Seduced By The Candidate (The Candidate, #1) (2 page)

“Fuck ‘em,” he thought. “I have bigger fish to fry.” Despite
his heartfelt declaration, he remained prickly and agitated and knew that his
mood was bound to be reflected in his demeanor and actions.
          

Goulding turned to Lyndsey and was wondering how best to accept
the little man’s advice in a way that would make it sound like it had been his
idea all along. The door to the office crashed open and a pretty little blonde
exploded into the room in a whirlwind of falling papers and apologies.

“Senator Goulding. Sir, I’m so sorry I’m late. There was a
problem with the trains and when I tried to get a cab there were-”

“Miss Turner, you’re my P.A. You are here to assist me in
everything I do, which means you are here when I’m here—no, scratch that, you
are here thirty minutes before I am here. If that’s too much to ask, then
please let me know and I’ll be happy to relieve you of the onerous
responsibility.”

“Yes Sir, but the train-”

“I’m not interested in your excuses.” He cut her off again, his
voice hard and uncompromising. “Everyone else got here on time and I expect you
to not only match their professionalism, but to better it. Is that clear?”

“Yes Senator Goulding.”

“Good. Now as soon as you have collected you’re nefarious
detritus, please get me a coffee.
Black, no sugar.”

“Yes Sir.
Right away Sir.”

Charlotte Turner crouched over the scattered file of papers.

“Prick!” she said in a voice only she could hear.

* * *

As she waited for the water to boil, Charlotte cursed her
misfortune, but realized that, on reflection, she hadn’t really expected
anything else. She was good, really good and her college results backed that
up. But that was academia and the ‘real world’ was still totally alien to her.
She was twenty-six and for over two decades had dedicated her life to the
school system, maintaining a 4.0 grade point average at school and setting a
new high school record with a SAT score of 2220.

 
Eager to test her
abilities further, she had accepted a scholarship to study a Bachelor of Arts
degree in economics. If she was totally honest with herself, reluctant to leave
the comforting cocoon that the education system provided. Four years later, she
graduated
summa cum laude
but was
still unwilling to enter the workplace. When the offer of another scholarship
had been made, she had leapt at the chance and threw herself into a Master’s
degree in Business Administration, which she had also graduated
summa cum laude.

Charlotte was exceptionally talented. Every one of her tutors
encouraged her to go on to do great things and make a real name for herself.
She shook her head and watched the curling steam dance up the wall. If any of
those tutors could see her now they’d be appalled. Charlotte Turner, one of the
brightest students that they’d ever seen taking a P.A’s job with a bad tempered
Republican asshole. Why? Well, that was the twenty thousand dollar question
wasn’t it? She had no one else to blame but herself.

Charlotte knew academia, she was comfortable with the routine,
the discipline and the detachment and she didn’t want to leave it. She had
waited for another opportunity to present itself, another scholarship offer to
land on her doormat and make her decision easy, but as the weeks went by,
nothing came. By then, all of the best internships had been filled and as
stunning as her qualifications were, no one was going to wait forever on the
off chance that their dream employee will simply walk through the door.

Her parents weren’t particularly wealthy and with no
scholarship to pay her way, it was clear that she had no future in the school
system. She also had no chance of getting a job that reflected her
qualifications without a great deal of searching, and untold weeks of
interviews wouldn’t pay the bills or put food on the table. She was broke, out
of time and as unpalatable as it was, she was seriously thinking about waitressing
jobs just to make ends meet. That was when John Lyndsey had called her.

He was intelligent, articulate and clearly an academic. She
liked him straightaway. She liked him even more when he asked her if she would
be interested in a job working as a P.A to Senator William Goulding, the
Republican candidate in the forthcoming Presidential election race. Wow! Being
a personal assistant didn’t exactly fill her with inspiration, but then again,
she wasn’t exactly in a position to be fussy.

What made it much, much more appealing however was working
closely with Goulding. She might have been something of a social recluse, but
she wasn’t blind or deaf and anyone with even half an ear to the ground knew
about Goulding. He was a military hero and his achievements in politics where
almost unheard of. He was also pretty damn sexy, although she had to admit that
men, sexy or otherwise were not exactly her strong point.

Of course, she had taken the job. So far, it was an unmitigated
disaster! Goulding was a dick, sexy, but
an
dick
nonetheless and she had found that working for a living was far more difficult
than studying for either one of her degrees. This was only her fourth day and
already she had pissed off her boss, alienated half of the office and failed
miserably in trying to figure out her predecessors filing system! Worst of all,
there was still one day to go until the weekend. God only knew what she could
mess up in that time!
     

The fact that Goulding’s predecessor had made such a swift exit
was still something that she didn’t really understand. Madeline Carter was by
all accounts a wonderful, highly efficient addition to Goulding’s campaign
team. With only six weeks to go until D-Day, she left almost overnight. True,
she had been offered a much more senior position with another Republican
politician, but from what little she knew about the woman, Charlotte would have
thought that she would have wanted to see out the campaign and help her boss to
a seat in the White House. For no other reason than to prevent the considerable
inconvenience involved in finding a replacement. Still, her loss was
Charlotte’s gain and she was certainly not going to look a gift horse in the
mouth, even if this particular gift horse was beginning to look distinctly
Trojan!

With the coffee complete and steaming in Goulding’s favorite,
‘Lincoln Lives On’
mug, she carefully
made her way to his office with more than a little trepidation. Knocking
politely, she waited for his invitation to enter and when he bade her, “Come”
she entered.

“You’re coffee Senator,” she said.

At first she didn’t think that he heard her. He continued to
read the memo in front of him. Finally he sighed, put the paper down on the
desk and rubbed his eyes; every bit the man that was already feeling the weight
of the nation on his shoulders.

