Campaign For Seduction (5 page)

“Can I ask you a question?” she said on impulse. “Off the record?”

It took him a long time to answer. “You can ask me anything.”

“You seem so sane. Why do you want to be president?”

The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Only a wacko would want the job, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe I’m a wacko.”

“No, you’re not.”

He stared at her, no doubt seeing too much, and embarrassment rose up in her cheeks, hot and uncomfortable. She hadn’t meant to disagree so vehemently, but, really, everything she’d ever seen or read about this man—everything her gut screamed at her right now—told her that, despite his wealth and privilege, he was a true public servant. A man of the people who wanted the best for all Americans.

He was not, and never had been, a wacko.

“Why?” she asked again.

“Do you want the sound bite answer, or—”

“I always want the real answer, Senator.”

“You’ll laugh.”

“No, I won’t.”

Something in his expression softened, swirling into a mesmerizing image she could study for hours if not days. Nerve endings prickled to life low in her belly and in her breasts, and that was before he raised a hand to beckon her and spoke in that black velvet voice.

“Sit down with me, Liza.”

Drawn into his orbit, a poor circling planet seeking the sun’s warmth, she sat in the seat across the desk from his and held her breath, waiting for him to confide something clearly private and meaningful.

“My mother died when I was in grade school. Brain tumor.”

Liza blinked. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. She’d known they had this shared tragedy in common, but there was something unbearably intimate and raw about discussing it with him now.

“I know.” She hesitated. “My mother died when I was ten. A…stroke.”

Their sad gazes locked in mutual understanding—their mothers both died when they were young and no more needed to be said about it—and the invisible connection between them tightened as though someone had bound them together with black crepe.

“My father was a real piece of work,” he told her. “If he could have slept with all his millions under his pillow at night, he would have. I never understood him, and he sure as hell never understood me.”

His late father, Matheson Warner, had been a giant in the publishing world, having started a magazine in the sixties and growing it into an empire that eventually included newspapers and TV stations before it was sold upon his death—what was it? twenty years ago. She’d also known that Matheson, along with his older brother, Reynolds Warner, who’d built his own clothing empire, WarnerBrands International, was a cutthroat businessman.

What she hadn’t known was that his son was anything other than proud of him and the family name.

“Oh,” she said.

“You probably have a great father. Wasn’t he in the army?”

Startled as she was that he knew this detail about her private life, her stubborn streak would not let her sit by while someone used the word great in the same sentence with her father.

“My father has Alzheimer’s—”

His face fell. “I’m sorry. My uncle Reynolds had Alzheimer’s.”

“—and before that he was an army colonel who never had a conversation with me without trying to make me feel bad because I wasn’t the boy he wanted. His expectations of me are exceptionally high. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never met one of them.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something sympathetic—they did have a lot in common, didn’t they?—but sentimentality wasn’t her thing.

“Are you trying to dodge my question, Senator? What have difficult fathers got to do with the presidency?”

He paused and she had the feeling he was marking her confession, cataloging it for later review and analysis. “My father thought he was entitled. That the rich should get richer and the poor should sit down and shut up. That if you worked full-time but still couldn’t afford college for your kids or health insurance it was because you were too stupid to get a better job or too lazy to get a second job.” He shrugged. “It pissed me off. Why shouldn’t everyone have the same opportunities I had? Why couldn’t the gardener’s son, who was my best friend growing up,
by the way, afford to go to Yale when he got in just like I did? What sense did that make?”

“You want social justice?”

He grinned. “Let’s just say I’m a big fan of Robin Hood.”

“Lots of people admire Robin Hood, Senator, and they don’t subject themselves to Washington politics.”

The grin widened. “Did I mention I like the behind-the-scenes deals and the strategizing? I like engineering solutions to complicated problems. And I’m good at it.”

“And modest.”

The grin turned wicked and so hot that she could feel its effects in her flushed skin and the deep ache between her thighs. “If you show me a politician with a small ego, Liza, I’ll show you a person who doesn’t have the juice to be elected dogcatcher.”

They laughed together, and it was so deliciously wonderful and perfect that Liza’s breath caught and held in her throat. The pull she felt toward this man was so strong it thrilled and scared her. She shot to her feet with all the grace of a beached walrus.

“I should go. You’re busy.”

His face darkened with what looked like disagreement, but he nodded anyway and rifled his paperwork. “Yeah. Great.”

“Great.” She headed toward the door as fast as she could.

“Did I hear that you’re in negotiations for the anchor’s chair?”

She froze and cursed under her breath because how could she leave when the conversation turned to her favorite topic—herself? Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled.

