The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2) (14 page)

“How bad is it?”

Jared types another few sentences, aggressively loud keystrokes that punctuate the silence. Finally, he spares me a look.

His dark eyes crackle with anger.

“Pretty fucking bad.”

I sigh and pad over to the room service cart, delaying the inevitable as I pour myself coffee and doctor it with too much cream and sugar. He makes no move to clear the couch of papers strewn around him, so I curl up in the chair opposite. “Lay it out.”

“Strike one, Lauren’s TV appearance yesterday morning. She’s got everyone speculating on that stupid picture again.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid.
My mother’s harsh words reverberate in my brain and I feel smaller, weaker, already. I hate that he’s calling
our
passionate embrace stupid.

“Sasha fucked that one up. Your interviews on the plane gave the stories counterpoint, made them something more.” Jared shakes his head. “That’s why I sent her to Chicago. I need to run damage control on this.”

My heart sinks further, even though I know better than to expect that Jared just came to LA because he needed me. He came because I’m part of his
job.

“Strike two, your speech at Trey’s school. The pundits are picking it apart, saying your stats are shit, saying you got the gig to get the black vote, not because you actually care about black kids getting shot.”

My cheeks go hot because that’s an ugly lie, but refuting it would make it a
thing
and draw it out another few news cycles. We can’t rise to their bait, even though Trey and Mama Bea are my family, not some voter demographic.

Jared levels me with a glare. “You didn’t follow the script.”

I wince, knowing he’s right. I wrote it out, gave it to Sasha to vet, and then threw it all away. “What I had wasn’t real. It would have gone over like a turd in a punchbowl.”

“Trust me, it’s going over like a turd anyway.”

I stare into my coffee cup, chastised, hating Jared for this ruthless calculation of my performance. I said nothing wrong in my speech. The haters are just politics as usual. But I didn’t follow the vetted script. “Sorry,” I mumble.

“Sorry’s not a soundbite,” Jared snaps. “And I’ll be damned if I let you ride sorry to the debate.”

I blink back tears, wondering where my lover has gone.

“Strike three,” Jared begins, and I hold my breath. “The donor event. This is what’s really got me worried.”

He turns his laptop to face me and it’s worse than I imagined: Lauren Darrow is smiling,
glowing
, her pale blue eyes alight for the camera. Next to her, I’m a grouchy mess—slightly out of focus because I’m closer to the camera, tired eyes mid-blink. A frown makes me look older than Lauren, even though she’s several years my senior.

But Jared’s not so much interested in the picture as the caption. He reads it aloud.

Former California First Lady Lauren Darrow and vice presidential candidate Congresswoman Grace Colton appeared at a Democratic fundraiser in LA last night.

“We became close friends during the primaries,” Darrow said of Colton. “I know what it’s like to make a quantum leap from local politics to the national stage and I was happy to offer Grace my insights. In politics, it’s easy to make simple mistakes that can have disastrous effects on a campaign.”

Darrow wouldn’t comment on whether her husband plans to endorse the Conover-Colton ticket, but she said he’ll continue to support the values of the voters who elected former governor Darrow to the state’s highest office six years ago.

“That’s the biggest steaming pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard.” I’m sputtering with anger. “She makes it sound like we’re BFFs, and like I’m a novice going to
her
for advice on how to run for office.”

“Instead of her crashing your party, the photo looks more like you were crashing hers,” Jared adds. “The worst thing about this is how it will lend legitimacy to anything she says about you. If she says you hate kittens, people are going to believe it.”

“I hate
her
.”

“Get in line,” Jared says mildly. “It’s a waste of time.”

“Why are you not more angry about this?” I feel beaten, like I’ve just gone several rounds with a heavyweight, and I’ve barely been awake a half-hour. “Why are you going after
me
for everything I’ve messed up, rather than seeing who’s really trying to undermine us?”

My voice rises, a shrill note that rings in the quiet hotel room when Jared doesn’t immediately respond.

Jared sets his laptop on the coffee table and takes stock of me. Dark circles ring my eyes that need a good dose of concealer. My coffee cup trembles in my hands.

