“Need some help?” she asked, twisting around in her chair as she stole a pickle from the plate and slipped it seductively into her mouth.
He paused as he watched her eat the pickle, and then answered with a grin that brought out the dimple in his strong chin. “No, just sit there and watch me work my magic,” he said, adjusting his Man’s Job apron. “Eat another pickle, if you’d like. Next time, suck it before you chew.”
“Hmm. I didn’t know that you had a food fetish,” she said playfully.
“The kinkiest kind of fetish. I love to watch you eat phallic foods. Pickles, corn dogs, popsicles, bananas…”
Charlie picked up another pickle and sucked it before biting the tip. “Is that good for you, baby?”
“You have no idea,” he said with a raised brow.
Obediently, she propped her elbows up on the granite countertop and watched as he cooked, adding more haste to his preparation with her teasing.
At 31 years old, Sully was the ideal bachelor – intelligent, handsome, well-built, successful and charming. Everyone loved Sully; he had been William’s secret weapon in the race. The women loved him for his beauty, and the men respected him because he was a man’s man. He also was an exact replica of his brother, just a younger, wilder version. All the Orrin men were prizes from the father to the four brothers, but the youngest was the grand prize. Sully was special.
A Yale alumnus, who had been a running back for the Bulldogs and graduated at the top of his class, Sully had come home to work for his father in Florida only recently. Prior to that, he had worked on countless campaigns for democrats all over the country. But like his brother, Sully had a passion for South Florida politics and when Will chose to run for office to change the area for the better, he had jumped at the chance to run the campaign.
It was supposed to be a win-win situation. And if anyone had asked Charlie, she would have bet her last breath that they would have won this election.
Lead by three, lost by five.
She dipped her head at the thought.
“You’re still dwelling on it, aren’t you?” Sully asked, putting the prepared meat into the skillet. He turned around and wiped his hands on his apron.
“I am,” she confessed.
“Let it go, Charlie. Just for the remainder of the night, let’s just focus on us.”
“Us?” Charlie cracked a smile at the thought. “What about us, Sully?” She loved to say his name. Sully. Sully. Sully. She adorned him, though she would not say it out loud.
The food began to burn just in time to save him from his slip up. He turned his back to her quickly and poured in his secret ingredients. “I just mean that we should have a contingency plan. Everyone has to have one. For instance, you knew that if we didn’t win, then you’d have to look for employment elsewhere after the election. I mean, it is November now. In December, you will graduate from the University of Miami, and then you go into the real world.”
“I’m already in the real world,” she corrected, taking another swig from her bottle. She eyed his back and noticed that he was growing tense.
Heaving a sigh, he said, “Okay, forget I said that. The point is that you had to have a plan for after graduation, just in case the campaign went to shit.” He tilted his head. “Which it did.”
Charlie hesitated. “I thought that we would win. I was certain of it as recently as last night.”
Sully was suddenly concerned. “So you haven’t lined up interviews for after graduation with anyone?”
Charlie tried to shrug her shoulders. “Of course I have,” she lied. “I’m not stupid.” She had been.
There was immediate relief in Sully’s eyes. “Exactly,” he said with enthusiasm. “You have a contingency plan. You’re a smart woman. I would normally say smart girl, but considering I’m sleeping with the intern who also happens to be ten years younger than me, I have to say woman to make me feel better about myself.”
Charlie laughed. “I am grown woman. And you’re only ten years older than me. It’s not like you’re that old, or I’m that young. In this society, it’s perfectly normal for older men to date younger women and vice versa, especially in the workplace.” Getting back to the point, she shifted the attention. “Do you have one?”
Sully leaned on the island. “A contingency plan? Of course I do. I’m going to file for welfare and get food stamps and section 8 since we lost the campaign. Oh and I plan to get pregnant…immediately. I’m looking for an athlete, but I’ll settle for a musician.”
Charlie spit her beer out laughing at his ridiculous remark. “I can’t believe that you just said that.”
