The Senator's Wife (20 page)

Dorothy would have looked equally nice wearing exactly the same outfit.

“Lord-a-mercy, what is that?” Dorothy exclaimed as Davis came lumbering into the room, his toenails clicking on the polished wood floor. Kenny, holding the dog’s leash, glanced up, but it was Lewis who answered.

“We got us a dog, Mama, for this interview. Tom’s idea, and I think it’s a good one. Voters love dogs. Tom’s come up with a catchy slogan, too, for the campaign now that we’re slugging things out toe-to-toe
with
Orde. What was that again, son?” Lewis asked Tom, frowning.

“HBO,” Tom supplied. “Honneker Beats Orde.”

“HBO,” Lewis repeated to Dorothy. “Honneker Beats Orde. It’s gonna look good on bumper stickers.”

George Orde was a former state legislator who had zoomed up the polls as Lewis had stumbled. At this
point he seemed to be the principal threat to Lewis’s continued occupation of his Senate seat.

“If we keep on doing what we’re doing, Orde shouldn’t be too hard to beat,” Tom said.

“I don’t think so either,” Lewis said.

“What’s its name?” Dorothy asked, referring to the dog.

“Jefferson Davis,” Ronnie said dryly. “Or just Davis for short.”

Upon hearing his name, Davis wagged his tail, almost upsetting a porcelain shepherdess on a polished wood side table. With a quick grab Kenny saved the expensive antique from annihilation.

“Good dog,” Lewis said, patting him while Kenny hung on to the leash with one hand and restored the figurine to its rightful place with the other.

“Senator, Mrs. Honneker, Mrs. Lewis: Miss Cambridge is here with Miss Topal and Mr. Folger from that magazine,” Selma announced from the doorway. All eyes turned in her direction. Thea walked in past her, accompanied by a pony-tailed man in a T-shirt and jeans with a camera slung over one shoulder, and a fortyish woman with short, chicly styled brown hair, bright pink lipstick, and a beige business suit. In one hand the woman carried a leather briefcase. In the other she held a half-eaten doughnut.

With a mighty woof Davis went for the doughnut. Miss Topal dropped her briefcase with a shriek. A lamp crashed. Doughnut in mouth, leash trailing, Davis bounded into the hall with Kenny, Thea, and Selma in hot pursuit.

“Take this,” Tom hissed in Ronnie’s ear, shoving something cold and moist into her hand. Ronnie
looked down at the object, first with surprise and then with revulsion. It was a small piece of ham purloined from one of the ham biscuits on the tray—what on earth?

She looked up at Tom with incomprehension. So surprised was she by this unexpected gift that she even forgot to glare.

“Davis,
here!
” Kenny yelled. The sound was close at hand, perhaps in the hall. Toenails scrabbling frantically over hard wood preceded the dog’s reappearance by mere seconds. The reporter, Miss Topal, jumped back out of the way as fleeing dog and pursuing humans barreled back into the room.

The dog checked for a moment, lifting its head as if glancing around. Its nose tested the air. Then it headed straight for Ronnie.

Eyes widening, mouth falling open, she watched it come.

“Say his name: Davis. Call him!” Tom ordered under his breath. The urgency of the whisper prompted obedience.

“Davis!” Ronnie produced the name with a squeak.

The dog bounded to a stop in front of her, wagged its tail, and started urgently licking her hand. The photographer unslung his camera.

“Smile,” Tom quietly instructed her as the camera started clicking away.

Chapter
23

“S
ON, GETTING THAT DOG OUT HERE
was a stroke of genius. Pure genius.” Chuckling, the Senator clapped Tom on the shoulder as they walked into the dining room, where Selma was putting final touches to the table.

Tom could see that the room hadn’t been changed by so much as a silver candlestick since he used to eat supper in it with his roommate’s family nearly two decades before. The wallpaper was still the same, some unbelievably expensive hand-painted Chinese import. The drapes were heavy gold brocade, tied back to frame tall multipaned windows and thick with fringe. The furniture—a table that seated ten without the addition of any leaves, china cabinet, huntboard, and silver chest—was dark, heavily carved, and antique. The very plates used to set the table looked the same. The fine white china rimmed with gold was almost translucent, it was so old. Tom remembered how, as an impecunious college student eating with his roommate’s rich and distinguished family, he had feared breaking a piece even by using his silverware too forcefully. He
had cut his meat very, very carefully and scooped up his peas as if they were loaded with nitroglycerin, just in case.

