The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2) (4 page)

“Or idiot. Or dumbass. You pick. I just want to know what part of my personal or political agenda made you think for one minute that I’d be less than delighted if you were dating a guy?”

“It’s not that. I was just afraid … that you’d tell Mama Bea.”

I hold up my hands in mock surrender. “Oh hell, no. I’m not offering, if that’s what you’re worried about. You can have that conversation with your mama.”

“I can’t. She wouldn’t understand. How do you think the church ladies would take it if they find out she’s got a faggot son?”

The word startles me, scares me so badly that I smack his cheek to snap out of this alternate universe. It’s like he just used the
N
word. “Don’t you
dare.
Don’t you dare speak about my friend like that.”

Trey reels back from my slap and I realize that I’ve just jumped way over the line. I just
hit my employee.
Holy shit.

“Oh my God, Trey. I’m sorry. I had no right.”

He rubs his hand on his cheek and blinks a few times, then levels his gaze at me. “I love you, Grace. You know that?”

His familiar phrase, uttered weekly and sometimes daily, feels like a punch. “Trey. I’m so sorry.”

“No, you’re not. There’s no bullshit between us. Never has been.”

“Except for the part about you being in the closet?”

“That’s not bullshit. That’s a survival skill.”

“Then you do what you need to survive, Trey. I’ll be behind you no matter what you decide.” I pull him in for another hug, just to make sure we’re past the weirdness. “But can you do me a favor?”

“Bring you your usual coffee?”

I scrunch up my face. I’ve already had my allotment of caffeine for the day. “Make it decaf. But the favor I was going to ask is that I’d love it if you could at least be out to me. I’d like to get to know Joel. If you’re willing.”

Trey’s eyes smile for the first time since our uncomfortable conversation began. “Decaf’s for sissies. But yeah, I’ll make sure Joel comes by again.”

***

I go head-down with work, grateful I have a couple of uninterrupted hours to process what’s happening with Jared before my office fills with staff and Trey gets back from his coffee date with Joel. The press requests are overwhelming and I prep for my next on-camera, determined not to make as spectacular of an ass of myself as I did on
The Rick Knox Show
.

Trey’s knock signals the arrival of my latte and my stomach growls appreciatively. Despite feeling queasy some mornings, a banana and coffee for breakfast isn’t cutting it anymore.

“You want to do the scheduling?” Trey asks. His laptop is tucked under his arm.

“Bring it on.”

“You’ve got a meet-and-greet with a handful of Shep’s favorite senators at ten, Sasha Heller at eleven, lunch with Aliza at noon, and then you’ve got to be in hair and makeup for the interview with Gloria Alton by two.”

“Lunch with Aliza? She flew out today.”

“She called me while I was out at coffee. Said it was important. But the address is an office building. You want me to call her back?”

“No,” I say too quickly. “She should be in the air by now.” I pull my phone out of my bag and there’s a new text message from her.
 

I booked you an appointment with an OB under my name. Dr. Beninger, Suite 224. I left Trey the address but the building’s big enough it shouldn’t ring any bells. Tell them you’re just doing your annual girl parts checkup.

“I’ll get back to her and let you know what we need to do.”

Trey taps a few keys on his laptop and then pauses. “What aren’t you telling me?”

So many, many things.
I feel like a hypocrite, forcing Trey’s secret out of the closet when I so closely guard my own. “What?”

“Sasha Heller?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Who put it on my schedule? Is she a journalist?”

“Ah, the mighty powers of Google. Sasha Heller’s a campaign strategist. I got a call from Shep’s team this morning; they told me to kill your foreign-policy briefing and slot in Heller. Do you know people call her ‘Give ’em Heller?’”

My face falls and I force my eyes down to my latte. So this is Jared’s doing. This is the product of “you’re not my candidate anymore.”

A rift gapes wide in my chest, an empty space that all of Jared’s love and faith in me filled. He really
has
quit me.

CHAPTER SIX

Sasha Heller doesn’t walk. She marches. Sasha Heller doesn’t talk. She trills, enunciates, or declares. Sasha Heller doesn’t just dress to kill. By reputation, she’s got blood on her hands from cutting the guts out of dozens of candidates.

