Jared (River Pack Wolves 3)(13)

That was what Grace loved about her work—making real things happen for real people. This kind of change, if it went through, could affect so many people’s lives every day. During the photo-op itself, Grace’s father was his usual stately self, delivering Nolan’s speech as if the words had naturally come to him on the spot. Grace may not agree with her father about his new shifter legislation, but there was no denying he was an accomplished politician who could make things happen. After the photo-op, he had returned home, while she went back to the office to tie up loose ends and plan the calendar for the next day. Things would just get more frenetic the closer they got to the campaign launch.

The sun was sinking in the West, and its rosy hue turned the soaring pine trees surrounding her home into a mystical forest. As she pulled into the long winding driveway, she couldn’t help thinking about the sexy shifter she met last night—and wondering if he would be returning tonight.

God, she hoped so.

Whenever she thought of him, it was an instant fully-body turn on. She’d never felt anything like it, even with smart and sexy Nolan-the-speechwriter. She couldn’t tell if she was just desperate for sexual release or if the intense attraction was simply a natural response to the devastating sexiness of the man. Were all shifters that way? Or was it just him?

She parked her car in the vast garage where her father kept his showpiece vehicles. Her Fiat was plain-looking next to all the Jaguars, like a poor cousin who had come to visit, but she didn’t mind. Sometimes she felt like the one normalizing force in her father’s life—the thing that connected him to the real world where people didn’t live in mansions and drive fancy imports. Even though, truthfully, she did both of those things, too.

She strolled toward the front of the house and gave a smile to Richard, one of her father’s private security guards. Security was a constant presence around the estate, ever since she was a kid and her father was first elected to the Senate. To her knowledge, there hadn’t ever been a real threat to their safety, but her father had always said the price of being a public figure was the loss of a certain amount of privacy. The guards were always professional and practically invisible most of the time. She didn’t give them much thought, other than to politely acknowledge their presence. To do otherwise—to completely ignore them, as her father did—always felt a little wrong to her. They rotated a lot, so it wasn’t like she got to know them personally, but they were still human beings, doing their job—and doing it well, as far she could tell.

“Good evening, Ms. Krepky,” Richard said. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, and he made her feel more secure just having him around.

She grinned. “All quiet on the Western front?”

“Everything’s secure,” he replied with a small smile. “I’ll leave it to you to decide the rest, Ma’am. Your father requested that you visit him in his office when you arrive.”

She frowned, but she knew better than to ask for more details, and just strode through the door Richard held open for her. The wide entryway was empty, not that she expected to see anyone. The house was lightly staffed these days, with just a housekeeper and cook as well as a gardener who only came on the weekends. Her heels clacked on the marble flooring, and she smoothed back her wayward hair as she wound through the halls to her father’s office.

One of Grace’s fondest memories was brushing her mother’s long hair at night, pretending she was Rapunzel and Grace was rescuing her from the castle by twisting it into a long braid. When the cancer struck, the first thing to go was her mother’s gorgeous brown locks. Grace felt like her world was shattering with each clump she found abandoned on the floor. The chemo treatments were useless, and the cancer took her mother quickly. That was ten years ago. At the time, Grace didn’t know if she would survive. But ever since, Grace had grown her hair out, long and straight and all the way to her waist, just like her mother’s, with only the occasional trim to keep it neat.

It reminded Grace of her mother every day, but it annoyed her father to no end. He had ideas about the proper, professional length of a woman’s hair, and Grace pretty much blew that out of the water. She tried to keep it under control in his presence, so she bound it up with a small band that she kept in her pocket just for that purpose. She was an expert by now, and in just a few seconds, it was restrained in a knot that tucked neatly at the nape of her neck.

She checked herself in the mirror outside her father’s office, and it looked decent enough.

She knocked on the thick wood-carved door, then entered without waiting for a response. Her forward momentum came to a screeching halt, hand frozen on the doorknob when she saw who was inside.