On the Record

by K. A. Linde

  That was where she had told Brady she would be, so unfortunately it looked as if she would have to suffer through the cold again. Liz didn’t understand how it felt like a winter storm was about to rip through North Carolina any second when it was only October. It didn’t help that she had mistakenly left her jacket in the office. Rummaging through her backseat, she found a Patagonia pullover, threw that over her button-down, and added a pair of gloves out of the glove compartment.

  As she eased the door open, the wind whistled through the opening, stinging her eyes. It was too damn cold.

  Grunting, Liz shoved the door open all the way and locked her car up tight. She walked briskly across the pavement and took a seat on the damp hill that led to the Union. From her vantage point she could see everything—the main parking lot, the newspaper entrance, the entrance where she would anticipate Brady . . . if he actually showed.

  Light streamed out of the back entrance to the Union and Liz’s eyes darted to the brick building partially obscured by century-old trees. Hayden walked out and into a circle of light from overhead. He ran his hands back through his hair and looked disgruntled . . . maybe even pissed off. She had never quite seen him look like that. It was sexy, and that made her angry. They wouldn’t even be in this position if he wasn’t acting like such an idiot.

  She didn’t want to watch him, but at the same time she couldn’t tear her eyes away. It was like watching someone else. A stranger. Her Hayden was always calm and collected.

  He held the door propped open, clearly lost in deep thought. Liz narrowed her eyes as he reached into his pocket. She watched him pull something out, but he had turned partially away from her, so she couldn’t see what it was. As she tried to figure it out, her phone buzzed next to her. She jumped and grabbed at her cell phone, not wanting him to notice the light in the distance.

  Liz debated answering it, but after a second she silenced it. She didn’t really want to talk to Hayden right now.

  The call ended. She watched him hang up the phone and place it back into his pocket.

  After a second he dug something out of his other pocket. In shock, she watched the Zippo lighter from across the parking lot as the cigarette flared to life in his hand. Her mouth was hanging open as he took a long drag from the cigarette, breathing in deeply. His chest expanded and his head dipped back ever so slightly, as if he had just tasted a piece of heaven.

  Her mouth went dry. This wasn’t Hayden. He would never smoke. He abhorred the dirty habit. Christ, he was a runner! How the hell could he run for miles if he had cigarette smoke clogging his lungs?

  She watched, completely astonished, as he drew another long drag on the cigarette before almost viciously throwing it off to the side. His hands visibly shook before fisting angrily into his hair. She could have sworn he cursed, but she couldn’t hear him against the howling wind.

  His hands fell out of his hair, but stayed in fists and slammed uselessly against the metal door. Violent. Not a word that she would have ever used to describe Hayden. He shook out his fists, seeming only to grow angrier.

  Clearly debating with himself, he pushed the newspaper door closed before storming across the parking lot to his car. The lights to his Audi came to life right before he recklessly peeled out of the parking lot.

  His car disappeared, and she felt as numb as the cold surrounding her.

  Their argument was spiraling further and further out of control. She could see the pieces of the puzzle laid out before her as to how to fix this situation, but instead of moving them into place she tossed them off to the side. She stood up. Today she was bereft of the willingness to make it right.

  And she was strangely okay with it all. Of course, she was shaken by Hayden’s reaction. What was he doing with cigarettes in his pocket? That wasn’t some freak accident. He’d had them with him. How long had he been hiding it from her? It made her wonder what else he was lying about, and made her sick to think about what had transpired between them. Yet, despite that, she couldn’t help but want him to suffer for how he had treated her. Her heart contracted, but she couldn’t shake the feeling.

  Headlights blazed across the now empty parking lot, and Liz scrambled to her feet, brushing the crumpled leaves from the dark denim of her jeans. Her feet carried her down the hill, across the street, and out into the open lot. Her body was warming for a reason that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the anticipation of seeing Brady, being alone with Brady.

  Brady. What the hell was she going to say when she saw him? So much time had passed. How would he even react? The last time she had seen him, he had told her to just stay out of his life. The last time they had talked, he had said that he would fly from D.C. to see her. She didn’t know which Brady she would see tonight. It made her stomach knot in anticipation.

  His black Lexus slid evenly across the black pavement straight toward her, the bright lights the indication of his approach. She didn’t even notice until it glided right up to her that her hands were shaking.

  The tinted window slowly rolled down, revealing the all-black leather interior that she had spent a good deal of time in. She glanced around anxiously even though she knew that the only other person nearby had left in a rage minutes beforehand.

  “Hey,” she murmured softly, leaning forward through the window and getting her first up-close look at Brady in what felt like a lifetime. He was flawless. It was undeniable. Whatever had gone on between them, whatever had ended it all—it didn’t change how attracted she was to him. How attracted she had always been to him.

  “Get in the car,” he said, unlocking the doors.

  “Brady . . .” She trailed off. She couldn’t believe that he was here right now. She couldn’t believe she was staring at this beautiful face and that she was talking to him. She couldn’t believe she’d had the guts to call him and that he was here. She just wanted to stare at him, but instead she said the only thing that she could muster enough courage to say: “I don’t think we should do this.”

