by Susan Sey
“Are you crying, Mom?”
“Of course not.” She sniffed again, a little less delicately. “Okay, maybe I am. But I’ve wanted this for you for so long. All those years, all those girls. I was running out of ways to sneak them under your radar, but I knew if I just kept...”
Erik’s brows drew together and he said, “If you just kept what?”
“My patience.” She gave a watery chuckle. “If I just kept my patience, you’d find one you liked. And you have. Haven’t you?”
“I hope so.” Nixie’s million-dollar smile flashed through his mind, popped there like a flashbulb. He pinched the bridge of his nose and pushed the image away. He thought of Mary Jane’s pale, soft skin, clear and freckle-free under the dome light of his Jeep. “I really, really hope so.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sloan Leighton peeked through her lashes at the man--the boy, really--leading her into Senator Larsen’s private office the following Monday. He was painfully young, all Adam’s apple and wrists.
“Thanks so much for this,” she said, wrapping a hand around his arm and leaning in. “I can’t believe I got the time wrong. I’m such an air head sometimes. You’re sure it’s okay if I just wait here?” She opened her eyes wide. And now I am sincere.
A flush stained the kid’s soft cheeks as he gazed helplessly down at her. “Sure. Senator Larsen’s due back any minute. I’m sure she’ll want to see you.”
Sloan gave his arm a little squeeze. His eyes about rolled back in his head and she hastily let him go. There was such a thing as over playing her hand. “Well, thanks. I owe you one.”
She tucked her tailored skirt under her knees and sat primly on the edge of the Senator’s soft leather loveseat. The kid shook himself out of the reverie he’d lapsed into at the idea of Sloan Leighton owing him and promptly backed into the door frame. His flush deepened alarmingly as he renegotiated his exit and disappeared. Sloan glanced around the room. It wasn’t quite what she’d expected. The outer office was the usual fluorescent business space, but this room was something else entirely. The walls were a lush, smoky gray the exact shade of twilight, paired with a thick cocoa-colored carpet and this creamy sofa that made Sloan want to slip off her shoes and stretch out.
Framed photos lined the walls--the usual shots of the Senator shaking hands with other powerful politicians. A closer inspection revealed some unexpected black and whites mixed in, though. They all showed a younger version of the Senator with her arm around various incarnations of Nixie’s new boyfriend. Sloan smiled reluctantly. Dr. Erik Larsen was a radically charismatic man, but he’d been a sweet and lost-looking child. There was something so elusive and familiar in the way he stared into the camera. Stared through the camera, really. Like it wasn’t even there, like he was searching beyond it for something.
Just like Nixie, she realized with an unpleasant jolt. For a long time, she’d thought Nixie wasn’t focusing on the camera when she had her picture taken. It had been years before she’d realized that Nixie was actually focusing on the camera too hard. Like she expected something from it. And why wouldn’t she? She’d watched her mother debase herself for the cameras for years. Why wouldn’t she expect there to be a reason?
“Sloan Leighton,” the Senator said, pushing open her office door. “This is unexpected.” She closed the door behind her with a soft click.
“I lied quite outrageously to your office boy,” Sloan said, putting on her most charming smile. She was amused to find her palms a little damp.
“I gathered.” The Senator folded her arms and leaned a sharp hip against the polished Victorian desk. “Why?”
“I wanted to chat with you,” she said. “Girl to girl.”
A single blonde brow arched, and it was the only movement the woman made. “Oh?”
“About our children.” Sloan tried out a maternal mien. “They seem rather...taken with each other.”
The Senator waited silently for her to continue, her face a study in barely masked skepticism. Sloan shrugged, but a flame of temper licked up inside her. Who was this woman to judge her? Were they really so different? They’d both used their God-given gifts to force a reluctant world to cough up their due. The Senator had gotten to use her brains, good for her. Sloan’s gifts had been decidedly more earthy and she wouldn’t apologize for using what she had.
