The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2) (7 page)

That’s Sasha’s cue to make a hasty exit, but she snaps a glance at me and sees the meltdown in my expression, threatening to bubble to the surface. “We’ll be right outside if you need us.”

I nod, thanking her for this small
I’ve got your back
gesture. Beneath her sharp calculations, Sasha doesn’t miss a thing. They close the door and I swallow, prickles of heat racing up my neck, threatening to choke me.

“That’s hardly the reception I’d expect,” my mother says, her mouth set in a hard line. “What about ‘It’s nice to see you?’”

“I try to keep my lying to a minimum,” I grit out, feeling the familiar rush of anger and alienation. She’s done this drop-in at my Oregon congressional office before, so I know what’s coming. “What do you want?”

“Look at you, high and mighty. So convinced that I always
want
from you. You don’t take into account everything you wanted from me growing up. How much you sucked me dry.”

I roll my eyes, trying to force sarcasm or disdain up in a wall between us. It’s flimsy, though. She always knows how to find the chinks in my armor, where to pry at the cracks. “What will it be today, then? What do you want?”

“It’s not what I want. It’s what I
deserve
.”

I pull open my lower desk drawer and fish around in my purse for a checkbook. “Are you late on rent again? How much?”

“It wasn’t cheap flying out here. But you never returned my calls. Or my messages. Is Trey even giving them to you?”

Oh, he’s definitely giving them to me.
My computer monitor bears a dozen new notes, some flagged
personal
, and I imagine most of them are her. Or Jared. I
wish
they were Jared. But he’s been swept up in Shep’s campaign and he’s in New York right now. I think. I can barely keep track of where
I
am supposed to be.

“I’m sure you can imagine things are very busy right now.”

“I do more than imagine when I see you all over the news. Especially in
that photo
.” She narrows her eyes at me, making sure I know exactly the photo she means. Me and Jared, locked in a clinch, his hand snaking up my skirt. God, I’ve regretted that scene a thousand times, been made to feel wanton and ashamed by every conservative pundit, but no one makes me feel as dirty, as classless, as my mother.

My mother, who’s hardly the definition of class as she sits with her knees open, her Virginia Slims peeking out of her purse, her index finger pick-pick-picking away at the ragged cuticle of her thumb.

I uncap a pen and poise my hand over my checkbook. Money will buy me peace at least. “How much do you need? A thousand again? Fifteen hundred?”

I hope it’s not much more, considering the sorry state of my checking account after I paid for Han Lee’s exquisite garments to cut financial ties with the Darrow campaign, plus some new furniture for the condo into which the Secret Service demanded I move.

My mother stares me down, her eyes squinting, revealing every one of her sixty-four years of hard living. “Add a zero, Gracie.”

“You can’t be serious.” I drop the pen on my desk, straightening. “What in the hell do you need ten thousand dollars for?”

“I have expenses. I have needs.”

“
Needs?
Ten thousand dollars is a down payment on a condo. It’s a pretty damn nice used car.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” My mother’s cheeks tighten with something that could be a smile if it weren’t so calculated.

This
is why I left home the minute I graduated. Why I spent most weekends with my friends in high school, and why I never went home from college for Christmas. I was happy being a resident assistant charged with keeping the peace over the holidays in the dorms. Happy to pick up a job cleaning up after summer conferences in exchange for room and board and a tiny stipend.

I never went back to the last horrible apartment I shared with my mother and stepfather. Except once—a different apartment, shabbier, with water stains making the ceiling paint bubble and brown. That was when my stepfather left her, or she left him. Some rift that was never explained to me except for a haunting phone call with my mother in tears, saying again and again, “I need you, Gracie.”

It was my senior year in college. February, because I was looking forward to my first real vacation ever: spring break with my girlfriends on South Padre Island in Texas. Party central. Booze everywhere. Hot guys everywhere.

I saw the pictures, my friends in bikini tops, holding Technicolor cocktails. I never went, because my mother cleaned out my savings, wove a tale of woe so great that I gave her everything I’d saved for that trip.

When she came to me four months later, a week after missing my graduation ceremony, and asked for more, I vowed
never again.

