In Bed With the Opposition (6 page)

Now, to the extreme annoyance of the other morning commuters on the metro, Ethan’s backpack and papers sprawled over three seats. He tried to clean up the mess with one hand, and answered his phone with the other.

“Listen, I’m flattered,” he said to the persistent would-be candidate, some Maryland professor-turned-politico. “But you can’t afford me.”

“I’ve studied your work, Mr. Castle,” the professor said. “You used to run grassroots campaigns on a shoestring.”

And it used to be a lot more fun, too, Ethan remembered. It was more exciting than working for some douche bag like McLanahan or even a fossil like Kip Halloway. That’s for sure.

“Just an interview, Mr. Castle. That’s all I’m asking.”

Ethan admonished himself for even considering a fringe candidate. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to waste your time or mine.”

Just as he finished the conversation, his phone vibrated in his hand with a text message.

I was a jerk last night. -GS

GS? Grace Santiago.
Jesus Christ
, she was so hyper-detailed that she initialed her text messages!
Let it go
, he thought. This woman is a bundle of girl-next-door trouble tied up in a sex-starved bow. She got his blood moving, but also pissed him off. If he took a job working for Professor Kim, he’d piss her off right back…but also get to see a lot more of her. And he had to admit, he found both prospects appealing.

He used his thumbs to type into his phone.

Yes, you were a jerk. -EC

I’m sorry. -GS

You can make it up to me by taking me to dinner tonight. -EC

I’d be happy to, but I have an event at the Elks Lodge tonight. Seriously. -GS

He’d have to rent a car to get there and an Elks Lodge wasn’t exactly the most exotic venue, but in sex, war, and politics, you had to learn to make do.

Which lodge and what time? -EC

Chapter Six

Sadly, this was not the first time Ethan had stepped foot in a lodge belonging to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He was helping to rearrange bingo tables when Grace arrived on the senator’s arm, wearing a navy pantsuit that made her legs look a million miles long. She gave off the air of a high-powered she-devil, but Ethan remembered when ponytails, blue jeans, and being eager to please were her trademarks. Ethan wasn’t sure which Grace he liked better. He was very sure, however, that he wanted them both.

Grace made her way over to Ethan’s bingo table and put her hands on her hips. “You actually showed up. It would’ve served me right if you didn’t.”

“I wouldn’t miss a chance to hear your curmudgeon-in-chief launch into his fifty-year-old stump speech.”

“Hey,” she said with smile, but a firm warning tone. “My boss is off-limits.”

Washington types.
They were so easy to needle. “Duly noted. Any chance you’ll let me take you out after this is over?”

Now she smiled, digging her hands down into her jacket pockets. Grace’s brown eyes sparkled as if they were all alone. “I thought I was buying. What, aren’t stale Oreos and flat soda good enough for you?”

“Yeah,” Ethan laughed. “But they’re not good enough for you.”

He wanted to take her somewhere fancy, but it was late when the meeting ended. As it turned out, the diner on Route 40 was one of Grace’s favorites, so Ethan’s luck was holding. The owner kept hot chocolate brewing for Halloway staffers during the fall campaigns, a welcome respite for the volunteers who handed out pamphlets while their fingers froze. “How’d you know to bring me here?”

“I’ve always had good instincts when it came to you,” Ethan said. At least, he used to. Sometimes you had to bluff.

At this hour, the diner was mostly empty, but the scent of cinnamon and chocolate warmly welcomed them. Truth be told, Ethan was already feeling pretty warm being with Grace again, and it wasn’t just the sexual heat. There was something inherently wholesome about her. Even back in law school when he’d pressed her against a bookshelf with her skirt up around her thighs and made her moan things that would make even a naughty librarian blush, she’d had a girlish charm. He was reminded of that now as Grace literally pressed her nose to the glass covering a spectacular Napoleon cake. “That looks so good.”

He loved how her eyes got wide, like she’d never eaten before. “Don’t they feed you on the Hill?”

Grace smiled as a waitress ushered them to a booth. “Not really. If I want anything that hasn’t been processed or preserved beyond recognition, I have to steal it from fund-raiser buffet tables.”

“I used to do that too!” Ethan confessed, and they both laughed.

By the time the waitress came by, they had lapsed into more traditional conversation, and he realized Grace had grown up a lot since law school. She’d always been bright, but talking to her now about the upcoming environmental bill, her mastery of the issue was a huge turn-on.

Grace took forever to order. Like she was making up some mental list of pros and cons for each possible dish on the menu. When she finally decided upon waffles, he was surprised. “I saw you drooling over that Napoleon cake. Too scared to try it?”

Grace precisely arranged her napkin and silverware. “I like waffles. Deep down, I’m a waffle kind of girl.”

The waitress tapped in annoyance on her pad, and though Ethan was normally a great champion of the working class, he ignored her. “Yeah? What’s wrong with the Napoleon?”

