“Do you mean which continent, which city, or which hotel?”
“All of the above.”
“South America, obviously. It’s Wednesday, so this must be Chile. I’m in Santiago, in the restaurant of the Hilton, attempting to get coffee from people who seem no more awake than I am.”
Chile meant she was behind Walkers Ford. “What time is it?”
“Five in the morning. I need coffee. My brain feels like it was removed from my skull with a dull ladle. Disculpe, señor. ¿Me puede dar una taza de café, por favor? Gracias.”
Coffee took Freddie from high-functioning to superhuman. For not the first time, Alana wished her stomach tolerated the acid, because on her best day she didn’t process the world like Freddie did.
“How’s the conference going?”
“Fine,” Freddie said. “But next month’s conference in New Delhi still needs work. I need the research on programs to increase the literacy rate for girls in rural areas. Your replacement—”
“Denise.”
“—Does not possess your gift with academic databases. When are you coming home?”
Denise didn’t know Freddie’s brain, what she’d read, what she wouldn’t read, what interested her. “In two weeks, as we’ve discussed.”
“Just before the Senator’s banquet.”
“As we’ve discussed,” Alana repeated. “Why don’t we call him Peter?”
“Because Mother called him the Senator when we were growing up, and while we found him intimidating as children, we now find it amusing.
Practice your piano, Frederica. The Senator will want to hear your first Chopin piece. Stay out of the Senator’s way, Alana, dear,
” she said, mimicking their mother’s precise intonation. “Ah. Gracias. Eres mi salvador.”
Alana lifted the strainer from the pot of tea and waited while the last drops plunked onto the surface of the liquid. “Have you seen Toby lately?”
“I was able to squeeze in a quick visit while they played in Mexico City.”
“How’s the tour going?”
“Brilliantly. They’ve sold out every venue. Next year it’s stadiums. I’m not sure when we’ll fit in the wedding, but fit it in we will.”
Her sister met Toby Robinson at a star-studded foundation event in New York City the previous year. After a whirlwind romance that led to pictures in the society pages of the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, and the
LA Times
(coverage suitable for the socialite philanthropist stepdaughter of a former senator), and the glossy pages of
People, Hello!,
and
US Weekly
(dating tattooed, dreadlocked lead singer and songwriter for an English band rooted in the visceral music found in the world’s slums) Toby proposed onstage at Wembley Stadium as they closed out the final concert of last year’s tour. The video went viral before the final encore. The publicity for the foundation went a long way toward soothing their mother’s horror that her older daughter, a graduate of Miss Porter’s, Stanford, and Yale who had the ear of powerful people on five continents, was marrying a rock star who hadn’t finished high school.
“Have you set a date yet?”
“If only it were that easy,” Freddie said, uncharacteristically wistful. “I mentioned to Mother I’d love to have a small ceremony in his parents’ garden in Stoke-on-Trent. It’s a gorgeous garden, full of roses, enclosed by this stone wall built from rocks his ancestors took from the fields hundreds of years ago. Just us, family, a judge. Cake and champers. And the graves of the plague victims from 1666.”
“You can’t exactly uninvite the plague victims,” Alana said. “And what does Mother think of that?”
“Having lost the opportunity to barter me off to an eligible up-and-coming politician, Mother sees the wedding invitations as legal tender. The last time we talked, she’d pared her list down to six hundred and forty-three.”
“Six hundred guests?”
“On our side, Lannie. On our side alone.”
“Does Toby know six hundred people?” she asked, envisioning a balanced ceremony, twelve hundred white chairs aligned in rows, Freddie’s side crammed to overflowing, Toby’s side populated by his parents, his sisters, the other band members/wives/children, and Toby’s personal assistant.
“By a conservative estimate, he knows six
thousand
people, but only considers about twenty of them close enough to invite to our wedding.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I. Did you call me for a reason?”
“I went to the town hall meeting last night.”
“You hate politics. You also hate meetings, crowds, and potentially contentious situations. This is why you’re my research guru, and I do the meetings.”
“The library budget was on the agenda.”
“Don’t tell me they cut it. Please do not slash the last remaining hope I have for the future of our country before I have another pot of coffee.”