“I’m afraid you don’t have the clearance for that information, Senator.”

The senator, who was on the influential Foreign Relations Committee and therefore had a clearance level that made him privy to state secrets that would probably uncurl her hair, thought this was pretty funny.

“I’ll take that as a yes. For the record—I think you deserve the job.”

“For the record—you’re darn right I do.”

Another delicious moment followed, one with smiles and the glorious warmth of his amusement and approval on her face.

“What’s that I smell? A big ego?”

Liza shrugged. “Big egos have their place, don’t they?”

“Darn right they do,” he told her. “You’re not as prickly as I thought you were, Liza.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Senator.”

Staring at him, wanting him, it was a physical effort to keep her feet where they were, to stay on her side of the cabin when she wanted to be in his lap, straddling him. The ache between her legs was now a wet throb and would soon be a torment.

Time to go. Past time.

“Good night.”

She was determined to escape this time, because it was becoming harder to convince herself that this was a business meeting and they weren’t flirting with each other.

“I’ll answer one last question if you want,” he told her. “For the road.”

Curses. The offer to answer questions was like crack to a journalist—irresistible. Fortunately, she had one ready.

“What’s all this like?”

“This?”

“Being the candidate. The media attention and lack of privacy. The security.” She hesitated, trying to find a word big enough to encompass all the sacrifices he’d made to get to this point in his life. “Everything. What’s it like?”

He shrugged. “This is what I signed up for. I knew it wasn’t day camp.”

“Yeah, but it can’t be easy. What do you most miss about your old life?”

“What do I most miss?”

Uh-oh. Why was he looking at her as if she’d developed green-and-white stripes across her face? Mortified, Liza clamped her jaw tight shut, but the horse was already out of the stupid barn and galloping away.

“Sorry,” she said.

Why didn’t she know when to keep quiet? It’d seemed like a reasonable thing to ask, but now she felt D-U-M-B, especially with him giving her that furrowed-brow look. Poor man. He was probably regretting his decision to work with her and worried she’d next ask about his favorite color.

“Dumb question.” She edged toward the door. “I’ll get out of your hair—”

“Wait.”

Something in his expression had changed, grown dark and hot. When their gazes connected, she felt that lightning bolt sensation again, as though a powerful charge of electricity had shot between them and then radiated out to illuminate the cabin.

This wasn’t flirting. Flirting could be innocent.

This, whatever it was, wasn’t.

It felt so strong that she wondered if the force of it would interfere with the plane’s systems and knock it out of the sky.

Tossing his pen aside, the senator got to his feet and stretched to his full height—all long legs and broad shoulders and sexier than players in an NBA locker room.

Liza’s heart screeched to a halt, and her mouth went dry with unadulterated lust as she waited to see what he would do.

Chapter 5

H e came closer, his ruthless gaze skimming her from top to bottom as he approached, pausing on her breasts, hips and legs, missing nothing and savoring everything.

Oh, God. He wasn’t the presidential candidate. Not now.

This was a man who desperately wanted her and wasn’t afraid to show it, a man who would, with very little provocation, slide his hands up her bare thighs and under her skirt, slip her panties down and off, plant his palms on the cheeks of her butt, and lift her so that she could wrap her legs around his waist.

He would unzip his pants, free himself and plunge deep inside her body. He would press her against the cabin wall and pump his hips back and forth—endlessly, expertly—until she passed out from pleasure with tears in her eyes and his name on her lips.

And she, with very little provocation, would welcome him.

He came right up to her, breaching the divide between them until she had to crane her neck to look up into his glittering eyes and the flaming warmth from his body burned her. Until the faint but addicting scent of his musky cologne invaded her senses, fogged her brain and clouded her judgment.

“In my old life,” he told her, “If I thought a woman was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, I’d say so.”

“Oh,” she said, stunned.

He drifted closer and his hoarse voice dropped until it was a mesmerizing whisper that she felt inside her body rather than heard with her ears. The secrets poured out of his mouth, and she greedily absorbed them, knowing, but not caring, that each word complicated her life and inched her closer to the kind of trouble that ruined careers and lives.

“If I thought of a woman all the time, even when I was supposed to be doing my work, I would tell her. And I would ask if she ever thought of me.”

Liza, hearing the question buried in his words, couldn’t deny him even though a smarter woman would. One corner of her mouth turned up in a tiny smile, a yes, I think of you, too, and she did nothing to stop it.

A tremor went through him and his breath hissed softly. Raising one hand, as though he wanted to cup her face, he let it hover inches from her overheated cheek without ever making contact, killing her with her own longing and need.

