Indecent Proposal (22 page)

“Well, before you worry about that,” Wallace said, “you’re heading to Sweet Bliss Bakery today to talk about small business in Decatur.”

“Me too?” she asked.

“Yes, you too,” Wallace laughed. “You and Harrison are attached at the hip until he leaves for Arkansas. Welcome to marriage and the campaign.”

Wallace drove over to Sweet Bliss with them, briefing Harrison on the remarks he would make at the bakery.
She couldn’t say she understood the finer points of tax breaks, incentives, and relief, but she figured it was part of her job to at least try and pay attention.

“Unemployment numbers came out yesterday,” Wallace said.

“And?” Harrison asked, glancing up from his notes.

“It’s bad.”

Harrison sighed the kind of sigh she understood so well. Sometimes there was just so much wrong, it was hard to figure out what to try and change first.

The bakery was a funky storefront on a cool, leafy business street lined with cafés and park benches. Inside, it was crowded with people, a few reporters and the owner, Sandy, a smiling Mexican woman who jumped out from behind the counter to welcome them.

“There’s Maynard,” Wallace whispered, his eyes trained on a guy she recognized from the press conference on the far side of the bakery, and Harrison nodded to confirm he heard him, while continuing to shake hands with every person in the room.

Ryan stepped back, fading into the woodwork and the loaves of bread, trying to breathe through her mouth. Because the smell of baking bread and cookies didn’t smell good now; it smelled sour.

Proof that God could be so mean.

The stop was a short one. Harrison had a coffee and a Danish, and sat at a table and answered questions about tax breaks for small business and incentives for entrepreneurs.

“I have a question,” Maynard said when things were winding down. She saw Wallace, in the back of the room, glance up, his entire body taut at the sound of Maynard’s voice.

“Shoot,” Harrison said, and took his first sip of coffee, which now had to be cold.

“It’s for your wife.”

Every eye turned to her where she sat on a stool beside the counter, a cup of tea at her elbow.

Instinctively she wanted to flinch or narrow her eyes and demand to know what they thought they were looking at, but she smiled instead, hoping she looked delighted and surprised. Like she knew what the hell she was doing.

“All right,” she said.

From the corner of her eye she caught Wallace and Harrison share a quick look of fear, which did nothing for her confidence.

“Unemployment numbers came out yesterday.”

“Not good, are they?” she said.

Maynard blinked, and inside she did a victory dance. “No. They’re not. Particularly for women. Women are the fastest-growing demographic in unemployment.”

“What exactly is your question?”

“Do you have any insights into that?”

Wallace on the far side of the room stood up as if he were going to put a stop to the whole event, but she knew if they did that without her answering the question, all the good press from today would start to fade away and Maynard’s voice would get louder.

She remembered her brother after finding out she was pregnant.
You’re broke. Alone and about to have a baby
.

Had she stayed in New York, she would have applied for unemployment.

So yeah, asshole
, she thought.
I have some insights
.

“I don’t think we can talk about women and unemployment unless we talk about reliable and affordable day care, or health care, or safe neighborhood schools. Raising children falls more often than not on the mother’s shoulders, and sometimes it’s impossible to hold down a job and be pregnant. Or hold down a job and keep our kids safe and cared for.”

“Amen!” Sandy, the owner of the bakery, shouted from her spot behind the counter. “I couldn’t start this bakery until my kids were in school full time and able to get themselves home from where they were being bused.”

“There you go,” Ryan said, pointing at Sandy. “That’s my insight.”

A few other people started clapping, and while sweat trickled down her spine and her head went fuzzy, she caught Harrison’s eye.

The summer before her mom died she was on a T-ball team, a Bridesburg neighborhood thing sponsored by the Gas ’N Go. But Ryan had taken that shit seriously. She’d stood at first base with her mitt up, her eye on the ball, waiting for her chance to make a play. Any play.

Dad had stood in the tall weeds past the first base line, smiling at her like she’d invented the game.