Grace pondered. “It’s a messy cake named after a brutal French dictator. It’s also exotic and expensive.”

Expensive?
This vexed him. “You know that I could buy this whole restaurant, right?” Before she could scold him for boasting about his financial success, he draped his arms over the back of the booth and said to the waitress, “We’ll have the Napoleon with two forks, please.”

“Why are you ordering for me?”

Ethan flashed a smile. “Because I know what you like.”

He loved that she both blushed then tried to rally. “Then forget the two forks. Order your own. I was an only child. I don’t share well.”

“Fine, make it two pieces,” he told the waitress. “And add an order of waffles to that, because deep down, I think Grace is the kind of girl who wants it all.”

More color came to Grace’s cheeks. And once the waitress left them alone, all her bravado was gone. Ethan watched her fiddle with the salt and pepper shakers, lining them up by the ketchup. “I’m sorry about Halloween, Ethan.”

“You should be. We could have had a spectacular night together.”

“You sound pretty sure of that,” she said, leaning forward, her voice a whisper.

“Oh, I am,” Ethan said, grinning like an idiot. He loved looking at her. With those big brown eyes, that thick dark hair, and her tanned skin, it was hard not to stare.

When the waitress came back with their order, Grace’s whole face lit up with excitement. Ethan watched as she took a bite of the chocolate-drizzled Napoleon. Her eyes fluttered closed, she sensuously licked pastry cream from the corner of her mouth. And even though they were in the middle of a restaurant, she moaned. “It tastes sooo good.”

Ethan fixated on the lucky fork nestled between her lips. “You know, I always loved it when you said that…”

…

How had it happened?
Grace wondered. It was a work night. It was past midnight. Yet, somehow, she found herself in the diner’s empty parking lot making out with Ethan Castle in the front seat of his rented Corvette. She couldn’t remember exactly how they got here, but once he’d kissed her, she’d lost all sense of time and sanity, and now the gearshift was in a seriously inconvenient location.

She loved the way he threaded his hands through her hair. The way teeth clashed, tongues tangled, and quickened breath fogged up the windshield. He made her feel completely out of control—totally unlike herself. But when he fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, Grace stopped him. It was one thing to kiss in public. It was a whole other world of
wrongness
to do more than kiss. “What are you doing?”

At first, Ethan seemed incapable of coherent speech. Then he whispered, “I’m pretty sure I’m trying to undress you.”

Grace looked out the window where an early snowfall on the pavement turned from green to red with the flashing of the streetlight. “We can’t do this, Ethan. We’re grown-ups now.”

He leered. “Which means we can do whatever we want.”

Grace felt shaky. She could still taste his cologne, but it wasn’t stronger than the taste of her own longing. Somehow, she found the inner strength to pull away, lower herself back into her own seat and tuck the hem of her blouse in her skirt. “I know the kind of impression I gave you back in law school. That I was trashy—”

“That’s not the impression you gave me. Not at all. But don’t tell me you aren’t having just as much fun as I am tonight.”

“No, you’re right. I’m enjoying this—I’m
really
enjoying this. It’s just that we’ve got to stop. I mean, you’re leaving town in the morning, and once you pick a candidate, you’ll be off to Ohio or South Carolina.”

Ethan put his hands on the wheel. “What if I stayed?”

In Grace’s experience, men didn’t stay. Her father sure hadn’t. So she looked Ethan in the eye, and said, “You’re not the kind of guy who sticks around. I know how your job goes. You’re never in one place for long and you love it that way. You thrive on it.”

“That makes me a bad person?”

The car suddenly got a lot colder. Grace pulled her coat over her shoulders. “Of course not.”

He was clearly offended. “The way I remember it,
you
were the one who didn’t stick around, so what’s the problem now, really?”

That
shamed her. “Look, we shouldn’t be doing this. It’s against the rules.”

He ran a hand through his dark hair and tension tightened down the toned length of his forearm where he’d rolled up his shirtsleeve. God, he was gorgeous. It wasn’t really her fault that she turned into a oversexed lunatic when he was around, was it?

“What rules, Grace? Name the statute.”

In Grace’s opinion that was pretty unfair, considering she hadn’t finished law school. “It’s against
my
rules.”

“Do you come with a manual or something?” She watched him let go of his irritation. Then he pulled her close, nuzzling her collarbone. “See, I was always the type who opened his toys without reading the directions… Sometimes you just gotta break the rules.”

Grace shivered a bit at his mouth near her ear. “But I like rules.”

She felt him smirk. “Oh, I could give you some rules…”

She didn’t want to think about what he might mean by that. It would surely be her undoing. “Ethan, I’m serious.”

“I
know
and it’s weird. What’s the story behind all your rules, hmm?”

