by J J Arias
“They should be in bed.” Governor Fernandez stood and gave several commands in short succession.
“Can’t say I’ve ever seen them do that,” Josephine commented to herself, watching the dogs whine as they begrudgingly obeyed the governor and left the room. Mila stood from where she’d knelt.
“You can’t be here,” the governor stated matter-of-factly when she returned to the library. “It’s not personal,” she added less harshly. “No one is allowed down here. Not even my husband.”
Mila scanned her face as she weighed her options. The woman looked tired but still as attractive as she had when she was in full make up and professional attire. The more dressed down version of her, in slacks and a sweater, looked even more in control than she usually did.
Standing toe-to-toe, Mila was aware of her three-inch height advantage, but the governor was so imposing the difference was meaningless. She glanced at her down turned lips before meeting her eyes again.
“Good thing I’m not your husband.” Mila’s words were lower and more guttural than she intended them.
Governor Fernandez’s face flushed with color, but Mila didn’t wait for a reply. She made her way to the couch with the handful of papers and laptop she’d ditched on the floor to play with the dogs. Despite her heart thumping in her throat, she walked calmly to the armchair across from the sofa and sat like she belonged. As she set up what she was working on, she saw the governor glare at her chief of staff with wide, rage-filled eyes. Josephine countered with a what-do-you-want-me-to-do face.
With no choice but to aggressively kick her out or let her stay and help, the governor stood in frozen indecision. As the moments ticked by, Mila wasn’t at all sure what route she’d choose, but she made herself busy and tried to ignore her.
After a while, Governor Fernandez retook her seat at the edge of the couch and picked up the binder and highlighter she’d been holding when Mila had first entered. Mila’s body tensed as she tried to look natural and occupied, but it was a while before she allowed herself to relax.
In silence, the three women worked until the early morning hours. When Mila ran out of her own documents, the governor handed her a thick report from the department of transportation, who’d been pushing for the same measure for years.
Looking for a more comfortable position, Mila sat all the way back and planted her feet on the seat so her knees were up against her chest. In that position, she could hold her reading material in front of her while stealing glances at the woman sitting across from her.
Governor Fernandez was so intent on what she was doing that her forehead creased under her constantly furrowed brow. Just before she marked something on her page, she bit the very corner of her lip. Each time she did it, Mila’s pulse quickened just a little more and she had to force herself back to her task.
When even Mila’s eyes were too tired to see straight, they agreed to call it a night.
“Thank you for your help tonight, Mila,” Josephine said as they walked out of the library.
“This is a really important issue,” she replied earnestly. “It means a lot to me,” she added before saying good night and bolting upstairs to collapse on her springy mattress.
Chapter Twelve
“Good morning,” an increasingly familiar voice called from behind George. Part of her wanted to continue walking with the dogs toward their agility course and pretend she hadn’t heard her, but the rest of her wasn’t as annoyed as she’d been a few months ago.
“Morning,” she replied as crisply as the morning air.
Mila jogged toward her, zipping up her tangerine-colored windbreaker as she went. “I can’t believe it’s actually getting cool before Thanksgiving this year,” she said as she approached.
George didn’t reply. There were few things she hated more than talking about the weather. Unless it was an impending hurricane, tornado, or electrical-grid-destroying heatwave, the weather was usually not worth mentioning. It was Florida. The seasons varied from humid and hot to very humid and hot to a slight chill in the dead of winter. What was there to discuss?
“So, I wanted to talk to you about something I’ve been working on. An initiative started in France that makes people blow into breathalyzers before they can turn their cars on,” she explained with apparent excitement.
She went on to detail what some Western European and Nordic countries had done when making their own laws more stringent. It was far outside the research task she’d been assigned, but George decided to hear her out instead of pointing that out. She listened intently as they left the manicured garden, ventured to the open field, and to the dogs’ training area.
“Are you going to say anything?” Mila asked so suddenly, George looked away from what the dogs were doing on an obstacle to face her. “No offense,” she added after looking away and staring back at George with those piercing blue eyes that reminded her of a natural spring in a hidden forest. They were as stunning as the woman’s sudden rudeness.
George shoved her balled fists in her jacket and turned to her. “Ms. Dortch,” she began, looking for a quiet calm that wouldn’t result in a call to Human Resources. “Did you not consider that my allowing you to intrude upon my exceedingly rare personal time to listen to your research results is a sign that I am interested in listening to what you have to say?”
Mila’s throat danced as she swallowed loudly. It forced George’s attention to her long, smooth neck, but she wrestled herself back to the moment before she lost herself.
“I’m sorry, Governor, but you’re impossible to read,” she said with her own impassive expression.
Deciding that it was an insult rather than a genuine apology, George took her hands out of her pockets and crossed them over her chest as if a physical barrier might act like a bulletproof vest. “I wasn’t aware that I needed to be an open book for you,” she commented dryly, holding her head up as if that could make her as tall as the young, blonde irritant. She’d almost stopped calling her that in her mind until that moment. What a mistake.
