In Bed With the Opposition (2 page)

So he
was
asking her out on a date. And dates were something Grace was decidedly bad at. She always obsessed over what to order and how far she’d have to walk in her high heels, and inevitably made a bad choice about both by the end of the night. “I’m sorry. My calendar is booked solid until after the election.”

He laughed, and it wasn’t even his television laugh. It was that charming know-it-all amusement that used to make her feel so warm inside. “The election is more than a year away. So where are we going?”

His insistence made her head spin. “I didn’t say yes.”

“No, Grace, I mean, where are we going
right now
?”

She looked up abruptly, totally disoriented. She’d intended to get the senator a drink from the coolers in the grass. Somehow—perhaps in her desperation to flee—Grace had led him right past the coolers and into the service parking lot. Now she found herself trapped between Ethan and the hood of a dirty catering truck she dared not lean against lest she ruin her skirt.

Standing this close to him was a rush, but she reminded herself that it was the rush of danger she felt.

“Grace, just let me take you out to dinner.”

Just let him
. Oh, the things she’d
just let him
do. For two wild months during which she could only excuse her behavior as stress-induced delirium, she’d behaved like an oversexed nymphomaniac every time they got together. But Grace was wiser now, and it didn’t matter how telegenic, talented, or impossibly tempting he was. Grace had plans for her life, and she wasn’t going to let Ethan Castle mess them up again. “I’m sorry. I don’t have time.”

It was a complete blow-off. Any normal guy would have taken the cue. But Ethan Castle wasn’t normal. Maddeningly, he moved in closer. “It’s just dinner, Grace. Even in an election year, you have to eat.”

“I swipe stale cookies off conference tables at Elks Lodges while the senator campaigns…”

“Do I need to join the Elks Lodge so we can talk over stale Oreos and flat soda?”

“Now there’s a glamorous offer,” Grace said, though the idea secretly pleased her.

“I don’t need glamour,” Ethan said, leaning
way
too close. “I get by on pure animal magnetism.”

Yes. Yes, he did. But Grace couldn’t let him get away with that ridiculous line, so she rolled her eyes. “Sorry, I’m busy.”

“Make time for me.” He said it with the arrogance of a man used to getting his way. He was so damned sure of himself.

And that flustered Grace.

She waved her hands to keep him at bay. “Look, the only opening in my schedule is a two-hour window next Sunday between ten and noon during which my big excitement will be a trip to the EZ-Clean Laundromat.”

“Great! It’s a date.”

With that, Ethan Castle adjusted his backpack and walked away.

Wait, what?

Grace called after him. “That wasn’t an invitation!”

Ethan put his hand to his ear and pretended he couldn’t hear her. “See you Sunday!”

Grace stood in the parking lot wondering how that had just happened. She felt as if she’d been in some kind of drive-by accident, left dented by the side of the road. This unexpected reunion with Ethan had completely unsettled her.

And Grace really preferred to be settled.

There’s
no way
he would actually turn up at her laundry facility, right? Since law school, Grace had been scrupulous about her privacy, so she was certain Ethan didn’t have the faintest idea where she lived. Besides, Ethan was a busy guy. He was too important to spend time with a mere special assistant. His attention had been as flattering as it was distressing, but fortunately, she’d probably just seen the last of Ethan Castle.

Turning back toward the picnic tables, she noticed people clustering on the lawn. Something wasn’t right. Taking a few steps, she heard the band cut off abruptly. That’s when someone shouted, “Quick, call an ambulance! Senator Halloway has collapsed!”

Chapter Two

Grace dropped her blazer, kicked her heels off, and raced to where Senator Halloway lay crumpled. He wasn’t moving.
Dear God
, he wasn’t moving!

Heedless of grass stains, Grace went to her knees and checked for his pulse. She felt one, but he was breathing shallowly, so she loosened his tie, then wrapped her arms around him both to comfort him and to shield him from photographers.

