Caveman, he thought. And he kind of liked it.
“You don’t think Jay Schulman did something wrong?” the host, a good-looking blond guy who appeared twelve years old, asked.
“I didn’t say that, Tom,” she said, and he liked the way she never let people twist her words. “What he did was completely wrong. Violence serves no purpose in my campaign or in the future of New York State. Violence does us no good. Full stop. But because Jay did something wrong doesn’t make Bill Bishop right. Bill Bishop and the producers that have the men and women of his ilk on their shows—”
“Ilk?”
“Bill Bishop is a liar. And he’s a racist and a misogynist. And those points of view serve no purpose, either.”
“So Jay Schulman did the right thing by punching him?’
She smiled, patient to the very end. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. But perhaps asking rational and reasonable men and women to argue irrational and unreasonable points of view as if they have merit—maybe that’s the real wrong here.”
Oh, God. He loved her so much.
“When we do that,” she kept saying, “no one wins, because we’re all covered in mud.”
“So?” Tom the child asked. “What do you suggest instead?”
“Oh my God.” Her eyes went wide and bright. She clapped her hands in front of her like a kid on Christmas morning. And it wasn’t sarcastic, it was real. It was one hundred percent real, and it was why people loved her. “Let’s go back to investigative journalism. The hard stuff. The good stuff. The kind that made us all think critically. And facts! Remember facts? Let’s go back to facts.”
The handsome blond boy interviewing that goddess looked like he wasn’t sure what to say in response. Luckily, the female host spoke up.
“I remember facts,” she said. “I miss facts.”
“Me too,” Maggie laughed.
“Thank you, Mrs. Perkins, for joining—”
“I’d like to say one more thing, if I can,” Maggie said, and something went painfully still in his chest. His heart. His heart went painfully still.
“By all means,” the female host said.
“I met Jay Schulman our freshman year of college. We had a class together and I sat next to him. Well, not next to him, one seat away. And I waited most of the first semester for him to notice me. He didn’t.” She smiled as he said it. “He was too busy making plans to change the world. And I always had the sense that he didn’t notice me because I wasn’t as important as his plans. As his dreams and goals, not just for himself but for this country. I…thought I was his second choice.”
The hosts exchanged a look. Jay sat up on the edge of his couch.
“It’s come to my attention that I was wrong. That he did notice me. And there have been a lot of years between us. But I want to say, publicly, that he’s not my second choice, either.”
“So…Jay Schulman is NOT leaving the campaign?”
“No,” she said. “He’s fired. Totally gone from the campaign. But he’ll be around in other ways. I hope.”
Jay was on his feet, realized it, and sat back down.
That didn’t feel right, so he stood up again.
“I have to…” he murmured, and at that moment, his phone started ringing off the hook. Completely blowing up.
Fuck it.
He just had to get to her. See her.
He tossed the phone down on the couch behind him, shoved his feet into his running shoes, grabbed his wallet and keys, and headed out the front door of his apartment.
Outside he encountered a miracle when a cabbie was idling at the front curb, checking his phone.
Jay hurtled into the backseat and gave the cabbie Maggie’s address.
What…what do I say? he wondered. What do I do?
The place would be packed with people. Crap, he should have changed. Sweatpants? Really?
He still smelled like sex and booze, too.
This was a bad idea.
But he didn’t tell the cabbie to turn around. If this train was going to crash, he’d see it all the way through to the explosion. The cab dropped him off in front of Maggie’s brown house, and he took the steps two at a time to knock on her front door.
Belinda, one of Maggie’s assistants, answered. “Shit,” she said at the sight of him and then yelled over her shoulder. “Colin! You win, it’s him.”
“Win?” he asked.
“We had a bet going how long it would take you to get here. Colin bet a half hour.”
“Congrats to Colin. Is Maggie—”
“In her office. Go, man,” she said with a smile. There were hoots and hollers from staff as he made his way to her office, and he couldn’t fight his grin.
They were happy hoots and hollers. Good-natured teasing from people who liked him and loved Maggie. Who wanted to believe as badly as he did that something could happen between them.
They were suckers for a good story. Just like him.
He knocked on the closed door to her office, and his heart raced when her voice said, “Come on in.”
He eased open the door and found her behind her desk, signing something, Toby beside her.
“Go away, Toby,” Jay said.
“I don’t think you’re my boss anymore—”
“Go away, Toby,” Maggie said with a smile, and Toby laughed.
“I know when I’m not wanted.”
Toby took whatever papers Maggie handed him and left, patting Jay on the shoulder as he went. The door clicked shut behind him and it was just Jay and Maggie in the bright room.
“You sure know how to make a scene,” he said.
“Just following your lead,” she said.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said, taking one step closer.
“I think I did.”
“Endangering your campaign?”
“You always were melodramatic. Nothing is endangered.”
