by Alicia Scott
Bloody hell. He slammed his car into gear and roared away as if driving fast would help. Of course, it didn't.
* * *
Tamara was shaking so hard, it took her four attempts to fasten the chain lock on her door. She stood in the entryway of the suite, still breathing too hard. Then in a flurry of movement, she ripped at her clothes as if getting them off quickly would finally rid her of C.J. MacNamara's touch, taste and smell.
The clothes pooled at her feet. Naked, coveted with snaking scars she hated to see, she made a beeline for the bathroom and its whirlpool tub. She cranked the water to the hottest setting she could find. She dumped in half a bottle of hotel shampoo for suds. She climbed at last into the steaming, whirling, floral-scented water, closing her eyes and willing it to soak the last of the emotions from her pores.
She didn't want to be angry. She didn't even want to be passionate. At this point, she wanted her composure back so she could return to New York as intact as possible.
She heard her mother's gentle reprimand. "Slow down…"
She heard her father's hoarse cry. "Oh, God!"
She heard Shawn's pain-weakened voice. "It'll be okay, Tammy. They'll … come. Some … one … will … come. The … Lord … is … my shepherd. I shall … not … want…"
She pressed her hands against her forehead. She squeezed the horrible, conflicting pictures back into their special place.
She didn't want to know. She just wanted justice.
The steam rose around her. It curled her hair. She kept her face buried in her hands for a long, long time. When she finally looked up again, the memories were pushed back. The emotions were gone. She let the hot water soak into her limbs, and suddenly, she was unbearably exhausted.
It was okay. She could handle tired.
She climbed out of the tub, toweled off and got ready to go to campaign headquarters. She didn't need C.J. MacNamara or his piercing eyes, or his strong embrace. She just needed to find traces of the red car. And she would do that on her own.
Chapter 6
« ^ »
"Where are the bumper stickers? What is this? I thought we had a full five thousand coming in. Come on, come on, where are they?"
"Printer had a slight problem," Celia called out from across the bustling, churning, phone-ringing chaos. "Delivered them this morning with Brennan spelled with only one n."
"What?"
"They'll have them here by Monday morning, they swore."
"Jerry!" Mrs. Winslow barked, "Get me the phone and the number for the printers. I will handle this personally. Celia, find the pins, instead. If there is a man, woman or child in this county, I want them wearing a Senator Brennan for Our Future pin. Hannah, get me four focus groups, heavy on women and minorities. We just got the new campaign commercials in and we need to test them. Scott, did the newest version of the senator's announcement speech come in?"
"Yes," Scott said glumly.
Mrs. Winslow practically grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. One week before the senator's arrival, the campaign war room was living up to its name. "Spit it out! What's wrong?"
"I ran it by a dozen test groups in the last three days," Scott said, the words rushing out. "It rates high with middle-aged men, both white, Indian and Hispanic, but women didn't respond to it at all, while voters under thirty-five complained it was too old school. At this point, he's hitting only forty percent of the voters. We ran the numbers, Mary. That won't do it, not with a young, well-respected outsider like Matthew Phillips throwing his hat in the ring. Women love him, young voters adore him. Basically, he's a really sexy version of Ross Perot."
"Scott, repeat after me— There is no such thing as a sexy Ross Perot."
"Mary," Scott said just as testily, "I'm telling you now, with speeches like this, the senator's not going to carry his home state. How can he not carry his own state? Demographics have changed around here, and somebody had better explain that to the senator and his head speechwriter."
Mary scowled, chewing on her lower lip. Then her gaze latched on to Tamara, who was sitting in front of her computer, trying to look like she was working while she blatantly eavesdropped on the senator's woes. She'd dressed for the day's chaos in a slimming black pantsuit. Generally, it made her look sharp and chic. Today, it merely accentuated the pallor of her skin and the shadows beneath her eyes. Apparently, Mary Winslow thought the same.
"My God, you look like hell. Are you feeling all right?" What the question lacked in genuine concern, it made up for in razor-sharp demand.