Grace’s heart leaped into her throat. Tears pricked at her eyes. And just as she thought the old man would die in her arms, the senator began to murmur. Red-faced and confused, he looked up into the heavens. Grace followed his gaze to some of the balloon animals that swayed in the breeze.

“Gracie?”

Her gaze snapped back to him. “I’m here, Senator.”

“Don’t leave me,” he said, shaking in mild delirium.

“I’d never leave you, Senator. You know that.”

Thirty minutes later, the old man was back on his feet, even more cantankerous than before, refusing to let the EMTs help him. He insisted that he wouldn’t go anywhere unless it was in the back of his own car, behind tinted glass windows.

If he weren’t a United States senator, Grace probably could have persuaded the EMTs to
force
him into the ambulance, but nobody in the state would gainsay Kip Halloway.

Retrieving her things, Grace crawled into the backseat of the car beside him, her emotions swinging between fear and fury. “Go straight to the hospital,” she told the senator’s driver.

“Don’t you do it,” Senator Halloway threatened the man at the wheel. “I want to go home.”

“Senator, you
collapsed
!”

“Bahh, it’s nothing. Just a little heat exhaustion. Besides, it gave us an excuse to get out of there. You know how I like to make a dramatic exit.”

He could make light of it, but Grace couldn’t. Senator Halloway wasn’t a healthy man. She should’ve been watching him like a hawk. She should’ve been getting him something to drink, but instead, she’d been fawning over Ethan Castle.

Grace stared out the window with guilt twisting in her gut. She shouldn’t have left the senator’s side. It was her job to look after him, and even if it weren’t, Senator Halloway was more than a boss to her. In her purse, Grace kept a list of personal heroes. From Susan B. Anthony to Margaret Thatcher, she took inspiration from many women. But when it came to men, Grace had only one hero: her boss. He wasn’t just a living political legend—he was also the only man she’d ever really been able to depend on. She loved the old bastard and she was terrified to lose him. And she
could
have lost him today.

Grace took a deep breath and braced herself. “Please don’t run for office again.”

The old man’s expression soured. “Not you, too, Gracie Girl! And here I thought you’d be chomping at the bit for a chance to prove yourself in a national campaign.”

Gracie Girl
. She didn’t mind the pet name because he’d called her that since she was a child. Besides, he was five decades her senior and she loved him as if he were her own grandfather. So Grace screwed up her courage. “I’m more interested in policy than politics, you know that. I’m not sure campaigning is the kind of career I’m looking for. But even if it was, I wouldn’t want to do it at your expense. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. The voters are in an ugly mood…”

The senator lifted one leathery, age-spotted hand to straighten his tie. “Young lady, I’ve been running for office since before you were born. I’ve never lost an election. Not one.”

“What does the family think?” Grace asked.

The senator grumbled. “My family thinks I ought to retire. Everyone but Blain. At least my grandson still believes in me.”

He looked wounded, as if she were abandoning him, and this, so soon after he keeled over on the grass. Oh, he could play her like a fiddle! Unfortunately, knowing that didn’t make it any easier. “I believe in you, too, sir. I do. I’m just worried about you.”

Grace knew she was treading a fine line. There was no polite way to tell someone that they were too old for the job. But after today, maybe it needed to be said. In his prime, Kip Halloway had memorized the Constitution nearly word for word. Now he couldn’t remember where he left his day planner. Once upon a time, Kip Halloway had been known for eloquence and brevity, but now his floor speeches rambled. He used to have a gift for remembering everyone he met, but just last week, Grace spent the better part of an afternoon begging the folks at
The Daily Show
not to run a clip of her boss forgetting the president’s name.

He’d quipped, “There have been twenty presidents in my lifetime and let’s face it, not all of them are that memorable.”

