“Don’t worry about your circumstances. I’ll take care of you,” he said to her. And he said it, not like a maybe or an if you don’t mind suggestion. He said it like a fact.
And Kay, for some strange reason even she found astonishing, didn’t question that fact. She even took some solace in knowing it. Which could become her happily ever after. Or her doom.
She stood up too. And when he walked over to her, and pulled her into his arms, she didn’t resist at all.
She was so nonresistant, in fact, that Nico felt the heat. And he began kissing her passionately again. And then he removed her shorts again. And then he unzipped his trousers again.
“Not that this is the only reason why I’m here,” he reassured her with a smile. “But it’s a damn nice perk,” he added.
Kay smiled too, and kissed him back. And then he entered her, right there on her small kitchen table, and they worked it out all over again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
And their relationship was off to the races. Instead of it being a long distance affair, the way Kay thought it was going to be, Nico, who usually spent most of his time in Europe, spent most of his time stateside at his home in Chicago, and worked out of his offices in Chicago, during their time together. He had committed to give it a legitimate shot, and he wanted Kay to see his commitment. Because Nico was all in. He needed to see what it was about Kay that had intrigued him so, and if there was any future at all for the two of them.
Kay, too, was in a special place. She woke up every morning happy for a change, and hopeful that Nico was who he appeared to be and wouldn’t break her heart. That was all she was shooting for back then: she didn’t want another heart break.
What solidified it for her happened two months into their relationship. She still hadn’t found employment. Mainly because white senators just didn’t hire black staffers in their higher-ranking positions. But also, she believed, because of potential employers phoning Senator Drake to get his opinion on whether or not to hire her. He would tell them no, and because his word meant something around Capitol Hill, they would tell her no. It was kind of terrifying for Kay, that her career in politics could be over. But knowing she had Nico in her corner softened that reality.
But she still was holding out hope that Congressman Holmes would finally announce his retirement, and she would try to win that seat for herself.
Nico didn’t come over to her house that night after she got the call from her latest prospective employer telling her, without any helpful explanation why, that her application was rejected. And for Nico not to be there when she received that latest rejection was kind of jarring. They had planned to spent the night together at her house that particular night. But he said he had something to take care of and wouldn’t be able to come over. It turned out to be a very lonely night for Kay.
But then, that next morning, he phoned and asked her to meet him at his office downtown. “I would come get you,” Nico said to her, “but I’m swamped.”
Kay understood that he was a hard-working man and she was still unemployed, so she agreed to go to his office. They had been dating two months, but it was the first time he’d asked her to come to his office.
It would also mark the first time they would be seen together in any public space, she realized as she parked her car in the parking garage of the massive building, a building with Bacard International written on a granite stone out front. It was at that moment, seeing his office building, did she realize that Nico was bigger than even she realized. Intellectually, she knew he was a major player. His portfolio of businesses he had co-ownership in proved that. But to see it up close and personal astounded her. And she began to wonder if the reason he called her to his office was to, once again, offer her a job.
A job she knew she had to decline if they were ever going to make their relationship work.
The lobby was so vast, and filled with so many people coming and going that Kay felt as if she was walking through the halls of Congress just to get over to the reception desk. Kay smiled, and the receptionist, an older white woman, returned her smile. “May I help you?”
“Yes ma’am, you most certainly may.” Kay began removing her gloves. Although she wore a light-blue dress, she also wore a knee-length, dark-blue coat. “I’m here to see Mr. Bacard.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes,” Kay said, and the woman picked up her desk telephone.
“Your name please?” she said as she pressed a button.
“Kay Laine,” Kay responded.
“A Kay Laine is here to see Mr. Bacard,” the woman said into the phone. “She says she has an . . . What’s that?” The receptionist looked at Kay as if she was surprised by something. “Oh. Yes, of course. I’ll let her know.” Then she hung up the phone.
“Is he in?” Kay asked. Was that why she looked so concerned? He wasn’t in?
“Yes, he’s here,” the receptionist said. “And he’ll be right down.”
