The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2) (20 page)

“You’re not helping.” I try to be serious. “If the analysis after our debate is any indicator, I’ve got a target painted square on my chest. The Republicans are out for blood.”

“Wait a sec. I have to read you my favorite headline.
Favorite.
” I hear her rustling in the background and then she clears her throat. “Ready? ‘S
TUD
VS
. S
OCCER
M
OM
: C
OLTON
OUTMUSCLES
S
HARP
ON
KEY
ISSUES
,
POLLS
SAY
.’ That’s priceless.”

I groan. “They called me a soccer mom. It makes me feel like a fuddy-duddy.”

“Nah. Take it as a compliment. For once, they’re not saying you’re a shameless hussy for letting Jared grope you in public. And the point is, girl, they thought you won.”

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. I’m a real contender.

***

Jared asks me for updates via text and I send him a trickle of new details on Trey’s condition between hospital visits and meetings at my office.
 

The tubes come out and Trey begins to talk. Doctors run tests, assessing if there’s any permanent damage from his head injury. The turning point—when Mama Bea finally begins to relax—is when Trey’s well enough to ask for real food.

He wants coffee and pizza. I bring deep-dish to the hospital and even though it’s lukewarm by the time I arrive, it’s the best damn pizza we’ve ever tasted.

When I get back to the office, a message from my broker says I can have the money for my mother in three business days. I hustle to fill out and sign a handful of forms. I’m afraid I’ll get the money too late.

What
really
scares me is that my mother hasn’t called to ask for it again.

I call my mother’s phone several times with no answer, each increasing my anxiety. Will she do the Gloria Alton show? She finally calls back hours before Sasha and I are scheduled to leave for New York.

“Mother! Where have you been?”

“Don’t get crabby with me, Gracie. I was flying home. You should have gotten me an upgrade to first class.”

“I didn’t even buy your ticket.”

“You should have pulled some strings. I was stuffed in the back of the plane like I was a nobody. They didn’t believe you’re my daughter when I told them I should get an upgrade.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, feeling sorry for the poor flight attendants who had to deal with her on the return trip. “Mother, I’m calling about the … thing you came to Washington to discuss.”

“The TV show?”

“Yeah. Are you, I mean, you didn’t … do it?”

“Nearly did, since you wouldn’t take care of me. But Trey treated me properly when I was there, and Mr. Rankin.”

I choke. “You met Jared?” I knew he intercepted her when she showed up at campaign headquarters, but what did she tell him? “What did he say?”

“He took care of me. Explained why I’d be better off supporting you than talking to Gloria Alton. So never let it be said I didn’t support you. Don’t you dare forget me when you’re all high and mighty.
I
know where you come from and I can take you down a notch anytime I want.”

I suck in a breath, grasping for my composure when I want to reach through the phone and ring her conniving, self-centered neck.

I do a final prep for New York with Sasha still holding me at a distance, her mistrust tainting our relationship. She probably wonders what else I’m holding back from her.

She tries to prep me for the talk show, showing me clips on her tablet like a coach prepping his players with opponents on film before game day. But Sasha’s advice is strained and I struggle to focus. My answers to her short, clipped questions are strings of mumbo-jumbo policy garbage.

“I can’t work with you like this.” She slams the cover on her tablet closed and shoves it in her overfull bag.

“Like what? Tired? Hungry? Fucking sick of the same drills that aren’t getting us anywhere?”

Sasha snaps her bag shut, her eyes flashing annoyance and a hint of anger. “Oh, you’re going to play it that way? Poor Grace?”

I sit back in my chair and cross my arms. “I’ve been going a hundred miles an hour and my hormones are making me tired and dumb. It’s the least you can do to
try
to be nice.”

“I’m not about nice.” Sasha purses her mouth, not an ounce of pity in her expression. “And I’m not cutting you any slack. It’s kind of hard to run for the second-highest office in America, isn’t it?”

The taunt in her voice sickens me, tearing an even larger rift between us. “Shut up.”

“
Please
.” Sarcasm sharpens this word. “You know how many times I turned Jared down when he tried to hire me? Three. Three times I told him you weren’t ready, that you wouldn’t be tough enough to take everything you’re going to get hit with and make it to the finish line.”

