Indecent Proposal (12 page)

“Well, good morning,” she said, cocking her hip against the door. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“What the hell is going on outside?” Mary asked. “I can’t get to work without getting harassed by about twenty assholes with cameras outside my door.”

“Wait … what?
Twenty?
”

“At least!” Mary cried.

“They’re starting to go through our garbage!” Vasquez from upstairs yelled. “My wife caught one of them coming in through the emergency exit out back.”

“I’m … I’m sorry.” Speaking was hard through the thumping of her heart in her throat. “I’m sure it will die down.”

“When?” Mary asked, crossing her arms over her chest, her expression dubious.

“I … I don’t know.”

Her neighbors erupted in outrage.

“Have you called the cops?” she asked Mr. Jenkins, who up until this point and for most of her association with him had remained silent. He was kind of like a silent, balding troll in work pants with a key ring he liked to jangle in his pocket.

“Of course. It hasn’t done much good. They moved back to the street for about an hour, but they are right at the doors again. This needs to end,” he said, jangling the keys in his pocket.

“You know what needs to end?” she demanded. “You letting strangers into my home.”

Jenkins didn’t even flinch. “It won’t be your home if you don’t get rid of the journalists on the sidewalk in front of the building.”

“There you go,” said Mary, nodding her head in approval. “That’s how we do.”

Oh fuck you, Mary
, she thought but had the good sense not to say. Mary worked as a baker, kneading bread. Mary could tear her apart. Like with her bare hands.

“You can’t just threaten me with that, Jenkins. I have renter’s rights.”

“Not when your actions have a direct and potentially dangerous effect on other residents of the building. Look at your lease.”

Holy hell
.

“Okay,” Ryan said. “I will … I will do what I can.” She met the eyes of her neighbors over Mr. Jenkins’s bald head. They were all glaring at her. Half of them no doubt still pissed about her complaining about the noise after midnight last year. She’d been big on petitions for a stretch there and she did not make friends with the locals. “I promise.”

Someone somewhere was making coffee, the smell as powerful as a house fire.

It made her cranky and she shut the door in their faces.

Pushing away the siren song of the three Starbucks within a two-block radius, she grabbed her phone and called her brother.

“Leave a message,” his machine said.

“Wes,” she said after the beep. “You have to call me. You have to. Because you have fucked up my life in an epic way. You need to make it right.” She was pacing between the kitchen and the bathroom. This little part of her apartment had never seen so much activity. “By first of all telling me what you’re doing with a DHS badge. You could get in serious trouble for that; and secondly, getting the pack of rabid journalists off my goddamned sidewalk. And third—”

His phone beeped at her, indicating she’d gone on too long.

She hung up and tossed her phone on the couch.

Surely, this morning, of all mornings, she deserved a coffee. A small one. A sip. Just a sip.

She glanced at the clock above the stove. It was eight a.m. She had thirty-six hours before she had to give Harrison her answer.

And if he told the press that she was a bartender who was trying to blackmail him, the press numbers outside her door would only grow. The harassment of her neighbors would only get worse. She imagined Mary
might start selling “stories” to the press. Hell, half of them would.

And the quiet, simple life she had been fantasizing about with this baby was totally in jeopardy.

She leaned back against the wall.

Wes had to make this right. He just
had
to.

Her phone, in the cushions of the couch, started to ring and she dove for it.

“Wes—”

“Wrong sibling.”

Nora
. The sound of her sister’s voice brought Ryan to her knees.

They were Polish twins, born eleven months apart. They’d slept in the same bed. Shared secrets and stories and air under the Holly Hobbie quilt their mother had got for them on sale at Woolworth’s.

They’d borrowed each other’s clothes, beaten up the bullies that called them names, and stolen each other’s boyfriends.

Well, that was her mostly, stealing Nora’s boyfriends.

And she’d been living in exile for so long.

I’m sorry
, she thought.
I’m sorry for all of it
.

“What the hell have you done?” Nora asked. That familiar voice saying familiar words triggered a familiar response.