Kay immediately understood why the receptionist seemed so surprised. The big boss coming all the way downstairs on Kay’s behalf? Who was that girl, she had to be wondering. Kay was in fact that girl, and was wondering it herself. But she inwardly smiled. Nico, in every way, was passing every one of her red-flag tests.
When the elevator doors dinged open and Nico finally stepped off of the elevator, Kay couldn’t help it. She smiled a grand smile. They had been apart last night for the first time in a while, and she missed him.
When Nico saw her at the reception desk smiling and looking so darn sexy and vibrant to him in her blue dress and overcoat, he couldn’t get over to her fast enough. He made it his business to keep his private life out of the public eye, that was why they didn’t socialize in public at all. But seeing her standing there, and knowing that she belonged to him, and knowing that he missed being with her last night even worse than she had missed him, caused him to lose all restraint. When he made it up to her, he pulled her into his arms and gave her a big, fat kiss. Right in front of everybody who cared enough to notice.
When they stopped kissing, they both were still smiling. And Kay was grinning. “Wow,” she said, which made Nico grin too.
“Come on up,” he said, his arm still around her waist, as he walked her over to the elevators.
The receptionist was shocked. So was the security guard, who walked over to the reception desk still watching the couple as they stood at the elevators. “Who’s that lady with Mister B.?” the guard asked.
“I have no idea,” the receptionist said.
“Maybe his wife?”
But the receptionist knew that couldn’t be true. “Don’t be daft,” she said to the guard. “He doesn’t have a wife.”
“How do we know that? He don’t tell us anything. He treats her like a wife. I think she may be his wife.”
But the receptionist dismissed such nonsense out of hand. She could not imagine a man as powerful as Nicholas Bacard marrying a black girl. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said to the guard as if he had offended her, and got back to work.
When they settled down on a leather couch in Nico’s office, Kay was still getting over how large it was. “Do you realize your office is bigger than the Oval office?” she asked him as she sat on the edge of the couch, and folded her legs.
Nico smiled. He was so tired he couldn’t even pretend. He was leaned back. “Always got politics on your mind, don’t you?”
Kay smiled. “It’s all I know,” she admitted. “And I’m sure you’ve been in the Oval before,” she added.
Nico didn’t respond. He’d had “clients” who worked out of the West Wing too. But not even for Kay would he ever divulge such information. “You look well-rested,” he said instead.
Kay realized he didn’t respond to her comment, but she was used to that. He did not discuss much of any of his personal business with her. But she didn’t push the issue. He had a right to his privacy. For now, at least. “I didn’t sleep as well as I usually slept,�
�� she admitted. She wasn’t a liar and wasn’t going to become one with Nico.
Nico smiled. “Yes, I agree,” he said, taking her hand into his. “The few hours I did get some rest were tortuous.”
“Why didn’t you come over?”
Nico hesitated. His other business interest, the business Kay knew nothing about, had him detained most of the night. “I didn’t get in until very late,” he said.
Kay didn’t like to hear that. What was he doing out so late? But she didn’t question it either. Nico hadn’t given her any reason yet to mistrust him. She wasn’t going to invent reasons. “You work too hard,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked her. “Have you heard anything?”
She nodded. “I was holding out hope that the last interview I had would be the charm. It seemed promising. But they went in a different direction also.”
Nico hated to hear it. “I’m sorry, Kay. Who was the idiot that turned you down this time?”
“I’m not telling you because I don’t want any pressure applied to these people.” She remembered how he was willing to strongarm Eddie Drake into hiring her back. “I don’t want that. They have a right to hire whomever they want to hire, not who my boyfriend says they have to hire.”
Nico noted how she referred to him as her boyfriend. And he realized he wasn’t upset by the label. Other women had tried it in his past, and he quickly shot it down and left their asses. But this time? He liked it. Which would mark the very first time he ever allowed any woman to refer to him by such an intimate term of endearment. But it was Kay. And Kay, he knew, was so different!
“You think Senator Asshole is discouraging them from hiring you?” he asked her.
“Maybe. But they have a right to listen to him.”
“Stop being so damn magnanimous!” Nico said angrily. “You worked your ass off for that fool. You don’t know how badly I wanted to jack his ass up and give him a taste of his own medicine.”