“You can rest easy, Madame Senator. I’m not out to seduce your son. I do have standards. Low and twisted, yes, but standards nonetheless. Maybe you don’t approve of me, but I’ve only ever done what--or who--was necessary.”
“I’m biting my tongue, Ms. Leighton,” the Senator said. “I’ve been following your career for years, and you’ve done quite a number of interesting things. And people. I’m desperately curious about a few of them. But you’re not here to dish with me. Not about our children, and much to my regret, not about that delicious Italian prince you spurned. I know a woman on a mission when I see one. What do you want?”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of Sloan’s mouth. “I don’t like you,” she said. “You’re clever and hard and you see too much.”
“I’m also on a schedule.” The Senator glanced at her watch. “Could you possibly get to the point?”
Sloan’s smile died. “I want Nixie to be happy,” she said.
“I like Nixie very much,” the Senator said. “But her happiness isn’t under my control. Or yours.”
“I know.” Sloan spread her hands. “But her unhappiness has been very much under my control, and that’s something I want to change.”
“And you think I can help you?”
“Well, yes. You see, we’re at what you might call a crossroads at Leighton-Brace Charitable Giving. There’s an important opportunity for Nixie in the Middle East right now, but she’s digging in here in DC. Because of your son.”
“Ah.”
“She and our advisor are at each other’s throats over it, and for once in my life, I want to do the right thing,” Sloan said. “If your son is as serious about Nixie as she seems about him, I’ll call off the dogs. But if he’s toying with her, if she passes up the opportunity of a lifetime because he thinks he’s lucked into the golden goose, well... I’d find that unacceptable.”
“You’re the only one allowed to hurt your daughter, is that it?”
“If you like.” A small dart of pain landed somewhere in the vicinity of Sloan’s heart, but she lifted a languid shoulder. “Let’s just say that if Erik’s intentions are less than honorable, I’ll find myself compelled to drive a wedge between them.” She smiled, finally on familiar ground. “And please remember how low and twisted my standards are. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my child.”
The Senator gazed impassively at her. “Are you threatening me?”
Sloan gave a delicate chuckle. “Threatening you! The very idea.” She slipped her purse over her shoulder and stood. “I was just hoping to keep this low profile, that’s all. Things always get so...messy when the press is involved, and this being an election year, well, I’d hoped to avoid bloodshed.” She paused. “Figuratively speaking, of course. But a mother must do what a mother must do.”
“Or who she must do?” The Senator threw Sloan’s words back at her with the calm assurance of the seasoned debater she was.
“Now that’s up to you, isn’t it?” Sloan smiled. “It was lovely meeting you. Good luck with the election.” She walked toward the door, deliberately putting a lot of slink into her hips. She turned, one hand on the knob. “You are running again, aren’t you?”
The Senator gazed at her shrewdly, and Sloan held her breath. Come on, she thought. Give me something. Please God, give me something. She didn’t think she could bear to follow through on the threat she’d just made. Not again.
“If this ends up in the papers, I’ll know where to rain down the fury,” the Senator said finally.
“Understood.” Sloan took her hand off the knob.
“Erik called me last Friday. He wanted his grandmo
ther’s ring. Her wedding ring.”
“Ah.” Sloan was shocked to feel an exquisite bittersweet joy rise up in her chest. Her baby. Her and Archer’s baby, taking that foolish, ill-fated leap into something as ridiculous and fundamentally flawed as marriage. She blinked against a shaming flood of tears. “So he’s serious about her.”
“Looks that way.”
“We’ll have to learn to get along, then, won’t we?”
“I wouldn’t mind hearing about that Italian prince.”
“He was just a duke. And something of a disappointment.”
“Ah.”
Sloan opened the door and slipped out.
Twenty minutes and one astonishing cab ride later--Sloan hadn’t experienced that kind of out-of-body terror since the last time she’d driven in Cairo--she stepped into the Presidential Suite at the Four Seasons. Karl lay on the couch, his stocking feet propped on the arm, his fingers laced together over his bald scalp while a laptop hummed happily on his stomach. He looked up from the screen when she opened the door.
