Vivi makes a choking noise and almost takes down a fire hydrant.
“Pay attention to what you’re doing,” I warn her sharply before returning my attention to Elle. “Surprise me,” I repeat. “I’m adventurous enough to appreciate a good surprise.”
“Well, I’m not,” she informs me, and I can just imagine those pink lips of hers worked into a pout. I swallow a groan.
“Every woman likes surprises. I’ll see you tonight.” This time when she’s gone, I power off my phone. Lifting my gaze to gauge how close we are to my destination, I meet Vivi’s horrified expression in the mirror I shake my head. “Professionalism.”
“Ms. Courtney?” she demands. I don’t say anything, and Vivi takes it as an invitation to keep talking. “Please tell me you’re not sleeping with his wife to get back at him for what he did? I mean, what would be the point? It’s not like you can throw it in his face. What the hell is wrong with you, Graham?”
“I’m not fucking Robert Courtney’s wife,” I say through clenched teeth. “And before you ask, I never have, nor is it in my plans for the future.”
“Oh thank god. For a second . . . .” Vivi trails off, and I almost think she’s done but then I see her eyes doing that darting thing in the mirror, like she’s mentally piecing together the puzzle. I roll my own eyes. “Dear God . . . his daughter?” she hisses, sounding shocked.
She’s known me long enough not to be shocked by anything or anyone I do.
“Mind your own goddamn business. There are plenty of women with that last name in this city.”
Vivi pulls the car into the closest lot, slams it into park, and whirls on me. “Then tell me it’s another Courtney—any other Courtney. And don’t you lie to me, Delaney, or I’ll kick your ass.” The finger she has pointed at my face trembles.
“Really, Vivi?” She sucks in her cheeks. I blink. “Besides, why do you care?”
“I care because you’re family, and my mother would roll over in her grave if I let you get out of this car without giving you a piece of my mind.”
I look at her long and hard. Leave it to her to aim for my heart by bringing up one of the only women I’ve ever wanted to make proud. “The dramatics, Vivi,” I snap.
“And do you know what else I care about? Hurting people. So tell me you’re not messing with Courtney’s daughter just because of what you think he did?”
“I know,” I growl. “You know too. I wouldn’t waste my time if all I went on was thoughts and maybes.”
“God, Graham. What the hell has happened to you? What happened to that sweet boy who used to bug me to help him with his homework?”
“He got a fucking clue years ago.” I check my watch. It’s almost one. She’s wasting my time with her spiel on honor. “I don’t have the time or the patience to listen to your ‘God, Grahams’ or your lectures, Vivienne. You have a job, so do it before you find yourself back in Brooklyn.”
Thinning her lips into a pissed-off line, she pulls into traffic and drives me to my meeting in silence. She doesn’t speak again until just before I get out of the car, and when she does, I consider firing her on the spot.
“I’m so disappointed in you. Your issue is with Robert Courtney. Not his kids. Please tell me you’re not going to manipulate that poor girl into thinking you care about her?”
I stare her down for a long time, regretting that she knows so much about me, and feeling triumphant she doesn’t know as much as she thinks. I could tell her the truth. That I won’t need to promise Elle the sun and moon and whatever the fuck else it is Vivi thinks she might want to hear to get her into bed with me.
I’ll give her independence from her father.
Eventually I straighten the yellow tie Vivi had picked out for me, open the door, and free myself from the confines of the car. She’s still turned around, staring at me like I’m a monster. “Go back to the office. And make sure you cancel my plans for tonight. I’ll find my own way back.”
She says something else, but I fail to hear it over the slam of the car door.
I check my watch again.
Nine hours until show time.
Chapter Eight
Elle
“Do you plan to continue this ridiculous show, Eleanor, or are you ready to settle this like adults?”
