DC Affairs (4 page)

Who the hell was this chick kidding? She was someone I should
aspire
to be, and at
least
nine years older than me. She wasn’t that far off from forty and I was a year into the halfway point to thirty. How self-deluded was she?

“Okay. Thanks, Kylie. Enjoy your weekend.”

“You too.” I ended the phone call and stood hurriedly despite my headache from hell.

Andrea engrossed herself in cleaning up as “Points of Authority/99 Problems” blasted from the Bose system.

“I got the job!” I exclaimed as soon as we were within arms’ length.

My best friend turned around. “No shit! Oh. My. God. Congrats, babe.” She embraced me with enthusiasm. “We have to celebrate!”

I smiled and laughed at the same time. “I can’t believe it!”

“I can. You’re going to go far, baby girl. I’m so proud of you.” I barely heard her over Chester Bennington’s screaming but we hugged again.

This was a new chapter in my young life and I didn’t know whether I should have been happy or terrified. I happened to be both at the thought of seeing Peter again.

Chapter Four

Peter

“H
ow’s Washington been treating you?”

Peter stole a glance from his wife, Elizabeth, and realized she was still one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. They’d been married for the past thirteen years and had two children. Their twins, Anna and Andrew, were ten years old.

She’d had such a difficult pregnancy and the twins were such a handful, they both agreed it best she undergo a tubal ligation. That’d occurred nine years ago. She was a tireless advocate of women’s rights and constantly held fundraisers on the behalf of women’s health. Though she’d come from a family similar to Peter’s own, she was pro-choice and also believed in gay civil rights and almost every other progressive cause there was to be fought.

In fact, there was nothing wrong with her except for his lack of love for her. He still loved her—how could he not when she was the mother of his children? However, he wasn’t in love with her any longer.

“It’s been treating me just fine, darling.” He smiled in her direction. “Am I missing anything in Annapolis?”

Her blue-green eyes sparkled with merriment. “Not really. Politics is politics regardless. Our family has been through a lot, what with the Mayoral race and then Governor. I’m anxious for this all finally to be over and done with.”

Peter stood from the hotel suite bed they shared and walked over to the patio doors. He wore a pair of boxer-briefs and nothing else.

“What does that mean exactly, Liz?”

She padded toward him and leaned her head against his back. “You know what I mean, Pete. I hope you win but there’s a good chance the Democrat party might not even pick you to represent the people in the twenty sixteen Presidential election. If that happens then I hope you finish out your term as Governor and maybe write your memoirs but…allow us all to rest. Surely you must understand how taxing this is on your children…and on me too.”

He turned his head though he couldn’t see his wife’s face. “What exactly do you want me to do? This has been a life long dream for my family
and
me—”

“Yes,
your
family, but what about the children and me, Pete? We’re your
immediate
family, not your parents.” Elizabeth touched his shoulders lightly with gentle hands. “To be honest, it’s a nightmare for me. I’m okay in Maryland and I love it there. This is not my dream. I don’t want the children subjected to Secret Servicemen and I’m not ready to not be able to go anywhere without protection. It’s scary and frankly, I don’t think you’ve thought this through very much.”

Peter turned around to face his wife. Her chestnut hair, short and sleek against her face, reminded him of a younger, attractive Anna Wintour. She wore a slinky scarlet negligee, which showed off her gorgeous figure, still lean and in shape despite the birth of twins.

“I have thought about it and I thought it’s what you wanted too. Can you honestly tell me how our life changes from the way it is now?”

“Well, for one, when I accompany my parents to our country home in the south of France every summer, no one knows who I am. This won’t
be
the case if I’m the First Lady of the United States. Do you think the First Husband is allowed to go anywhere on
his
own?”

“No…but it’s something you learn to deal with, sweetheart.” He brought his hands to her cheeks and kissed her gently on the mouth. “I wouldn’t do anything to put our family in jeopardy. If you don’t want me to run for President, please say so now. It will save me a lot of humiliation farther down the line.”

Peter instantly wished he could take the words back. The last sentences he wanted to hear leave Elizabeth’s mouth were pleas for him to back out. He’d come so far and even if his wife wasn’t completely on board, she couldn’t do that to him. It would be anathema to the plan he’d cultivated so carefully in his life.

He wanted to go all the way regardless whether he ultimately lost the election or not. At least he could say he tried. His ambition truly was one of the few parts of his life he explicitly fell in love with wholeheartedly. How could he not when he’d grown up in a household where failure wasn’t an option and his parents always stressed for him to be the best at what he did. That included every government office he’d ever pursued during his career.

Elizabeth folded her arms against her breasts. Her forehead creased slightly as her patrician features pinched in anger. She would never raise her voice but her face was more expressive to her moods than any tone she could ever use.

“I’m not going to do that, Pete. I can see the look of trepidation in your face right now. You’re terrified I’m going to dash your hopes when our family should be the only important part of our lives. Your children should always come before your ambition. Didn’t we both agree to that? If you’re not willing to sacrifice for them then…what are you willing to sacrifice for? If you dare say the good of this nation, I’ll bash your head in with a paperweight.”

