Lovely Pink

by Raine Miller

  Lovely Pink

  Raine Miller

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Copyright © 2021 Raine Miller Romance

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design: Letitia Hasser

  Cover Image: Sara Eirew

  Editing: CC Readings

  Proofreading: Proofing With Style

  Contents

  LOVELY PINK

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  A Request

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Crossover Book

  Join my Newsletter

  About the Author

  Also by Raine Miller

  LOVELY PINK

  by Raine Miller

  The politics of love are brutal.

  Yes. They. Are.

  But it doesn't really matter either way because this plan was set in stone a long time ago by the ones who hold all the power.

  Reese Pinkarver and Grayson T. Lash III will marry and merge the political dynasties of the honorable presidential legacies they were born into. A destiny so much bigger than the both of us. With all the rewards that come with it…to the tune of a billion-dollar trust fund.

  And I am here for all of it. All in.

  I know who I want to spend my life with. Who I want to have babies with. Who I want beside me as I make my way with carrying on the legacy of our names.

  My Lovely Pink.

  All I have to do is convince her it's what she wants too.

  *LOVELY PINK is a STANDALONE novella.

  *Originally published as CAPITOL SOUTH in the limited release anthology collection,

  Love In Transit.

  The best way to predict the future is to create it.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Chapter One

  REESE

  October

  Washington, DC

  A red shirt with the Netflix logo taped in place, and a fake bag of ice.

  How very clever.

  I wish I could’ve thought of such a brilliantly simple idea before I decided to put on what I’m wearing right now.

  To be clear, that would be wearing, while riding the DC Metro to my selected destination for the evening on the busy Saturday of Halloween weekend.

  I tried not to pout over how much more I would’ve enjoyed a nice, safe dose of Netflix & Chill with Horatio curled up in my lap instead of going out tonight, but I promised my friends from work I would come. So, I’m on my way to a Halloween party. Make that a “costume required” Halloween party.

  Bleh.

  I guess I sort of blend in, considering Mr. Netflix & Chill and I aren’t the only ones wearing costumes on the subway tonight.

  There’s a guy rocking a lavender unicorn suit, complete with sparkly rainbow tail and twisty horn, who just gave me and my dress the sideways-eye. Heyyyy, like you’re in a position to judge me, Fluffy. His buddy, Suicide Squad Joker sporting some painfully green hair, leans in and snickers at something Fluffy just whispered in his ear, most likely about me and my dress. Yeah, and you’re no Jared Leto, you ass. Good luck with that green hair in about a week from now.

  Sometimes I hate people.

  A drop of sweat rolls down my back as the interior of the train car starts to feel chokingly claustrophobic.

  Slow breath, Reese.

  Like my choice of costume tonight was something that wouldn’t attract at least a passing response.

  Riiiiight.

  I’m an idiot. And while I won’t argue the validity of that point, I am also a magnet for unwanted attention regardless of whatever I do or don’t do. This is reality when your last name is Pinkarver, and you can trace your lineage—in a solid direct line mind you—to a beloved POTUS. My great-great-grandfather served his term nearly a century ago, but the name Pinkarver is still considered political royalty in this town. Right alongside Kennedy and Roosevelt. Others in my family have served in Congress, the Senate, and as governor of two different states of the union. All of this information is written down for posterity, my name in textbooks used in fifth grade Social Studies, all the way up to US History 101 at college campuses everywhere.

  Legitimate stuff.

  Unlike me.

  My day started off for shit, and it hasn’t gotten any better as the sun made its path across the sky. I’d pretty much written it off for any improvement at this point.

  My big toe throbbed behind the heels I was wearing, still protesting the unfortunate smashing of it into the nightstand earlier this morning. The headache I’d battled for most of the day was giving me every indication that it wasn’t quite finished with me yet. At least I knew why the headache. A lack of caffeine was the culprit there. Zeke’s Brew House got shut down for health code violations (plural) and I’d been running too late to go somewhere else.

  So, I guess I’ll be finding a new place to get my coffee from now on.

  The weird message from my mother last night wasn’t helping, either. Something about my inheritance coming due with my twenty-fifth birthday, which was just two months from now. I didn’t know anything about an inheritance for when I turned twenty-five. She’d never mentioned it before, so I was a little lost on the topic. My mom currently lives in Japan with her third husband who serves as the US Ambassador to Sapporo, so the time difference usually has us playing phone tag for a bit before we can connect.

  Yeah, make that very weird. My whole family situation is weird, though. It’s been weird from the very beginning.