“What? We’re democrats…you didn’t know? That’s what we do,” he joked, making fun of the ridiculous accusations that they’d heard on the campaign trail about women, the system and the democrat’s desire to baby the less fortunate.
Rolling her eyes, she wiped her face with a napkin and kicked her shoes off. It felt good to rub her aching feet against each other. “No, I’m serious. Now you were grilling me in your own way. You mean to tell me that you don’t have a plan set up for post-mortem.”
“Hmm. Clever word usage. I like that. Okay. Here’s the Sully philosophy,” he said, picking up his own beer as he began his lecture. “Not much of your life should be spontaneous in my opinion. You should have a plan based upon where you have been and where you are going. You should wake up every morning with a plan, Charlie, and go to bed making one. Now life happens in the process, but you should have a just in case plan for that. You get what I’m saying? You should have a contingency plan for when…well, when life happens.”
“You still didn’t answer my question,” she said, ignoring his rant.
Deflating, he lowered his bottle. “I plan to go and work for the mayor. He has already offered me a job running his public relations department.”
“Wow, when did you line this up?” she asked, impressed and happy that he would be remaining in the city. Maybe there was hope for them after all.
“No one else knows. I spoke with him a few months into the campaign and then again about a month ago, because like I said, you always need a…”
Charlie cut him off. “I know. A contingency plan,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Exactly,” Sully said, nodding her way. “You’re learning.”
Teaching his girlfriend and watching her learn mildly turned Sully on and gave him an idea for a perfect role-playing session for later. Walking over to where she sat, he moved his body in between her legs and bent to kiss her full, mouth. He had waited all day for this and planned to enjoy every minute. Moving slowly and deliberately with his kiss, he emptied his emotions into every evolution he made around her fleshy tongue, sucking on her big bottom lip and cupping her face with his large hands.
Drained from his touch, when he finally pulled away from her mouth, she saw stars. She sucked her bottom lip to taste the last of him and felt a pool of familiar silk below.
As he stared into her eyes, hypnotizing her, his nimble fingers ran down her crisp, white button-down and began to slowly pick them open.
She watched with a hint of amusement.
“The meat is burning,” she said, looking over his broad shoulder at the stove.
“Umm, let it burn,” he said, opening her blouse to see her white lace bra. His index finger trailed around her hidden nipple. “You make me think of Langston Hughes poem about sweet Harlem women. You know that.”
“Why don’t you recite it to me when we get to bed?”
Turning around quickly, Sully went over and turned off the stove then returned to her. “Say no more. We can eat after we work up an appetite.”
Charlie couldn’t help but giggle. Mostly because Sully was great in bed. He had a body like a Greek god – huge meaty chest, carved abs, thick chunky thighs, long legs, muscular back and a more than generous undercarriage.
“Do you want to do it right here or up in the bed?” he asked, taking off his blue dress shirt. The vei
ns in his arms protruded down from the caps of his carved shoulders down to his strong hands.
Charlie cracked a devious grin. “Let’s do it on the patio,” she said, looking out at the balcony. “It’s beautiful out there tonight.” Trailing a kiss down his neck, she shoved her hands down in his slacks and felt his rock-hard manhood. “Plus, I don’t think that we can make it to the bedroom.”
Sully eyed the patio and then picked her up and put her firmly on the floor. “I’ll grab the wine. You bring that beautiful body,” he said, running his hand over the light in the kitchen. “And we can go and make a mess of ourselves.” Everything went dim and they quickly rushed outside.
***
At a quarter after seven the next morning, Charlie was still in a deep sleep when Sully carefully pulled himself out of his bed, put on his favorite Yale t-shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts and slipped on a pair of brown leather flip flops.
The sun was shining in through the pane glass windows onto the bed, warming her naked skin. Standing over her watching her body rise up and down in a harmonious rhythm while she lightly snored, Sully debated whether tonight would be the night that he would ask her to move in with him. Last night, they just needed to comfort each other after the news of their loss, but now that they both had a clear head, he wanted to talk about the next steps in their relationship. His other contingency plan.
