It was amazing. He was amazing. He rattled off how it was powered up, how long the charge lasted and how fast it could go. But Madeleine wasn’t hearing any of it.
All she could think of was how big this was going to be for him. His excitement was contagious. She could see the passion and determination in his eyes and his whole body as he pointed at each new gadget. It was doing fluttery things to her insides.
Then she thought about what it all meant. The end game was to bring this car to the public and she could see now why he knew it would be a success. Something this cool at an affordable price, of course people were going to want it.
Which meant Michael Langdon was about to become more popular and well-known than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates put together. The nation’s spotlight was about to turn on him in a major way.
And the spotlight was a place she would never go back to.
* * *
“COME TO dinner with me.”
He had insisted on walking her up to her hotel room and was now standing inside the room with his body holding the door open like he didn’t want to leave.
“Michael, we’ve spent the whole day together. You’re no doubt sick of my company.”
“I’m not. Come to dinner with me.”
She sighed. “You know I won’t do that.”
“You ate lunch with me at Darnell’s.”
“That was different. It was just us and Archie. Besides, I’m feeling tired. I don’t know that I would be good company.”
Michael stepped inside and let the hotel door close behind him. “This is because of what Craig said, isn’t it? You’ve been different since then. More withdrawn.”
The distance she knew she was exuding wasn’t because of what Michael’s engineer said. She was still thinking about how she was going to stop herself from doing something utterly stupid, like fall for Michael Langdon.
“I should have… When he said that, I should have done something. Fired him, I don’t know.”
“Fired him? He’s your head engineer,” Madeleine said to inject some reason into the conversation. She kicked off her shoes and didn’t let herself think about how comfortable she’d become with him. It didn’t even bother her that they were alone together in her room or that she no longer cared if he saw her without her shoes. “Michael, it was a comment. It happens when people meet me for the first time. They look at me for a second with that I-think-she-looks-familiar gaze and then it’s, ‘You’re not that Madeleine Kane, are you?’”
“I didn’t defend you the way you deserve.”
She walked over to him, grabbed his hand, squeezing it to show her gratitude. “That’s sweet, but I don’t need you to defend me. Remember, I was sort of the guilty party in that very sordid play.”
“Bullshit. He was the one who was married. The more I’ve come to know you, the more it makes me sick to think what happened to you. All the scandal, all the jokes, all the trash that came down on you. You, the least slutty person I know. How people couldn’t see that about you, I don’t know.”
Madeleine swallowed as a rush of guilt welled up again even after all these years. She turned her back to him. “I wasn’t innocent.”
“How can you say that? You ooze moral uprightness and goodness. Sure, maybe you made a mistake. Maybe the most powerful man on the planet talked his way into your panties, but you can’t be blamed for that.”
It was his outrage on her behalf that got to her. She had to stop it. It wasn’t right for her to let him go on thinking she was blameless. It wasn’t right for him to want to defend her when she wasn’t the heroine in this story.
“You don’t know everything about me,” she said, facing him again.
“Then tell me. Because that’s what I want to know. Everything.”
She could see how serious he was. “Maybe you won’t like me so much after you know the truth.”
“Try me.”
His assurance humbled her. His deep-rooted certainty that she was innocent and good and couldn’t have done the thing everyone accused her of doing, it made her feel covered with grime. Maybe it was best that she told him. Maybe when he saw her, finally saw who she was, he would be the one to pull back, and she wouldn’t have to worry about her feelings for him anymore.
“I told you my mother died and my father raised me.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, by the way. I don’t know if I said that.”
“She had cancer. It was very hard for a while. After she was gone, it was just my father and my brother. They expected things from me. Expected me to work hard, excel and behave. I went to an all-girl high school. I received top grades and honors. I was accepted into Yale where again I received top grades and honors. My first job was for a state senate campaign and I distinguished myself quickly in political circles. I worked three more elections and in each of those, my candidate won. When Jason Marlin asked me to be part of the team, I leaped at the chance to take my game to the national level. My father was thrilled. Proud. My brother was jealous and that was almost as satisfying.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he said abruptly. “I don’t want you to have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
“No. You wanted the truth and this is it. Anyway, it should have been an amazing time. I was on top of the world. Then things started to change. I started to resent the president almost immediately after the election. Something shifted in him as soon as he won. In hindsight, I can say maybe it’s something all candidates experience when they win. They have to transition from someone running for office to a leader. Suddenly my advice—which had been so pivotal in winning the election—was not as necessary once he had the job.”
“But he made you a senior adviser.”
“Which many in the old guard of the party resented. I was too young. Too inexperienced. I was no longer as useful as I once was. No longer important.”
“I bet that ticked you off.”
“I nearly hated him.”
“Then how did it happen?”
Madeleine closed her eyes. Every day of her life since it did, she asked herself the same question.
“He’d never done anything overtly aggressive on the campaign but I always knew by the way he watched me. The times his hand would linger on my back. Or the way he would stare at me for too long. My experience with sex before that…well, let’s say I wasn’t the most experienced. But I wasn’t naive. I knew what he wanted.”