Except my life. My whole existence. My heart.
“I waited that entire semester for you to look at me. To see me. But you never did,” she said.
“I was watching you out of the corner of my eye. I was giving myself migraines.”
“How different things would be if we’d just been a little braver, maybe,” she said, and he nodded.
“I loved Ben with my whole heart, Jay.”
“I know. I did, too.”
“But you’re not my second choice. You could never be second to anyone. I can love you and have loved him.”
He blinked. Swallowed. “Love?”
“Yes, dummy. Love.”
Yes, dummy. Love, was now the most romantic thing he’d ever heard. The best thing he’d ever heard.
She stood and circled the desk. She’d kicked off her heels, and her smooth legs, again in black nylons, just…they just wrecked him. He remembered in a flood exactly how she tasted.
He reached behind him and locked the door.
Her eyebrow raised. “What are you doing, Jay?”
“What I should have done the first day of that semester,” he said and stalked toward her. “Making you mine.”
The feel of her in his arms was so new and so right at the same time. He didn’t understand how she could be familiar and startlingly different at the same time, and he loved it. He was going to spend so many years figuring out that mystery.
“I should have punched a guy out on national television a long time ago,” he said.
“Or you could have asked me out.”
“Sure. That was an option.” He sighed, his arms around her back. “What do you suppose happens next?”
“You’ll get sued. We’ll fight it. I’ll win the election. We’ll go on a brief vacation and we’ll figure out how to save the world. Or at least make it better.”
“God, that sounds good.”
“Which part? The sued part?”
“All of it,” he said, kissing her. “With you, all of it sounds good.”
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Also by Molly
Check out M. O’Keefe’s THE DEBT series: The lives of five teenagers are blown apart when they save one of their own from their abusive foster father. But instead of going to prison, they find themselves indebted to a powerful man with mysterious motives. And no one knows if they’ve been given a second chance or a life sentence.
* * *
The Debt (FREE PREQUEL)
Lost Without You
Where I Belong
Ruin You
About the Author
Molly O’Keefe has always known she wanted to be a writer (except when she wanted to be a florist or a chef and the brief period of time when she considered being a cowgirl). And once she got her hands on some romances, she knew exactly what she wanted to write.
She published her first Harlequin romance at age 25 and hasn’t looked back. She loves exploring every character’s road towards happily ever after.
Originally from a small town outside of Chicago, she went to university in St. Louis where she met and fell in love with the editor of her school newspaper. They followed each other around the world for several years and finally got married and settled down in Toronto, Ontario. They welcomed their son into their family in 2006, and their daughter in 2008. When she’s not at the park or cleaning up the toy room, Molly is working hard on her next novel, trying to exercise, stalking Tina Fey on the internet and dreaming of the day she can finish a cup of coffee without interruption.
Dishing It Out, her last Harlequin Flipside won the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice award for best Flipside in 2005.
Her Superromance Baby Makes Three won the RT Reviewer’s Choice for best Superromance in 2006. L-length Her novella, “The Christmas Eve Promise” in The Night Before Christmas won the RITA in 2009. And her full length contemporary romance CRAZY THING CALLED LOVE won the RITA in 2013.
Find Molly online at:
www.molly-okeefe.com/
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About This Book
Camilla’s living on her ex’s couch, working a few more weeks on a contract before she can leave the city and head west to pursue her comedy dreams. Elizabeth is the last woman she’d expect to get tangled up over—so what harm is a one-night stand? Or a second date?
1
Camilla
The only thing more awkward than crashing on your ex’s couch is crashing on your ex’s couch and then she brings a date home.
Well, date would be generous. Hook-up, definitely. I can hear them laughing gently through the wall, so it’s not a hate fuck at least. Gretchen likes hate fucks. That’s how we met.
She heckled me from the crowd, I called her on that bullshit move after I was done, and my hands were down her pants in the hallway in the back of the comedy club twenty minutes later.
We didn’t last long. I’m a monogamous type of girl, and she’s very much not. So we dated for a few weeks, until she broke up with me and declared me her best friend in the same conversation.
I resisted that label at first. Seriously, it’s fucked up, right?
But on the other hand, Gretchen has a way about her. She doesn’t take no for an answer, for one thing, and for another, she has a sweet apartment in the city, with a full bedroom for herself and a living room.
With a couch.
Which came in quite handy when I lost my apartment to a fire—as brutal as it sounds, and I’m still reeling—and I was planning on leaving the city when my temporary teaching contract ends, so signing a new lease sounded like a bad idea.
In hindsight, taking Gretchen’s couch wasn’t the brightest plan, either, as I don’t really have the right to ask for roommate consideration. Like… don’t bring hot chicks back and bang them when I’m still hung up on your gorgeous tits and skilled mouth? No?
The laughter on the other side of the wall swells again, and fuck it. I’m going out.
