Campaign For Seduction (3 page)

Chapter 3

“T hese red-eyes are killing me.” Takashi Nakamura, Liza’s longtime producer and friend, hung up his air phone and collapsed back in the seat next to Liza. “It’ll be damn near 3:00 a.m. before we get to the hotel. That’s not even worth getting into bed for.”

Liza, who’d just finished her own phone call, grunted. Then she arranged her neck roll, lowered the satin blindfold over her bleary eyes and pulled her small fleece blanket over her shoulders in what was sure to be a futile attempt to get a quick catnap. Man, was she beat.

Also hungry, frustrated and agitated.

It was going to be a truly awful night. Having forgotten to charge her iPod, she couldn’t listen to music to drown out the loud hum of the jet’s engine or the ongoing dull chatter of the cabin’s other occupants.

She was definitely going to be cranky tomorrow.

Beside her, Takashi reclined his seat and heaved a harsh sigh. “We’re too old for this nonsense.”

“I’d noticed.” Liza’s thirty-seven-year-old body didn’t adjust to the constant travel and time changes like it used to; lately it
didn’t seem to adjust at all. The trip last month to Beijing with the president had nearly done her in, and her poor internal clock still didn’t know what time it was.

“We also don’t get paid enough for this nonsense.”

“Amen to that,” Liza said.

This wasn’t exactly true. She made a huge salary even if she never had the time, energy or inclination to enjoy it. Still, a great salary did not equal a great life. Divorced years ago from Kent, a cheating rat bastard who’d taken most of Liza’s travel assignments as opportunities to screw other women, Liza didn’t do relationships because there was no percentage in them. Nor did she do anything other than work and charity work for an Alzheimer’s foundation.

Her Georgetown brownstone sat empty most of the time, even when she was home, because she was always on the trail of a story. She could only vaguely remember her last official vacation, which was two or three years ago.

With no children, no significant other and no hobbies, Liza was hardly the picture of Zen-like balance or happiness, not that she had the time to address this problem. Why bother anyway? Life was pleasant enough, and her career was certainly exciting even when it threatened to kill her with exhaustion.

Maybe she’d never have children, but she was slowly coming to terms with that aching emptiness. Wasn’t a thrilling career a fair trade for her lack of family?

“Was that your agent on the phone?” Takashi asked. “What’re they quoting you now?”

“Twelve.”

Takashi snorted. “I thought they were serious.”

“Not yet,” Liza muttered. “They’re getting there.”

They lapsed into a moment’s silence, during which Liza wondered what her father, a retired army colonel, would say if he knew she was talking about a twelve million dollar a year offer to host the nightly news as though it was chump change. Then she thought of what he’d say if he knew she was holding out for more money—and shuddered.

You always screw things up, girl. That’s what he would say.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want the job. She just didn’t want it
as much as she’d thought she would during all those years when she was clawing her way up the ladder.

That was probably her exhaustion talking, though, because the travel was really getting to her.

The chance she’d been working for—the highest aspiration of any TV journalist—was finally hers, and she didn’t plan to waste it. Nor would she let the network have her services for cheap, especially since the travel and pace would be nearly as excruciating as they were now.

Her body of work spoke for itself, and she’d subbed in the anchor’s chair dozens of times. Though she was not the most senior correspondent, she was one of the most popular, and the ratings soared every time she filled in.

The bottom line was that she had the chops for the job and fully intended to have it soon now that the current anchor, who’d been in the chair since Moses floated down the Nile in a basket, had announced his upcoming retirement.

In the meantime, while her agent worked on the negotiations, this gig on the candidate’s plane was the final stepping-stone to the professional glory that would soon be hers.

She tried to relax a little, but the tension through her shoulders and the cramped leg space made that difficult at best. Worse, the lingering adrenalin surge from her encounter with the senator still had her blood pumping. Just as she started to scrunch her shoulders up and down in one of those on-plane relaxation exercises that never relaxed anyone, her air phone rang.

Great. And here she’d thought she was lucky to be working on a tricked-out plane with all the finest communications upgrades that allowed her to get calls at her seat. Riiiight.

“Liza Wilson.”

“Is that you, girl?” her father barked by way of greeting.

Liza stifled her groan. “Hello, Colonel.” She’d always called him Colonel because his stern face and gruff demeanor made diminutives like Daddy and Pops unthinkable. “How are you? Why aren’t you in bed?”

“When are you coming to take me home, girl?”

Liza’s heart sank. He was having one of his bad days, which were becoming the rule rather than the exception. She should’ve
known; an after-midnight call from an eighty-year-old was probably never, as a rule, a good thing.

“You are home. Remember?” Liza cringed as soon as the R-word was out of her mouth. Saying things like don’t you remember? to an Alzheimer’s patient wasn’t a great idea. “You live at the Regency now, Colonel. That’s home.”

Silence.

She waited, feeling the wheels turn in his mind, the old memories rising to the top to confuse him and the recent ones sinking to the bottom, useless and forgotten. “I live on Crooked Oak Lane,” he finally said, referencing a house he and Mama had lived in forty-odd years ago. “I don’t live in this three-room dump.”

Lord, give me the strength to deal with this man tonight. Amen.

That three-room dump, as he so lovingly called it, was one of Washington’s best and most expensive assisted-living facilities, most of which she’d visited and researched before placing him late last year. It had a clean record, a beautiful building and caring people to look after him.

It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a dump.

“You do live there, Colonel. You’ve got all your favorite things there with you. Are you in the bedroom? Look at the comforter. That’s the one I picked out for you. And see the—”

“You picked out that ugly comforter?” The Colonel’s disdain came through the phone loud and clear, so noxious she could practically smell fumes. “Better get your eyes checked, girl. You always screw things up, don’t you?”