Over the ensuing years Tom had changed a lot. Sedgely did not appear to have changed at all.

The Senator added, “That should be a heck of an article. Great pictures too. Ronnie with that dog! Great!”

“I’m glad it worked out so well, Senator,” Tom said, stopping at the place Lewis indicated by a wave of his hand. He watched as His Honor walked around to his own chair at the head of the long, polished wooden table. After the
Ladies’ Home Journal
people had left, he, Kenny, and Thea had been invited to stay for a late lunch with the family, and all had accepted.

Now, finding himself directly across from Ronnie, he almost wished he had declined. Ronnie managed to look both gorgeous and sexy even in the sedate dress picked out by the personal shopper at Nordstrom’s. Ruby highlights brought out by the chandelier overhead glinted in her hair; her skin looked as creamy to the touch as he remembered it being. The subtle pink lipstick on her mouth enhanced rather than hid its fullness, just as the modest lines of her dress enhanced rather than hid her figure. With only the approved amount of makeup to add a little polish, her eyes were soft and full of secrets. She was wearing the pearls he had removed for her the day they had met and, he could have sworn—though surely so subtle a scent could not reach all the way across a table—the same enticing perfume.

She was mad at him. Whenever she glanced his way, ire crackled in the air around her as tangibly as sparks
around a sparkler on the Fourth of July. He only hoped no one else could see it.

She was looking at him now. Standing behind her chair, hands curled around its ornately carved back, her gaze met his across the table.

“HBO and Jefferson Davis,” she said under the cover of the general hubbub of everyone getting settled. “I can’t believe you get paid for thinking up things like that.”

Tom shrugged. “We’ve each got our specialties,” he said, and sat down. He wasn’t going to get into a fight with her. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week. He was going to turn the other cheek as many times as it took until her anger had burned itself out and the fire that still smoldered between them had cooled down.

After that Ronnie studiously ignored him, which Tom supposed was about as much as he could hope for under the circumstances. But the rigidity of her facial muscles and the occasional flash of her eyes warned that her anger was barely held in check. Anyone with an ounce of perception would be able to pick up on it in about two minutes flat.

Thank the Lord his tablemates did not seem to be blessed with much perception.

Selma wheeled in a serving cart laden with bowls of soup, distracting Tom’s attention. Food was a good thing to focus on, he decided, safe and without hidden undercurrents. As his bowl was set before him, he saw it was cream of tomato with a dollop of cream and a sprig of dill on the top.

Ruby red and creamy white—Ronnie’s colors.

Damn it, focus on the
food
.

It sure looked—and smelled—good. And the smell
was thankfully strong enough, and spicy enough, to overpower any wandering hint of a subtle, tantalizing perfume.

The soup
was
good. Tom concentrated on eating it.

“So, having used the poor dog as a political prop for all of two hours, I understand we’re supposed to send him back to the pound,” Ronnie said acidly, spoon in hand. She addressed the remark to the Senator; her glance flashed over Tom for no more than a second or two, but he felt its impact like a physical blow. “Don’t you think that seems a little cruel?”

The rancor in her voice was meant for him alone. Tom knew it as well as if she’d shouted it aloud. He only hoped no one else realized it. A quick, hooded glance around the table reassured him. If his tablemates had the least suspicion that Ronnie was taking potshots at him, they were disguising it well. In fact they deserved Academy Awards.

None of them was that good at acting. Tom relaxed a little.

“Ronnie, honey, Sedgely’s a big place. We can keep him if you want. How much trouble could one dog be?” The Senator’s tone was placating, his smile at his young wife full of charm, though it seemed to soften her not at all. “It’ll be fun for you, maybe, to have a pet.”

Starting on his salad—it was as tasty as the soup—Tom wondered, as he had more often than was good for him lately, about the nature of the relationship between the Senator and his wife. Almost involuntarily he glanced from one to the other. Ronnie seemed cool to her husband, while he seemed almost juvenile in his eagerness to please her, which was perfectly understandable
given recent events, Tom told himself. The Senator, after all, had been discovered cheating on his wife. Of course she was cool to him, and he wanted to make it up to her.

