He takes my hand on the table and squeezes, bathing me in the warm affection of his smile. He bends to kiss my forehead, and I know to others, it looks intimate, and it is. It’s the intimacy of a decade-long friendship that has survived bad sex with each other and broken hearts with other people, and still managed to hold fast. I blink rapidly, moved by Wallace’s unconditional friendship and still breathless from the direct look I shared with Maxim, like the airbags have deployed and punched me in the chest. Will I be bruised tomorrow?
“Well that’s really cool,” Owen says, smiling at Wallace. “Sounds like you’re as passionate about helping people as Lennix is.”
Wallace and I lace our fingers tightly, and I know he hopes they will move on to something else as much as I do. It doesn’t take long for them to turn back to discussing the latest gossip on the Hill and dissecting every season of Game of Thrones. We share a quick chuckle, and when I look up, Maxim’s eyes are fixed to the point where Wallace and I still hold hands.
“Guess I’m not such a bad beard after all,” Wallace whispers in my ear. “Maxim looks convinced. Maybe he’ll move on and find some other girl to fill his time while he’s here in DC.”
“Probably,” I say around a knot in my throat. “We did good.”
I thought I’d feel relief that he believes I’m taken, but I don’t. I’ll have to examine the contrariness of my emotions when I’m alone. I’ve already shown too much.
We make it through the next two delicious courses before Owen stands and starts speaking.
“Eat.” He waves at the table, urging everyone to continue with their meal. “This isn’t a formal meeting. I’m sure Kimba and Lennix will have plenty of those ahead of us.”
Everyone chuckles and keeps eating, dividing attention between their plates and their new candidate.
“Thank you all for coming. Mill and I wanted to have you here in our home,” Owen continues. “To have you meet our kids, Darcy and Elijah, and my brother, Maxim, who’ll be pivotal in our strategy. For some reason, people love this guy. I don’t get it.”
Maxim shoots him a wry look before dropping his eyes back to his plate, his mouth set into a firm line. For a second, I feel awful for ignoring him, deceiving him, but I have to protect myself. I know how it feels to hurt for that man. I won’t do it again.
“Lennix and Kimba,” Owen says, jerking me out of my thoughts. “anything you’d like to say?”
Kimba hates public speaking of any kind. She gives me a nod and the look that says girl, don’t even. With a sigh, I take a deep gulp of my water and stand. I search the faces of the men and women assembled around the table, and I search for what I should say.
“My mother once said injustice never rests and neither will I.” A sad little twist of my lips is as close as I can come to a smile. “She was an agitator. One of my earliest memories is of her hoisting me onto her shoulders at a protest. It’s in my blood.”
I find and hold every set of eyes on my team. “I’m counting on it being in yours, too. We have a remarkable candidate in Senator Cade, one I know we can all get behind. It’s no secret that Kimba and I have made our life’s work empowering candidates who will champion the causes of the marginalized. That’s what gets me out of bed every morning. It has been my complete focus for the last ten years, since I left college.”
Maxim’s stare singes a hole in me, but I ignore it and go on.
“On this journey, there will be times when we think we’re losing. Things will happen we never saw coming and aren’t sure how to negotiate. There will be times when we want to give up, but I descend from a long line of warriors. The Apache were the last to surrender. I take a certain amount of pride in that. I embrace it as part of who I am and how I fight.”
I look down the table to Owen. “I’ll fight for you, Senator Cade, because I trust you to fight for the people I dedicate my life to serve. Every person sitting at this table was selected for not only their brilliant mind, but for their fighter’s heart. You’re a dream candidate, but we’re a dream team.” I allow the smallest smile to bend my lips before softly saying, “Don’t let us down.”
My team cheers. Owen offers a solemn smile from his end of the table, and his wife studies me with new interest, her eyes darting between her brother-in-law and me. I sit and reach for my glass of water, praying this will end soon so I can go home.
It’s only a blessed half hour before things start breaking up. A nanny comes to take the twins upstairs. The staff clear away the remnants of our last course and everyone starts collecting their coats and saying their goodbyes.
Wallace is sliding my coat onto my shoulders when Maxim walks over. He just stands there. I sense him, even though I don’t look up from my Stuart Weitzman pumps. The silence encompasses the three of us, wrapping around and restraining me like barbed wire biting into my flesh.
“Can I have a word before you go, Lennix?” Maxim finally asks, his voice subdued.
A word. He means to bundle me off to Owen’s office or to the library. He’ll whittle my resistance down to a nub. He’ll make me forget he lied and that I shouldn’t allow him within ten paces of my body or heart. He wants to remind me how he feels and smells and tastes. He used to camouflage the wolf, but not anymore. He’s tamed his hair, cut the burnished waves that used to nearly kiss his shoulders, but his spirit is still wild, howling on some frequency I shouldn’t be tuned into, but I am. He’s now completely wolf and unashamedly Cade. He’s still the rebel, and I’m afraid I’m no more able to resist him than I was in that conference room a decade ago.
Afraid. I’m afraid. That’s an emotion I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge in this scenario with Maxim. Is this self-awareness? My therapist will be so proud.