"I'm fine. I just had a late night."
Mrs. Winslow's hands settled on her trim hips, garbed in a sensible navy blue schoolmarm's skirt. "I know you are just a volunteer, Tamara, but it's two days before the senator's arrival and I can't have my staff up late drinking and performing poorly—"
"I know—"
"Don't you understand how important this is? Don't you realize how much the senator is trusting us to do this right? This isn't some high school most-likely-to-succeed contest. Here in this room, we are working on molding the future. We are setting our sights on determining the next leader of the free world."
"I drove here all the way from New York," Tamara fired back, a little bit on edge herself. "It occurred to me it might be important."
Mary Winslow's eyes narrowed to laser-blue pinpricks. "They told me you were a good writer."
"I've written a few press releases in my time."
Mrs. Winslow abruptly picked up a file and slapped it on Tamara's desk. "These are the voter surveys we've conducted for the last six months. They report what issues are most important to women, to white males, to Indians, to the elderly, to Gen-X. Read them, get to know them. Then I want you to take the senator's speech and see if you can fine-tune it—and I mean fine-tune, nothing huge, nothing drastic—to better reflect wider demographics. Then we'll fax it back to the senator's head speechwriter and see if we can get it to fly."
"Wouldn't it be easier to have the speechwriter do it?"
"Alex is a little busy these days, as I'm sure you can imagine. Besides, we don't need anything major. Just enough to show that the senator is a broad-thinking man. He cares about the Navajo. He cares about the Hispanics. He understands the plight of the working mother. He feels the pinch of the middle-class family struggling to send their first child to college. He's a family man."
"That's what all the young, pretty blond aides on Capitol Hill think, too," Tamara murmured, picking up the file.
"I don't need your sarcasm right now."
Beneath the desk, Tamara's hands curled into fists. Funny how composure used to be as second nature to her as breathing. Now she might as well sign up for a one-way ticket to Bellevue. Lovely. "Sorry. I'm a little tense."
"Welcome to the club." Mrs. Winslow stabbed her index finger toward the file again. "I'll need this by end of day. Don't get too wedded to anything, either. The senator likes to edit edits. Hopefully, however, we'll end up with a version more appealing than this."
"All right."
Mrs. Winslow was already turning away, her finger pointed at the next victim.
"Mary—" Tamara said abruptly, seeing an unexpected opportunity. "What if we looked at more than just the senator's speech?"
"Such as?"
"Well, the fundamental issue here is how do we repackage an older, old-school conservative politician to appeal to a younger, more diversified audience. Sure, we can tweak his speech, but it's also the man himself. I don't know why his publicist hasn't gone over this with him, but those navy blue single-breasted suits and red striped ties he likes to wear? For crying out loud, he should just stamp Twenty Years Past Freshness Date on his forehead."
Around them, a few eavesdropping volunteers giggled. Tamara warmed up for the kill. Her exhaustion was gone. She felt nervous, almost euphoric. She had an opening she hadn't realized she would get, an opportunity to pry into the senator's life. Her voice deepened to a rich, husky baritone that knew how to hold an audi
ence. "We get the senator into a charcoal gray, double-breasted suit with a silk, maroon and navy blue abstract tie. Then we let him make an entrance." She paused. Mrs. Winslow leaned forward.
"How does the senator normally come into town?" Tamara pressed innocently. "Limo? Lincoln Towncar with dark-tinted windows and his own driver?"
"He prefers a Towncar, yes, with his own driver. We always take care of the arrangements for him through one of the executive driving services in Phoenix."
"Entourage?"
"Of course! He has his publicist, his secretary, his aide. This time his family will be joining him, of course, plus he has a few bodyguards. A man like him can't be too careful."
"It's old school. Don't you see? It reeks of everything the voters are rejecting. Matthew Phillips isn't traveling with a funeral train of black sedans and private drivers. He drives his own car. His aides drive their own cars—or actually, cars he probably bought for them. What if we put the senator in something younger, hipper? We could get… We could get one of the senator's cars. He must own a few."
