“And you turned it into a triple-header.”
Cole glared in Ram’s direction. “You know, any time you want to try being helpful instead of insulting, I’m ready to hear it.”
“You want help? Get your ass showered and dressed. Get some coffee into you and think about what you really want.”
“I know what I want. I want Jenna.”
“Then drop out of the race.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can. We write a press release, you send it out, people will be pissed as hell but—”
“No. It’s more than that. Dropping out . . . that wouldn’t solve anything.” Jenna’s words trickled back to him. “She said something about how she believed in me. About how she didn’t expect that to happen, but it did. If I dropped out . . . it’s like I would be avoiding the issue instead of facing it.”
“Huh.” Ram frowned. “I think you have a point. And I’m not just saying that because it means you don’t have to drop out.”
“Thanks.”
“But for the record, if you did decide to walk away, I’d be behind you all the way. You know that, right?”
In all honesty, Cole had forgotten that, and it made him feel even smaller. If the positions were reversed, he knew that he would encourage Ram to follow the path that could lead to a richer life. He would remind Ram that his true friends would want no less for him.
He kind of felt like a shit for thinking Ram would feel any different.
“Yeah, buddy. I know. And thanks.”
“Okay. So you’re not dropping out, but unless I missed my guess, you want to make things right with Jenna. So where do we go from here?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
“Maybe—” Ram began, only to be cut off by his phone. Cole recognized the ringtone as the one Ram had assigned to Allison.
He checked the clock. Allison was at work right now, as Ram usually would have been. Why would she be calling him at this time of day?
Ram seemed just as confused as he took the call. “Hey, Allison. What’s . . . Cole? Yeah, he’s okay. I’m with him right now.” Ram shot a glance at Cole, who felt a ridiculous urge to pull the blankets over his pajamas.
“Sure,” Ram continued. “Hang on a sec.” To Cole, he said, “She wants this on speaker.”
Middle of the morning, wanting to speak to both of them at once . . . Cole’s stomach tightened, and not in hunger this time. This couldn’t be good.
Ram punched the button, set the phone on the side of the bed, and pulled his chair closer. “Okay. Speaker engaged. Now what’s happening?”
Allison’s voice boomed from the phone. “Cole, you’re there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“You don’t sound sick.”
“I . . .” Confessing his sins to Ram was one thing. Confessing them to Allison? Wasn’t gonna happen.
Luckily, he didn’t have to answer, because she rushed into the breach. “I hope you’re not too bad, because you’re definitely going to feel crappy after this. We’ve got trouble.”
“Tadeson?” Ram asked.
But Cole knew. “The Loser ran the article, didn’t they?”
“Front page,” Allison said.
Ram muttered something that sounded like an appeal to the Almighty. Cole couldn’t be sure. He was busy grabbing his own phone off the nightstand and accessing the newspaper’s site. As soon as the headline appeared, he knew that he was sunk.
The Candidate and the Corrupt, it screamed. Directly below were three photos. One was of Cole, taken directly from his press kit. The center one was of Jenna at the debate. And the third was of Jenna and Rob, huddled around what looked to be a fast-food table.
He whistled. “Son of a. . . .”
“Motherfucker,” Allison said, and a small part of Cole’s brain marveled that she could sound so crisp and professional even while letting loose with words that he himself would hesitate to say.
Cole handed his phone to Ram, who scanned the screen and immediately paled.
“I’m leaving the office now,” Allison said. “Are you at home? I’ll come there. We need to figure out what to do next.”
“Right. Drive carefully. See you in a few.” Cole reached for his phone, his mind an odd mix of panic and practicality—start coffee, have a shower, have Ram call Aubrey and Tim—only to be pulled back to the moment by Allison offering her parting shot.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said. “Ram, you need to let Jenna know about this. And Cole . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I hope to God she was worth it.”
***
One look at the headline blazing across her laptop and Jenna felt sicker than she had since she lost it at Bree’s.
It was all there. Her active participation in Cole’s campaign . . . Rob’s presence at the debate . . . her so-called meetings with Rob. There was no mention of a romantic relationship between her and Cole, but the article was written in such a way as to make it very easy for the reader to draw that conclusion.
That, Jenna could have lived with. She didn’t want her personal life splashed across the newspaper, but in many ways, Calypso Falls was still a small town. Her involvement with Cole would have come out at some point.
No, the part that had her cringing was the implication that Cole and Rob were in cahoots, and that her role was one of go-between.
“Right. Because I’m too dumb to have been a player on my own,” she muttered. A totally ridiculous reaction, she knew, but it beat the hell out of everything else she was feeling.
Her phone rang. She glanced at the display, braced to hear from her mother, Bree, possibly even the newspaper. Instead, Annie’s name was the one that appeared.
“Hi.” Jenna spoke cautiously. Given the pace of Annie’s days, it was unlikely that she’d seen the article yet. “What’s up?”
“Bree called to say you might need nurturing. Do I want to know why?”
