The Marriage Agenda(5)

For a man who would barely look at her, he'd sure pulled out all the stops.

She helped herself to a little of everything and watched him as she ate,  naked as a featherless jaybird but for the sheet. Her dress, she noted,  lay ruined in a ball against the baseboard where he'd flung it. Goose  bumps singed her flesh at the memory.

"Are you cold?"

Startled, she jumped, sending a forkful of mascarpone plunging to her  chest. When she looked at him, his gaze was pegged decidedly south of  her eyes, but then he cleared his throat and turned away.

Not awkward at all. She swiped the mess with a finger and wiped it on one of the cloth napkins beside the breakfast tray.

"I thought you might like some fresh clothing," he said. "So I had something delivered."

"Thank you." She tried to infuse some enthusiasm in the words, but it  didn't work. This dynamic was new to her. Knox, when he wasn't tearing  through her clothes with his teeth or feeding her lame breakup lines,  was a pretty happy, playful guy. This version left her feeling as if  she'd just had a one-night stand with a brooding stranger, and she'd  seen enough made-for-TV movies to know he'd cued her exit with that  whole no-eye-contact thing. What was breakfast-a white flag to abate any  hard feelings? Damn him.

Wordlessly, she untangled the king-size sheet they'd somehow twisted  into a knot and, using it as a robe, headed for the bathroom. Three  strides into her journey, Knox was in front of her. "What?" she asked.         

     



 

Her hard tone didn't seem to faze him. He reached for her with both  hands, threading her hair and pulling her mouth to his in a tender kiss  that turned her knees to mush. "We'll talk when you're dressed," he  said.

There it was. We need to talk. When were those words ever a harbinger of  good fortune? As it was, they took the goo right out of the smooch and  ruined any harbored hopes of relaxing in the shower. She dropped the  sheet in retaliation and headed for the bathroom au natural, feeling his  eyes on her the whole way.

Thirty minutes later, she'd lathered her way through an entire  hotel-size bottle of almond-milk soap and slipped into a pretty blue  sundress. He had replaced her ruined underwear-a tidbit the gossip  columnists would have for breakfast if the courier talked-and even  offered her a comfortable pair of sandals. Upon discovery of the latter,  her earlier grievance faded. Any man who thought to rescue her from  those god-awful high heels could be forgiven just about anything.

She emerged from the bathroom feeling like a new woman.

Knox looked up from his seat at the table and snapped shut his laptop. "How's the dress?"

She sat across from him, her mood considerably lightened when she saw the stark-raving approval in his eyes. "It's fantastic."

"I tend to agree," he said.

Doubts rallied. In spite of the amazing sex, she'd managed to keep her  brain ahead of her emotions. She faced him now bleakly dismissive-not  because he didn't thoroughly rock her world, but because her  expectations were pegged at zero. The fact he hadn't had a go-to condom  in his possession lent credence to the notion he hadn't intended to take  her to bed, which left her wondering what he could possibly want from  her.

And whether she'd care, whatever it was.

Pride kept her hackles raised, but the glass wall she'd built around her  heart had turned to crumbling sand. Old feelings rushed the fragile  barrier, sweeping away more of that well-intentioned indifference with  every ebb of her emotional tide. But she wasn't going to need him this  time. He'd wrecked her naïveté once.

She was stronger for it.

Suddenly wary, she crossed her arms over her chest. "What do you want?"

He raised an eyebrow but didn't mince words. "You've heard about my father's latest scandal."

It wasn't a question. Knox's father, Rex Hamilton, had been a United  States senator for nearly twenty years. Though his terms were not  without controversy, most of the trouble associated with his name was of  a personal nature. Rumors flew, as they often did, but Rex had been  discrete enough to ensure they remained unsubstantiated. He'd sent the  gossip columnists into a tizzy a time or two, but without foundation,  the gossip didn't directly affect his career. At least not until  recently, when he'd been strongly urged to step down after admitting to  an affair with a well-respected cabinet member's wife. Chloe wouldn't  have guessed Rex to be the type to surrender, but the fallout after the  latest tryst had made national headlines, planting him in the middle of a  semi-permanent three-ring circus and drawing paparazzi and political  ire from every direction.

