“Your house wine for me and...” Riley gestured at me.
“Uh...” What would have happened if Riley hadn’t walked in on us? The possibilities burned me up from the inside out.
“Are you okay, Paige?” Riley asked over the top of his menu. “You’re all flushed.”
“Fine. I’m fine.” I looked at the waitress. “Do you have any water?”
“We might,” the waitress said, and I had no idea if she was joking or not.
Granted, I’d asked a stupid question, so therefore it must deserve a stupid answer.
She clicked her pen a number of times, sending in our drink order by Morse code, I supposed, then sashayed to the next table.
A small smile played across Riley’s mouth as he turned his head, faking a casual glance around the restaurant, but really checking out our model waitress’s ass.
Classy.
“So, out with it,” Riley said, turning to me once again. “Tell me every detail about today. It must have been amazing to leave you so tongue-tied.”
At the mention of tongues, I dug my fingernails into my thighs so the pain would keep me focused. “It was amazing. The internship, I mean.”
Riley grinned. “I thought that was what we were talking about.”
“It is. We are,” I said, then took a long, steadying breath. “We took a tour of some of the areas not open to the public.”
“I’m envious.”
“You should be. And the United States government will be very unhappy if I tell you anything about those areas, so don’t even ask.”
“Fair enough,” Riley said, laughing.
The waitress came back with our drinks and took our food order. I ordered something that didn’t have too many zeroes behind it, though five seconds after she clicked her pen and glided away again, I couldn’t remember what I’d just read from the menu.
“I had French fries and a turkey sandwich at the library café.” See, I could remember that. “And I met some really good, interesting, bookish-type people that I may have to throw down the stairs to get a Library of Congress job.”
Riley choked on his sip of wine and sputtered into his napkin. “What?” he asked when he’d collected himself.
“That was the part I didn’t like.”
One of the parts I didn’t like. The memories Rick stirred up and his Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde act had diminished my excitement considerably. The whole thing made me feel sick to my stomach, but a small part of that uncomfortable conversation had awakened the information-finding beast lurking in all librarians.
What had Max Cleary done that would make Rick not want Max reelected? And why would he think the Cleary brothers had some kind of evidence Rick could use against Max?
Since I was the poster child for secrets, I understood better than anyone the need to keep them. But since I very nearly slept with one of the Cleary brothers, it would be wise to know what I was getting into for once. Especially if that secret was large enough to undo a man’s bid for presidency.
Rick could threaten me all he wanted, but it didn’t mean I had to give up the goods. I had more leverage than he did anyway since he was completely in the dark about Her. Just the threat of a paternity test would shut him right the fuck up, but I hoped it didn’t come to that. Otherwise I would have to unravel the ball of shame I carried with me and admit all my failures to the one person to whom it mattered most—Her.
“What about the part you didn’t like about your internship?” Riley pressed.
“Right. Yes,” I said and sipped at my ice water. “There’s only one position available, and I feel like I’ve just stepped into the Librarian Battle of Death arena. Most of the interns already have their library science degrees, and I still have a semester of graduate school to go.”
“It’s the first day, though. Who knows what could happen in the next six weeks?”
“You know I don’t have a competitive bone in my body. Remember P.E., eighth grade year?”
The class had made the volleyball game into a contest to see who could missile the ball over the net the fastest. I lost. So did my nose.
Riley sat back in his seat. “This isn’t a game. You want this.”
I wanted a lot of things, one of which involved a certain man’s hands performing magic between my legs again. My glass of ice water clinked as I tossed back half of it. It cooled my body enough to concentrate on the man who sat across from me, the man I should be glad to see after all these years, but didn’t seem as happy to see me.
“I guess we’ll just see what happens,” I said.
“That’s all anyone can do,” Riley agreed. “So tell me about Wichita. Is there anyone special there?”
“As in a boyfriend? No.”
“Previous boyfriends?”
I turned my glass around in a tight circle to watch the moisture bleed into the tablecloth. “Sure.”
That was my standard answer, but the truth was after my horrific year at a brand new school when I was labeled a slut for being pregnant at such a young age, guys avoided me with the same vigor as if they’d heard my vagina had teeth. After a whole year of brutal slut-shaming, I quit school, adding to my parents’ hatred of me, and enrolled myself in online classes where I didn’t have to leave the safety of my bedroom. I pushed myself to graduate in three years, then earned a full-ride scholarship to the University of Kansas where I rejoined society as a history/English literature student.
No boyfriends those four years or the one year of graduate school, unless you counted group dates, which I didn’t. Not since Rick when I was fifteen, and he was married. I didn’t want to count him, either.
I cleared my throat and my head of all those memories. “How about you? Are you seeing anyone?”
“Nah.” His gaze slid down my neck and snagged on my chest over the rim of his wine glass. “The dating scene in D.C. has been kind of lackluster.”
So, my chest must be gleaming. I shifted in an attempt to block some of my boobs’ radiance.
“What about our waitress? She’s pretty. And she brought me water when I didn’t know if any could be found.” I searched the restaurant for my brand new hero and found her by the bar in the corner. She was holding her pen in a stabby way and clicking the poor thing to death. “Seriously, you have my approval.”
