Adeline sighed. “I’m not going to luck out and get a twenty-two-year-old intern to show me around, am I?”
“That would be luck?”
She grinned. “Well, to be honest, I was hoping that a newbie wouldn’t know all of the nuances of past parties, in which case I could be free to view the space as a blank canvas.”
“Compromise,” he proposed. “I’ll show you the general space where I like to host, but I promise not to say a word about what Jada’s done in the past.”
She shifted slightly, clearly bothered. “Why? Don’t get me wrong, I respect the whole get-your-hands-dirty personal approach, but you can’t tell me that the mayor of New York City doesn’t have something better to do with his time.” Her voice was steady, and politely challenging, but the wariness in her gaze told him something else. Not of an event planner impatient with a client’s stubbornness. Not even a governor’s daughter, jaded by the world of politics. But of a woman who didn’t trust men—who didn’t trust him.
The realization sent a quiet anger through him, but it had a silver lining. He now knew exactly where he’d gone wrong with Adeline Blake.
“Can I be honest?” he asked, tempering his usual full smile to reflect how he really felt: nearly as wary as her.
She shrugged. “Of course.”
“I told you the other day that I liked that you didn’t tolerate my crap, and I meant it. I don’t often interact with people who don’t want something from me—or who I’m not trying to, uh, shall we say curry favor with.”
“Understandable,” Adeline said. “Part of the job.”
“It is. But even when I’m not in mayor mode . . . I am. Or rather, people see me that way. At the risk of sounding very poor famous dude, it’s rare that people treat me like a regular guy.”
She pursed her lips, then nodded. “Sure, I can see that. What’s that have to do with me and the event I’m planning?”
He grinned. “Well, see, you’re sort of proving my point. You don’t mince your words around me. You don’t get flustered. Hell, I’m not even entirely sure you don’t dislike me.” The fact that she didn’t rush to contradict him was hardly reassuring, but Robert pushed forward. “The fact is, Ms. Blake . . . you’re rather refreshing.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “You like me because I don’t like you?”
“Basically,” Robert said, lifting his shoulders. “Maybe it’s my corrupt politician’s soul that can’t help but want to win you over, or maybe I just enjoy being treated like a man instead of a title, but I enjoy your company. And at the risk of sounding like an awkward schoolboy, I thought it might be nice if you and I could become friends.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, he realized they had nothing to do with his desire to learn what she knew about her father. While the aspiring governor in him still wanted to prove to the world he was a better man, and would make a better governor, than George Brennan, he couldn’t pretend that he looked at Adeline and thought of the governor.
Because when he looked at Adeline, he didn’t think of himself as the mayor. Somehow he’d turned into a goddamn Hugh Grant movie, standing in front of a girl, asking her to like him.
Because he meant what he’d said. He liked her. He liked the way she made him feel. Women tended to act fluttery around him, and it had gotten even worse after the Man of the Year debacle. For that matter, Robert had a hard time figuring out who his true friends were. Other than Kenny, who had no problem giving it to Robert straight, everyone else seemed to see him as Mr. Mayor first, Robert second.
He craved something different. Damn it, he just wanted a friend. Granted, his body still wanted a lot more from Adeline Blake. But he’d settle for someone to talk to.
“Friends,” she said skeptically.
“I make a good one,” he said, spreading his hands to the side. “For example, if you ever need a ride to the airport, I have my driver on speed dial. And if you need someone to help you move . . . I know a guy.”
She laughed. “A good friend to have, indeed.” Adeline looked him over for a moment, then sighed. “Fine. Show me your party space.”
“And then we can become best friends?” he joked, opening the door for her.
“Depends. Does your driver go to LaGuardia and JFK?”
“For my friends, he’ll even go to Jersey if you need to fly out of Newark.”
She made an impressed noise. “You make a compelling case, Mr. Mayor.”
“Think on it, Ms. Blake. Who knows, you may even get around to calling me Robert one of these days.”
“Let’s not start talking crazy. Now, tell me about your home,” she said, looking around as they left the office space. “It’s beautiful.”
“I can’t take much credit. It was built in 1799 near the same site where George Washington commandeered a building during the American Revolution because of its strategic proximity to Hell Gate.”
She shook her head questioningly.
“A strait of the East River, and potential attack point for the British fleets. In fact, the British destroyed the house that Washington had built. Archibald Gracie had this one built later, named after him, obviously. It’s served various purposes over the years. A home, a museum, a classroom. It even served as the public restroom and ice-cream stand for Carl Schurz Park in the early 1900s.”
“Really?” She sounded genuinely interested. “When did it become the official mayor’s residence?”
“In 1942, though not all mayors have opted to live here. For example, Bloomberg held meetings and private events in the mansion but didn’t actually live here. Though he did foot the bill for a major renovation, which brings us full circle to the start of this tangent: I can’t take much credit for anything in the house. It looks the same now as when I moved in.”
“No urge to put your mark on it?” she asked, as they stepped into one of the parlors.
“If it needed maintenance or restoration, then absolutely. But cosmetic changes for the sake of it? Nah. Feels a bit like a dog peeing on a fence post just to say, ‘I was here.’ I’d rather leave my legacy with mypolicy—be remembered for the good I did, not the throw pillows I’ve selected.”
