Indecent Proposal (10 page)

“Who wants to know?” she shot back, which made the guy grin knowingly.

“How do you know Harrison Montgomery?” He lifted the big camera around his neck to take her picture, blinding her with the flash.

Oh. Shit
.

“I … I … don’t,” she said, stumbling up the path, glitter in the corner of her eyes.

She opened the lobby door and once inside, turned back around to see the photographer take out his phone and make a call.

“What the hell?” she breathed.

“Paparazzi,” a guy said, and she turned to see a beautiful tall black man in a bad tie. He seemed vaguely familiar to her, but that was the life of a bartender. At some point it seemed she’d served everyone in the five boroughs a beer.

But so scathing was his gaze, she felt the need to pull the carton of milk to her chest, an extra layer between her and the hate he clearly felt for her.

“It will probably get worse,” he said.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

“Wallace Jones. I’d like to say I’m the man here to make your life hell, but I think that guy is waiting for you in your apartment.”

In a great rush she realized why he seemed so familiar: in the footage of Harrison she’d been relentlessly watching for the last few days, this guy was almost always in the background. Looking nervous.

As she watched, he pulled a roll of antacids out of his pocket and thumbed one into his mouth. “Go,” he said. “It’s kind of making me sick looking at you.”

“Listen, asshole,” she snapped. “I haven’t done anything!”

“You might not have done anything,” Wallace interrupted, his dark eyes pulling her apart piece by piece. “But your brother sure has.”

Her stomach fell to her feet. “Wes?”

“Bearded guy? Definition of a loose cannon? Paid a little visit.”

She didn’t stick around to hear the rest of the “How Wes Thought He Was Doing the Right Thing but Actually Managed to Screw Up My Life Even More” story. She bypassed the extremely slow elevator and went up two flights of stairs, pausing at the landing to get her breath back.

Once upon a time she used to run a six-minute mile, her body strong and fueled.

Now her ass was kicked by a flight of stairs.

The hallway in front of her apartment was eerily quiet, like a scene in some horror film in which she was the dummy too stupid to realize she should just leave. Vanish into the night instead of reaching out with a slightly shaking hand for that doorknob.

The door opened at her touch.

These days she was pretty much a stripped wire, exposed to every element, every emotional whim, and despite her efforts to prepare herself for seeing Harry … 
Harrison
again, she was wasted at the sight of him.

He stood in front of her dark windows, the city a bruised landscape behind him. He seemed bigger in his suit than he had in that Bulldogs tee shirt. Or maybe it was because he was Harrison Montgomery now and not Harry, and that came with its own weight. An extra few inches.

At the sound of the door opening he turned to face her and she thought she remembered how handsome he was, how appealing his gravitas, but she hadn’t remembered the half of it.

The lamplight gilded him in his tailored gray suit and his rich brown shoes, all of which cost at least four months’ rent. Gone was Harry’s grief and anger. This man was all cold and stony displeasure, his face carved in hard, unforgiving lines.

“Ryan,” he said, and even his voice was different. Still laced with sweet tea and peaches, but there was an iron bar down the middle of it.

Oh, Wes, what did you do?

There were a thousand things she wanted to say and do, like ask him about his sister and brush that hair off his forehead, or cup that dimple in the palm of her hand the way she had that night.

And all of those things would tie this moment, this place, the two of them, back to that hotel room and maybe erase some of the anger on his face. This distrust that radiated from him.

She imagined a smile from her might set them down in this conversation with a kinder, gentler hand.

But there was nothing kind and gentle about Harrison at the moment. He looked like retribution dressed in a thousand-dollar suit.

And Ryan had been pushed into plenty of corners, so she knew when to come out swinging.

“Harry,” she said, and his lip lifted, not quite a smile. No. It was far too mean to be a smile. “How did you get in?”

“Your landlord is very bribable.”

“Well, that’s troubling.”

“You’re lucky it’s just me in here.”

Considering the photographer standing outside her door, that was shockingly true.