I cringe, nearly dropping the phone from its spot between my ear and the crook of my neck. Stupid. I am absolutely stupid for not taking a look at the screen before answering. In my defense, it’s a quarter before nine. Although I’ll never, ever admit this to Graham, I’ve thought of him entirely too much since we spoke this afternoon. When my cell rang in the middle of pulling my dress over my head, I immediately assumed it was him and had accepted the call. Instead, as I sit down on the end of my bed, I hear the controlled breathing of the last person I want to talk to.
My father.
“Eleanor?”
“Yes, I’m here.” I grab one of my strappy, black pumps from the floor, clutching it like a dagger, before slipping it on my foot. “Look, I really don’t have time for this tonight.” I squint down at the peep toe, relieved I didn’t smudge the nude polish I’d brushed on last minute. “I can call you tomorrow or Wednesday, though, if that works for you.”
“If you want your life back you’ll make time.”
I shouldn’t let that get to me—after all, I’m speaking to someone who’s spent the majority of my life making me feel inadequate. Still, it’s hard to think of anything else other than hanging up on my father and blocking his calls for assuming that, now that he’s cut me off, I no longer have a life.
Jabbing the speakerphone button, I toss my phone on the bed. “I thought I was settling things like an adult when I told you that Zach’s happiness meant more to me than your image. My opinion isn’t changing. I’m not going to distance myself from my brother, or beg him not to love someone, just because it doesn’t fit your agenda for a heterosexual, abstinent country. Sorry, Dad, it’s never going to happen.”
He snorts and I can picture him in his old world style office half an hour away, smoking a cigar and cursing the day he brought me home from the hospital twenty-two years ago. “This all just seems damn convenient since I recently announced I’m considering a bid for 2016.”
He’s not just considering it. He had narcissistically told us on Thanksgiving that he is the future of this country—a conservative visionary with a winning smile, a fat bank account and a set of values that would make a nun weep.
Releasing a bitter laugh that stings the center of my chest, I shove my other foot into its shoe, my fingers numb as I secure the strap behind my ankle. “I’m sorry you feel your gay son is going to ruin your chance to be president.” I stand, smoothing the black dress down over my hips. “He’s not, and you should be ashamed for making him feel he has to hide who he is.”
“You didn’t mention yourself,” he says. I freeze. I shouldn’t care what my father thinks about who I see, or what I do while seeing them, but the first thing that comes to mind is Graham. Had word gotten back to Dad about the drinks I shared with Senator Delaney last Friday night?
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“That in the last four or five years, you’ve changed beaus like underwear.” I roll my eyes. In the last four years, I’ve had two short-term boyfriends and, most recently, Alex. Whom I had dated for two of those years. And really, who the hell even uses the word “beau” anymore? My father clears his throat before asking, “Did you know they were getting married, Eleanor? Did they tell you what they planned to do before they went through with it?”
“Yes,” I snap. “And if Zach asked me again what I thought of it, I’d tell him to—” The doorbell rings, and my heart leaps into my throat. “I’d tell him to go for it,” I finish, noticing that the anger in my voice has dulled in my eagerness to see Graham.
“So you told him to go through with this . . . unnatural—”
“If you say what I think it is you’re about to say, you can count me out o
f your life for good.” Grabbing my clutch from my dresser, I take one final look at myself in the mirror. I’d channeled Holly Golightly in pearls and a black, curve-hugging sweater dress, leaving my long ebony waves loose around my shoulders. “Dad, I really do have to go.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Eleanor,” he says harshly, and I suck in a breath, even though those five words shouldn’t faze me anymore.
I’ve heard it before, especially in the last few years. When I chose GWU over his Ivy League alma mater, when he found a box of condoms in my bedroom drawer when I was nineteen, when Blake took me bar-hopping for my twenty-first birthday, and my photo and a tiny blurb wishing me a good one somehow made it into the back of a society editorial—the list goes on.
“No, not just disappointed,” Dad continues. “I’m ashamed of you.”
The doorbell chimes again, and I hurry from my room. “Well then, I won’t feel too bad for having to hang up. I’ll call your scheduler so we can eventually sit down for that grown-up conversation you want,” I say stiffly, even though I’m pretty sure they’ve just adjourned until January.