Without lifting my head, I answer before I turn to leave. “No.”
40
Maxim
Last night did not go well.
I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t for Lennix to bring a damn date. Not just a date, but a relationship apparently. One where they go on service projects and build wells together, and generally make the world a better place. I grudgingly admit Wallace Murrow is not a bad guy. Not at all. I made sure of that when they dated before, but they’re back together? In the decade we’ve been apart, I took heart in the fact that Nix never dated any one guy for long. Wallace was the longest relationship I knew about, and for her to go back to him?
I stepped back before. The wounds were fresh. Her anger still burned hot and she’d ignored every attempt I made to contact her. Not to mention I was in the fight of my life trying to save my company, but a lot of time has passed. We’re both in different places now, and I’m done waiting.
I’m not sure how serious she and Murrow are, and . . . this makes no sense, but I don’t know if I buy it. There’s something missing with them. I’d never felt anything like the hot, addictive urgency that surged between Lennix and me, and I haven’t experienced it since. I guess I wanted to believe she hadn’t either. Maybe that is just the arrogant part of me—which I freely admit is a good portion of my personality. Whatever I expected, it bothers me that she isn’t available.
How’d Grim miss that? His security firm was one of the smartest investments I ever made. It pays dividends that have nothing to do with profit. Information is often just as valuable, and Grim deals information like a king pen.
After the last argument with my father, I continued seeking answers on climate change, but also turned my attention to doing what Cades do best: building a fortune. What really exploded the coffers was innovation. Finding inventors interested in creating the things we use every day more sustainably. Not just sports bras and clothing, but tiny parts in electric cars that I now hold a patent on to make that entire industry more efficient.
Grim has, through the years, kept loose tabs on Lennix for me. That wasn’t hard. Her star in the political world rose steadily and spectacularly, which didn’t surprise me at all.
What do I want from Lennix? To know
if my memory tricked me, and she wasn’t as fantastic as I remember? Do I need that reassurance to move forward? I can’t call this love, the near-obsessive burn in my gut when I think of her, when I saw her last night. She was a candle lit and extinguished too quickly, but the smoke of what we had has endured, lingering in the air all these years.
I wouldn’t call it love, but it’s something I’ve never found elsewhere, and I need to know if I could have it again.
If I could have her again.
I’m not famous, generally speaking. There are no squealing girls or awestruck fans when I venture out, but in certain circles I’m well-known. DC would be one of those circles, especially with my brother rising the way he has. I pull the brim of my Astros cap a little lower and adjust my sunglasses. When I enter the Royal, the LeDetroit Park coffee shop where, according to my sources, Lennix has breakfast each morning, I don’t cause even a ripple of interest.
She’s seated at the table tucked into a back corner. Sunlight shines golden on her high cheekbones. She’s reading, her dark brows bunched, and she chews on her bottom lip. I stand there for a second watching her. It feels good to simply be able to look at her again. She reaches for the steaming teacup beside her and takes a sip.
“Morning,” I say.
“Shit.” She startles, hissing at the burn and tugging her bottom lip. She sets down her steaming cup of tea and aims a look caffeinated with impatience up at me. “Good morning. Too much to hope this is a coincidence?”
I crook a half-grin and nod to the empty seat across from her. “Can I sit?”
“I mean, you went to all this trouble to find me.”
I sit and lay my sunglasses and hat on the table. “Not too much to figure out since you eat breakfast here every day.”
“It’s creepy that you know that.”
“One man’s creepy is another man’s determination.”
“A new business venture for you. Inspirational quotes for stalkers.” She pushes away the untouched croissant in front of her. “Print that over an ocean scene. It’ll be gorgeous on the wall of some peeping tom.”
“Nice one.” I chuckle and sink lower into the seat. “This could have been avoided if you’d just talked to me last night.”
She glances up from under a sweep of midnight lashes, but slides her gaze away, out the window to the people passing by. There was a time when this woman’s body begged for mine, and now she’ll barely look at me.
“I didn’t think we had anything to discuss,” she says, eyes still trained outside, voice pitched to a level of indifference. “I’m assuming Owen told you my conditions for accepting the job.”
“You mean that Kimba is my handler?” I infuse some amusement into the words, but I didn’t find it funny when Owen told me. I still don’t.
“Your contact.” She looks at me directly. “It’s not unusual for us to divide responsibilities.”
“Is it unusual to have slept with your clients?”
Her eyes and mouth pinch at the corners. That’s what I wanted—the fire I know is there, not these cold ashes she’s giving me.
“This is exactly why I didn’t think we should work together,” she says.
“Because you’re scared? Or would Wally not like it?”
“I’m not scared, and it’s Wallace. Please stay out of my relationship.”
“Your relationship.” I stretch the word out as if examining it syllable by syllable. “So when did you and Wallace start seeing each other?”
Back then, Grim reported that they were dating, but it wasn’t clear when they started.
“The first time it was not too long after college graduation,” she answers.
I tense at her words. “Were you seeing him when I came to the campaign office in Oklahoma?”