Proud.

That’s how he’d looked at her.

That’s how Harrison was looking at her now.

Like she’d invented the damn game.

Ryan smiled at Sandy, and then, because she was nearly light-headed from stress and relief and the sour smell of sourdough bread, she reached over and squeezed her hand.

Sandy hauled her into her arms and the way Ryan was sitting, her face went right into her boobs. Which made both of them laugh.

Flashbulbs went off.

Harrison stood up and came over to her, helping her off the stool, wrapping his arm over her shoulders. “Thanks, everyone!” he said, waving and saying goodbye, and within minutes they were settled in the backseat of the town car again.

With Wallace, the grinning, bouncing maniac.

“You are a goddamned natural!” he cried, all but punching her in the shoulder.

“A natural bullshitter,” she laughed.

“Maynard thought he had you,” Harrison said. That smile flirted around his lips, his eyes were glittering, and she’d never seen him so … shiny. This was the Harrison on the video footage. Harrison Montgomery the candidate. And all that shine, all that glitter, it was falling down on her, too.

It was heady stuff.

“But he didn’t!” Wallace cried, and he and Harrison went on to break down the event and her performance.

She felt herself blushing. And it was hard to breathe, actually.

Growing up, she’d thought she was a part of a clan. A team. The Kaminskis. Someone in that house always had her back, always made sure she was okay. She knew that if it was required, people would go to war for her. And she would do the same for her sisters and brother. Her dad.

They were never alone when they had each other.

But she’d been kicked off that team and she’d been alone. Really, really alone for a long time.

But not anymore.

In the strangest places she’d found herself another tribe. An unlikely team.

She turned her face toward the window so they wouldn’t see her crying.

Chapter 17

Friday, September 6

The morning that Harrison was leaving for Bishop, Arkansas, it was raining. A dark day pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, and a fog obscured the view of the city and the trees she’d gotten used to in the last few days.

And oddly, it matched her mood.

It was weird that she would be alone here. In his house. Without him.

“Other than the Voters luncheon, you won’t have anything on your schedule,” Harrison said, putting his suitcase by the door. “Have you called the doctor?”

“I have an appointment tomorrow.”

He nodded, as if that were all that needed to be said about that.

For all their team spirit, the baby was still a no-man’s-land between them. Never discussed. Sometimes she got the sense that he wanted to change that, ask her about it, be involved, but perversely she wouldn’t allow it.

She had to stop herself from getting sucked so totally into this huge life of his. He could use her for the campaign and she could like it, even love it. The meetings and the events. The glitter by association. The teamwork. It was exhausting, but she felt like she was a part of something.

And that was seductive.

But something had to remain hers; not everything could be used as fuel for his campaign. And the baby was what she was clinging to. The baby and her red teacup and being stubborn and perverse for the sake of being stubborn and perverse.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Sleep, mostly. I have to call my landlord and end my lease.”

“What about your stuff?”

“My brother is going to box it up for me.”

“He can send it here?”

“He was going to deliver it personally and then stick around for a week,” she said, straight-faced. “He can sleep on the couch, can’t he?”

“Is that a joke? That’s a joke.”

“Is it?”

In the end she couldn’t keep a straight face and they both smiled, cracking the strange tension of his leaving and the doctor’s appointment.

From the back bedroom she’d been calling home, she heard the ringing of her cell phone.

“I need to go get that,” she said, putting down her teacup and ducking out of the kitchen and away from Harrison.

The room was dark, the curtains still drawn. The bed she slept in was shoved in the corner, covered in amazing gazillion-thread-count sheets and blankets. In the corner was a treadmill, which might explain her husband’s physique if it weren’t covered top to bottom in boxes.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and grabbed her phone from the windowsill where it was charging.

The number had a Philly area code.

Nora. It was Nora. She must have gotten word from
the bank that the mortgage had been paid and maybe that a bank account had been set up in Olivia’s name.

She suddenly had two hearts, one in her stomach the other in her throat.

