DARK PARADISE - A Political Romantic Suspense (7 page)

“My God, John, what’s gotten
into you?” I smile and offer breathless praise. “Rough day?”

I hear the clink of his belt,
and my spirits fade. He never sticks around long. At least some of the other guys
would lie down for a while. Make small talk. Sometimes order room service. It
was always just as emotional for them as it was physical. All they ever wanted
was someone to make them feel special.

That’s the funny thing about
people with money and power. They can have almost anything they want, but most
of them just want to feel loved, and if they need it badly enough, they’re
always willing to pay for it.
Araminta
says
everything has a price. I tend to agree.

“Leaving so soon?” I sit up,
dragging my nail down my caved belly as roll to my side and cross one thigh
across the other.

“Regrettably.” His warm lips
press against my forehead.

One of these days, I’d love to
get him to stay a while, maybe engage him in some kind of conversation just to
feel him out a bit more. I could start with a childhood memory and go from
there. A man’s childhood can sometimes provide priceless insight.

I offer a sweet smile. I can’t
nag or beg. Nothing about that conveys any kind of ideal fantasy for them. All
I can do is play the part of the princess who waits patiently in her tower. The
doll put back on the shelf until next time. The void-of-opinion
Stepford
wife.

Reminding myself that this is
supposed to be all business and no pleasure, at least not on my part, I stretch
my arms over my head and roll to my stomach, giving him a view of the ass he
loves so much on his way out.

“Oliver has called a cab for
you downstairs,” he says.

I hear the metallic twist of
the doorknob, and I feel the opportunity to get to know him better
disintegrate.

“John?” I call out.

“Yes?”

“What was your favorite
childhood memory?”

He huffs. Or laughs. I’m not
sure, since I can’t see him.

“I know where this is going,
Camille,” he says. “Nice try.”

He’s a smart one, my John.

“I’ll see you again soon,” he
says.

“I’m going home this weekend,”
I almost forget to tell him. “To Tennessee. I visit my mother the first weekend
of each month.”

He doesn’t answer at first, and
my thoughts suspend. He’s unhappy with this news. I can feel it.

“Very well,” he says. “Have a
wonderful time with your mother, and we’ll reconvene when you return.”

I listen as his footsteps grow
distant, and I hear the click of the front door.

By the time I’ve redressed and
freshened up, I glance out the window to make sure the cab is still waiting. It
is. Padding down the hall on my way out, I stop by the kitchen when I spot a pile
of mail shoved into a wooden tray on the counter.

I’m not sure how I didn’t see
that there before, but sure enough, it’s sitting in plain sight.

It’s not like I’m snooping . .
.

And no one’s here to see me
look . . .

Without further deliberation, I
trek toward the stack of mail and rifle through. It’s all junk. Not a single
bill or questionable letter. All of it is addressed to the same person, or
company, rather:
Vivacorp
.

Never heard of them.

I pull out my phone and snap a
picture. I’ll have to Google them later.

My stomach somersaults at the
thought of the possibility of this leading me to John’s identity. But then
again, do I really want to know?

And what happens when I find
out?

“John”

My father grills breakfast on
the promenade outside the White House’s “Sky Parlor.” That’s
right,
grills
. It’s a Montgomery family tradition: bacon, sausage links, and breakfast
potatoes, fresh off a gas grill with a buffet of fresh fruit and fine pastries
made from scratch in the White House kitchen. One Saturday each month, when my
father is stateside, we meet in the solarium for breakfast.

This morning, Vice President
Darlington and her husband join us, as well as a few of my father’s closest
confidants. This is more than just a family affair.

“What’s going on, Mother?” I
ask as she pours coffee from a porcelain carafe.

Her polished nails click
against her mug as her eyebrows angle. “We’re celebrating the unofficial start
of your father and Nanette’s re-election campaign. I thought we could enjoy a
nice breakfast together in the solarium and
talk
shop
after a while.”

Mother brings her mug to her
lips, her eyes leaving mine and landing on the doorway behind me. With hands in
my pockets, I turn to see who’s joining us now. And I wish I hadn’t.

“Why is she here?” I keep my
voice low.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” My
mother swats her hand at me, clucking her tongue. “She’s a Darlington. You’ll be
seeing a lot of her during this campaign. It’ll be just like old times.”

“Wouldn’t you love that.”

“You know that I would.” Her
nails trace the crystal eagle brooch on the lapel of her tweed Chanel jacket.
“It never hurts to give destiny a good shove in the right direction.”

My mother, First Lady Busy
Montgomery, has the entire world fooled by her charm and grace. The benign
smile she wears at all times is only ever for the camera, and that helmet head
hairstyle of hers pays homage to First Ladies of yesteryear, back when America
was truly beloved and its citizens placed blind trust in the families who lead
it. Her wardrobe consists of mostly pastels, a nod to holidays like Easter, which
is synonymous with family values and gatherings.

