Rook (Political Royalty Book 2) (10 page)

“Are you watching the news?”

“I heard on the way back from dropping Sandra and the girls at the airport.”

“It’s worse. Another section just collapsed.”

“Jesus.” He breathed the word, and she pictured his face, his dark eyes pinched in pain.

“Where are you?”

“Almost at your door.”

She stood, trying to ignore the fact that as soon as he got rid of his family he headed to her. Of course he did. They had a tragedy on their hands and a campaign to steer. It was more likely strategy than the fact that he missed her as much as she missed him. He hadn’t touched her since Nevada. She’d worked damn hard to stay away from him and he hadn’t pushed. After the last time they made love, it was as if they both finally realized the risk and futility of continuing with nowhere to go but heartbreak and scandal. But the consequences had no bearing on how much she wanted him. Alone with him, she didn’t stand a chance, and she hated herself a little for even thinking about it when so many people were facing the real horror unfolding before them.

There was a soft rap at her door, and she hurried to open it, not bothering to look through the peephole. Walker stood on the other side in the dark pinstriped suit he wore like a uniform, his shoulders broad enough to carry the world and his face etched in pain. He stepped into her room, closing the door behind him, and pulled her into his arms without saying a word. The spicy scent of his aftershave surrounded her and she pressed her cheek against his chest, feeling the warm, steady beat of his heart. There were so many things they needed to talk about, so many things they needed to do, but for a moment they simply held each other, drawing strength from the contact, the weight of the events of the morning and their need for each other holding them in place.

This was more than sex. There was so much more between them than just physical attraction. Haven hadn’t realized how lost she’d been without him until he wrapped his arms around her, and she could feel again. Pulling back, Walker reached between them to tip her head up. For a long moment, his eyes searched hers, saying without words all the things she’d been missing, and then he bent and kissed her. A simple brush of his lips over hers that held the promise of things to come, when they had time, when people weren’t dying.

They stepped apart at the same moment, but even out of the circle of his arms, she still felt tethered to him. As if in a few brief moments they’d reestablished the connection that had lain dormant while they had to avoid each other. In wordless agreement, they faced the television, sitting side by side on the bed as the news played out in front of them.

“My God, all those people,” he said.

Haven nodded, blinking against the tears filling her eyes. Now that she could feel again, she seemed destined to feel everything. She reached for his hand, cradling it on her lap while she struggled not to cry. On the screen, the newscaster had been joined by a structural expert and the two of them were going over things like maintenance schedules. No one mentioned death tolls or the injured and Haven wondered how long it would take before they knew the real cost of that morning’s disaster.

The network kept replaying the footage of the people scrambling for safety as the second section of bridge collapsed and Haven knew she’d be seeing the images when she closed her eyes that night. Hot tracks burned her skin and she had a fraction of a second to wonder when she’d started to cry before Walker reached over and brushed a tear off her cheek with his thumb. The tenderness in his touch stripped her emotions bare and made it that much harder to hold things together. And she had to hold it together.

Justin would be at her door any minute or waiting by the bus, depending on whether he’d been watching the news. They had staff and the press waiting for them and she had a response to craft. She couldn’t afford to sit around feeling things—not for Walker, not even for the people on the bridge. She had a campaign to run and a man to make president and she didn’t have any room for mistakes on either count.

There was a knock on the door and she pulled away from Walker’s touch, meeting his gaze for a moment because they both knew it would be the last time until they were alone again. With her feelings so raw, there was no way she could look at him and hide the truth of how she felt, not from him or anyone who saw them together. She’d wait until they had time alone again and then she’d try to get her fill of him, try to patch the holes that watching him play happy family man with his wife ripped in her heart. Swiping at her tears, she opened the hotel room door without bothering to check. She already had her arms open to hug Justin, but instead of her friend, Sandra Walker stood on the other side of the door.

She barely gave Haven a passing glance, instead pushing past her into the room and making a beeline for Walker.

“Shep darling, I thought I might find you here.”

“What are you doing here, Sandra? Where are the girls?” Walker stood, intercepting his wife before she reached the bed. All the warmth and vulnerability vanished from his expression. The walls slammed up so fast Haven couldn’t fight the feeling that something fragile got crushed in the process.

“The girls are upstairs with Abby. I came back as soon as I heard. We never even got off the ground. When you weren’t in your room, I assumed you were with Haven, planning your response.” She glanced over her shoulder, giving Haven a smile that didn’t reach her eyes before turning back to face her husband.

It suited Haven fine. Sandra Walker was the last person on the planet she wanted to see at that moment. Not when she was feeling raw and vulnerable from both her emotions and the horror unfolding in front of them. She did have a moment to wonder if the senator’s wife suspected anything or if she was too sure of herself to imagine her husband with another woman. Given his family history, that seemed unlikely, but if she thought there was something going on between Haven and Walker, she was a dammed good actress.

“This changes everything, doesn’t it?” Sandra said, beaming up at her husband.

It seemed an odd time to be smiling, but Sandra’s reactions were beyond Haven’s scope of experience.
What kind of woman saw a tragedy as nothing more than an opportunity for her own gain?

“This is exactly the kind of thing you need to illustrate your domestic platform. They’ll have to pay attention to you now. The media will do the selling for you. I already heard a report on the way back from the airport on how far behind most major cities are on their maintenance. This is a crystal-clear visual example.”

“Sandra,” said Walker, looking horror-stricken. “People died. They’re still dying. For God’s sake, this is about more than a campaign visual.”