“I haven’t done anything,” she snapped back, because she and Nora couldn’t have a normal conversation without going for blood. “It’s Wes—”

“Wes slept with Harrison Montgomery? I find that hard to believe.”

“Really?” she asked, trying to make a joke. Trying to do anything to make all the things wrong just a little bit right. “Because I wouldn’t put anything past Wes.”

“Oh, that’s rich, Ryan. That’s so rich coming from you.”

Ryan heard the sounds of pots and a pan getting
thumped down on the old yellow stove on Nora’s end. She was probably making breakfast. Dad sitting at his spot at the kitchen table, the newspaper pulled apart and set out in his paper-reading tradition. A coffee cup at his elbow, dressed for a job he didn’t go to anymore.

Olivia might still be asleep, or just dragging ass on her way downstairs for breakfast.

She and Olivia emailed each other, and Ryan sent her things from the city. Funky clothes and jewelry that would stand out in Bridesburg. But it wasn’t the same. It was almost worse, never seeing her in those funky things.

“Are you in trouble?” Nora asked.

“Do you care?” Ryan shot back out of habit. And then immediately wished she could take it back.

“Not particularly. Look, we’ve got journalists hounding us. Dad stood on the sidewalk last night with his shotgun and some asshole showed up at Olivia’s piano practice, asking her questions about you.”

“I’m … I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. And I’ve heard that before. Olivia has college visits this week. And I know that probably doesn’t mean anything to you—”

“Of course it does!” she cried.

“Then make this shit stop. I swear to God, if you blow this for her …” Ryan heard the quick inhale of a cigarette being lit. Nora was smoking. Shit was bad if Nora was smoking.

“I’ll make it stop,” she whispered, running her pinky over the fringe of her red blanket. She didn’t know how, but she’d do what she could to make this right.

“Good.”

“Can I talk to—”

“No.”

Nora hung up. Ryan sat there on her knees beside the couch, listening to the silence for a few moments,
before she finally hung up and set the phone back down on the couch.

She did know. She did know how to make this right.

Wes wasn’t going to be able to get those journalists and photographers off the sidewalk. Wes wasn’t going to be able to fix this. That was Wes’s lot in life, making messes he couldn’t fix.

And maybe she wasn’t smart enough to see another solution, or she was too damn tired to try, but the key to making this stop was in her hands.

And in the end it wasn’t even a decision she had to make. She just had to come to grips with what was happening.

Well. Crap
.

She got off her knees and sat on the floor, her back to the couch, her legs in front of her. From under the couch, she pulled out the notebook and pen she used to make grocery lists and draft petitions to piss off her neighbors.

There wasn’t any other option but to agree to Harrison’s proposal. And she could survive anything for two years; she’d been married to Paul for four, after all. She could do this, particularly if it meant giving her baby a better start than the one she could provide on her own. Particularly if it meant protecting Olivia, and Nora and Wes and Dad, from the stupidity of Wes’s sense of justice.

What did a congressman’s wife do? Smile. Wave. Drink tea … she didn’t really know what else would be required of her, but she could do it.

She’d done worse.

But she would come up with her own terms for this indecent proposal and she’d look out for her family. The baby and Nora and everyone else back home.

The thought spread, turning to hope. Perhaps this was the way to get back in Nora’s good graces. The way
to get back home. Being Harrison’s wife didn’t feel like such a horror show when she thought of it that way.

The phone behind her rang and she reached up to grab it.

Wes.

“You’d better have a good explanation for this,” she said, not bothering with hello.

“I was trying to do the right thing,” he said, his voice glum and contrite and sad and angry. “I swear I just wanted him to own up to his part in this.”

Weary, she laughed. “What are you doing flashing around a DHS badge?”

“Causing trouble,” he said. “Look, I’ve got a call in with Harrison; hopefully I can fix this—”

“You can’t, Wes. It’s past that. The press is onto the story. They’re in front of my house. They’re in front of Nora’s, harassing Olivia at piano. Dad’s going to shoot somebody.”

“Jesus …” he breathed.

“Yeah. Listen, I got this, but I need you to get me a lawyer. A good one. A … scary one.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m getting married.”

