Indecent Proposal (16 page)

And then he’d pulled a stack of papers from the briefcase on the floor beside his outstretched legs and didn’t look at her again.

He was so big in the backseat, took up so much space. Air.

She tilted her head back so she could breathe.

“Are you going to be sick?” Harrison asked.

His electric-blue eyes watched her in the darkness. It was the first time he’d looked at her since getting in the car. It was shocking, that gaze in the half-dark.

My husband
.

That is my husband
.

“I’m fine.” Her voice croaked from exhaustion and disuse.

The tinted windows made the dark outside seem darker, but it was obvious they were driving closer to the city.

“Where do you live?”

“A condo in midtown,” he said looking back down at the files in his lap. He took a sip of scotch.

“Is it nice?”

“Nice enough.”

The silence was so thick she could scoop it up in her hands, like wet sand, and make a wall between them as real as the privacy screen between the front and back seats.

“What happens tomorrow?” she asked, because she was perverse and he so clearly wanted her to be silent.

“We’ll be giving a press conference at my campaign office. Before that there will be some people at my house to help us get ready.”

“Your mother is getting me clothes.”

He barely looked at her. “If that bothers you, tell her to stop. Eventually she listens.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Noelle will probably have a better idea of what I need than I will.”

Harrison sighed. Ryan ran her hand over the water bottle in her lap, collecting moisture and then wiping it on her dress.

“I made her angry, and I did it on purpose. I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“Everything makes her angry; don’t take it personally.”

“I’m going to need all the friends I can get.”

He huffed under his breath, giving her the impression that friendship and his mother were not going to happen. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the way Patty had taken her apart in the foyer. Obviously, Patty didn’t like her and that was fine, but that scene wasn’t just about not liking Ryan. It was about protecting her son. And Ryan had no clue what went into being a politician’s wife, but maybe that was part of it.

Protection.

Part of her job was to keep the illusion alive. To protect Harrison’s reputation.

Any other time, she’d call bullshit on that. There were two people in that hotel room, and only one of them knew the whole story. But she’d taken the money. Signed the agreement.

She was a politician’s wife.

She thought of all the women standing next to disgraced politician husbands as they made their tearful apologies for screwing other women. Were they there out of love? Or because the heart of their relationship was much like the heart of Harrison’s parents’ marriage?

Or her own.

She’d survived physical science sophomore year at Flowers by cheating off of Denise Shimansky, so she would survive this by cheating off of Patty Montgomery.

Which meant she was going to have to make nice. Or at least nicer.

“Will someone be writing us a speech … or something?” she asked.

“Wallace will have some remarks for us.”

“Remarks—is that a fancy politician word for a speech?”

That made him smile, and she felt that same stupid shot of accomplishment that she’d felt that night in the bar. A sense of pride in making this very serious man smile.

Stupid, Ryan. Don’t be stupid
.

“I suppose it is. Are you okay in front of an audience?” he asked, as if just figuring out that it could be a problem for a future congressman to have a wife who was terrified of public speaking.

“It makes me fart uncontrollably.”

His entire face fell in horror and she couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

“You’re joking,” he said, more demand than question.

“Sometimes I get so nervous I cry.”

“This isn’t funny, Ryan.”

“Oh, but it is.” She wiped at her streaming eyes. The tension of the day made her laugh even harder until she was doubled up on the seat. “Oh God, your face. So perfect.”

“Laugh it up,” he said dryly, but he started laughing, too. Well, not laughing, but smiling with his whole mouth, destroying just a bit of that icy chill around him, and it was such a wonderful release that she sort of stopped hating him. For just a minute.

This must be what Stockholm syndrome feels like
.

“Seriously, though, are you going to be okay in front of cameras?”

“I’ve done some modeling work. I think I’ll be okay. I’m just going to pretend I’m playing a character. A love-struck woman ready to stand by her man and drink tea and wave at people.” She gave him a smile and wave that was part Queen of England, part Dolly Parton. Warmth and distance, all in one gesture.

“That’s … really good.”

“Thank you.”

“Why’d you stop modeling?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug, though she did know. She knew exactly why the work stopped coming, why her agent found it harder and harder to book a job for her. “I’ve been told I am not always the easiest to work with.”

In the reflection of the window she could see him watching her. If she closed her eyes she imagined she would be able to actually feel the heat and weight of his gaze; that was how hard he was staring.

“Doesn’t bode well for us, does it?”

“I’m not sure anything bodes well for us.”

He went back to his files and she went back to looking out the dark window at the interstate lights, and the silence went back to being uncomfortable.

Part of what she liked about being a bartender was being able to read people. Being able to take all the clues they left in their body language and tone of voice, the way they held their drink or talked to their friends, and add all those things up into an impression. An idea of what they were like, what they wanted, what they were scared of.

Usually within ten minutes of serving someone a drink, she knew why that person was drinking. And sometimes, what the person was thinking.

But Harrison was utterly blank to her. Not only couldn’t she figure out what he wanted or what he thought, but he didn’t leave her any clues to even try to figure him out. He was a slick, handsome rich surface upon which she could get no footing.

Tonight, however, his family had given her plenty of clues. Plenty of tells. And the story his family told was not a nice one.

He’d grown up in a bowl, he’d said that night in the hotel. Without air.

She wondered, watching him with narrowed eyes, if he was truly this nonchalant. This cool in the face of marrying a stranger. Or if it was a show. After watching his parents in action, she was leaning toward show. Because underneath Harrison’s calm surface she would never have guessed he had parents like that.

Ted was a drunk. A bad one. Barely kept in line by his wife.

And all they cared about was what the other was doing that might impact them.

The only thing the Montgomerys seemed to do together was stare daggers into her flesh. How wonderful that loathing her was what they could agree on.

I am the tie that binds
.

