Never Been Kissed (5 page)

He dipped his head in a small nod. He’d told her to stop thanking him and she’d told him she couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

Being thankful was a state of being for her. And after all that had happened, she was more thankful than ever.

The doorman, a new one since she’d last been here, opened the door to the apartment building, trying hard not to stare at her face.

“You should see the other guy,” she joked as she passed and his eyes narrowed.

“Is he the other guy?” He pointed a thick finger at Brody.

“No,” she assured the doorman, comforted by his concern. His white knight efforts.
New Yorkers,
she thought with fondness,
so tribal.
“He’s taking care of me.”

“Looks like he’s doing a bang-up job.” The sarcasm was unmistakable and Ashley smiled to convince him.

Admittedly her smile was sort of hideous with all the bruising and she wasn’t surprised when it didn’t do the job.

Brody shook his head and hit the button for the elevator, dismissing the doorman. She remembered that about Brody, he was impossible to goad. Impossible to infuriate into action.

Calm, always so calm.

“I’m Ashley,” she said to the doorman. “I live on the top.”

“Nice to meet you, Ashley.” He touched her shoulder since her arm was in a sling and she supposed she looked
like a handshake might actually break her. “I’m Darnell. You need anything, don’t hesitate to call.”

“I will, Darnell, thank you. It seems … maybe I’ve misplaced my key.” As well as her passport, wallet, ID, and cell phone. All the things that tied her to the twenty-first century. The world was suddenly overwhelming and as if he knew, as if he could tell, Brody was there. A solid presence behind her.

“I got you covered,” Darnell said and slipped behind the front desk. He pulled out a thick envelope and handed it to her. “From your brother. He came by earlier.”

Right. Harrison again. She opened the envelope and everything was there. Driver’s license, credit card, debit card. Cash. Key. Gratitude wiped her out. Emptied her. The reserves she had gathered from being safe and warm were gone.

“Come on,” Brody murmured. “You should rest.”

She smiled with weak thanks at Darnell and let Brody take her to the elevator.

“ ‘You should see the other guy’?” he murmured. “You must be feeling better if you’re making jokes.”

“It’s either laugh or cry, Brody, and I’m tired of crying.” She walked past him into the old elevator and gathered herself to say goodbye. Again. She was ready to be alone, away from the constant rub of his company. She sighed, heavy and hard. “Thank you, Brody—”

He stepped into the elevator with her and held out his hand for the envelope. Wordlessly she handed it over and he used the special key to send the elevator to the penthouse.

“What are you doing?” she asked, crowded and off balance by his nearness. She was anticipating a very long hot shower, a good wailing cry, and a nap.

And all of that was best done alone.

“I told your brother I’d keep you safe. All the way.”

“I doubt there will be any dangers in Nonnie’s apartment,” she said, leaning against the wall, because she was tired and hungry and dizzy.

That year, ten years ago had given him such unprecedented access to the Montgomerys and he knew plenty of their dirty secrets.

As well as the real dangers she faced.

“Is there something you need to tell me?” she asked.

“Your mom.” Was all he said.

“Mom,” she breathed. She’d been wondering when her reprieve would be over. There was no chance Patty would have shown up at the hospital—that would have led to people asking questions. And if there was one thing Patty hated, it was questions.

“Harrison texted to say she’s here. Waiting. He’s coming as fast as he can.”

A sort of resigned dread sank into her bones, like knowing she was about to hit an iceberg but unable to change course.

“I can handle my mother,” she lied. On her best day she could handle her mother, but this was far, far from her best day. Up till now, she’d managed to avoid self-pity, but the prospect of meeting with her mother was enough to make her want to fold up on the floor and wave the white flag.

His eyes, watching the elevator floor numbers creep ever upward, didn’t give any indication that he heard her lie.

