Never Been Kissed (38 page)

“He was going to grow up sometime.”

Her eyes had glacier level coldness as they slid over her. “And you?” she asked. “Are you going to grow up sometime?”

Oh, to stand up, tear off the stifling blue suit that didn’t fit and she didn’t like and run away from her mother’s disdain for her, for everything that was important to Ashley was a powerful temptation.

But she was here to stand her ground, build herself something from scratch. And her mother’s disapproval no longer had any influence over her. She had, after all, survived worse things than her mother’s withering disdain.

“I’m taking over the foundation,” she said.

From the corner of her eye she saw her mother briefly hang her head, as if Ashley’s disappointments were just too much to bear.

“You understand I am on the board and I won’t have you devoting all of my mother’s money to foreign aid when there is so much need here.”

For a moment, Ashley actually felt fondness for her mother, beneath the hard political shell, there was the beating heart of a public servant. It just didn’t show itself very often.

“I’m working on a community-based, shuttle-service for underserved senior citizens.”

Patty blinked. “That’s something we can discuss,” she finally said.

“And we will,” Ashley agreed, biting back her smile in the mirror. “But I should make it clear, I don’t need your approval. The deal was, if I stayed in the States, I could manage the foundation.”

“That was years ago.”

“I’m growing up, Mother. This is what you wanted.”

There was a knock on the front door to the suite.

“Come in,” she said, and Harrison poked his gleaming head in the door.

“Hey!” He said and walked in. Everything about him was right. His hair, the suit, the firm but pleasant look in his eye. He was both approachable and somehow beyond reproach.

She looked away, still angry at him. Brody was the one who left, but if Harrison hadn’t shown him the door, Ashley might have had a chance to persuade him to stay, to work through the scandal together.

Or are you just telling yourself that, because that makes you feel better.

“You look really uncomfortable in that suit,” he said, trying to tease her.

“I’ve been wearing cut-offs for three weeks. Any suit was going to look uncomfortable.” He touched her hand and smiled at her for a moment.

“Thank you,” he said, “for being here. I feel better with you around.”

Suddenly, she realized just how lonely her brother seemed, surrounded on every side, three deep by people he only let in so far. But there was no one on the inside.

No one for him to show his secret hopes to.

And marriage certainly didn’t seem to make him any happier.

She squeezed his hand, as sad for him as she was angry. “I’m happy to be here. But we have some things we need to talk about.”

“The election—?”

“No, Harrison! Your wife.”

“Mom, can you give us a second. In fact …” he made eye contact with the hair and make-up staff who quickly disappeared out the door.

“You want me to leave?” Patty asked.

“I need to talk to Ashley.” He sounded so firm, so firm that mom didn’t argue. She lifted her chin and walked right past them.

“She’s having a bad night,” Ashley whispered, watching as she left a trail of ice in her wake.

“How so?”

“Both of her kids have grown up and don’t need her anymore.”

Harrison laughed. “If only that were true. Sadly, I still need her.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you got married?”

He rubbed a hand over his mouth and she was reminded of him in that hospital in Nairobi. Her brother kept so many secrets, so many pieces of himself tucked away out of the public eye, she wondered if he knew who he was anymore.

“Truthfully, I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s not real. It’s political. The whole thing.”

“Who is she?”

“A mistake, I’m trying to make right.”

Ashley flinched at the language. To be called a mistake? What a horrible thing. And it reminded her of that year after Brody, after the Vice Presidency was lost, when all those rumors surfaced about dad.

“Is this about Dad?”

“No.”

“Because his mistakes are his own. All of them, Harrison. That’s not anything you need to make right.”

His handsome features curved again into that political smile indicating he was done talking about this and she felt very keenly sorry for his new wife.

Harrison knew how to freeze a person out.

“When can I meet her?”

“Tonight. Later, I imagine. But, that’s not why I’m here. Look, I wasn’t sure if I should tell you but I thought, if you found out, you might lose it.” He sighed. “Brody is here.”

