See You at the Show (30 page)

He looked down at the ground again, his hands deep in his pockets.
 
“I don’t know what to say.
 
I don’t know how to make this any better.”

“You can’t.
 
Just go and pack, Daniel.
 
I think I’d prefer it if you weren’t here right now.”

He looked at her.
 
All those years of marriage and he’d never thought it would ever have come to this.
 
Throughout his whole life everything had always been so ordered and safe and Samantha had always been there.
 
Now all that was going to change, yet he couldn’t help feeling a little excited.

“I still care about you, Samantha...”

“Please, Daniel.
 
Just do what you have to do and leave me alone.
 
Do that for me, ok?”

He nodded, walking out of the kitchen without looking back once.
 
And for that Samantha was grateful because she couldn’t stop the tears from falling anymore.
 
This comfortable, perfect part of her life was over.
 
It was gone, and now she had to get ready for the fight of her life – finding out just who it was who’d taken her husband.
 
And winning him back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Stevie had been thrown head-first into something she never thought she’d ever do and she didn’t like it, it smacked of a situation she didn’t have control of, it put her in a weak position.
 
But she found herself doing anything it took to have Daniel in her life, no matter how much she hated it.

He’d left his wife, and that news had hit the headlines just days after it had happened and she’d then had to sit and watch it all unfold in front
 
of her on TV, read about it in newspapers, knowing they were spinning it all to make him still look respectable whilst they helped him to live a secret lie behind closed doors.
 
Because that’s what she was now.
 
A secret.
 
She knew the score.
 
She’d had it explained to her.
 
She’d been given the choice of walking away if it wasn’t what she wanted, and it wasn’t.
 
Of course it wasn’t.
 
But Daniel was.
 
He was so far under her skin she had no choice.
 
Even if it meant sacrificing part of who she was to be with him.

The General Election was just days away now, and Stevie had spent most of the past few weeks watching as Daniel spent more and more time away from London, criss-crossing the country, campaigning hard, trying to win the votes of people who may just have lost a little bit of the trust they’d previously had in him since his split from Samantha.
 
He was working flat-out, and if it wasn’t for the fact he was frequently on TV Stevie wouldn’t have seen him at all.
 
But she knew this was the most important time in his life.
 
It was everything he’d worked for, his life’s ambition.
 
She had to take a step back and remember she came second to all of that.
 
The country was in the throes of Election fever but all she wanted to do was be with the man everyone was still tipping to enter
Downing Street
.
 
She just wanted to be with Daniel.

She was in his
London
flat now, waiting for him to come home because he was on his way and she couldn’t stop that little shiver of excitement at the thought of seeing him again.
 
She was just kicking her heels really, until he got there, but this was what she did now – waited around until he was free.
 
She had no other option.
 
Her life was a whirlwind of secrecy.
 

She’d been given a mobile ‘phone to be used specifically to call Daniel, and he had one that he was to use only to call her.
 
She couldn’t call him on any other number.
 
She couldn’t be seen outside with him, she couldn’t talk about him, she couldn’t give anything away.
 
It went against everything she stood for but this man had got to her in a way nobody else had ever done before and anyway, she was good at keeping secrets, wasn’t she?
 
She should know.
 
There were things in her life she didn’t talk about, things she didn’t want anyone else to know.
 
So she shouldn’t really be finding what was happening now a problem.

The sound of the door closing signalled Daniel’s arrival home and she ran out into the living room, smiling as she saw him, looking every inch the politician in his dark suit and tie.
 
Until he saw her.
 
Then his whole demeanour changed.
 
His face broke into a smile and his shoulders relaxed as he threw his case down onto the floor, putting his hands in his pockets.
 
“You got here then?”

“Yeah.
 
The babysitters dropped me off half an hour ago.”

He laughed.
 
He knew she hated everything she was having to go through to be with him but she was dealing with it very much in her own way.
 

“Are you staying?
 
The night, I mean.”

“Well, the hassle it takes to get here makes it almost certain I haven’t just popped round for a cup of tea and a quick hello.”

He looked at her.
 
She was dressed in head-to-toe black from the bandana round her head to the tight-fitting t-shirt, to the army boots she was wearing, her tattoos on full display, her incredible blue eyes lined with smokey black eyeliner, her lips pale in her tanned face.
 
He thought she had a tendency to appear a little intimidating to anyone who didn’t know her, but at the same time she carried an intense beauty that was just mind-blowing.
 
She scared him; she made him more nervous than anyone had ever made him feel in his life but the excitement she’d put into his life was indescribable.

“Are we going to have these half hour conversations before anything happens every time you walk through the door, Daniel?”

“Sorry?”

She walked over to him, loosening his tie.
 
“Get the jacket off, come on, you’re not on the campaign trail now.”

He shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor as she dragged him by the hand into the room, pushing him down onto the sofa and climbing astride him.
 
“Now shut up and say hello properly.”

He pulled her down onto him, his mouth touching hers in a slow, gentle kiss and every ounce of stress just melted away.
 