  My grandfather, Theodore Pinkarver, had already raised three daughters before his only son was born to wife number two. Theodore Junior—my very beloved and “perfect” father. Grandfather had an obsession with his son that did not extend to his daughters, who were already living their own independent lives by the time my dad arrived on the scene. It was just as well, because my grandparents put their efforts into raising their precious son to be the prince who would inherit the Pinkarver kingdom some beautiful day off into a bright and wonderful future.

  It didn’t work out that way though.

  My father’s life was nothing even close to my grandparent’s vision for him.

  He ended up impregnating my mother when he was nineteen and she was just seventeen. My mother wasn’t considered quality marriageable material for Theodore Pinkarver’s only son, so the two of them were separated by my grandparents, and the scandal buried. My grandfather had the means and the connections to make it all happen with very little fuss.

  Then, my very young parents went along with the business of growing up and living out their separate lives. My mom had a baby to raise and husbands (plural) to find. My dad was just getting started on the wild lifestyle he enjoyed so thoroughly.

  And so, my grandfather swept the whole business—including me—under the carpet stacked in the closet with the rest of the Pinkarver skeletons. Money was provided to my mother for our support, and nobody knew I even existed.

  All neat and tidy.

  Until ten years later, when my father managed to kill himself one dark and stormy December night. A freak accident involving an icy tributary of the Potomac, a
nd what was probably far too many drinks before he ever made the bad decision of getting behind the wheel.

  His death was definitely the game changer for my grandfather, mostly because it was at this point my existence was finally revealed to the world. Reese Pinkarver, only child of Theodore Pinkarver Jr., sole grandchild of Theodore and Rosalind Pinkarver, was alive and well at St. Mary’s School for Girls down in South Carolina.

  My grandparents tried to build a framework of bright and happy onto my presence, but it was pretty hard to shiny-up the fact, I had been born illegitimate. The only descendant of the prestigious Pinkarver clan was the “love-child” of two kids who never saw each other again after the pregnancy was confirmed—and kept secret from the world for more than a decade.

  Putting a nice spin on that sad story wasn’t so easy.

  My grandfather couldn’t rely on his daughters for replacements because they were past child-bearing age by the time my father died anyway, whether they were married and willing or not. One of my aunts is a dedicated heart surgeon, another a senator of Maryland, and the third is living the bohemian-artist life in Greenwich Village. She’s my favorite, in a fun Auntie Mame kind of way. Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death! Yep. “Emotionally starved” is a clever way to sum up the Pinkarver family in a nutshell. What we lacked in births, we made up for in extra “dysfunctional-family.”

  Recently my own life felt like I was right on track with the rest of my family with the dysfunction—ergo the reason I am wearing a freaking wedding dress on the subway right now.

  I figured I could get away with it for a costume…especially if I slutted up the whole look with makeup, messy hair, and a homemade sign that read RUNAWAY pinned to the skirt.

  And yes, I’ve heard it before—sometimes my good judgment is questionable. My bad judgment? Not so much.

  The thing is, the dress I’m wearing…is not a costume. Not at all.

  It’s my real wedding dress.

  Well, it was my real wedding dress.

  It’s been hanging in the back of my closet for months, staring at me every time I go in there to choose clothes. Never to be worn. And a designer wedding dress isn’t something one can just drop off at the local Salvation Army without notice either. Undoubtedly someone would find my sad story just sordid enough to leak.

  It still surprised me the news of my breakup with Tim had passed with barely a ripple in the press. We’d met at work in one of the reading rooms at the Smithsonian Institute Archives where I helped him locate some zoological records from the Roosevelt Expedition of 1913 to what was then “Amazonia.” He kept coming back to SIA asking for me specifically, to help him find documentation on some obscure expedition from a century ago.

  I couldn’t resist the romance of it all.

  Yeah, that emotional starvation thing from which all Pinkarver’s seem to suffer? It helped me fall hard and fast for the free-spirited archaeologist who’d managed to charm me thoroughly by the end of our first date. I’d snagged my very own Indiana Jones, and I was going to keep him. The fact Tim didn’t appear to be all that impressed with my political family tree was an extra bonus.

  Nobody was more surprised than me when he popped the question nearly a year later. I said yes. We planned a small but elegant wedding in Charleston where I have extended family on my mom’s side. I bought the dress. All was good and we were happy.

  Except that it wasn’t good, and apparently he wasn’t happy.

  Three weeks before our big day, Tim went on a short work trip to Brazil. He never made his return flight. The morning I was to pick him up at the airport, he sent me an email saying his career was taking him in a new direction and he wasn’t ready to get married. He would be staying in Brazil indefinitely, and I was not to come there to be with him.

  I had been dumped—and I was crushed.

  Tim had completely blindsided me with his explanation for his reasons, the abrupt move to South America, everything.