“Did you give him your real name or your alias?”

“I gave him a hundred dollars and he didn’t ask any questions.”

“And I should have asked you a few more.” That came out heavier than she’d intended. Hurt. Angry. Her swing had lost its power and she stepped over to the kitchen to set the milk on the counter.

He was watching her; she could feel the icy-hot touch of his blue eyes against her bare shoulder, the long revealed length of her legs, and she wished she had on more clothes. A snowsuit, maybe. Or one of those burka things.

Because she felt utterly naked in her cut-off jeans and thin red halter top, her hair piled on her head in a messy knot.

A bra would have been nice.

“That night,” he asked, “did you know who I was?”

“No,
Harry
. I didn’t.” The plastic cap came off the milk jug with a loud snap.

“I don’t know if I believe you.”

“I don’t know that I care.” She took one of her red teacups and filled it with chocolate milk, not offering him any. Because that would be ridiculous, offering chocolate milk in a chipped teacup to future congressman Harrison Montgomery.

And because he’s had enough
, she thought.
More than enough of me
.

“This is quite an apartment.” His tone was one shade away from a sneer.

Oh, could you be any more predictable?
she thought.

“You like it? My uncle lived in his car in front of our house for a year. He had a microwave under his front seat. A foldout bed in the back. I learned everything about space-saving from him.”

Her words were met with crackling hostile silence, so
she turned and saw Harrison looking over her bookshelves.

The problem with living a stripped-down existence was that the things she did keep around, that did survive the form-and-function test—they were precious. Tiny windows into her soul, and she wanted to grab all the psychology textbooks she’d gotten at the used bookstore and her mother’s Lucite jewelry and stuff them out of sight.

“You have some interesting reading material for a bartender.
Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Social Psychology and Human Nature
?”

“Came with the apartment,” she lied.

The look he sent her was scrutinizing and uncomfortable.

“Your sister,” she said, and he stiffened, and she recognized the protective-older-brother stance. She’d seen it a million times before. “You did help her. In the end.”

“I did.”

“I’m glad.” She lifted the cup to take a sip, but the smell made the tension in her stomach worse. The last thing she needed was to throw up in front of him. She lowered the cup but held onto it, so she had something to do with her hands. “When you said she was in trouble you weren’t kidding. But I suppose the Montgomery family does things on a larger scale than average humans.”

Silent, he just stared at her, his eyebrow arched, his electric-blue eyes soulless and dead.

Ugh. Enough
.

“Why are you here, Harrison Montgomery?”

“Your brother came to see me.” He stepped closer. The apartment—already small—was claustrophobic now. “He says you’re pregnant.”

She lifted her chin against his icy gaze. Her heart hammering at her rib cage. “So I am.”

“Your brother seems to think it’s mine.”

“It is.”

The muscles in his jaw flexed as if he were making gravel out of his teeth. That night they’d shared, the way he’d grabbed her hand like a lifeline, the way his cheek had felt against her palm, the way he’d kissed her like she was property he needed to know every inch of—it was gone. The sweetness. The kindness. The mutual respect.

That small slip into infatuation.

It was all gone.

All that was left was hostility and a baby.

Worst one-night stand. Ever
.

“I don’t care if you don’t believe me,” she said, setting down the cup with great care because she felt as if she were shaking apart. “I don’t want a single thing from you. Not money. Not anything.”

“That’s certainly independent of you, Ryan. But it’s too late for that. The press won’t care. They will form their own opinions. And all they need for confirmation is to talk to the other girl behind the bar that night. Or perhaps the manager. A patron. Anyone who saw us.”

“All they saw was us talking.”

“It doesn’t matter. Your brother stormed into my parents’ home while my family was conducting an interview, flashed his badge around—”

“Badge? What badge?”

He blinked. “Homeland Security.”

