Private Indiscretions

by Susan Crosby

  She kept her tone even. “A friend of mine passed away this week. This day is about him. That’s all I have to say.”

  The reporter gave the cut signal to the cameraman. “Off the record, Senator?”

  “His name was Ernest Giannini, and he was an amazing man,” Dana responded with a smile. “Go talk to his wife, Rosa. She’ll tell you.”

  “It’ll be interesting to see if they use any footage,” Sam said after they left. Harley stopped the reporter outside the hall. She wrote in her notebook. “You know the story they’re after is about how one of the state’s most eligible women is finally showing up in public with a date.”

  “I hope it hasn’t ruined things for you.”

  “People will forget me.”

  She knew it was a throwaway line designed not to make her feel guilty, but it hurt. “You underestimate people’s interest in my love life. After the official year of mourning passed, I could feel a lot of attention toward me about when I would date. Who I would date. And the most interesting part was how women related to me.”

  “In what way?”

  “They talked to me about their husbands more. Complained more, actually. As if I should be glad I didn’t have to deal with a husband’s flaws and quirks anymore.”

  He tipped his head and smiled. “Who’s underestimating now, Dana? If they were telling you the down and dirty about their husbands, it was because they perceived you as a threat and were warning you off.”

  Dana hadn’t considered that. Why would she be a threat? In her business she dealt with more men than women, but it was just that, business.

  Harley swaggered over. “Well, well, well. Aren’t we cozy? The Princess and the Loser. Think Hollywood would be interested?”

  “Jealous?” Sam asked.

  He hitched up his pants. “You may think you’re the chosen one, Little Miz Dana, but I’ve got news for you. You aren’t as popular as you think. I wouldn’t run again if I was you.”

  Dana felt Sam tense. “You trying to give me advice, Harley? You?” she asked.

  “Just tellin’ it like it is. People gave you a lot of leeway before ’cause they felt sorry for you, but this time it’ll be different.” He leaned toward her. “I know somethin’ about you, Miz Clean as a Whistle.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Me? Never. I’m just remindin’ you, bitch—”

  Sam slammed him against the wall then kneed him in the groin to keep him there. Harley’s white Resistol tumbled from his head to the ground.

  “Let him go,” Dana said urgently. “The cameraman…”

  When Sam released him, Harley almost lost his footing. “Did you get that?” Harley called to the cameraman, who’d hefted his camera on his shoulder but was too late to film the confrontation. He and the reporter kept walking toward their van. Harley swiped his hat from the ground and dusted it off. “Feelin’ pretty safe with your bodyguard, huh, Dana?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  He jammed his hat on his head, tipped it down low over his forehead. “You were a prissy thing even in high school.”

  “And you were always an idiot.” People began to mill out of the building. Several slowed down to see what was going on as they walked toward their cars. She didn’t need more rumors than were already in the mix. “Let’s go tell Rosa goodbye, Sam.”

  The men challenged each other with heated stares before they went in separate directions. She and Sam tracked down Rosa and managed to speak a few minutes with her.

  In the car, Sam headed north instead of south. “Where are you going?” Dana asked.

  “On the drive here you said we needed to check your parents’ house.”

  She’d forgotten. “That’s good, I suppose. I think we both could use a little unwinding,” she added.

  “Driving unwinds me.”

  “Well, I need a break.”

  He didn’t answer but took the turnoff when he reached it.

  “Do you think he’s the one?” she asked.

  “Subtlety’s not his strong suit. I don’t know if he’d have enough patience for the postal service. His threat today was aimed directly at you. It doesn’t follow with what’s happened until now. Unless he’s not alone in the game.”

  “Meaning he’s joined with a political enemy?”

  “Right, although doubtful. Either way, it’s a threat.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to him?”

  “You were handling him just fine, Dana, and doing a very good job of riling him. I needed to see him react to you, not me.”

  “I can’t believe how fast you pinned him.”

