And then the break was over, and she was back at work. And Nico still couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
Kay had already noticed the distinguished-looking gentleman in the back of the room. And when she inquired about him, and Mindy told her he was there for a private meeting with Eddie, she went on about her business. But she didn’t ignore him. How could she? Every time she glanced at him, or looked in his general direction, he was staring at her. And it was no ordinary stare either. He was staring so hard, she wondered if he knew her.
And it wasn’t just him interested in her. Kay was curious about him too. There was that international man-of-mystery vibe going on around him. Some thuggish-ness too. And even from across the room, Kay could sense that unmistakable aroma of a man who knew his way around a woman. Big, powerful-looking. One of his arms big as both of her thighs. But he looked out of place at Senator Drake’s campaign headquarters. It seemed as if a man like him wouldn’t generally be caught dead around politics nor politicians. Then why was he there, she wondered?
But after twenty minutes of his constant staring, she became too busy to even remember he was in the building. A major argument had erupted between two staffers and she had to call them into a back room to quash their disagreement. “Highly inappropriate,” was all she said to them. “Highly!” And they got the message. One thing the entire staff knew about Kay Laine: she didn’t play.
But she was so tired she could barely hear herself think.
She leaned against a side wall just to take another quick break. She wanted to take off those heels: her feet were killing her. But she knew she couldn’t. In Kay’s view, protocol before comfort. Do no harm to the Senator’s reputation. That was her job. And she took it seriously.
“He likes you.”
Kay didn’t even realize Mindy, who had walked over, was standing beside her. “What?”
“That gorgeous hunk of burning love in the back? He likes you,” Mindy said. “And trust me, I’m not just saying it. He’s got the equipment to back it up. You can see it even through the fabric of that expensive suit he’s wearing. He’s got what it takes, girl.”
Kay wanted to roll her eyes. “Do you ever think about anything besides sex?” she asked Mindy.
“Come on now. Don’t act as if you haven’t checked him out too.”
“Girl bye,” Kay said with irritation in her voice. “I don’t have the energy nor the inclination to entertain any of your nonsense.”
“Oh, stop being so sanctimonious,” Mindy fired back. “Every female in this campaign has, at one time or another, kissed some man’s ass. Including you.”
“Actually I haven’t,” Kay said. “But you can kiss mine. How about that?”
Mindy looked at Kay with pure hatred in her eyes. “I was just trying to inform you of a fact. He wants to get his equipment inside of yours. That’s a fact. Why it’s a fact, I don’t know, but he does. Maybe he can see how uptight you are and they say the tighter the better?”
Kay rolled her eyes.
“But anyway,” Mindy said, “time to end the line.”
Kay frowned. “End the line? There’s probably fifty more people outside, and we still have a line inside. What are you talking about?”
“Eddie said end the line. He’ll see the people already inside, but the others need to be turned away.”
“Then turn them away,” Kay said. “You go out there and face their wrath.”
Mindy gave her a hard look. “Get real,” she said, and walked back toward the Senator.
Kay knew she couldn’t force the issue, although Kay was technically Mindy’s boss. But sleeping with the big boss, the Senator, had its perks.
Kay was the one to face the wrath of the remaining constituents outside, who cussed her out, called her bitch repeatedly, and when that didn’t seem to sting her, called her black bitch. But she was used to that too. None of their insults stung. She apologized again, and closed the door, with herself inside, and the remaining people in the line outside upset, not with the Senator, not with Mindy, but with Kay.
Sometimes she hated politics.
But this time, she was just too tired to care. She walked back over to the side wall, and she couldn’t help it. She took a seat and partially removed one of her stilettos, just to give her toes a break. And for nearly ten minutes she was able to sit and rub those toes and relax uninterrupted.
Until she was interrupted.
It was his shoes that she saw first. Berluti calf-leather dress shoes. A brownish tan in color. Size thirteen or fourteen if she had to guess.
She looked up. And there he was: the staring man. The man whose big, bright eyes were so blue they looked violet. Then she saw the glass of wine he was offering her, and that glass alone broke his spell on her.
He had apparently gone over to their refreshment table and poured two glasses of wine. He held one, and was offering her the other one.
“Thank you,” she said, as she accepted the drink. But he was looking down at her with a look so intense that it made her uncomfortable. Who was this guy? “Do I know you?” she asked him.
“You’re exhausted,” Nico said.
Kay couldn’t argue with that. “Very. But who are you? You’re looking at me as if I’m familiar to you.”
“Why do you allow it?” Nico asked her.
Had she missed some earlier conversation? “Why do I allow what?” Kay asked him.
“This mistreatment of you.”
Kay took exception to that characterization. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “Nobody’s mistreating me. Who’s mistreating me?”
“You are,” Nico said.
“Mr. Bacard?” Mindy had walked up.
Nico looked at Mindy. Kay was still staring at him. “Yes?” Nico asked.
“The Senator will see you now.”
