Indecent Proposal (7 page)

“You know,” Wallace said, sheepishly running a hand over his dark hair. “While I appreciate you wanting to protect your sister and I dislike agreeing with the Queen Mum, Arthur Glendale has pockets deeper than anyone has imagined, and without something to break up the media message that you are too young, too inexperienced, too rich, too goddamned Montgomery, and somehow too handsome to be a trusted public servant, you might lose what started as a shoo-in run for the House.”

“I thought you came in here with good news,” Harrison said.

“Your mom killed it.”

“Am I required to say it again?” Mother asked, holding out her arms. “All those problems would be solved if you were married.”

“Mother—”

“It’s true,” she insisted. “If you were married, you would immediately be considered more substantial.”

Marriage was Mother’s Band-Aid. Respectability the solid wall she hid all the family sins behind.

“I can’t just pluck a woman out of thin air.”

“You’re not even looking,” she cried. “You’ve spent all your time in school or with VetAid and not enough starting a family. Waiting to fall in love is not helping
your career.” Her tone conveyed quite clearly her derision toward love.

Harrison had no feelings about love, derisive or otherwise. He had no time and no energy to waste on chasing something he felt quite convincingly was not meant for him. Not meant for anyone in politics. Or his family.

Marriage and family were tools.

Love was a yeti.

He was thirty-one years old and this was his entire experience. His entire life. Since he’d turned twenty-two, every minute of every day was spent becoming who he was right now. Every turn in the road led him here. Not to a family, not to a wife, but to correcting his father’s mistakes. Making the Montgomery name something he could be proud of.

What else was he supposed to do but exactly this?

In the end, it didn’t matter how he got into office. All that mattered was that he got in.

“We’re in this and we’re leading in the polls. If the matter is more money, we’ll get more money. As for the Ashley miracle, I’ll ask,” Harrison said, bowing under the pressure because they were right. He looked like a kid standing next to Glendale. “When I get her on the phone. I will ask.”

“Well, will you look at that,” Wallace said, grinning at Mother. “Look what happens when we work together. We should channel our powers for good more often.”

Mother did not smile. She picked up her purse from the couch and slipped the strap over her shoulder. If there was a prototype for politician’s wife, Mother was it. Elegant, genteel, and calm. Stylish. Never flashy. Confident and contained. She gave the impression of still, deep waters. And even in his shabby, cluttered, crowded office that was basically just a cement box, she exuded a sense of Old World money.

There was a flash in his memory, the image of a woman in high leather boots and a thin tank top with a tattoo peeking over the edge.

Despite his efforts, he’d been unable to forget that night in New York City.

Raw. Rough. Unpolished.

Ryan had been the opposite of Patty Montgomery on a cellular level.

Perhaps that was why he’d been unable to stop thinking of her.

With effort, he refrained from smiling. Stopped that one flash from turning into a lightning storm of memory.

He stood and opened the door for his mother. Outside his office the campaign headquarters was crowded with staffers and interns, doing the hundreds of large and small tasks that made this campaign a real and tangible thing every day.

Outside the wide plate-glass windows was Peachtree and the downtown city center, cloaked in a gray rain. Mom’s car and driver were outside waiting for her.

Noelle, her assistant, waited outside the door like a loyal pet.

“I’ve told your secretary to put a Friday luncheon on your schedule for the twenty-third,” Patty said to Harrison.

“Fundraising?”

“Family.”

“Our family?” Family meals were not something that happened at the Governor’s Mansion. Not on Fridays. Not anytime.

“It’s an article for
Southern Living
,” Noelle supplied, glancing up from her iPad, where she seemed to have all her plans for world domination. “The Holiday edition.”

Right. The only reason his family would sit down at a table together was if there was a chance someone would
take a picture. Mother was very good at making them look like a typical family, with family dinners and vacations to the shore and trips to amusement parks, when in reality they didn’t do any of those things without a camera crew making it happen.

“Distance, Harrison,” Wallace said. “We don’t need pictures of you and your dad standing arm-in-arm over a turkey, for God’s sake.”

