues? Why are we playing fashion show?”

  Jared leaves my bedroom and retrieves a slim e-reader from his briefcase. He tosses it on my bed. “This is for you. It’s loaded with what the senator needs you to know, and I’ll be sending more documents to it. You’ll need to read a couple hundred pages a day to keep up.”

  I gape.

  “You said you wanted real issues. You’ll need to prep for everything.”

  I sit on the bed, click the e-reader on and there are dozens of documents: the senator’s detailed biography, his voting record, his platform, major programs, foreign policy, top campaign donors, and talking points for the press.

  There’s even a section called Grace Colton Biography.

  Why would I need to read up on myself? I open it and scan the document in silence as Jared sorts through my shoes and handbags.

  The major theme in Grace Colton’s life is rising from the ashes. As a scholarship student, Colton was the first in her family to attend college. She put herself through law school and earned a prestigious role in contract law at the firm Leverda, Maloney and Probus.

  When personal tragedy struck, Colton again rose from the ashes. A gunman armed with three semiautomatic weapons rampaged at Willamette Mall, killing three people and wounding three more during the busy Christmas shopping season. Her husband Seth and son Ethan were among those killed.

  Grace Colton ran for Congress in 2012 on a platform of gun control stemming from her personal tragedy, gaining national attention and funding for her campaign. Her re-election to the congressional seat two years later included more moderate positions on environmental reform and social issues, but her anti-gun legislation is noted as having “the most teeth since the Brady Bill.”

  I stare at the e-reader dumbly. “Why do you have my bio on here?” I ask.

  Jared turns and has the good grace to look a little bit guilty. “So we have a consistent message.”

  “Consistent?” I find my voice rising. “I’d think I could remember what’s happened in my life. To see it reduced to this…”

  Jared sits next to me on the bed and grasps my hands. “Grace, take a breath. This is not us trying to rewrite history, OK? This is us trying to manage the stories that are going to come out in the media moving forward.”

  “So you’re rewriting history.”

  “No, we’re just crafting a narrative that makes sense in the context of Senator Conover’s campaign. He needs you for certain issues and to catch certain demographics. We need to highlight the right stories from your life.”

  “You’re using Seth and Ethan.”

  “No more than you use Seth and Ethan. You honor their memory by holding them up as an example.”

  “But they’re mine. I lost them. Not you. Are you saying Senator Conover’s going to get on the sob train? Are you going to manufacture the little tear that creeps into the corner of his eye when he talks about people he’s never met?” I can’t keep the rising hysteria from my voice.

  “No, Grace.” He grasps my face in his hands and tips his forehead against mine. “I promise we’re not. I’m not about changing what’s real about you. I’m about picking and choosing what you have to offer and showing the world the best side of you.”

  I take a steadying breath. “What if I can’t get this right? What if I screw up, and say something stupid, or go off-script? I haven’t even finished my second term in Congress and I’ve never been under the media microscope the way Conover has.”

  “I’ve studied this into the ground, woman.” Jared’s hands slide from my face to the back of my neck, then down my back, pulling my body against his. “This is what I do. I’m not the guy in the spotlight. I’m the one behind the scenes.”

  I narrow my eyes. I know so little about Jared, yet he knows so much about me. “This is what you do?”

  “For twenty years. My first big campaign was Conover’s first run for the senate. I’ve been all over the country with other campaigns, and four successful elections with Conover.”

  “So you do this to Conover too? Go through his wardrobe, reshape his history?”

  “I’ve never had to do much with his history,” Jared says with a shrug. “It’s clean, it’s old money, it’s exactly what voters expect.”

  “But I’m not.”

  Jared tips his head, his eyes searching. “You’re right. You’re not a … conventional … candidate. But that’s where I come in. I’m the fixer.”

  “And you’re going to fix me?” I can’t keep the annoyance from my voice. “You’re going to stuff me in a voter-approved, soundbite-ready package?”

  Jared chuckles and pulls me tighter against him. “Nope, I’m going to help you put your best foot forward and then stand back while you give them hell. You’re going to take risks and take a beating. You’re going to be scrutinized the way your male counterparts never will, and it’s not going to be fucking fair. Not at all.”

  He pulls back slightly, so his eyes connect with mine. “But Grace, you’re going to get over that. You’re going to get past what’s unfair and beat them at their own game. Because you could actually win this thing. I’m convinced of it. If you’re as tough and smart and gutsy as I already think you are, you could win the whole damn thing.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Jared’s phone rings and he swipes the screen to answer it.

  “Shep. Good news?” He stands, pacing my bedroom as he listens and nods. “I’ve started the process. We could leak her name as early as tomorrow.”

  My mouth goes wide but he holds up a finger to shush me. He actually flipping shushes me.

  Oh, hell no. I’m on my feet, ready for a fight.

  “You want to swing back through Oregon
and pick us up? Or have us meet you there?”

  More nodding, and I get the distinct impression that I’m fully out of this decision-making process. Which pisses me off.

  “Shall I give her the news?” He listens for a moment, then adds¸ “It’s not that she’s not willing. I can talk to her about it.”

  He signs off the call and pockets his phone.

  I plant my hands on my hips, ready to take him apart. “Leak my name? Really?”

  “Decision time, Grace. Are you in or out?”

  “Ha. You should be a car salesman.” I stalk out of the bedroom in search of wine. There’s a half-empty bottle in my fridge and I slosh it in a glass. I don’t bother offering him any.

  “Grace.” His tone is warning.

  “No. You listen to me. I am a U.S.-fucking-congresswoman. I got elected by an eight-point margin. I self-funded half of my first primary with life insurance money from my dead husband. And now you want to just pull some strings and leak my name and you think I’m going to shut up and take it?”

  “Grace, stop it.”

  “I will not stop it. I will not do what you tell me to do simply because you tell me to do it. Your job is to be a consultant? Fine. Consult. But you’re not a dictator. And you’re not going to make decisions for me. I decide what’s best for me and the First District and the seven hundred thousand I represent.”

  I take a gulp of wine and in my frenzy it goes down the wrong pipe. I cough, then lean over the sink and really sputter. Fuck. I can’t even get mad properly.

  Jared comes from behind me and tentatively slaps my back to help me get over the cough, but I scowl at him and he backs off.

  When my voice is less strangled, I manage: “What about a negotiation?”

  Jared’s expression hardens. “This isn’t a negotiation. This is vetting. I’ve got a job to do, just like you do. I’m here to assess, to see if you’re ready to do what it takes to get on the ticket. Or decide if you’re not a good fit.”