Nico looked at Kay again, lifted his glass to her and took a sip, and then sat the glass on the table beside her, brushing her arm as he sat it down. Kay felt that brush, and they glanced into each other’s eyes. And she realized she felt something more, something she couldn’t even describe as she looked into his eyes. But then he walked away. Mindy escorted him down the back hall to the Senator’s office. He glanced back at her, which shocked her too, as he kept on walking.
Kay leaned back. That little whatever it was felt like a wow moment for her. But why? Why did she feel some kind of way just from that man brushing her arm? And what on earth was he talking about? How was she mistreating herself? Was such a thing even possible? And how would he know even if it was?
But before she could answer any of her own questions, another disagreement broke out between her young staffers, and a third staffer hurried to her. “They’re going to kill each other, Kay. We need you!”
Kay sat her drink down, too, and hurried to break up a fight as if her job wasn’t to manage a staff, but to manage young hotheads who thought being a part of a senator’s campaign was cool.
It wasn’t.
But even as she hurried to put out more fires among her staff, Kay could still feel that simple, slight touch against her arm.
CHAPTER NINE
Eddie Drake was relieved, but Nico wasn’t interested in his relief. Nor his words of appreciation. He gave him the photos, assured him that he would have no further issues regarding said photos, and left the office. He didn’t tell him what happened to Ralph and Patrice. He didn’t tell him any backstory. Because he knew Drake didn’t want to know their names, or what happened, or anything other than the bottom line: has the threat been neutralized?
But Drake, relieved to a point that made him giddy, insisted on escorting Nico to the headquarters front door. With Mindy just behind them.
“You don’t know what this means to me and my campaign,” Drake was telling Nico as they made their way to the front area. “I am so relieved!”
“I’m sure your wife is likewise relieved,” Nico said, and glanced at the Senator.
“Oh. Yes. Right. Her too!”
&
nbsp; Nico inwardly smiled. He knew that snake hadn’t mentioned a word to his wife about his numerous extramarital affairs, and the fact that there were photos memorializing those indiscretions. Not that it was Nico’s concern. It wasn’t. He did his job. He retrieved the photos. He took out the threat. And, unbeknownst to the Senator or any of his other clients, he kept copies should he ever need to call in a favor in the future.
When they made it up front, Kay was sitting back down again, and rubbing her foot again. When she saw her boss, she quickly put back on her shoe and rose to her feet.
“Great turnout,” Drake said proudly to his staff, who was at the refreshment stand, as he and Mindy continued walking Nico to the door. “Mindy did a wonderful job getting the word out, didn’t she?”
Nobody responded to that. Although Mindy undoubtedly told him, during their pillow talk, that she was the driving force behind getting the word out about the meet and greet, every staffer knew it was Kay. Even Nico knew that, and he was only guessing.
“Go home to your children and your spouses,” Drake said to his staff, and they all smiled at that order, and some applauded. “Kay,” he added, “since you don’t have a family, you’ll clean up the mess, won’t you, and give the staff a break?”
Nico looked at Kay. He knew chiefs of staff, to stay in their positions, often had to take bullshit left and right from their bosses. But would she?
“I agree that the staff should go home to their families,” Kay said. “But I also believe that Mindy should stay and clean up, since she hasn’t done anything all evening, and give me a break too.”
She stood up for herself. That took balls, Nico thought. And he could tell, by their nods, that the rest of the staff agreed with her. But they were too afraid of the Senator to verbalize it.
And for good reason, apparently, because the Senator was so upset with her little comment he couldn’t hide his anger. “Don’t you dare tell me who should do what,” he said to Kay. “I told you what to do. Now clean up the mess!” he added, through clenched teeth, and then he placed his hand on the small of Mindy’s back, and they left the building together.
Nico, and the staff, looked at Kay. One of the staffers even stepped up. “We’ll stay and help,” she said.
But Kay brushed it off. “No way. Go home. You guys have been in the grind all day. I’ll see you in the morning.”
They didn’t argue with her. They were glad to go. And they gladly left out.
Nico was still standing there, staring at Kay.
Kay was already frustrated and irritated with her boss. The last thing she needed was some stranger’s disarming staring too. “What?” she asked him, unable to conceal her displeasure.
“Why do you work for an asshole like that?” Nico asked her.
“He’s not an asshole,” Kay responded.
“Yes, he is. Why do you work for an asshole like that?”
Kay exhaled. “He does a lot of good for the people of Chicago. Before he tapped me to be his chief of staff, I was one of his aides. I saw the good he does. And I’m talking more good than any senator we’ve ever had. And I’m not talking doing good for the well-connected either. He’s a champion for the poor and disenfranchised. That’s why.”
“But the indignities of it all,” Nico said. “Does that not bother you?” And he said it as if it bothered him.
There was a hesitation on Kay’s part, which meant, to Nico, that it bothered her greatly. But she wasn’t about to admit that to him. “You asked me a question and I answered it,” Kay said. “Is there anything else?”
Oh, it bothered her beyond belief, Nico thought. She was in it for the right reasons, and was willing to take the Senator’s crap to stay in it for those reasons. And he admired that. He couldn’t do it. He’d kick that Senator’s ass and his whore’s ass, too, while he was at it. But he admired anybody who could take bullshit and turn it into beer. He began removing his knee-length overcoat.