“No.” She clears her throat. “What happened that day was a mistake, but it never would have happened if I’d been in a committed relationship.”
“So you like to think.”
“I know so. I would never cheat on Wallace.” Truth rings in her voice, and I’m even less sure of what’s going on between them.
“If there’s a point, could you make it?” She asks, glancing at the slim watch on her wrist. “I need to get to the office.”
“You obviously believe my brother can win,” I say, lowering my voice and glancing around. Owen hasn’t announced yet, and this city is crawling with eyes and ears.
“I believe he will win. I wouldn’t have taken him on if I didn’t believe that.”
“But he’s a Cade. Same blood. Same last name. Same father as mine.”
“You still don’t get it?” She leans forward, holding my eyes in a steely stare. “Who knows if I would have gotten over who your father was? You didn’t give me the chance to decide. You did to me what they always do.”
She tilts her chin up to a proud angle. “You thought you knew best and decided for me. You took away my choices, let me get involved that deeply with you knowing how I felt about your father and Cade Energy. You deliberately withheld the truth to get what you wanted.”
“I should have handled it differently,” I admit through tight lips. “You have no idea how many times I wish I had told you from the start, but I didn’t.”
“You lied.”
“Yes, I think that’s been well established over the ten years you’ve held it against me.”
“You think I’ve been pining for you? I haven’t.”
That grates because I can’t count how many times I’ve rolled over in some bed in some city and remembered her hair spilled on my pillow. Imagined I could smell the sheets again after the first time we made love, a heady blend of our bodies together and the subtle perfume that kissed her neck. Every time I see a windmill I remember her low, sweet laughing voice calling me Doc Quixote as she rode a bicycle ahead of me.
“If you want to tell yourself what we had was nothing special,” I say, “then lies must not bother you as much as you say they do. I can’t lie to you, but it’s okay for you to lie to yourself?”
“It’s not like that.”
“We both had our own agendas, dreams and goals. It’s good we took time apart to pursue everything we wanted.” I reach for her hand resting near her tea, lacing our fingers together. “But I told you I would come back for you. I never forgot you, Nix. And I always hoped there would be a time when we could repair things between us.”
“You shouldn’t have come back.” She pulls her hand away, fixes her eyes on her tea. “Not for that. Not for me. If you’re really here to help your brother, I’ve laid out my terms and we can both help elect him. If you’re back for me, you’ll be disappointed.”
“I’m back for both, and I don’t intend to be disappointed by either outcome.”
Her eyes flash, gunpowder gray and just as explosive, when they meet mine. “I told Owen I won’t work with you.”
Last night, Lennix committed her entire team to Owen’s campaign. Kimba won’t let them pass on an opportunity this good. The stakes are too high for a personal wrinkle like a past relationship to get in the way. Owen’s in.
And so am I.
“Do you really think I came back for the thrill of working with you on a campaign?” I chuckle. “I don’t give a damn who ‘handles’ me on the trail. What’s happening between us is completely separate from Owen’s bid for the presidency.”
“Nothing’s happening between us.”
“Damn, I just got back.” I fake an exasperated sigh. “Give me some time. I’m going as fast as I can.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. I told Owen—”
“I know what you told Owen, and I’m more than happy to have Kimba as my contact. What the hell does that have to do with us?”
She frowns. “You agreed to the conditions.”
“I did, but your conditions said nothing about what I do outside of the campaign.”
“Bastard,” she says, her tone calm, her eyes flaring.
“We both know my father. I’m not a bas
tard. Asshole, yes. Prick, may—”
“What do you want?”
“The same thing I wanted ten years ago.” I soften my tone. “A chance with you.”
“Why?”
“Because no one else has done what you did for me. Not before you and not since. I want to see if what we had, what we should have had, is still there.”
“It’s not.”
“Liar.” Her lips part like she’s about to speak, but I don’t let her get that far. “I felt it last night. I feel it now. Since you value the truth so much, tell me you don’t.”
The muscles tense beneath her clear golden-brown skin, disrupting the fine line of her jaw. “Wallace and I—”
“Yeah, how do I get rid of him?” I ask abruptly.
“You’re asking how to get rid of my boyfriend?” Dark brows wing over the scorn in her eyes. “You don’t.”
“Do us all a favor. When he asks you to marry him, just let him down easy.”
“He hasn’t—”
"He will, and when he does, tell him no.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because.”
“This isn’t second grade, Maxim. ‘Because’ isn’t a sound or compelling argument.”
“Because me. Better?”
“Your arrogance is truly astounding.”
“Thank you for that.”
“Not a compliment.”
“I make my own compliments. How does it feel knowing you could bring a man like me to my knees?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be on your knees, too. Should I tell you what you’ll be doing when you’re down there? Or do you remember?”
I lean forward a little, lower my voice.
“Do you ever think about how it felt to have my cock in your mouth, Nix?”
“Stop,” she grounds the word out, not looking at me, her fingers trembling around her teacup.
“To know that in that moment, I was completely at your mercy. That I belonged to you.”
“I don’t—”
The Kingmaker Page 24