The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2) (3 page)

“Come. Now, sweetheart. I want you to fly.”

Jared’s hand reaches around me and he flicks my clit, hard and fast, to push me to climax. My skin prickles but my body refuses to go where he leads. I can’t get there. I can’t get high enough to reach that climax, to taste the satisfaction of letting everything go.

I can’t let it go. We have a child.

“I can’t. Hold on. Much longer.” Jared grunts with the effort, his hips slamming into mine, his finger working my clit so hard I feel that familiar twinge. But it’s not enough. I can’t reach the climax. I can’t get through the haze of a million questions without answers, a million ways my life will change.

“Oh, God, Jared, yes!” I yell it, but my heart’s not in it. It’s empty and forced. “Yes!”

I feel his fingers still and his hips rock harder against me. His body convulses as he climaxes—short, sharp thrusts that tell me he’s coming.

And then he’s spent.

And I am a liar, because my climax never came.

Jared pants as he molds his chest to my back, as he tips us sideways to spoon, as he whispers beautiful, heartbreaking words into my ear.

They’re not enough. They’re not the words I need to hear.

It will be OK.

I want this child.

I want this child with you.

As Jared fails to tell me the things I need to hear in this moment, I’ve failed him too. I’ve made him believe I felt something I did not. I don’t know what’s worse—my deception, or the fact that he didn’t even realize I’d faked it.

Is our connection so superficial that he can’t see that?

Jared buries his face in my hair, inhaling it, and I shut my eyes tight against the tears.

***

When his breathing evens and deepens, I slide from beneath Jared’s arm and wrap myself in my robe
. I pad to the kitchen and start my tea kettle. I already know it’s going to be a restless night, but I don’t know if I can bear it with the man I love so close and so terribly unaware.

I crack open my laptop and stare at the screen where the speech for Trey’s old high school leers at me, taunting and unfinished.

I type a few words. I erase them.

I type a few more and they start to come more easily. They come in phrases, then sentences, then whole paragraphs as my fingers fly over the keyboard.

Some kind of dam breaks inside me and I write about the pain of losing my husband Seth and son Ethan to a depressed and psychotic gunman who brought three semiautomatic weapons to the Willamette Mall and opened fire.

Six people down. By the end of the day, three of them dead.

Seth, the good man, the carpenter who never had a bad word to say about anyone, whose patience ran longer than the Columbia River.

Ethan, the curious and active little boy, dark hair like mine and blue eyes bright like his father’s.

I’ve done my mourning, faithfully charted my five stages of grief in journals, and come to terms with what I’ve lost.

The question is now, what could I gain?

Vice president of the United States seemed like such an enormous, insane dream two months ago. And now it’s less than two months away from being a real possibility. But a mother? Again? It flies in the face of vice president and makes me wonder if I can do both or if I’ll have to choose.

“Why are you up?” Jared’s voice startles me and I look up too quickly. Guiltily. He’s in a T-shirt and boxers, his face bearing creases from my pillow.

“Working on the speech for Trey’s school.”

“No wonder you’re always tired. It’s almost two a.m. You know we have speechwriters who are paid to do this for you, right?”

“Give them the hard assignments, then. I have to do this myself.” I push my laptop away from me on the table. “I can’t imagine one of them being able to write what I need to say about this. They just don’t know. They weren’t there.”

Jared pulls a chair out from the kitchen table, flips it around and straddles it so his arms rest on its back. “But you’ll run it by them, right? Before you speak? We’re getting a lot of media requests for this event and our comms team is going to want to be sure you’re on message.”

I huff. “This speech isn’t about being
on message
.”

“The hell it isn’t.
Every
speech is about being on message. That’s why we do this. Because in a campaign where you can’t control ninety-eight percent of what happens, you can at least control what’s coming out of your mouth.” Jared’s eyes flash with annoyance.

It gets my hackles up. This is
exactly
the kind of controlling behavior that sets me off. I can’t let him get away with it, even at two a.m. “
You
can’t control what’s coming out of my mouth. You can recommend, but you can’t require. Or have you forgotten that already?”

“I haven’t forgotten how stubborn you can be.” His hand plunges into his hair and his fingers work over his scalp, then trail back across his stubble. As sexy as that stubble is, right now I don’t want to run my fingers through it.

