by Amy Faye
He's not being pulled roughly. Perhaps not at all. But he reacts as if the force were irresistible. A man's hand.
"I don't think she's interested." The voice makes Linda's blood run chilled.
"No, I suppose not," Lang says softly. He looks into the other man's eyes. For a moment Linda almost wonders what is going on inside Eric's head. She wishes she could see his balls draw back up inside his body, as funny as that would be.
"You should move on." Tom Delaney's body language is strong. He looks like some kind of movie star. It was amazing that she hadn't seen him when she walked in, if he was there at all. He and her new boss both had the sort of presence that attracted attention whenever they were in a room.
The idea that she had to spend all of her time with both of them—
"I didn't mean nothin' by it," Eric says, before moving on. Tom's body stays the way it was before, completely relaxed. As if he never worried for a moment that he'd be contradicted.
He steps up to her, and there's that icy gaze. It sends a shiver down her spine. Linda's glad that she's leaning against the wall, or she might have buckled.
"What are you doing in a place like this?"
"Women have needs, same as men."
"Do you want me to call Eric back, then?" The way that his name rolls off the tongue, so easily disregarding any sort of propriety, is almost shocking.
"Him? No. Not a chance."
"Good." Tom turns away, back towards the room.
"You weren't—" The assumption she'd had was that Delaney was being territorial over her. Maybe she was right.
He stops in his tracks and turns back. His eyes stray away from hers this time. He looks up and down her body with a cold, analytical eye. There's a faint smile there.
"Oh, you thought I was—with you? I won't deny I thought of it. But not in a place like this."
She shivers at the sound of his rough voice. Which is why she's distracted enough not to notice someone else walk by. A hand snakes around her waist, feeling oddly familiar, and wheels her around.
Her feet move automatically to avoid falling, but her eyes move up.
What was Adam doing here?
Chapter Ten
Linda's heard leapt into her throat. There was no way—was there? Adam wasn't the kind of man to ask. Not like Eric. If she fought him or told him no, then he'd stop. But he wouldn't ask. He wasn't that kind.
Did she want him to stop? Or did she want him to pull him into one of these rooms and have his way with her?
Her mind answered the question before she had spent an instant thinking about it. Yes. Of course she did.
And then he was pulling her into the front hall. His hand fell heavy on the door by the exit. The coat room, where she'd left her clothes and her privacy behind.
A man with military bearing and close-cropped hair opens the door from the inside.
"The young lady will be leaving," Quinn says. His voice is hard and holds something that she hadn't expected. Something that might have been anger.
The man nods and steps over to a rack, where several dozen dresses hang. He grabs Linda's without much thought and hands it to her.
Linda slips it on and Adam works the zipper without being asked.
"Go home," he says, with a voice that says that it's not a question, and there won't be further discussion. He steps through the door beside her, and for a few short paces their directions happen to coincide.
She might have asked what he was doing there. She might have asked why he was acting like this. She might have asked why he thought he could tell her to leave. She might have asked any number of questions. She doesn't ask any of those things. He doesn't look like he's interested in questions.
She slips into the rental car and finally, her anger is allowed to flare up.
What the fuck did he think he was doing? What the fuck was his problem? What gave him the right to tell her what to do, even a little bit? Not a god damn thing was what.
Not a god damned thing.
He couldn't stop her if she wanted to go back inside. And part of her wants to. Part of her wants to drop right to her god damned knees and let Eric Lang do whatever he wanted to as long as it ruined her mouth and she couldn't walk right for a month.
That would show him. Honestly, fuck Adam Quinn. He had no right at all.
She slipped the keys into the ignition instead. Turned the key, even as her mind screamed at her to get back in there. To go, and go now, to prove to herself and to Adam that he wasn't in charge of her life.
She closed her eyes, and her fingers turned the key without her permission. Her hands moved automatically to put the car into reverse, and then drive, and she pulled out onto the road and started the long drive home.
The entire thing seemed strange. By the time she was back into downtown, the entire thing seemed remarkably like a dream.
What were they all doing there? On the same night, the same time? They couldn't have gotten more of the Quinn campaign in a room together if they'd had a group sex party specifically for the purpose, it felt like.
By the time she pulled into the parking lot outside her apartment, it seemed unlikely that it had happened at all. It was a dream, maybe. Or she'd imagined it, in an anxiety-induced haze.
Either way, she settled into the chair by the dining room table and pulled out a pen and pad. It was a risk. A big risk. It would be throwing a hand grenade into the DC. press corps.
But in the morning, Delaney would look at it, and he'd agree that it was the right idea. Telling everyone that he'd been caught at a sex party was exactly the sort of thing that sounded exactly right about Adam Quinn.
It was the sort of rumor that stuck. It was the kind of thing that painted him in exactly the light that he wanted to be painted. Aggressive, sexy, in high demand. And scandalous, dangerous, a risk.
Not only that, though. It was exactly the sort of story the media couldn't take their hands off. Tom would look at it and if he hadn't thought of it himself, he'd be kicking himself for it.
