Private Politics (The Easy Part) (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jumping out of the taxi, Alyse knew she had arrived at Liam’s place before he had. His commitment to public transportation had worked in her favor for once. She jogged up the stoop and for at least a minute, she stared at the door to his building without moving. She still didn’t have all the details worked out.

Across town she’d left Millie and Parker with enough food to feed a small army and a huge mess in the kitchen.

“I don’t care,” Millie had replied. “Fix things with him.”

“Will do.”

And she intended to. The silly, ridiculous man was locked in some sort of battle with himself whereby he wanted her as much as ever but couldn’t seem to let himself have her. She knew she’d earned every bit of his hesitancy but she also knew it was repairable. It had to be. She was in too deep now. She just needed to find the right tool.

Love
, a word he’d uttered so effortlessly and confidently, was too much. It was a cudgel and too manipulative for this moment.
Sorry
would be in the mix, but it wasn’t quite right either. Besides, she’d already tried it and it hadn’t worked. No, the right choice was
please
. The moment called for
please.

She pulled his key out of her purse. When he’d given it to her, she’d slipped it into a rarely used internal pocket and ignored it. Now, she rectified her error and struggled to thread it on her key ring. Liam was in her life for real now. She only had to let him know.

She unlocked the front door, slipped up two flights of stairs and opened the door to his apartment. With a deep sigh, she shut it and stood contemplating her next move.

She could get naked and into his bed, but somehow, that didn’t seem right. This wasn’t about sex. She’d watched him watching her all weekend—their mutual attraction wasn’t up for debate. No, she had to convince him she wanted a relationship with him. It was a new problem for her and she hadn’t quite solved it yet.

She pondered the kitchen at the far end of the space, chewing the inside of her mouth. It might have been only two days since she’d been here but it felt like a lifetime. Since the last time she’d stood here, she had accepted the end of her job at YWR, testified as a whistleblower and acknowledged what she wanted was Liam on his terms. Like a post-apocalyptic landscape, she recognized the terrain, but it all seemed changed.

“Mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

Alyse squeaked and jumped. She had nowhere to go except back against the door, which with a clatter was precisely where she went.

The voice, Liam’s, came from the couch where he was stretched out. It must have been a goddamned Metro miracle. Somehow, he’d beaten her across town.

He hadn’t bothered to turn on a light to warn her. He also didn’t have the TV on, or his phone or laptop out. Relaxed as a cat sunbathing, he stared at the ceiling. Since her eyes hadn’t adjusted yet she couldn’t make out his features. He didn’t seem angry she was there, but his response was frustratingly ambiguous.

“Oh, hi.” At least the darkness hid her blush. “I, uh, thought you wouldn’t be home yet. I had something else planned.”

“If it’s lingerie and whipped cream, I’ll be disappointed.” He might be amused, but she couldn’t tell.

She was really glad she’d eliminated that option in the car so that she could scoff, “When I have ever struck you as obvious?”

“Never.”

“Precisely. You’ve got to give me more credit than that.”

“Giving you credit has never been the problem.”

He needed a ticking clock—it would have made the time stretching after that statement easier. As it was, Alyse because inordinately aware of the noises her body made: the
thump
of her heart, the
swish
of her breath and the
clicking
of her clothing. She was loud.

Just standing still, trying to figure how to move forward with him, she generated an enormous amount of noise. She stumbled into his space and messed up its quiet solitude. It was always going to be like this with him. All she could hope for was her intrusion to be welcome. She knew she asked a lot.

He spoke first. “Did you forget something?”

“Yup.”

He lifted his head up to look at her. His face shone pale and bright as a flame in the light from the street. “What’s that?”

“You.”

His eyes caught the light and flashed then, hopeful and optimistic. But before she could process and enjoy the moment, he dropped his head back onto the couch with a
thump
. A heavy, pessimistic, defeatist sound.

As long as they were together she would have to live with that noise. Two weeks before, if she’d uttered that line, if she’d said she wanted him, he would have been across the room and on her like a bride-to-be at a Vera Wang trunk sale.

In wounding him, she’d made him cynical. Not a lot cynical, just a dab, but she might have changed his basic makeup. Living with it would be a daily reminder she wasn’t always a careful person, but she could deal with that. It beat trying to live without him.

If she’d learned anything from fundraising, it was not to oversell. She ignored every screaming nerve in her body and waited.

“Um...” He shifted on the couch.

She couldn’t make out his features at all. All she could do was parse his words, his sounds more precisely.
Um?
What the hell did “um” mean?

It probably wasn’t good. In face she had the distinct impression this wasn’t going well at all. She needed just a bit more, then.

“Liam, I’m sorry.”

The words themselves weren’t hard. She’d said them before and she would say them again. What stuck in her throat was in asking for a place in his life, she was changing her basic nature too.