She traced a drop of water down the plastic side of her bottle and watched him from the corner of her eye.

“That was quite a scene in there,” she said. “At the mansion.”

He flipped over a page of his file. “Not quite how you imagined your wedding?”

“I never imagined myself getting married again, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

His icy blue eyes met hers, wide with surprise, but then he glanced away, hiding himself again. She’d hit a nerve, she thought.

Smarter women might leave him alone. Go back to staring out the window and gathering reserves for the coming weeks. Smarter women would shut up and not poke at the man in his cage.

She’d never been very smart.

“I was talking about your parents.”

He didn’t pause, didn’t look up. She wouldn’t have known he’d heard her if it weren’t for the muscle flexing hard in his jaw.

“Complaining about the in-laws already?” He flipped a page so hard it sounded like the paper tore.

“Has it always been like that?”

“What? Dad drunk and Mom furious? Yes. It has always been like that.”

“Do you hate them both equally?” she asked. “Or are you saving something special for your father?”

Slowly, so slowly, like the earth turning, he lifted his eyes toward her. “What makes you say that?”

“You barely looked at him.”

“I only had eyes for you.” His smile was a cold, hard slice in his face. The most ineffective smile ever smiled.

“Why do you hate your dad so much?” she asked. “Is it the drinking?” Honestly, she didn’t expect him to answer. There was no precedent set between her and Harrison. Or even Harry, really, who’d managed to tell her very little about himself, all while she was falling headfirst into his bed.

“I don’t hate him,” he lied, and she laughed.

“Your mother you talked to—not kindly, but you answered her questions. You did her the honor of argument. But your father …” She shook her head. “That was a heavy-duty freeze-out. Top notch, really, because you were smiling the whole time.”

He shifted in his seat as if he were sitting on nettles. “My father and I disagree on a lot of things politically.”

“What was happening during that ceremony wasn’t political, Harrison. I may not be smart. But I’m not dumb.”

“This whole thing is political. The marriage, you being here. None of this would be happening if I weren’t in politics.”

She shook her head, enjoying his discomfort, his angry clinging to lies and defenses he’d already created in regard to how he dealt with his family. She wondered when he’d done that, how he’d learned it. Was it something that happened to Montgomerys at birth? Alcoholics were thick on the ground back home and she’d watched plenty of families get destroyed, plenty of husbands and wives and kids turn themselves inside out pretending there was nothing wrong in their homes.

Well, that nonsense would end with her baby. Her baby wouldn’t lie to keep the family skeletons in their closets.

“But for your family politics is personal, and I must say, that heavy-duty anger toward your dad, it felt pretty personal.”

“Plenty of fathers and sons don’t get along. I can’t imagine what your father thinks of your brother?” He lifted an eyebrow, sending her what she imagined was usually a cutting glance, but she had nothing to lose. Nothing left to cut. He could not touch her with his poor efforts.

“My father would lie down in traffic for all of us,” she said. Or he would have, once upon a time. Now, she couldn’t be sure.

“How lovely.”

“And your dad, would he do that for you?”

Harrison laughed. “He would only lie down in traffic if it got him good publicity.”

“Is that why you hate him?”

“No, Ryan,” he snapped. “I hate him because he’s weak. He abuses his power. He pretends to be something he’s not.”

“Oh,” she breathed, sort of stunned that he’d actually answered. Sort of stunned that dishonor was at the heart of his dislike for his father. She’d believed that dishonor was part of the political package. The Montgomery reality.

“Why haven’t you talked to your sister in six years?” he asked, turning the interrogation over onto her.

She barely controlled the flinch, the instinctive recoil, because that was what he wanted. She’d played this game of polite torture, delicate cruelty, before with her sister and it was poisonous and destructive. But she was very, very good at it.

“That’s not true,” she said. “She called me just the other morning to tell me not to screw up our little sister’s life any more than I have.”

“And that’s something you’ve done?”

I screw up everyone’s life
, she thought.
Just watch
.

“It’s why I am marrying you, you know. If it were just me, I wouldn’t give a shit about the press. But my sisters.
My dad. My brother. This baby. Marrying you and your money will change everyone’s lives.”

And maybe … maybe it will let me back in
.

“Why did you marry me?” she asked.

Harrison shook his head and reached back into the small hidden compartment in the seat between them for the scotch. “We’ve covered this, haven’t we? A sex scandal would ruin my career.”

“I know what you told me, Harrison. But what your mother said tonight is true—there were other ways to handle this. So why marriage? And I’ll remind you I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“Yes, the human lie detector claim. Did you learn that from your years behind the bar or those psychology books in your apartment?” His eyes glittered from under his lashes.

“Oh no,” she laughed, fairly convincingly if she did say so herself. “I just look at the pictures in those books.”

“Now who is lying?” he asked, his voice a quiet whisper before he took a sip of the scotch.

Oh, he was far better at this game than she was.

Because he’d seen the secrets, the small desires she kept in her apartment, those stupid books. That stupid dream to go back to school. And he would mock it. Diminish it. Just to hurt her, because that was the awful game she’d started.

And she knew nothing of him. Nothing at all.

I can’t do this
, she thought.
I can’t spend every minute of my life playing some kind of chess match with this man, wondering what is real and what isn’t
.

She hated the very thought of it, a future spent on high alert, looking for weaknesses to exploit just to wound him. Just to find the human being beneath that façade of his—it made her feel like she was drowning.

Tears burned behind her eyes and she looked away from his sharp gaze.

The wheels hummed along the highway, the world a blur outside the window. “If this is going to work,” she said, pressing her hand against the cool glass and then her forehead, “to the world outside, we’ll lie our faces off. But you and I …”

The words
Let’s be kind. We’ve both been hurt enough
wouldn’t come out of her mouth into the horrible coldness between them.