“Ah, so then you’d hover around an interior designer as much as you do your event planner?” she asked with a smile, jotting something in her notebook as she took in the room.
Only if she looked like you.
It wasn’t just Adeline’s looks, though. Something about this woman’s presence both calmed and ignited him. Highly annoying, considering she rarely called him anything other than Mr. Mayor.
“Why do I get the feeling I look like a control freak through your eyes?” he said, slightly dodging her question.
“It’s not always a bad thing,” she said almost distractedly, continuing to take notes.
“Could that have been . . . a compliment?” he said, lowering his voice to a teasing whisper.
Her lips tilted in a womanly smile. “If I ever compliment you, you’ll know.”
“If. Ouch.”
“Don’t worry,” she said breezily. “You strike me as a man who enjoys a challenge.”
That I do, Ms. Blake. That I do, he thought, his eyes drifting over her curves when she turned to study the rest of the space.
“So, this is all fair game for the party?” she asked, oblivious to his thoughts as she wandered into another room. “One hundred and fifty people is a lot for a private residence, even if it is technically a mansion.”
“The whole first floor, minus my private office,” he said, following her into the adjoining room. “Basically, if it’s on the school field trip tour, it’s fair game for guests.”
“Got it.” She continued jotting notes as she roamed around his home.
The mansion was good-sized, but because it was old, it lacked the open floor plan of more modern homes, with much of the first floor taken up by a bunch of smaller spaces. There was, however, a decent-sized ballroom, which was usually the focal point of any gathering.
Something Adeline had realized all on her own, apparently, as she was spending more time in the iconic blue room than the others.
She set her notebook on a small end table and switched to her phone, using it to take a video of the space. “What’s upstairs?” she asked distractedly, spinning in a slow circle to get a 360-degree view of the room with her camera.
“What?” he asked, realizing he was watching her with a bit more intensity than a mayor should have when looking at an event planner.
“You said everything on the first floor except your office is accessible to guests. What’s upstairs?”
“The living quarters.” He hesitated, not wanting to have a repeat of their lunch date when he’d pushed too hard and scared her off, then decided to go for it. “Want to see?”
She gave him a startled look, then narrowed her eyes just slightly. “Depends. Will I regret it?”
Robert grinned. “I’m willing to risk it if you are.”
Chapter Ten
Tuesday, October 13
A month ago, Adeline would have sworn she’d never set foot into a politician’s world. She’d had plenty of firsthand experience with the formal, uptight, manufactured life of a first family, and to say the memories were unpleasant was a massive understatement.
And yet here she was, not only planning a party for an elected official but touring his private quarters, seeing where he lived, how he lived. Most baffling of all, she was enjoying it. Enjoying him, she realized as she cast a sidelong glance at the mayor.
He’d excused himself a couple of minutes earlier to take a phone call, and instead of it feeling rude, she liked that he knew she wouldn’t get all huffy at the fact that the most powerful man in the city might possibly have something more pressing than making small talk with her. It was hard to explain, even to herself, but she felt a strange sense of pleasure that he seemed to think of her as a part of his inner circle, rather than an exception to it.
But along with that pleasure came a vague sense of foreboding, the same trepidation that had her keeping her distance the past week. He’d been absolutely right in gently accusing her of avoiding him. On a professional level, she’d been perfectly thorough. She’d never let the event she’d been hired for suffer simply because the client made her nervous.
And he did make her nervous. Their disastrous conversation over lunch had made her realize just how much damage this man could do if he ever found out who she really was. And her alarm hadn’t come so much from the fact that he’d clearly been trying to learn more about her, but from the fact that for an insane moment, she’d wanted to tell him.
Maintaining her privacy was precisely the reason she didn’t date and made a point of steering clear of men she found attractive, and for all his insistence that that lunch had been a work meeting and her desperation to believe it, she knew there’d been something simmering between them that went beyond bland discussions about dress code and appetizers.
When she was around him, she kept forgetting herself. She kept forgetting she was the daughter of his political rival, and even more puzzling, she even forgot she was an event planner. She was simply a woman who enjoyed a man, who felt both breathless and safe when she was near him.
It was this strange dichotomy of emotion the mayor brought out in her that had her pulling back. The old version of herself had trusted easily and believed the good in people. Strange, perhaps, given the fact that she was raised by an unscrupulous bastard like George Brennan. Or perhaps it was because her father had been such a corrupt snake that she’d needed to believe he was the exception, rather than the rule.
Her younger self had given her heart away easily, confided in people she shouldn’t have, trusted those who said, “No, of course the drink wasn’t that strong,” and assured her that the photos were for “their eyes only.” She’d believed men who’d said they’d call the next day.
The result? She’d had far too many hazy nights where she couldn’t remember the details, the entire internet had seen her boobs, and she’d yet to meet a man who thought she was worth sticking by when things got even a little bit complicated. For that matter, she’d spent way too many hours blinking back tears when she realized the guy who’d said all the right things on Saturday was completely out of her life by Sunday.