He was teasing her, and he had every right to. She knew she was eccentric, and that was probably the polite way of putting it. But her rules came from a very serious place. When she was young, her parents didn’t speak English very well. She’d had to translate for them. Even as a very little girl, she’d had to pay attention, be disciplined, and act like a little adult or else they wouldn’t have money, food, or a place to sleep. Her dad was always sure that a big payday was around the corner, some new wild scheme that was going to make them rich, but whenever he came into any money, he always blew it. Bad decisions, poor impulse control…it had made her childhood hell. And she’d promised herself that she’d never be like him.

That’s why she had rules.

But all of that was too sore of a subject to share with Ethan. It was too embarrassing. That was the problem with letting anybody get close to her. They’d find out that not even somebody as messed-up as her dad was willing to stick around for Grace’s sake. So she had to pull away. “Ethan, I like
order
. I like lists and routine. Meeting you in a diner in the middle of the night isn’t the kind of thing I do.”

“But you’re here anyway, aren’t you?”

There was that. A very good point. And it wasn’t because anybody pushed her into it. She’d wanted this and she’d done it. Which was a rare and precious thing even if it went against all her better instincts. “I have no explanation for this.”

“I can explain it,” Ethan said, softly stroking her shoulder. “When you saw Blain Halloway, you thought of me. Just like I said you would. That’s why you’re here.”

Holy Mary, Mother of God.
There it was again, that look of total sexual confidence. That predatory glance, like he was about to eat her alive. And come to think of it, she really wanted to be devoured. Ethan Castle made her heart race in a way the senator’s grandson never did, but this kind of mad excitement wasn’t something she could trust. “Ethan…I like you. I really do. It’s just that I don’t know how to fit you into my life. I don’t even know when we’re going to see each other again.”

Ethan grimaced. “I don’t know, either…”

Grace bit her lip and they both lapsed into silence.

Running a hand through his hair, Ethan finally asked, “So, this other guy, does he fit into your five-year plan?”

“We’ve got a lot of history…”

He gave a sigh that sounded like resignation. “Tell him if he ever stands you up again, I’m gonna have something to say about it.”

So, this was good-bye, then. That was for the better, wasn’t it?

Ethan leaned into her. “I’ll take you home. Just let me kiss you goodnight.” When she looked wary, he added, “Just a kiss.”

It was
just a kiss
the way the Gettysburg Address was just a speech. Ethan started with a captivating premise, his hands on her cheeks, his lips soft. But then he drew her deeper into it, the rhetoric of his tongue soaring as he captured her own. Finally he made his closing argument by biting her lower lip and pulling her tightly against his chest until she was breathless.

It was another thrilling, electrifying, heart-stopping kiss. Unfortunately, if it was a good-bye kiss, why did it leave her dazed, dewy, and wanting more?

…

Thanksgiving was, at heart, a somber holiday. At Christmas, Grace could get away with looking like a shiny ornament. But the cleavage-enhancing miracle of her Wonderbra might seem seriously out of place at a holiday that conjured up images of pelt-wrapped freezing natives and starving Pilgrims.

Fortunately, she had just the right outfit for the occasion: a brown wrap dress that hugged her curves with knee-high suede boots and a tribal necklace. Molly even agreed that Grace looked a little bit woodsy. “Like an updated Pocahontas, which, given your job, is probably spot-on, since you save bumbling white men from their own folly on a daily basis.”

Grace smirked at Molly. “Pocahontas. I like that idea. Blain may have escaped the wiles of Wonder Woman, but what man can resist a sexy nature-loving native?”

Molly groaned. “When are you going to give it up? Now that Clark Kent is out of the picture, you’re going to try to make Blain fall in love with you over the cranberry sauce?”

“It’s not like that,” Grace insisted. Since saying good-bye to Ethan at the diner three weeks before, she’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself over Blain Halloway anymore. If he wanted her, he was going to have to be the one to make the next move. But if he
did
make a move, Grace was going to be ready.

Holidays at the Halloway House were always raucous affairs, so Grace headed over early to help in the kitchen. Blain met her in the foyer, his hair angelic under the white lights. He took her coat. It was a polite gesture that he performed as a matter of course, but when he revealed the outfit Grace was wearing, he stared. “Hap—Happy Thanksgiving…”

Grace took a moment to feel smug. She’d made Blain Halloway stammer. Or maybe it was the wine. She realized belatedly that he was balancing a half-finished glass in his hand, and she wondered how many he’d had. “Can I get you a drink, Grace?”

She nodded. “With ice. I’m feeling a little hot.”

He gave her an appreciative glance. And as she walked into the kitchen to help her mother with the appetizers, she sashayed her hips, and looked over her shoulder to see that he was still staring. Yes, that’s right. Blain Halloway, the golden-haired prince of her little fairy tale, was ogling her.