Harrison couldn’t believe it had barely been forty hours since Wes Kaminski had burned his life down to the ground, but he couldn’t put off his parents any longer. He arranged for a meeting at his campaign office for six o’clock Sunday night, knowing that would keep Dad away. Dad wouldn’t show up to his campaign office if he was on fire and Harrison’s office had the only water in the city. Dad met Harrison on his own turf. His pathetic way of trying to maintain some power.

“Has she called?” Wallace asked.

Harrison shook his head. He was in the middle of
making phone calls to some of his big backers, trying to reassure everyone that his world wasn’t going up in flames, but he got the very real impression that only half believed him.

“You want me to have Jill set up the press conference for tomorrow morning?” Wallace was lying down on the couch in the corner, tossing a tennis ball in the air with one hand and catching it with the other. This was Wallace’s deep-thinking ritual.

They’d both slept in the office last night, putting out fires. Jill, his press secretary, tried to quit early this morning. Thank God Wallace talked her down off that ledge.

“Yes.” Harrison dropped the pen so he could rub at his eyes with both hands.

“What do you want her to say?” Wallace threw the ball wide, so he had to stretch his arm off the couch to catch it.

“That I’m going to be addressing the rumors regarding my relationship with Ryan Kaminski.”

“And that relationship is …?”

“You’ll know as soon as I do.”

At five, most of his interns and staff had left the building, so it was just the core team still trying to salvage this campaign, still trying to get his education message out over the screaming gossip. At five after five his mother walked into his office in a summer suit with flowers on it, pearls at her neck. A blue purse over her arm.

It was the Patty Montgomery uniform, and he’d seen his mother in some version of it almost every day of his life.

“You’re early,” he said.

“You have been avoiding my calls and I’m tired of waiting.”

She looked … rumpled. Which was actually alarming. Even when Ashley had been kidnapped by the pirates,
her fate unknown for three weeks, Mother had never stepped out of her home looking less than totally controlled. Her slightly mussed hair and lack of lipstick seemed like a declaration that the Montgomery family was hanging by a thread.

“Your father’s office is mobbed. Noelle is fielding calls from
The National Enquirer. The Enquirer
, Harrison!”

Just saying the words gave her a minor stroke.

She glanced at the couch where Wallace lay sprawled, not moving at the sight of her, and then sniffed before sitting down on the chair in front of his desk. “You need to tell me what’s happening. Your father isn’t stepping foot in this building until he’s sure a pregnant woman won’t come flying out of the woodwork.”

“If I had a nickel for every time that’s happened,” Wallace joked.

“I find none of this funny,” Mother snapped, glaring at Wallace before turning that glare onto him. “Who the hell is Ryan Kaminski?”

“Well, Mother, if all goes according to plan …”

“Wait. Wait, I want to get a good look at her face when you tell her.” Wallace leapt up from the couch to stand beside Harrison’s desk.

Harrison sighed, and in a moment’s silence gathered all his resources for the fight to come. “If all goes according to plan she’ll be your daughter-in-law.”

Mother recoiled as if Harrison had thrust roadkill at her.

“Oh, God, it’s better than I imagined,” Wallace said, clapping.

Mother ignored Wallace. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“That’s a ridiculous plan. Why would you marry some woman we don’t even know?”

“I know her,” Harrison said, fighting the assimilation of “we.” The Montgomery mantle.

“How?”

“She’s pregnant.”

Mother gasped. “With your child?”

“With his dog, actually—it’s very strange,” Wallace said.

“Yes,” Harrison said. “With my child, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Of course it matters! You are a Montgomery! You need to have a blood test done before you take on this kind of campaign … poison.”

“It’s all poison, Mother. I could come out with irrevocable proof that the baby isn’t mine, but I’ll still be in the mud.”

“Then pay her!” Mom cried. “Do what every other man in office before you has done—pay her off.”

“That doesn’t always work,” Wallace said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Harrison said, growing sick at the way everyone was able to throw around the idea of paying Ryan off, like she was nothing. Like this child was nothing. “I’m not paying her to go away.”