Because a hand grenade was exactly what Adam Quinn wanted. It was what the voters who were supporting his early poll numbers wanted. It could ruin anyone else. But Adam Quinn had an exclusive next Thursday. A chance to tell the world the whole truth about the story.
And then he'd be able to walk out of a big god damn mess that would have ruined any other man's career, without a single consequence.
Now if only she could say the same thing about herself. Her body felt like it was on-edge. She could still feel his arm around her, could still feel the fabric of his clothes against his skin. She could still feel the cold, steely, intense gaze that he raked over her body, instants before she left.
Tom Delaney had looked at her and seen something he had liked. But Adam—Adam had looked at her and seen something that belonged to him.
Chapter Eleven
There was little that ruined an evening more than getting upset about something. Adam Quinn had been through four separate divorces—four—and countless breakups, and they'd all been on good terms. Because getting upset didn't just ruin his evening, it ruined the following evening, as well, and all of his time until he finally decided to give it up.
Four women he'd thought he cared about enough to marry them. Several women he'd given it serious consideration towards, and several more that had a nice enough body that he would be more than willing to forget about the future for a little while, and just have fun.
And now he was letting himself get hung up on a girl young enough to be his daughter.
In what must have been a hundred relationships, a hundred one-night stands and thousands of women who were something in between, he'd never once felt this way before.
When they were together, they were his and he had the right to get upset if they were out on the town—not that he preferred to. But before that? Why feel possessive? There's no need at all. Just let them do what they want to do. Women are joyous creatures. They want to go sleeping around? Sure. They can s
leep around with whomever they would like, but if it was him then so much better.
But the minute he'd seen her, he knew. And the minute that he saw a train of men getting ready to proposition her, he felt something in the pit of his stomach. A primal urge to make sure that nobody could. Nobody but him.
The same thing that overcame him is what told him not to do it. If he's feeling that strongly, then there are risks involved. Big risks. Adam Quinn didn't mind risks. He took them more than most. Because he took the right kind of risk. The kind that paid off. He looked, then he leapt, and there was always some kind of backup plan.
Looking at Linda Owens, feeling the things that he couldn't explain why he felt, he knew instinctively that there was something there that he shouldn't have even remotely been feeling, because there wasn't any backup plan for something like that.
She was off-limits. Never mind the age difference—that had never been a problem before, and it hadn't ever hurt him in the past—she was an employee. Not a colleague, not an adviser. He paid her to work for him.
Which meant that if the press caught wind of it, it would look Monica Lewinsky bad. He'd be demonized as manipulating her, and using his money and his position to coerce her into whatever he wanted.
That was foolish to believe. Linda Owens was not the sort of women who was coerced, not from the impression that Adam had gotten so far. But there was more to it than that. Reality didn't count for much, when public perception was involved.
And more than that, she had every right to be left alone. She didn't come there looking for him. She went there looking for someone, but certainly not for him. So it was his own selfishness that made him force her to leave, not some kind of good nature. He wanted her for his own.
He took a breath. He was getting over-emotional about a subject that shouldn't matter. She wasn't married. If she was in a relationship, then she hadn't mentioned it. Adam's instincts told him that she wasn't. Maybe she was recently, but not any more. There wasn't time in her day for a relationship.
He played the scene back in his mind. Felt the flare-up of anger again, as if he were standing there and watching her for the first time. He put it away this time. Easy. Practiced. He'd be fine with it all by morning. Specifically, he'd be fine by not responding to it.
His phone rang. A deep breath, and then he pulls the phone out of his pocket. Delaney. Adam answers the phone, and the scratchy voice on the other end greets him.
"Adam. How are you feeling?"
"What's up?"
"You want to talk about it?"
"Talk about what?"
"Don't play coy with me. Your walkout is going to be the talk of the town by morning. And with Miss Owens, too?"
Quinn's face hardened. "News spreads quickly."
"Sure, I guess it does. But in my case, it didn't have to spread far. I particularly like the mole she's got—"
"Tom, I'm going to have to ask you to wait a minute. I've got another call."
Adam jabs the hold button and drops the phone into the passenger seat. He pulls off to the side of the road. He'll get himself under control. It's just a matter of time. Easy. Practiced.
He always had a temper as a young man. A mile-wide streak in him of disrespect and disobedience that they tried to get out of him with military school. Well, it might work. It might not. But the one thing was for damn sure.
He'd learned to get rid of that destructive streak. He'd tempered it into a stubbornness that served him well in the business world. Bull-headed enough to get what he wanted out of business, but managed enough not to lose his head over anything. Never lose your temper with a client or a rival, and never stay in because you were in too deep already.
Tom Delaney was a friend, in a certain sense of the word. The men knew each other better than most. In part because Tom was a dangerous man, and Adam was a sleeping bear. The word rival failed to capture their relationship.
But outside of this, Adam had no trouble admitting a positive sort of feeling about him. And if Delaney had walked up to him right now, Quinn might have broken his neck. Whatever his play was, now wasn't the time to make it.