“Eleanor, don’t you dare hang up on me!”
Powering off my phone, I drop it in my bag and rest my head against the door. I’m not going to let him ruin my night. He’d already screwed up my holiday break, but I won’t bring my dad to dinner with Graham. That would be both creepy and nerve-wracking.
Smiling, I fling the door open.
“You’re early, Senator Delaney.” The words fade to a whisper when I spot an incredibly tall, blonde woman dressed for business in a grey blazer and matching wide-leg pants. From the other side of the hallway, I hear the sound of my neighbor’s customary Friday night party—they’re blasting old Sublime—and I make a guess why she’s here. I point at his door. “Sorry, Jason’s place is right there.”
A hesitant smile plays on her lips. “Elle?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Vivienne, Graham’s assistant. He was tied up and sent me.”
“To tell me he wouldn’t be able to make it?” Before I can stop myself, my shoulder droops against the doorway and the corners of Vivienne’s glacier blue eyes crinkle into a frown.
“He didn’t tell you I was coming?” When I shake my head, she sighs. “Of course he didn’t. He sent me to bring you to him.”
“Oh.” I hold my purse closer to my body. My heart races against the back of my hand. “I could’ve just driven to him. He didn’t have to put you out.”
Her smile is back, but it’s forced. “He insisted, so I’m ready whenever you are,” she says in a strained voice. “It’s cold out, so you might want to grab a coat.”
The silence between Vivienne and me is awkward as she leads me to—what looks and smells like—a brand new BMW 7 series. Sitting next to her, I twist my hands together, trying to make sense of the sudden frigidity behind her tone right before we took off. What the hell had Graham told her about me?
Wetting my lips, I’m grateful I opted for gloss instead of lipstick. “Do you know where he’s taking me?”
Piercing eyes glance over at me. “His apartment. He had a chef prepare dinner for you.” I notice that she grips the steering wheel tighter, and I feel the sinking sensation that Graham and his assistant might have been more at one time.
Navigating through D.C., Vivienne says little else to me until her phone beeps while we’re inside the elevator of a luxury high-rise condominium building that overlooks the Potomac River. “Graham just messaged,” she says, glaring down at her phone. “He’s already here, so you can go right in.”
I nod, feeling the warmth—a combination of confusion and embarrassment—spread across my skin with each floor the elevator ascends. Surely he wouldn’t do something as calloused as sending a woman he’d slept with to pick me up, would he? But when I glance over at Vivienne, who is glowering a hole into the elevator panel, I know something is up.
And with a reaction like that, an office romance is the only thing that makes sense.
When we stop on the eighth floor, Vivienne points at the door directly across the hall. “That’s his condo.” While her tone isn’t as cold as before, it’s still detached.
Rubbing my hand anxiously over my chest, my fingers catching one of the buttons on my trench coat, I step out of the car into the dimly lit hallway. The sound of my heels seems to echo off the gleaming hardwood. “Thank you again. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your last name?”
“Delaney. It’s Vivienne Delaney.” Giving me a final smile that looks like it hurts her face, she punches a button and the elevator doors start to slide together. “Have a nice night, Elle.”
Chapter Nine
I don’t know how long I stand there, blinking at the closed elevator door, and feeling like someone just gut-punched me, but when I feel strong hands on my shoulders, I jump.
“You’re not thinking about leaving already, are you, Ms. Courtney?” Even as he whispers this into my ear, he steers me toward his apartment. “My assistant was supposed to cancel an appointment, but she’s playing fucking games today, and it was unavoidable that I couldn’t pick you up.”
His assistant who shares the same name as him. I wait until I’m standing in the entry hall, and I can hear music playing softly in the background—Revenge by Danger Mouse, if I’m correct—and the door is closed, to face him with tightly narrowed eyes.
“Vivienne Delaney?” I demand breathlessly. I refuse to leave this entryway until I know what the hell I’ve walked into. “At first I was sure she was an ex-lover of yours, but Delaney? Were you married to your assistant?”
