Chapter Twenty-Six
This time, it isn’t rushed. It isn’t frenzied and fueled by lust and anger and mind-blowing dirty talk.
It’s sweet and sad and slow. It’s what we both need.
To heal. To be whole.
As our bodies join, as my limbs remember the precise fit to lock us together, the simple, strong rhythm of our rocking hips, I know we must be doing something more than just sex.
This could be making love.
Could be.
Jared keeps his face turned away from mine, his mouth on my neck, his eyes closed in the darkness of my bedroom. I glide my hands across the muscles of his shoulders, kneading, following the cadence of his hips as he moves inside me.
My fingers thread through the short, soft hair at the back of his head, pulling him closer as I wrap myself around him—legs around his hips, arms around his shoulders, his length buried inside me as I hold him there, too.
Our breathing quickens and I know he’s getting close. I grab his ass in both hands, loving the strength in these muscles, the power that drives him harder inside me.
I cry out when he touches the place that lights my orgasm like a firecracker, the fuse burning bright and hot, rapidly toward its destination.
I detonate. And as my body coils and releases, my climax washing across my skin, I feel him meet my climax with his own. His grunts, his sharp thrusts, his groan as he empties himself inside me; all are tinged with bittersweet need.
It is comfort amid fear and shifting sands. It speaks to healing and fulfillment and safety. All in one. All in one simple act. All in who we are together.
***
“The next part of vetting doesn’t look at who you are now, it looks at who you were. Were you a Supreme Court law clerk, or a beauty pageant winner, or a llama farmer?”
I laugh, remembering our past joke. “Nope, nope, nope.” I set two steaming mugs down on my coffee table, curling up on my couch next to Jared, whose laptop is open and perched on his lap.
“Well, just like Whitewater and the Swiftboats came back to bite candidates in the ass, who you were matters. It matters a lot, and that’s what I’ve got to get to the heart of.”
“Or I’m out.”
“Or you’re too much of a liability. At Senator Conover’s age, this is a one-shot deal. Either he wins the nomination or he doesn’t, and he starts planning for retirement when his senate term ends in 2018.”
“What do you need to know?”
Jared drills me with questions: sharp, specific, intricate words that cut away the gray. “Have you ever…” seem to be his favorite three words, and he asks probing follow-ups about my position papers in the law school journal, my official activities as a corporate lawyer, and virtually every nook and cranny of my private life.
Have I ever had an abortion?
Have I ever traveled to the following countries…?
The clock creeps toward noon and Jared patiently works through his list. He asks if I’ve ever plagiarized material for a school project or in publication (no) and whether I attended political rallies before I became a public figure (yes, on a school-funding measure).
But turnabout is fair play. Every time Jared zings me with a question that hits too close to home, I volley questions back, making Jared answer as if he were a candidate.
He’s my candidate. He’s in contention for a piece of my heart that grows at a breathtaking pace.
“Have you ever used any illegal substances of any kind, including prescription drugs?”
“That’s a pretty broad category, Jared.” I raise my brow. “Have you?”
“Let me clarify: Have you ever used prescription drugs that were not intended for you?”
“No. I barely take Advil as it is.”
“Have you ever used federally banned substances?”
“Again, that’s a broad category. A bunch of states have legalized marijuana, including Oregon.”
“Stop being so obtuse. Have you ever smoked pot?”
The word obtuse gets my hackles up. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Then no.”
“No, you’ve never smoked pot?”
“No, I’m not going to answer your question. If it didn’t matter when Clinton was in the White House a generation ago, it’s not going to matter now.”
“God, Grace, don’t you get it? This is not me trying to tally your sins, or worse, show them to the world. This is me trying to protect you. I’m trying to get ahead of some pimply asshole who’s going to claim he was your dealer in high school.”
“I never had a dealer. I tried it a few times, but pot makes me weird, OK? Super paranoid. Not a happy high.”
“OK.” Jared looks somewhat placated and goes to his notes. “Have you ever been arrested in connection with a drug- or alcohol-related offense, including suspicion of driving under the influence?”
“No.” My lips quirk. “Have you?”
“Arrested? I’m not a criminal, Grace.” Jared’s eyes tighten, the strain from last night showing through.
I reach across the back of the couch for Jared and pull him into me, giving him a second to slide the laptop to the coffee table before I wrap myself around him in an embrace.
This is so strange. So foreign in its domesticity—just us, coffee and papers strewn around, the quiet of my apartment only occasionally interrupted by the honk of D.C. traffic in the streets below.
“What’s next for you today?” I ask.
“I’m flying out in a couple of hours.”
“Already?” I pull away to search his face, and I realize this question is more from my place of wanting and needing to be near him than genuine curiosity about his job.
I want to be near him. Truth.
“I was never supposed to come to D.C.,” Jared says. “But when you said I had to show you I was sorry, I figured I’d better. I just didn’t expect to be waiting outside your building for hours. And when you didn’t answer your text, I thought…”
He doesn’t have to finish. I know what he was thinking: was I on a date? But I can’t fill in answers to his unspoken question. I can’t tell him about Darrow.