“The magazine won’t come out until after the election,” Mother said. “And considering the way you’ve been tearing your father apart in speeches, a family photo shoot and article will go a long way toward showing there are no hard feelings.”

She meant publically. Because personally, it was far more than hard feelings between him and Ted—there was a cavern of disappointment and anger. Of disgust.

Some men were created in the image of their father. Harrison grew up in his father’s negative space. In the holes Ted had left behind. Harrison was who he was in spite of and to spite his father.

But Ted had clout and loyal followers—an Old World liberal guard that didn’t like Harrison, and it would do his career good to get them on his side.

Harrison glanced at Wallace, who after a moment shrugged.

“What time do you need me?” Harrison asked.

“All day. I’ve had your schedule cleared.” Mom glanced over her shoulder. “Goodbye, Wallace,” she said.

“I can’t come for lunch?” he asked.

“No.”

And with that Mother was gone, down the center aisle of the room, a warship sending smaller vessels—interns and staffers—scrambling out of her way.

“Your mother terrifies me,” Wallace said.

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

“It’s a very complicated fight-or-flight response. I can’t explain it. I feel that way around most women.”

Harrison smiled. Thought again of that tattoo and the long, silky brown hair falling over it, revealing and obscuring at the same time.

“Let’s get back to work,” Harrison said, walking back to his desk and the call sheets there. The destiny he’d been groomed for his entire life was waiting for him.

And there was no place in his destiny for that tattoo and the woman it belonged to.

Chapter 6

Sunday, August 18

The nausea woke her up. The nausea always woke her up. A greasy, sick pull from sound sleep, from pleasant dreams about money and being able to go a day without barfing.

It was all-consuming, the nausea. Like an untrained puppy who kept jumping up when it shouldn’t. Or a shitty friend with too much drama. It was, in fact, so paramount that it wasn’t until she opened her eyes that she realized she wasn’t in her own bed.

The ceiling was yellow and lacked the water stains from the time her upstairs neighbor left the sink running. Television news was on in the room and she didn’t have a TV in her apartment.

The bed was funny. The mattress uncomfortable and beneath the sheets, covered in plastic.

She lifted her hand to find an IV tube stuck in her vein.

Uh-oh
.

“Hey. You’re awake.” It was her brother’s voice and she turned her head slowly, keeping the world steady, to find him sitting beside her bed.

“Hey,” she whispered. Joy bounced through her, momentarily pushing aside the dizziness and exhaustion. Wes. Her big brother, who’d braided her hair after Mom died and forged Dad’s signature on notes so she
could skip school and go with him to Phillies games and showed up with pizza and milk at the end of the month when Dad’s check had been stretched so thin it could barely keep the lights on.

It had been a few months since she’d seen him and as usual, it was a shock. Wes was a shock.

He’d always been an intense guy, an explosive kid and teenager. A lesson in extremes, that was her brother. Slow to love, quick to fight. Short temper, long memory. Smart brain, stupid heart.

But this man version of him seemed … dangerous. As if the years had worn away the middle ground between his extremes. He was all or nothing. In or out. All of his filters were gone, and he sat beside her bed in a sea of palpable anger.

Wes turned and pointed a remote at the TV in the corner behind him, putting the news on mute.

She reached out and touched his beard. Tugged it. An old welcome.

His lips curled in a familiar half-smile.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Flushing Hospital,” he said.

The world rolled off its anchors and her stomach pitched.

“You need to throw up?” he asked.

She breathed through her mouth until the wave passed. “No. I’m okay. It’s just strange being the one in the hospital bed,” she teased.

He smiled so sweetly at her. “It’s a little strange for me too, but it’s been a while since I was the one with the IV tubes.”

“Allen Hayes?” she asked, remembering the last fight that got him in the hospital.

“I had no idea his sister could pack such a punch.”

She ran a finger down the bumpy ridge of his nose. It
had been broken more than once. He grabbed her hand and pressed his mouth to the back of it.