The elevator stopped and the doors binged open onto a penthouse apartment that was like stepping into a strange but lovely museum. Hardwood floors glowed with warmth from the sunlight falling through the big windows. The walls were covered with dark green wallpaper, and shadow box after shadow box filled with butterfly and beetle specimens. Bookcases lined the foyer, the front hallway, and the little bit that could be seen of the
living room, and every shelf was filled with books and art and small lovely things of interest her grandmother had collected. Voodoo dolls sat next to perfume bottles. A framed Picasso sketch was on the wall, next to a photo of Ashley as a girl, feeding ducks in Central Park. Somewhere in the room there was a small monkey skeleton.

The flocked wallpaper was starting to lift off the walls, the horsehair couches and velveteen chairs were beginning to sag, but Ashley didn’t care. When she was in the States, this was home. And in a changing world, she liked that home never changed.

“Ashley.” Her mother’s Georgian drawl was accompanied by the sound of high heels hitting wood floor hard enough to dent. She was coming from the sitting room and Ashley closed her eyes, gathering herself.

“We could sneak out,” Brody said.

Her eyes flew open, stunned he’d made a joke, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was taking her coat and hanging it in the closet. Maybe she’d imagined it.

And then suddenly, there was Mom. Wearing an impeccable Donna Karan suit, her blond hair lying convincingly about her age. Her makeup, her posture, everything perfect. Ashley sometimes thought her mother was created in a lab—the perfect political wife.

Patty Montgomery.

When magazines and newspapers ran articles about Patty as the First Lady of Georgia, the mother of the up-and-coming public servant running for Congress—the journalists called her “a steel-tipped southern magnolia.” Which was ironic since she was a transplanted New Yorker. And the accent was a fake-it-till-you-make-it phenomenon.

But the journalists talked about Patty being the strong, civil-minded woman behind two good men.

And of course the mother of a recognized foreign aid
worker. But somehow Ashley didn’t get the beaming-with-pride mother routine.

Even now, in this hallway after all that had happened, her mother looked at her in that familiar way.
Such a disappointment,
her expression said.
Again.

Ashley spent her girlhood cringing from that expression, and the whole of her adult life running from it.

When she was younger, she never learned, to her mother’s dismay, the way of saying one thing with sugar but meaning something else full of poison. Perhaps it had been Nonnie’s no-bullshit influence. But the way Patty had talked to the world had baffled Ashley, confused her, put cracks in the already weakened relationship between them.

She had no mind for politics, no concerns for reputation. All the things Patty treasured, Ashley renounced.

“Mom,” she said. No hug between them. It was hard to remember the last time she had hugged her mother … or her mother had hugged her. Before the situation ten years ago with Brody, surely.

“You look tired.”

She smiled, but didn’t put too much work into it.

“Are you all right?” her mother asked, lifting her chin.

Ashley, the black sheep of her family in every single possible way, was taller than her parents, but when her mother did that, lifted her chin and looked down her nose at her, she felt about two inches tall.

“Never better.”

Patty sniffed at the sarcasm but didn’t respond. Which of course made Ashley feel like a child.

“I need to lie down, Mom. Can we talk in the other room?”

“Yes … yes, of course.” For the first time Ashley noticed Noelle in the corner, her mother’s ever-present aide. Her stomach dropped even further into her body.

Noelle carried a stack of papers and was busy tapping something into a phone.

The Montgomery political machine constantly had to be fed. Exhausted and unable to keep up with all that was happening she imagined Noelle shoveling coal into a terrible fire-breathing furnace that looked like Patty Montgomery.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Patty said and Ashley pulled her lips back into line. “Are you hungry?” Patty asked. “I had food brought in. Some soup.”

“Soup?” Amazing. This time when Ashley smiled, she meant it. “Soup would be great.”

“Go sit down,” Patty said. And weakened as Ashley was, she had a vision, lovely and strange, of Patty actually heating up the soup. Standing over a stove, stirring a pot.

Magically, Patty would be wearing an apron. For her.

If her mother would actually do that … so much would be forgiven. That’s how little pride Ashley had left. Maybe after all that she’d been through they could start fresh. Let go of some of the resentment and disappointments that lined their life together.

But then Patty turned to Brody. “The soup is in the fridge, if you would be so kind. And then, I imagine you can go.”

Well, there goes that dream.

