“So I’d still like us to work together to win the White House,” Shep says. I lift my face in surprise. “What if I gave you certain issues to lead? Gun control, environmental legislation, and capital gains. I know those are your hot buttons—would you be open to taking another crack at our platform, fleshing them out?”
“Our platform?”
He looks at Jared, then back at me. “Let’s make it ours. Couple of things to get out of the way, though. First of all, Darrow. You done with talking to that bastard?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Can’t trust him.” Conover glances at Jared. “Ask Rankin. He’s been stung by the Darrows before.”
I realize there’s more to his history with Lauren and Aaron Darrow than she disclosed. And I believed her. Not him.
Maybe stupid isn’t too far off the money where I’m concerned.
“How about Jared? You done with this bastard?”
I look at Jared, his eyes sad and drawn. No crinkles. Just chocolate-brown irises that plead with me in this moment.
“Not by a long shot, Shep.”
“Good. Because you can trust him. I trust him completely. And you’ve got to, if you want to run with me.”
“I will.”
“Fine. Keep your hands off each other until you’re behind closed doors. I know you’re both consenting adults, but let’s not scare the children. Got it?”
I blush crimson and both Jared and I nod obediently.
“Fine. Then we’re going to convention. We’ll do the endorsement announcement in a few days—we don’t need to pile on the news cycle from yesterday. You’ve got a speech to learn, a bunch of press to get through, and a relationship to make right.”
Shep gives both of us a hard look. “Don’t mess it up again.”
Chapter Forty-One
Jared drives like a maniac.
He dragged me out of the campaign office and into his truck so fast I didn’t even get a chance to grab a volunteer T-shirt. I barely managed to remember my suitcase.
And now he jets down the freeway at positively illegal speeds, his hand clutching mine except when he drops it occasionally to shift. We drive out of the city, into green and more green, and nearly an hour has passed when I see patches of water intermittently through the trees.
A sign announces Table Rock Lake, and we pass the What’s Up Dock. Cute. Jared turns off the road abruptly onto a narrow gravel drive, bumping us along toward a pale yellow farmhouse with a broad porch that spreads like a skirt around it.
“Where are we?”
“Kimberling City. Well, outside it a bit.”
We’re in rural southern Missouri and I am truly lost, with nothing about this place resembling a city.
I get out of the car and walk toward the house, breathing in the sweet smell of summer grass and the heady fragrance of ripe fruit from ancient trees.
“It was my grandmother’s house. And now it’s my house. Not that I get much time here,” Jared admits.
“You live here?”
“I stay in an apartment in Springfield during the week, when I’m not traveling.”
“Then why bring me here?” My throat tightens, trying to make sense of this man who steps up to me, toe to toe, and cups my face in his hands.
“Because I wanted where we stand to mean something. I didn’t want us to be in another anonymous hotel room or temporary apartment. I wanted you to stand on my land and in my home when I finally kissed you.”
Jared lowers his face toward me and my breath flutters in my chest, my lips parting as he finally reaches my mouth. I’m on fire, every nerve ending burning up with lust, and yet Jared anchors me with just the softest touch, his lips to mine, the press of them almost indecipherable in the current of warm air around us.
I lean into his touch, to his lips, and he catches my lower lip between his own. He moves against me, bolder, his mouth tracing the curves of mine as he drinks me in.
His tongue slides over my lip, tasting me, and I moan into his mouth, our breaths entwined as my body melts into his. His arms band around my shoulders, his fingers tangle through my curls, and his tongue teases my mouth, past my teeth, stroking my tongue and opening me more fully to him.
I’m breathless and drowning in him. His scent, his stubble, the press of his nose next to mine. His lips taste and take and then his teeth close on my lip, the sting drawing an ache from my core.
A need for more.
A desperate cry for his skin against mine.
My fingers pluck at his shirt buttons and he grabs my hand, turns and leads me to the farmhouse, up the porch stairs, and up a flight to the second floor. I catch snippets of images: a yellow hallway, a blue room, and then a pale, sage green room with white, gauzy curtains.
The rough-hewn bed is draped in white, too, the furnishings sparse. Jared peels my clothes from my body without hesitation, without question, as if we’re meant to do this.
As if we’re inevitable.
He lays me down across his bed and then covers my body with his own, his hands wrapping my wrists and pinning them above my head. He trails his lips across my cheek and down my neck, then down to my taut, heavy breasts that ache and spark as his stubble brushes across them.
He sucks my nipple into his mouth and I gasp with pleasure. I pant with want as his tongue circles each in turn, lips tugging at them until they peak.
“Beautiful,” he sighs, his drawl more pronounced now that we’re in his home. “Grace, you’re beautiful.” His hands skim down my ribcage, around my waist and rest on my hips. “I can’t believe I never told you that before.”
I smile, a giggle bubbling up in my chest. “Shame on you, Jared. You were so focused on all the dirty things you could do to me, I’ll bet it never occurred to you.”
“Let’s just say you gave me time to think.” His expression sobers. “And to regret. And to want to live a life without regrets. With you.”