“Do you remember what happened?” Wes asked.

“You were coming to take me to dinner.” Excited, nervous, not exactly sure how she was going to break this insane news to her brother, she’d buzzed him up to her apartment, unlocked her door, and then run to the bathroom to vomit.

“I found you passed out on your bathroom floor. It looked like you’d vomited blood, so I called an ambulance,” he said.

Blood she remembered, but that was all.

Oh God
. She put a hand to her stomach.

“Did I—?”

“You’re fine. Both of you.” She could hear it in his voice, the lecture he was dying to give her.

She blew out a long breath, trying to get the sudden spike of her heartbeat under control.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That must have been scary.”

“Well, it’s not a moment I want to relive anytime soon, seeing my sister passed out in a pool of blood. You hit your head on the corner of the sink. Split the skin over your ear and knocked yourself out.”

“I knocked myself out? On the sink?”

“At least it wasn’t the toilet.” Wes smiled. “You’re still your own worst enemy.”

Laughing felt good. Felt so good, like throwing open the window on a perfect day.

Wes picked up her hand and held it between his two. His hands were callused across the palm, worse on his right than on his left. And he was thin, thinner than she’d seen him in a long time. Whatever the mysterious computer work he wouldn’t talk about required of him, it was taking too much.

“It’s good to see you,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“Talk to me, Ryan,” he breathed.

She hadn’t said the words out loud to anyone yet. A week ago what she’d thought was the flu turned into a missed period and a drugstore pregnancy test and finally a doctor’s confirmation. So far the baby was a secret she kept to herself, and it still didn’t feel real. She was in serious survival mode between the nausea and the joblessness and the fist-shaking minuscule failure rate of condoms that had not panned out in her favor.

Also surprising was how much she wanted this baby. It had been years since she’d thought of starting a family, and now certainly was not an optimal time, but none of that seemed to matter.

She was sick, scared, financially strapped, and emotionally vulnerable, but she was so damn
happy
about this baby.

Her new family.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

He opened his mouth to let out the lecture but she stopped him. “Don’t,” she said. “Anything you say about staying out of trouble will only be hypocritical.”

“I’ve never been pregnant and alone and sick.”

“I’m breaking new Kaminski ground.” Even he had to smile at that.

“You’ve been sick like this the whole time?”

Her mouth was gummy, her lips dry and cracked. “I haven’t been feeling great for a week. But it’s only been like this for three days.”

“The doctor said you were severely dehydrated.”

“I haven’t been able to keep anything down.”

His hands squeezed hers and she pulled her fingers free, bracing herself for the outburst. “Jesus Christ, Ryan, why didn’t you call me sooner? Why do things have to get this bad before you ask for help?”

“I don’t know, Wes,” she sighed. “But yelling at me isn’t going to change anything.”

He stood up and turned to look out the window. All she saw out that window was blue sky. Not a single cloud. Not a skyscraper or apartment building. It was as if they were floating above the city. Just a blue so dense and so deep it didn’t seem real.

“The father—”

“Not around.”

“You plan on telling him?”

“He is not around, Wes.”

She wasn’t about to tell her big brother that she didn’t even know Harry’s last name.
Oh God, he’d go ballistic
.

“Okay, so, no father. What is your plan?” The sunlight fell over his face, bringing out the red in his hair and tightly clipped beard, turning his eyes to amber. It was funny that she’d always been called the pretty one, had been able to make some kind of living for a while off of her looks—that stupid Lip Girl thing when she was seventeen—when Wes was the real beauty.

Half intellectual whiz kid, half well-groomed Viking berserker.

His look was popular and on Wes, extremely authentic. He’d make a killing if he wanted to.

“Ryan?”

Right
. Her plans.

“I’m keeping the baby.”

“Okay.”

She pushed herself up to sitting because she quite literally wasn’t going to take Wes’s coming lecture lying down. “I haven’t really had a chance to plan past that while vomiting my guts out.”

“Are you working?”

She plucked at the edge of the thin hospital blanket; it was beige. The color of her life these days.