But that act alone alarmed Kay. It was something about Nico that seemed to breed sensuality. Which made, what would have seemed innocent on a regular man, like removing his overcoat inside a building, anything but when Nico did it. “What are you doing?” she asked him.
“I’m going to help you clean up this mess,” he said to her.
Now it was Kay’s time to stare at Nico. Was this guy for real? But she was nobody’s fool. Every man that ever showed interest in “helping” her, ended up hurting her. “No,” she said. “Thank you, but no. I can manage.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. I can manage just fine.”
Nico knew it had everything to do with the fact that he was still a stranger to her, and she wasn’t about to be closed up in that building, at night, with some stranger. She didn’t just have balls. She had good sense too. Which he could only appreciate.
“Good night then,” he said to her with a slight bow of his head.
“Good night,” she said to him.
And with his overcoat swung over his arm, he walked out of the building. He smiled when he immediately heard her locking the door behind him.
As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he glanced back and saw Kay, through the plate-glass window, as she took a deep breath and got busy. She had no spouse, nor children, according to Senator Asshole. He wondered why.
But he wasn’t going to stand outside and spook her any further like some damn stalker. He made his way across the street as Carmine Jusseppi, his longtime bodyguard, got out of his waiting SUV and opened the back passenger door. Nico got in, Carmine closed the door and got back in on the front passenger seat, and then waited. The Driver was waiting too. But Nico had given no order for them to go anywhere. So they stayed put.
Nico had a base of operations in Chicago, and Carmine and the Driver worked out of his Chicago office. But Nico himself was rarely in town. He, in fact, needed to get back to business he was handling in Europe, business he was handling when he got the call from Senator Drake. But for some reason, he wasn’t ready to leave so easily until he made sure Kay was safely out of that building. It was late. It was a standalone storefront on an otherwise deserted street. He wasn’t leaving that easily.
“Carmine?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I need a quick background on a Kay Laine.”
Carmine quickly picked up the car phone and made a call to their forensics guy. Then he placed his hand over the speaker. “He says just K or K-A-Y?” Carmine asked.
“My assumption is K-A-Y,” Nico said.
“He assumes K-A-Y,” Carmine said into the phone. Then he listened and placed his hand over the speaker again. “He says is Laine spelled L-A-N-E or L-A-I-N-E?”
“I don’t know,” said Nico, staring at Kay, as she continued to work feverishly. “But she works for Senator Drake.”
“He has no idea,” said Carmine into the phone. “But she works for Eddie Drake, the junior senator from the great state of Illinois.”
And then Carmine waited on the phone for a few minutes. And then he began repeating to Nico what was being said to him. “Her name is Katherine Laine, but they call her Kay. Born and raised here in Chicago. She’s single. No kids. Graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in political science. Worked for Congressman Drake, now Senator Drake, since she graduated college. She has a few close friends, including Roger Pettway, her closest friend, who also works for the Senator. Considered feisty. Ambitious. Sometimes hard to get along with because she doesn’t go along with the bullshit. Honest. Tough. Does a lot of charity work.”
“What about her family of origin?” Nico asked.
“What about her family background?” Carmine asked into the phone, and waited again. Then he notified Nico. “Nothing on them,” he said. “So they must be upstanding too.”
Nico nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and Carmine ended the call.
But Nico, oddly enough, was disappointed that there wasn’t any dirt on her. She was too clean for a mob man like him, and he knew it
. Why he cared either way, though, was the bigger question.
And then Kay, finally, made her way out of the storefront.
She noticed the SUV across the street but the windows were too heavily tinted for her to know if anybody was inside. She, instead, hurried to her Chevy Camaro that was waiting at the curb. She threw her briefcase into the car, and then got in herself and pressed the Start button.
But the car didn’t start. She tried again and again. But no go.
Nico saw it too. “I’ll be back,” he said. Leaving his overcoat on the seat beside him, he got out of the SUV.
The Driver looked at Carmine. “Who’s she?”
“Some dame he likes, I guess.”
“I thought he was here to meet with that Senator.”
“He met with him.”
“And met a dame?”
“Apparently. How should I know? And why are you asking all these questions? Stick to driving!”
The Driver, offended, looked at Nico, instead, as Nico made his way across the street and over to Kay.
Kay saw him coming. He looked so big and impressive in his suit, without that bulky overcoat covering him up. And oddly enough for a cautious person like herself, she was relieved it was him and not some nutcase trying to do a hook up. Although, she also realized, that could be his motive too. She pressed down the window.
“Car trouble?” he asked as he made his way to her window.
“It won’t crank. I’ll probably have to call Triple-A.”
“Pop the hood,” Nico said as he took off his suitcoat. Kay pressed the hood button, grabbed her cell phone, and got out of the car too. Nico handed her his suitcoat. “Put that on,” he said to her. “It’s cold out here.”
As Kay put on his suitcoat, because he was right about the bite in the weather, he began inspecting the inner workings of her Camaro.
The President's Boyfriend Page 5
