Private Politics (The Easy Part) (7 page)

But Alyse was a shell. A muddled unhappy person. She didn’t want to talk about it. Since she knew Millie would understand the second they made eye contact, she fled down the hall and shut her bedroom door with a
click
.

She stood there for a few minutes until she felt a little more normal. She only noticed that something was in the middle of her bed when she shucked off her suit jacket. It didn’t land softly on her comforter, but rather on a piece of paper, making a crumpling noise in the process. She fished the item out and read:

BITCH
,
DON’T STICK YOUR NOSE WHERE IT DOESN’T BELONG
.

Several times in a row she processed the words and on each repetition, they made less sense.

The note appeared to have been typed on an old-fashioned typewriter. Who had one of those anymore? Who did she know who had an old-fashioned typewriter?

Because the note’s author had been in her apartment. Had entered her bedroom. Had stood right here and set it on her bed.

Then she screamed.

Chapter Seven

Liam didn’t bother knocking this time. He tried the handle to Alyse and Millie’s apartment and found it thankfully unlocked. Parker and Millie stood in the living room speaking in low voices. One of Parker’s hands tangled in her hair, the other rested on her shoulder. Liam swallowed hard against the knot in this throat.

“Where is she?” His voice was gruff and demanding—utterly unlike himself. When an answer didn’t come immediately he rolled a hand to prompt it.

Parker jerked his head toward the bedroom. “The officer’s still in there.”

That was fine; he needed to see for himself how she was doing. Then he’d go home. Ever since Millie had called, he’d been distraught. He’d even taken a cab, not wanting to deal with the Metro. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.

Now he’d arrived, he wasn’t sure what he was doing, except he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he didn’t see her.

A few steps and he could glance inside Alyse’s bedroom. She was talking to a DC police officer, a dark column of authority who didn’t belong in the serene pastel space. The officer’s back was to the door, but he appeared to be taking notes on a tablet.

Her attention was riveted on the wall as she answered a question Liam hadn’t heard. She looked indomitable. Face set, arms crossed over her chest, she hadn’t yet ditched her ever-present heels. She looked ready for battle and not at all like someone had broken into her apartment and left a threat on her bed.

At that moment, she glanced over and startled at the sight of him in the doorway. He clenched his hands into fists at the fleeting shadow passing over her eyes. She was so damn strong, but anyone would be entitled to a little fear in light what was happening. She didn’t indulge it, not in the slightest, dismissing the terror with a nod of her chin at him. Whoever was responsible was going to...well, he’d like to think he’d make them regret it, but the promise sounded really grandiose. That officer, though, he’d probably make the perpetrator regret it.

Liam waved, or rather raised his hand and gestured at her like an idiot. It wasn’t half, not a tenth, of what he wanted to do.

“We’re almost done.” Her voice was the tiniest bit brittle, resilient but with signs of fragility.

He nodded and, not wanting to hover, headed back to the living room. “Tell me everything.”

Millie offered a weak smile, as if she understood why the details mattered to him. “There’s not much to say. She found the note and we called the police. Other than the door being left open by whoever did it, there was no sign of a break-in.”

“Are there security cameras?” he asked.

“Only at the entrances. Not in the hallway.” It was an upscale building, so he was surprised. “They’ll check the tapes, but there might not be much to see. It’s a big building. There are a lot of people going in and out. They’ll analyze the note for fingerprints, but it’ll take a few days.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What can we do? We don’t know who did it, so we can’t get her an order of protection. She and I are going to Ellen’s for the night. He doesn’t want us to stay here.” She punched her fiancé lightly on the arm.

“You can stay with my mom as long as you want,” Parker said. “Or you could stay with me.” His apartment was tiny, so that wasn’t a solution, though Liam understood the impulse. He was certain Parker didn’t want Millie out of his sight.

Just then, Alyse and the officer entered the living room. He was explaining how to get in touch if anything else came up. Her arms still wound tightly around herself, as if she might break apart if she let go. Liam was shattering at the sight.

“Stay safe,” the officer said. Everyone muttered thanks.

After closing the door, Alyse collapsed on the couch. Her fingers slid in her hair and up, forming a silk screen that hid her face entirely from view. Her roommate glided next to her and wrapped her in a hug.