You have to work in nine hours.
Yeah, yeah. Sleep is for the weak.
And if I’m lucky, I can talk my way into a five-minute spot at one of the late-night comedy clubs.
I slam the apartment door behind me.
I’m in luck. When I slide into the back room at Gigglesnort, someone is puking in the alley.
I give the scheduler my best attempt at a sympathetic look. “Rough night?”
She laughs. “You know you’re in luck. You can have a five-minute slot at eleven.”
Of course I grin. I’m not going to hide that I’m thrilled. “Thanks. I’m going out front to watch the others, but I’ll stay sober.”
She scowls at the propped-open door to the alley. “You better.”
The crowd is a decent size tonight. I need to wait a few minutes to get a drink—soda water with lemon, and not just because I want to be clear headed for my set. It’s also a school night, and the last thing I want to do is spend tomorrow fighting a hangover while I battle the constant fight of tenth-graders hating math.
I play this game with myself before a set. I try to figure out where the crowd is from. I usually start my set with a bit of commentary on 2017, to take a read on the room, but I like to have a gut feel before that.
It’s New York City, which voted against the current president at practically the highest rate in the land, but there could always be tourists in the crowd, and who knows how that can go. Dance for us, funny lesbian girl. Just don’t offend us.
I’ve got two routines I’m working right now. They start the same way, and they’re both…good. Routine A pulls the punches slightly. It’s safer for a mixed political audience.
It’s not nearly as funny, though.
But ironically, Routine B usually slays the best when it hurts someone in the crowd, if everyone else thinks it’s funny.
Bring on the pain. It’s hilarious when your buddy falls on his ass. Fine line to walk, because while comedy is both painful and real, you don’t want it to actually slice too deep. That’s when the laughs start and the awkward silences stretch forever—and then there’s no booking, no invitation to audition for a producer.
Tonight seems like a pretty local crowd, though. Lots of straight couples, which is good for my girlfriend jokes. Thursday night is date night. I’m glad I came out for it.
From the other side of the bar, a woman catches my eye. It’s too soon, I tell myself, and she’s not my type. Too polished.
Which is a lie, because I love the curve of her mouth, slick with lipstick, and the shiny wave of her hair.
What I mean when I say she’s not my type is that she’s out of my league.
I don’t want to want her.
But I stare long enough for her to feel the weird prickle of my gaze. She turns and catches my eye, and when she smiles, my chest heats up.
Those lips are something else.
She doesn’t look at me for long. Her attention slides back to the stage and I watch her laugh. Her smile’s even better in profile.
I take my drink and head backstage. There’s one more set, then it’s my turn. My bio is weak, so I have this weird routine that I do while the MC is introducing me. In my head, as loud as I can mind-shout, I imagine the MC is actually saying, “And up next, fresh back from Los Angeles where she appeared on Ellen and Jimmy Kimmel, Hoboken’s own Camilla Thomas!”
I’m a decade away from being in the same room as Ellen, let alone appearing on her show, but a girl can dream, right?
Joggi
ng onto stage, I adjust my glasses, then adjust the mic before I plant my feet wide and shove my hands in my pockets and deliver my test balloon line. “Okay, so…wow, 2017, this has been some year, huh?”
All I hear are groans and sighs, so I think it’s pretty safe to do Routine B.
“I made a lot of life changes this year. Some by choice. Others were thrust upon me. I realized I couldn’t afford health insurance unless I went back to work at a regular job, for example. So I did the mature, responsible thing and started drinking heavily.”
That gets the laugh I was hoping for, although the first one is tenuous. You gotta follow it up with something good.
“Just kidding. I prefer to drown my sorrows in potato chips and naked women.” I point at a guy in the audience getting ribbed by his friends. “You know what I mean, don’t you, sir?”
I work through a few more jokes about working full-time and trying to be a comic, then I loop back to naked ladies. “I’ve accidentally made a habit of being the girl who dates women who usually date men. And that’s kind of a weird thing to happen more than once, you know? Like what does that say about my sub-conscious? Hey, self, you may not impress someone with real standards. Better stick to straight girls.”
That sometimes gets big laughs, but tonight, only a few titters. Damn. I take a deep breath and smile. “So obviously, that says more about my self-esteem issues than anything about straight girls. Or men. Although, let’s be real…right now some of you dudes are shifting uncomfortably in your seats.”
More giggles. Some poking of dates.
My grin feels more real.
“But seriously, I’m just getting over a bad break-up myself. And I’m sleeping on her couch, too.”
Groans. Those feel good, though, because they’re on my side now.
“Right? It’s highly embarrassing. I’m like a lost puppy she rescued, but decided to give away instead of keeping. I’m a few sympathetic head rubs away from her setting me up on blind dates.” Wait a beat. “With other stray pets she’s collected.”
Rogue Acts Page 5