Remembering that the Colonel wasn’t in his right mind never quite did the trick during these conversations. She rolled her eyes at Takashi, looking for a little commiseration, but he was busy reviewing his e-mail and couldn’t hear the Colonel’s side of the conversation anyway.

Liza told herself she was being stupid. You’d think she’d be used to this kind of thing by now—this generalized grouchiness and dissatisfaction from her father—but no. It was no good telling herself that he didn’t know what he was saying, that he had dementia or that he really appreciated her deep down. Those things worked only when the behavior was a recent change, the
result of the disease. The Colonel had never thought she was much good at anything and most likely never would.

But…he was her father and only living relative.

Determined to take the high road, she changed the subject and tried again, her hopes low. “Did you see my report on the news earlier, Colonel? About Senator Warner and his campaign?”

“Yeah, I saw it,” he snapped. “I had to hang my head in shame over in the activity room tonight. Daughter of mine giving a black candidate a hard time. What’re you thinking, girl?”

Just like that he was clear and focused again, centered on the present and Liza’s most recent failings. She supposed she should be glad for these fleeting moments of lucidity, but it was hard when he used them to attack her professionalism, which was somehow worse than his personal attacks.

“I’m thinking about giving objective coverage—”

“There wasn’t anything objective about your coverage,” he muttered. “Black reporter criticizing a black candidate—”

Okay. Enough was enough. She’d really tried, but now her blood pressure was in the red and she could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. Time to cut her losses before this man sent her into stroke territory up here at thirty thousand feet, where decent medical help was unavailable.

“Uh-oh, Colonel,” she interrupted. “The captain just told us to stop using the air phones. I’ll see you this weekend, okay?”

“When are you going to take me home, girl?” he spluttered.

“Bye.”

She hung up. There was a moment’s silence, and then Takashi spoke.

“Daddy Dearest?”

Liza snorted. “I like to think of him as Ward Cleaver.”

The last thing she saw before she lowered her blindfold was Takashi’s sympathetic smile. Because she didn’t do emotions of any kind, especially pity, she flashed him a warning look that only earned her a soft chuckle in return.

Men. They were so aggravating.

If only she could wave a magic wand and rid the earth of them. It would be a much better place.

After thirty seconds of blessed silence, an annoying new sound
hit her ears: the unmistakable crinkle of a food wrapper. Feeling grouchier by the second, Liza slid the blindfold up to her forehead and cracked open her left eye to watch Takashi rip into a bag of—she squinted—dried apple crisps.

“Yuck.” What a disgusting waste of calories. “Why can’t you ever eat any decent junk food?”

Takashi winked one heavily lashed dark eye at her and flashed the dimpled white grin that turned women far and wide to jelly. “Want one?” Crunching loudly, he tipped the bag in her direction.

She snorted before collapsing back against her seat and rearranging the neck roll. “Why would I eat that? Wake me up when you break out some Cheetos.”

“No Cheetos. I’ve got soy nuts, dried apricots, and…uh-oh.”

“Hmm?” she said sleepily.

“Wake up, Za-Za,” Takashi hissed. His sharp nudge to her ribs jarred Liza fully awake and she yelped. “The Princess of Darkness at twelve o’clock, and she’s looking right this w—. What’s up, Adena?”

Liza snatched the blindfold off and looked up to see a new visitor to row twenty back here in the tail end of the plane.

Adena Brown—Senator Warner’s senior adviser, gatekeeper and consigliere, a couture-clad political marvel so shrewd, disciplined and fierce in her protection of her candidate that the press universally hated her—stood in the aisle next to Takashi.

Liza snapped to attention and sat up straight.

Adena looked annoyed, as usual, but made a token attempt at politeness. She stretched her perfectly lined lips past her teeth in the grimace that was the closest she ever got to a smile, tossed her hair over her shoulder and spoke to both of them even though the worst of her narrow-eyed glare was reserved for Liza.

“Got a minute?” she asked.

“Of course.” Liza tossed her blanket aside and scooted to the edge of her seat.

“The senator would, ah—” Adena’s feeble attempt at pleasantries slipped away and she heaved a long-suffering sigh “—like to see you, Liza. And I need to talk to you, Takashi.”

Liza blinked. Senator Warner wanted to see them? As the
Scooby-Doo cartoon character liked to say, Ruh-roh. Yeah, this was it. She’d known she was getting tossed.

Exchanging a discreet sidelong glance with Takashi, who looked as puzzled as she felt, she tried to act as if being summoned to talk with the candidate in the middle of the night was an everyday occurrence.

“Ah,” she said, “is everything okay?”

“Peachy.” Adena checked her watch. “Coming?”

Liza stood and exchanged a Help me! look with Takashi as she edged past him and into the aisle. Takashi merely shrugged and stood aside for her.

They fell in behind Adena and marched toward the front of the plane. A few of her cohorts gave them curious looks as they passed their rows, but for the most part the cabin was quiet and people were trying to get a little shut-eye.

They passed through the adjacent cabin, which was filled with drowsy campaign staffers—they all looked like they were twelve or younger, anxiously awaiting that first growth of facial hair so they could run out and buy a razor—stretched out in their seats.

Liza looked around for the senator, but he wasn’t there. The three of them kept moving into the next cabin, which held a conference room.

Here, Adena stopped and put her hand on Takashi’s arm. “Wait here. Liza, the senator’s in here.” She pointed to the next cabin. “Follow me.”

Liza, who thrived on adventure and was in her element whenever she put a politician in the hot seat, gulped. With the random and, she hoped, ridiculous thought that she may never see Takashi again, she slipped into the senator’s private digs.