He was certain it helped, but he could do a better job. He had a bigger body and much more padding than Millie. He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing here, why Millie had called him, but if anyone was going to hold Alyse, he was pretty sure it should be him. Or maybe he and Millie could tag team.

Before he could figure out how to offer, Alyse pushed her hair back from her face but didn’t pull away from the physical contact. She wasn’t crying. Her expression was set and serious, like an athlete before a big game. She looked Winged Victory, only less winged.

She looked right at him. “Geri knows.”

For a second the words didn’t make any sense, as they had to work their way through a thicket of concern for her. But then he nodded in recognition. That...wasn’t good.

“She questioned me today about what I was doing talking to you.”

His stomach jumped and he crouched so he could look her in the face. “Do you think she did this?”

Alyse shook her head. “It couldn’t have been her. She was in the office all day. But Ryan? Yeah, probably.”

He didn’t want to nag or second-guess but this was important information. “Did you tell the officer?” he asked as nonjudgmentally as possible.

“No. I left the details as vague as I could. I can tell them everything later on. Once I...once I get a lawyer.”

Liam nodded. Good.

“Do you want to get a bag together and we can go to Parker’s mom’s?” Millie asked.

Alyse’s brows pulled together. “No. I was going to call Margot. I’ll stay with her.”

“I already did. But she’s with Liz in Bethesda for a few nights while her floors get refinished. You can go to Liz’s, but it’ll be cramped with three. And it’s far away.”

It was as if someone had slapped Alyse. The color left her face and her mouth and eyes set at an agitated angle. Somehow this news seemed to have upset her more than the overall situation had. Obviously she’d made a different plan in her head.

“I’m sure Parker doesn’t want to give you up tonight,” she said to Millie after a beat. Her objection was the plan might upset Parker?

That was it. He wasn’t going to stand here—crouch here—silently. “My place,” he said. “You can come to my place.”

Three heads snapped toward him. Alyse and Millie wore nearly identical round-eyed expressions of surprise. Parker’s mouth curled into the barest impression of a smile. Liam wouldn’t hear the last of this. Once the asshole who had threatened Alyse was in jail, his friend was going to give him lots of shit for finally making his move during a crisis, but he didn’t care. She belonged with him. Not forever—though he wished—but for now. He could do this for her. He could help her.

“Who would suspect you’d be with me?” he asked Alyse.

“Geri and Ryan, maybe. They think you’re helping me investigate them.”

Inconveniently true. “They don’t know where I live,” he countered. “Besides, the note was meant to scare you. They’re not going to hurt you.” He wasn’t sure this speech persuaded anyone, himself least of all, but he tried anyway.

“You don’t have a guest room. Where would she sleep?” Parker said. There was still a suggestion of a smile on his mouth and in his eyes. Oh yes, the ribbing would be loud and would last a long time.

“I sleep on the couch all the time. You can have my bed.”

Now even Millie was looking at him with something that might turn into amusement given enough time.

Alyse nodded. She’d agreed? She would stay with him? Sadly, rather than clarifying, she asked, “How do you get to Dupont Circle from—”

“Shaw,” he supplied.

“Yeah.” It might as well be Siberia based on her tone.

“The Metro goes there, honey. The green line. And there’s a bus and there are cabs. You’re not going to work tomorrow, are you?”

She wrinkled her nose as if he’d said something intolerably stupid. “Of course I am. Calling in sick would be highly suspicious. I have to go in and act like nothing’s wrong. Be the airhead Geri thinks I am.”

“Why?” he asked with a glare. She didn’t need to get within ten city blocks of her boss or her lobbyist bed warmer until they knew what was going on as far as he was concerned.

“To give us a few more days to figure out what’s up before I have to call my dad.” She left out the
you idiot
but her expression implied it.

“You haven’t told your parents what’s going on?” He couldn’t imagine keeping something like this from his mother. Obviously he didn’t understand her family life at all. “Are you sure you shouldn’t tell them, like, now?”

“Don’t worry, I will eventually. And when I do, I’ll leave out the part about staying with you.”

He relaxed a little as this seemed to be the news he’d been waiting for: she would go with him. Plus, she must be feeling a little better if she was cracking jokes. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“It probably should be.”

Her eyes sparkled as she spoke and for a fleeting instant, he felt better. Alyse was smiling, a little, and coming home with him, sort of. Weren’t those something to celebrate? Other than how it was happening—except there was no other. He couldn’t, not for five consecutive seconds, mislead himself.