The other guys.

She’s got a better pedigree than Shep and a better election-winning track record than Jared. And now she’s in my corner.

“Jared and I will work in lockstep for you and Shep and it makes sense to spread out our coverage. Jared can’t be in two places at once.”

“Of course.” I’m shell-shocked by this woman assigned by the Conover-Colton campaign as my new campaign manager. I had no say in it, and no notice. It’s as if I’m just along for the ride.

“He briefed me this morning and frankly, I have some concerns.” Sasha pulls a tablet out of her briefcase, taps and swipes a couple of times, and pulls up a list.

A long-ass list.

“Let’s do the urgent priorities first. Your interview this afternoon? Gloria Alton is a lot more tabloid than she is journalist. So she’s going to want to know everything about that man in your tryst photos. I wouldn’t put it past her to put them up on screen during your interview. Are you ready for that?”

I balk. No,
hell
no, I’m not ready. Especially with my relationship with Jared in tatters.

Or is it done? No, I can’t—don’t want to—believe that. I want to believe he’s just done being my campaign manager, and in his place sent me this shark who probably sharpens her teeth on the carcasses of competitors.

I’m hardly giving Sasha Heller my attention as my resolve hardens: I’ll find a way to make things right with Jared. I have to.
I have to fix this with the father of my child.

That’s when I realize that I should have swallowed my pride and given Jared a bit more deference when it came to vetting my speech. Instead, I snapped at him, pushed him past his limits, and now I’m stuck with this campaign robot.

“Grace? Are you listening to me?”

“Yes,” I say automatically.

“Then what’s the answer?”

“To what?”

“To my question?”

“What question?”

Sasha huffs and shakes her head, but her light brown TV anchorwoman-styled hair doesn’t move an inch. “Who the hell is the man in the picture? Because at a minimum we need to be vetting him so we’re ready when you make it public. I can’t believe Jared didn’t do it already.”

I snort. I
can. Jared didn’t vet the man because
he
is that man. But that’s one piece of information he’s failed to share with Sasha. Interesting. I wonder if he doesn’t trust her, or if he has other reasons for holding it back.

“I’ll share it when I’m ready.” I cross my arms, indicating that this is my final answer.

“I can’t pry secrets out of you if you’re not ready to share, but let me tell you this: I’m hired to be in your corner. No matter what. I’m fighting for you—not Shep, not Jared—and we’ve got to be tighter than best friends for the next two months. Do you understand me?”

I nod, unsure whether I can trust her. Lauren Darrow’s public betrayal of my trust—exposing my gullibility—still haunts me.

And so I turn the inquisition around. “Let me ask you something. Why did your last campaign wrap up?”

Thanks to Trey, I know she managed Congressman Juan Rivera’s exploratory presidential committee last year, but he folded it before the campaign season ramped up. Later, he was on Shep’s short list as a running mate until Jared learned he had a dirty little mistress secret.

“Rivera has three kids in school and he didn’t want to uproot his family life from Florida or expose his teenagers to that much national scrutiny. It was a good call and a sacrifice for a family man with such great ambitions.”

I sit back in my office chair, taking measure of Sasha Heller. She’s good. “Well put. Of course it has nothing to do with his car accident or his affair with a pretty campaign volunteer.”

Now it’s her turn to appraise me. “Well played. You’re testing to see if I’m going to bullshit you? Because part of being your campaign manager is being your vault, even if it means bullshitting everyone else.”

“With a stone-cold bitch face.” Her ultra-serious expression makes me chuckle and that takes some of the tension out of the air. “OK, I believe you. But keep in mind working with you is hours old. I need a bit of time … to adjust.”

“Don’t take too long with that. We’ve got about fourteen hundred hours left until the general election. Don’t think I’m going to let you sleep more than four hundred of those, or waste even one of them.” Sasha smiles and for the first time I detect actual warmth in her hazel eyes.

“OK.”

“So let’s talk about what’s on your calendar. Why did your best friend send you to a
medical
office building for lunch today? Because we should use that time to prep for the Alton interview.”

My mouth drops open but Trey and his impeccable timing rescue me as he knocks and pushes open my office door without waiting on a response. “Grace? Alton’s producer just called and moved up your hair and makeup call to one, so I need to cancel Aliza’s lunch. Are you good with that?”

