Fixer: A Bad Boy Romance (21 page)

Unless what he wanted was Alicia, to have that love back. Even still, his heart ached, burning for her, a burn that he somehow knew would never go away.

Tanner left the Capitol, headed home, started dumping clothes into his suitcase. He needed to leave.

Chapter Twenty-Three

*

"No, not even close. Come on, you can't be serious with this shit." Tanner threw the printed paper with the proposed speech he'd been reading down onto the desk of the gubernatorial candidate's head speechwriter. "Are you even trying?"

The speechwriter, a young man with a sparse resume that proudly touted a C average in college as his crowning achievement, blinked up at him. "What's wrong with it?"

"What's wrong-" Tanner cut himself off, fighting to swallow his anger. He'd been struggling with anger more recently, as of late. Stages of grief, he thought blackly to himself.

Instead, he turned the paper around so that the speechwriter could see, stabbing down with one finger at a particularly awful passage. Just to drive home the issues with this section of the speech, Tanner had circled the paragraph twice and then scrawled "NO" over it with a thick tipped red marker.

"This," he spat out through gritted teeth. "You're stating that the governor's going to embrace coal power. That's wrong."

The speechwriter peered down at the paragraph, as if he didn't even remember his own writing, and then returned a weakly watered down version of Tanner's frown back up at him. "No, the governor told me to put that part in."

"What? Why the hell would he want that in there, when one of the biggest planks in his platform is environmental stewardship?"

"It's not just coal, it's clean coal," the speechwriter said, as if this explained everything.

Tanner opened his mouth, but closed it again after a minute of searching helplessly for words. "You ought to run for a political appointment yourself," he finally spat out, the worst insult he could conjure up. He snatched the speech draft off of the writer's desk and stormed in to talk to their candidate himself, as the young man sat back and grinned at the apparent compliment.

The governor sat behind his own desk in the campaign office, looking intently at something on his computer with his mouth hanging slightly open. At the sound of Tanner opening his office door and barging in, the man quickly snapped up, clicking furiously at something on his screen as his mouth snapped shut.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?" Tanner asked, trying to keep his disgust out of his voice.

"No, no, not at all," the governor replied. Derrick Scott wasn't anyone's idea of a perfect governor in terms of policy, but he did have a confident speaking voice and strong demeanor, which was enough to keep him appealing to voters. As long as everyone listened to the style of his speeches, and not the lack of substance, Tanner thought that he could manage to squeeze out a win for the man.

Of course, after he spent a few years in office and accomplished absolutely nothing, Tanner had already decided that he wouldn't pick up the phone when they called him back to lead the man's re-election campaign.

"Derrick, what's all this I hear about coal?" Tanner asked, dropping the half-written speech onto the man's desk.

Derrick smiled, although it was more of a nervous gesture than a confident one. His bald head, shaved and polished, gleamed like a cue ball. "Yeah, Keegan, I wanted to talk to you about that. See, I've been talking to some folks over in the energy sector who are looking to provide a whole bunch of Florida jobs, and they say-"

"It's Tanner," Tanner cut in.

Derrick frowned in incomprehension. "What?"

"Tanner. Not Keegan."

His frown deepened. "But that's your name, isn't it? I like to call people by their first names, put them at ease."

"It doesn't put me at ease," Tanner snapped back. He knew that, at least the old Keegan Tanner would never talk back to a candidate like this. The candidate needed to be kept happy, well-fed, and complacent, while he did the real heavy lifting behind the scenes. But as of late, he found himself hating Derrick, hating everything about the man. He had absolutely no morals, and his charisma was as shallow as a kid's backyard wading pool. Next to Alicia, the man was just a cheap sock puppet-

Tanner closed his eyes for a moment, wincing. He didn't want to think about her name. He'd spent the last two months trying to not picture her, not remember her, not realize how much he missed her and wanted her. He could move on. Just needed more time.

"Tanner," he said firmly, opening his eyes after taking a breath. "Call me Tanner."

"Well, if you insist," the governor allowed - another thing that Tanner hated about the man. He backed down at the slightest sign of confrontation. Great for Tanner to get his way in disputes, but Tanner couldn't be at the man's side every second - and it only took a few seconds for a lobbyist to change Derrick Scott's mind.

"Anyway, back to this coal thing," Tanner returned, tapping the speech now sitting on the governor's desk. "Look, you can't put this in there."

"But it's clean coal!" Derrick replied, as if this made it different. "And the energy people are telling me that it will bring jobs-"

"Derrick." Tanner fought the urge to reach up and rub his temples. "There's no such thing as clean coal. It's just buzzword bullshit made up to lie to voters. It's going to bring pollution, not jobs - come on, there's no coal here! This isn't West Virginia!"

"But they said it's clean-"

"Derrick, your whole platform is about stewardship, both for the budget and the environment. Bringing in coal plants will destroy your environmental credibility, and the cost to the state when the President finally implements those carbon taxes he's been threatening for years will destroy your fiscal plank as well. You can't put this in a speech."

Derrick Scott looked put out - no, worse than that, Tanner realized. The damn man was pouting! Like a little child! What was he, eight years old?

Tanner wasn't going to cave on this. He waited, glaring at the candidate and not bothering to hold back the disdain in his eyes.

"Fine," Derrick finally caved, just as Tanner knew that he would. Dear lord, the man was seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of electability. "But listen, maybe instead, we could talk to the energy people and convince them to instead bring some other jobs! They were saying all sorts of fun things about fracking-"

Keegan Tanner, in a rare twist, found himself speechless.

He turned around, ignoring as the gubernatorial candidate kept talking. "Oh, and Derrick," Tanner called over his shoulder.