  “He’s gotten a little soft since his football days.”

  “So you honestly don’t think he’s behind the threat?”

  “Not what you’ve been receiving through the mail. That’s got to be someone who knows you would take a bullet for Randall’s reputation over your own. Harley doesn’t care about that.” He spared her a quick glance. “Do you know what he was talking about when he called you clean as a whistle?”

  She looked at the road instead of Sam. “Yes.”

  “Something you haven’t told me?”

  She nodded. “Honestly, I’d forgotten about it.”

  “Could it damage your reputation?”

  They were pulling in to the driveway of her parents’ house. “I don’t know. I was seventeen. And the charges were dropped.”

  Nine

  Sam’s only visit inside Dana’s house had come the night he picked her up for the senior prom. He’d thought she must be rich. They had art on the walls and furniture that all looked good together. He realized now how mistaken he’d been. The nice but completely middle-class home had only been special because Dana lived there.

  He took off his jacket and tie as she opened a window to air out the stuffy living room.

  “I’ll make lemonade,” she said.

  He wanted to know what she’d done that could’ve gotten her arrested. “I don’t need anything.”

  “I do.”

  Her tone was anything but pleasant. He assumed it wasn’t personal but directed at Harley, and her situation, and life in general. He trailed her into the kitchen, watched her slam a can of frozen lemonade on the counter, followed by a plastic pitcher that bounced noisily, and tipped, landing on the floor.

  She grabbed the edge of the counter and swore. This behavior was so out of character for her, he waited and watched her until she seemed to gather herself then he picked up the pitcher and moved her aside to rinse it.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “You’ve held up well, Dana. No need to apologize.”

  “I haven’t slept much. It makes me cranky.”

  “Fire away. I can take it.”

  His words seemed to take the steam out of her.

  “I could really use a hug,” she said, not waiting for a response but burrowing into him, locking her arms tight, resting her head against his shoulder.

  He gave himself up to the moment, as he seemed to be doing too often, and even wrapped her close. Still she didn’t relax.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said, her voice tight.

  “Wait’ll you get my bill.”

  Her laugh was shaky. “Yeah. Thank God I’m stinkin’ rich, ’cause money sure does buy happiness, doesn’t it?” Her bitterness hung in the air.

  “Tell me about a time you were happy.” He combed her hair with his fingers as she settled more comfortably against him.

  “Grad school. I rented this tiny cottage in Berkeley. Bedroom you could squeeze a twin bed and dresser into. Living room where a twelve-inch TV seemed like a big-screen, you were sitting so close to it. Kitchen where you couldn’t plug in two appliances at once. I loved it. I loved being at Cal. The campus environment, the midnight discussion groups and the laid-back atmosphere. I worked in Randall’s office and I got to meet incredible people and be on the inside of political debates and decisions. It was amazing.” S
he sighed. “Your fingers are incredible. I could sleep right here.”

  “Why don’t you? Sleep, I mean. I can work by phone for a while. You could snatch a couple hours.”

  “You don’t mind? Really?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Okay.”

  She took a step back and his body temperature plummeted. She looked fragile, yet he knew she wasn’t. She picked up the can of lemonade.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Making you something to drink before I go upstairs.”

  “I hate lemonade.”

  Her mouth tightened. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” She returned the can to the freezer then shut the door not quite hard enough to be called a slam but close.

  Her foul mood was obviously back. He decided not to remind her that the lemonade was her idea.

  “Go back to your happy place, Dana.”

  After a second, she laughed. “You know what else made me really happy?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “It’s upstairs. If you want to come with me, I’ll show you.”

  Creaky stairs, faded wallpaper, a sturdy banister. A lived-in, loved-in house, Sam thought. There would be lots of happy memories for her here. He followed her into her bedroom. He knew which room it was because he’d made it a point to know. Sometimes he would be out hiking and end up on her property. Because it was dense with trees, no one ever discovered him.