I want to wring his pushy, obnoxious neck.

“You call it stubborn. I call it principled. Po
tay
to, po
tah
to. Even if you sent my speech to your writers to get it processed and focus-grouped and rubber-stamped, I’m not promising I’m going to say what they tell me to.”

“You’re not a puppet.” Jared’s words snap with sarcasm, echoing my claim from the first week we met.

“No.”

“But you’re smart. And you want to be vice president. And you’re
my
candidate. I want you to win this, but you’ve got to trust me enough that you’ll give me
one fucking minute
and let me vet your damn speech. You’ve got to, before you spout it off in front of seventeen cameras that are going to slice and dice what you say into soundbites with totally different optics than you intend.”

“Optics?” I’m seething.

Jared is silent, just a short, sharp nod.

“This is what you can do with your fucking optics.” I slam my laptop closed and stalk back to the bedroom, where I grab a pillow and an extra blanket. I walk out to the living room and toss them on the couch. “Don’t you dare speak to me like I’m someone to be managed. I have a mind of my own and you’ve known that from the start. That’s the
only
way that we’re going to be able to do this.”

Jared looks at the couch, then back at me. “Oh,
hell no
, we’re not doing this. You will
not
be the rogue candidate on the most important campaign I’ve ever managed and fuck up Shep’s run at the White House—or your own. I will
not
let you do that.”

I cross my arms, anger boiling beneath my skin. “How exactly do you expect to
not let me
?” I’m taunting him, pushing us both closer to the edge in a fight that could tear us apart.

“Easy.” Jared stalks back to my bedroom, returning with pants and shoes on, his dress shirt hanging open. He scoops his things into his bag and strides to the door. “I quit. You’re not my candidate anymore.”

CHAPTER FIVE

I can’t wrap my brain around what Jared quitting means, so I cope the same way I got through the aftermath of Seth and Ethan’s murders—I go to work.

I surprise my Secret Service agents, Mac and Eric, by popping my head out of the door before six a.m. An almost sleepless night has left me dragging, but I resolve to get into the office, get my legislative work done, and head home for a nap by lunchtime.

“You want coffee? I’ll be ready to go in ten.”

“Thanks, Ms. Colton, but we can’t accept.” Mac’s bun seems even tighter today.

“You can’t accept coffee? I’ve got a full pot and I’m not allow—I mean, I’m not going to drink it all.” I appeal to Mac and Eric with a smile, but they stand straight with military precision. “Call it a public service. Don’t let good coffee go to waste. This is Kona peaberry. Smooth and strong.”

“We can’t accept because we need our hands free,” Eric explains.

“Do you need your hands free in the car? Or only when we’re going down to the garage?”

“Just for the trip down.”

“Fine. Then I’m pouring us travel mugs.” I slip my laptop bag over my shoulder and corral three tall stainless steel mugs between my fingers. It’s awkward, but I make it downstairs and into the black SUV where another man waits behind the wheel. Eric takes the front passenger seat and Mac takes the back with me.

I pass out the coffee and Mac makes a soft, contented hum.

“You see? It really is that good.”

“Thank you, Congresswoman Colton.” Mac raises her sleeve and speaks into a microphone. “Phoenix away from location Tango Bravo, en route to Charlie Hotel Oscar Bravo.”

“Can you just call me Grace?”

“No.” Mac hesitates. “We’re not supposed to.”

“But you can call me Phoenix?”

“That’s different. That’s your code name for when we’re on comms.”

“Then what’s Charlie Hotel? I thought we were going to my office.”

The driver turns out of my underground parking garage, pointing our vehicle toward the Capitol.

“We are. Most folks just abbreviate the Cannon House Office Building as CHOB, so that’s Charlie Hotel Oscar Bravo.”

I crack a grin. “And you can’t just call it Cannon? I feel like we’re in a spy movie. Very cloak and dagger.” I turn to Eric. “Any other good spy tricks up your sleeve?”

Eric turns, his eyes shaded by glasses. “We’re also not allowed to talk about that.”

“You’re no fun.” I stick out my tongue at him.

“Well, you are,” he shoots back. “Thanks for the coffee and for keeping this assignment interesting, Congresswoman Colton.”

