Jared is suddenly very interested in checking the gauges on his car, the rear view mirror, the road signs. Anything but answering.
I reach across the console and squeeze his knee, waiting for the answer.
“You know that saying, ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me?’”
I nod when Jared glances my way for confirmation.
“Well, it’s shame on me. I’d been working mostly East Coast and Midwest campaigns, and Lauren asked me to handle Darrow’s gubernatorial bid.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her to go to hell?”
“I was … taken by her.”
Taken by her. It’s an odd choice of words, heavy with meaning. Maybe she lured Jared in as surely as she lured me to trust her. Maybe she took more from him than just affection.
“She used what we’d had when I was running the AG’s campaign. She coerced me to run Darrow’s campaign, and that’s when I started to understand all the little deceptions their entire life is built on. All the favors, the money, and the façade.”
“She knew she couldn’t let an outsider get too close to the campaign.”
“Exactly. That was the poison pill. If I ever leaked about them, she’d reveal information about the AG—things I told her in confidence. If that became public, it would point straight back to me. My career would be over.”
“She needed insurance,” I blurt. “Just like with the photos of us.”
“I’m sure of it.” Jared reaches for my hand. “She probably planned to use them for leverage, and most likely later in the campaign. But when you blew up that interview so spectacularly, I’ll bet she said, ‘Fuck it, ruin her,’ and released them anyway.”
I shake my head. I can’t pretend the pictures don’t hurt—a lot. Shep’s made a very brave or very foolhardy move, choosing me to join his ticket when the pictures will likely alienate plenty of mom-and-apple-pie voters.
“Lauren probably thinks you told me about their gun-lobby funding. Even though you didn’t. Trey is a wicked researcher. But she probably thinks—”
Jared nods slowly. “I’m sure she does. And Conover knows. He knows he can trust me. But then, men with very little to hide tend to be a bit less protective of their privacy.”
“Do you ever … regret it?” I ask. “The threats and backstabbing and constant jockeying for position? When Lauren was pushing me to cut you out of my life, it felt like nothing was safe, or sacred. Like there’s never going to be a part of my life again that just belongs to me.”
Jared reaches across the console and squeezes my knee. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better for you, Grace. And I’ve decided my career running campaigns is over. It almost cost me you, and no election is worth that. This run with Conover—and you—it’s going to be my last. I’d better enjoy it while I can.”
He gives me a sad, pained smile and then he puts his eyes back on the road.
Chapter Forty-Three
Death. Spiders. Darkness. Heights.
Fear of public speaking tops the list. In political terms, those fears rank three to seven points behind public speaking—enough to defeat any candidate by a solid margin.
I’ve prepared for my speech for days, for years in Congress, and for a lifetime with every experience that brought me to this moment. But it’s doesn’t feel like enough, especially when Conover’s speechwriters can’t seem to decide how tough or sympathetic I need to be. My script is constantly changing, throwing off my cadence in each read-through.
Jared can’t figure out what he wants me to wear because he’s afraid that a too-sexy look will send the press into another frenzied commentary about our lusty photos, while too-conservative will have me unfavorably compared on talk shows to “bitches and dykes” in power.
Those are Washington words, not mine, and it’s embarrassing I hear them thrown around like locker-room chatter. Gay or straight, outspoken or dainty, I respect women in power. I just wish the rest of the Beltway did.
Jared’s had me mostly quarantined against the media firestorm that erupted after Conover’s official announcement, taking only a few select interviews as we prepare for the convention. It’s my debut night, and I can’t hide my satisfaction every time I see a clip from Knox on Politics, my platform coming through in sharp, unflinching soundbites.
There’s no hiding it. No apologizing for it.
And Conover doesn’t want me to.
“You ready for this, baby girl?” Trey’s holding my hand in the wings, grinning like crazy, as the Democratic National Convention heats up on its second night. The environment is electric and I see Jared here and there, slipping around the margins, orchestrating everything.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“You puked yet?”
I roll my eyes at Trey, but my stomach is queasy with fear. Not again, I tell it. I prayed to the porcelain goddess already this morning. Let’s not start again and ruin my lipstick.
My body obeys.
Rivera introduces me in glowing terms, his recitation of my résumé both complimentary and sweeping.
I hear him pause and music swells beneath his voice. Rivera continues, “Ladies and gentlemen, the congresswoman from Oregon and the next vice president of the United States of America … Grace Garcia Colton!”
The music blares and I follow my cue, hit my mark, and just breathe. Rivera grasps my hand in a firm, one-for-the-cameras shake. The applause is so loud I can’t even hear the music, the lights so bright I can’t see Mama Bea and Aliza in the place of honor where a candidate’s family should be.
I don’t see them but I know they’re there.
I turn to the podium and remind myself to wave, the gentle, close-fingered motion that Jared instructed.
“Don’t go too fast or you’ll look like a spastic chicken, just fluttering around,” he said.