He was back in this safe little world, this private bubble they’d been forced to live in and it felt good.
 
Sometimes he never wanted to leave.
 

“You are incredible,” he said, sliding his hands up under her t-shirt.

“It’s pointless trying to campaign me, Mr. Politician.
 
None of that’s gonna work on me.”

He smiled.
 
“Are you going to give me the welcome home I deserve then?”

“Whoa, you’re keen aren’t you?
 
I’m training you well, Mr. Madison.”

“The best teacher I ever had,” he whispered, sitting up but holding onto her waist, keeping her astride him.
 
“Listen, Stevie...”

“Oh Jesus, we’re not getting serious already, are we?”

“When this Election is over, if I win...”

“There’s an ‘if’?
 
I thought you were almost a dead cert.
 
That’s what all these polls are indicating anyway.
 
And do you know what I heard the other day when I was forced to sit and watch every news channel going just to get a glimpse of you?
 
I heard that the female vote is swaying very much in your direction because you are one fucking handsome son-of-a-bitch.”

“Nothing to do with my policies then?” he smiled.

“Baby, I don’t even know what your policies are.”

“Do you want me to show you?”

“You can show me anything you like.”

She had him again; right where she always managed to get him.
 
In a position he couldn’t get out of.
 
He’d lost his train of thought, everything now just led to her.
 
Daniel Madison, Prime Minister-in-waiting, was facing the only weakness he’d ever had in his life.
 
And her name was Stevie Stone.

***

Angus flicked through the magazine, sitting back in his chair as he took in every detail that stared back at him from the pages.
 
Stevie Stone in glorious, naked technicolour.
 
No wonder Daniel was infatuated with her.
 
She had one hell of a body.
 
This was what the soon-to-be next Prime Minister of Britain was probably sleeping with right at this very moment.
 
This was the woman who’d made this whole Election campaign a hundred times harder than it should have been, and she wasn’t set to make it any easier once Daniel entered Number Ten Downing Street on Friday, because he would.
 
It was practically all over, bar the shouting.
 
Polls indicated a land-slide victory for his Party and a new Government was set to take over the country, but where did that leave Stevie Stone?

Angus was making it his job to find out as much as he could about this strange and different young woman, and these pictures from a rock magazine, they were just the start.
 
But if Daniel really was serious about making his relationship with her public then a lot more digging was going to have to be done.
 
It was important they knew what, and who, they were dealing with, they couldn’t afford anything to come tumbling out of the closet when they least expected it.
 

He couldn’t help sneaking another look at the magazine spread, those blue eyes of hers staring back at him as she showed off everything God had given her – and He’d been extremely kind to Stevie Stone.
 

Closing the magazine he threw it into a drawer.
 
It was best to leave that alone because he was beginning to see why she’d got under Daniel’s skin so quickly.
 
She was certainly a fascinating young lady, but was she someone who could pull off being the partner of a Prime Minister?
 
Looking the way she did?
 
Because that’s what it still came down to for somebody in Daniels position.
 
And Angus doubted very much that Daniel had even given that a second thought.

He got up and poured himself a drink.
 
There was a lot of work to be done yet before they even thought about making her public.
 
Best to keep her completely under wraps until it was certain Daniel wasn’t thinking with his penis because, looking at those pictures, Angus could well understand any man doing just that.
 
No, Stevie Stone would have to stay in hiding for a little while longer.
 

He walked back over to his desk and opened the drawer, taking out the file that was underneath the magazine, opening it up and reading the first page again.
 
There was absolutely no way she could be made public just yet, because Stevie Stone wasn’t really who she said she was, Angus had found
that
much out, but for now he was just going to sit back and see exactly what it was that she chose to tell Daniel.
 
And after that he’d decide what his next move would be.

***

“We need to talk, Stevie.”

“Christ, Daniel, that’s all you ever say to me these days.”

“Because it’s very important, sweetheart.
 
I need to know what’s going on because on Thursday things could change very rapidly and we need to talk about what happens next.
 
With us.”

She looked at him, crossing her legs up underneath her as she sat on his sofa, eating popcorn and drinking beer in tiny denim shorts and a white vest.
 
She looked like some unbelievably sexy biker girl and he found himself getting turned on again just thinking about what she could do to him with that mouth of hers.
 
Samantha had never done that.
 
He was forty-four years old and until he’d met Stevie Stone nobody had ever done that to him.
 

“What’s the matter with
you
?” she asked, still staring at him.

“Sorry?”
 
He quickly tried to pull himself together.
 
Did she have any idea what she did to him?

“You’ve gone all weird on me.
 
You alright?”

He sat down beside her, taking the bowl of popcorn away from her and putting it down on the table, pulling her legs out and over his lap, stroking her ankle as he spoke.
 
He just wanted to touch her.
 
He didn’t want to have to spoil these moments with unwanted reality but this wasn’t some dream he was living here.
 
This was real-life.
 
And it was complicated.