“She’s not my assistant, actually. She’s my Chief of Staff’s.”
“Okay, were you married to your Chief of Staff’s assistant, then?”
Leaning against the door, Graham rakes his brown eyes over me hungrily, and I glance away so I won’t openly ogle him too. Wearing a stripped down version of the black business suit he probably wore to work today—tailored pants, a white shirt with the top few buttons undone, and a loosened yellow tie—his dark hair is tousled, and he’s once again sporting a five o’clock shadow that’s too sexy for his own good.
No, everything about Graham is far too sexy for my own good.
“In your research about me, did you see anything about a wife?” he questions at last.
No, but that doesn’t mean anything. My brother has been married for months, and no amount of searching for Zachary Courtney brings up anything about his elopement to the man he’d dated in secret for years. When I shake my head, hugging my arms over my chest, Graham’s eyes lower to my breasts, which are thoroughly covered by both my trench coat and my dress, before returning to my face.
“Did you ever stop to think that she might be my cousin, or perhaps my sister?”
I point my eyes toward the ceiling where two neat rows of recessed lighting beaming down on my face until I tilt my chin back down. “You don’t have a sister.”
As soon as I speak, I regret it because from the way a grin splits his bronze face, I can tell I’ve stroked his ego. Bridging the gap between our two bodies in one long stride, he frames my face with his large hands. “No filter?”
I gasp for air. “None. I just want the truth.”
“Seeing you like this, this jealous over someone you haven’t seen, nor, according to you, thought about the last few days, makes me wonder what you’ll be like after our bodies have become better acquainted.” When my mouth drops open, he says, “And you’ve not had me for another three days or a week or two.”
“I meant no filter about Vivienne,” I say through my teeth even as desire creeps through my veins. I pull away from him. “I didn’t ask you to talk dirty to me.”
He laughs. It’s deep and sensual and, paired with the seductive glint in his eyes, dangerous. I step around him, reaching out for one of the brass doorknobs, but he stops me when I feel his fingertips on my shoulders, and the heat of his muscular body pressed against my back.
“Stay,
” he orders, his warm, sweet breath stroking my ear. I turn my head to find his dark gaze penetrating mine. “Because my former sister-in-law is probably in her own fucking car by now.” Skimming his hand from my shoulders, he unfastens the top button of my trench coat, and then the second. “She’s probably already on her way to the airport for her long-awaited holiday vacation.” He unties the belt slowly, his knuckles brushing against my waist. “And besides, I have no plans of taking you anywhere until you’ve had dinner with me.”
He pauses before shrugging the coat off my shoulders, and I reach up, stopping his hands with my own trembling fingers. “Would you hold it against me, Ms. Courtney, if I admitted I’m rather hopeful you’re naked underneath this coat?” He finishes removing the coat, his full lips curving up as I turn around and he looks me over. He rubs his shadowed chin thoughtfully. “Luckily, I have a vivid imagination.”
“Vivienne’s your sister-in-law,” I ask, avoiding his erotically-charged question as he leads me into the spacious interior of his condo. It’s an open floor plan, with the kitchen, dining room, and living area all visible, decorated in luxurious neutrality, and surrounded by floor to ceiling windows. “She was married to your brother?” Or was he married to her sister?
He nods. “To my older brother and for about fifteen minutes before my mother convinced Bennett what a mistake it was.” I don’t miss the sarcasm dripping from his voice when he stops me in the center of the room, right in front of a plush grey fabric sectional. Tossing my coat on it, he bends his head so that his mouth is inches from mine. “Vivienne has never been my lover, will never be my wife, and if she said something that makes you think that, I will have her ass.”
“No, no. She . . .” Maybe I had imagined the blonde’s chilly reception? Talking to my father is enough to screw with the strongest mind. Dad can be like the Hannibal Lecter of Capitol Hill. Embarrassed, I flick my tongue over the side of my lip. “I’m so sorry, Graham. I never react like that, I promise.”
Pawn: Volume One Page 5