And so I grip the podium, smile until my teeth dry out, and wave.
After several long minutes, the applause falls away. The teleprompter begins scrolling, timidly at first, and I open my mouth to speak. And then I close it. I put my hand on my heart, my eyes stinging with tears, as real and raw emotion overcomes me.
Vice president. This could be real.
This could be my first step toward a completely different life, a life Ethan never would have allowed, but that his death enabled. He brought me here. Nothing but the fiery passion to protect him, to defend other children like him, and to meet my firm promise that his death would not be in vain. It all drove me to this moment.
“Thank you,” I start, my voice trembling. I’m off script already. “Thank you, Senator Conover, for this opportunity. And thank you, America, for this moment.”
I bow my head and grasp the locket that holds Ethan’s picture. Just for a moment, but it’s enough. It’s enough to ground my legs as I stand here at a glass podium with fifty thousand people in this stadium watching me, and tens of millions more tuned in on TV.
I am ready.
And I begin. “I am honored today to accept your challenge and your choice. I accept the responsibility to serve and defend America, to champion our ideals, and to join with Senator Shep Conover as your choice for vice president, representing the Democratic Party…”
***
From the moment Conover chose me, everything changed.
I don’t mean from the moment he announced my name on national television a few days before the convention. Although everything changed then, too, because the Secret Service security detail suddenly became a major part of my life.
Like every other major party candidate, they’ve given me a code name. In 2008, Sarah Palin was Denali. Hillary Clinton was Evergreen. Years ago, Ted Kennedy was not so lucky with his nickname: Sunburn.
I’m Phoenix. The mythical bird that rises from the ashes.
I’ve risen from fear and grief, from scandal and suffering, and from the crushing loneliness of walking with a purpose that is outside myself, but not within me. I know what’s within me now, and
I’m ready to fly again.
I say everything changed when Conover chose me, but I don’t mean when he chose to meet me in Oregon, when he started my life on this crazy spiral that forced me to question what’s possible, what I’m made of, and what I truly desire.
I’d have to turn back the clock three years to show you the precise moment when everything changed, even though I was unaware. I made a little speech—an inconsequential speech—for undergrads in the communications department of my alma mater. Someone took a video with their phone and uploaded it to YouTube.
And that wobbly recording is how Conover first found me.
“We have a history, through the First Amendment, of protecting things even though they’re unpalatable. Unpopular religious views. Dissident speech. Rabble-rousers and crazies and bigots and even treasonous viewpoints—they’re all protected, because what we value more than family values … is freedom.”
The video shows my face in profile, my hair tumbling down my back in wild waves, and I look like I could be a student, not a vice presidential running mate.
But Jared says when Conover saw this video, he put me at the top of his list.
My speech continued: “We value the ability and in fact the duty to hold our own views, and proclaim them proudly. And that is why I’ll go unflinchingly forward, for as long as the voters of Oregon will have me, to proclaim what’s unpopular, to touch the third rail, to go down in flames so long as I’m standing up for what’s right. Because a phoenix rises from the ashes.”
Conover asked Jared months ago to start building a file on me. Jared labeled it The Phoenix Candidate.
I glean details from early vetting during the Conover campaign in bits and pieces, and I begin to see how much Jared needed to know me even before he approached me in that bar.
I was never a fling for him. Never an idle distraction.
“I needed to know you, Grace, in every way I could,” he tells me fiercely as we’re wrapped around each other on a quiet night a week after the convention, both exhausted from the whirl of media and strategy sessions.
“And now that you do know me?” I pull away from his face to get a good look at him, to see his honest response.
Jared closes the distance between our mouths, his lips demanding, devouring. “I need more.”
THE END
Grace and Jared’s story continues as the 2016 Conover-Colton campaign makes a run for the White House…
The Phoenix Campaign
Chapter One
Too many people are watching me.
The Secret Service has an apartment across the hall from my newly rented Washington, D.C. condominium. Every coming and going is recorded, protected, measured and managed. I can’t slip away.
The media records me at every turn, analyzing my wardrobe, my hair, my speeches past and present. At least some of them have their eye on the ball, rather than behaving like paparazzi and simply trying to catch me on a day without makeup.
I can’t even go to the grocery store without a reporter telling America what’s in my basket. Organic or regular? Butter or margarine? Post or General Mills?
Jared’s watching me, too, his face drawn, his eyes uncertain as I feel increasingly rundown after our twelve- and fourteen-hour days. Even more than the fierce, mind-blowing sex with Jared, I need sleep.
Senator Conover chose me as his vice presidential running mate, and now we have less than two months before the general election. Eat, sleep, prep, travel, talk. It’s all I do.
Finally, I crack under the scrutiny. I can’t not know any longer. And so I call Aliza.
“I need you to come to D.C.,” I tell her. “Do you think you can get away from work for a bit?”