“If I might speak freely,” Mila said before staring at her expectantly. The breeze kicked up, sending wisps of hair streaking across her forehead.
“Dear, I’m not sure if you have any other setting,” she said with an arched eyebrow before sighing and shifting her weight between her feet. “Please, go ahead. This isn’t the military,” she added with a dollop of sarcasm as her muscles tightened and her throat went dry.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you—”
“And yet here we are,” George interrupted.
Mila continued her thought without wavering. “I don’t mean it as a personal attack. It’s not just me that finds you hard to decipher. One of your main polling problems right now is that most people interpret your body language as robotic and message as lacking genuineness.”
George knew what the pollsters were coming back with, but it didn’t make Mila’s words sting any less. Over the years she’d grown a very thick skin, but personal critiques about her rather than her policies were never easy to digest. She shifted her weight, expecting the woman to continue.
“Now, the last two elections before that, your passion was used against you. I’m sure you remember the fiery Latina Bullsh—” she stopped and cleared her throat. “Nonsense,” she finished with a better choice of word. “If you ask me, you’ve overcorrected and your passion has been extinguished. Along that process, I think you’ve put on a mask and keep all your actual thoughts and emotions guarded. It makes you come off cold and robotic. Instead of feeling like you’ve been listening to me just now, it was more like I was barely being tolerated and probably tuned-out.”
George stood there with the dogs running around her and Mila’s words floating in her head. In one fell swoop, she’d managed to offend, embarrass, and insult her. There were so many emotions to feel at once she couldn’t decide how to proceed. Heat rose to her face in the interim.
“Are you always so aggressively yourself?” George
snapped. “Because let me tell you, that will not serve you if you wish to have a career in politics. Sometimes blunt honesty doesn’t get you anywhere near where you want to go,” she told her, deciding that of all the things she was feeling, pissed off was first on the list.
“Governor, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh please, don’t decide you need to filter yourself now. You’re not sorry,” she scoffed. “If you believe it to be true, don’t compromise your sterling integrity by apologizing,” she snapped as she whistled for the dogs. She wasn’t even sure what she’d said. All she could focus on was escape from the crushing discomfort of Mila’s presence.
In a blaze of glorious rage, she turned and stormed toward the house, the dogs bounding ahead and racing blissfully through the wet, dewy grass. George’s chest ached and her stomach burned. What she wouldn’t give to be that free for just a moment. To cut the bindings tethered to her body and release the scream she’d been holding inside herself for decades. How lucky they were, never having to be anything but what they wanted to be. How she admired it in Cleo and Victoria but loathed it in the blonde irritant. People didn’t have that kind of freedom, not people with any ambition, and she was incensed that a person her age hadn’t learned that yet. There were rules to follow. Expectations to meet. She couldn’t be some vulnerable emotional thing; she’d won her first election in spite of that trait, not because of it.
“Wow, you really walk fast when you’re mad,” Mila joked as she ran up beside her.
“I am not mad, Ms. Dortch,” she said through gritted teeth that didn’t exactly sell her story.
“Listen,” Mila said with the unearned familiarity of a hand on her forearm. The electric connection short-circuited her system and caused George’s feet to stop stomping against her will. “I am sorry for being so blunt,” she continued softly. “I didn’t mean to come off as disrespectful. I’ve been told more than once I can do with being a little less . . . direct,” she confessed with the hint of a bashful smile.
Like an animal soothed by music against its will, George’s heart rate began to slow and the blood pumped less dramatically in her ears. Her sights froze on pink lips before she shook off her daze.
“It’s fine,” she decided after clearing her throat and starting back toward the house at a more leisurely pace. “You haven’t told me anything I haven’t heard before.”
“I shouldn’t have been such a jerk about it,” she said as they approached the mudroom leading into the main house.
Out of the corner of her eye, George could see she was giving her another arresting half-smile. She couldn’t risk looking at her again. The tangle of emotions and sensations coursing through her body were confusing enough without the aid of her piercing blue eyes or the dimple in her left cheek. She pulled off her hiking boots and continued inside without a word.
* * *
Josephine set down a little plastic cup the size of a shot glass on George’s Capitol building desk. It was a welcomed sight after several hours of deep research. Nothing like Cuban coffee to jolt her into a second or third or fourth wind. She’d lost count.
George held up the drink and mimicked a toast before knocking it back. “Thanks.”
“What are you looking at?” Josephine asked as she took her usual seat on the sofa catty corner to the garish desk.
“Norwegian DUI laws,” she replied matter-of-factly.
Josephine stopped rubbing a mark on the back of her high heel and looked up. “Norwegian?” she parroted with obvious confusion. “Why?”
George marked her place before closing her thick binder. “Oh, I don’t know,” she admitted as she stood and stretched her sore lower back. “Mila made some good points about not having to re-invent the wheel. A lot of these studies have already been vetted extensively and have universal application as to physiology and driving impairment.”
“Mila did, did she?” Josephine said, not bothering to hide her amusement or Cheshire Cat grin.
“What is that face supposed to mean?” she snapped, not liking whatever it implied.