I look in his dark eyes and I see the walls coming down. His home. His history. His life lived out of suitcases and rental cars. No matter how this campaign sweeps me up tomorrow, I know that what I want with Jared is something real.
“I want to know you, Grace. Inside and out. I want to know you deeper and better than anyone has ever known you. And I want to have you, Grace. If you’ll let me.”
All I have to say is, “Yes.”
Jared’s eyes close at that word. His body is still, his breath stopped for a long moment. And when he opens his eyes, I see his face change. I see the crinkles come back to his eyes as he smiles like I just gave him the sun.
He parts my legs and moves between them, his hips flexing as he nudges his cock against me. I’m already wet, drenched with desire from his kiss, his touch, and more than anything, his words.
He wants to love me.
And I love him.
“Grace,” he hisses as he drives inside me, filling me so deeply that I cry out with the force of it. “Grace Colton, you are mine.”
He pulls me closer, my hips angled up to his so he can touch that spot inside me that sends electricity up my spine and down to my toes. His mouth covers mine as I moan, as I whisper the things I can hardly say aloud.
I need this. I need you. I love this. I love you.
“Louder,” Jared says, his hips bucking against me, the slap of flesh echoing in this cool green room. “I need to hear you say it, Grace.”
“I love—” He takes my breath away with the next thrust, and my climax threatens to steal my ability to say the last words. “I love you.”
Jared crushes his mouth against mine and my spine bows up off the bed, tender breasts rubbing against his chest, his touch sending tingles through me. I ride a wave of energy that spirals higher and higher, a staircase I’m endlessly climbing, until at last I am released.
I soar.
I dive.
And I crash into him as his climax overtakes both of us, his groan ripping through his throat as his body pumps heat and life into mine. I clench
around him, draining him, our explosion like a mine underwater, where everything expands and then, just as suddenly, contracts.
All of our energy comes back to one singular point of focus: our lips.
His mouth on mine. His words, as he whispers love into my mouth over and over and over.
And I drink it in. Every last drop.
***
I trace my fingers through his chest hair, my ear cradled on his shoulder. I need answers, but I’m terrified that pushing for them will erase what progress we made.
“Spit it out, Grace.”
“What?”
“Whatever you were going to say. You take these little, short breaths like you’re just about to talk, and then you stop.” He squeezes me tighter to his side. “Say it.”
“There’s more to you and the Darrows.”
“Yes.” His tone is wary.
“So I want to know. I need to know. Because all this time she’s been manipulating me, driving a wedge between us, and I just … I feel fucking stupid.”
Jared rolls toward me and cups my chin in his hand. “Don’t. Because she manipulated me, too.”
My eyes widen with too many questions and I don’t know where to start, but Jared continues.
“I was working on the California attorney general’s campaign and Lauren was a TV reporter. Hot. Ambitious. She’d eat her own young if it meant getting ahead.” His chuckle is mirthless. “When we were … involved … I remember she said she’d rather die than have kids. And yet, when it was politically expedient for Aaron Darrow, she popped out three of them without blinking.”
I shiver. “You were involved?”
“Depends on how you define it. We were fucking, but at the time I was too stupid to realize she was also fucking with my head. I was so focused on getting my candidate through, and she was ruthless. We’d talk policy all night and she’d suggest the next moves against the competition.”
“She was useful to you.” I remember the echo of Lauren’s question: Do you control him, or does he control you?
“That’s the real head-fuck, Grace. I thought I was using her, getting my rocks off and a little strategy on the side. But she was using me. She convinced me to make strategic leaks that propelled her forward as a reporter far more than it benefitted my candidate.”
“Why does she hate you so much?”
“Because I’m not convenient anymore.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course not. She’s been married to Aaron for eight years.” Jared’s eyes tighten and my stomach rolls with a new realization. “It didn’t end there, did it?”
“No.” It’s a whisper laced with shame. “I became inconvenient when she tried to hire me for Darrow’s presidential bid and I stayed with Conover instead.”
“And all this time…?” I’m still catching up, shell-shocked from the depth of his admission.
Jared shakes his head. “Just … just sometimes. When she needed me, and when she could find a way to make me need her.” His tone conveys self-loathing and disgust.
“Does Aaron know?”
“Maybe. Maybe he has women, too, if Lauren lets him. Or maybe she lets him think he’s getting away with something.”
I’m silent, my stomach churning with disgust. The pieces are falling into place: Lauren’s reversal, from encouraging me to date to telling me I should dump Jared. Jared’s taut need for control, to be sure I wasn’t head-fucking him just as surely as Lauren did.
And Jared holding back the kiss, a piece of himself that was too raw, too real.
Another question hangs in the air.
“Jared? Why me?” It comes out like a squeak, but I have to know. Was he retaliating against Lauren by picking me up in that bar? Was he—or is he—truly through with her?
His throat rumbles, a deep, contented vibration that spreads warmth through me. “How long do you have, Grace? Because it will take years to tell you all the ‘whys.’”
I snuggle closer. “Why me, at the beginning?”
