In Too Fast

by Mara Jacobs

  I felt the perfect, normal, out-of-the-spotlight life I’d built for myself being pulled out from under me.

  Chapter Three

  I was a freshman at Bribury College, a small, elite school between Baltimore and DC. And I loved it there. Loved that I could be just Jane Winters. Loved my roommates Lily and Syd. Loved my classes (as much as you can love college classes).

  I should have been spending my break whooping it up with my high school friends back home (not that I had any, having gone to a boarding school for the past four years). But no, I was here at this wedding listening to my half-brother drop a bombshell.

  “Are you serious?” I asked. Joey nodded. “Is he serious?”

  Joey nodded again. “He’s putting out feelers.” He did the air quotes thing around “feelers” and added, “He’s invited a bunch of the party’s influential people to the wedding.”

  I didn’t say anything. Things made sense now. Why I was here, a bridesmaid. Step right up, folks, see the elusive, happy political-scandal family. They only appear every millennium. Or every election cycle.

  “What an ego to think the public has forgotten what he did,” Joey said.

  I saw more flashes out of the corner of my eye and realized the song had—finally, thankfully—ended, and Betsy and my father were making their way to us.

  “Forget what he did? Not likely with me standing here.”

  Joey let out a soft snort. “I know, right?” He seemed to realize that statement could hurt my feelings and added, “No offense.”

  Really? After all I’d heard in my lifetime, something like that one just rolled off my back. “None taken.”

  “And now the entire wedding party,” the bandleader announced. Betsy had a very prominent band playing and a DJ for any intervals. That must have cost a ton.

  “That’s why the humongo wedding. And the press being here,” I said, though I didn’t really need to.

  “Yep,” Joey confirmed. “All for show.”

  “Well, what wedding isn’t, really?” I didn’t know why I said that—it almost sounded like I was defending Betsy. Or my father.

  Ryan Something-or-other came to take me to the dance floor. “I’ll dance with Jane,” Joey told him. “You dance with Chrissy.”

  Ryan couldn’t hide the delight from his face—Chrissy was the bridesmaid he’d been hot for. But he shot Joey a look. “I don’t know. I don’t want the wrath of Bridezilla coming down on me.”

  “I’ll deal with fallout from Betsy,” Joey said as he took my hand and led me out onto the dance floor. I saw Betsy do a double take at Joey and me being paired up, but when she saw that Ryan had found Chrissy—that there were no loose ends—she relaxed into the arms of her new husband.

  She was probably used to Joey changing things up on her. He went through a bit of a wild phase in his teens. Drinking, expelled from a couple of different prep schools. Acting out, the press called it. I think it pissed my father off—which was probably the point. But I also think it really hurt Caroline, which was probably why Joey eventually straightened up, got an Ivy League degree and a good job, and became a model citizen.

  But come on. A year in Africa on a relief mission? Uh…no. Not for me. Unless maybe to accompany Brad and Angelina.

  “So yeah, the wedding is for show. Betsy actually wanted something small. Just family. Up at the cape.” Caroline had a huge place at Cape Cod that had been in her family for generations. I had—for obvious reasons—never been there. That was where Betsy and Joey spent all their summer vacations growing up.

  It made sense—Betsy wanting something small. Whereas Joey rebelled, and then accepted the cards he was dealt, and I lived with them my whole life and played them to my advantage, Betsy had gone a different route.

  She hated the press, avoided them at every turn. She was a very shy person. She’d had a small, very close circle of friends since her early teens—Jason being amongst them. They had all gone to the same prep school and then Brown.

  Of course the size of this wedding would be something she would abhor.

  “Why didn’t she? Get married at the cape?”

  “Dad said he’d pay for everything if she did it up bigger. Including buying her and Jason an apartment in Manhattan.”

  “Wow,” I said, mentally calculating the cost of this wedding and an apartment in New York.