“What do you mean, your text?” I jump up from the couch to distract us from that other question, fish my phone out of my purse and find no new texts.
“I sent you a text yesterday, while you were onstage. I told you I was hopping on a plane and to be ready for me—”
“Wet and naked,” I finish for him, reading a text that somehow came in without showing up as new. Hot damn, this guy can dirty-talk. He also has some nerve to assume that I’d just be OK with that, considering the fact that he froze me out for more than a week.
Jared pushes himself off the couch and strides toward me. His brown eyes capture my amber ones, and I watch as he opens his mouth and slowly, deliberately licks his finger.
And then he trails his damp finger along my collarbone. “Here’s wet. Now let’s get you naked.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Trey gives me the hairy eyeball as I roll into my D.C. office a few minutes after noon. “Big night out?”
I shrug. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come see you and Mama Bea.”
“Want to tell me what that’s about? Because your calendar is starting to look awfully suspicious.”
I shut the door to my legislative office, a small, two-room setup on the third floor of the Cannon House Office Building. Trey commands the desk in the main room, with another desk at the side for another staffer when we are in session, and a two-seat waiting area.
The inner office is mine, simply furnished and hung with photographs of Oregon’s varied beauty, the Pacific coast, Cascade Mountains, and eastern Oregon farmland. It’s not an ego wall of photo ops, the kind that cover most pols’ offices. I leave my laptop bag on my desk there and go back to the main room, pulling a chair opposite Trey’s desk.
“This is big.”
Trey sips the last of his coffee and tosses it in the t
rash. “Big, like, bill-out-of-committee big? Or big, like, front-page-news big?”
“Big. Like, thermonuclear.”
He crosses his arms. “And you’re holding out on me?”
“I didn’t know what I could say yet! But now I’ve got an idea.” And so I unwind the story, back to the point where Senator Conover called me for a meeting in Portland, and forward to the dinner with the Darrows last night.
I don’t mention my relationship with Jared. I can’t.
When it’s all out of me, I’m nearly breathless, my heart beating fast as I consider what’s possible. Conover or Darrow? The dark horse or the slick frontrunner?
Trey’s phone beeps and he picks up. “Congresswoman Grace Colton’s office. How may I help you?”
I wait, watching him tap a few keys on his computer.
“About how long do you think you’ll need?” Trey curls a finger and I go around his desk to see what he’s typing. Lauren Darrow, 2 p.m. He raises his brow to ask for permission and I nod. “That will be fine. Consider it confirmed.”
He puts the phone back down and grins at me. “Looks like things are moving fast in your world, girlfriend.”
“Let’s fire it up.”
Trey grins, gleeful over our next adventure. “You know I love you, Grace, right?”
“I know.”
***
I meet Lauren for a late lunch at an atrium restaurant. Over bowls of overpriced salad, she lays out the details of the campaign strategy.
She’s sharp, calculating, and ruthless in her ability to cut through the crap of politicking. I begin to see that Darrow’s greatest asset isn’t the campaign strategists on his team. It’s Lauren.
“We’ve done most of our due diligence on you, so the question is simply what you’re willing to do with this opportunity,” Lauren says.
Like it’s just that simple.
Maybe it is.
“I—I don’t know yet,” I say honestly. I can’t tell her about Conover, but a million questions about what I’m willing to do flood my brain.
Lauren sets down her fork. “Grace, now is the time to be decisive. To take action. I don’t want to pressure you, but—”
“But you want to pressure me.” I straighten in my seat. “Lauren, I’ll be the first to admit that this is an amazing opportunity. Truly. And I’m flattered you’re even considering me, since there are so many other people more qualified—”
“More qualified, but not necessarily more electable,” she enunciates. “That’s the difference, Grace. I don’t care if Bobo the clown is more or less qualified than the next guy. What I care about is a simple calculation: does putting Bobo on the ticket mean more or less votes?”
I open my mouth to respond, and then close it. Damn, when you put it that way. Part of me worries that Darrow sees me as a disposable asset. Will I reel in more or less votes? But another part of me, the ambitious, hopeful part, wonders if I need to push my feelings about Darrow and Conover aside and break this down into a simple calculus of my own:
Will Darrow get me within a heartbeat of the Oval Office, or will Conover?
From the conventional wisdom in the press, the answer seems obvious: Darrow. The primary votes left the Democratic nominee undecided, with no clear majority of delegates voting for one candidate. At the convention next month, two things will decide the next presidential nominee: the superdelegates and Boyle’s delegates, if he releases them to align with a different candidate.
This means the superdelegates will be watching Darrow and Conover closely to see who’s gaining momentum, who’s raising money, and who’s likely to be the best bet in the general election. And I’ll bet anything that Boyle’s working furiously behind the scenes to get the most bang for his buck when he releases his delegates.
“I need to know what you’re willing to do, Grace,” Lauren says. “We hashed out your positions last night. You and Aaron are fairly compatible, and we can divide and conquer on your pet issues.”