If only I’d listened to myself then. Because here we are now, eighteen years later, and I’ve bailed her out at least as many times. Seth tried to get me to take the tough-love angle and cut her off, but as a contract lawyer, I was pulling in double his carpenter’s wages. I overruled him.

“Tell me what you really need, Mother. You don’t have to show up at my office to ask for a check.”

“I wouldn’t if you’d return my calls. I have a new cell phone, you know. It works.” She fishes in her purse and flashes me a big one, expensive, at least a couple hundred dollars.

“Why are you asking me for money if you can afford
that
? And a plane ticket?”

“Borrowed the cash from my neighbor. Told him you’d pay it back.”

“You told him
I’d
pay?” I’m sputtering with anger.

“Well, when my daughter’s on the news every other night, that’s pretty good collateral, right?” Again, she gives me that flinty smile, as if she’s just outsmarted the world.

“Collateral damage is more like it,” I mutter, silently calculating how much I could scrape out of my checking account to make her go away. Twenty-five hundred, tops.

“Don’t you get a snippy tone with me, Missy,” my mother rebukes me. “Do you know how many reporters have this number?”

She shakes her phone at me again and it chills me.
Ohgodno. Please don’t let my mother speak to reporters.
And yet, Jared warned me about this immediately after my nomination. Reporters would be coming out of the woodwork to track down old friends, relatives, whatever dirt they could scrape up.

Hence, Jared’s very thorough vetting process.

I summon my mildest tone for my mother. “Oh? Are you getting calls? My campaign manager, Sasha, is the best person to talk to. I could give you her number to pass along to the press if they call.”

“Don’t be stupid. They’re not calling for you. They’re calling for me. They want to interview me. The future vice president’s mother. They want to know
all
about what you were like growing up.” She says it in a sing-song voice but it’s so much more than a taunt.

It is a cold-blooded fucking
threat.
And now I see that this isn’t the bailout on rent she’s expecting.

This is payday.

It’s extortion.

“And you declined to be interviewed.” I try to keep my statement neutral, but I need it to be a prayer, a desperate plea not to do this.
Do
not
fuck up my run for the White House by trotting out all of our dirty laundry.

“For now,” she says. “But they offered me money. A lot of money. And it occurred to me that you might be willing to match their offer, maybe sweeten it.”

I sit down in my desk chair, utterly defeated. “How much?” My voice barely carries, but her sharp ears catch the question. Of course they do.

“They offered ten thou. So I thought, maybe twelve? Fifteen to make it even?”

“Even for
whom
?” I’m spitting venom again, against this woman who birthed me and raised me and knocked my self-confidence down to rubble on a daily basis.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“For me. I brought you into this world. Are a few handouts here and there all you’ve got for me? You didn’t even call me when you got nominated.”

Because why would I call someone who’s always been disappointed in me?
No, I spent my nomination night with the two women who love me unconditionally: Aliza and Mama Bea.

“I’m sorry,” I say, the apology acid on my tongue. “I’m sorry for not calling you. I’m sorry these
handouts
aren’t enough. But I’m not rich. I spent most of Seth’s life insurance money on my first campaign and the rest on my condo. I get a congressional salary, which is less than I made as an attorney.”

“A hundred and seventy-five thou is a lot more than I make. You get a condo and I get a shit apartment. How is that fair? And if you get elected, you’ve got a fifty-grand pay raise coming. You’ve got money to burn.”

Shit. Damn the Internet and its instant answers about public officials’ salaries.
“I haven’t been elected. And I don’t have ten grand just sitting around in my checking account.”

“Twelve,” my mother corrects. “You can have a little time. I’m staying in Washington until Friday.”

My eyes widen. “Where?”

“Oh, I got myself a nice room at the InterContinental. I’ll have them send you a bill.”

“Mother! You cannot just go spending money and borrowing from neighbors and expect I can pay for it.”

She has the temerity to look wounded. “Why not? I see Senator Conover’s nice house, and your chauffeurs and limos and things, and I know where the vice president is going to live. It’s practically a mansion. I think it’s time for a little trickle-down.”