“Mom! He rescued me from Somali pirates! Brought me home from halfway around the world. He’s not here to make me soup—”

“It’s not a problem.” Brody’s low masculine voice was a rumble through the room.

“Brody, don’t!”

And then he was gone. Into the kitchen to make soup.

This was part of the reason why she left her family behind. Because it was so hard to stop taking responsibility for her mother’s behavior. Or apologizing for her
attitudes. To her mother, servants were servants and anyone not a family member was a potential servant.

It wasn’t a race thing, it was a privilege thing. Or maybe it was both, Ashley didn’t know anymore, she was suddenly so tired. Nonnie’s sagging couch and the beautiful crazy quilts Ashley had helped her make when she was a kid beckoned.

She sought some refuge, wondering if after surviving kidnapping by pirates, she’d be done in by her own mother.

Standing over the old stove in the galley kitchen, Brody stirred the chicken soup. The noodles whirled in a small hurricane caused by his spoon. He took his time, watching the noodles because he could hear, very clearly through the white swing door, what was happening in the living room.

“Did they hurt you?” Patty asked, and he winced. Not her best opener, though in her defense, a warm bedside manner had never been Patty’s strong suit.

“No, actually, I fell down the stairs. Ran into a door.”

Brody smiled. Jet-lagged and concussed, Ashley still had it in her to go a few rounds with Patty Montgomery.

“Harrison led me to believe you were in shambles, but clearly if you can be sarcastic you must be feeling better.”

“I’m … sorry. For the most part no. They didn’t hurt me. This … this happened at the end.”

“Your brother and father worked very hard to get you free,” Patty said. “It hasn’t been easy.”

“I don’t imagine it was.” Ashley sounded so tired and he wondered, as he had a million times in the year he worked for the family, if Ashley hadn’t been switched at birth when she was born.

It was the only thing that made sense.

“Why were you even out there?”

“It’s a vacation spot, Mom. The Seychelles are full of rich people doing what we were doing, hiring boats for
a tour of the islands. We had no way of knowing the crew had connections to the pirates—”

“No, I don’t suppose you did. You never do seem to see the potential mistakes until you’re making them.”

“I was kidnapped. I didn’t go running into their arms. I didn’t ask to be beaten and kicked. I can’t believe you are finding a way to make this my fault.”

“I’m not,” Patty replied with a heavy sigh that said
Of course it’s your fault.
“But we need to talk about what we’re going to do next.”

“Next?” Ashley asked. “I’m going to have some soup and take a nap.”

“Your friend who was kidnapped with you—”

“Kate? Someone has heard from her?”

“Your brother. She’s making an announcement to the English press on Monday. I’m sure she’s going to mention your name. Now, in an effort to control the negative fallout to this … announcement, you are going to give a press conference here, tomorrow morning.”

He glanced at the door. She had to be kidding. Ashley was in no shape for a press conference. Despite her brave face, she was running on fumes, and the real horror of all that had happened to her hadn’t even set in yet. The next twenty-four hours were going to be a brutal emotional mess for her.

“You’re not serious.”

“I am.”

“I can’t … no.”

“There is no no, here, Ashley. Your father’s approval rating is dismal, your brother’s election is in three months, and should people hear of this from outside sources we will lose our chance to control the story. Your ransom was a lot of money, and people have questions. So, we have to get in front of this now, or risk Harrison’s run for Congress.”

“Mom, please—”

“It will be brief. Noelle has a draft of your comments. You will read the statement, answer a few questions—”

“Questions? Mom, I have a concussion!”

“Just a few.
The Times, The Wall Street Journal,
and of course
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
We are still waiting to hear back from the international press. Fifteen reporters, tops.”

“Mom—”

“Twenty minutes, a half hour and it will be over.”

“Look at my face! There’s no amount of makeup that will have me look okay for cameras.”

“Actually,” Noelle, the assistant, spoke up. “We don’t want you to look okay. In fact, the faster we do this interview, before the swelling goes down, the better. It will score a lot of points for Harrison’s campaign.”

Brody would have laughed if the woman being abused in there weren’t Ashley.