  “Get in the car.”

  “Look, it’s not a good idea. I’m really messed up. Calling you was impulsive and thoughtless of me. I shouldn’t have freaked you out. But driving away with you right now would be even worse,” she told him, hugging herself tightly. All she wanted to do was say the exact opposite of what was coming out of her mouth. She wanted to drive off into the sunset with him and never look back. She always had.

  “Get in the car, Liz.”

  “I’m still dating him, Brady. Think about what you would feel if you were him. Think about how much it would hurt if he knew about this—about what I’m thinking of doing,” she said even softer than before, her whole body nearly trembling with the anxiety.

  “Liz,” he growled. “Get. In. The. Car.”

  “I can’t. I just can’t get in the car with you,” she said. She made the mistake then of lifting her eyes to meet his deep chocolate orbs. Fuck! His eyes were so intense and commanding. She just wanted to get lost in those eyes forever. She swallowed hard and licked her bottom lip. “It’s not a good idea.”

  “Goddamn it, Liz. Get in the car!” he yelled. “I didn’t get out of my meetings for the night and drive thirty minutes out of the way for you to tell me to go home. Now get in the car.”

  “Seriously, shut up,” she cried, pushing off of the car door. “I made a mistake. People make mistakes.” The car jerked into park and he popped the driver’s-side door open. “What are you doing?”

  “I said get in the car, Liz, and you’re going to listen one way or another,” he said, walking around the front of the car.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you. I’m not in the right frame of mind tonight, and being around you is a bad idea.”

  “I like bad ideas,” he said, standing before her.

  “Well, I don’t!”

  Brady shook his head, a gorgeous smile replacing the glare he had been shooting at her.
Dear Lord, he was too attractive for his own good. She could hardly even concentrate when she looked up at that face. Liz tried to find her words again to tell him to leave, but in that moment, he moved forward and stood a mere inch away from her. She could feel his body heat radiating toward her. She stood ramrod still at his nearness. He moved forward as if he was going to touch her, and then at the last second he pivoted quickly and threw her easily over his shoulder.

  She screamed in protest, completely caught off guard. “What are you doing? Brady Maxwell, put me down. Put me down now!”

  “I told you to listen, and you didn’t.” His arm held the back of her legs easily in place to keep her from moving as he opened the back door of his Lexus.

  “I didn’t think you were going to act like a caveman,” she said, muffled in the back of his suit coat.

  “Well, now you know better, huh?” he asked, tossing her into the backseat and slamming the door shut in her face.

  Liz reached for the door, yanking the handle back and forth uselessly. “You have fucking child locks on these doors?” she screamed into the empty car as he slowly strolled back to the driver’s side.

  She shoved her entire body into the movement anyway, wrenching her shoulder with the extra effort. Releasing the handle, she fell backward, the cool leather cushioning her body upon impact. She quickly righted herself and climbed into the front just as Brady eased into his seat.

  “I can’t believe you!” she yelled, sliding her body into the passenger seat and reaching for the door. Pulling the handle several times in frustration, she discovered it too was locked. She moved to grab the lock and pull it up, but Brady’s hand caught her wrist and put it back at her side. “Seriously?”

  Brady smirked. “You should have gotten in the car from the beginning.”

  “You’re kidnapping me,” she growled, glaring at him.

  “Listen here,” he said, reaching across her body to grab her hands. She tried to pull away from him, but he held her hard and fast, pressing her back into the seat. “I want you to remember that you called me crying in the middle of the night,” he growled. “You were the one who used that line. You were the one who used that name. You were the one who fell back into old methods. So don’t you fucking pull this shit on me. Did you or did you not call as Sandy Carmichael?”

  He waited.

  “Yes,” she grumbled through gritted teeth.

  “Did you or did you not typically call that line for me to fuck you?”

  He waited again.

  She tilted her head up and refused to look at him. She was not going to have this conversation right now.

  “Liz,” he growled, tightening his grip on her hands.

  “Yes,” she yelped. Well, sort of.

  “Then stop acting crazy. I don’t have time for this. I’m going to let your hands go, and you are going to act like a normal person again. Are you ready?”

  She nodded her head with as much dignity as she could manage as he let her hands go and put the car into drive. Liz didn’t say anything as he pulled away from the newspaper. She was fuming. First Hayden’s accusations, and then when Brady showed up he acted like a maniac. She really should have just gone home and cried into her pillow.

  Except now that she was here . . . with him, she didn’t actually want to be anywhere else.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  His brown eyes cut over to her momentarily and she had to keep from sighing. Christ, the man did things to her body she didn’t understand.

  “A condo.”

  “You have a new condo?” she asked.

  He smirked. “Something like that.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “You’ve always been safe with me.”

  “Yeah. Who’s going to mess with a congressman, right?” she asked with a soft chuckle.

  “Plenty of people, I’m sure, but I don’t think we’ll be bothered tonight.”