  “She and Jason really want to leave their jobs and work in public service, but couldn’t do that and live where they wanted to on what they’d probably make…so, she took Dad up on his offer.”

  “Well…yeah,” I said as if it was a no-brainer. The look Joey gave me said it wasn’t something he would do. “It’s not selling out if you wind up doing what you wanted all along anyway,” I said.

  Joey did a sweeping motion, encompassing the photographers—most of whom had their cameras trained on Joey and me. “This is not what Betsy wanted.”

  I nodded toward Betsy, who was looking adoringly, happily, at Jason. “Maybe. But she looks pretty happy right now. And they’ll be very happy in their new apartment.”

  “It’s not that simple, Jane. There’s a slippery slope of selling out. You need to hang on to your principles right from the start.”

  I snorted. “Principles? In the viper’s nest we live in?”

  “It wasn’t always like that.”

  “Right. Life was Shangri-la until I popped out.” I tried to sound normal, but the bitterness in my voice seeped out.

  I was right, but Joey tried to hide it. Maybe he had grown up. Maybe I was imagining the subtext of the looks between him and Betsy.

  “Not Shangri-la, no. As it turns out, it was all a lie, our happy family. But it’s not a lie if you don’t know the truth.”

  “There’s some messed-up logic for you,” I said.

  He shrugged, my hand that rested on his shoulder rising and lowering with his movement. “Politics is full of messed-up logic.”

  “So are families,” I added.

  “Yeah,” he said, and twirled me around. “Anyway, I’m getting the hell out of Dodge during this circus. Betsy and Jason are going on an extended honeymoon through Europe, then they’ll start their new jobs next fall, when the apartment is ready. I’m giving you fair warning—you might want to make yourself scarce for the next six to nine months.”

  “I’m in the middle of my freshman year at college. How am I supposed to disappear?”

  “Right,” he said, then looked down at me as if realizing I couldn’t live my own life yet, like he and Betsy could. “Can you stay at Bribury during the summer? Take classes?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it, but I guess I could. Why?”

  He shrugged again. “I’m just thinking with Betsy and me away, Dad might come calling on you to hit the campaign trail with him.”

  Some one-on-one time with my dad—no Betsy or Joey. And most definitely not my mother. Traveling around the country. Stumping, I guess they called it. And then Joey added, “He’ll need somebody to trot out to show he has some family that still talks to him. That he’s not a total douche.”

  Oh, yeah. Right. I’d be the sacrificial lamb.

  My father asked me to dance next, and I waited for him to bring up his going back into politics, but he didn’t. He did look over my shoulder whenever he got a chance, probably scoping out where all the reporters and potential bigwigs might be stationed.

  Sad, but after our small exchange in the limo on the way to the reception, we really didn’t have much more to say to each other. I wanted to bait him about his decision to run for office, but I couldn’t really come up with something to say—which was very unusual for me.

  We danced in silence mostly. He kept an eye on the photographers, and when apparently the moment was right, he smiled down at me. I smiled back at him, like some daughter happy to be dancing with her beloved daddy. Our smiles were such practiced movements it would be hard for anyone to tell just how completely fake it all was.

  Chapter Four

  After th
e dance with my father, I was led to the dance floor by Grayson Spaulding, my roommate Lily’s father.

  Not asked to dance, mind you, just taken to the dance floor and made to dance with the man that was the brains behind my father’s presidential run. And the reason I was even here at the wedding.

  “So, governor, huh?” I said to him as he moved me about the dance floor. I found it easier to ask Spaulding about it than my father. I guess that said something about my relationship with my father.

  To his credit, Spaulding didn’t even appear surprised that I knew about my father’s running. Hell, maybe everybody knew and I was just, as usual, catching up.

  “We’re going to need your support for this campaign, Jane,” he said to me. He looked me in the eyes for this.

  This. This was the difference between Grayson Spaulding and Joseph Stratton. Spaulding knew everybody was watching us, and he kept his eyes on me, seeming oblivious to it all.