"Oh, yes? What?"

"The framed picture on the wall behind you reflects your computer screen," Tanner said with a sigh. When he walked into the office, the man had been browsing the "casual encounters" section of Craigslist, several lurid pictures easily viewable in the reflection behind him.

"Oh. Shit. Look, I just clicked a link in my email, I didn't know that it would-"

Tanner slammed the office door behind him, cutting off the rest of the man's protests. He'd probably sink himself with a scandal before he even made it a year in office, he thought blackly to himself.

The whole thing was an exercise in futility. He had just wanted out of Washington, and although he'd told Pribus that he was done working as a fixer, the man wheedled him into taking this position down here, working a short term appointment to get Soon-To-Be-Governor Scott elected. Tanner figured that the extra cash would help offset his heavy drinking bills, and accepted the spot.

More recently, however, as Derrick Scott drove him crazy, Tanner found himself pushing the booze away. Instead, he started spending more and more time in the little hometown gym located a block away, grunting as he pushed his body to its limits, letting the physical exertion of lifting weights and running on the treadmills clear his mind of intrusive thoughts.

But no matter how much he exercised, how many stupid things Derrick Scott said to him, he couldn't keep Alicia fully out of his mind.

More and more, Tanner realized, he'd made the wrong choice, had kept on making wrong choices ever since the woman saw right through him. He should have known, right then, that there was something special about Alicia.

But instead, he assumed that she was plain, that she didn't matter, and that he could replace her in the future with another woman.

Now, however, women held no interest for Tanner. One of the campaign interns came on to him, a sexy blonde barely out of college but already showing off incredible growth in the upper torso, but Tanner barely even noticed. He turned down her offer to go out and get a drink, kept his eyes away from her expansive cleavage, and felt only relief when she finally, pouting and put out, set her sights on the head speechwriter instead.

What would he end up doing? Tanner couldn't decide, didn't have any answers for the questions in his head. He knew that he still wanted to work in politics - it was his life, his passion - but he couldn't keep doing things like this, helping a sleazeball like Derrick Scott get elected.

He heard some of Alicia's words echoing back to him: "...we need to do something that matters - not for us, but for our future..."

Tanner paused. He wasn't just hearing the words in his head, he realized. Instead, he heard them drifting in his ears! He blinked, looking around and snapping back to the present.

There! Someone had turned on a television in the main area of the campaign building, and, her head and torso displayed on the set of some talk show, was Senator Alicia Stone!

Tanner shoved aside a low-level staffer as he staggered over, his eyes locked on that television screen. "Turn it up!" he barked, not sure who he was addressing. Some flunky must have heard him and held the remote control, however, because the volume on the set rose until he could clearly hear Alicia's words.

"So, Senator Stone," said the host of the show, frowning. The camera panned over to him, and Tanner wanted to curse at the cameraman. Go back to Alicia! "You're introducing your education bill again, despite the strong opposition that it faced last time?"

Finally, the camera returned to Alicia, looking strong and defiant and composed, so good that Tanner wanted to reach out and try and touch her through the screen of the television. "Yes, that's correct," she replied simply.

"You don't fear that the same thing will happen as last time? This bill will go down in flames, and opponents will lambast you for targeting pipe dreams?"

Alicia, however, had a response ready to that. "Is it a pipe dream to want better education for our children, for our future?" she fired back, filled with fire and energy. Tanner watched, wishing that his candidate Derrick Scott could channel even a fraction of that seriousness, that conviction and passion. "I don't believe so. If that's the label that will be put on the rare politicians who step up and do something, instead of just sitting back and continuing to let our country slide, well, it's a label I'll be glad to wear."

"And how do you think your chances are for the bill's passage?" the host asked next, after taking a moment to recover from the energy of Alicia's response.

Alicia sighed, her eyes dipping down. "I wish that I could promise that it would pass, as I hope," she admitted, "but it's going to be a tough call. Last time, I thought that I had the votes, but the bill didn't end up coming through. This time, I feel like my fellow senators are even more jaded and reluctant to stick their necks out for change by voting for a bill like this one."

"Doesn't sound good for your bill's chances," the host admitted sympathetically.

But Alicia smiled back at him. "Well, last time I thought the bill would pass, and it failed. This time, I think the bill will fail, so I'm hoping that it will pass!"

"Sounds like Yogi Berra's kind of logic," the host chuckled, but he was laughing along with Alicia, not at her. Her undeniable charisma had already charmed him, won him over to her side. Tanner felt a pull of longing, deep in his gut.

But more importantly, he knew that, as it stood now, Alicia's bill wouldn't pass. No bill fared better when it was introduced for a second time.

This education bill, just like the first one, would founder and die-

-unless he helped.

In that moment, Tanner wasn't even thinking of winning Alicia back. But he knew that he owed her this, that this was his one chance to make right the injustice he'd caused, the sin that had weighed on him for the last two months.

"Hey, Derrick!" he shouted casually over his shoulder.

Derrick Scott stuck his bald head out of his office. "Yes, Keegan?"

"I quit. Your campaign's the political equivalent of a dumpster fire, and I hope you burn with it. Enjoy watching porn in your office until the funds run out."

And as every single staffer stared at him, their mouths hanging open, Tanner left to go catch the first available flight to Washington.

Chapter Twenty-Four

*

Two days later, Alicia Stone sat on the floor of the Senate, fighting the urge to bite at her fingernails. It was an old habit, one that she'd suffered with as a child and fought against when she entered college. She'd weaned herself away from it, mostly by throwing herself instead into studying and typing, other things to keep her hands busy, but she still occasionally felt the urge to pop a nail into her mouth and bite down.