In going to school, in coming to Washington, in putting space between her and her parents, she’d been finding a way to be who she was. Her selfishness was strategic. It insisted on drawing boundaries, in claiming most of herself for her own private use.

In giving it up—if only for him—she imagined another way of being in the world. She leapt into the unknown, trusting that he’d catch her, that he wouldn’t ask for too much and that in sharing herself, she’d get something back.

She really might as well have been doing this whole “please take me back” thing naked.

She continued, “I overreacted. Maybe I was looking for a reason to run. Maybe I just needed a moment. Whatever it was, I didn’t handle it well. I’m not good at this. But I want to be. I want to be good...with you. Please.”

She took a deep breath and then another. Liam didn’t say anything. Tired of listening to the noises she made, she tried to catch the whirr of a vacuum two flights down and the buzz of the streets. The noises that would be her lullaby if he said yes.

In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “If you’re back, you have to be all the way in.”

“I am. I used the key to your apartment, didn’t I?”

In the space of a heartbeat, he was up and around her, against her. His hands were in her hair and down her back, his mouth at hers.

“I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so damn much,” he said between kisses.

She pressed against him, hungry for the feel of his body. “Me too.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He cupped her face and held her still as he spoke. “I knew what was happening, knew it was bad timing, knew I was pushing you and I did it anyway. I can’t be...I can’t be moderate where you’re concerned. I want too much. I let myself take you leaving personally and that was wrong.”

The words caused the last of the tension in her body to melt away and Alyse kissed him back hard. Thankfully, he seemed every bit as needy.

It was the least sexual high-heat kiss she’d ever had, a kiss that wasn’t about falling into bed but was about proving presence.
I’m here today
,
I’ll be here tomorrow
,
I’ll be here forever
. If nothing she said just now could convince them, then she’d show him. He’d show her. The kiss was the first of ten thousand tiny choices that would make thing larger than the sum of its parts. The spinning gold out of straw would be their relationship.

They kissed themselves out, burning through several days’ worth of want until the emptiness in her stomach ebbed. Until they stood curled around each other and just
were
. Until she felt their togetherness enough to untangle from him and stumble over to the couch.

Sprawled on top of him, Alyse traced Liam’s jawline, prickly with beard growth, and felt content for the first time in months. For the first time, certainly, since her first meeting with Fred when the stopper had fallen out of her world and a very fortuitous scandal had swallowed her up.

Liam brushed her hair behind her ear and said conversationally, “Don’t leave me again.”

“I don’t tend to make the same mistake twice.”

And she didn’t.

Epilogue

Two Months Later

Liam struggled to open the door with the bag of food in his hands. Alyse wasn’t there yet—a fact that he confirmed, peeking into the bedroom, bathroom and closet. Since they’d gotten back together she’d frequently surprised him. It turned out he’d been wrong about the hotness of the whipped cream thing despite her insistence it was an ironic gesture. Sometimes the obvious move was the right one.

To celebrate their sort-of-two-month anniversary, he’d picked up Ben’s Chili Bowl. He doubted she would remember their first date. It was a silly detail, really, but even months later, every feature of their relationship shimmered in Technicolor compared to the rest of his memories. She’d probably resent that, something about the classic palette versus Day-Glo, but it was true. She didn’t live life on the same plane as anyone else.

Surprising no one but her, Alyse had been named the director of Young Women Read, Inc., following Geri O’Reilly’s fall from grace. Geri and Ryan had made a plea deal, but both had been marginalized by the investigation and public attention. While Ryan’s career would probably be salvageable—commentary on the state of lobbying in DC when an admitted money launderer still had influence—Geri’s probably was not.

Marc Rynsburger had also avoided prison time, though an aide of his had been convicted of a misdemeanor for breaking into Alyse’s apartment to plant the note. On evidence collected by Ryan Scott, several of Rynsburger’s employees had paid fines for making contributions to political campaigns through citizens and green-card holders in violation of the law. As Bertie had suggested, however, Rynsburger himself had been insulated from prosecution. He had passed off US operations of his conglomerate to someone else and had left the country. Ostensibly he was taking care of some growing part of his company, but Liam was certain he’d be back. While it wasn’t much, Liam was certain the public attention Poindexter had brought to bear had paid off in some small way.

Of course it hadn’t all been about the greater good. Poindexter had profited too. Page views were up, ad revenue was up and they were going to add another investigative person to pursue more original reporting. Doug didn’t hound him quite as frequently as he had before. Liam still felt anxious and responsible, like he was playing at something that might break apart at any moment, but he’d accepted his personality might just be that way.

He saw Alyse less than he would like. She was determined to leave the stench of the controversy behind, to reestablish YWR as the most important NGO in town addressing women’s literacy internationally.

Being her, she’d damned near succeeded already. Her schedule brimmed with meetings and events. She’d wheedled her way onto every task force and panel in town and was taking some new approaches to fundraising. But they did spend most nights together even if she rolled into his apartment late and was too exhausted to do anything but pass out next to him.

