Campaign For Seduction (8 page)

“John. Good name.” Everyone tittered and Mrs. Barnes looked pleased. “What’s your question for me?”

“I wanted a Pop-Tart for breakfast, but my mom made me eat oatmeal.” John scrunched his face, leaving no doubt about his opinion on oatmeal. “I don’t think that’s fair. Can you write her a note and tell her it’s okay for me to eat Pop-Tarts?”

“Wow, John.” John tried not to laugh. Clearly this was a serious issue in this young man’s life. “I’m not sure I have any power over moms and breakfast items. Have you tried any honey or brown sugar on your oatmeal? That might help.”

“Nothing helps,” the boy said flatly.

“Tell you what,” John said. “Why don’t you offer your mom a compromise to see if you can both be happy? You tell her that on school days you’ll eat your oatmeal—without complaining—”

John groaned.

“—if she’ll let you eat Pop-Tarts on the weekends. Could that work?”

John brightened. “I’ll try it. Thanks, John.”

This was too much for Mrs. Barnes, who turned a thousand shades of purple and leaned in to bark at the boy in a stage whisper.

“John. Please call him Senator Warner. Where are your manners?”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Barnes.” Scooting the little diva off his lap and standing at last—man, his creaky knees were getting too old for this floor sitting—he smiled and caught his soccer ball when Adena tossed it to him. “We’re all friends here. Who wants to play a quick game of soccer with me before I have to go?”

A joyous cheer rose up from the kids, and there was a crazy scramble to get lined up at the door. This gave John the cover he needed to check on one little girl in the corner. He’d been worried about her the whole time he was there.

She was glum. Despite her cute little blue dress and tights, which he knew should cheer up any young girl, she’d hardly smiled at all, and even her sandy shoulder-length curls seemed to droop. John edged around the general chaos and gave her a grave look.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” She dimpled but didn’t give him the full smile.

“What’s your name?”

“Maggie.”

“Tough day, Maggie?”

“Yeah.” She drew out the word, making it at least three syllables.

“What’s up?”

She handed him a picture and swiped at her enormous blue eyes, which were now sparkling with tears. “It’s Sampson.”

John studied the shot, which was of a clear glass tank. Inside was a green frog with bulging red eyes surrounded by all kinds of rocks and plants.

“Sampson?”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh, no.”

“When I went to feed him this morning, he was all shriveled and…dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” John told her. “Will you have a funeral?”

“After school.”

They stared at each other, and John wished he could ease the weight of the world off her tiny shoulders. Yeah, he’d like to solve the Social Security problem, but this was a real issue, too.

“Should we say a prayer?”

Maggie sniffled. “Okay.”

They joined hands and bowed their heads. “God, please look after Sampson, who was a good and loving frog. Please welcome him into heaven and give him a nice pond to swim in, giant lily pads to jump on and, ah, lots of juicy flies to eat.”

John cracked one eye open and checked with Maggie. “Anything else?”

“And a nice log to hide in.”

“And a nice log to hide in,” he added. “Amen.”

“Amen.”

John tried to give her back the picture, but she didn’t want it.

“You keep it,” she told him. “So you’ll never forget Sampson.”

What a sweet child. He’d sure love two or three like this one someday. John pressed the picture to his heart and smiled at her. “Thank you, Maggie.”

Beaming, she bounced off to join her comrades in line just as Adena materialized at his elbow.

“How long do we have for soccer?” he asked her. “I was hoping—what the hell are they doing?”

Adena looked around in surprise. “Huh?”

He waved at Liza, Takashi and Brad, who were standing a few feet away, watching him rather than packing their stuff up and getting ready to go like everyone else. John stared at them with dawning irritation.

Had they just filmed that whole thing with him and Maggie?

Probably. Brad’s camera was out.

Incensed, John stalked over to confront Liza, who was at the root of a whole host of his problems these days. Takashi and Brad barely registered with his consciousness.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Excuse me?”

The benign innocence in her big baby browns didn’t fool him for a minute. Taking her arm, he steered her a few feet away, behind the divider that hid Mrs. Barnes’s supplies from the rest of the room.

Liza snatched free, looking affronted. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that that was a private moment between me and a little girl who’s lost her frog, and I don’t want it splashed all over the news tonight like I’m trying to win points for—”

“I know it was a private moment.”

“Then why the hell were you film—”

“If you weren’t so busy attacking me and gave me the chance to explain, Senator, I could tell you that Takashi wanted to film, but I asked him not to, so we didn’t.”

John blinked. “You…didn’t?”

“No.”

The wind whooshed right out of his sails. Didn’t he feel like an idiot? Hanging his head, he rubbed the back of his neck and began his obligatory apology. “I’m, ah, sorry for—”

“Oh, don’t apologize.” Holding up a hand to stop him mid-speech, she backed up a step and flashed what was, quite possibly, the smuggest smirk he’d ever seen. “I’m going to enjoy having you under my thumb for a while. Your guilt should make you extra nice to me, don’t you think?”

Damn, he wanted this woman. “Liza,” he said with utmost sincerity, “I’d be thrilled to be under your thumb or anywhere else you’d like to put me.”

Whoa. Had he said that out loud?

Yeah, apparently.

A pretty flush colored her face, and for just a fleeting second, he saw the flash of heat in her glittering eyes. She almost smiled. But then she caught herself and gave him a severe look instead.

The heat was still there, though. Banked, but still there.

“Let’s go, Senator,” she said. “Don’t you have a schedule to keep?”

Pivoting on her heel, she swept out, leaving his pulse thundering at the base of his throat and his mouth dry.

