Kiss the Girl (51 page)

“
Nixie’s shaky tonight
,” Karl said.
  Sloan turned to find him
in the darkness of the balcony behind her,
swiping
at his scalp with a hanky.
  She gave
a light laugh, though she had to
reach a little to pull it off.  She didn’t feel light tonight.
 

“She doesn’t look shaky.  She looks...powerful
.”
  Sloan narrowed her eyes and studied her daughter more closely.  “Yes.  Powerful and pissed.” 
She cut her eyes to Karl, who hovered just behind her shoulder.  Always in the wings, always pulling strings.  “
You two had words?”

“
She thinks she’s in love with the damn doctor.”
  He gazed down at Nixie who looked
perfectly at home in the mayhem of
strobing
flashbulbs. 

A waiter passed by the French doors
separating them from the ballroom crowd
and Karl took a couple glasses of champagne from his tray.  He offered one to Sloan, who took it and helped herself to a healthy swallow.  It went down like money, rich and ripe with possibility.
He ignored his own glass, she noticed.  Just like always.

Sloan followed his gaze to the red carpet, to Nixie’s handsome Viking doctor handing a stiff blonde out of a limo.

“What if she is in love?” Sloan asked.

Karl
paced the tiny balcony like a caged animal, his bulk and his energy pushing Sloan up against the railing.  “Christ, Sloan, I’m sure she is.  Nixie loves everybody.  That’s what she does.  It’s who she is.  But he’s not in love with her, okay?
”

“He’s not?”

“No.  And he didn’t deliver the news with any kind of finesse, either.  Kid took a hard hit.”

Sloan shook her head wonderingly.  “How on earth do you
find
these things
out
?”

Karl ignored this.  “
She’s reeling a little still
.  I don’t trust her to follow through on the bargain we made with Senator
Harper
.”

“To bring
the prodigal son
back into the fold?”

“Right.”  He stopped pacing and cut her a look.  “You’re going to have to help her, Sloan.”

A wave of weariness washed over her
.  The last time Karl had said those words, she’d had to fuck her daughter’s boyfriend across Europe.  God she was tired.  But she upended her glass of champagne and
set
it on the wide marble balustrade with a practical click.
  Time to shoulder her responsibilities.  Again.
  “What do you want me to do?”

“
Nothing like last time
.”

“Thank
G
od for small favors.” 
Sloan felt her mouth curve, but wouldn’t have called it a smile. 

“Senator
Harper
packed this gala with a lot of people who’ll write big, fat checks on his say-so.  He’ll expect his money’s worth from Nixie.  And if she balks--
”  Karl
spread his hands and smiled, his
teeth
very white
in his beard.

“--I’ll be there with the cattle prod, is that it?”  Sloan reached for Karl’s untouched glass of champagne, took a healthy
slug.  “And what about
Bumani
, Karl?  Or the disaster after that? 
The next war? 
The next crisis? 
How long are we going to keep zapping her back into a place she doesn’t want to be?”

“I’m dealing with that, Sloan.  We had a good talk tonight, Nixie and I.  I think
she’ll be okay.  She’s just--”

“Shaky.  You said.”

“Yeah.  Shaky.  So help h
er
out
tonight, all right?
  Keep her focused.
”

Sloan drained her glass.  “Yes
,
all right,
” she said
, but it chafed in a novel, unexpected way
.
  Like a scratchy sweater or pants that were just a little too tight.
 
Okay when you put them on, but irritating within the hour and unbearable by day’s end. 

Lucky for her, this wouldn’t be a full day’s work. 

What was one more hour out of her life?   

Erik waded into the
sea
of photographers and reporters, literally cutting a path for Mary Jane with his body. 
He took a certain
pleasure in the violence of it
, in using his bulk as a weapon against this writ
h
ing pack of cameras and microphones and blazing lights
that had taken so much from him
.

He looked up to get his bearings
.  He hadn’t meant to look for Nixie, but
the sight of her
stopped him like a bullet.  She was there, just there
on the rise of the marble steps leading into the hotel
, bathed in the incandescent glow of the spotlight. 

Erik blinked, but the vision of her in that dress--oh dear God, that
dress
--was burned forever in his mind’s eye.  S
he was like a flame
, long and slim and deadly hot from her tousled mass of coppery curls right down to her polished toenails.  And yeah, he
had
noticed her toenails lacquered the same amazing sunset-on-speed color as her dress.  He’d noticed everything, from
the look of utter indifference on her face as her gaze skimmed over him without a hint of acknowledgement to
the hand low and possessive on the curve of Nixie’s hip.
 