“My face?” she clarified unnecessarily. “Nothing. I’m just waiting for you to admit that my idea was brilliant.”
George scoffed before plopping down in an armchair across from Josephine. “And what idea was that?”
“Oh you know, just restarting the fellowship program, bringing on a great group of new minds, robbing Blankenship of his meager ammunition against you so that even he has had to shut up about the non-existent scandal or start looking like a crackpot conspiracy theorist,” she shrugged as she rattled off her list of achievements.
George tipped her head forward in acknowledgement. All those things were true.
“And I don’t think it hurts that she has some beauty to go with those brains,” Josephine added with a wry grin.
George tapped her leg with her outstretched foot. “Oh stop it,” she said with a chuckle. “We’re not going to be those stereotypes. Objectifying a very accomplished and intelligent woman just because she also happens to have a nice physique and conventionally attractive face.”
“Looks like you’ve given that a fair bit of thought,” she replied, relaxing back into her seat as if unable to contain her self-satisfaction. It was like she’d had three Thanksgiving dinner sized helpings of it.
“I know what you’re doing, and you’re insane,” George snapped, all levity gone for her tone.
“I’m not doing anything, Georgie,” she teased, bringing out the nickname used for only the most personal of occasions. “She’s a lovely person and brings out something in you I haven’t seen for a long time.”
“Yeah, a loss of patience and decorum,” she countered.
“Well, sometimes decorum is way over-rated.”
A loud beep interrupted their conversation. “Governor,” a man’s voice spoke over the intercom on her phone. “Your three o’clock is here. Should I see them to the conference room?”
“Yes, Manny, thank you,” she called with her head craned back toward her desk.
George stood, straightening her navy sheath dress before covering her curves with the matching suit jacket. “Come on,” she said, slipping out of her flats and into a pair of nude pointy heels. “Let’s do some real work and stop thinking about a glorified intern.”
“Who said I was the one thinking about her?” Josephine countered, unwilling to let it go as she tucked a salt-and-pepper micro braid behind her ear.
George gave her a severe stink-eye before swinging open the door, politician’s smile firmly in place.
* * *
George had intended to be home by seven, but it was closer to midnight when she dragged herself into her bedroom and kicked off her shoes by the door. A quick shower and change into old gym shorts and a faded T-shirt was all she could manage before she collapsed into her big, empty bed.
After checking a text from Nathan saying he’d be back from Minnesota in the morning, she was ready to pass out. Despite her exhaustion, sleep was illusive, and she realized that the rumble in her stomach was the cause. George turned over and tried to ignore it, but when the growling became painful, she had no choice but to address it.
Muttering to herself like a cranky child, she didn’t bother with a robe as she snuck down to the kitchen in hopes of leftovers. The chef usually had something squirreled away for long nights.
The house felt immense but empty as she moved silently through it like a phantom. It wasn’t the same pre-dawn energy, full of burgeoning electricity, it was the still nothing of a dead battery.
Instead of the dark kitchen George had been expecting, she was met with the glow of an open fridge and a woman’s silhouette. The surprise rooted her to the ground as her eyes danced over her skin, exposed by a thin white camisole and rolled up boxer shorts. She looked so soft despite the obvious strength of her muscles.
Wanting nothing more than to run and dive into bed on an empty stomach, George couldn’t drag her gaze away. In the glowing li
ght, Mila looked almost angelic. Her brain was on too long a delay, and when Mila turned away from the fridge with three glass Tupperware containers in hand, George was still standing there.
“Oh shit,” Mila gasped as she jumped. “I didn’t know you were there. I hope I didn’t wake you,” she added, speaking in a hushed tone.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she replied in a low, husky voice.
“It’s your house,” she replied with a throaty chuckle. Without the refrigerator door open, they had nothing but the moonlight streaming in through the plate-glass window over the sink for light. “Are you starving, too?” she asked so naturally an unwitting bystander would think they did this regularly. “All I ate today were two granola bars and a handful of peanuts I stole from Tim.”
“I think I’ve got you beat,” she replied despite her inner voice telling her to leave now and head back upstairs. “I had a latte, an espresso, a bite of Jo’s croissant and two mints.”
In the safety of the darkness, she moved closer to where Mila was standing. Maybe I’m dreaming, she decided. She was like an old cartoon being drawn by the scent of a cooling pie on the windowsill.
Mila laughed again, sending George’s stomach plummeting and heart soaring. Why did that sound have such an effect on her?
“Looks like we’re both terrible friends when snacks are involved.”
George chuckled. She did mooch off Josephine’s food more often than she’d care to admit. “What have we got?” she asked, feeling like an alien had taken over her body, as if the low light gave her plausible deniability should she be confronted later about her choices.
“Meatloaf, some kind of veggie casserole situation, and asparagus,” Mila said as she held up each container to the moonlight.
George watched her as she did, her gaze trained on the lines of her angular face that looked so soft in the pale light. From a few feet away, she could smell the violets of her lotion, or maybe that was her natural scent.
