The 14th... And Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  “I’m going to make my calls to the senator and to Marc,” she said. “Then you call Manny and Ed Winters and tell them when we’ll be coming in tomorrow. We, Jack. You and me. Together.”

  His arms tightened around her. “And after the calls?”

  She brushed his lips with hers. “After the calls, we review the draft of the senator’s legislation. It’s still in my purse.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. I’m not giving up on you yet, Merritt. Of course,” she murmured against his mouth, “the night’s still young. We might just take another shot at besting the all-time NASCAR record for refueling.”

  When he brought her up hard against his body, Angela seriously considered changing the sequence of events. Despite her teasing about beating the record, she had no intention of rushing things. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

  Jack must have had the same idea.

  “Make your calls,” he growled. “I’ll make mine. Then you’ve got one hour, I repeat, one hour, to talk. About anything.”

  The senator, of course, grasped the implications of Jack’s decision to testify immediately.

  “So he’s thinking to use my hearings to bait a trap, is he? Well, this ol’ coon hunter might just be able to help him tree a varmint or two. I’ll spread the word that this is going to be a humdinger of a session.” His voice sharpened. “You just be careful, missy, you hear?”

  “I will.”

  “And make sure that man of yours keeps his head down and his seat belt buckled.”

  “He’s not mine,” she protested with a quick glance over one shoulder. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Ha! My eyesight may be failing me a bit these days, but it’s still good enough to catch those looks you were giving our friend Jack this afternoon. Do you know what they say back home ‘bout folks who go around kissin’ goats, by the way?”

  “No.” she replied hastily, “and I don’t want to.”

  He chuckled again, then hung up after issuing a stern admonition for her to call her mother.

  She called Marc Green instead.

  Marc’s reaction to the confirmation of Jack’s appearance before the committee was far more restrained than his boss’s. A frigid silence spun out over the line, causing Angela to bite back an impatient sigh. The staffer was still obviously in a snit over their earlier confrontation.

  Too bad! She didn’t have either the time or the inclination to soothe his ruffled ego. After confirming the time of the hearing, Angela hung up. Then she dug her dog-eared copy of Senate Bill 693 out of her purse and plopped down next to Jack on the narrow cushions.

  “One hour,” he warned, marking the time with a pointed look at his watch. “Assuming I can keep my mind on medical reform and my hands off you for that long.”

  “One hour,” she agreed, hoping she could keep her mind on medical reform and her hands off him for that long.

  Despite their banter and the heavy sense of anticipation that gripped them both, the gravity of the issues they grappled with soon consumed them. Angela didn’t convince Jack to support all the provisions of the bill. In truth, she didn’t understand a good many of them. Those areas she had personal knowledge of, however, she campaigned for skillfully and enthusiastically. Jack didn’t argue, nor did he dispute the issues involved. He simply fed them back to her from a different perspective.

  True, some of the most expensive drugs on the market only cost a few dollars, at most, to mass-produce. Pharmaceutical companies had to recoup their overhead and operating costs, however, as well as the ten to twenty years of research that went into developing, testing and obtaining FDA approval to market those drugs. Government-imposed price controls would certainly cut costs to the consumer in the short term. In the long term, those same controls could discourage vital research that might save lives.

  Yes, all citizens should have equal access to the health care system, regardless of income levels. But patients’ needs and desires weren’t equal. In a federally regulated system, should taxpayers be asked to fund elective cosmetic surgery? Or prolonged life support for patients whose loved ones couldn’t bear to let them go? Any system of guaranteed care still had to allow for individual options and needs, Jack suggested.

  Page by page, subparagraph by subparagraph, he pointed out the strengths and weaknesses in the proposed legislation to an attentive and secretly impressed Angela. She’d listened to endless debates in the senator’s office, when lobbyists for the AMA and the major insurance companies protested vehemently against every provision and suggested alternatives. None of the arguments she’d heard made the sense Jack’s did.