“Actually,” Alana said, “they asked me to come up with a proposal for updating the library. I mean, I know how much the library means to the community, but they asked
me
to do the proposal.”
“And why wouldn’t they? You are the research librarian for the Wentworth Foundation.”
“It’s not research. It’s a proposal and a presentation.”
“To all eighteen residents of Walkers Ford, South Dakota?”
Alana rolled her eyes. “Nineteen. Lisa Sturdyvent had her baby last week. Michael Christopher. Seven pounds, eleven ounces. Mother and baby both healthy.”
“Well, then. A buzzing metropolis.”
“Don’t make fun of this, Freddie. This matters here. I don’t want to mess it up.”
“I’m sorry, Lannie,” she said, her voice gentling. “What do you need?”
“I can do the research. It’s the proposal I’ve never done.”
“It’s simple. Do the research. That part you know. Then go through the research, identify the best solution, then anticipate objections, and counter those in the proposal. A good position paper is as much persuasive as it is factual. Surely you’ve read the position papers we craft after you obtain thousands of pages of data for us.”
“Of course,” Alana said, stung. “I’ve just never written one.”
“I’ll send you some of the shorter ones from the foundation’s infancy, when we weren’t getting invited to sit at the big-boy table. Oh, this is brilliant!” Freddie had picked up Toby’s slang, but stopped short of imitating his accent. “This will be good training for you. Then when you get back you won’t have any reason to object to taking on a larger role in the foundation.”
She didn’t want a larger role in the foundation. She liked the role she had. For the most part. She liked getting staffers what they needed, spending hours trawling through databases and archives, considering a problem from as many different angles as she could. She didn’t like moving on to the next problem, then the next one, constantly skimming the surface. But when she sat at her family’s table at a conference, or heard stories from people helped downstream by the changes the foundation affected, she really liked what she did.
“It’s a situation with no real world impact,” Freddie went on, by this point talking as much to herself as she was to Alana. “It’s the perfect rehearsal.”
“There’s actually quite a bit of real world impact,” Alana said.
“Of course, but not your real world,” Freddie said smoothly.
Santiago, New Delhi, or Budapest weren’t actually her real world, either, but Alana didn’t have enough tea in her to argue with a caffeinated Freddie. “It’s a key resource in the community and Chatham County. When a town this size makes a financial commitment like this one, the ramifications, the impact is enormous.”
“I understand.” Alana heard her sister’s fingernails against keys. “You should have left two months ago. You can’t let local politics delay you.”
The council couldn’t agree on a direction for the library, let alone make a personnel decision. But with the upcoming banquet and Freddie’s wedding, Alana had to leave in two weeks.
“Build strategy on research,” Freddie continued. “Base the proposal and execution phases on that research. Keep it rational, fact-based, unemotional, fiscally beneficial. Lead with the blindingly obvious. By the time you’re proposing a solution, they’re so used to nodding their heads that they just keep nodding. I’m sending you documents and the tip sheet we give interns when they’re drafting papers for us. Sent.”
Alana watched as the notification materialized on her phone. “You’ve had some of that coffee.”
“Most of the pot. Conference folk are late-nighters. If I want to get anything done, I get up early.”
“So you’re running on five hours of sleep?”
“Four. I’ll sleep on the plane tomorrow. I’m flying to Sao Paolo, and Toby’s flying down to meet me. I want to be rested for the reunion.”
Alana smiled. “Sounds like a good plan.”
“This won’t delay you leaving Walkers Ford, will it?”
“No. The mayor asked for the proposal in a couple of weeks, right before they make a decision on the new library director.”
“He’s neglecting to get buy-in from key stakeholders,” Freddie said immediately. “Won’t the new director want to develop the proposal?”
“I made that point. He said he thought the new library director would appreciate coming to a fresh start, but I’m not so—”
Freddie had moved on. “And you’ll be home for the banquet.”
“Yes, I’ll be home for the banquet.”
“Do you need a date?”
That casual tone meant that Freddie knew something Alana didn’t. “No. Why?”
“Are you bringing someone?”