“YouTube,” he answers decisively. “I was doing some early vetting and saw you speaking. And I was … mesmerized. I had to see you at that bar, just to talk to you. I wanted to hear you laugh, or say something real, not a speech. Just a man and a woman, not a consultant and candidate.”
Jared rolls above me and captures my face between his hands, his body pressing me into the bed.
“And I passed that test?” I tilt up my lips and plant a tiny peck on his chin.
“So much more than that. I wanted to know you, to be close to you, but I knew you’d never let down your guard if you met me as a consultant. So it had to be that night.” Jared’s eyes drop, tracing the line of my throat down to my breasts. Shame colors his tone. “But I also wanted to control you, if only to prove that you couldn’t control me. That you couldn’t do what Lauren did.”
“I don’t want to control you, Jared.”
“I know,” he rasps. “God, don’t I know it. Every move I’ve made to control you has utterly backfired. You’ve shown more mettle than most politicians I’ve worked with. You’re going to be a good partner for Shep.”
I lace my fingers through the hair at the back of Jared’s head and pull his lips to mine. It’s a searching kiss, drawing out regret and need. Drawing everything into the light.
“Is that it, Jared? No more secrets?”
“No.” His hips flex and my body responds on instinct, opening to him again. “How about from you?”
I snort. “I can’t imagine hiding anything after the third degree you gave me in the vetting.”
Jared bends and attacks the sensitive spot where my neck meets my shoulder. “Good. Then no more secrets, and no more talking.”
We don’t speak after that, but we’re far from silent.
Chapter Forty-Two
One night is not long enough to know him, but it’s a start.
Jared finally lets me out of the bedroom when we’ve exhausted ourselves in every possible way, and we wander downstairs for a tour of the house and to forage for dinner from his well-stocked freezer.
His refrigerator, on the other hand, is as barren as my Washington apartment’s, revealing how alike we are in our nomadic ways.
The farmhouse is more than a century old, with three cheerful bedrooms upstairs and a big, hexagonal-tiled bathroom with a claw-footed tub. Jared leaves me to soak in it while he starts our meal and I nearly pass out from the deep heat and my cumulative exhaustion.
When the water goes tepid, I dress and follow my nose downstairs to dinner. The home is sparse, clean, and modest. Most of the furniture is old, inherited from his grandmother. Hallway walls are hung with old photos of past generations of Rankins and Patricks, his grandmother’s maiden name.
I learn that his mother was a Rankin; she didn’t marry one. She worked at the local grocery store to provide for her mother and son, enduring the small-town ridicule of being an unwed mother, until she died when Jared was in college.
And so Jared became the provider. Over dinner, he tells me how he bartended to get through college and supplement his grandmother’s Social Security. A surprise scholarship propelled him through grad school, and summers were spent learning the ropes on local campaigns.
His upbringing was simple, like mine, but unlike mine, he had love. He had a sense of place, while I was moved from apartment to apartment, school to school, city to city. We went wherever my stepfather could find work, however far we had to go to escape his reputation as an unreliable employee and a drunk.
“I hated moving,” I tell Jared as we eat on the front porch at sunset. “It was hard to really invest in friends when I never knew if I’d be with them for long.”
“And now you’re a nomad again,” he observes. “Ever want to put down roots again?”
I think of my sterile condo. It’s home base, but it’s not home to me. The closest thing I have to a home and family is Trey and Mama Bea.
“Someday.”
“How about Number One Observatory Circle?�
��
I whip him a glance, full of humor and promise. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’d be rattling around the vice president’s house all by myself.”
“All. By. Yourself?” He stretches out the words, his grin spreading across his face.
“Of course, I might have a gentleman caller from time to time.”
“Just the one?” Jared asks, his expression more intent.
“Just the one,” I confirm. “And as often as possible.”
***
“You never told me what happened with Boyle,” I say as we close the miles back to Springfield. Back to reality, where our crazy lives wait to be lived. My suitcase is packed back up in his car, anticipating that we won’t return to the farmhouse for days at least.
Or weeks. Things could get crazy in a big damn hurry.
“Boyle backfired, the same way Schweiker did when Reagan named him as his intended running mate in seventy-six, before he’d even secured the nomination.”
I blink, barely remembering the details. Jared got a master’s degree in public policy while I went to law school. He spent years immersed in this stuff, while I’m still catching up. “But Boyle was never Conover’s running mate. Not officially.”
“Well, the press seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion, and so did Boyle. So he started throwing his weight around, promising people things he had no business promising on behalf of Conover. I gave him enough rope to hang himself and he did an excellent job of it.”
“Conover dropped him?”
“Cold.”
“I love Shep.”
“So do I. I worked on his first campaign—he recruited me right out of grad school. When he won, he could have forgotten about me and just gone to Washington, but then he told all of his contacts. He made my career.”
Ah ha. So there’s a deeper connection. That’s why Conover trusts Jared so completely, and why he demands I do the same.
“Did you ever work for Darrow?”
The Phoenix Candidate Page 19