  My father needed to see the people watching him. It was as if he wouldn’t believe it otherwise. That need to see the adoration (as it had been in years past) or the curiosity (as it was now).

  Spaulding knew it was there, smelled it like a bloodhound, but didn’t need to visually confirm it.

  That’s why some people needed to run for public office and others were perfectly content to be the man behind the curtain, pulling the levers and making the steam rise.

  “We already made our deal, Mr. Spaulding,” I said. “Here I am, pretending to be a happy part of the family.”

  “I think we’re to the point where you can call me Grayson, don’t you? Typically I’m on a first-name basis with my extortionists.”

  “I would say your co-conspirator, if anything…Grayson.”

  A small smile crept across his face as he looked down at me. “I like you, Jane. I’ll bet you’re good for Lily.”

  “Wasn’t it supposed to be that she’d be good for me?”

  He gave an elegant shrug to his shoulder, and I realized the puppet master had strings even I couldn’t see.

  And I looked for strings at all times, with all people.

  “How do you think I’m good for Lily?” I asked, resigned to the fact that this assumption was part of his plan from the beginning.

  He studied my face, almost as if wondering if I could handle the truth. His eyes softened just the tiniest bit, and I realized he now knew that, sadly, at almost nineteen, I could handle just about anything.

  “It would appear to most people that Lily would be a grounding presence to you, having the upbringing you did.”

  “You mean having a new-age, gold-digging twit for a mother and a douchebag fame-whore for a father? What about that screams instability?”

  He didn’t actually roll his eyes at my sarcasm—I would have bet that Grayson Spaulding had never deigned to roll his eyes—but a soft exhale left him, which said he wasn’t pleased with my summation. Accurate as it may be.

  “But it is also true that you would have a…liberating effect on Lily. She was truly caught in a ‘middle child who feels they must be perfect to be noticed’ situation.”

  Wow. He’d nailed Lily perfectly. And here I’d assumed—and I’m guessing Lily had too—that her father was completely oblivous to her feelings.

  “You weren’t afraid I’d lead her down the wrong path of…liberation?”

  He studied me again, and I felt like he knew every one of my secrets. It was probably how politicians felt when he told them which way he wanted them to vote on a bill or something.

  If he even did that sort of thing. It might all be about the campaign to him, not the actual governing. The race itself might be the crack that Grayson Spaulding smoked.

  “No. I was not concerned about that, Jane.”

  “Why not? I’ve dragged Lily to parties where I’ve been stinking, falling-down drunk. I’ve had to send her out of the room while I’ve banged a guy silly. And have asked her to join me…in both activities.”

  An exaggeration on all accounts, but he didn’t need to know that. Although he probably already did, the all-knowing bastard.

  “I appreciate the shock value, Jane. But let’s save that for bragging around the cafeteria table, shall we?”

  “I don’t brag around the cafeteria table,” I said, indignant. Sooooo not my style.

  “I know,” he said with a tiny smile.

  I nodded to him, acknowledging that he’d got me on that one. Then decided to tackle the elephant in the room.

  “So just how do you see me being of any help to my father’s campaign? ’Cause I can only see tabloid headlines and paparazzi camped out in front of my dorm in my future.”

  He gave the tiniest of head shakes. “That won’t happen. We’ll make sure that Bribury is off limits.”

  I imagined that he could probably make that happen.

  “What about the tabloid headlines?” I motioned with my chin to the row of approved photographers, and even the people taking photos, and shooting video, with their phones. “Beginning with today’s little farce of a happy family.”

  “That’s why we’re getting out ahead of it. Of course they’re going to dredge it all up again—Joe’s affair with your mother, you being born—”

  “Him denying he was my father?”

  He gave a curt nod, and looked away for a moment. But it was enough.

  “Or—wait. Did you tell him to deny me? Was that your piece of political strategy?”