  Her room looked as if it hadn’t been touched since she left for college. Had she brought Randall here? Slept with him in the bed covered with a hot-pink and lime-green bedspread and piled with a variety of stuffed frogs? Sam couldn’t picture Randall in this room where movie-ticket stubs were still tucked into the mirror frame and photographs tacked onto corkboard on the wall. It was all so decidedly girlie, he couldn’t match it to Dana.

  She’d disappeared into a small walk-in closet filled with clothes and boxes. In a minute she came out carrying a bundle wrapped in a fabric printed with pink hearts. She set it on the bed and opened it, taking out a picture frame and passing it to him, her expression too serious to think this could be a happy memory.

  It was the prom. Their prom. Him in his rented tuxedo, her in flowy pink, paler than her usual hot pink, more sedate. He could still feel the fabric against his fingers, not silk as she wore now, but an imitation of some kind.

  “I was happy that night. Most of the night, anyway,” she said. “What happened, Sam? What did I do? I thought everything was fine, then all of a sudden you changed. It had been a great date until then.”

  He couldn’t answer without explaining her father’s role in the evening. Aware she was waiting for his reaction, he took the photograph from her. “We were so young,” he said.

  “I think we look cute together. Please tell me what happened that night. I know it was just a sympathy date for you, but for me—”

  “Sympathy? Where the hell did you get that idea?”

  “What else could I call it? I had a date lined up. He broke his leg right before the prom. You said, ‘I’ll take you.’ Everything was good, then you stopped dancing with me. You all but stopped talking, too. You didn’t kiss me good-night.”

  “Dana, I guarantee you it was no sympathy date. It was a carpe diem date.”

  “Seize the day? Why?”

  She really didn’t know? She never knew how he felt about her? Three days before the prom he’d overheard her telling Lilith and Candi after English class that she couldn’t go to the dance. There’d been tears in her eyes and crushing disappointment in her voice. The minute her friends took off for their next class he volunteered. No one could’ve pulled him down from the clouds after she said yes.

  No one except her father.

  “I always liked you,” Sam said finally, feeling somewhat adolescent.

  “Then why did it end so badly?”

  “I’d never kissed a girl. I didn’t want my inexperience to show.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. The more the night went on, the more nervous I got.” Which was a partial truth anyway. He’d been dying to kiss her but was scared to mess it up.

  “Something tells me there’s more to it than that, but you obviously don’t want to share.” When she met his gaze she frowned. “That night…Sam, that night must have cost you a fortune. You worked so hard for what you had. I didn’t know how hard until listening to Mrs. Giannini today.”

  He shrugged. It had cost him almost every penny of his savings, that’s all. He’d spent the money without regret.

  But he wanted this picture. How could he ask without seeming pathetic?

  Just then she picked up a folder from within the heart-decorated fabric the photo was wrapped in. “Here’s a copy for you, if you want it. I bought them as a surprise that night. I never gave it to you because… Well, because I thought you hated me.”

  “No.”

  She sighed. “Don’t you wonder how we survive being teenagers? It’s such a self-absorbed time. Everything is so important and serious. We make assumptions. We waste precious time being wrong because we won’t ask for clarification. I should’ve asked you what was wrong that night. I wish I’d had enough faith in myself to ask you.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. I wish the date had ended differently, too, but I guess things work out the way they’re supposed to.”

  “Do you think we were supposed to meet again at the reunion?”

  “I think fate plays a role sometimes.” He watched her take the toy frogs off the bed and fold down the bedspread.

  “If Mr. G. hadn’t died, we wouldn’t be here, alone.” She undid two buttons on her suit jacket. Something frilly peeped out, black lace. “Do you know how seldom I’m alone? I feel alone a lot, but there are usually people around.”

  “I’m around.”

  “You know what I mean. Out of the public eye, even if that eye is only Hilda.”