Beneath that carefully crafted
façade lies one of the greatest masterminds of this generation. What Busy
wants, Busy gets. How else could the eighth daughter of a destitute coal miner from
rural Kentucky grow up to marry the son of President JL Montgomery?

“Be polite and say hello. Don’t
make this awkward for both families.” Mother says, her voice audible only to
me. “And that’s an order, not a request. You do not have a choice.”

“Everyone has a choice.”

“Not when you’re a Montgomery,
dear.” She taps me twice on my shoulder before pasting a smile on her face.
Before I can protest, she walks away to offer Vice President Darlington an
absolutely divine
blueberry muffin.

The solarium is small enough
that I couldn’t avoid Lydia if I tried. My father stands outside at the grill,
stirring potatoes in a grill basket and wearing a canvas apron with the
Presidential Seal logoed across the front.

If my brother were here I could
shoot the breeze with him until the inevitable, but alas, he’s late as usual.

“Good morning.” The sing-song
voice that once set my soul at ease sends an unwelcome jolt down my spine.

I don’t have to see or hear
Lydia to know she’s standing directly behind me. I feel it—that heavy energy,
that sick thud in my chest, like a pesky houseguest who refuses to leave.

I pull my shoulders tight and
turn to face her, staring down at the same shiny emerald eyes I used to love.
They’re not as bright anymore. Years of being an evil human being have left
them tarnished.

“Hi.” I don’t disguise my
disdain as she studies my face.

“You look good.” The second
thing out of her mouth is typical Lydia: flattery as an icebreaker. “How have
you been?”

The third thing out of her
mouth is a tactic to place the ball in my court, to get me to open up to her
under the guise of a benign, quintessentially American conversation starter.

“Small talk, Lydia? Really?
After all these years.” I huff, pouring myself a coffee simply because it
allows me to turn away from her for a moment. She steps closer, cornering me.

“Is it too much to ask that
we’re cordial to each another?” Her voice holds an innocent quality, but I know
better.

“We threw cordial out the
window a long time ago.” I pour two creamers and a sugar into my mug and stir
until the liquid swirls. I’m not going to drink it. I just want her to know
that right here, in this moment, this stupid little cup of coffee is more
important to me than she is. It’s more deserving of my time and attention than
anyone else in this room.

“I made a mistake. A big one.”

I’ve heard that line several
times before. She’s famous for it as far as our history is concerned. You don’t
spend twelve years on and off with a woman and not figure out her patterns and
strategies after a while.

“Let me guess: you still love
me, you realized you’re only ever going to love me, you were young and foolish,
you were scared, and you know now that we’re meant to spend the rest of our
lives together.” I repeat her old lines before she has the chance. It’s more
efficient that way. “Oh, wait. I forgot the one about being each other’s first
loves, and that there was a reason we keep coming back to each other.”

Her jaw falls, and her arms
fold across her wrinkle-free linen dress. A tiny American flag pin is attached
below her collarbone, and it sparkles in the sunlight.

“What’s wrong, Lydia? Take the
words right out of your mouth?” I smirk.

A friend of my father’s stands
within earshot of us, and I spot him whipping his head in our direction. This
isn’t the time
nor
the place, and the last thing I
need is for his comrade over there to inform him of potential interpersonal
issues on the campaign trail. He has a job to do, and he should focus on that
and
not
my personal life.

But she started it, and I’m sure
as hell going to finish it.

“I hopped off the Lydia Darlington
train two years ago,” I say. “I’m never getting back on, and there isn’t a
single thing you can say to make me change my mind. Understand?”

I lift my mug as if I’ve just
made a brilliant toast and offer her a counterfeit smile before taking a sip.

“We’re going to be seeing an
awful lot of each other here soon,” she says. “You’re going to have to be nice
to me. You’re going to have to spend time with me. A lot of late nights.”

Quite the contrary. I’ll
personally see to it that every working minute on this campaign trail is spent
as far away as possible from this demon spawn, and as for my late nights . . . well,
those will be spent with Camille. I’m taking her with me.

“Whatever you say, Lydia.” I
chuckle and walk away just in time for my brother to make his appearance. I
can’t count on him for much, but he always did have a knack for perfect timing.

Camille

I pull out several filled
journals from my carry-on bag Saturday morning and transfer them into a locked
suitcase beneath my childhood bed. I’ve been transporting the older ones, a
handful at a time, with each visit lately. Call me paranoid, but I don’t want
them all in one place.

My mother knocks on the door,
and I shove the unzipped bag out of sight. She doesn’t know about it. Linda
Buchanan would be sick if she knew what her daughter was really doing in
Washington, DC, and I don’t want to involve her in any of this anyway.

“Come in,” I call out.