There was no stopping the smile blooming up from inside Jenna. “Um . . . rough night. One that’s turned into a rough day.”
“Do I get details?”
“I’m guessing you have maybe thirty seconds to talk.”
“Not true. I have a full two minutes. Unless Tiff hurls before then, which could well happen.”
There was nothing like a call from her baby sister to put things in perspective.
“In that case, forget talking to me. Check on the Loser’s website. Front page. That’ll give you all the details, except the fact that everything that’s implied about me and Cole is not . . .” She closed her eyes and gripped the phone. “Is no longer true.”
“Well that’s a hell of an. . . . Oh, Jenna. Sweetie.”
It was probably safe to assume that Annie had found the article.
“Cole Dekker. . . . Rob Elias . . . his daughter Jenna, a volunteer with. . . . Oh, shit in a sandbox.”
“Are you allowed to say things like that in front of little kids?”
“Tiff is in the bathroom. She can’t hear me. Anyway, her mom described her latest man as being primely fuckable, with Tiff standing right there, so I doubt I’ll get any attitude from her.”
Yeah, probably a safe bet.
“Jenna, hon. This is . . . oh, crap.”
“What?” Jenna couldn’t believe she’d missed anything, but Annie’s tone had every muscle tightening.
“They have your new name in there.”
“They what?” Jenna turned back to the laptop, panic slowing her fingers.
“Yep. In the caption under the photo of you at the debate. It refers to you as Jenna Elias Carpenter.”
For the second time that morning, Jenna felt ready to praise the porcelain god. This time, though, it went a lot deeper than the aftereffects of the night before.
Her new name. Her ticket
to anonymity, to her fresh start to her new life. One Google search and she would now be tied to Rob, to scandal, to all those things she had tried to put behind her.
“You hear that giant whooshing sound?” she asked Annie. “That’s my hopes and dreams flying out the window.”
Chapter Sixteen
Cole sat behind his desk, Allison in the chair across from him, Ram pacing and staring out the window like he was auditioning for a part in the next Mission: Impossible movie. Except even to Cole, Ram seemed more Maxwell Smart than Tom Cruise.
“We need to decide how we’re going to address this,” Allison said, repeating the theme she had been pushing since she entered the office. Cole wanted to give her an answer. Not just to make her stop saying it, either. Allison was a hard-working woman who had a valid point. She deserved to have her concern taken seriously and answered.
But try as he might to come up with some solution, the bulk of his focus was still in the apartment above the coffee shop, hearing Jenna tell him that he had turned into another goddamned politician.
If anyone should know, it would be her.
“How do you want to answer it?” he said tiredly, tossing the printout of the article onto his desk. “There’s nothing in there that isn’t true.”
Allison’s jaw sagged. “It says that you and Rob Elias—”
“It doesn’t say that anywhere. It implies a whole lot, but the actual facts are one hundred percent correct. I knew who Jenna was. I allowed her to work on my campaign. I kept her in the background. She has been meeting with her father.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Ram turned away from the window. “I thought she hated his guts. So why was she getting all cozy with him?”
For me. She did it for me.
“He came here the day after the debate, spouting some veiled threats. I told Jenna. She struck a deal with him, agreeing to meet him once a week if he promised to stay away from the election.”
“Even though she hates him?” Allison asked.
“That’s right.”
Allison nodded. “Okay. She was worth it.”
Like he didn’t know that already.
“I think we shouldn’t say anything.” Ram peeked out the window again. “Folks around here know the paper’s reputation. They probably won’t believe anything they read there. If you say anything, it’ll just add fuel to the fire.”
“That’s all true, Ram, but you know that Tadeson will jump all over this.” Allison tapped her pen against the printout. “After Cole has spent the past months harping about honesty and transparency, Tadeson will have a field day with these allegations.”
“So we have to switch to playing defense.” Cole rubbed the back of his head.
“I think we need Jenna in on this,” Allison said. “We prepare a statement for her—”
“Saying what?” Ram asked. “That Cole had no idea who she is?”
“Not exactly.”
Allison stretched out the words in a way that had Cole looking up sharply.
“No.”
“No what?” Allison asked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re thinking of setting her up to take the fall. You want her to say that she hid her identity or something, don’t you?”
Allison bit down on her lip but said nothing.
“I’ve put her through enough.” Cole kept his words low but firm. “She’s been nothing but aboveboard and honest from the start. There is no way in hell that I’m going to do that to her.”
“Fine.”
It was clear that Allison was irked, but Cole knew she would go along with him. Just like he was ninety percent sure she wouldn’t have gone through with sacrificing Jenna anyway. She was too decent for that.
Still, even ten percent was more of a chance than he was willing to accept.
“But we can ask her to tell the part that’s true,” he said. “That she wasn’t discussing anything about the election with her father, or she wasn’t gathering his advice, or however you want to phrase it.”
Allison typed something into her phone. “That would help.”