  He tapped a finger on a small paragraph at the bottom of the next-to-the-last page. “This insert, for example, is pure dynamite.”

  Frowning, she peered at the article in question. “I don’t remember that insert in the original version of the bill. But what’s wrong with tax incentives for clinics and nursing homes that provide quality care to their patients at a reduced cost?”

  “On the surface, nothing. But a growing number of nursing homes and special-care clinics are multinational corporations with other interests in the health industry. HealthMark, for example, operates a drug distribution unit, a home infusion unit, and oncology clinics all across the country. This language would grant them tax credits for providing their own drugs to the cancer clinics at a slight discount...which they already do.”

  “I’m sure that wasn’t the intent,” Angela admitted, hooking her arms around her drawn-up knees. “Marc will have to change the wording before the bill goes to full committee.”

  “Yes, he will.”

  The dog-eared and heavily underlined papers fluttered as Jack scanned the last page, then fanned through the bound copy of the bill a final time.

  “There are some good provisions here, Angela,” he said slowly. “And a great many more I adamantly oppose. If I’m asked my opinion, I’m going to give it.”

  She pressed her lips together, pulled by divided loyalties. Coon Dog Claiborne was an expert at extracting precisely the testimony he wanted from the most reluctant witnesses. She knew his strategy. She’d seen him in action countless times.

  In this instance, he intended to keep his questions to Jack focused exclusively on the audits of HealthMark and the abuses they’d uncovered. Then he’d hold those abuses up as proof of the need for sweeping reform. That was why he’d brought Jack to Washington.

  “You may not be asked for an opinion,” she told him, bending her allegiance as far as it would go. “You don’t know the senator. He, ah, scripts his agenda very carefully.”

  “He doesn’t know me, either.” His gaze settled on her face. “Neither do you, for that matter.”

  It was true. Aside from the bare facts in the brief bio the staff had pulled together, Angela knew little about his private life. Strangely, she didn’t care.

  “I know all I need to know, Jack,” she told him softly.

  The quiet words hung on the air between them. He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and cupped her cheek.

  “What do you know, Angela?”

  She rested her cheek in his palm, loving the feel of its warmth against her skin. She was close, very close, to loving the man that went with it.

  “I know you’re willing to try food you can’t even pronounce.”

  “That’s important?”

  “It is to me.”

  His thumb stroked her chin. “What else?”

  “I know you look pretty dam good in a top hat.”

  The slow stroking moved to her lower lip. “Your think so, huh?”

  She planted a kiss on the pad of his thumb. “I do.” “What else?”

  Her mouth curved. “I know that you’ve got a way to go until you break the NASCAR refueling record.”

  Laughter leaped into his eyes. “Guess I need more practice. With someone who can find her way around the pits.”

  “Well...I’ve got a few hours with nothing to do. I suppose
I could let you practice on me.”

  The phone’s shrill cry dragged them from a sound sleep. Jack rolled off the narrow bed, and was on his feet before the sound had fully penetrated Angela’s consciousness.

  Groggy and disoriented, she pushed herself up on one elbow. “Wh—?”

  The single overhead bulb flared into light on the second ring, illuminating the hard planes and shadowed valleys of Jack’s body. Every tendon corded with tension, he poised over the phone.

  Silence descended. Five seconds. Ten.

  Angela tried desperately to adjust to the sudden sense of danger that invaded her sleep-clogged brain. She’d forgotten. Lost in Jack’s arms, she’d forgotten that there was another world outside this cabin. She almost sobbed in relief when the phone shrilled again.

  Jack picked it up immediately. “Yes?”

  His gaze snagged hers from across the room. For the life of her, Angela couldn’t decipher the sudden glint in his eyes.

  “Yes, Mrs. Paretti, she is.”

  Oh, God! Her Mother! And Jack. Naked.

  Well, one of them was naked, anyway. Her mother was probably encased from neck to knee in the hot-pink nightie Tony had bought her last Mother’s Day.