Peter stepped back instinctively.

Elizabeth had never been violent but he’d never seen her as pissed off as she was now. This was a slight unfortunate turn of events.

His cell phone rang and his wife turned toward the bed. “Don’t you dare answer that!”

“Why don’t you answer it instead,” he offered in a low voice.

She turned her back on him and quickly snatched up the phone. “Hello? Mrs. Peter Coburn speaking.”

He watched her face change from pissed off to slightly annoyed as she listened to the caller.

“Thank you, Kylie, I’ll be sure to let my husband know.” Elizabeth ended the call and tossed his phone on the bed. “Your campaign manager wanted me to inform you Sigourney Stewart has been called and notified of her new position in your campaign.”

“Thanks,” he replied before he made several quick strides to the bar and fixed himself a straight whiskey.

“You see? How are you supposed to throw in the towel when you’re hiring additional aides and what not? All those people would be out of a job and I would inadvertently contribute to the nation’s unemployment rate. You’re such a shit sometimes, you know that?”

Peter swigged from his whiskey. “Does it matter? Everyone I’m hiring is highly educated. Ms. Stewart graduated from Georgetown with a Law degree and attended Harvard for her undergraduate degree. If I hadn’t hired her, she’d take the bar exam, Liz.”

“Mmm, you know a lot about this young woman, don’t you? Does your knowledge extend beyond her in a less than professional sense? You promised me after we moved to Annapolis you would leave all that shit behind in Baltimore.”

Fuck, Liz was still was upset. She rarely ever cursed for fear it made her seem uncultured and crass.

He finished his drink and did a mental count from one to ten. “I can assure you there will be no impropriety between my new campaign aide and I.”

Peter faced his wife, and she still looked unconvinced with the smirk she wore on her face. “Oh, really? Well, be sure to try to keep that promise, Pete. It would be…highly unfortunate if you proved yourself to be nothing more than another George Riley clone. Then again, we often dislike the people who most remind us of ourselves. You would be wise to remember that.”

“Yes, darling.”

He watched her walk into the bathroom and close the door behind herself with a soft click. This evening had to get better. Hopefully the AIDS Fundraiser wouldn’t be too much of a bore.

K
ylie turned to him with a smile on her face.

She looked beautiful and elegant in a little black cocktail dress and matching sky-high designer heels. Her hair, swept up into an elaborate chignon, complimented her subdued makeup with the exception of the bright red lipstick she wore.

She wasn’t a natural at small talk and therefore, listened attentively as Peter described the incident that had transpired between him and his wife.

“What do you think I should do?”

Kylie glanced into his gray eyes and smiled brightly. “Well, we’ve come too far to back out now but if you do plan to work with this…woman, you need to keep your libido under control. It wouldn’t help any of us if you were to allow a few moments of pleasure to trump everything you’ve worked so hard for.”

“Yeah, I know.” He swigged from an expensive whisky on the rocks and sighed. “Liz completely took me by surprise this evening. If I knew she’d felt this way, why have we come all this way?”

His campaign manager glanced at him with cold green eyes. “I speak now as your friend and confidante. I don’t think she knew what you planned. She was okay with being a mayor’s wife and then the governor’s wife but she isn’t okay with being the First Lady. That is something you’re going to have to come to terms with. It’s the only way.”

Peter’s steel-gray eyes danced around the elegant crowd. Most of the people in the room were at least his parents’ age if not older. He felt positively young though Generation X politicians were slowly making headway.

“Listen,” he began in a quiet voice. “I have enough to deal with. Everyone is going to grill me about my age as it is. I’m one of the youngest mayors and governors in modern history and although I’m over thirty-five, it is virtually unheard of for a candidate to run for the office of President before the age of forty. Hell, Nyongo-Rice is still quite young and at fifty, she’s only six years younger than my mother. There’s a good chance I won’t make it anyway but I still want to try.”

Kylie smiled in his direction though it never reached her pale green eyes. “Then you need to explain that to your wife, not me. Chances are she may or may not ever be First Lady but the probability of it happening in the next two years is doubtful. If another Democrat wins then that puts you out of the running until twenty-twenty-four unless something life changing happens between twenty sixteen and twenty-twenty. As it is, you have pointed out the obvious. You will
only
be thirty-nine were you to win the Democrat ticket and run for President a year and a half from now.”

He shook his head. “I need a cigarette—”

“I thought you told me you quit.”

“Get off my back, Kylie. You’re just as bad as my wife.”

Peter walked off and joined a handful of senators, representatives and various other professional law-makers on an elaborate set up in one of the White House gardens. He lit a Marlboro, pacing back and forth as he dragged on his cigarette.

He wasn’t a fool. His life had always been relatively easy when compared to ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world but for once he wondered if he should have questioned his parents’ decision. Maybe Elizabeth wasn’t the woman for him. How the hell did he get out of his marriage without costing himself the whole election, his dignity and pride?

The more he thought about it, the more his brain seemed to go around in circles. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t know what to do and didn’t have a clue how to go about changing anything in his life.