“Grace.”

“No.” Mac shakes her head.

“Then call me Phoenix. If you ‘Ms. Colton’ me, I’m going to feel like an old lady. And I am
not
an old lady yet.”

“Understood, Ms. … Phoenix.”

***

I leave Mac and Eric outside my office door and flick on the lights in my office. Something’s off and at first I can’t put my finger on it. The air feels different in here. I take off my coat and hang it on our rack, then leaf through the stack of morning papers on the edge of Trey’s desk.

Voices make me turn.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Trey says loudly as he pushes open the door from my inner office into our reception area where his desk sits. He looks disheveled, his tie hangs askew, and the thin young man following him also looks out of sorts. Trey gives me a tight smile. “What a nice surprise. Um, Joel just stopped by and I gave him a tour.”

At six thirty in the morning?

I put out my hand to shake and his jaw is slack. It takes him an extra second to reciprocate and then he gives me an uncomfortable smile. “Nice to meet you, Ms.—I mean, Congresswoman Colton. I mean—wow. I didn’t expect you here so … early.”

Something’s fishy and I decide to push it. “I don’t think either of you did.”

Trey’s dark complexion seems to redden. “Uh, no. I just thought Joel would like seeing your photos. From Oregon. On your office walls.”

Holy crap, could he act any more suspicious?

“So what brings you here so early, Joel? Do you work on the Hill?”

“No, I work in a wine bar in Georgetown. I was just visiting Trey.”

Ah-ha!
“You must be the sommelier Trey mentioned.” I smile broadly as if we’ve been talking all about Joel.

“He mentioned me?” Joel’s eyes look happy, but then they cut to Trey, who does
not
look happy.

I turn back to Joel. “All good things, I promise. You’re teaching him a bit about wine, right?”

“Oh yes,” Joel reaches for Trey’s arm, a familiar gesture, but Trey stiffens. “Last night, we were tasting a flight of reds from the same vineyard, six different years. It was amazing how different…” Joel’s voice dies as Trey’s face gets even more pinched.

“How did you two meet?”

“At a park.” Trey says quickly, then holds up his phone to show us the time. It’s not even seven. “We should really go.”

But I can’t just let them slip away, let whatever’s happening get swept aside by a man who’s been like my little brother for almost four years. I turn to Joel. “Would you mind waiting here for just a moment? I have a couple of pieces of business for Trey, but then if you two want to go grab a coffee, I know Trey’s probably dying for it.”

Joel brightens. “Triple Grande, round one.”

He knows Trey’s coffee order.
He’s got my boy’s number—and quite obviously, a bit more. “Exactly.”

Trey follows me into my inner office, where one of the pillows on my short couch is lying on the floor. There’s plenty of evidence to convict him and from the horror and fear in his eyes, it’s clear he thinks I’m about to.

“God, I’m so sor—”

“Wait a damn minute before you say something you’ll regret.” I lecture him. Trey’s a head taller than me, but his chin’s tucked to his chest in shame. “Don’t tell me something that’s not true. Don’t tell me you’re sorry about … whatever.”

“I’m sorry we surprised you, then.” He swipes a hand across his mouth, as if forcing himself to use the fewest possible words to talk his way out of this.

“OK, that part was weird. But can we talk about what’s really going on here?”

Trey’s lips press together, holding back a secret I’ve suspected for years. His cute, twinkling eyes and narrow hips earned him plenty of interest among young women staffers, yet he’s rebuffed every one. Layer on his obsession with fashion and certain celebrities and I’m not too far off the mark to make a guess.

“Trey, if it helps, I think you two make a cute couple.”

His eyebrows shoot up and he shakes his head.

“Are you telling me I’ve got it wrong? That you’re not gay? Because I’m pretty sure you squealed even louder than I did when we got to do that shoot at
Harper’s Bazaar
.”

Another head shake.

“No, you’re not gay? Or no, I’m not wrong? Because as stupid as I’ve been about things with my own personal life, I can at least be perceptive about this. You’re not just friends.”

This time he nods.

I bulldoze through the bullshit and pull him into a hug. “Don’t you get that I’m happy for you, you moron?”

That knocks a laugh out of him. “Moron?”