“I was going to see if you were
coming down for breakfast,” she says. “I made Mickey waffles.”

My sweet mother lives for the
first weekend of every month. For two whole days she gets to step into her old
skin, the only one that ever truly gave her purpose and meaning. And for two
whole days, I get to forget about politics and sex and the hustle that’s become
my life—I get to simply be someone’s daughter.

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be down in a
minute.”

She lingers in my door, her
warm smile drowning me in an innocent sweetness before she trots back
downstairs.

I pull the suitcase back out
and count the journals.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

My stomach drops when I realize
I left one at the apartment. My most recent one is arguably the most important
of them all.

Two deep
breaths
and I’m halfway to pulling myself together. If I fixate on this all weekend,
I’ll never enjoy my time away. The good thing is that
Araminta
knows nothing about it. Someone would have to go rifling through my things to
find it, and the odds of that are slim.

“Okay.” I breathe out. It’s out
of my control, and I’ll be back home tomorrow night.

A minute later, I take my seat
at the breakfast table, listening to my mother hum
A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes
as she whisks waffle batter and
fires up the Mickey waffle iron she bought fifteen years ago during our first
and only trip to Disney World. She saved up for years for that trip and it
rained the entire time, but it was the most fun I’d ever had in my young, brief
life.

Not even torrential downpours
could wash away the magic of that place.

Even as a child, I couldn’t get
over how absolutely perfect everything was. The streets were clean, swept
daily. The bushes were shaped like Goofy and Donald Duck. Nightly fireworks
made my whole body tickle with each pop and tingle with each crackle. Mickey-shaped
pretzels, pineapple soft serve floats, and enchanted rides topped it all off.

Nobody cares about anything at
Disney World, and everyone is smiling.

“Do you remember when you used
to tell me you wanted to work at Disney World when you grew up?” Mom stops
humming to ask me a question. Her lips spread wide and she laughs. “It was the
cutest thing, Camille. You said you wanted to operate the Tea Cups.”

I laugh. “It was my favorite
ride. And you were so wonderful to let me ride it five times in a row. I don’t
think I could do that much spinning right now if I wanted to.”

She pours a cupful of batter
onto the iron and shuts the lid before flashing me a wistful glance. “And I’d
do it all over again, sweetheart. Even if it made me sick to my stomach the
rest of the day, all I wanted to do was see that beautiful smile of yours. All
those parents at Disney World? They’ll empty their life savings to see that
smile on their kids’ faces. And let me tell you, it was worth every clipped
coupon and Kraft dinner.”

“Maybe we can go back someday?”
I propose. “I could really use some magic in my life. I kind of miss it.”

“Oh, honey,” she says. “Magic
goes away the second you become an adult, and unfortunately it never comes
back.”

I sink back in my chair. “But
we could go back anyway. You know, for old times’ sake.”

“It’s not that I wouldn’t want
to,” she says. “I’d love it. But I just don’t have any extra money right now.”

“I’ll pay for it.”

Her head whips toward me then
shakes back and forth. “You don’t have any money either. A young lady living in
DC on a waitress’s wages cannot afford a two-person trip to Disney World.”

My mother still thinks I’m a
waitress, and it’s a sore topic of discussion I’m generally keen on avoiding.
But not today.

“The holiday season is coming
up. I usually get huge tips. I’ll save them up and we can go after the first of
the year,” I say. “Please? Let’s go. Just us. I want to do this.”

She clucks her tongue and fights
a smile.

“Please. You’re retired. You
should be doing fun things.” A retired schoolteacher’s pension doesn’t exactly
allow for Hawaiian vacations or Alaskan cruises. “You never travel. You never
leave Oakdale. You’ve always been there for me, Mom. You’ve taken care of me.
Let me take care of you for once.”

I always told myself that
someday, when I become famous and my bank account is fat enough, I’m
bankrolling my mother. She’s the sweetest, hardest-working woman I’ve ever
known, and she sacrificed to give me everything I could ever need. She even took
a second job so we could move out of the rat-infested, low-income apartments in
the seedy part of town. For years, she worked two jobs and attended school part-time
to earn her teaching degree.

Best of all, her summers were
for me.

And when everyone else was
traveling the country with their families, we read to escape. My mother always
said books could take us anywhere we wanted to go.

“Let’s get away,” I urge.

She smiles, rarely able to say no
to her pride and joy. It’s a quality I took advantage of far too many times as
a child. In all my life, there was really only one question to which she ever told
me no. And still to this day, she refuses to answer it.

“All right, Camille. You’ve
twisted my arm. We’ll go,” she says, forking the waffle and dropping it on a
plate.

If only it were that easy to
get her to tell me who my father is.

There are two facts I know
about him. The first? He works in politics. The second? They met in Washington,
DC.

I’ve always wondered if my pull
in that direction was because a missing piece of me might still be there.