“You took the job and you didn’t even
believe
in me?” My voice is a hoarse and angry whisper.

“That’s not my job. It doesn’t matter if I believe in you or think you’re a piece of shit. It only matters what the voters think. And the way you’re half-assing through this prep, it looks like
you
don’t even believe your bullshit anymore.”

“It’s. Not. Bullshit,” I say through gritted teeth. “You don’t think I’m strong enough to handle what’s next? Fine. Then you take the weekend off and I’ll prep. I’ll go to New York myself. Because I won’t stand for someone treating me like—”

“Like your mother treats you?” Sasha raises a brow, challenging me.

“Fuck you, Sasha. Fuck you very much.”

***

Mac and Eric are uncharacteristically quiet on the drive back to my condo and I wonder if they sense something’s up. I shower, change, and pack a new bag, realizing that I’ve spent more time on the road and living out of suitcases in the last couple of months than being at either of my homes.

I can’t reach Jared before the plane takes off, so I resign myself to the likelihood that we won’t talk until after I tape the show tomorrow morning.

When I finally get to my New York hotel room long after dinnertime, I send him one more text.

Grace: Eight hours and counting until I have to hit the studio.

I collapse on the bed, my suit still on and my shoe dangling from a toe. I don’t have the energy to undress. I read a text from Mama Bea, an update on Trey’s progress, and smile when she says he’s demanding his phone. Like his wallet, it was lost sometime during the assault.

I’m floating into dreamland when my phone chimes.

Jared: Knock ‘em dead. I know you will.

Grace: Did you hear anything from Sasha?
 

Jared: She said you went without her. What’s the deal?

Grace: She kept pushing me. And I finally pushed back.

Jared: I know what it’s like on her side of that tug of war.

Grace: You never let up.

Jared: Until I realized I wanted *you* more than I wanted you to win. That’s why I had to quit your campaign.

Grace: She doesn’t understand me.

Jared: Neither do I. But maybe that’s a woman thing.

Grace: Nice try. Don’t be an ass.

Jared: Did she demand you follow her directions for one fucking minute?
 

Grace: No. That’s all you.

Jared: See? She’s getting too soft on you. You need Sasha. You can’t just dismiss her because she does something you don’t like.

Grace: I didn’t dismiss her. I just told her not to come.

Jared: Same difference. Two hard-headed women in one room. I’m surprised we didn’t have a meltdown sooner.
 

Grace: Tell me I’ll be OK tomorrow.

Jared: You’ll be OK.

Grace: Just OK? Not great?

Jared: Do me a favor before you go to bed tonight, OK?

Grace: What?

Jared: I sent you something for luck. Open your door.

I nearly trip in my haste to get to the hotel room door. Mac and Eric flank the entrance and there’s Jared in a wrinkled dress shirt, toting a briefcase and a rolling bag behind him.

He places a small box and a sheaf of newspapers on the hall table and gives me a lopsided grin. “Surprise?”

I drag him into my hotel room, closing the door so fast it’s nearly a slam. “You sent me … you?”

“I’m lucky. Or at least, I’m hoping I’ll get lucky.” Jared’s low chuckle and his innuendo lift my heavy heart. “Do you have any idea what I had to do to get here?”

“No, but I’m going to do everything I can to make it up to you.” I tug at his shirt, fumbling past his belt and buttons, his socks and shoes, until I have one man, perfectly naked, following me to my bedroom. He plucks at my clothes eagerly, leaving them in a trail down the hall.

“Do you know what I love about you?”

“My stubborn streak?” I push him back toward the bed but he captures my wrists and rolls me onto my back, taking the lead.

“Mmm…” His murmur rumbles through his chest and I feel it in the press of his skin to my breasts. “That’s not it.” He bows his head and captures a nipple in his mouth, his tongue flicking it into a bud, his sharp teeth adding that bare edge of pain that electrifies my nerve endings.

“My hot thirty-nine-year-old body?” My question is sarcastic, a wry admission that I’m not the young, lithe thing he could have. That my body will soon be changing, crisscrossed by stretch marks. Cankles are just the start.