His gaze lingered on her lips. “If a woman had a beautiful mouth, I would kiss it. If her hair looked like silk, I would run my fingers through it. And I’d—”

He would what? What?

Liza waited and hoped but…nothing. For several long seconds he tortured her by not answering and letting the delicious images writhe through her brain without giving them complete focus.

And yet it was all there in the depths of his gleaming dark eyes: him slipping inside her body…the two of them flowing together…the friction and slide of their damp skin…the excruciating thrill of his absolute possession.

The need to make this scene a reality was too great to stay quietly inside Liza’s body and she gasped. Was this really happening? Could the sexiest man in the world really be attracted to her?

Searching his intent face for answers, she found one: he knew the risks and was as troubled by their chemistry as she was. This was not the gambit of a player who tried it on every woman he met, just for kicks, nor was it the habitual practice
of a man who stood beneath a tree weighted down with ripe peaches, shook a branch and caught the easy fruit in his waiting hands.

He wanted her despite all his best intentions, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Dropping his lids to cover his fever-bright eyes, he took a harsh breath. When he met her gaze again, the heat had disappeared. The man was gone and the candidate was back, erecting such a solid wall against her that she could almost see each brick.

Though he wanted her, he wanted to be president more, and that was that.

“But I’m a candidate and I can’t do those things.” He used his speech-making voice now, the one that did the voice-overs on all his commercials—I’m Senator Warner and I approved this message—rather than the husky voice of a man who wanted. “Can I?”

“No,” she agreed.

That would have been the end of the conversation except that something came over her. Part need, part temporary insanity and part the kind of irresistible impulsivity that made kids dart into the street to capture runaway balls. Whatever it was, she couldn’t ignore it or let this moment pass without touching him—just this once.

What could it hurt? Who would know?

“You can’t do things like that now, Senator.” She paused. “But I can.”

He stilled.

With the sound of his labored breath, her own thundering pulse and Teddy Pendergrass’s “Love T.K.O.” filling her ears, Liza reached out. She didn’t know what made her do it—only that she had to. Cupping his strong jaw in her palm, absorbing his surprised gasp into her body, she ran her thumb along his lush bottom lip and the heat surged between them

One touch wasn’t enough. She’d been a fool to think it would be.

She had to taste those lips.

Standing on her tiptoes, exerting slight pressure to bring his face lower, she tipped her chin up and brushed her mouth over his.

Mmm.

He was perfection. Pleasure fanned out from that point of contact and filled her until she mewled with the sensation.

The tiny sound sent a shudder rippling through him.

Not pausing to think, she ran her tongue across his tender lips and tasted mints and something so primal and delicious that she wanted to gorge on it until it killed her.

He shifted closer.

Yesss.

When she felt the vibrating energy of his growing lust beneath her fingertips and the insistent clenching between her thighs, reality intruded.

Stop, Liza. You have to stop.

With all the reluctance in the world, she pulled back and let him go.

He’d just started to reach for her, but now he dropped his hands and stared at her with glazed eyes. They watched each other for a minute, both sets of lungs pumping as if they’d just sprinted a hundred meters, and Liza’s face and scalp prickled with the new heat of embarrassment.

But she wasn’t sorry. If she’d just committed career suicide, that kiss was a fine consolation that would keep her warm for many nights to come.

“I don’t—I don’t know what made me do that.”

Lame, yeah, but the best excuse she could offer for her behavior.

“I think you probably do.”

The magnitude of her recklessness began to sink into her lust-fogged brain, and she wanted to throw herself out of the nearest emergency exit. In addition to making a move on a man, something she’d never done in her life, she’d just broken more ethical rules than she could count with the person who might one day be her president.

If he wanted to, he could make one phone call and get her fired. On the other hand, if she wanted to, she could tell her story to a tabloid and start a feeding frenzy that would damage his chances of winning the nomination.

Where did that leave them? Nowhere good for either of them.

Her hand, moving on its own again, went to her mouth. Whether it was to hold his kiss there or wipe it away, she didn’t know.

“It won’t happen again.”

One of his eyebrows rose, making him seem vaguely irritated and, if she wasn’t mistaken, amused by her naiveté. That riveting black gaze sent goose bumps racing over her skin.

“You crossed a line I wouldn’t have crossed, Liza.”

“Forgive me, Senator.”

What else could she say? Ducking her head and giving herself a swift mental kick in the butt for her unspeakable impulsivity, she hurried out before the mortification sent her entire face up in flames.

There she was.

John saw Liza Wilson the millisecond he walked through the double glass doors of the conference room at his Cleveland headquarters and all but cartwheeled with excitement.