“What about vetting?” I blurt. I don’t relish another inquisition from a political consultant, but Darrow is moving a lot faster than Conover did. Somehow having Jared ask me those intensely personal questions didn’t sting the way they would coming from a complete stranger.
Lauren waves a dismissive hand. “Already done, long before we talked, Grace. You think I’d be having lunch with you in public if we hadn’t already determined you’d be good for Aaron’s ticket?”
I whip my head around, feeling exposed. Anyone could see us right now in this open, atrium-style restaurant with massive windows facing a busy sidewalk. It’s nothing like yesterday’s quiet dinner.
And I realize that’s by design. “How—how did you vet me?”
Lauren smiles slightly, her lipstick still intact despite eating the salad. “Private investigator. It’s a simple process, Grace. We just want to turn up anything that might not sit well with voters.”
“You had me investigated?” My stomach clenches, unease and the fennel-orange salad roiling in my gut.
“Don’t frown, Grace. It’s not a good look.” Lauren picks up her fork as if we’re planning something as innocuous as a baby shower, rather than an all-out run at the White House. “Besides, there’s not much you have to worry about. You’re almost squeaky clean.”
I let out a slow breath. Nothing to worry about, Grace. No skeletons in your closet.
Lauren leans in. “But I do want to talk to you woman-to-woman. You’re single, Grace.”
I nod, stunned by her lightning-fast change of subject.
“This man in your life? If you’re a running mate, your relationship won’t fly under the radar for long. Can you honestly say this man is someone voters should get to know? Does he make you more electable?”
I avoid her gaze. I can’t talk about Jared.
“I didn’t think so.” She gives me a slow, appraising look, then leans back in her chair. “I’ll ask you again. Do you control him, or does he control you?”
I halt, remembering Jared’s command to be wet and naked and waiting. That text showed up as “read,” because it was read. By Lauren.
Embarrassment trumps my anger over the fact that she read my text. “And I’ll tell you again, it’s complicated.”
“Who is he?”
“Jared Rankin.”
Lauren’s eyes flare. “Conover’s campaign consultant?”
I twist my napkin in my hands and stare at the tabletop. “Yes.”
Lauren mashes her lips into a thin line. “Grace, you have to cut this off. Immediately. If you run with my husband, you’d literally be sleeping with the enemy.” She leans back. “Plus, we don’t want voters to get distracted by a relationship. You’re still a widow in their minds.”
I bite my lip against a snippy retort. I lost my family five years ago. What’s the appropriate mourning period? A decade? A lifetime?
“Think about it, Grace. I’m trying to help. A fling with the wrong man could damage your future. You need to keep your eye on the ball.”
I give her a noncommittal nod and let several seconds tick by and the tension eases. “What happens next?”
“Next we make our choices. You agree to sign on to our campaign. Our speechwriters go crazy, and we hash out certain issues to ensure we’re all working from the same playbook.”
“You mean you want me to fall in line.”
Lauren’s mouth tightens. “I don’t think I need to remind you that Aaron’s first on the ticket. Not you. You fall in line behind him, or you don’t get on it at all. Are we clear?”
I meet her clear, calculating blue eyes with my amber eyes, and I don’t blink. She is one fierce bitch, but that’s what it takes to win, and the competitor in me respects that. “Crystal.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I don’t know who’s pulling the strings, Conover’s team or Darrow’s, but the flood of requests to my offices in Oregon and Washington, D.C. keep Trey and the rest of my staff hopping.
Press reques
ts for comments on a variety of pending bills. Profile pieces in two women’s magazines. People wants to know what I keep in my handbag. I decline that one, but write an op-ed for Time on the parental leave issue I brought up during Women to the Helm.
When Harper’s Bazaar requests a photo shoot, Trey nearly loses his shit, squee-ing from excitement. We take a shuttle to New York for the afternoon and they tape me into a haute couture ball gown of gunmetal silk. They tell me to put my hands on my hips and shrug my shoulders forward so the hollow of my collarbone is more pronounced.
My hair is a wild mass of curls in the shoot and the makeup artist gives me a wicked smoky eye lined with silver. I can’t help but feel that it’s not very vice presidential, but Trey says he’s been in touch with Darrow’s people. This is on the approved list.
Jared’s away again, somewhere in America, somewhere with Conover as he fundraises with increasing desperation. But he’s my lifeline at the end of the twelve- and fourteen-hour days, the sanity that grounds me as more than a packaged politician.
I’m a woman, and he pulls out all the stops to remind me of this. I clutch my phone and a glass of wine in the quiet of my apartment and I don’t feel so lonely.
“What was the best part of your day?” His familiar rumble warms me through the phone line.
“Meeting with Moms Against Gun Violence. I got to tell them about my bill that would provide more safety measures and training in schools.” I pause, listening to Jared’s subtle breath across thousands of miles. “How about you?”
“Imagining what I could do to you. With my teeth and my tongue.”
I can’t suppress my laughter. “Thinking about me was the best part of your day, Jared?”
“Less thinking and more doing would be better.”
I rest my hand on my thigh, feeling the warmth and weight of it, imagining it could be Jared’s. “Tell me more about that.”
The Phoenix Candidate Page 12