“Thank you Charlotte,” he said in a tired voice. “About
earlier, I...I want to apologize.”

“Really Sir, there’s no need, I”-

“No Charlotte, there is. It was rude, un-called for and not
something I’m proud of.” He interrupted her with a small smile.

This was a first, maybe buried beneath the outer-asshole was a
real human being. Although he worked exceptionally hard to make sure that the
real Goulding remained very, very well hidden!

“I’m under all kinds of pressure at the minute, what with the
schedule, the press, the men from...” Goulding trailed off. “Anyway, I’m sorry.
You’re doing a great job here under exceptional circumstances and I want you to
know that I appreciate it. When John told me that he had found someone to
replace Madeline, I was skeptical, even after he showed me your exceptional
list of qualifications, but you have already more than justified you’re
appointment.”

“Well, I, I...” Charlotte stammered, unable to find the right
words in the face of such an incredible compliment. “Senator Goulding,
er...thank you.”

“Please, call me Bill.”

Goulding took a sip of his coffee and smiled up at Charlotte
with genuine warmth and emotion. She had rarely seen her boss smile and never
before without having previously had a camera thrust at him. The transformation
was incredible and it completely changed every aspect of his face. He was a
truly exceptional looking individual and the warmth of his smile spread to
every feature. The creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth lent an air of
reality to his otherwise sculpted looks. His eyes gleamed with humor and appeal
and his perfect white teeth shone in stunning contrast to his flawless, tanned
skin.

Charlotte felt her pulse quicken and a sensation similar to
pins and needles run from the tips of her toes, up the full length of her body
and culminated on her lips. It felt wonderfully alien and she blushed at the
thought that this rude, arrogant man could inspire feelings that no one else
ever had. She looked down, desperately trying to hide her embarrassment. When
she felt confident enough to look at Goulding again, she saw that he had
returned to his memo. Charlotte was surprised to realize that along with her
profound relief was a deep-seated sense of disappointment.

Charlotte Turner was by no means an unattractive young woman.
In fact, she was quite the opposite. She was beautiful. It wasn’t that she
didn’t appreciate the way that she
looked,
it was
merely that she had never felt the need to enhance or emphasize it. For years,
her brain had done the talking and everything she had ever accomplished had
been the result of hard work, study and dedication to her scholarly pursuits.
Being such a highly intelligent woman, she had also sought similar attributes
in a potential lover and had found that the men frequenting the various
colleges to be something of a letdown.

There had been the usual string of ‘jocks’ looking for a trophy
blonde to parade around the school and hang off their arm with a look of pure
adulation. There had also been the super intelligent nerds that had no place in
this world of ‘beautiful people’ and had found her mind stimulating, but her
good looks were incredibly intimidating. True, there had also been the middle of
the road ‘normal’ men, but who wanted to settle for normal?

If she was honest with herself, she was probably just too
picky. She was attracted to the chiseled good looks of the athletic types, but
put off by their shallow outlook and demeanor. She was thrilled by the
intelligence displayed by the intellectuals, but not exactly wowed by their
reclusive nature and less than exceptional physical stature, and she simply
wasn’t prepared to accept mediocrity.

It wasn’t merely theorizing either. She had dated men from all
three of these groups. Almost out of a sense of normality, in order to do what
was expected, she had dipped into uncharted waters and tried to find someone
that could fulfill her physical needs in the same way that her studies had
satisfied her mental ones. Without exception, she had been left sorely
disappointed.

Charlie had been the captain of the wrestling team and was
handsome, broad shouldered and imposing. Unfortunately, he had also been
vacuous, boring and intent on getting into her panties without first trying to
unlock her mind. She had gone as far as tolerating his unskilled fumbling on
their first two dates, before she could no longer carry on kidding herself and
had called the whole thing off.

Simon had been an acknowledged mathematics genius. His passion
and talent had intrigued and inspired her. Intellectual he might have been, but
Simon was a social pariah and with great intelligence, also came great
arrogance and bad manners. He simply couldn’t understand anyone that wasn’t as
clever as he was and tended to treat them with disdain and derision. Even when
faced with an intellect as well recognized as Charlotte’s, he couldn’t bring
himself to acknowledge it, as it wasn’t in one of the ‘classical fields’. Simon
wasn’t really threatened by
Charlotte,
he just never
saw her as being on the same level as he was and tended to treat her with a
tolerant, elitist air. He was also a terrible kisser and after an evening of
lifeless, disappointing petting she had learnt more than enough to know that he
wasn’t ‘the one’.

Jeremy had been the middle-of-the-road man and at first things
had looked really promising. He was handsome, polite, and clever without being
exceptional. He seemed genuinely interested in her as a person instead of
merely a brain or a body. They had dated for a couple of weeks and she had
found him to be entertaining company and a wonderful distraction from her life
of dedicated study. Unfortunately for Jeremy, that was all he proved to be—a
distraction. He was fun to be with, but he had no real depth or substance and
certainly not sufficient allure to drag her away from her books for any great
length of time. Neither one had wanted to admit it, but they were clearly
looking for very different things in life. When they eventually did go their
separate ways, it was more a relief than a wrench.

So there it was. She was alone, un-touched, virginal and
thoroughly disheartened with the whole dating thing. She had dipped her toes
into the water and found only ‘boys’ instead of the man and equal she had so
hoped to find. Worse still, the whole disappointing sequence of events had been
such a disaster that she had pretty much come to the conclusion that she would
never find the right man for her and as a result, she had even stopped looking.

If she couldn’t study and excel at college, she would persevere
and excel at work. As far as potential relationships were concerned she would
adhere to the words of Buddha,
‘
Health is the greatest gift,
contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.’
She would be faithful to her career and forget everything else.