James Harper’s
hand. 

Erik
stood there, frozen, his gut clutched with rage until s
omebody squeaked behind him and jammed a fist into his lower back.  He came back to himself with a startled blink.  Oh lord.  Mary Jane.  He’d forgotten her.  Again.

“Sorry
,” he said.
 
“
Come on. Let’s get you inside.”

Nixie had spent her entire life on red carpets and in war zones, and to her way of thinking, they weren’t all that different.  Both were crowded, hostile places full of shouting, confusion, and strangers with a violent desire for something.  About the only way she could tell which was which anymore was the wardrobe.

She walked through the chaos as she’d been taught, smiling and serene, accessible yet apart.  The queer weightlessness Karl’s ultimatum had put in her middle helped.  It kept her oddly untouched by the storm around her, like somebody had inflated a balloon around her heart.  She ought to be feeling more than she was, but it was all trapped inside that straining bubble buried deep in her chest.  

Just as well, she thought, moving through the jostling crowd.  She didn’t care to fully experience tonight anyhow. 

Jame
s
’
hand
la
y
heavily
around her hip, low and possessive and uncomfortably hot through the thin material of her dress.  He kept her close, intimately so, their bodies canted together, their smiles bright for the cameras.  But even numb as she was, Nixie picked up the darker note swirling under his camera-ready smile.  Resentment.  Dislike.  Maybe even malevolence.  Was it for her? she wondered idly.  His father?  Himself?  

She hit the top of the marble steps and struck the expected pose.  Let
James
snuggle the curve of her hip into the line of his while the cameras snapped and whirred.  All the while, his anger, his disdain lapped at her like an encroaching tide. 

She ran her gaze over the crowd without curiosity, fixed on a point somewhere behind the paparazzi and their shouting, on something beyond the violence of their want. 

And found Erik. 

He helped Mary Jane, pale and trembling visibly, out of a limo and into the crook of his arm, but his eyes were on her.  The void at her center gave a strange, searching quiver, but Nixie forced her gaze to skim over him, past him.  She didn’t want to see the judgment in his face.  She knew exactly what he thought of her, of
James
, of this choice she’d made to allow the press to feed on her personal life like this. 

She’d made a bargain.  Now she’d live up to it.  Those kids needed help, and Erik and his sacred principles weren’t getting the job done.  But she could.  And she would.  With his approval or without it.  

She turned to
her date
with a brilliant smile.  “Are you ready to go in?”

James
returned her smile with something razor sharp that probably photographed well but burned like ice against her bare skin.  “By all means,” he said. 

She took his offered arm but it felt like a snake under her hand--cool, muscular, faintly sinister.  They walked slowly into the foyer of the hotel, mounted the curved staircase like a couple of well-trained stage actors and stepped into the ballroom.

Light and heat, expensive perfume and soaring ceilings, deep red wine inside flashing crystal glasses--it all came at Nixie in a fierce, familiar rush.  She tossed herself into it without hesitation and the crowd swallowed them whole.  The instant it closed behind them
James
shook his sleeve free of Nixie’s touch. 

“Are we done here, then?” she asked.  Where was the relief? she wondered.  Shouldn’t she be relieved to be finished with him so soon?

“You wish.”  He snatched a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and knocked it back with one long swallow.  “Christ,
I
wish.  But no.  Daddy dearest won’t be satisfied with a quick photo shoot.  Unless I’m well and truly rehabilitated, I’m of no use to a future president.”  He glanced at the crowd swirling around them, the fanciful swish of ball gowns against the more sober hush of tuxedos.  The prominent personalities and powers who wore them.  “Judging from
the
faces I’m seeing, that rehab is costing my father a bundle.”  He twisted his lips into a smirk.  “So no, we’re not done here.  Not by a long shot.” 

He grabbed her hand again and shot purposefully through the crowd, towing her behind him. 

Erik
threw an arm around Mary Jane’s
shoulders
and shepherded her
through the swarm of reporters
.  Her entire body vibrated
under his touch
, as if
she were some kind of human
tuning fork
in the key of terror.
  A
nd it didn’t ease up when he’d
led her up the marble stairs and
joined
the crowd
of DC luminaries,
flitting around the soaring ballroom
like rare birds
.  If anything it got worse.