  Tonight. That word. As if he didn’t intend for her to leave.

  She didn’t even bother contradicting him. She didn’t trust herself alone with Brady for an entire night. Not in his condo, where there were probably beds and couches and doors . . . and other things they’d had sex on last summer. But clearly telling him to take her home was out of the question. He had thrown her over his shoulder earlier just because she wouldn’t get into his car. She had a feeling tonight was on his terms . . . as most things with Brady were.

  Ten minutes later, he pulled into the winding entrance to a new complex on the outskirts of town. The buildings were in various stages of construction. Some were only partially built, others just had the frames, and some were complete but missing windows. Only one building had the entire brick framing with all the other fixtures and landscaping complete. Liz thought that was odd.

  “Is this the right place? It doesn’t even look finished,” she said, peering out the windshield.

  “It’s not. It’s still in development. But it’s owned by a division of Maxwell Industries, and so I have access to it.”

  Huh. Liz knew how Brady’s family had earned their fortune over the generations. It started out with large tracts of land and had developed into an immense real estate venture coupled with the political side. She hadn’t known about this particular project, though. Granted, she hadn’t been following his career as closely as she had before.

  Brady parked the car in front of the one building that looked finished and killed the engine. “We have a fully furnished open house for potential buyers,” he explained when she just stared at him quizzically. “There aren’t any cameras on the premises.”

  “Oh,” she whispered. Brady, always thinking ahead about who could see them together. This felt all too familiar and made her voice come out harsher than she intended. “Why didn’t you just take me to a hotel?”

  He popped the door open and answered without a backward glance. “Because I like to fuck you in different places.”

  Liz’s mouth dropped open at the comment. He had to be joking. She sputtered and tried to collect herself, but it wasn’t working.

  He chuckled softly when he saw she was still staring up at him slack-jawed. “Come on, Liz. Don’t make me come get you.”

  She scrambled out of the car. Holy shit! This was not happening. She was not following him up the stairs and into a condo when she knew that he had every intention of fucking her. She wasn’t that person. No matter how angry she was . . . she couldn’t go through with something like that.

  Brady slid a key into the door and turned the knob, letting it swing inward. His hand on the small of her back sent warmth radiating throughout her entire body and she wondered if she even stood a chance at resisting.

  She stumbled into the condo and Brady flicked the lights on. It was a nice-looking place, clearly decorated by someone with taste, but from a corporate angle. No imagination. There were stairs right off of the entrance and a kitchen hidden off of the living room. That was all she got to see of first floor before Brady shut the door and started up the stairs without a word.

  Here goes nothing.

  Even though Liz knew she shouldn’t follow him, she did. She was drawn to him. No matter how much she tried to convince herself, she always had been.

  There were two rooms, and Liz walked into the bigger of the two, where Brady was standing with his arms crossed, staring at the giant king-size bed that took up the majority of the room.

  At the sight of it, Liz deflated. Her emotions were all over the place tonight. She was a wreck. The ups and downs had taken a toll on her, and she kind of wished that she could just go to sleep. She couldn’t add another roller coaster to the equation.

  “Brady,” she whispered, her voice taking on an edge of desperation.

  He didn’t move for a solid minute. Just stood there and stared at the bed. She had no clue what he was thinking at that point.

  Finally, he turned around and stared at her. She could see that whatever mask he had been wearing before had completely dropped
away. He looked like her Brady—in control, but somehow still vulnerable. She hadn’t really thought about it like that before, but when she looked at him now after all that time apart, she knew that that look of desire that so often crossed his face was a vulnerability to her. He still felt very strongly toward her. It was all over his face, and it made her heart melt.

  “Come here,” he said, crooking his finger.

  She licked her lips before walking over and standing in front of him. She didn’t even play around by standing at a distance. She knew that he was in control, and she knew what he wanted. She planted herself directly in front of him and tilted her chin up to look at him.

  Brady’s strong hands threaded back through her hair. Her eyes fluttered closed at the softest of touches. He ran his hands backward and swept it off of her shoulders. She nearly groaned as his fingers brushed against her ears, neck, and collarbones. But she didn’t move or say anything until he cupped her face in his hands, and then she opened her eyes to stare up into his handsome face.

  Her breathing was already ragged and irregular. How often had she fantasized about this moment—about him coming back for her?

  “What happened, Liz?” he whispered.

  His words seemed to break the floodgates again as they reminded her of her argument with Hayden tonight. Tears welled in her eyes as she started babbling. “Hayden surprised me at the newspaper. I’d been in New York for my internship and I hadn’t gotten through a lot of my work. He saw it and flipped his shit. He basically said I was irresponsible and should give up the paper because I was running it into the ground. Then I saw him smoking and . . .”

  “Liz,” he said, cutting her off. A tear trickled down her cheek and he reached up and swiped it from her face. “No. What happened with us?”

  Liz opened and closed her mouth a few times as she tried to come up with the answer to that question. “You were going to choose the campaign,” she murmured.