Jared releases my breast and his eyes arrest me. His expression darkens. “Don’t. Don’t even pretend you’re not the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”

My heart soars. As if to prove it, Jared moves down my body, hands roaming across every inch of skin, my scars and flaws, with a reverence that makes me flush and shiver. He lowers his mouth toward my pussy, hot breath moving across me that sparks a thrill of anticipation.

Want and need.

Dark and light.

But there can be no truth between us tonight.

I stutter and moan as his tongue finds me, licking across me and sucking my labia into his mouth. He’s pulling on cords of passion tied directly to my core and I writhe beneath him.

I should tell him. I
must
tell him. But now this has gone so far, so long, and I don’t want to ruin this perfect moment. The selfish part of me needs just this, our perfect union, before I go out and get crucified on the talk show tomorrow.

With shifting sands that are always threatening to undermine me—my mother, Lauren, Trey’s attack, and whatever the Republicans throw at me next—I need something in my life that is stable.

Something to comfort me. Jared.

Jared stills, then raises his head. “Where did you go?”

Shit. He always knows when I’m thinking.

“I’m still here.”

“Bullshit. Where did you go in your head when you stopped letting pleasure steer you?”

I open my mouth to respond, but his expression slams closed, his eyes flashing with hurt and anger.

“If you can’t be here with me, when I flew a thousand miles to see you, I at least deserve to know where you’ve gone.”

I push myself back on the bed and pull my knees toward my chest. I shake my head. I need more time than a stolen moment to explain. To beg him to understand me. To hope he loves me anyway. “I can’t do this right now.”

“Can’t what? Make love to me? Or tell me the truth?”

That hits too close to home. “Can’t talk about it.”

Jared straightens, his cock bobbing as he stands, his jaw set. “Can’t talk about
what?
Since when did we have secrets between us?”

Cold fear rushes down my skin like ice water poured over my shoulders and I wrap my arms tightly around my knees. “You kept secrets from me. When we first met, you didn’t even tell me who you really are.”

“That’s your excuse?”

I open my mouth to reply, knowing that I’m wrong. So wrong. I’ve keep this secret for too long and now it’s festered into an outright lie. He’s given me almost everything—a reassurance he loves me, a promise to stand by me—and yet I’m holding him to an impossible standard.

It’s not his fault that he had a shitty father.

Not his fault that his job takes round-the-clock investment.

The things that intrigued me about Jared from the start—his inscrutable, mercurial nature, his fierce and demanding presence—are the things that have tripped me time and again, preventing me from telling him the whole truth.

Lie.
They didn’t trip me. I all-out embraced every excuse in the book.

I open my palms, a gesture of surrender. “I don’t know—”

“Stop. Stop right there before you spout some bullshit. Save it for the cameras,” he says savagely.

I’m losing him. He spins through my apartment, yanking on his pants, hauling on his shirt and his shoes, grabbing his bags. “Can’t you just give me
one fucking minute
to explain?”

He whips me with a glance and his voice is raw. “No explanations necessary,
sweetheart
.” The last word is cutting, rending a bitter slice from my flesh.

He slams out of my hotel room, nearly mowing down a Secret Service agent, and I’m left with an empty echo and a hole in my chest. This is not how it’s supposed to be. I’m this close to everything I didn’t even know I wanted—the White House, another child—and yet it’s hollow if I can’t have it with Jared.

My eyes fall on a little package on the table, a small brown box that Jared dropped with some newspapers when he came in. I pick it up and it feels empty, but something inside shifts.

I open the box.

There, on a fluffy bed of white cotton, is a gold locket. I pry it open with my fingernail, revealing a black and white photo of a smiling child. His dark eyes are Jared’s.

My eyes cloud with tears and I find a scrap of paper beneath the cotton.

My grandmother was the strongest woman I knew until you. She wore this every day of my life. I’m giving it to you for strength and so you will know I believe in you. Completely.

Jared’s words shatter me, cut deeper because he’s gone. How can we have a future together when he believes in me, but I trusted him so little that I didn’t offer him the truth in return?