It was funny stuff, but the job was killing the old man, and that was to say nothing of what it was doing to Grace. Her mornings started at 5:00 a.m. when she rushed out the door of her Maryland apartment in an effort to beat rush-hour traffic. She usually didn’t get back until way after dark, and she always brought work home with her because her boss was such a handful that she couldn’t get everything done during the day. Just the thought of the work she’d missed today made her loll her head back on the seat in exhaustion.

The senator eyed her shrewdly. “You know, Grace, I don’t care what my private nurse says. I’m healthy as a horse. You’re the one falling asleep in the car, and you’re just a gal of twenty-eight.”

“The politically correct term is
woman
, not
gal
.” It was a losing battle, but she had to try. “Besides, they say really
old
men need less sleep than everybody else.”

Kip Halloway guffawed.

She’d known he would put up with her lip. Ever since he’d hired her mother, Senator Halloway had treated Grace like family. He’d thought she was gifted and sent her to a special school where she’d been able to skip the seventh grade entirely. He’d helped her pay for college, footed the bill for her first year of law school, and when she’d expressed an interest in politics, he’d given her a relatively important position at a very young age.

In short, he’d done more for her than anyone else in her whole life. She
owed
him the truth. “Sir, it’s time for you to retire.”

His shoulders slumped. His blue eyes were already slightly cloudy with age, and now they clouded with emotion too. “Who would take my place?”

“Nobody can ever take your place, Senator, but maybe someone can do a decent job…”

He sighed. “What would I do if I retired, Grace? Go fishing and write my memoirs? More importantly, what would
you
do? You wouldn’t have the first notion of what to do with yourself.”

Was he actually considering it? Grace was momentarily dizzied with the possibilities. “I thought…I thought I might go back to law school…”

“So you just want to be a lazy bum, is that it?” he teased her. “You never worked as hard in law school as you do now.”

Well, that was the truth.

“I’d get some sleep. Go out with friends.” Remembering Ethan Castle’s proposal, she added, “Maybe I’d go on a date.”

“With Blain?”

Grace’s stuttering relationship with the senator’s grandson was an open secret and her continuing crush was beginning to be a joke, so Grace tried to play it off. “Oh, I’m starting to think your grandson loves campaigning more than he could ever love any woman.”

The senator patted Grace’s hand. “Well, then, he’s a fool. Your brown eyes have always reminded me of my Martha, God rest her soul. Eyes deep and dark as coffee… You need a gentleman suitor who respects you and recognizes how valuable you are.”

Grace noted the antiquated use of phrases such as
gentlemen suitor
. Still, she was touched by the senator’s obvious affection.

“You have class, Grace,” he added. “You’re a good girl.”

Grace stayed quiet because she wasn’t exactly the good girl he thought she was.

Seeing Ethan Castle had reminded her of that.

…

Ethan was still keyed up even after a game of racquetball, a rain shower in the travertine Roman-style bathroom, and a massage in the hotel spa from a pretty Scandinavian girl named Helga. He liked to travel in style, but tonight his luxury hotel suite seemed cold, empty, and cavernous.
Christ
, it had a grand piano in it. What was he supposed to do with that?

Guitar Hero
was more his style.

He turned the lights down so the room was only illuminated by the glow of his laptop, upon which he was getting absolutely nothing done. Grabbing a chocolate from on top of the pillow, he tore the wrapper off and chomped down on it.

He seriously needed to relax.

Ethan couldn’t have afforded any of this in his salad days. At the beginning of his career, he spent most of his nights sleeping on couches and filching doughnuts just to survive. This was a common story for folks who forsake home, hearth, and hammock for the excitement of the political trenches. But Ethan was good at his job, both on camera and off. He was so good at it that he could now pick his clients and name his price.

Money wasn’t the problem. He had other problems. Like the fact that none of it was any fun anymore…

Staring at the congressional district maps on his laptop, he couldn’t make up his mind about a candidate to work for. And he just didn’t care. It was all the same tired old shit and he was drowning in it. The candidates who needed him couldn’t afford him and the candidates who could afford him didn’t need him.