“Bro—” One time when Ashley was a kid the Montgomery family started to get heat for being out of touch with the real world. Patty didn’t buy groceries. Harrison and Ashley had tutors and nannies and private school educations that cost more than most people made in their lives. In an effort to combat this perception, her mother had arranged a photo op at a county fair for the family. All to prove to people who would never really believe it that they were a normal family. Who did normal things.

So, as a normal family does, Patty filled the fair with pre-screened extras (there was no way she could actually have the real-life public there) and told Ashley to look like she was having fun.

Ashley had almost immediately found The Drop Zone. She sat strapped into a ring of seats that climbed up to the top of a very high pole and paused there a second before dropping into a free fall to the bottom, where hydraulics caught the seat and returned her to safety.

That Brody was here made her stomach feel the same way. Like the world beneath her had vanished.

“Where?” she asked.

“He’s outside the kitchen staff door. My guys have stopped him, but he wants to come in.”

“Why?” she breathed. Her fingers were in knots in her lap.

“I imagine for the same reason you look so tortured.” He ducked his head to look into her face. “You okay?”

No,
she thought.
No, I’m not.
But she smiled, because she was a Montgomery among Montgomerys and that was what a Montgomery did.

“Fine.”

There was another knock on the door and Harrison’s campaign manager poked his head in. “We need to get going.”

Harrison nodded and the manager disappeared. Harrison was so good at that, making people vanish.

She was not. Wasn’t even interested in having that skill. Harrison pushed people away, she gathered them close.

And she wouldn’t change that about herself.

Why is Brody here?
she thought.
Has something happened to Ed?
She pushed away the idea that he was here for her. Not because she didn’t believe it, she did—as foolish, as dangerous a thought as that might be—she just couldn’t do anything about it at the moment.

“I’m sorry for what I said to him in Bishop,” Harrison said. “And if he’s who you’ve chosen I’ll support you. It’s time the Montgomery’s supported one another. Do you want me to let him in?”

She put her hand on Harrison’s arm. “Let him in.”

Harrison nodded. “We need you out there in ten minutes.”

“Then you better send in Dora,” she said and pointed to the fat curlers in her hair, “because I have no idea what to do with these.”

Brody stood along the back wall of the hotel ballroom nursing soda water with lime. He had one eye on the exits, a habit that would probably never die, and his other eye on Ashley.

It had taken him a second when the cool brunette stepped up to the stage wearing a blue suit and red high heels; he hadn’t recognized her.

He nearly dropped his drink when she started talking.

If he hadn’t been in love with her before the speech, he was now. Now, in fact, he was in ruins.

She’d been funny and sobering in turns, she’d talked about public service as if it were a privilege.

“If we all just did it,” she said, “we’d know how addicting kindness can be. How habit forming helping someone is. My brother understands this and that is why he’ll make a great congressman.”

When she was done and the polite applause filled the ballroom, Brody had put his fingers to his lips and whistled. Seriously out of place, but what was the point of pretending. He’d driven six hours to get here and it was worth every moment.

She’d stepped down the wide stairs at the side of the stage and into the knot of press that had been standing there. Patty joined her, smiling as if standing arm in arm with her daughter was something she’d done a million times.

Ashley stepped away from the reporters, but one dodged forward, getting in her path, and Ashley reeled back, alarm flickering briefly across her face.

Brody pushed off the wall and crossed the room, setting his drink down on a table as he walked.

“I’ve answered all the questions I’m going to answer regarding Somalia. Tonight is about my brother,” Ashley was saying. “And about the future.”

“But Kate McGovern alluded to sexual—”

“She’s done.” Brody stepped in between the reporter and Ashley. The reporter opened his mouth as if to argue but one look at Brody’s face and he stepped back. Brody walked forward toward the closed doors on the other side of the room, away from where the press stood. The
women followed, he could feel them at his back, a solid wall of ice and fire. He heard Patty greeting people as they walked and he slowed down his pace, until finally they were out the side door into the staging area for the kitchen.

