Richard swallowed another mouthful and smiled at her, puzzled. “You have something to say, I take it.”
“Not at the moment, but I’m trying to plan for my future. I thought I’d better get a bead on what was going on in your head.”
“Ahh.”
“Tamara’s leaving you, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
M.J. swished the cognac around in her mouth, pondering the information. “Do you have a strategy in mind?”
Richard’s laughter continued for several seconds before it faded into a drawn-out sigh. “Sure. My strategy is to sign and date whatever the fuck her lawyers put in front of me.”
That managed to get a chuckle out of M.J. “Will she wait until after the reelection to file?”
Richard set the glass on his desk. He looked in her eyes, knowing he had to be straight with her about this. “Tamara will wait until after the reelection. But there’s another matter that I’m afraid may not be able to wait.”
M.J.’s entire demeanor changed in an instant. One moment she was plotting political strategy and the next she sat, her face blank and frozen. But her empty stare soon turned to an expression of horror. As usual, M.J. had already made the cognitive leap. She’d been working for Richard so long that she knew how his brain worked. And in this particular situation, he could see that she was already grasping for how to convince him to change his mind.
“She’s been gone more than forty-eight hours now, M.J.”
“No, Richard. You can’t. Absolutely not. Not before the reelection.”
“That’s well over two months away. They’ll be living in Bora Bora by then.”
M.J.’s ears turned red. She was more pissed than Richard had ever seen her.
“Please try to understand. Right now, Christina’s case is simply a custody-related abduction out of a tiny town in Maine. It is not particularly news. But the minute I go public and reveal she’s my child, the precious four-year-old daughter I never knew I had—”
“Your career is over?”
He ignored her snarky interruption. “When I go public, the faces of Evelyn and Christina McGuinness get plastered all over the Web and featured on every damn TV news channel in the nation. And, bam, we find her.”
“This is pure insanity.”
“Be realistic.” Richard rose from his leather chair and made his way to the tall windows. He rattled a bit of loose change in his trouser pockets, watching his partial reflection in the glass. He looked a bit like a ghost. How perfect. “We both know the truth will ooze out before the election, one way or another. Charlie McGuinness is angry enough to serve up my head on a platter.”
“I can handle Charlie McGuinness.”
“And if it’s not him, it could be any number of people who have knowledge about my paternity. Perhaps a court employee or even an agent assigned to the case who happens to loathe my politics. You know how nasty this life is. One anonymous tip is all it would take to cause a crap avalanche.”
“You simply can’t do it.”
“If it’s all going to fall apart anyway, I should go public sooner rather than later, proactively cut through the scandal and take responsibility. At least that way my confession might help find Christina. Some good might come out of this whole mess.”
“This is political suicide.”
He turned from the windows in time to see M.J. stand. The woman was irate.