“Sure, Grace. Maybe on the weekend?” Aliza’s been my best friend since law school and she’s also the only person I can trust with this assignment. The only one.
“Any chance you can come sooner?” My voice is strained. “Like, on a flight out at five tonight? I’ll get you an upgrade.”
“Miss me that much?” Aliza laughs. “I thought you had Mr. Hot-and-Please-Bother-Me keeping you warm between speeches.”
“I do. But I need you.” My voice wavers. Don’t cry. Don’t lose it, Grace. You don’t even know yet.
“Sweetie. Grace. I hear you. I’ll come. God, are you OK?”
“Yeah.” I take a breath, and spit it out. “But I need you to bring me something. Confidentially.”
“We still have our attorney-client privilege, remember? You got me on retainer for a buck.”
“And you put it in your bra!” I laugh, loving her special, whip-smart brand of crazy. “Aliza. This is serious. I need you to bring me a pregnancy test.”
***
“If you have a drink of wine before you know, it doesn’t count,” Aliza says, pressing a glass into my hands.
“I’m pretty sure it’s bad karma.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not going to make a bit of difference. Except maybe relaxing you. And tonight, sweetie, you need to relax.”
I take the glass and wet my lips with a little white wine, but my heart’s not in it. The pregnancy test Aliza brought me rests on the kitchen bar and I’m afraid to touch it.
To make it real.
To figure out whether my thirty-nine-year-old body just revolted against everything I’ve worked for in the last four years and decided to surprise me with the worst possible news.
I can’t be the pregnant candidate. I can’t be the unwed, knocked up, single, slutty, vice presidential candidate. I can’t.
I can’t make a baby with a man who only figured out how kissing and commitment works last week. My one-night-stand man. My political consultant. Jared.
A man who has never shown the slightest desire to become a father.
I set down my wineglass and pick up the blue-and-white box. Aliza points me to the bathroom.
“No more procrastinating, Grace. Get in there, pee on the stick, and don’t you dare look at it until you come out here and show me.”
I obey.
My panties are strung between my knees as I sit on the toilet, inspecting my chipped toenail polish. I can’t even keep up a pedicure. How the hell could I take care of a baby and be in politics?
Aliza raps on the bathroom door. “Time’s up, Grace. Get out here. Show me.”
I force my gaze away from the little plastic stick so I won’t see it. So I won’t know for five more seconds. I pull up my yoga pants, open the bathroom door, and let Aliza in.
Then we both stare at the test on the counter. The little plastic window on the white stick reveals an unmistakable blue plus.
It’s positive.
I’m pregnant.
Read Grace and Jared’s continuing story in The Phoenix Campaign, a full-length novel now available at a special preorder price.
Dear Reader
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Acknowledgements
This is how The Phoenix Candidate came to be: editor extraordinaire Jim Thomsen, with whom I’ve worked on all of my books, asked me in August where I thought the market was going and what readers were interested in. That conversation spawned a loose idea for a book with some of my favorite elements—erotic romance, politics, and powerful women.
Although I was more than a quarter of the way into writing the final book in my Tattoo Thief series, Jim encouraged me to put it aside for a sh
ort time and write The Phoenix Candidate immediately, because (in his words) “women + politics + power = white f*cking hot.”
The idea finally gelled during lunch with writer friend Levi Buchanan. I had to put up or shut up. And so, in twenty-six days, I wrote the first draft.
Then came more inspiration:
I stayed up late by West Coast standards to get it done, and yet my East Coast writer friend Diana Peterfreund was up late with me, encouraging, prodding, and reminding me to focus.
My friend Alyssa Meritt suggested that Grace’s nemesis might be Lauren, not Aaron, and that’s now my favorite part of the story. I love a good villain.
Katherine Ernst listened to my first couple chapters and did a little freak out of joy, right there in her apartment. She helped ensure political authenticity (though I’ve fictionalized some elements for dramatic effect).
Emma Hart picked the winning cover photo immediately (after my attempts failed), and I can’t argue with her sterling track record. Geneva Lee helped me track down the photo and offered great advice.
Nancy Doublin and Lisa Reeves are phenomenal friends and beta readers, and Cynthia Moyer is a tremendous copy editor—all of them make my heart happy with their notes. (Mentions of needing a cold shower after reading a scene are always appropriate and appreciated). Sam Stettner likewise encouraged me from the start. Amy Duryea is a meticulous early reader and proofreader. Nazarea Andrews from InkSlinger PR is always in my corner with a blog tour launch and I am deeply grateful for her organization.
Jim gave this book both a developmental and line edit, but it’s the developmental edits where I am in his greatest debt. He keeps pushing my skills and testing my boundaries while teaching me about writing craft.
Countless other authors, friends, and family members encourage me, advise me, or simply give me the space and freedom to do this crazy writing thing.
The Phoenix Candidate Page 20