“Why aren’t the reporters wondering why she’d question your morals on national television in the morning and then gush about being close friends that evening?” Jared says quietly. “Why didn’t they ask her what mistakes you’re making? Because what she intimated in that quote was a total softball.”

“I … I don’t know.”

“I do. I know because I know how Lauren thinks and works. She pecks away at your foundation, wriggles in there, so that she can either bring you down or prop you up, depending on whether it serves her purposes. She wants to be in a position where she can pull the rug out from under you if you don’t play ball her way.”

I chill at his explanation. It’s exactly what she implied last night. She can either lob a grenade at our campaign by exposing Jared, or she can keep quiet and take the credit—and the favors due in exchange for her silence.

“Other than the pictures and knowing your name, what does she have?” I ask.

“Enough.” Jared says. “She knows enough to make me look like a terrible addition to the ticket. You’d better believe the vice president’s significant other will be judged every bit as harshly as Shep’s wife.”

“So you don’t want to go public.”

“Not if we can help it. Let Lauren keep thinking she’s holding onto a juicy secret and I’ll find something to make it worthwhile for her keep it quiet.”

Political favors. Appointments. What does she want?
I have only a sketchy history between Jared and Lauren, knowing she manipulated him with sex and political favors, both before and after her marriage to Aaron Darrow. I hate the possibilities
something worthwhile
conjures.

“It’s extortion.” My righteous tone sounds hollow as I consider what I’m willing to pay my own mother to keep my past private.

“It sucks, but it’s part of the game. Quid pro quo. Happens more often than you’d think.” Jared eyes me closely as I squeeze the back of my neck, suddenly feeling queasy. “Got something you want to tell me?”

I look up in alarm. “What? No. I’m fine. Just … not feeling my best.” I stand and move to the bedroom door. “I’d better get dressed. Do I have more here in LA or are we going home?”

Jared raises his brows as I equate home with D.C., but he doesn’t comment. Instead, his voice softens. “I promised you’d have a gaffe. I’d say you had plenty, so I’m giving you a day in Oregon to regroup. You’ll be back in D.C. before the debate in Charlotte.”

“Are you coming with me?”

“I’m going to down to Texas with Shep.”

My face falls. “Oh.”

“What?” It’s another open question that prompts me to spit out the truth of what my mother wants. But I’m too ashamed to admit that my own family is shaking me down.

“Nothing. I just thought we’d get to see each other for more than twelve hours.”

Jared’s brow rises, a naughty gleam in his eye. “I managed to see a lot of you in twelve hours. Every last part, I reckon.”

I cross my arms over my chest, unwilling to let him detour us with innuendo. “So that’s it? I’m out of the loop and you’re calling the shots on what we do next to respond to this?”

“No more than I’m out of the loop when you shut me out of your meeting with Shep.” Jared’s expression hardens and I see hurt in the fact that I forced him out of the room back at campaign headquarters.

“I’m sorry. I just had to speak to him privately.” The minute the word
sorry
passes my lips, his face goes blank.

“You do what you need to do and I’ll do what I need to do. But just remember that I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me. If you don’t tell me the truth. The whole truth.”

My mother.

My child.

My true feelings for him.

I’ve created a swirl of half-truths and misdirection. Now I’m uncertain how much of what he knows or believes is real. And just like the night I faked an orgasm, I feel myself pulling away from him. “I have to get dressed.”

Jared’s shoulders sag. “I have to go in twenty minutes, but I’ve got a reporter waiting. He wants an interview with you in forty.”

“What did you tell him?”

He hesitates. “I didn’t commit yet.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t briefed you.”

Anger bubbles up in my chest as I realize how little he trusts me to make decisions. He
still
wants to control me and I won’t stand for it. “You mean, because you can’t be there to keep me on a short leash?”

“You don’t know what’s coming. You don’t know if this reporter is in Lauren’s back pocket, or cozy with the Republicans.”

“Do you?”

“That’s what I was trying to figure out.” Jared’s voice rises as he makes an exasperated gesture toward his phone. He stands, stalking across the room toward me. “Don’t you get that I’m trying to protect you? And at every turn, every time you shut me out, you won’t fucking
let
me!”