Yes, all of her acting out had been on her agenda, or so she’d thought, but she couldn’t deny that there’d been plenty of hungover mornings in her early twenties when she’d wished someone would have seen her behavior for what it was—desperation.
A longing for someone to care.
She’d grown up since then. Knew that it was better to keep the deepest parts of herself protected. Thus, she wasn’t in the market for any kind of romantic entanglement, especially with the freaking mayor of New York City.
But. His suggestion of being friends . . .
That held a surprising amount of appeal.
Other than Jane, Rosalie, and her coworkers, friends were something Adeline had been a little short on since moving back to New York. Part of it was just the nature of building a new business from the ground up, but she couldn’t place all the blame on her long work hours. Addie’s innate friendliness was forever battling with Adeline’s reluctance to trust people, which applied to all aspects of her social life, not just romance.
And while Robert Davenport the mayor was hardly the best person to befriend, Robert Davenport the man was awfully easy to be around.
He was still on the phone, so she wandered around his living room. It was a little too museum-esque for her tastes, but it was impressive in a stately, old-fashioned kind of way. Her father would have loved it.
She picked up a framed photograph, her heart giving a little squeeze when she saw it was of Robert and his parents at Disney World. The mayor looked to be ten or so. She smiled a little at the happy faces and the mouse ears, the normalcy of the moment catching her by surprise. From what she knew about Robert Davenport Sr., he’d already been entrenched in local politics by the time the current mayor was in elementary school, and yet he’d still taken the time for a family vacation.
To be fair, her father had taken the occasional getaway as well. Just not with her. George Brennan had been fond of “getting off the grid,” as he’d called it, which, as Addie had gotten older, she had realized was his way of sleeping with women half his age—married women, multiple women . . .
He’d quietly drive off in the early morning to a rented house in the Catskills, or wherever, and come back days later a little more smiley, a little more smug.
When she’d been really young—far younger than Robert in this picture—she’d cried to her nanny about his desertion, wondering why he didn’t take her along. Wondering why she didn’t get to go on weekend getaways to Cape Cod like her friends.
It hadn’t taken long until she’d changed her tune entirely. Eventually, she’d come to eagerly relish seeing his taillights, rejoicing in the break from his oppressive, controlling presence.
The mayor came up behind her, interrupting her bitter memories. “You’d never know it from my face, but that photo was taken about five minutes before a full-fledged breakdown.”
Adeline turned toward him, picture frame still in her hand. “You? Anything less than a model specimen of humanity?”
“I know. I find it shocking, too,” he said with a smile, though his eyes were a little sad as he looked down at the three grinning faces. “I’m all smiles in that moment, but fast-forward a few seconds to when they told me it was time to go get dinner so we could be back in time for the fireworks show. It didn’t at all gel with my plan of having a churro for ‘dinner’ while waiting in line to go on Space Mountain for the third time that day.”
“A roller coaster after churros? You were a brave kid.”
“I was a spoiled brat,” he said with a small smile.
She glanced up at his classically handsome profile, at the conservative blue suit. Even after hours, his tie knot was impeccable, and there wasn’t a wrinkle in sigh
t. He looked like the type of kid who would have ironed his own polo shirts and polished his own loafers.
Adeline told him so as she set the photo back on the shelf.
The mayor laughed. “Hardly. My knees were always skinned. I was forever in trouble for not going to bed when I was told, for trying to maneuver more TV time than I was allowed. I refused to eat vegetables, I got in trouble in school, and I spent all of fifth grade with damn as my favorite word.”
She laughed along with him at the mental image he’d described. “You’re so straitlaced now. What happened?”
Even before his eyes dimmed, she regretted the question. She knew exactly what had happened. The whole country did.
He reached out and straightened the picture frame, though it didn’t need straightening. “Everything changed when he died. I guess that’s an obvious statement. Of course things changed. But I sometimes think I became a different person that day. I chose to be a different person. The day after the funeral, I made myself a promise to honor him. To do everything exactly right to carry on the legacy that he’d started. To do our family’s name proud because he no longer could.”
“He’d be proud of you,” Adeline said quietly.
Robert’s smile was sad. “Yeah. But the hell of it is, I think he’d have been proud of me even if I’d kept on being a terror. He always told me it wasn’t the type of person you were on paper that mattered—it was the way you made other people feel that was important. He told me I could be an A-plus student and a grade-A jerk, a struggling student who spread good in the world, or anything in between. My choice.”
The difference between their fathers was so stark she almost laughed. Her father’s “pep talks” had been more in the vein of: Jesus, Addie, a B-plus in social studies? For God’s sake, your teacher knows who I am—how do you think that looks?
She swallowed against the memories of a childhood that had been pretty much the opposite of what the mayor was describing. “Your dad sounds pretty amazing.”
“Yeah. He was. My mom’s really great, too. I know it’s a cliché, but she really stepped in and played the role of both parents as best she could. She always fulfilled her promises to practice soccer with me in Central Park, even when she forgot to bring a change of shoes after her workday. Truth be told, it was a little embarrassing to have my mom running around the park in stilettos, but I never let her know it. And now, I’m grateful.”
Yours in Scandal Page 8