The Phoenix Candidate(72)

“So much more than that. I wanted to know you, to be close to you, but I knew you’d never let down your guard if you met me as a consultant. So it had to be that night.” Jared’s eyes drop, tracing the line of my throat down to my breasts. Shame colors his tone. “But I also wanted to control you, if only to prove that you couldn’t control me. That you couldn’t do what Lauren did.”

“I don’t want to control you, Jared.”

“I know,” he rasps. “God, don’t I know it. Every move I’ve made to control you has utterly backfired. You’ve shown more mettle than most politicians I’ve worked with. You’re going to be a good partner for Shep.”

I lace my fingers through the hair at the back of Jared’s head and pull his lips to mine. It’s a searching kiss, drawing out regret and need. Drawing everything into the light.

“Is that it, Jared? No more secrets?”

“No.” His hips flex and my body responds on instinct, opening to him again. “How about from you?”

I snort. “I can’t imagine hiding anything after the third degree you gave me in the vetting.”

Jared bends and attacks the sensitive spot where my neck meets my shoulder. “Good. Then no more secrets, and no more talking.”

We don’t speak after that, but we’re far from silent.





Chapter Forty-Two





One night is not long enough to know him, but it’s a start.

Jared finally lets me out of the bedroom when we’ve exhausted ourselves in every possible way, and we wander downstairs for a tour of the house and to forage for dinner from his well-stocked freezer.

His refrigerator, on the other hand, is as barren as my Washington apartment’s, revealing how alike we are in our nomadic ways.

The farmhouse is more than a century old, with three cheerful bedrooms upstairs and a big, hexagonal-tiled bathroom with a claw-footed tub. Jared leaves me to soak in it while he starts our meal and I nearly pass out from the deep heat and my cumulative exhaustion.

When the water goes tepid, I dress and follow my nose downstairs to dinner. The home is sparse, clean, and modest. Most of the furniture is old, inherited from his grandmother. Hallway walls are hung with old photos of past generations of Rankins and Patricks, his grandmother’s maiden name.

I learn that his mother was a Rankin; she didn’t marry one. She worked at the local grocery store to provide for her mother and son, enduring the small-town ridicule of being an unwed mother, until she died when Jared was in college.

And so Jared became the provider. Over dinner, he tells me how he bartended to get through college and supplement his grandmother’s Social Security. A surprise scholarship propelled him through grad school, and summers were spent learning the ropes on local campaigns.

His upbringing was simple, like mine, but unlike mine, he had love. He had a sense of place, while I was moved from apartment to apartment, school to school, city to city. We went wherever my stepfather could find work, however far we had to go to escape his reputation as an unreliable employee and a drunk.

“I hated moving,” I tell Jared as we eat on the front porch at sunset. “It was hard to really invest in friends when I never knew if I’d be with them for long.”

“And now you’re a nomad again,” he observes. “Ever want to put down roots again?”

I think of my sterile condo. It’s home base, but it’s not home to me. The closest thing I have to a home and family is Trey and Mama Bea.

“Someday.”

“How about Number One Observatory Circle?”

I whip him a glance, full of humor and promise. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’d be rattling around the vice president’s house all by myself.”

“All. By. Yourself?” He stretches out the words, his grin spreading across his face.

“Of course, I might have a gentleman caller from time to time.”

“Just the one?” Jared asks, his expression more intent.

“Just the one,” I confirm. “And as often as possible.”





***





“You never told me what happened with Boyle,” I say as we close the miles back to Springfield. Back to reality, where our crazy lives wait to be lived. My suitcase is packed back up in his car, anticipating that we won’t return to the farmhouse for days at least.

Or weeks. Things could get crazy in a big damn hurry.

“Boyle backfired, the same way Schweiker did when Reagan named him as his intended running mate in seventy-six, before he’d even secured the nomination.”

I blink, barely remembering the details. Jared got a master’s degree in public policy while I went to law school. He spent years immersed in this stuff, while I’m still catching up. “But Boyle was never Conover’s running mate. Not officially.”