Haven’s stomach recoiled, from the thought that the woman Walker married could be so self-absorbed she couldn’t see the devastation the morning’s events had caused. But also because her own thoughts had gone in a similar direction. It would be good for the campaign, and it would take some of the wind from Collins’s sails. The general was used to issuing orders to get things done, not working through the many layers of government required to actually govern.

“Of course, they are,” said Sandra with what Haven assumed she meant to be a softened tone. “But Shep, darling, there’s not a single thing you can do about that now. What’s done is done. We can praise and thank our brave first responders and offer our condolences to the ones left behind, but we can’t turn back time. What
you
can do is make sure something like this never happens again. That no other family has to know what it’s like to lose a loved one in such a senseless event. Show the country how important it is for us to start to take care of ourselves first.”

“I am not going to use this tragedy to prop myself up. I am not going to forget the people who died this morning,” said Walker, his jaw clenched so tight he could barely get the words out.

“Don’t be silly. No one is proposing you forget anyone, but you would be a fool not to use any means at your disposal to get your message out. And you, Shepherd Walker, are not a fool.”

“We’ll talk about it on the bus.” He took Sandra by the arm and turned her toward the door. His fingers must have dug harder than necessary, because Haven saw the other woman wince before taking the hint and heading for the hallway. Standing in the open door, Walker looked back over his shoulder to Haven. “We’ll figure this out.”

Sandra would assume he was talking about a strategy for dealing with the tragedy, but Haven knew he was making a promise he couldn’t keep. The thing between them—whatever it was—wasn’t something either of them could figure out. He closed the door after them, leaving Haven alone again.

Leaning against the wall, she fought against the nausea making her stomach churn. It didn’t matter how they crafted Walker’s response or what happened in the next couple of days. Whatever words she chose, she’d hear them in Sandra’s cloying, callous, Southern drawl and however things worked out, they wouldn’t end with her and Walker together.

M
ATT RUBBED HIS CHEEK, TRYING to get rid of the imprint the polyester couch cushion left on his face. Calling it a couch was generous; it was more like a loveseat or a sofa for midgets. He’d gone from being cramped, curled in a ball on his side, to having his legs fall asleep hanging over the armrest all night. It didn’t matter. It was worth it to have Becca sleeping in his bed. Knowing what he knew about what she’d been through, he didn’t think he could bear to leave her alone again. He wanted to be where he could see her and make sure she was okay. Or as okay as she’d ever be again.
Fuck.

He ran his hand through his hair, grabbing a fistful and yanking in his frustration. The bite of pain helped him focus. No way would he let his shit filter over to his sister, but he was going to have to find a better outlet for his frustration. At least until he could do something tangible to the animal or animals who hurt her. He had a flash of Walker pounding away on the treadmill and wondered if that would work as a coping strategy.

A quick glance at his phone showed the local time at six in the morning, which made it nine on the East Coast. He hadn’t thought to set his alarm before they fell asleep last night. Hell, after Becca fell asleep with her head on his chest, he hadn’t thought about anything at all except taking care of his baby sister. It was a lot harder to ignore work and the rest of the world with the early morning sunlight filtering between the gap in the curtains.

He watched his sister sleeping in his bed, her face so peaceful and young. For a moment, he could almost convince himself nothing happened, and he’d just shown up for a quick visit. Then the truth of what she told him crashed down on him, and he had to feel the horror all over again. If that’s what she went through every morning, he didn’t know how she kept going. He didn’t think he’d be able to in her place, and it made him all the more committed to not leaving her to deal with it alone. Regardless of the cost to him and his career. He’d figure out a way to phone it in for a while so he could make his sister his priority.

Making sure to hit the mute button first so he wouldn’t blast Becca awake, he turned on the television and surfed until he hit one of the cable news shows. He could tell before he turned up the volume that something terrible happened while he’d been asleep.
God damn it.
Missing Wyoming was one thing; missing a major news story was something else entirely. His editor was going to lose her shit if he didn’t come up with some kind of response from the campaign. He’d needed today to be an easy day. Straightforward delegate counts and nothing else.

Was that too much to ask?
he thought and then tempered his response when he saw the devastation on the screen. A jagged edge of concrete punctuated with twisted rebar was all that was left of where a bridge once stood. Cars dangled over the edge, waiting for the slight shift that would send them careening into the water. He couldn’t tell from the images whether the damage had been caused by a bomb, an earthquake, or something else, but whatever caused it had been devastating for the people making their early morning commute.

Inching the volume higher, he read the numbers scrolling across the bottom of the television. Twenty-two dead and over forty wounded.
Good God.
The pretty blonde news anchor pressed her painted lips into a grim line as an expert on the phone talked about tensile strength, spalling, and projected versus actual maintenance schedules.
So it probably wasn’t an earthquake.
He wasn’t even sure they had those in Vermont. Careful not to shift the bed, he sat at the foot, close enough to hear the news without turning the volume any higher. Issuing the classic
it’s too soon to know for sure
disclaimer, they were calling it a structural failure likely brought on by budget cuts to routine maintenance.

“With the sequester cuts hitting education and law enforcement, local municipalities have been forced to cut the budget wherever they can to make up the slack,” said the disembodied voice calling into the news show. “Maintenance is often one of the first places to be cut. For years, cash-strapped communities have siphoned money from maintenance line items and allocated it to more immediate needs. I’m afraid today we may have seen one of the consequences of those kinds of decisions. And probably not the last.”