I am the standard.
And I won’t be bossed around. “Jared, I put on the suit. If you think you’re going to get me to budge from this condo without an explanation, you’re sorely mistaken.”
He paces toward me, appraising me, getting in my space. I square my shoulders but he backs me up against my kitchen bar, boxing me in between his arms. I feel his breath sweep across my cheek as his voice rumbles low. “I already took your suitcase down to the car when I went back to the hotel for mine. We are getting on a plane. We are going to meet Shep in Denver, and you two are going to discuss terms and what it’s going to take to get you on the ticket. If he even chooses you.”
His lips are dangerously close to mine, but his face reads all business.
That word if scares me a little. I might actually want this. “OK,” I whisper.
He draws back. “Good.”
“But aren’t we—?”
He silences me with a glare. “One fucking minute, Grace. Give me that.”
I open and close my mouth, a thousand questions bubbling up. I grab my keys and purse from the table by the door, touch Ethan’s picture, and flick off the lights.
In ninety minutes, we’re airborne.
Chapter Fourteen
Yesterday was a test.
Today is another.
As soon as we’re seated on the plane, Jared produces the e-reader from his briefcase. “I assume you haven’t dug into this yet?”
I shake my head. It seemed pointless after our fight.
“Read.” He sets it on my lap. I open my mouth to protest and he growls, “One fucking minute, Grace.”
Passengers boarding the plane shuffle past us, and Jared’s phone rings. He turns away from me, toward the window, speaking in short, clipped sentences. I catch “Denver” and “Miami” and “it’s not going to happen again” and “none of your business.”
Jared’s tone is harsh, but his pitch wavers. He hangs up with a scowl and powers off his phone.
“Who was that?”
“The competition.”
“What do they—?”
Jared cuts me off. “It looks like we’ll have some company at the events, but you can handle it. What we do is none of their business, because until the Democratic National Convention, it’s every man for himself. We’re not friends, we’re competitors.”
Jared cuts off our conversation by opening his laptop and typing furiously. I force my eyes to the e-reader. In two hours, I absorb most of Senator Conover’s major platform positions and make notes on what I’ll want to discuss. He’s strong on foreign policy.
“Too strong,” Jared mutters during one of his brief breaks from staring at his laptop. “Voters are ultimately self-interested. They prioritize domestic issues over foreign, so the fact that Conover’s been involved in every major foreign action since Kosovo doesn’t hold as much water as what Darrow’s been able to accomplish in California.”
I nod, knowing Conover’s the underdog in every way: funding, visibility, and pure charisma.
Aaron Darrow was an immensely popular moderate Democratic governor of California. Together with his anchorwoman-turned-spokeswife, he engineered major reforms that made his second term in office a foregone conclusion.
Until he announced that he wouldn’t run again. And that he’d be running for president instead. Then a media firestorm broke loose, and Darrow’s been riding the “presumed nominee” wave ever since.
He’s still presumed—by winning thirty-eight percent of the Democratic primary delegates, he’s out in front. Conover trails by a lethal seven-point margin, winning only thirty-one percent. Boyle brings up the rear, with just eleven percent of delegates legally bound to vote for him during the convention.
That is, unless Boyle releases them. That makes Boyle a kingmaker, and to the consternation of the party, he hasn’t dropped out yet.
The numbers also don’t account for another twenty percent: superdelegates, high-ranking party faithful who can vote for whomever they choose.
“It’s anyone’s race,” Jared concludes, as we debate the various ways that superdelegates, released delegates and endorsements could help Conover pull ahead of Darrow. “It’s been forty years since there was any actual suspense at the convention. It’s good to make the old guard sweat.”
***
When we land, Jared navigates us seamlessly to Denver’s Hyatt Regency.
He flashes a panty-melting smile at the pretty clerk. “Room for Grace Garcia, please.”
“Will you be needing two keys?”
“Please,” Jared says, and I cut him a sharp look. A bit presumptuous, aren’t we?