  It had backfired royally. But it would have taken some of the sting out of knowing that it hadn’t been my father’s idea to disavow that he’d ever had an affair with my mother and that they’d created me.

  “Yes, that was my idea. And I apologize to you for it, though it’s a little late.”

  I studied him, the way he’d studied me so closely a moment ago.

  The tiny swelling I’d had for a brief second thinking that my father—though he hadn’t stood up to this guy way back then, when he should have—hadn’t wanted to deny me sank as I realized the master manipulator I was dancing with was at it again.

  “You’re lying,” I said. Before he could answer me, I continued, “You want me to believe that now so I’ll get all warm and fuzzy toward good ol’ Joe, but we both know it was his idea to deny the whole thing ever happened. Including me. Especially me. I’ll bet you even tried to talk him out of it at the time. Am I right?”

  God, I desperately wanted to be wrong. How pathetic was that? Still hungry for crumbs of Daddy’s affection even after all these years of knowing I’d never have it.

  But I knew I was right.

  There was no pity in his eyes (thank God) when he answered me. “Yes.” He twirled me a little then—a showy move for someone who left the showy moves to others.

  When we came to rest, he said, “You would make a great candidate someday, Jane. I only wish I’d still be in the game then.”

  “Why? And more importantly, hell no.”

  He smiled then, a real, genuine smile. It was kind of nice, in a dad sort of way. “Never say never. Especially with your bloodline and connections.”

  “I don’t have any connections.”

  “Look around you, Jane. This room is filled with your future connections.”

  “Why do you think I’d be good at this backstabbing, all-for-show world?”

  “Because you have your father’s charm and your mother’s scheming.” I recoiled from his words, but he held on to me. “I mean that as a compliment, Jane.”

  “None taken.”

  He smiled again.

  I shook my head, wanting to shake his words off me.

  “That deal you made? So Lily could go on seeing Lucas? That was ballsy and a stroke of genius.”

  I shrugged. But yeah, I was a little flattered.

  “I’d be even more impressed if you told me you’d played it that way from the beginning. If you had Lily make her deal with me, knowing you’d come back and counter with your deal, getting the outcome you wanted.”

  H
e gave me too much credit. Plus… “You think this is the outcome I wanted?” I motioned with my chin to the proceedings around us, and down to the bridesmaid’s dress I was wearing.

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Besides, I was on board with Lily being away from Lucas. I didn’t know at the time…” I stopped. This wasn’t really my story to tell to Lily’s father.

  “Know what?”

  What the hell. Lily had taken Lucas home to meet her parents over the holidays, so Spaulding must have seen it too.

  “How much he loves her.”

  He stiffened, but not a flicker of emotion changed on his face. It was an okay face. Kind of average for a dad. Not movie-star handsome like my father, but…pleasant. It certainly didn’t show the barracuda of a man that he was.

  “You did get that, right?” I asked. “That they’re crazy in love? And not just ‘teen angst, they’ll get over it in a week’ kind of love?”

  He swallowed, took his time. “Yes. I got that.”

  “Good for you for admitting it,” I said, somewhat surprised that he had. I assumed Grayson would be of the mind that if he didn’t acknowledge it, it wasn’t true.

  “I have found it serves me well to see situations as they truly are, not as I would wish them to be.”

  “Damn, good line. I’ll have to remember that one.”

  He smiled again. “You can have it—use it at will. What’s more, try to live by it.”

  I thought that was pretty good advice. Advice I was going to take.

  “So, back to me and the campaign. Or, in other words, why would you want me within ten feet of it, and why would I bother?”

  He liked cutting to the chase; he was that kind of man. And I found I was becoming that kind of woman.

  “We’ll get out in front of it. We can’t hide it—obviously. So instead we use it to our advantage.”

  “Having a child with your mistress while your wife was undergoing cancer treatments? How the hell do you take advantage of that?” But I knew how before he even said it.