He had never met a woman like Charlene Meadows before in his entire life. She had taken his world by storm, and while she was incredibly young and completely oblivious to the way the world really worked, he wanted nothing more than to be with her.
At first, he thought that the attraction would wear off the way that it did with most women, but something about her had staying power in his life. She didn’t come with a lot of baggage, hadn’t been jaded by a bunch of bad relationships and didn’t feel as though he owed her anything. It was such a relief to be in such an easy relationship. And now that the campaign was over and he was taking the job with the mayor, he could also spend more time getting to know the woman who had made him stop his cheating ways.
It wasn’t just her passion for politics that he thoroughly enjoyed, it was how much she trusted him and how warm and caring she was. Most women had an ulterior motive when it came to the Orrin men, but not Charlie. She was transparent, a characteristic nearly non-existent in politics or women. She had really seen the potential in his brother and devoted herself completely to their cause. Plus, she was a breath of fresh air in his life. She didn’t really give a damn that he was an ivy leaguer or that his family was rich. She wasn’t interested in climbing the South Beach social ladder. All she wanted to do was make life better for Floridians and love him in the process.
“You inspire the hell out of me,” he said in a whisper. His confession was true. She did make him want to be a better man. With a soft rub of her face, he thought about what it might be like to make her Mrs. Orrin later in their lives.
He wondered for a brief moment if he could do something like that, if he was capable of the commitment. Of course, he’d never had those types of thoughts before about any woman. So the fleeting vision scared the dog crap out of him instantly. He shut the thought off before the seed took root.
Oblivious to his existence, Charlie turned in the bed and pushed herself down in the warmness of where his body had been. A comfortable moan escaped her before she drifted deeper into sleep.
Pulling the covers over her, Sully tucked her in tightly, grabbed his keys and left.
***
It was a normal beautiful day in Miami when Sully pulled out of the dark, concrete parking lot onto the streets of downtown. The area was already bustling with people going to work, headed to breakfast, walking their dogs and doing their normal daily routines. In truth, he loved the business of his district, loved the energy it gave off. In all the places that he had lived, Miami was his favorite. It was diverse with people, culture and creativity. It was the cradle to innovative thought and pragmatic dogma. Such a combination was hard to find anywhere, but here in this city the two thrived.
He jumped on the loop and headed in the heavy, bumper-to-bumper traffic over to the campaign headquarters to meet with Will and finish packing things up so that they could move out of the space as soon as possible.
With the top down to his oriental blue BMW and the music blasting Hotel California, he allowed himself to simply relax this calm Wednesday morning and enjoy the drive and the much needed rest after such a long, hard campaign.
It had been over a year since he hadn’t been in a rush to get somewhere or in a suit for a meeting. Being back in his old clothes felt good but having no pressure on his back felt even better. He was finally on vacation. And while he was sure that he was supposed to feel horrible still about losing the election, he didn’t. He had given it a hundred percent or more in this election, and the people had spoken. There was nothing more that he could do but learn from any mistakes made and not repeat them in the next race that he ran.
For now, however, recuperation was the key. He needed to get some much deserved sleep, lay out at the beach and work on his tan and hit the gym. Maybe he could even talk Charlie into a weekend cruise on the family yacht.
As he was about to exit off of I-95, he saw a white Volvo with his brother’s Vote for Orrin bumper sticker on the back of the car. He shook his head.
Led by three, lost by five.
Boy, would he be glad to get past this one. He had worked on a lot of campaigns and this was the second one that he had lost, but on the bright side it had been by a small margin in a very red state. So, there was promise for the future. All they had to do was develop a plan and start working it soon. Like Charlie, he would have to stop thinking about the campaign so much in order to move past it. But unlike Charlie, he was more than ready to do that. All that was needed was to not see those damned bumper stickers everywhere that he went. Too bad that the team had distributed over 14,000.