She took a breath and considered what she was doing. What she was about to say, she had never said to anyone. So why was she telling Michael, the one man whose opinion suddenly mattered so much to her?
“Go on,” he encouraged. “It’s okay. I’m not going to judge.”
Maybe that’s why she was telling him. Maybe deep down she knew that out of anyone, he might understand. After all, he had also made mistakes.
“One night, it was the two of us alone in the Oval. I was arguing a point on an upcoming social-security reform bill Congress was about to put up for a vote and he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t listening to me. And suddenly I snapped. I asked him if he wanted to have sex with me. I thought at least in this I would have control.”
Sitting on the couch, she leaned forward and dropped her face in her hands. It was too hard to look at him. Too hard to say it while he was watching her. But she had to finish it. This was the ugly truth and it was what she’d promised him. She couldn’t hide from it. Sitting straighter, she promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She didn’t deserve any sympathy for what she’d done.
“While it was happening, all I could think of was how bad I was. Not a good girl anymore. If my father saw what I was doing, how horrified he would be. No, sir, I was a woman who could make a president get down on his knees if I wanted. Then his wife walked in and the world knows the rest of the story.”
“You’ve never told anyone that before, have you? You didn’t have to tell me.”
“I know. But I wanted you to know. I wanted you to know that when all those disg
usting stories were being written about me, every one of them was true. I wasn’t some poor young woman who was taken advantage of like some people tried to portray me. My friends all thought I had been seduced or tricked. And the whole time I knew it was me. I made that decision. He might never have acted on his feelings if I hadn’t opened the door for him.”
“Don’t…”
“No, I knew what I was doing, and it wasn’t out of affection or even attraction. I wanted payment. I wanted to be listened to again. You know what that makes me?”
“Don’t say it.”
“A whore.” She gulped as the word rose up like bile in her throat, burning along the way.
“Stop it,” he barked. “I won’t let anyone talk about you like that. I sure as shit am not going to listen to you say it about yourself.”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s you beating yourself up for a mistake you made seven years ago. You messed up. You suffered for it. Move on.”
He didn’t understand. He was blinded by something—exactly what, she didn’t know—but there was no justifying her actions. She didn’t deserve his defense.
“I can’t. So no, I don’t want to go to dinner with you. And maybe now you’ll understand why I can’t let it go. Why I’ll never let it go. Because everything that happened…it was all my fault.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“HEY, ARCHIE! You here?” Michael called into the open garage, thinking he’d find Archie and his new project busy at work. He’d picked today to come by since he found himself alone. Madeleine had gone back to Philadelphia to tie up some loose ends on a job and check on Ben. At least that’s what she’d said. She insisted it wasn’t because she was running from him.
He had to trust that she was telling the truth. And trust that she was coming back.
Instead of finding Archie and his project, the place seemed almost empty except for an old banged-up Chevy. Then a man slid out from underneath the car with some grease stains lining his face.
“Archie ain’t here. He went out to the bank.”
Michael waited for the guy to sit up to introduce himself and when he did it was like a punch in his gut. The man wasn’t much to look at. Short, thin, partially balding with small eyes that dipped into his head. But despite the years and the grease, the recognition was instantaneous. Archie’s new project wasn’t a stranger.
The man got off the glide and then walked over to a worktable looking for a clean rag he could use on his hands. He had barely acknowledged Michael’s presence and Michael wondered if he could somehow back out of the garage without having to engage him. But then he could feel eyes on him, sizing him up.
“Hey, I know you.”
Too late. “I’m sorry,” Michael muttered. “I don’t—”
“It’s me. Nooky Clarke. You’re Mickey Lang. I was in the cell next to you at Wayne County, like, fifteen years ago.”
“I don’t think so—”
“Oh, wow, you’re the guy Archie was talking about. The one who made out driving cars and shit. I didn’t put it together. Michael Langdon. Mickey Lang. Go figure, right?”
Michael tried to swallow the acid that was filling his mouth. He didn’t want to see this man. Didn’t want to acknowledge he knew him. “I came by because…Archie’s a friend.”
“You really don’t remember me? Most guys I know, they don’t forget much about their time inside. It’s one of those things that stick, if you know what I mean.”
“I can promise you I’ve forgotten all of it,” Michael said softly. At least almost all of it. “Look, just let Archie know I was here.”
“Sure thing. And hey, if you’ve got any fancy car problems, I know how to change oil and shit now.”
“Thanks.” Michael turned and forced himself to not give in to the urge to run out of the shop screaming but to take each step slowly and deliberately. After all, it wasn’t like you could outrun the past.
“Congrats and all on making it big. You know, the money and stuff.” Nooky was still talking even as Michael walked away. Still standing in the garage rubbing his hands with a rag that was no longer clean. “When Archie told me about this fancy ex-con I was like, eff that. I don’t need no pep talk from some rich dude. But I remember you, Mickey. Yeah, I remember you real good.”