“I repeat: No.
Why?
”
“Because Nancy said Mother said the Senator said David said he was bringing Laurie. You remember Laurie. She likes to name-drop senior faculty from Harvard’s government department and White House staffers she knows from her internship.”
Alana sipped her tea and tracked the gossip chain. Nancy was Mother’s assistant. Mother was Mother. The Senator was the Senator. David was Alana’s ex-boyfriend, the Senator’s latest golden boy, and Laurie was an intern, hired fresh out of the Harvard School of Government after a stint at McKinsey and Company, and already proving indispensable in ways Alana never had.
“You might want to bring someone.”
“David’s welcome to bring whomever he chooses. I’m fine going alone, as I did before David and I started dating.”
“You’re not seeing anyone there, are you?”
A song lyric popped into her brain:
I kissed a cop and I liked it . . .
She’d had all the experiences available to a graduate of a girls’ boarding school and a women’s college, so the song’s original lyrics weren’t nearly as risqué as kissing the chief of police of Walkers Ford, South Dakota. The image of Lucas Ridgeway, sprawled on her sofa sent heat flickering along her nerves. It was nine o’clock in the morning, too early for longing. Longing was for evenings, for seductions, for dinners and candles and sofas and
please God
beds.
Dating was for Chicago.
Her body fervently ignored that rule. “I’m not dating anyone here,” she replied.
“Good. No entanglements. No complications.”
“Entanglements? You’re marrying a global brand who’s on tour eight months out of the year.”
“Our lives and ambitions fit together,” Freddie said serenely. “It’s not complicated at all.”
“What about when you have children?”
“God invented nannies, tutors, and private jets for a reason.”
“You want your children to have the life we had?”
“Why not? They’ll be Wentworth-Robinsons, and if you thought being a Wentworth came with responsibilities, being a Wentworth-Robinson means global opportunities and global obligations.”
Alana turned to look out the kitchen window at the grass greening up in the backyard, the vines twining up the picket fence. Nannies and private jets . . . or a swing set. A wood one with a slide would look perfect next to the garage. Maybe a sandbox. She’d always loved the sandbox. The sandbox was a local thing. Not a global thing.
The door slapped closed on Lucas’s front porch. Suddenly aware not only of the heat simmering deep in her belly but of her robe open over her thin cotton nightgown, Alana turned to look out the screen door.
Lucas, wearing a uniform shirt, jeans, and boots, stood on his step. The early morning sunlight highlighting the planes and angles of his face only served to accentuate the lines on either side of his unsmiling mouth, the seemingly permanent furrow between his eyebrows. Despite the gentle, early morning sunlight, he slid on a pair of wraparound shades, gave her a short nod, and got into his Blazer.
Alana resumed breathing again. Two weeks. Just over two weeks to write a proposal and go back to Chicago different. It wasn’t much time, but if she played her cards right, two weeks could be an eternity of heated nights.
“I have to go. I need to send Mother yesterday’s briefing. The Senator’s on his way here. Do not get yourself ensnared in any . . . snares out there on the prairie. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” she said absently.
Lucas gave her another nod, then backed out of the driveway. Released from that intense stare, Alana rinsed out her mug. If she felt this frustrated after a night dreaming heated, unfulfilling dreams about Lucas, would the converse be true if she actually slept with him? Would she sleep well, body and mind satiated?
She intended to find out.
• • •
ALANA LIFTED ONE
shoulder to keep her tote bag and purse in place as she locked her front door. In her peripheral vision, she saw Lucas’s police Blazer parked in the driveway, but she wasn’t going to glance over at his house. The lock was tricky. She had to lift the key just so while holding the doorknob toward the frame, so locking the door required all of her attention.
Or so she told herself.
Refusing to get caught sneaking sidelong glances at Lucas’s house like a lovesick teen had nothing to do with it. Besides, nothing had happened last night. Okay, a little something happened before the town meeting, but a whole lot of nothing happened afterwards. It would have been too obvious to leave with Lucas. Walkers Ford’s citizens had welcomed her with open arms, then with casseroles and cookies and invitations to attend church. This wasn’t Chicago.