Just that morning they’d been arguing about whether she’d been snoring the night before. She had been, but that didn’t stop her from vigorously denying it.

“That’s a highly dubious accusation. I don’t think WASPs are allowed to snore.”

“Really? Among my people, it’s encouraged.”

He chuckled as he set the food on two plates on the table they almost never used. The spread looked bare. He should have picked up some flowers. In lieu of that, he scrounged in a drawer for a candle leftover from the last hurricane and some matches. Once it was lit, he took a few steps back to admire his work. It couldn’t hurt. He had a big question for her. He’d take all the help he could get.

Once that was taken care of, he fumbled with the wine. He really needed to get one of those fancy bottle openers. As it was he ended up breaking the cork half the time. The only redemption was that Alyse broke the cork three-quarters of the time, but she insisted the quality of screw-top wines was increasing, so evidently technology was on his side.

For once he removed the cork in one piece and poured two glasses. Now, he just had to pick music. His iPod was mixed in with some books on a shelf. Among them was a now dog-eared copy of
Judaism for Dummies
, which his mother had helpfully sent right after she’d met Alyse for the first time.

For weeks, it had just sat there. He hadn’t moved it. She hadn’t said anything about it. It was the Jewish elephant in the room.

Then he’d come home from a boy’s night with Parker and Michael to find her reading it on the couch, highlighter and sticky notes in hand.

“What?” she asked innocently, as if it were just any book. For several days, he’d studiously avoided looking at her while she was reading and he’d stifled his grin. Mostly.

Two days ago, still innocently, she’d asked about blended holidays and Christmas trees. “I just really like twinkle lights,” she’d explained.

As much as anything else, the beaten-up book had led to the question he had for her tonight.

As he shuffled through his library debating between Latin jazz—too obvious—and Mahler—too ironic—and just as he settled on classical guitar, a key scraped in the lock and the door bounced open.

Standing in the hallway and framed by fluorescent glow stood Alyse, holding a telltale white paper bag.

“You would not even believe what I just endured on the Metro. I mean...” she trailed off when she saw the table. She peeled her coat off, dropped her purse and set a white paper bag on the counter, which probably contained exactly what his had: two half smokes, split and grilled.

Crossing to him, she threw her arms around his neck and whispered, “I love you” into his shoulder.

Liam gripped her partially to hide his shaking. “Do you mean it or is that just the gratitude talking?”

She swatted at him but didn’t let go. For several beats, they stood there clinging to each other.

Then, finally, blessedly, she repeated, “I love you.”

He pressed his mouth to her hair and exhaled shakily. Once more, he plumbed for confirmation. “Are you sure it isn’t just smell of the hot fat you love?”

Pulling back without letting go, she said, “It’s the hot fat, and the candle, and the wine, and
you
. You who saw through my layers. You who put up with...my snoring. You who believed in me. You who wanted me to be better. You who loved me exactly as I was, unfinished and scared. Always and forever it’s you, Liam Nussbaum.”

He squeezed her hips so hard he was certain he’d left marks. “Oh. Good. Because I love you too.”

He’d been careful; he’d been so damn careful. After saying it too soon the first time, Liam hadn’t uttered the words since before their brief breakup. But now that she was onboard—really and fully onboard—there was nothing holding him back.

He’d loved her not since the moment they’d met but well before they’d kissed. Well before he thought there was any way she’d ever be his. Well before he’d hoped she might love him back.

He pulled her in to kiss her properly and then she, giggling, said, “Say it again?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

After a minute, they stood forehead-to-forehead and the moment was perfect.

“Great minds think alike,” he offered.

“Do you just mean the food?”

“Is your food a pretense too?”

“Yeah.” She pulled back but kept her hands linked behind his head. “Today I...well, I told my landlord I wasn’t going to renew my lease.”

Liam felt an obnoxious grin spread over his face. They could be so alike he didn’t believe it. “Did you? So you’re homeless?”

The smile she gave him was undoubtedly the same one Cleopatra had given Caesar when she’d rolled out of that carpet. Alyse tempted him into irrationality, and if he had anything to say about it, he would never do without her again.

In a tone that matched the look on her face, she said, “Well, I will be in three and a half weeks.”

He pondered for a second. “That’s...too bad.”

“It really is, isn’t it?”

“I guess you’ll need to crash here temporarily?” His words cracked they were so dry. Then his shoulder did as she hit him with a surprising amount of force.

“Is that it? Your entire offer for me to move in is couched in a joke?” Her outrage was only half-feigned. “I would have at least thought you’d have come up with a plan for how we’re going to deal with the closet space. It’s got me up at night.”

Pulling her across the room, he said, “Well, first I’m going to make love to you on the couch. Then I’ll make my real proposal.”

As he pushed her down gently and covered her with his body she whispered, “Have I mentioned I adore how your mind works?”

“Not today.”

* * * * *