Had her come-on to him been part of a campaign to punish His Honor for straying?

Tom didn’t like the idea of that. He frowned across the table at Ronnie without even realizing what he was doing until she returned his glare measure for measure.

The salad—no, it was an open-faced grilled chicken sandwich now—sure was good.

Ronnie and the Senator didn’t act like lovers, though, not even lovers in the throes of a serious marital crisis. When they were together, he didn’t sense any—heat.

From personal experience he knew that Ronnie was capable of generating considerable heat.

As he had too many times since meeting her, Tom caught himself wondering how His Honor and his wife were together in bed. An old man like the Senator with a beautiful, sexy young wife like Ronnie was bound to want to get it on—

His hand tightened on the knife he was using to cut into his sandwich. It made a squeaking noise against the plate.

Immediately Tom sought to redirect his thoughts.

“I don’t really like dogs underfoot,” Dorothy said placidly, and Tom realized they must have been discussing the pros and cons of Jefferson Davis as a pet for some time. “They shed.”

“I can take the dog home with me if you want,” he said to Dorothy, contributing to the conversation as if
he had faithfully followed every word. “I’ll take him to my mother’s house. There’s room there for a big dog.”

His gaze unintentionally crossed Ronnie’s, and held. If her attitude toward the Senator was cool, Tom found himself thinking, it was the opposite when it came to himself. Temper still snapped from her eyes.
Careful
, he willed her silently. It wouldn’t do either of them any good for His Honor or anyone else to suspect that their relationship was or had ever been anything other than strictly business.

“Your mother’s house.” Ronnie’s words were drawn out, almost drawled, which for a girl from Boston was quite a feat. Tom almost smiled. The antagonism in her gaze softened slightly, and he could see that she was remembering, as he was, the afternoon they had spent at the farm. That afternoon they had been friends.

“That’s a good idea,” Kenny said jovially. “Plenty of room to run there. It’s a farm.”

The last was clearly offered as an explanation to those who might not know.

“I hate to impose like that on your mother.” Ronnie’s gaze met his again, and suddenly the enmity was back in her eyes in full force. Turning her attention to the Senator, she smiled with melting sweetness. “It’s nice of you to say we can keep him, Lewis. I think I
would
like a dog.”

The look she fixed on His Honor was positively sugar-coated. For a moment Tom was taken aback; only then did he realize that Ronnie had never before been much more than civil to the Senator in his presence.

They were husband and wife. Sometime, somewhere,
surely the two of them had to generate some heat.

The Senator had been an old man when Tom was in college. Or at least at that time Tom had considered him an old man. When he had thought of him at all, it had been as his roommate’s rich and influential father; at one time he’d even considered him as a potential father-in-law. Certainly not by any stretch of the imagination had he ever pictured Lewis Honneker as the husband of a girl he himself wanted to take to bed.

Impossible to picture Ronnie making love with His Honor, as he and Marsden and the girls had referred to the Senator all those years ago. Tom didn’t want to even try.

Though he couldn’t seem to help it.

What the Senator and his wife did, or didn’t do, in bed was none of his damned business
.

The Senator returned Ronnie’s smile with delight. Tom recognized that expression: It was the hopeful one of a man trying to dig his way out of the doghouse. He recognized something else, too: the melting look Ronnie had sent her husband had really been intended as a shot fired directly at
him
.

Tom realized with a blinding flash of insight that the ingredients for a disaster of major proportions were in place. If he didn’t take himself out of Ronnie’s orbit, sooner or later the situation was going to blow up in his face.

He wanted her too badly. And, God help him, he was turned on to the back teeth by the certain knowledge that she wanted him.

“Oh, dear, do you really want to keep that dog,
Ronnie?” Dorothy was saying doubtfully. “Well, I suppose we can give it a try.”

“He’s a real nice dog,” Kenny said. “He’ll make you a good pet.”

“He doesn’t seem very well trained,” Thea put in.

“We’ll send him to doggie obedience school.” Ronnie smiled, switching her attention to Kenny. “You could arrange something like that, couldn’t you, Kenny? You seem to be so efficient at getting things done.”