Riley shook his head, an amused gleam in his eyes. Blue, like his brother’s, but not as bright.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said.
I shrugged, not wanting to get into all the ways I had and hadn’t changed.
“So...” I began while toying with the corner of my napkin and pretending nonchalance, “do you remember Rick Chambers?”
“Sure.”
“Do he and your dad still run in the same political circles?”
Riley took a long draw of his wine. “Not really. Rick switched parties a few years ago. Why?”
“More water, ma’am?”
I looked up into the cherubic face of a water boy carrying a pitcher with lemon slices floating at the top.
“Please,” I said and pushed my glass toward him.
But he started pouring before the glass had stilled, and water slopped all over my hand.
“Jesus, kid.” Riley slammed his wine down and threw his napkin at me. “Watch what you’re doing.”
“It’s okay,” I assured the boy, then turned a sharp gaze on Riley. “It’s just water.”
“Sorry. S-sorry.” The boy’s cheeks erupted in a blush, and he carried his pitcher stiffly away.
“Riley,” I scolded while I dabbed at my hands. “What the hell? It was an accident.”
He stretched his arm across the back of the booth like he hadn’t even heard me, but his jaw pulsed like he was actually angry. About water. This man sitting across from me was not the boy I grew up with. Had politics warped his mind into thinking he was better than everyone else and could therefore treat everyone he thought was beneath him like dirt?
He used to be so compassionate. When we passe
d homeless people on the street, he was always the first to start digging through his pockets. He used to volunteer at a reading center for kids with me. If it wasn’t politics that had changed him, something else had, but this new, short-tempered Riley definitely wasn’t my favorite thing about being back in D.C.
“I’m just tired, that’s all,” he said and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He wasn’t even looking at where he was—”
“Drop it,” I warned, my voice low.
Was this what it was like to reprimand a petulant child? Honestly, what was his problem?
His cell rang, and he nearly dropped it in his empty wine glass in his haste to answer it.
“Steve, my boy,” he answered.
The house wine had stained his lips crimson, which was why I only drank red alone at home and with a pan of brownies. Every time he grinned, it reminded me of Dracula, and I had to look away.
With him distracted, I fished my phone out from my purse and did a few quick keyword searches for Max Cleary and Rick Chambers together. Several photos showed the two men smiling, shaking hands, or posing with the current president. One article from three years ago detailed a veterans’ benefits bill they were collaboratively sponsoring.
Rick, who was probably in his early thirties by now, had returned from a tour in Baghdad a few months before I met him. A blizzard of shrapnel from a homemade bomb had nearly taken off his arm, but Max Cleary quickly took him under his wing when Rick returned to the states. When he wasn’t paving his way to Capitol Hill at the Clearys’, Rick visited my house. Always eager to please, he did odd jobs to help get us ready for our move to Wichita.
But both he and Max were thought of as war heroes. They weren’t involved in any scandals, at least outed ones, but a year ago Rick became the twenty-fifth senator, and the second from Pennsylvania, to switch parties since 1890. His explanation was that his beliefs were no longer aligned with the other party’s. Was that why Rick didn’t want Max to be president? Because they were now on opposite sides of the political spectrum? Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary, nothing that would inspire Rick to turn against his old friend Max, at least according to the first page of Google results.
Maybe it wasn’t political, and if it wasn’t, then it had to be personal. Something to do with Riley and his younger brother who had earlier fueled me up to maximum power. But what?
Our waitress paraded a tray of food in our direction and then set one plate in front of me. “You had the nut-kissed meatballs and linguini, right?”
13
Sam
EVER SINCE PAIGE AND Riley arrived home from their dinner together, Paige had barely said a word to anyone. She sat ramrod straight on the edge of the couch next to Riley while images from the news show flashed across her eyes. Where did she go inside that pretty head of hers? Probably to earlier when she lay spread out on the island in the kitchen like a feast sent from heaven. If I could crawl inside her head and join her, I would.
I could see the tension coiled tight inside her in her balled-up fists, the way her lips parted so she could saw her teeth across them, her chest pushing against her black dress, the hot one according to my dick-knuckle brother, and her heavy breaths. Yeah, pretty sure I made an impression.
I grinned into the pages of my book that I hadn’t read a single word from since they’d left. Her smooth skin, delicious curves, the way she threw her head back when I ripped off her thong had consumed my head. The musky, sweet smell of her was still on my fingers, which rushed lust-filled thoughts from my brain down south into a constant, painful reminder of her.
And what she’d said before, all that about not being a good person... I didn’t know where that came from, but I wanted to know more. I wanted her to prove to me she wasn’t a good person. Naked. Doing very, very bad things.
When the sports part of the nightly news started, Paige stood and stretched up on her silver-painted toes. Her calves flexed. I tried not to stare but did a damn poor job of it.
“Well, it’s been fun, everyone, but I need to get to sleep,” she announced. Her usually sexy, relaxed voice sounded strained, even with the glass of white wine she’d downed right when they got home.
“Yeah, me too. Long day tomorrow.” Riley turned off the television and chucked the remote toward the far side of the living room at my head.