  “No, ma’am,” Jack said, holding her eyes. “Not a drop.”

  Groaning, Angela flopped back on the cushions and threw her arm over her face. She kept it firmly in place until the call ended, some moments later.

  “Please,” she begged. “Tell me I’m having a bad dream. Tell me my mother didn’t just ask you if you had any Italian blood.”

  “Your mother didn’t just ask me if I had any Italian blood. Your aunt Rose did.”

  Angela dropped her arm. “Aunt Rose? Uncle Guido’s wife?”

  Mustachioed, gimlet-eyed and iron-willed, the formidable Rose Paretti ruled her household with the efficiency and ruthlessness of a dictator. She was one of the reasons her poor uncle retreated to this comfortable, cluttered crab shanty as often as possible.

  Angela scrambled to sit up, dragging the covers with her. “Why in the world did Aunt Rose call?”

  “She’s relayed a message from your uncle Guido. I’m supposed to get in touch with Ed Winters right away. Hang on.”

  Her mind whirling, Angela listened to Jack’s side of the conversation with Ed Winters, which seemed to consist primarily of I’ll be damneds. He hung up a few moments later and stared at the cabin wall.

  “Well?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”

  He gave himself a little shake, the way a dog might as it came awake.

  “I caught Ed just as he was heading downtown. It seems that someone deposited a garbage can on the front steps of the Second District headquarters a little while ago. Two patrolmen found it...and the man who’d been stuffed in headfirst.”

  Angela clutched the blankets to her chest. She now knew where this was heading. Uncle Guido’s connections had delivered.

  A skilled printer and bookbinder when he received his long-awaited visa to the States in the late thirties, Guido Paretti had forged papers for several friends who weren’t as fortunate. Those friends had never forgotten the favor. One was now the mayor of a large Eastern Seaboard city. He’d invited Guido to his swearing-in. Another had recently sold his string of Las Vegas hotels for an undisclosed sum. The garbage can, Angela had been told, was his personal signature.

  “Ed Winters says this human trash might be our hired hit man.”

  She surged up on her knees, her heart thumping wildly. “Really?”

  “According to the patrolmen,” Jack said slowly, “the guy fits your description, although he’s closer to thirty than twenty.”

  She dismissed the extra decade with a wave of one hand. “I only saw him for a second or two.”

  “He’s also scared out of his gourd,” Jack continued, “and spilling his guts. He keeps babbling that he has no idea who hired him, that all the arrangements were made via anonymous calls. But he swears on his mother’s grave that he didn’t know a relative of Guido the Ragman would be with the suit he was supposed to take out.”

  “Oh, Jack!”

  She was across the room and in his arms in seconds, blankets and all. She clung to him, her stomach roiling.

  In her heart of hearts, she’d suspected all along that Jack was the target of these horrible attacks. But knowing made it worse.

  So much worse.

  Jack wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her tumbled hair. He’d suspected—hoped!—all along that he, and not Angela, was the target. Knowing made what he had to do easier.

  So much easier.

  Chapter 13

  As she always did, Angela tried hard not to wake up.

  Dragging the blankets over her head to shut off the sunlight streaming through the cracks in the curtains, she burrowed her face into the cushions. Their musty odor was almost gone, she noted in a lazy corner of her mind. Now, Jack’s scent lingered on the layers covering the cushions, a healthy male residue of warmth and exertion. Of love and lust.

  A languid heat swirled through her as she reveled in both the scent and the memories of the night just past. They’d come close, she mused dreamily. They’d come dam close to besting the NASCAR record for refueling. Once after Jack had tossed the senator’s bill aside, and once after Aunt Rose’s call, when they’d...

  The delicious heat evaporated instantly.

  Aunt Rose’s call!

  The garbageman!

  Jack!

  Yanking at the tangle of blankets, Angela poked her head out and searched the tiny cabin. She went limp with relief when she spotted Jack at the kitchen table, clicking away on the little notebook computer Manny Ramirez had left for his use.