When he got to the strip mall where the headquarter had been housed, he saw his brother’s BMW and his sister-in-law’s Lexus parked up front with Harry, the campaign’s treasurer, and a few interns.
Pulling up beside his brother’s truck, he jumped out of his car, hit the alarm and walked inside. As he did, the bell on the door chimed.
“Morning, folks,” Sully said, taking off his baseball cap.
“Morning,” Will said, looking up from a table of paperwork. Evidently, Will was tired of the suits too, because today, he had on casual clothes for the first time in forever. “I wasn’t expecting to see you so early,” he said to his brother, glancing at his watch.
“Well, I figured I’d come and help out early. I’ve got something to do later this afternoon,” Sully said, walking over to the coffee maker. “Is this fresh?”
“Just made it,” Will’s wife, Amber, said as she boxed up campaign t-shirts.
“Hey, you got a minute? I need to talk to you,” Will said, walking towards his office.
Sully looked at his brother suspiciously. “Sure,” he said, pouring sugar into his Styrofoam cup.
The two of them walked into Will’s office and closed the door behind them. Sitting on the front of his desk, Will cracked a wide political smile. “I’ve got good news.”
“We’re going to get a recount?” Sully asked.
Will smirked and scratched the stubble growing under his chin. “No. Not that good. I spoke with DLC this morning. Ernie was impressed with how you ran this campaign. Really impressed. He wants you to come and work for him in D.C.” He crossed his arms over his chest and waited for his little brother to explode in excitement.
Will was in for a letdown.
“D.C.?” Sully asked with a frown. His voice sounded surprised and apprehensive.
Will tilted his head and bit his bottom lip, contemplating why his brother wasn’t jumping for joy yet. “Yes, D.C. What? You freaking love D.C.? You love politics. Last time I checked, you loved the DLC. I thought you would be ecstatic over this
. Do you know how many favors I had to call in to make sure that my baby brother was taken care of?” He tried hard not to sound too pushy, but he was certain that he had failed at that just now.
Sully knitted his brows, processing his brother’s every word. “So Ernie didn’t call you?” he asked, shutting the rest of Will’s rant off.
Will stood up from the table. “Yes, he called me…called me back.” Shrugging off the technicalities, he rolled his eyes. “Whatever. It’s been arranged. George is leaving his position because of some health issues, and Ernie wants new blood instead of promoting from within the organization. So, he wants you. You’ve got all the right credentials. You’re unattached, and you can travel. You’re perfect for this…and why am I having to pitch it at you? What is going on here? Where is the love?”
Sully ran a hand through his tousled hair. “Nothing, I’m just…exhausted, I guess.”
Will nodded. “Yeah. I know. You ran a hell of a race for me, and no one deserves this more than you.”
Sully exhaled a deep breath making his rock hard chest deflate. Even though he knew that his brother was right, this was all so unexpected for him. Still, he tried not to disappoint his brother completely. “Yeah…so when do they want me to start?” Maybe if it was after Charlie graduated, he could take her with him.
“Immediately,” Will said with a smile. “They want you on the first thing out of here this week.” His voice was less tense now that he was getting what he wanted.
“What about my place?”
Will frowned. “Sublet it.”
The truth finally had to come out. “What about Charlie?” Sully asked.
Will pursed his lips and shook his head. “You can’t be serious, Sully.”
“Well, I am…” Sully looked his brother in the eye now.
Will walked over to his brother and put his hand on his shoulder. “Hey, listen to me. You’re my little bro, and I love you, but you gotta know when to take your leave. Now, this job is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it’s all based on your hard work. You fucking deserve this, Sully. Take it. Charlie…” Will took a deep breath and tried to find a careful way to say what he felt he needed to say. “Charlie is only 21 years old. She’s a young woman with her entire life in front of her. Plus, she’s smart and she’s a go-getter. She doesn’t need you.”
The Contingency Plan (The Lonely Heart Series) Page 2