“Of course,” I smile, like it’s no big deal, when in fact it is a
big fucking deal
that I get in to see a doctor. But there’s no way I can do that without the scrutiny.

“Trey, can you grab us salads? We’ll do a working lunch in here before going to the studio,” Sasha says.

Trey’s brows lift but he nods. That’s one of my unspoken rules about being so close to him as an employee. I
never
ask him to fetch me lunch. But Trey knows what I like and he asks, “Chef’s salad, baby girl?”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll have a Caesar,” Sasha says.

Of course.

***

“I know it’s a delicate question, but all of America is dying to know who might be standing next to you on Inauguration Day. Congresswoman Colton, who is the man in this photograph?”

I force a smile on my lips and breathe through my nose slowly, per Sasha’s instructions. “I know your viewers are curious about my personal life. That’s natural, and par for the course for any public figure.”

I pause, forcing her to nod a silent
Go on.

“While I chose to be a public figure and to run this race with Senator Conover, the man in this photograph did not choose to be public. This photo was taken before I was named as a running mate. So that’s why I’ll respect his privacy by not naming him until we are at a point in our relationship where it makes sense to share it publicly.”

“So you’re in a relationship with him?”

I swallow.
Dammit.
That was one of the trigger words Sasha warned me about. “I think it’s important to focus on the
real
relationship issues for America, like legislation that supports parental leave and marriage equality.”

There. That’s a non-answer and a perfect bridging statement that will make Sasha happy.

“You’re right,” Gloria Alton says, and it throws me for a moment. “But marriage is a big issue for voters. You’re a widow, Congresswoman Colton. So the question remains, are we ever going to see you in One Observatory Circle with a husband and family? Or is this man in the picture just a meaningless fling?”

The words hit me like a slap, tearing away the gray area that exists in my relationship with Jared. We were supposed to be nothing but a one-night stand when he first sought me out in a bar, but we’re nowhere near the nuclear poster family suitable for a political campaign.

But we could be a family.

If he loves me enough to want me for the long haul.

If he loves the idea of being a father.

“The man in this picture is a good man. Let’s move on, Gloria, so we don’t bore your viewers.” I give her my best smile and, miraculously, she does.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“How’d it go?” Trey looks up from his computer. He’s the last member of my staff left in the office. Sasha’s done with me for the night, but she packed every minute of my schedule from seven to seven tomorrow.

“It went.” I sink into the chair by Trey’s desk with an audible sigh and toe off my shoes.

“Your hair looks good up.” He nods to the hair-sprayed confection of curls pulled into a loose twist, with a few soft spirals by my ears. Per Jared’s direction, it’s become my signature for public appearances. “Jared knows his shit.”

“Except for the part where he acts like a shit.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

I roll my eyes, unsure of how much I should say. “I think this one was my fault. He pushed me, I pushed back hard, and then … he just quit.”

“He quit you? Or the campaign? That’s why Sasha Heller’s in the mix now, isn’t it?”

I nod. “He said he didn’t want me to be
his
candidate anymore. So he assigned someone else.”

Trey scoots his chair to the side of his desk and grabs my hands in his. He waits until he has my full attention. “Don’t sweat this, baby girl. Maybe the best thing for you two is to have a bit of space. It’s a new relationship and going from zero to sixty is pretty jarring.”

I cock a brow in question. “You know this from experience?”

Trey’s gaze slides away from me. “Nah. Things are moving pretty slow with Joel. He’s out, I’m not, and that’s a problem for him. I don’t like keeping secrets, especially from people I love, but I can’t help this one.”

Trey’s words echo the words in my brain.
I don’t like keeping secrets, especially from people I love, but I can’t help this one.

Aliza knows about my pregnancy, yet I can’t bring myself to tell Jared, or Trey and Mama Bea. The people I love.

There’s also another man to whom I owe the truth, the one who’s taking untold amounts of flak for picking the “slutty widow” as his running mate after the backlash of my pictures. Shep Conover deserves to know his running mate’s going to be a blimp by spring. I need to repay his faith in me with honesty.