"I'm sure he does."
"Isn't his house on the outskirts of Sedona?"
"Of course, it's a lovely home. I believe … I think he may have a Cadillac, maybe a Buick, something like that. I really don't see the difference between that and the car service we've already arranged for him."
"What about something younger? Something, say … sportier. Does the senator have a sports car, you know, a … a red sports car?"
"What in the world would a man the senator's age be doing with a red sports car?"
Tamara met Mrs. Winslow's gaze blandly. "I don't know. I thought men of all ages liked sports cars."
"Not the senator," Mrs. Winslow said firmly. "He's a very image-conscious man, and for as long as I've known him, he's driven fine, reliable American-made sedans. Really, to put him in a red convertible? That may appeal to the young voters, but that would destroy his image with his established fans. A man of his age in a red convertible. It just … it just wouldn't do!"
Mary Winslow dismissed the notion once and for all with a negative shake of her finger.
"No," Tamara said faintly after a bit, "I suppose it wouldn't."
Mrs. Winslow bustled away, leaving Tamara alone with her computer, press releases and a speech she was now to target toward women and minorities. The adrenaline had left her, killed by Mrs. Winslow's simple but firm assertion that the senator had never owned a red sports car. He was an American sedan man. And most of his driving needs were taken care of by a professional service.
So if the senator had been at the American Legion to accept an award, how would he have ever left in a red sports car? Mostly likely the same driving service that took him to the ceremony took him home. No red car. No senator driving a sports car.
The phones around her were still ringing off the hook. Mrs. Winslow's voice rose again as she lit into a new campaign soldier not performing up to par. Tamara sat there, rubbing her temples.
What if she was wrong? She'd glimpsed the man's face so briefly and such a long time ago. Maybe it was just some guy, some totally random guy, and all these years, she'd doubted the wrong man, hated the wrong man, condemned the wrong man.
She didn't know anymore. She just didn't know, and the phones kept ringing and the people kept shouting and it was too loud to think. She picked up the speech. She couldn't get herself to make a single edit.
I know it's him, I know it's him, I know it's him.
Do you, Tamara? Or are you just that desperate for someone else to blame?
The memory came out of nowhere. She wasn't prepared for it.
It was her own voice in the back seat of the car, ten years ago. "Look, Dad. Through the right-hand window. Isn't that the most beautiful moon?"
"Oh, my God, Robert! Look out! Look out!"
Her fingers snapped the pencil she was holding. Her fingers were trembling again. She got up, holding herself together very carefully. She went to the women's rest room and splashed cold water on her face.
She still couldn't get her own voice out of her mind.
* * *
At eleven o'clock that night, Tamara finally left the campaign war room. Others remained behind. With one week to go, the sheer volume of work was overwhelming. In New York, Tamara routinely worked until one or two in the morning. The machine, they called her. The woman who could always get it done.
In Sedona, she was the volunteer with the bloodshot eyes and the drooping expression. Mrs. Winslow hadn't been able to stand looking at her anymore.
"Go home," she'd barked. "Get some sleep. Take tomorrow off if you have to. I need you one hundred percent on Monday."
Now Tamara stood in the darkened parking lot, inhaling the dry, spicy air and listening to the soft whir of late night birds. The Arizona sky spread above her like a lush expanse of midnight blue velvet. In the distance, dark cutouts indicated the looming Rock Monuments. Stars dusted their forms like sequined trim. Desert nights were so unbelievably soft. She'd never really considered it before. In contrast, Manhattan nights were harsh and meant only for the hard at heart.
She walked to her car, her gaze scanning the parking lot. Then she realized she was looking for signs of C.J. and forced her gaze back to her car. Did she really expect him to be out here waiting for her? It was late on a Saturday night. The man had a bar to run. And a good thing, too; she was tired of him always appearing. She was tired of dealing with him.
Her hand paused on the door of her Lexus. Her gaze was still scanning the darkness for his familiar form. Dammit. She scowled. She missed him. She did. Somehow, she'd gotten accustomed to him showing up at the darndest places, with his quick grin, probing gaze and strong shoulder.