  My grandparents were remarkably supportive of the whole messy business though, assuring me they would make sure the news of our breakup was tamped down in the media. It was in their best interests really—I got it. They didn’t want the embarrassment attached to them. It was bad enough they had to acknowledge my illegitimacy at all. If there was a way they could’ve turned back time and forced my parents to marry, I know they would have done it. Separating my parents was their one true regret. They couldn’t even forge documents to show a secret marriage had taken place, because my mom married her first husband when she turned eighteen, right before I was born. At the time, I’m sure my grandparents were relieved to have my mother out of the way, and married to someone else who could claim the inconvenient kid.

  Who was only a mere girl anyway.

  They also assumed my father would have years to live, with plenty of time to give them at least a son or two who could carry on the sacred Pinkarver name. The obsession over babies born with penises in my family is a thing. And in case you didn’t already know, Pinkarver penises always trump Pinkarver vaginas. This was the running theme woven throughout all relationships between my grandparents and the rest of us. I also believe that if they could’ve arranged a sex change for me, they would’ve done that too. Instead of Reese I could’ve been Reid. Good thing it’s not so easy to grow a penis on a female.

  It just wouldn’t do, having the news of their illegitimate granddaughter being dumped by her fiancé mere days before the wedding Tweeted, Facebooked, and Instagrammed all over social media. I remember my grandmother repeating the same sentiment at the time, “Thank God, he didn’t stand you up at the altar. We could never hold our heads up in this town again.”

  Well, lucky for you, Grandmother, you don’t live in this town anymore, so you don’t have to worry yourself into a dramatic frenzy over it.

  Two years ago they made the Boston house their permanent year-round residence, so I didn’t see them much unless I was summoned. Whenever a summons did come, I went to Boston to see what they wanted.

  I didn’t question the why’s or the what-for’s anymore. I’d learned my place in the order of things. I was an extension of their political empire, tied by virtue of my bloodline to the one person they had ever truly valued—my father. That’s how the purpose of my life worked in their frame of reference. I understood, but it sure would’ve been nice to be loved just because I was their grandchild and not because of what I represented.

  Ahh, but these were merely useless thoughts taking up space in my busy brain.

  Just like the notion of having any kind of true freedom to do whatever I wanted in life, was equally useless.

  Which is how I ended up with the bright idea to recycle my cursed wedding dress into a Halloween costume and wear it on the metro.

  I felt the train slow down as the ticker flashed CAPITOL SOUTH on the digital display in tandem with the recorded announcement.

  Go time, Reese.

  Chapter Two

  REESE

  I made my decision in the time it took for me to exit the metro.

  This life-altering decision also served the additional purpose of preventing me from stressing over the attention (gaping stares) people were giving as I came out of the tunnel in my Galina gown.

  I supposed it would be pushing it to grab a coffee from one of the cart stands, but I considered it. My caffeine levels for the day were dangerously low. I reminded myself to take care of that little problem as soon as I got to the party.

  But back to my big decision. Tonight, this whole wedding disaster with Tim was out of my life for good. This dress would not be returning to my closet. It was well past the time for me to move on. Tim was gone and he wasn’t coming back. I was still alive and kicking, and honestly, no longer emotionally devastated over his departure, either. It was more a feeling of indirection I felt at the moment. Where was I going? What was my final destination supposed to be? Who would be there with me? I had some vague ideas about my future, but it involved another pe
rson whose motivations were not completely clear to me just yet. I needed more from him but just wasn’t totally sure what more meant on my end.

  I suppose, wearing my once-beloved wedding dress to a fun party tonight was a symbolic gesture I was ready to let the past go and move forward.

  Relationships, men, weddings—were off the menu as well. Despite one particular person’s opinions on the matter, I needed a break from the whole shebang. There were other more important things for me to focus on at the moment.

  As I walked the short block down New Jersey Avenue to the address where the party was being held, I got the most unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach—as if I were standing on the precipice of some great shift about to happen in my life.

  That same feeling returned just a few minutes later when I lifted the heavy Victorian knocker on the door to Lance Oakley’s house, letting it fall three times in quick succession. Lance is a friend I met when I started working at SIA. He’s also the son of our sitting Vice President, so we totally “get” each other. He feels just as trapped by his father’s role in government, as I do within the confines of my family. For an Army veteran who lost his left leg below the knee in Afghanistan, Lance is remarkably positive in his outlook on life. If you don’t count all those tats he has. He is literally covered from the neck down. I think he gets them as a form of therapy for the PTSD, but tattoos are better than drugs if it’s your addiction.

  The front door to Lance’s house opened before me with a creaking groan, the tired iron hinges in perfect step with the Halloween decorations lining the stone steps and scattered across the landing. I could hear music blaring and people shouting from inside, but I couldn’t see who was greeting me.