Trying not to hear anything ominous in the man’s tone, Michael finally did the grown-up thing and turned around. He didn’t have a pep talk in him, but the least he could do was offer the man some truth. “If you keep your nose clean, Archie can do right by you.”
“Like he did for you?”
Michael swallowed again, this time more with sentiment than disgust. “Yeah, yeah, like he did for me.”
“Be seeing you around, Mickey.” The man raised the greasy rag in his hand like some kind of flag salute.
Michael didn’t say it, but under his breath he whispered, “I hope not.”
* * *
READY TO LEAVE Philadelphia and head back to Detroit, Madeleine wasn’t pleased with the weather slowing her down. Rain poured down as she made her way from the cab to Ben’s front door. Madeleine cursed under her breath. Her plan was to visit Ben one last time and then head directly to the airport.
The cabdriver had pulled up as far as he could on the driveway, but even during her sprint up the short path to Ben’s front door she’d felt the rain soak through her sweater to her skin. The thought of sitting on the plane soaking wet didn’t appeal to her much.
She should cancel her flight.
She squashed the thought as soon as it came to her. She couldn’t cancel a flight because of some damp clothes. And she couldn’t cancel her flight because, while going back and seeing Michael again after everything she had told him was going to be hard, in the end she was a professional and a professional finished the job.
Michael wanted her to come back. He wanted to discuss the upcoming green-initiative marathon she had scheduled him to speak at.
Madeleine wasn’t stupid. She strongly suspected his need to have her by his side was his way of proving to her she hadn’t disgusted him with her confession. She wasn’t sure why. She disgusted herself every time she thought about what she’d done.
But Michael was insistent. He hadn’t been happy at all when she’d told him she was returning to Philadelphia. She had to assure him it was only temporary to finish up some details from her last assignment and to check on Ben. Only then did he seem mollified.
It wasn’t lost on her that if she chose not to return, it would be easier to deal with Michael remotely rather than in person. But duty won out over embarrassment, so she was going back. She refused to acknowledge the small kernel of excitement living in her heart, knowing she was going to be seeing him again that afternoon.
She rang the bell a few times and tried to huddle under the overhang that only kept her partially dry since the wind was blowing rain everywhere. One more reason to hate spring, in her opinion. One day it could be mild and hinting of warmer days to come, the next you were being soaked by a cold, dreary rain.
She could see Anna’s car in the driveway so she knew they were both home. She didn’t imagine she would be interrupting anything and wanted to see Ben before heading back to Detroit. After a minute with no answer, she took the initiative and pulled out her key ring. Ben had given her a spare some time ago because he’d been spending more and more time working from his home rather than coming into the office.
Once inside the foyer, she opened her mouth to announce herself but stopped when she heard shouting.
“What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean it’s none of my concern? You can say that? After what happened?”
It was Anna’s voice and she was upset. No, she was angry.
“Don’t tell me how I feel. Don’t you dare!”
Madeleine was stunned. In the years she’d known Anna and Ben she’d never heard anything more than playful banter between them. Yes, they teased and mocked one another ruthlessly, but never with any real
heat.
This wasn’t banter. This was a fight.
“You want me to leave? You want me to quit? Tell me. Just say one damn thing that’s the truth!”
Madeleine couldn’t hear any of Ben’s side of the conversation. Not that it surprised her. Raising his voice would be intolerable to him. He was always measured and careful in everything he said. Plus, given his weakened condition, it was quite possible he didn’t have the strength to shout back.
It was his condition that forced Madeleine into motion. Anna might be angry with good reason, but Ben wasn’t in a position to fight back and that wasn’t fair.
“Hello! Ben? Anna?” She was loud enough to get their attention. She could tell from the direction of Anna’s voice they were in Ben’s office so she headed down the foyer to the room on the left.
The sliding door was halfway open, and with another shove she pushed it aside to let herself in. “Hey, sorry. I rang, but there was no answer so I used my key.”
Anna stood with arms crossed over her chest, her face a picture of restrained fury. Upon seeing Madeleine, though, she quickly altered her tone. “Hi, Madeleine. Sorry, we were just…talking. I’ll let you visit while I take care of some things.” She turned back to Ben, who was leaning against the fireplace, not looking at either woman. “We’re not through with this.”
“Anna, we most decidedly are. Please leave us.”
Once more Madeleine was stunned. The dismissal in his tone was like nothing she’d ever heard from him. That he could use it with Anna, who had been everything to him in these past months since he’d been diagnosed, was even more bizarre.
The door slid shut with a thump and they were alone.
“Ben?”
“Don’t. Please. I’m begging you not to ask.”
Madeleine shifted on her feet. Hearing Ben beg for anything was nearly as awful as his dismissal of Anna. Without question she would respect his wishes. But she had no intention of leaving without talking to Anna first. “Okay. I’m sorry I interrupted.”
“I’m not. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have,” he said as he made his way to his desk. Though he didn’t shake or stumble, she could see the effort it required for him to move across the room and take his seat.
One Final Step Page 8