It was still dark outside and ungodly early—five-thirty in the morning. They’d all been up for hours because John had gone with his staffers and the whole entourage for an early-morning swim at his club, and yet she looked fresh and beautiful in her green dress and black boots, her head bent low over her clipboard as she murmured with Takashi and their cameraman over in the far corner near the sideboard. They’d begin filming soon, so her heavy on-camera makeup was in place, but John found himself wondering how she’d look without so much paint. After a minute he came to the unwelcome conclusion that she’d be more beautiful rather than less.

Damn woman.

Two long days had passed since The Kiss because she’d been recalled to Washington to confer with her executive producers about the logistics of her new assignment with him and Sitchroo. But she was back now, and the sight of her made all his body’s systems—pulse, temperature, breath—go haywire, just like always.

Edging past the bleary-eyed but cheerful staffers already assembled at the massive table, calling good morning as he went, John could acknowledge the magnitude of his mistake in spending time alone with her. What had he thought? That Liza would irritate him? Had he actually been that stupid?

Yeah, Warner. You were that stupid.

She’d been so irritating he’d almost swallowed her whole.

What else had she been?

Unexpectedly sweet. Charming and funny, but also fierce and strong.

Sexy enough that his blood still ran hot every time he thought of her. Really hot. So hot he was in danger of melting the clothes off his own body.

And her smell…some sophisticated combination of a spring garden with a healthy dose of sultry siren thrown in. The kind of scent that made a man’s knees weak, his mouth water and his eyes cross.

Liza, Liza, Liza.

The woman demolished his reserve, destroyed his focus and made him think crazy thoughts, like the following:

Campaign? What campaign?

Or: what harm could there be in kissing her?

Or this little gem: I wonder if I can lock this cabin door, throw her across my table and make love to her until the plane lands. Would anyone really notice if we were in here alone together the whole night? It could work, right?

That’s right. He, Jonathan Matheson Warner, who had never in his life done anything impulsive, had been millimeters away from grabbing that woman and taking her any way she wanted it. Hard and fast? No problem. Soft and easy? No problem. Well…no problem after the first hard-and-fast time. Upside-down while hanging off the plane’s wing? Whatever Liza wanted, he was there. Who cared about a presidential campaign when there was a woman like that in the world?

John shuddered. Five minutes alone with Liza Warner and he was now wallowing in self-destructive behavior. Could playing Russian roulette be far behind?

He already had a paparazzi fire to put out at this morning’s Sitchroo meeting because a tabloid was running pictures of an airheaded celebutante kissing him at a Hollywood fundraiser last week. His poll numbers had already taken a hit because of it—a small hit, but still a hit—and he didn’t have any more numbers to lose.

The last thing he needed was another fire about his personal life, and he wasn’t fool enough to think he could have an affair
with Liza—even a discreet affair—and keep it secret for very long. No matter how much he wanted to.

Luckily he had the gift of focus. Without too much trouble he could usually hone in on the real issue in any given situation, the one that needed addressing. That focus would help make him an exceptional president if given the chance.

Normally focusing on his work was no big deal; it was how he’d become this successful in his career and managed to control the three-ring circus that was a presidential campaign.

On the other hand, normally he wasn’t obsessed with Liza Wilson.

Concentrating on his work had gotten him through the last couple of days without seeing her, but it was easy to resist temptation when temptation wasn’t there. Temptation was back now, and his work didn’t seem to mean jack or shit when she was this close.

Determined not to stare at Liza, John sat at the head of the table, ready to get this party started. Forget Liza Wilson, he told himself. Forget her. And he started to. For nearly half a second he did. But then the insidious thoughts started working on him and he glanced her way again, hoping for some flicker of acknowledgement in her eye, a half smile, a blush, a look…something…anything…but she kept her head low, and there was nothing for him to cling to except the powerful memory of her sweet lips on his.

Adena, meanwhile, was staring across the table at him with a knowing and irritated look in her eyes. “John.” The warning in her voice couldn’t have been louder or clearer if she’d used a megaphone. “Should we get started with the—”

Screw that.

John held up a hand to silence and dismiss Adena and, with her, John’s doubts. He could make time to say hello to Liza; it was only polite. And anyway—what could happen in a room full of people?

“Give me three minutes.” He stood again. “I need some coffee. Talk amongst yourselves till I get back.”

The staffers resumed their chatter, and John left the table with Adena’s glower skewering him through the shoulder blades. He shrugged it off, his mind on Liza with a single-minded focus that was so absolute he was barely aware of the other people in the room.