I easily dodged it. It smashed into one of his baseball trophies on the bookshelf behind my armchair.
Paige frowned at Riley and shook her head as she went to the kitchen with her empty wine glass.
“Nice one,” I said to Riley and smiled. “No wonder you didn’t make it to the big leagues.”
He stood, glaring like he always did, and swayed on his feet. Jesus, was he drunk?
“Watch it, SamRam. At least I didn’t go to jail for assault and battery.”
The smile fell from my face as I gripped the arms of the chair to keep myself from swinging at him. Paige walked back into the living room. Without a glance at either of us, she went upstairs. Had she heard the jackass’s slip?
“How about you don’t mention that again?” I warned through gritted teeth.
Riley leaned down toward me, his beer breath strong enough to gross even me out. “Afraid Paige will find out, are we? I saw you looking at her.” His gaze was dark, lethal.
I pushed my fury to the side long enough to laugh in his face. What was he trying to do, intimidate me? “I look at a lot of people. Doesn’t mean anything.” I pushed him in the chest. Hard.
He stumbled backward, the stupid drunk. He almost didn’t catch himself in time before he took a dive into the corner of the coffee table. Four empty bottles of beer tipped over when he bumped into it. I’d been so focused on Paige, I hadn’t even noticed he drank that much.
“A word of advice, though? Why don’t you lay off the beer. Nobody likes the drunk at the party.” I stood and patted his cheek to help him sober up. Also because he hated it. “Actually, nobody likes you at the party.”
“If you touch her, I’ll tell her everything about you. About how Hill cleared your name for the assault. About dealing drugs for him. Everything.”
“And the pictures with the prostitute and your dick in her hands?” I leveled him with a warning look since he should know better. “Are you going to tell her about that, too?”
The fucker always liked to spin things away from him and any responsibility he had in the whole Hill situation. He was the one who left the fucking laptop with all his shit on it right out in the open before he’d wiped the incriminating pictures off of it. A real genius political consultant at work, ladies and gentlemen.
The police found the pictures the night I went to jail, and Hill had said he would make those disappear, too. He must really have his hands deep inside the pockets of the D.C.P.D. But instead of making them vanish, he used the pictures as blackmail against our family if we didn’t pay Rose’s debt off. He hadn’t exactly given us much of a choice.
“Do it, then. Tell her,” I continued. “I’m sure she’d be very interested to hear all of it.”
He nodded, slow and deliberate, as if he’d just cracked a riddle. “That’s why you’re around all the time, isn’t it? Is she already fucking you like the whores you’re used to?”
My fingers dug into my palms with the rage that sped through my veins. Oh, that fucking fuck didn’t just say that. He’d just downgraded his childhood friend to skank, but Paige was the furthest thing from a whore. He had to know that already, which meant he was just trying to get a reaction out of me. Testing me.
I stepped back. “There’s no fucking of any kind. She’s not my type. She doesn’t do anything for me. I’m here because I live here. End of story.”
“That better be the end of the story.”
I shook my head at the ceiling because that comeback was going in the record books under Most Pathetic. “Go to bed.”
“Drop dead,” he mumbled, then dragged himself up the stairs.
A few minutes later, I followed
. Knowing him, he’d pass out the second he hit his bed. I stared at my bedroom door, listening for some kind of noise from Paige’s room across the hall. All I heard was the faint sound of water running in her bathroom. I slipped into my room and sat on the bed with my head buried in my hands.
The thought of her rolling her hips into the palm of my hand flashed behind my eyelids on repeat. She’d addicted me to her body in less than a second. I hadn’t even seen all of it yet, hadn’t explored it in all the ways it begged to be explored. My dick hardened into an intense ache that refused to be ignored. I wanted her with a fierce need. What had happened earlier had fed that craving and turned it into an obsession. Functioning—hell, walking—was out of the question until I felt her flesh slide against mine again.
A shadow darkened the space between the closed door and the carpet. Someone stood right outside.
My heart pounding, I shifted my legs off the bed, slowly so I wouldn’t squeak the mattress, and opened the door a crack. The bedside lamp cast a faint glow into the dark hallway and shimmered inside a pair of big brown eyes. Judging from her heated gaze sliding over my naked chest, I doubted she’d been in the hallway studying the paint job.
“Hi,” I said, voice husky.
“Hi,” she whispered. Her gaze dropped to the floor before it slowly skimmed all the way up again. “About what happened earlier.”
I stepped closer and angled away from the light behind me so it shone on her. Seeing her like this, her attention focused only on me, unhinged my reality for a second, as if it was one of my many dreams about her. Just to be sure, I brushed my fingers along the crease at her elbow. When she shivered, I decided I liked reality a whole lot better.
“You mean your Shh! thong? I’m holding it for ransom.”
She glanced at Riley’s door and licked her lips, which sent a jolt to my dick. If she wanted to continue where we left off pre-cock block, I was all in. Blood roared between my ears. Her skin heated underneath my fingers.
I stroked my hand up over her shoulder, enjoying the sigh that came from her lips, and brushed my fingers to the back of her neck. She stared up at me with a blazing need that made me bite back a groan.
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