She laughed. Her brother ran in secret circles, but not that secret. “My brother is a computer hacker, Harrison. The badge was undoubtedly fake.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. He’s fooled smarter men than you. When he was in high school—”

“Stop, Ryan. Stop with the charming tales of poverty and petty crime. We have a real problem here.”

“Fine,” she snapped. She loved her tales of poverty and petty crime. It was all she had left of her family. “I didn’t know who you were. I did not set out to get pregnant.”

“The condom was yours.”

Lindsey’s, actually; not that it mattered, but it meant she didn’t know how old it was, or if it had been compromised in some way. All things she didn’t care about that night.

“You think I sabotaged it?”

“I think desperate women have done worse.”

“I’m far from desperate, Harrison.”

He glanced around her apartment, all her meager possessions on display.

“What a snob you are,” she laughed. If he thought she was desperate, he had no clue what desperation really was. Living in a car with a broken microwave under the front seat wasn’t even the most desperate thing she’d seen. “Look, let’s just be done with the slut-shaming portion of the evening. I’m not interested in anything you have to give me. I will not talk to the press. I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone! So you can take your accusations and your curled lip and get lost.”

For emphasis she opened the door to the hallway, but Harrison stepped forward and shut the door. He kept his hand braced on the door and leaned over her, close enough that she felt his breath against her exposed chest. Close enough that she could feel the heat from his body.

Memories, unwanted and uncomfortable, settled over her, sunk into her.

She might not like this man, but for one night she had really liked his body.

“I credited you with a great deal of insight that night at the hotel,” he said with withering disdain. “I am shocked to learn how wrong I was.”

Breathlessly stung, she ducked away from him, but there was no room to run in this apartment.

“Whether the badge was real, whether or not you set out to trap me, none of it matters. If we don’t address this situation now, it will only get worse. Tomorrow there will be five men with cameras out there.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“I’m a Montgomery, Ryan. My sister has been the top of every news update for weeks. My father is destroying the state he’s the governor of and I’m running for Congress. We are the goddamn news. And if the story breaks now that I had sex with a bartender and got her pregnant? Your life—to say nothing of mine—will be hell. But I have the resources, the legal help and money, to handle it. What do you have?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“That bravery is very endearing. But you have a sister in high school, another one who works as an ER nurse. Do you really want to do this to them?”

“How do you know about them?” she breathed, torn open and vulnerable.

“A preliminary investigation into your life. Right now there are dozens of journalists doing the exact same thing.”

“I’m going to kill my brother.” God, she could just shake Wes and his overblown sense of justice.

“A sentiment I share, but that won’t help us survive this kind of sex scandal.”

“Oh my God.” She fell back against the counter, the reality of what was happening to them crashing down hard around her. “I’m a part of a sex scandal.”

“I see you are starting to get the picture.”

“And you’re running for Congress.”

“I am.”

“You’re falling behind in the polls.”

“Delighted to see you’re doing your homework.”

His sarcasm was elegant. One of those fencing swords against her raw fists. She didn’t stand a chance, and so she gave up the fight.

“All right … how do we get out of this?”

“Did you meet Wallace downstairs?” he asked.

“Yes. He doesn’t like me.”

“No. He doesn’t.” Harrison laughed. “In fact, he says I should simply ignore the rumors. Ignore you. Ignore your child and just bow out of the race, let Glendale take the seat, and lie low for a few years.”

She jumped at this solution because it required nothing of her. “Sounds reasonable.”

“But I don’t want to bow out of this election. I would like to win it and get to work.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

“But you are. If I ignore this story, it will eat my career alive. For the rest of my life I’ll be the Montgomery who had the sex scandal.”

“What do you want me to do about that?”

“Marry me.”

Chapter 9

She laughed. She laughed so hard she had to brace her hand against the counter, accidentally knocking her pretty red teacup into the sink, where it shattered. But even that didn’t stop her from laughing.

“I’m not kidding.”

“And that makes it even more funny. Listen, Harrison, you broke into my apartment. Called me stupid. All but accused me of being a gold-digging whore. I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.”