  She stood still, as if waiting for him to leave. But all the memories that had surfaced since seeing her again started to pool in his mind, then transformed to desire, low in his body. His gaze strayed down her, head to toe. He didn’t care that she was watching him look at her. He wanted her. Not as the boy he’d been but as the man he’d become. He wouldn’t have known what to do with her then, but he knew now. Needed her now.

  He took a step toward her, touched a button on her jacket, slipped it through the hole. She said nothing, just watched him with dark, serious eyes. He undid one more button, then the last. Still, she didn’t move.

  He slipped her jacket off and tossed it over a white-wicker rocking chair. The black lace bra was cut low and pushed her breasts into smooth mounds.

  His hands found hers and he lifted them to his lips, then held them until he knew this was what she wanted, too, and the quaking subsided.

  “I have protection,” he said.

  She looked startled for a moment, then she eased closer. “Do you? Had you anticipated this, then?”

  “No.” He just hadn’t trusted that something wouldn’t happen, not after yesterday in the passageway, and last night at her bedroom door. And this morning when he’d awakened from the most vivid sex dream he could remember having.

  He reached behind her to unzip her skirt. It fell to the carpet with barely a sound. She wore a thong and black thigh-high stockings. The sight of her almost staggered him. He’d dreamed of seeing her like this since a day in tenth grade when her nipples had gone hard, pressing against her blouse while he and Dana argued a point from history class about Napoleon.

  He tamed the memory. “I’m never going to be able to watch you on C-SPAN again, Senator, knowing what you wear under those power suits.”

  She smiled in return, a teasing, sultry look that darkened her eyes impossibly.

  Assured he wouldn’t have to stop this time, he took charge, diving his fingers into her hair, tipping her head back and finding her mouth with a passion so long denied, so long fantasized that he backed off almost
instantly, afraid he would hurt her.

  “Don’t think,” she whispered as she had once before, moving against him, her body soft and yielding and inviting, her hands coming to rest at his waist. “Just do.”

  He didn’t need any more encouragement. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was stupid. But she was what he needed. He wouldn’t be left with regrets this time.

  Ah, but she felt glorious. Her hair brushing against his arms, her hands running along his chest, finding buttons, pulling at fabric. Her mouth, hot and sweet and demanding. The tempting sounds that vibrated along her throat when he stopped to taste on his way down. Her fragrance, made more potent with body heat. The curve of her back as she offered her breasts. The click of her bra clasp. The velvety texture of her nipple as he circled it with his tongue, then pulled it into his mouth, making her cry out, encouraging him toward the other one. Do more. Go further. Take her higher. The smooth, long length of her body as he knelt to take off her shoes and stockings. The feel of her hands on his head when he pressed his mouth to the black thong. The exquisite pain of her fingers molding his skull, digging in, while he traced the edges of the fabric with his tongue. The silky smoothness of her legs as he grazed her skin with his fingertips.

  He pressed her onto the bed, yanked off the rest of his clothes, then peeled her thong away. He covered her body with his, wishing he had the will to take it more slowly, knowing he couldn’t last long. He slipped a hand down her to test her response. She rose to meet his hand, moaned as he slid a finger into her, drew a quick hard breath when he swirled his thumb up higher.

  She was ready; he was beyond ready.

  He stopped long enough to protect them, long enough to look in her eyes and be sure this was okay and right and good for her. Her eyes shimmered, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted.

  “Sam,” she said. That was all. Just his name. Said like no one ever had. No one had wanted him like this, needed him like this.

  He watched her face as he joined with her. Saw her unmitigated pleasure, felt the urgency in her motions. She arched high, made a long, low sigh when he was sheathed. Her legs slid around him and locked. She dug her fingers into his rear, lifting herself higher still. Her release started slow and gained strength fast, the sounds pouring into the room, filling his head with sweet memories he could conjure up in years to come. When she started up a second time, he gathered her close and went with her, his pastel dream turning into Technicolor reality that dazzled and blinded and dazed. He’d felt nothing like it in his life. Nothing so perfect, so grand, so exquisite.