For a moment she allowed herself to imagine the words coming out of Nora’s mouth:
Come home. We miss you
.

“Hello?” she said, her eyes closed, daring to hope.

“What the hell have you done now, Ryan!” Nora snapped.

“What … what do you mean?”

“I got a call from the bank today. I have to go down there and sign papers because the mortgage has been paid off and an account has been set up in Olivia’s name and I’m in charge of it?”

“Why are you making this seem like a bad thing?”

“How’d you get the money?”

Don’t
, she told herself.
Don’t make it worse. Don’t be awful just because she is
. But in the end, she’d bitten her tongue enough in the past few days and she couldn’t anymore.

“Well, you’d never believe this, but I made enough sucking dick—”

“Ryan!” Nora exhaled, long and slow. “Can we talk seriously?”

“You’re the one who called with accusations, Nora.”

“Okay. How did you get this money?”

“I married Harrison Montgomery. It’s all part of our prenup.”

The shocked silence on the other end of the line should have been satisfying, but her world was too messed up. “You
married
him?”

“I did. If you ever read a newspaper, I imagine you’ll see my picture.” She almost told Nora about the baby, but the poor baby had been through enough the past few days.

“Are you … okay?”

Ryan closed her eyes against the sting of tears, but somehow that wasn’t enough. She had to climb up onto the bed and lie there in a fetal position, her head buried in the mound of blankets on the unmade bed.

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully, unsure of where that would get her with her angry sister.

“Are you in danger?”

My body, no. My heart, maybe?

“No. I’m … he’s nice.”

“And you’re such a good judge of men?”

“I would have thought you’d be grateful!”

“Don’t tell me you did this for us?”

“Who else would I do it for?”

“Yourself! Oh … God, Ryan. I don’t … what the hell am I supposed to say to that?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, beyond exhausted. Beyond defeated. “Can we start with thank you?”

“Fine. Thank you.”

The connection buzzed with silence. “Dad … Dad misses you. Olivia’s harassing me all the time to get you to come home …”

“What are you saying, Nora?”

“I’m saying come home.”

She lifted the phone away from her face and covered her mouth with her hand so her sister wouldn’t hear her sobbing.

“Ryan? You there?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice thick, and she knew Nora could tell she was crying. “Thank you, but I can’t right now. In a—”

“What?” Nora’s tone was sharp. Hurt.

“I can’t come home right now. I’m in the middle of this campaign …”

“Six years you’ve been begging to come home and now you’re too busy? Isn’t that just fucking like you?”

“Nora, I can’t just walk away.”

“Do what you want, Ryan. You always do.”

Nora hung up and Ryan did, too, and pushed the phone away, as far as she could.

“Ryan?” It was Harrison and she lay there, stretched out across the bed, watching him in the doorway. “Was that your sister?” He knew she’d been waiting for Nora to call.

Flush and wicked with some reckless wind, she did not sit up.

Fuck you, Nora. Fuck. You. I do what I want? Hardly!

But maybe it was time to start.

Harrison was nice.

And her sister made her feel like shit.

And in the end, really, wasn’t this what she was good at?

“Yes,” she answered. “It was Nora.”

Harrison stepped into the room. She stretched out her leg, loving the way he could not stop his eyes from following the movement.

“I want to give you these,” he said, lifting a set of keys and a scrap of paper. “The keys to the condo and the code for the garage. I’ll have the car, to get Ashley. But in the future you can use it whenever you need it.” She took the keys and the scrap of paper and set them down on the windowsill with her phone.

“Would you like to sit down?” she asked.

To her great surprise, his weight made the mattress dip and she scooted up to higher ground so she wouldn’t roll into him.

“Are you okay?”

She pushed her face into the sheets for a second, wishing she could just melt into them.

“Not yet,” she said, her voice muffled in the sheets. “But I will be.”

“What did your sister want?”

She tilted her head to see him. “The bank called about the mortgage and the account set up for Olivia.”