Quinn picks the phone back up. He forces his anger into a box of steely calm and latches the lid. He presses the hold button again and brings the handset back to his ear.
"Okay, I'm back."
Chapter Twelve
It wasn't unexpected when Linda pretended that nothing had happened. It was the right play. It was, however, unexpected when Tom did it, too.
His lack of restraint was not only famous, it was what Adam had hired him for. Because he was always playing hardball. It was an undesirable trait in a friend, never being able to just relax and let something slide, but in a media consultant, it was just about the only trait that was really needed.
Adam ignored it. They were going to do what they were going to do, and he had to do what he had to do. There was nothing to gain from making a fuss. Just wait until the other shoe drops.
It dropped just after lunch. Linda looked tired, at the best. Exhilarated. It occurred to Adam as he thought through the day that he hadn't seen them since a little after they walked in that morning.
Tom announced, loud enough for anyone to hear. "We've got it." His voice was rougher than normal, like he'd been talking too much.
"Oh?"
"You'll like this one. In the hallway."
Adam raised an eyebrow, but he pushed himself back from the unadorned oak desk that he'd set aside for himself, tapped a few keys on his keyboard that made the screen go black, and followed them out.
He looked first to Linda. If Tom thought something was a good idea, then that was one thing. She was the canary in the coal mine. If she was nervous, then it was a bad idea. She seemed nervous, but it was an energetic nervousness. Like she was about to roll the dice on a big gamble.
"Lay it on me."
"Remember when I said that you were going to be the talk of the town last night?"
Adam's jaw tightened. "Sure."
"What if we made sure of it?"
"You mean what if we leaked the story to the press."
Tom smiled; Linda had a thumbnail lodged firmly between her front teeth, but she seemed to be stopping herself from actually chewing it. "That's exactly what I mean."
"It's a risk. Linda?"
"It was her idea, Adam. Look at her. Learning, always learning. I'll be out of a job soon, if she keeps making plays like this."
She smiles a little, but she doesn't look at Adam.
"Interesting. And you think it'll work?"
Tom's eyes light up as if the question is all he's ever wanted to be asked. "Think it'll work? Of course it will work, Adam. Of course it will work. It's got everything from top to bottom.
"Sex, of course. Everyone loves sex. And then it's got that air of danger. Anonymous sex. And more than that, it's got an air of government conspiracy. Like you're already infiltrating. It's perfect."
Deep breath. "Linda, talk to me. What's got you nervous?"
"It's a risk. I think it pays off, or I wouldn't have come to him. And you want to take risks. So I don't know. I just don't know."
Adam leans back against the wall. The idea had occurred to him, on some level, but hearing it confirmed by the other two made it real. It meant that what had previously been an incident that he didn't want to relive would be on television every night.
Of course, they wouldn't mention—he hoped—having stormed out. If they did, then it would create a little bit of a different story. Adam Quinn, too disturbed by the Washington establishment even to fuck their women.
The thought courses through his mind as if it might have been a good idea. It wasn't, and he already knew why.
"Linda needs to be left out of it."
Her face screws up. "I mean, we could run interference on it if they try to bring that up, but why? I'm just nobody."
"I've had my name raked through the mud more times than I can count. It's more mud than name, these days." Adam looks a
t Tom Delaney with a hard expression. "I'm not going to have that happening to Miss Owens. Am I clear on that?"
Tom smiles. It doesn't suit him. He looks like a caricature of himself. He's always frowned, and so he should continue now. But apparently this has put him in a rare good mood.
"Of course, sir. Just you. Anyone else we should throw under the bus? Just in case?"
"Do you think it'll be necessary?"
Linda's nail is back between her teeth. She's rocking her thumb back and forth, as if she hopes that she can counteract the desire to chew her nails by reversing the action, pressing harder against her teeth standing still. Tom, on the other hand, is rearing to go.
"Necessary? No. It makes it look less targeted, though. They'll bite easier if they don't think it's bait."
"Without the extra?"
"They'll bite. How could they not? But it won't have that ring of truth. They'll know right away it came from us, or from someone looking to get you out of the race. Rather than being an organic story."
"Do what you think you have to, then," Adam answers. His mind races with possibilities that he doesn't want to put words to right now.
"Are you sure about this, Linda?"
Her eyebrows crease again. Then she smooths her face over, and it's as if it never happened.
"Sure I'm sure. I'm not the one in hot water. It fits your image perfectly. It's not going to do anything to you, I don't think. The public perception is already that you're a man of… considerable virility, shall we say. The only thing they're going to get out of this story is that nothing has changed now that you're on the campaign trail."
"I agree," Tom chimes in. "But then again, this is her specialty, not mine."
"You're right, it isn't," Adam answers. He can't explain why he's upset. Something he can't put his finger on. And then, all of a sudden, the entire situation clarifies in his mind.
He's angry because Tom's there. He's there with Linda. Linda, who is his. She just doesn't know it yet. And he's putting her at risk.
