Fixer: A Bad Boy Romance (17 page)

Tanner watched her walk away, her hips twitching back and forth with each step of her bare feet across his hardwood floors. She'd found an ancient apron buried in one of the drawers in his kitchen, and insisted upon strapping it on. Tanner didn't tell her, but she looked amazing, a domestic goddess. The career woman, it seemed, was equally adept in the kitchen as in the Senate chambers.

Even with her just in the other room, he felt a physical sense of longing seize him. Even knowing that she was in his apartment made it feel a little warmer, a little more like home. He hadn't realized how empty it felt when he was alone until after Alicia started showing up.

Funny, that; even when he'd had other women over, usually a conquest or two who elected to stay the entire weekend to get the full Keegan Tanner experience, the apartment didn't feel any different. If anything, he looked forward to when the woman would depart, returning to him his blessed privacy.

But with Alicia around, the place didn't feel cramped. He suspected that she could walk in on him doing just about everything - jerking his dick to a Victoria's Secret catalogue, for example - and she'd just smile, shake her head in mild judgment, and then leave him to his own finish.

Actually, she'd probably get that sexy, aroused fire in her eyes and head over to help finish the job, insisting that she had a much better alternative to the pictures of flat, airbrushed women on the pages of that catalogue...

Despite his gloomy thoughts, Tanner felt a little surge of sexual hunger stirring in his loins. Damn the woman for somehow managing to seize full control of his genitalia, infiltrating his every fantasy! Even the allure of internet porn didn't hold a candle to the thought of Alicia, naked and hungry for him, wrapping her legs around him and gasping in his ear as her nails raked his back...

A minute later, Alicia returned, hands now free of plates. "So, what can I do to take your mind off of work?" she asked, a wicked little grin dancing around her lips. "A massage? A warm shower? Maybe you just want to lay down on your bed and let me rub your shoulders?"

Somehow, Tanner knew that such a suggestion, although innocent sounding on the surface, would quickly lead to other activities. "Not sure that I'll be able to stop thinking about work," he admitted. "Sometimes, I just have to let these thoughts work their course inside my head."

"I understand." Alicia tugged her chair over closer to him, sat down and rested her head on her hands as she peered up at him. She didn't say anything, her eyes just boring into him.

"What?" he asked after a minute, a little unnerved by her stare.

"You're a strange one, Tanner," she said after a minute. "Keegan Tanner. Even the name makes you sound like an ass."

"Gee, thanks."

"Don't give me that fake 'wounded innocence' act. You ought to be my worst enemy. A Republican fixer, with all sorts of devious rumors floating around about just how low you'll sink in order to accomplish your goals. Nothing proven, of course, and no one will outright admit to anything. But the silences are plenty suggestive. From the moment that I heard you wanted to meet with me, I knew that you wanted to destroy me."

"Not me personally," Tanner corrected. He knew it was a weak defense, but it had the small benefit of being true. "The Republican leadership are the ones who want you to go away. I'm just the tool they chose."

"Interesting choice of words," Alicia murmured, and Tanner winced as he realized that he'd just called himself a tool.

"Not my favorite label, but a fitting one - and I've been called worse," he said.

"And they probably still want me gone, don't they?"

For a moment, he considered lying, or even just not answering, but Alicia's big turquoise eyes drew the honest answer out of him. "Yes," he replied. "More than ever."

Alicia nodded. "I thought so." She waited another beat, just watching him. "What are you going to do?"

He really needed to change the topic. "I think I'm going to take you up on that offer of a massage," Tanner said, standing up from his seat at the table. He tried to put on his best rakish grin down at her. "And I think I know just where I want you to start."

Alicia smiled back, but she just sat back in her chair, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. Tanner tried to ignore how the gesture pushed her tits up and towards him, failed utterly. "Not a chance in Hell, sexy."

"Tease," he said, no heat in his voice. He reached down, and after a second, Alicia allowed him to take her hand and draw him up to her feet in front of him.

"I don't know what you're going to choose to do," she said softly, standing in front of him, her head tilted back so she could gaze up into his eyes. "And I don't want to pressure you into anything. I'm not going to give you an ultimatum."

"Thanks," Tanner said, uncomfortable with the topic of conversation back on his crossed allegiances.

Alicia kept on looking up at him, her eyes seeming to look right through his shields and reducing his smokescreens to nothing more than dissipating mist. "But I hope you choose the right thing," she said, so quietly that he could barely hear the words. "This, what we have together... it's different. I think you feel it, too."

Tanner didn't say anything, as his brain and body fought bitterly against each other. He trembled slightly, hating himself.

"I think you do," she said again, so soft that his ears barely caught the murmur. She stepped forward to cross the last foot of distance between them, but didn't reach up to loop her arms around Tanner's neck and kiss him.

Instead, she just pressed her cheek against his cheek, hugging him softly.

Tanner stood there, frozen, for a moment. Her hair pressed up against his lips, his nose, and he couldn't help but inhale the scent of her, clean and floral and so unique that he knew that he'd never be able to forget it. His arms came up, slowly, almost jerkily, to wrap around Alicia and hug her back.

They stood there, arms around each other, not speaking, for several minutes. Tanner could feel the warmth of Alicia's breath through his shirt, splashing gently against his ribs. His need for her was like a physical force, bearing down with incredible pressure on his mind, trying to squeeze him flat.

But he resisted. Because as amazing as Alicia might be, he'd made a promise, and he had his duty.

She knew that he'd do his job. Even with her talk of a truce, of seeing through him, she had to know that he wouldn't be able to put off doing his job forever. He couldn't leave behind everything, give up his entire career, just because she managed to ensnare his heart.