Today, talking to Grace, he’d bragged about the campaign in Iowa because it was the last time he’d done anything that stirred his blood.

Grace
.

Now, she sure stirred his blood. Seeing her again had been a shock to the system. A startling reminder of the one time in his life he’d been completely blindsided.

Ethan had no problems
getting
women. Like any good political operator, he knew how to make a sales pitch. On numerous evenings, in numerous hotels across the country, he’d sealed the deal with beautiful girls of all persuasions, from the smoking hot reporter in Atlanta with a tickling fetish to the three-time Olympic gymnast from Colorado Springs. But for Ethan, there was always a new candidate to champion and another state to conquer. In short, his frequent-flier miles weren’t exactly conducive to committed relationships.

By the end of a campaign, he left them all behind.

Grace Santiago had been different because Ethan didn’t leave her; she left
him
and he never figured out why. Worse, he’d had it bad for her. The first time he saw her in lecture hall, taking ridiculously detailed notes with five different-colored pens, he’d had to fight a primal urge to grab her by the ponytail and do dirty, filthy things to her.

Luckily, she didn’t make him fight that urge for long. Between study sessions, they’d groped in every campus nook and cranny they could find. She was smart, sexy, and quirky as hell. Unlike his other classmates, Grace didn’t let law school ruin her idealism; there wasn’t a cynical bone in her body and he’d loved her for that.

Ethan fell for her so fast and hard that he’d been a gibbering idiot when she suddenly and inexplicably dropped out of his life. Grace left him bewildered and brokenhearted. Not a combination he’d ever experienced before or since, and it still pissed him off to think about.

Oh, sure, he hadn’t done a great job of romancing Grace. No flowers, no fancy dinners out. He hadn’t been rolling in dough back then. But he’d given her his prized DVD set of
The West Wing
. That had to count for something.

Apparently not.

“Together?”
she’d asked him today.
“Is that what you call what happened between us?”

He’d certainly thought they were together. Finding out otherwise made him even angrier than all those unreturned phone calls, and now he couldn’t stop brooding about it. Christ, he’d even asked her out again today only to be shot down, repeatedly. He’d had to throw in that bit about the laundry to save face, but now he was actually considering it, which meant he should make a plane reservation and get the hell out of this town the first chance he could.

Besides, he had other reasons to leave. Sometimes the nation’s capital gave Ethan the willies. He loved jetting all over the country for rubber chicken dinners with voters in small-town America, but Washington, DC, was the place political operatives went to die—or get a desk job, which was the same thing.

He’d feel better if he got on the road again, posthaste.

But instead, Ethan looked up the listing for the EZ-Clean.

Grace Santiago had been the biggest question mark in his life. An unsolved mystery that crept into his thoughts on red-eye flights as he cemented his reputation as a political gunslinger. He’d be damned if she remained an asterisk in his personal file.

She owed him an explanation. Granted, tracking a woman down at the place she did laundry was a little extreme, but guerrilla warfare in relentless pursuit of the goal was the only way Ethan knew how to operate.

…

Grace told herself that she wasn’t waiting while she carefully folded whites and darks that Sunday, but she couldn’t keep her eye off the clock.
He’s not going to show
, she told herself.

And he didn’t.

Fortunately, she didn’t have time to think much about it, because bright and early on Monday morning, Grace gathered with the rest of the staff around the office television to “celebrate” Senator Halloway’s reelection announcement.

Nobody looked less thrilled about it than Norma Billingsly, the chief of staff. Norma had been with the senator since the eighties, but her pointy cat-eye glasses were from another decade entirely. She’d been bellyaching about her own desire to retire for years but wasn’t about to abandon the senator.

None of them would.

Pouring champagne into paper cups, the senator’s grandson lifted his in a toast. As expected, Blain had been tapped to run the campaign and he was in high spirits. He whooped like the former frat boy he was. “
Halloway for Senate! Halloway for Senate!
”