I close my eyes as Jared’s hot breath fans across my face, his anger apparent in his touch that pins me to the bedroom door. The power in his arms, tightly coiled, threatens to burst forth at any moment.

“I’m—”

“Don’t fucking say you’re sorry. Don’t say it. Just tell me the truth.” His eyes burn into mine.
 

Mother. Child. Secrets. Lies.
I don’t even know where to start, and with Lauren grasping at the edges of our campaign, I’m more insecure than ever. My need for Jared’s support, for the comfort out connection offers, overrides the hard truth that he deserves to know.

“I can’t.” My voice is hoarse with emotion. “I want to tell you everything, but just … not now.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“We’re wheels up in fifteen minutes,” Mac says to Eric, then speaks into her microphone. “Phoenix plus ten en route to location Sierra Mike Mike Alpha.”

I slip on sunglasses to block out the world as we drive to the airport in Santa Monica, where a smallish plane waits to whisk me and a handful of traveling press up to Oregon. Most of the staffers who came out to LA are heading back to headquarters in Missouri or D.C., in full debate-prep mode.

I’m in full meltdown. The interview did
not
go well.

Jared briefed me as I got ready, then ran for his flight, so I had only Mac and Eric as backing when I walked in the hotel conference room for the interview.

Jared was right to be nervous. It was an ambush.

Last spring, when neither Darrow nor Conover was the clear Democratic candidate, the Republicans got their shit together and moved in lockstep to select James Jackson as their nominee. He’s known as “the money man from Texas” both for his family’s oil business and his guidance of the Senate Budget Committee.

Like Shep and me, the Republican ticket is a Senate/House matchup: Jackson picked Illinois Congressman and Gulf War vet Landon Sharp as his running mate.

I knew I was in trouble even before I sat down for the interview. Jared told me this reporter first labeled the Jackson-Sharp ticket as the “Dream Team.”

It’s no wonder: both men are handsome enough for Hollywood, pedigreed with Ivy League diplomas, and have deep ties in Washington. But when the media hangs that kind of title on one side of the race, it’s just a matter of time before their opponents are saddled with a counterpoint moniker.

The Nightmare Team?

The Odd Couple?

The Dysfunctional Duo?

“Is this trip to LA a desperate attempt to make up the ground you’re losing to the Republicans on fundraising?” the reporter asked.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

“This trip demonstrates that the Republicans are losing ground to us on the issues,” I shot back at the reporter. “They’re pushing for regressive policies that favor a privileged minority and voters see through that.”

It wasn’t an answer to his question, but it was a soundbite Jared and Sasha would be proud of. The truth is, when it comes to fundraising, Jackson and Sharp are unstoppable.

Unfortunately, the first question out of the reporter’s mouth turned out to be the easiest one of the lot. We went several rounds on policy, but many, many more on my personal life. I ducked and dodged but the damage was apparent—next to Landon Sharp’s gorgeous résumé as a Gulf War vet, and his very public grief over the loss of his dear mother to cancer, he’s the saint and I’m the sinner.

“Landon Sharp says he’s coping with the loss of his mother by participating in cancer research fundraisers,” the reporter begins. I nod, thinking of Sharp’s shockingly hot photos that went viral, a wet white T-shirt clinging to his abs as he finishes a run to raise awareness for ovarian cancer. “Considering the recent revelations about your relationship, you seem to have moved on from the loss of your family. What advice would you have for Landon about grieving?”

I’m stunned, open-mouthed, over the sheer idiocy of this question. So I’m dating again after nearly six years of being widowed, and I’ve
moved on?
The reporter pits Sharp’s philanthropy against my apparently loose morals and I burn with shame.

But I choke that down and stick to the script.

“I’m deeply sorry for his loss. I applaud him for channeling his grief into activism, which is what I did when I ran for Congress on a platform to fix the holes in the laws that allowed a disturbed man access to the gun that killed my family.”

And so it goes. I hold my own, but through the interview, it’s apparent I’m not polished enough, not experienced enough, not … ready.

***

“Earth to Phoenix,” Mac says gently. My head snaps up and I follow her onto the plane. In less than three hours, we touch down in Oregon, lush and green, and I practically want to kiss the ground, I’m so happy to be home for a few hours.