John wrapped up a Sitchroo meeting at their Washington headquarters on the fourth floor of an office building and looked around for Liza. In a disheartening sign of how far gone he was for that woman, he was eager to submit to another interview or, come to think of it, any other activity that meant one-on-one contact with her.

Through God’s grace and a whole lot of self-discipline, he’d managed to ignore his growing obsession with Liza for the last few weeks.

Glory hallelujah.

Just today he’d toured a factory, given a keynote address at a luncheon and spoken at the university, all without thinking of Liza much at all.

He was the man.

But…

Right now she was all he could think of, all he could see.

What was up with that?

Until she walked into his life, he never had a problem with distractions. He’d focused on his work because it was his calling, and that was the end of the story. Either he wanted to be president and worked toward that goal, or he didn’t. Simple.

Seeing the world in black and white was a natural side effect of being a man with strong convictions, and he couldn’t have come this far in his career without believing in a few core values.

Sure, he was happy to work with his colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and he had a well-earned reputation in the Senate as a consensus builder, but he never lost sight of the big picture, or of the things that were important to his agenda for the country.

He was always clear on where he stood, where he needed to be and how he needed to get there.

Until it came to Liza Wilson, the woman who made him feel like a junior varsity basketball player who’d accidentally
wandered onto the court with the Celtics team during the finals: overmatched, outwitted and in serious danger of getting hurt. Until Liza Wilson planted the unwelcome thought in his brain that there could be more to life than work.

The situation was his damn fault. He should’ve ignored his attraction to the woman. Shouldn’t’ve dreamt up the whole misguided Inside Sitchroo thing. Sure as hell shouldn’t’ve selected Liza for the project. Shouldn’t’ve talked to her alone that night, shouldn’t seek her out, like he’d done at the pancake breakfast, and shouldn’t be straining his brain, right this very second, to manufacture a reason and opportunity to spend time alone with her again as soon as possible.

Yeah, he shouldn’t. But he would. He couldn’t help himself.

There was something irresistible about the keen intelligence in her cool dark eyes, something about her unexpected flashes of warmth that lured him like a bear to an open jar of marshmallow fluff.

What would it take to make her warm up to him all the time? How could he get her to look at him the way she had that first night when they were alone?

Why was he even asking himself questions like this?

Because at some point during this interminable day he’d decided that they were going to be lovers.

Crazy? Yeah. Risky? You betcha. But that’s what he was going to do.

The competitor in him couldn’t resist a challenge or a puzzle. She was both. The strategist in him needed to tackle complex problems, and structuring an affair with a woman covering his campaign without blowing up both their careers was as tricky a situation as he was likely to get this side of a set of peace talks.

The man in him just wanted her.

Her smile, her warmth, her laughter. Her strength and intelligence.

Most of all he wanted her willing body in his arms.

With careful planning he could have it all. He was nothing if not a careful planner, and there was no time like the present to start.

John headed to the back corner of the conference room, where two chairs sat facing each other in front of a blue backdrop with
the lighting umbrella overhead. As usual, Takashi looked around and acted as if he cared that John had arrived. Liza, who was now stooped over her open laptop on the conference table, didn’t.

Liza’s fierce insistence on ignoring him gave John a perverse satisfaction, and he had to stifle his Cheshire cat grin. He must really get to her if she had to work so hard to feign indifference whenever he showed up.

“We’re starting at five-thirty tomorrow.” John shook Takashi’s hand. “Busy day.”

“How nice.” Liza snapped her computer closed. “We get to sleep almost as late as the roosters do.”

John and Takashi both laughed, to her apparent irritation. At last she looked up at John, her brown eyes flinty.

“Are you ready, Senator? I’ve got some questions for you, and then I’d like to eat a whole yak because I’m starving.”

“Liza’s a people person, Senator.” Takashi grinned. “Just so you know.”

John gave her a grave look. “I’m sorry that covering my campaign is such an inconvenience for you, Liza.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” She brightened a little and one corner of her mouth turned up in about a fourth of a smile. “I keep thinking about the Emmy I’ll probably win for campaign coverage, and that keeps me going. Are we ready?”

John sat down and braced himself for a barrage of questions about his personal life, which the press had been hammering relentlessly. The interlude with the widow at the breakfast a while back had opened the whole can of worms and he hadn’t managed to get the lid back on, but he was trying. Not everything should be trotted out and used as a campaign issue when convenient. Some things were personal and sacrosanct, such as his memories of his wife.

Even if the outlines of those precious recollections were growing vague.

Fearing the worst, John squared his shoulders, then realized he was doing it and forced himself to relax. The last thing he wanted was to look constipated during this interview, even if every on-camera encounter with Liza did shorten his life by a year.

Liza smiled her shrewd journalist’s smile at him and opened
her mouth, and he felt as though he’d been caught squarely in the sights of a hunter’s rifle. But then, once again, Liza surprised him.

“Senator, you come from a wealthy family and you had an Ivy League education. You’ve been dogged almost from the first moment you entered public life with complaints that you’re out of touch with the working-class people who form your voting base and—”

John raised an eyebrow.

“—this morning, you played water polo with your staff, which is a sport a lot of folks are unfamiliar with. On the other hand, you’ve met with factory workers all over the country and worked the grill at a pancake breakfast. Senator Fitzgerald’s chief of staff has already called the pancake breakfast a—and I’m quoting here, Senator—” Liza glanced down at her notes, then back up at him “—‘stunt designed to show the voters that he was born with a plastic spoon in his mouth rather than a platinum spoon.’”