  He’d obviously been up for some time. His hair was sleek and wet and slicked back in the way that reminded her so much of the Fonz. He’d pulled on the warm, bulky-knit fisherman’s sweater, and he wore the brown cord slacks he’d purchased yesterday. Judging by his attire, he wasn’t going anywhere. Not for a while.

  He was safe and here and hers for a few hours more.

  Wiggling out of the confining blankets, Angela pushed herself up and indulged in a long, catlike stretch. Her head fell back, and the soft cotton of the T-shirt Jack had insisted she pull on for warmth last night molded to her skin.

  Her movement drew Jack’s intent gaze from the flickering computer screen. Instant, aching arousal gripped him at the sight of Angela arching to greet the morning. With her hair spilling down her back and the tips of her breasts peaking in the cool morning air, she looked so much like the pagan goddess he’d first imagined her that it was all he could do not to cross the room, tumble her back onto the bed and lose himself in her wild, welcoming warmth.

  As intense as that urge was, however, he wouldn’t allow it to override the task he’d set himself, the task that had pulled him out of her arms just before dawn. He contented himself with enjoying the sight of Angela’s long, slender legs as she swung off the bed and padded across the room, wearing only his T-shirt and a sleepy smile.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Crunching some numbers.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “I can think of better ways to start the day.”

  Smiling, Jack leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. “Like how?”

  She leaned a hip against the edge of the table. “Well, we could go for a walk along the shore. Or we could drive into the village and stuff ourselves silly with grits and crab cakes. Or—” she waggled her eyebrows “—we could try one more time to beat the record.”

  Although she kept the banter light and easy, Angela was serious. Absolutely, one hundred percent, no-kidding serious. The knowledge that Jack would soon leave the safety of this small pine-shingled cabin and set himself up as a target ate at her insides like battery acid. For all her passionate insistence that she, and she alone, would drive him to the Capitol, she had the cowardly urge to hide the car keys, disable the starter and curl up with him for the next week
or month or year.

  “I vote for all of the above,” he responded with a lazy smile. “But I want to show you something first.”

  “What?”

  “These numbers I’ve been working on.”

  “All right,” she said doubtfully. “But I think you should know I’m a lot better at things mechanical than things mathematical.”

  She leaned over to peer at the gray computer screen. In the process, the T-shirt pulled up one hip. Jack’s smile got a little tight around the edges.

  “These figures may take a while to explain,” he told her. “Why don’t you pull on something warmer...and less distracting?”

  For all of two seconds, Angela was tempted. Very tempted! If a mere glimpse of her bare hip could distract the bean counter in Jack from all those neat columns of figures, she had a good idea what might happen if she scooted his little notebook computer to one side, perched on the table and curled her toes in his lap.

  As quickly as the idea darted into her mind, Angela discarded it. Despite their lighthearted banter, reality was fast closing in. Whatever Jack wanted to show her had something to do with the reason they were secluded away together in the first place. This wasn’t the time to play games. Unfortunately.

  With a wave of a hand, she headed for the bathroom. “I’ll get cleaned up and dressed. Just sit tight.”

  He wasn’t going anywhere, Jack thought, slewing his attention back to the computer screen. Not until he made sense of the numbers. Leaning forward, he hit the keyboard again.

  He was still playing with the spreadsheet he’d developed when Angela reappeared, scrubbed, brushed and fully clothed. She’d tied her hair back in a loose ponytail and pulled on her figure-hugging jeans and the warm, fleecy sweatshirt with the cockeyed seagull on the front. Hauling the other chair around to Jack’s side of the table, she plopped down in it and peered at the computer screen with the same enthusiasm she might give a dentist’s drill.

  “What do we have here?”

  “Do you remember that language in the senator’s bill? The one that grants tax incentives to clinics and nursing homes to reduce costs to their patients?”