You will not need C.J. MacNamara. I forbid you to need C.J. MacNamara.
"I forbid you to need anyone," she muttered out loud, then, realizing she was talking to herself in the middle of an empty parking lot, she crawled into her car before she made a total spectacle of herself.
She headed straight back to her hotel. She needed a good night's sleep. Maybe a swim to loosen up tensed muscles. A late, hearty breakfast to regain some of the weight she was losing. She knew better than to let herself run down like this. She should take better care of herself. Health mattered.
She found herself pulling into the parking lot of the Ancient Mariner without knowing how she got there. By night, it was everything it hadn't been by day.
The parking lot was jammed full of cars. Bright outside lights lit up the wooden structure with gay welcome. A spotlight rested on a three-foot-high carved statue of an old sea captain leaning on a cane, while painted white letters announced The Ancient Mariner.
Music spilled out of the wood. Tamara could hear the pounding pulse of a deep base and the high, trilling crescendo of an electric guitar. Rock 'n' roll. Good, old-fashioned, foot-tapping, finger-snapping music. The kind that made you smile while you listened. The kind that made people laugh and talk louder and clank beer mugs. The walls were practically shaking with it.
And she could picture C.J. standing in the middle of it all, like a captain at the helm of his ship, guiding it effortlessly through the storm. It was his kind of place. Vital, wild and fun.
She sat in her car, her hands flexing and unflexing on the wheel.
She should just go in. She could say she wanted to see how Sheila was doing. She could find a bar stool, she could order a beer. She didn't remember the last time she'd had a beer. She didn't remember the last time she'd been in a working-class bar. She could sit and listen to the music and watch the people and see if she sat there long enough, would that fun seep into her? Would she finally relax? Would she finally wear herself out to such a point she could sleep without dreams? She was so tired of the pictures creeping into her mind.
She wanted to see C.J. She just did.
I don't need him.
You miss him.
I don't miss anyone. It's stupid to miss people. They are either there or not.
He's a handsome man. He smiles. He makes you smile—when you let him. There's nothing wrong with that.
There is everything wrong with that. I'm not his type. We have nothing in common. He likes me only for the challenge.
He cares. He understands you better than you realize. And he's gotten to you—just an itty, bitty bit.
She scowled. Again. She hated it when she lost arguments with herself. She stared at the lit-up, pulsing bar with open yearning—like the little girl on the fringe of the party. She hungered to go inside. To belong. To feel at home.
She didn't move. She was afraid. She was isolated, and she didn't know how to crack the ice. She felt like Sleeping Beauty, lying in the crystal with her eyes open, wanting to move, to sit up, to walk away, but only able to lie there and hope the prince would get smart and kiss her.
No, I will not be passive. Ben taught me better than to be passive. You want to get to the end of the parallel bars, you take a step. So take the step, Tamara. Stop thinking of the damn consequences and just take the step.
She shoved open her car door. And one of New York's most accomplished public relations executives bolted across the parking lot so she could get into the bar before she changed her mind.
* * *
"Uh-oh," Gus drawled. "Look at the door. That's gotta be trouble."
C.J.'s head popped up instantly from behind the bar where he was loading beer mugs in the tiny dishwasher. Who was trouble? Then he spotted Tamara in the open doorway, light spilling around her. She was easy to recognize. In her trim black pantsuit, discreet pearl earrings and upswept hair, she stood out amid the Ancient Mariner's casually dressed clientele like a princess visiting the peasants.
"Wow," C.J. said, unable to tear his gaze away. He was supposed to be angry with her. He'd told himself he'd had enough—he wasn't going to look her up today, he wasn't going to keep chasing her. She'd made her opinion clear, and he had better things to do with his time than pursue a woman who changed her story every five minutes. Now she was here, in his bar, and like an alcoholic confronted by an icy, cold beer, his good intentions went out the window. God, it was good to see her.