“Hey, Sloan. How did it go?”
“Depends.” She stepped out of her shoes and let her arches weep with relief as she padded into the kitchenette. She retrieved a cold bottle of water from the fridge--God, she loved America--before wandering into the sitting area and lowering herself into the square arm chair facing the couch.
“Depends on what?” Karl’s eyes were already back on his computer screen.
“On your point of view, I guess.” Sloan folded her arms and propped her breasts on them, waiting for his full attention. To his credit, when he finally set aside the computer and looked at her, he didn’t so much as glance at the cleavage straining against her shirt. She smiled. Karl’s interest in her body was purely professional. She performed for him this way just to stay in practice.
“Screw my point of view, Sloan. Is this doctor going to be a problem or not?”
“He wants to marry her.”
“What?” Karl sat up so fast he nearly bobbled the laptop.
“He’s asked his mother for the heirloom ring and everything.”
“Oh my God.” Karl scrubbed big hands over his face. “This is a nightmare.”
“It can be.” It had been nearly twenty years since Archer had died, and grief still hijacked her with vicious regularity. But Sloan didn’t fool herself. Karl wasn’t thinking of Nixie’s heart. He was thinking of Bumani. “What are we going to do?”
Karl’s gaze dropped speculatively to her cleavage. “Do you think you could attract the good doctor’s attention?”
Sloan had excised her conscience years ago, so she was surprised to feel it twitch in protest at that. But she forced her mouth to curve into the most knowing of smiles.
“Nixie had to slap him to his senses the first time we met, and I wasn’t even trying.” Very hard. “Of course I can get his attention. Do you think I should?”
Karl frowned and rubbed thoughtfully at his beard. “I don’t know. It’s probably too soon to go that route again. If we have to fly solo on Bumani, we might want to rehabilitate your public image a little.”
“True.” A sneaky rip tide of relief rippled in her veins, so Sloan lifted the bottle of water to her lips and took a tiny sip. She’d spent her morning committing all manner of minor sins in the hopes of avoiding a truly ugly one. In spite of her best efforts, it was still a very real possibility that she’d have to steal yet another of Nixie’s boyfriends, and her stomach went sour with shame. “Karl? Do we really need Nixie for this one? If she’s dead set on staying here, can’t we--”
“Nixie’s the key, Sloan. You know that. We need her.”
She shrugged her acquiescence. Karl was rarely wrong. If he said they needed Nixie, they needed Nixie.
“So what are we going to do?” she asked.
“I have an idea,” he said, reaching for his cell phone. “Let me take it from here.” He ran a critical eye over her face. “Why don’t you go rest or something? You look tired.”
I feel dirty, she wanted to say, but she only smoothed her skirt and stood. A small twinge of panic tightened her stomach, and she touched the lines between her brows that formed whenever she frowned. She had to be more careful. She wasn’t young anymore, and she needed to take scrupulous care of herself if she wanted to maintain the fiction that age hadn’t touched her. That none of the cruel, countless sacrifices she’d made over the years had touched her.
“Maybe I’ll go have a shower.”
Half an hour later, she rifled through the explosion of lingerie that had taken over half her suitcase. White satin, black silk, jade green lace. Filmy, slinky, expensive. She shoved it all aside and dug deeper. She didn’t want any of it. Not today.
Her curls, carefully conditioned and combed, stuck wetly to her cheeks as she cursed and shoved both arms into the suitcase to lift away the mountain of underthings.
“Ha!” She reached into the last corner and fished out a pair of white cotton bikinis. The elastic was warped, the material worn and soft, and an improbable herd of ladybugs formed a heart on the derriere. They were the last thing Archer had ever given her and she lived in fear that one day she would wear them out.
She stepped carefully into them, smoothed the simple, serviceable cotton against her skin. For an instant, it seemed to smooth something inside her as well. Something raw and broken and dirty.