“What do you need for a few nights?” he asked.

Twenty minutes later, he lifted her third suitcase—a reasonable number of clothes, a lot of shoes and a surprising number of books—into the back of a cab and gave his address to the waiting driver. When he slid onto the hard vinyl seat next to her, she was staring out the window with a focused, stony gaze.

As the car jerked forward, he asked, “What didn’t Millie tell me?”

“I...” She trailed off and licked her lips. “Can we talk about something else?”

She hadn’t looked at him. She was playing absently with the lock on the door, one of those push knobs that he hadn’t seen in a car in years. Come to think, he hadn’t been in a car in months until tonight. Her fingers moved over the protruding metal, up, down and then up again. He had to shove his mind from where it had gone.

Get it together.
If she was going to stay with him, he was going to need to learn how to operate around her. It would be best if that approach, whatever it was, involved fewer sexual fantasies.

Fifty-three topics presented themselves. Half of them were roundabout ways of asking about her conversation with Geri, probing her about her family or fishing about what the police officer had said. Many of the rest were dark and highly inappropriate. At least both Alyse and the cab driver were likely to think so.

Before he could figure out what would neither offend nor bother her, she asked, “How’s Molly?”

Her tone was nonchalant enough, but his response to the question was physical. It was as if the cab constricted several sizes and pressed in on him. It was a perfectly reasonable question. The
par excellence
of small talk, pretty much. Why did it feel so charged, then?

“Fine, I guess.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “I haven’t seen her since about three minutes after we ran into you yesterday afternoon.”

“She seems nice.” She was nice, but Alyse rarely said anything so obvious, making the words ring insincere. Releasing the door, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Is it going to bother her that I’m staying with you?”

The day before, when Molly had raised the possibility that his affections toward Alyse were returned, he’d laughed. If she were here now, no doubt she’d take this exchange as evidence her assessment of Alyse’s emotions vis-à-vis him was correct.

It just couldn’t be right. He’d spent six months in agonizing worship; he would have noticed if she returned his interest one iota. Clearly Molly touched a nerve, so Alyse
might
be jealous, but not in a personal way. She wasn’t actually invested in him. She did seem to like his attentions, and might be miffed that they were directed elsewhere, but that was as far as it went.

Wanting to be clear, he said, “I doubt she’ll ever know. I’m not... I don’t think we’ll have a second date.”

“Ahh.”

This was followed by nothing. In the front seat, the driver was listening to sports talk radio and having a loud conversation over the speakerphone about his broken dishwasher. He seemed to be purposefully not listening to them, as if he was trying to give them some modicum of privacy by way of noise and distraction. It worked.

“What about you? What’s the deal with that?” Liam hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud. For the space of a long beat, he wasn’t sure he had, until she turned to him slightly, not fully making eye contact, but examining a button on his shirt.

“With what?” she asked slowly, stretching the words until they were thin and sharp.

“Seeing anyone?” If he were going to ask it, and he had, he might as well try to get the information he wanted.

She nodded and switched back to silence, a heavy, thick, purposeful silence. It seemed like she might be trying to pretend that he hadn’t baldly asked something so personal, so invasive.

“Not now. Not in a while. I... Look, my parent’s marriage is adequate. So are my grandparents’, my sister’s. They’re all like the music they sell at Starbucks. You’re never going to actively dislike it. There’s always something interesting, something appealing, about it. It’s playing in the background when you’re drinking your coffee and it’s, you know, fine. Sort of cultured. But totally mainstream. If you’re fifteen or if you’re sixty-five, it’s fine. But because there’s no possible way it can fail, there’s also no way it can surprise you.”

In six months, he’d never heard her say anything about her family other than that they were okay in response to questions from Millie. Now he hadn’t even asked about them and she’d delivered a monologue. She wasn’t finished.

“The last guy I dated, Quentin, was a banker. So was Steven, the guy before him. They were...temperate.” Turning toward him for the first time during the cab ride, she finished, “I don’t want temperate.”

It was a good thing she wasn’t interested in temperate because at her pronouncement the relative climate in the backseat turned tropical. The wan yellow streetlights they passed illuminated the car with the same approximate ambiance as that of the DMV, but sitting less than three feet apart, their eyes locked and held. This was the place on earth with the most erotic potential at the moment.