“You said she isn’t planning to move until after Christmas?” Ram asked.
Cole nodded.
“Okay,” Ram paced to the next window. “We should include something like that. Make it sound like she was taking advantage of the time she had left in town to reconnect with her—”
“She’ll never say that.” Cole imagined the look in Jenna’s eyes if they presented her with a statement that implied she had any desire to rekindle anything with Rob. The kid from The Exorcist came to mind. “You’ll have to word it differently. Maybe say there were issues they needed to discuss, or something like that. But nothing that will make anyone think she wants anything to do with him, or she’ll laugh in your face and refuse to say anything.”
Allison frowned. “But it would—”
“No.” Cole set his coffee on the desk with a sharp crack. “I won’t ask her to lie. Especially not about that.”
Silence hung in the room. Allison seemed startled, as if she was just now seeing something in him that she had never noticed before.
And then she grinned.
“What?” he asked.
Allison sat back in the chair, far too satisfied for Cole’s comfort. “You’re in love with her.”
What?
“You’re out of your—” he began, but she leaned forward, one finger pointing at him in the classic Mom pose.
“I knew there was something between you two. Everyone did. But I thought you were just, you know. Having some fun together. I was wrong.”
“No, I’m pretty sure you were right.”
But was she?
Cole thought about the weekend in Brockport. About that moment when he watched her sleep and promised himself he wasn’t going to let her slip away. When he decided that simple distance wasn’t going to bring a halt to something that he knew could be so much stronger if they gave it a chance.
“Cole. Breathe.” Allison reached across the desk and patted his hand. “For one thing, I’m happy for you.”
“But—”
“And for another, this could be the way out. You get yourself to a jeweler, you pop the question, you have a press conference and introduce her as your fiancé, and everyone will be so blown away that—”
“Allison, shut up.”
If he hadn’t been so overwhelmed, he would have laughed at the stunned expression on Allison’s face. In the words of his very English grandmother, she looked completely gobsmacked.
“I’m sorry,” he said, more gently this time. “That was out of line. But I can’t . . . Look. Maybe another time, another place, but now . . . This was just supposed to be temporary. Even if I . . . even if we wanted it to be permanent, that wouldn’t be the way to do it. Rushing things . . . well. It’s not like we really had a chance, you know?” He attempted a gentle smile. ”And you kind of glossed over the part where I said she broke it off.”
Allison slumped in her chair. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should never have suggested it.”
Behind him, he heard a small but unmistakable sigh of relief from Ram.
“Forget it,” Cole said. “We all got caught up in the moment. So, that’s out of the way, and we can shake our heads at how stupid we were, and move on.”
“Sounds good.” Ram moved to lean against the desk. “But we still haven’t figured out what moving on entails.”
No, they hadn’t.
But Cole had a feeling that it wasn’t going to be pretty.
***
Jenna was in class when she got the e-mail.
She’d been ignoring her phone all morning. The rush of calls and texts—including an all-caps one from her mother—was too much, too fast. She needed to focus on something solid and familiar
and safe. Something that had absolutely nothing to do with the election. Something that had nothing to do with Cole.
The fact that she found it almost impossible to push him from her radar wasn’t lost on her. She couldn’t keep from wondering if he was okay. If Allison was giving him hell. If he was being similarly besieged.
If he, like she, was entertaining wild fantasies about hopping in the car and heading north and not stopping until the car needed gas.
And—if he were having those kinds of wishes—if his fantasy included her.
Not that Bree was right, of course. This wasn’t love. She had been in love with Kendall, much as it pained her to admit, and that was nothing like what she felt for Cole. Totally different. With Kendall, she had happily abandoned all other plans and hopes to be with him. She hadn’t cared that he wanted her to leave school and build her life around him and him alone. He had been such an overwhelming kind of guy that it had been easy to see there wasn’t room for two trajectories in their marriage. And he had been so all-consuming that it had just felt right to put him at the center of her life. He was smart and funny and successful, a self-made millionaire who could make her melt with a smile and who made her feel pampered and safe. Who wouldn’t have fallen for him?
But what she felt for Cole . . . no. Totally different. Totally quieter and . . . okay, more balanced. And maybe more equal. And God knows she had always felt like she had room to breathe with him, except for those moments when he was stealing every breath and every sensation and every thought.
Still, it would be nice to know that he was okay . . .
But she knew how to be strong. She tamped down the desire to check in with him, sent her mother a quick message that all was fine, and silenced her phone. She had a future to focus on. None of this mattered. Not in the long run.
But the class—ironically, in media ethics—was her least favorite. And her phone hadn’t vibrated for a long time. And the professor forgot her laptop, so had to zip out for a couple of minutes.
Jenna yielded to temptation. Because what if it was Cole? What if he were checking in on her, the way she wanted to do for him? She couldn’t leave him worrying.
Except the e-mail wasn’t from Cole.
Life of the Party Page 23