She shook her head and dropped her towel to clip on the matching bra. She yanked on a white t-shirt from BCBG. God, she was morose today. What did she have to whine about? Fate had been obscenely good to her. It had granted her the face and figure to earn everything she needed in the world, and then, for eight precious years--an administrative mistake on God’s part most likely--it had given her Archer Brace as well.
It was an embarrassment of riches by any standard, one she’d gobbled up with her trademark appetite. By the time the mistake was sorted out and Archer whisked away--private plane crash, so sad, world in mourning--she was already irretrievably spoiled.
She’d gotten used to being loved.
She’d had a man who snapped photos of her with two weeks of camp dirt cementing her hair to her head, insisting she’d never been more beautiful. He’d worshipped her body, of course, but what she remembered most was his hand on her belly as Nixie moved--serene, purposeful and determined--inside her, a foreshadowing of the woman their child would become. She remembered his fingers stroking Nixie’s fuzzy head as she nursed, remembered the astonishing fact that her exposed breast never even registered. Archer had loved her. Her.
She would never have that again, and she didn’t want it. She’d barely survived the first time. What she wanted now was something comfortable, routine and expected. It didn’t have to touch her heart. She didn’t have one left to touch anyway. She’d buried it with Archer.
What she had was a face that, with proper care and excellent lighting, could still sell magazines. She had a figure that, with the right foundational garments, could wear couture for another few years yet. And she had Karl, Archer’s best friend and fellow dreamer, who’d loved Archer as much as she had, who’d dedicated his life to the same causes and who valued most in her what Archer had valued least--her face, her figure and her willingness to exploit them both. She figured she owed the universe a whopping tab for those eight precious years, and God had left her Karl to make sure she paid.
“Sloan?” Karl knocked on her door. “You about finished in there?”
“Almost.” She shimmied into a butter-soft pair of Versace capris. The ragged cotton underwear was a secret for her alone. An admission of weakness too shaming and destructive to claim.
“I want you to see something out here.”
She caught sight of herself in the mirror and stuck out her tongue. God, she might as well just rent a mini van and go pick some kids up from soccer practice.
“Be right there.”
She pulled off the t-shirt and yanked on a tank top instead. It ended just below her navel, leaving an e
xpanse of smooth skin exposed above the low-slung waist of her capris. The word lucky stretched across her breasts, spelled out in tacky green rhinestones.
Better. She curled her mouth into its habitual surprise-me-baby-I-dare-you smile and padded barefoot into the common space to see what Karl needed from her now.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Erik left his mother’s apartment the following Sunday with his grandmother’s diamond in his pocket. He tried not to wonder if Nixie was at home across the hall. He didn’t want to see her, he told himself. He didn’t want to talk to her, or say something funny just to watch her laugh.
The next thing he said to her probably wouldn’t be very funny anyway. It would most likely be about his and Mary Jane’s surprise engagement. He punched the elevator call button and frowned at the doors. She’d congratulate him, of course. Tell him she’d seen it coming. But she wouldn’t have. Why would she when he’d been kissing her instead of his fiancée?
He pushed the call button again. Somebody else would probably tell her. News traveled fast in Anacostia. Surely he wouldn’t be the one to break the story? Not that she’d be disappointed or anything. A woman like Nixie didn’t have her romantic hopes pinned on a doctor. But they were friends, weren’t they? Good friends. And if any friend of his got engaged without even mentioning the possibility, wouldn’t Erik be a little hurt?
The elevator binged and the doors slid open, but Erik cursed softly and let them close again. He turned and headed toward Nixie’s door.
He had to tell her. It was the right thing to do. He punched her doorbell before he could think better of it.
The door swung open and Nixie was there, holding a newspaper.
“Hey, Nixie. I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d stop by. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Yeah?” A smile curved her lips and she pressed the newspaper to her chest. “Be still my heart. I didn’t believe for an instant it could be true, but feel free to drop to one knee.”