There were only waiters and trays there.

“You okay?” Brody asked Ashley, taking in her pale face. The pale remainders of the bruises were covered with makeup.

“What are you doing here?” Patty asked.

“Mom—”

“Did Harrison invite you?”

Brody lifted his badge; he hadn’t been invited but Patty didn’t need to know that. Beside him Ashley gave no clue of how she was feeling. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or hurt or happy. The urge to throw her over his shoulder and get her out of this place was hard to control.

“I would think that our professional relationship with you was over the moment you kidnapped my daughter. And if you are here expecting payment, you can forget it. We owe you nothing.”

He smiled, more teeth than happiness, and he was pleased when she stepped backward with one foot. “You’re right, you owe me nothing. As for kidnapping your daughter, if she said the word I would take her so far away you’d never see her again. You’d never judge her. You’d never find her wanting. And you would never ever get the privilege of seeing your amazing daughter reach a potential so far beyond your capabilities you can’t even imagine it. In fact,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, “I might not even wait for her to say the word. I might do it anyway, because you have never deserved the loyalty she has given you.”

“Brody …” Ashley whispered and pressed her hand to his arm. It was an electric shock even through his suit and the shirt beneath it.

“I need to go back outside,” Patty said, lifting her chin. If her hair moved, he imagined she was tossing it back. “Ashley, you can do what you want, you always have, but for the sake of your brother I would ask that you remember that tonight is important.”

She pushed her way out the door and Brody was left alone with Ashley.

His bravery of a few moments ago vanished. It was so easy to stick up for Ashley, to demand for her, what she deserved.

Not as easy to stand here and do the same for himself.

“What are you doing here, Brody?”

He was sweating. How strange. And he was breathing through his nose like a bull.

So much agitation,
she thought. If his words hadn’t sent her hope soaring, this … distress would.

But first she had to be sure—if he was here for any other reason than what she suspected, she would fall on the floor in pieces.

“Is Ed okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “Well, better. He’s bossing us around.”

She sighed, her hope a kite on a string that was running wildly through her hands.

“The subpoena?” she asked.

“Never came. It might still, but … we’ll deal with that as it comes.”

We.
Oh, the worlds she built on top of that word. In an instant she built a fantasy so bright, so compelling, she had to look away or be ruined.

“I can’t take any more heartbreak from you, Brody,” she whispered. She clenched her hands together to keep from reaching for him. Her words ran over themselves as
if fleeing a fire. “I have loved you since I was seventeen and—”

He grabbed her hands and pressed them to his lips. It hurt, the pleasure of it, and the ecstatic relief of his touch after the last week made her gasp.

“I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve you,” he said against her fingers, his eyes pressed closed. “But I love you. I love you so much, Ashley.”

She pulled her fingers away as if his words had burned her. And they had, because she wanted to believe this. But how many times could one woman get hurt by the same man?

“I was so scared of losing you I never let myself have you. Even while I was falling in love, I kept reminding myself that it wouldn’t last. That you would at some point come to your senses and leave—”

“You left,” she said. “You did. I would never have left.”

“I know … I know you wouldn’t have and I love that about you.”

“You don’t think you deserve me.”

“I’m working on that.”

“This isn’t a joke, Brody. I want to be happy and I can’t be with a man who doubts his worth all the time. It’s exhausting and painful.”

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes. A lot. Because I didn’t care. Because I was scared. But I want to be the man I was with you, I want to help you work on your dream. I want to be a cog in machinery that does good, because that’s what I deserve. I deserve to be happy and you … you make me so happy.”

She wanted to believe him, but she had visions of partnership, and partnership didn’t have an escape hatch.

“Do you think I’ll leave you?”

“No. I don’t. And if you ever do leave, it doesn’t matter.
I’ll find you. I will always find you. I am yours, Ashley. My family, my home, my body, my heart—all of it, everything I am, is yours.”