When he'd given up his seat, he'd claimed it was for a love of politics  and country-that in his absence, the business of governing could be  accomplished without distraction-but Chloe didn't necessarily buy it.  Politicians were caught in scandals all the time, and Rex had a pristine  record in the political arena. His extramarital affairs may have been a  distraction, but he was a man for the people, and his constituents by  and large loved him for it-some clearly more than others. What made this  affair different from the rest? It was possible Knox's mother had put  her foot down-preferably in a very personal spot-but Katherine Hamilton  was a gracious, classy woman who'd kept herself well above the fray.

Chloe suspected there was more to the story, but with the news of Rex's  departure from the Senate breaking less than forty-eight hours before  her date with Knox, she hadn't had time to dig. Her hopes weren't  high-gaining access to the upper echelon of Washington was a pipe dream  for a lowly print reporter, such as herself. But breaking a big  political scandal would cement her job at the Washington Tribune.

And she'd just reunited with one hell of a connection.

Even better, she knew just the story to break … if she could prove true her suspicions about Rex Hamilton.

"What about Rex?" she asked.

"I want his seat," Knox said.

She pulled her damp hair over her shoulder, feigning indifference  despite the interest tearing through her. "I'm a reporter, not a fairy  godmother."         

     



 

"Actually, you're amazing."

"Skip it, Knox. I don't need the ego boost. Why am I here?"

"Remember the night we met?"

Did she ever. It was at a dive bar two hours out of the beltway. He'd  bought her a daiquiri that night, too, and they had slow danced to every  song, even the fast ones. She hadn't realized his true identity as a  member of the Hamilton political dynasty until a couple of days later  when she'd seen his photo splashed on the front page of the newspaper  next to some charity headline event. She'd felt like an idiot for not  having recognized him, but he'd given her only his middle name, and  Chloe wasn't one to follow the gossip rags. Besides, Knox Hamilton  didn't wear five o'clock shadows, baseball hats, or jeans and faded tees  rescued from the eighties as he had that night. And the ruckus that  tended to follow him had been absent-he'd found the perfect disguise  playing a nobody in a bar. By the time she'd reconciled the face on the  front page with the man she knew, she'd spent a whole night in his arms,  whispering sweet somethings while they made plans to see one another  again. What had happened between them had come fast and hard, every  moment filled with a quiet intimacy, his every touch one of fulfilling  tenderness. There had been no pretensions between them that night, and  in the months of under-the-radar dating that had followed, there never  were.

"I do remember that night," she said. "Vaguely." Had the words trembled  on her lips? She'd spent a lot of time trying to forget the connection  they'd once shared. Past tense. That connection was beyond moot after  the way he'd left her-or it should have been. From the moment she'd laid  eyes on him in Off the Record, she'd known that route of denial was  over.

He grinned. "I think it's the first time I'd ever escaped recognition by a reporter."

"Says the man in disguise," she said, matching his smile. Then the  weight of her own words sank in, and she realized what had been missing  all along. "I never knew the real you, did I?"

He held her gaze, the moment lasting a beat too long. "Actually, Chloe,  you're probably the only person who has ever known the real me. Which is  why you're here."

His words sent delectable little shivers tiptoeing across her skin. She  tried to fend them off, but tendrils of that old connection still  haunted her. "Get to the point."

"I promised you an explanation as to why I left."

"Yes, you did."

"This life," he said, "isn't one I'd wish on any woman."

She rolled her eyes. "Fame … fortune … it would be brutal, yes."

The theatrics didn't earn a response.

"You're thinking of your father."

"His running around has destroyed my mother. She's outwardly  strong-hell, most people think she's a saint-but it's killing her  inside. This last time was just too public. Too much."