“Shep’s house is something he
earned
with his family business. And my
chauffeurs
are Secret Service—they follow me around to make sure I don’t get shot or kidnapped, not to give me a sense of privilege.” I close my eyes and squeeze my fingers on the bridge of my nose, willing myself to take a deep breath and avoid saying the million things I want to.

“Then you’re not giving me much choice here. I’ll call that nice reporter Gloria back and do her show.”

My eyes snap open. “Gloria Alton?”

“Yep, that’s the one. She wants to talk about your childhood. It took some digging, but I’ve got pictures in boxes. They were really interested in that.”

“Don’t do this,” I beg, because while putting my mother on national television to be labeled Poor White Trash is one thing, the kinds of questions Gloria is likely to ask will bring up answers that I never want to see the light of day.

What was Grace like as a child? As a teenager?

Was she a troublemaker? What did she do?

What were her friends like?

Was she promiscuous?

Why did she get suspended?

I’m sure my mother could concoct answers that would bring a tear to Gloria’s eye. She’d sell the story perfectly, selling me out at the same time. And if she was asked a damaging question, well, my mother’s bound to tell the truth, isn’t she?

A tap on my office door rescues me. Sasha pokes her head into my office, her eyes bouncing between my mother and me.

The tension is thick in the room.

“Grace, you have an appointment that you can’t keep waiting, but I thought maybe I could treat Mrs. Garcia to coffee.” She turns to my mother, a sweeping gesture like she’s welcoming royalty. “It’s such an honor to meet you. I’m so pleased you could come see the office.”

My mother warms to Sasha’s invitation, preening as she extends a hand from the couch. “It’s Marilyn.”

Sasha doesn’t miss a beat, taking my mother’s hand for a shake.

“Just give me a little time,” I plead again, my meaning dancing between her going for a coffee break with Sasha and me needing a few days to scrape together money.

“Don’t take too long, Gracie.” She shoves herself up from the couch, grabs her handbag and then pulls the cigarettes from within. She turns to Sasha. “Let’s go. I’m dying for a smoke.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

So much of a political campaign happens in sterile hotel ballrooms with a teleprompter that it’s a relief to do something unscripted for a change.

Jared and I are alone in the back of a Secret Service SUV as we drive to a suburban neighborhood in Silver Spring, Maryland, where a nice nuclear family and our campaign ad specialists are waiting. Sasha set up the video shoot to give my persona “dimension” but ducked out at the last minute.

Instead of letting a junior campaign manager fill in for Sasha, Jared’s here.

“How’d you draw the short straw and get saddled with me today?” I ask Jared.

“Saddled? I like the sound of that.” Jared’s chuckle suggests several dirty things he could do with horse tack and leather.

I roll my eyes. “I can’t say ten words without you going straight to innuendo.” I pull back from him and sit primly in my seat, crossing my arms and ankles, but my eyes spark with mischief.

“Sometimes I think you exist to torture me.” His hand snakes over to my knee.

I playfully bat it away. “Sometimes I think you like it.”

“Darlin’, I always like it.” He tries reaching for me again and this time I don’t push him away, letting his finger trace a path across my kneecap. His expression is serious, his eyes fixed on my mouth as his fingers make steady progress up my thigh.

I point to the front of the car. “You sure the privacy screen is enough?”

“Let’s test it out.” His raw, dirty chuckle sends a thrill up my spine. My neck bends to his seeking lips as he nips his way from earlobe to collarbone.

I sigh as I let my knees fall open a little, and purr as Jared pushes my legs further apart. His fingers demand access and I give it, eager to feel the pure, simple high of my lover’s touch.

It’s more than the fact that he lights up my body, sends electricity zinging to every corner of my body. It’s the fact that he
sees
me, both my polished side meant for public consumption, and my rough edges that make me flawed, fragile, and unique.

I revel in his touch, his kiss, and a familiar tug in my core tells me he’s ratcheting up his demands on my body, his fingers demanding my response. My hand slides up his thigh, eager to take, take, take. When his fingers connect with my panties my breath hitches and my stomach flutters.