Broken hearts could heal. Jobs, especially positions as powerful as his own, were a once in a lifetime chance. He'd never be able to reclaim this level of power if he turned his back on it now.

He felt Alicia's lips part. "Do you want me to stay tonight?" she whispered up at him.

He wanted her more than anything. His whole body ached for her. He knew that he'd have trouble falling asleep tonight, that he'd keep rolling over and wanting to feel her warm weight beside him. He wanted to lay in bed and spoon her, wrap his arms around her and feel her chest gently rise and fall as she slumbered.

"Yes," he said, the word coming out in a sigh of impossible sadness.

She nodded, as if he'd answered how she expected. "I think that you might need a bit of time on your own, to work through your decision," she said, her voice not unkind. She released her grip around him, took a step back. When she looked up at him, he saw tears shimmering in those big green-blue eyes, the sight like a dagger to his chest.

"You're going to go?"

Another nod. "But I believe in you, Keegan Tanner," she whispered. She leaned forward once again, and this time she did kiss him, as gentle as a feather's brush across his lips. "I believe that you're a good man, you'll make the right choice."

He nodded, fighting to hold back his own tears as he said goodbye to her, watched her catch a cab outside his apartment.

He stood at the window for several minutes, even after she left, wishing that he could see the ghostly afterimage of her, hear her voice in his ears again.

And then, finally turning away, he started digging through his own private files on various senators, figuring out which key positions he'd need to turn, subvert, in order to kill this education bill.

Chapter Nineteen

*

"Hey Duecent, I'm taking a personal day. You're on the Senator for today."

Tanner rolled his eyes as he heard Duecent groan and gripe. The man really was a miserable excuse for a chief of staff. What kind of chief of staff didn't even get along with his own charge, wanted any excuse to get out of doing his work? The man ought to be demoted down to coffee run intern.

Still, Tanner wasn't too upset, because at least he'd been able to get ahold of Duecent when he called, instead of having a different staffer pick up the phone. Most of the staffers held about the same opinion of Duecent as Tanner, and they'd hand the phone off immediately to Alicia, instead of going through the chief of staff.

"Yes, I'm sure," Tanner reiterated after a second more of listening to Duecent's whining. "Look, this is your damn job. I've got other appointments and meetings to attend to. If you can't step in and run your own senator's campaign for a single day, well, she ought to fire your ass and ship you straight back to whatever hobo camp in Colorado she searched to first find you."

This, of course, set off a whole new tirade from Duecent. Tanner listened for a few seconds, established that there wasn't anything of importance in the rant, and then hung up on him.

There. Now, at least, Alicia wouldn't be wondering why he wasn't around. Tanner gulped down the last of his espresso, tossed the cup in his sink to deal with later, and turned to his laptop, sitting on his dining table.

He had a list of names, about half a dozen different senators. These, Tanner knew, were the men he'd need to flip in order to kill Alicia's education bill.

He barely got any sleep last night, but that was okay, because he'd put the wakefulness to good use in working on this list. These half a dozen senators sat on enough committees, held enough influence and seniority, to convince most of their peers to fall in line and vote the same way.

And furthermore, Tanner knew that he could convince every name on his list.

Some of them would agree right away with him. These were the dyed in the wool Republicans, those who put fiscal responsibility up on a pillar and knelt down to worship it. They'd likely oppose the education bill anyway, if left to their own devices, just because of the potential cost to the American taxpayer. Still, Alicia had talked about converting some of them by offering them projects specific to their state, and Tanner needed to make sure that they didn't rise to the bait.

Others on his list would prove more difficult. Some of these were staunch Democrats, ones that Tanner had crossed paths with in the past. Fortunately for his side, he still had much of the material he'd used to originally convince these senators to take his side - and he suspected that, in exchange for a promise to destroy the copies he held, they'd be willing to compromise their integrity for this bill.

If all else failed, Tanner could always fall back on the old trick of convincing a senator that he already had enough support to kill the bill. If there was one thing that senators hated to do in their voting record, it was to show a track record of supporting failed legislation. If the bill was already dead, there wasn't much of a reason for them to still try and support it by voting in favor - and it lent more material to their opponents when they next ran for re-election.

Tanner didn't doubt that he'd be able to convince every name on his list to turn his vote against this education bill. He still hesitated, however, knowing the true hidden cost of carrying out his visits to their offices.

If he killed this bill, that put his relationship with Alicia in the ground. She'd never forgive him, likely refuse to ever see him again - except perhaps to splatter him against the windshield of his car, he thought with a twinge of black humor.

But he didn't have any other choice. His whole future was riding on how this bill turned out, on seeing it fail.

He had to carry out his duty.

Tanner emailed the list to himself so he could pull it up on his phone, even though he'd already committed the names to memory. He left his apartment, striding off to Capitol Hill, off to go make the first of his meetings.

Meeting by meeting, Tanner worked his way through the day. He tossed back several more coffees in order to keep up his energy, using the caffeine to fight off the growing sadness that kept creeping into his chest. His heart felt like a stone, but he kept a broad and confident smile on his face, assuring the senators that he knew what their best course of action for the future would be.

One by one, he counted up the votes against Alicia's education bill. Some of the senators promised that they could also sway others in their voting bloc; others made no such promises, but Tanner knew that they'd exert an influence nonetheless. In some of his later meetings, he even dropped the names of senators from early meetings as evidence that this bill was destined to fail. Find one crack, apply the right pressure, and it could be widened until the entire institution came crumbling down.