“Thank you for not doing that, Nico. If you do that, I can kiss any job opportunities in the political world goodbye. And like you said, I’ve worked too hard to allow that to happen. It’s all I know. It’s the only kind of work I want to do.”
“But if Drake is scandalizing your name,” Nico said, “he’s doing the damage for you.”
“I let them know, at the interview, what happened with Eddie. I’m up front with them about how his wife didn’t like me and thought I was sleeping with Eddie and what happened that night when she slapped me. If the truth isn’t enough for them, then to hell with them. I’ll find my way.”
Nico stared at her. “You put up with a lot for the love of politics. Why? Why do you love it so much? I detest the profession.”
“It’s public service,” Kay said. “It’s the only sphere where you can do a whole lot of good for a whole lot of people if you play your cards right.”
“You played yours right. Look where it got you. Fired with no prospects.”
Kay found such a comment true, but hurtful. She hadn’t told Nico about her interest in seeking a congressional seat. She was, in fact, putting feelers out with former operatives she worked with in the past, should she decide to run. But she wasn’t ready to make any announcements. Not even to Nico. Congressman Holmes, whose seat she would occupy, hadn’t announced any decision on whether he would seek reelection or not. “I’m trying to play my cards right,” she said.
He decided to move on. “You look beautiful. I like your hair that way.”
Kay found herself touching her hair. She’d almost forgotten she had gone to the beauty parlor yesterday and it was still freshly done in down curls with a part on the side. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure it beats my ponytail.”
He laughed. “Yes, it does!”
But Kay was getting anxious. “And I’m sure you didn’t ask me to come to your office to riff about hair.”
“No,” said Nico. He then reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out an envelope. He handed it to her.
“What’s this?” Kay asked as she accepted it. “Please don’t tell me it’s a job offer.”
“No, nothing like that,” Nico said. “I know your thing is working for politicians. I won’t interfere with that. Besides, you already made clear that working for me means no relationship with me. That took working for me completely off the table.”
Kay smiled. Her sentiments exactly! And she opened the envelope.
When she saw what was inside, she could hardly believe it. A deed, no, two deeds. One to her house in Chicago. And one to her condo in DC. Both stamped paid in full! She looked at Nico.
“You told me you could manage on your savings for about a month or two,” he said. “It’s been a couple months, and you still haven’t been able to secure employment in your line of work. I’m not letting you sell either one of your residences. And I’m certainly not allowing you to bankrupt yourself when I can easily help you. And as to any other bills you may have, I pay them from here on out too.”
Kay didn’t know how to respond. It was such a major gesture. And she knew, in her financial state, that she could use the help. But what would it cost her in the end?
Nico saw her concern, a concern that bordered on alarm. “What’s the problem, Kay?” he asked her.
“What if . . .” She looked at him.
“What if we don’t make it?” he asked her.
She nodded her head. “Yes.”
“Then I go my way,” he said, a painful look appearing in his eyes, “and you go your way. And you still will own your two properties. Which means, from my perspective, you’ll come out the better for having known me.” He said it and smiled.
Kay smiled too. And then tears appeared in her eyes and she hurried and hugged his neck. “Thank you, Nico,” she said. “Thank you so much!”
Nico held her too. And he was emotional, too, because it was a very simple gesture to him, but it meant the world to her. And that was why he knew he was falling hard for Kay. She never took him for granted. “You’re welcome, darling,” he said as he held her. “You are so welcome.”
And their relationship only got stronger from there. And although going to his office was their first public outing, so to speak, it was nowhere near their last. After that day in his office he took her to places she had never been before. Whenever he had business out of the country, he took her with him. From Ghana to Paris. From Japan to Brazil. It was like a dream come true for Kay. And what she had once feared might just be a sexual connection, became so much more for both of them.
And it remained that way for another glorious month. Until, near the end of that month, their third month together, on a Friday night. It was a day they both, in hindsight, would never forget. It was the day Congressman Justin Holmes from the great State of Illinois announced his retirement from the United States House of Representatives. They met up for dinner at an upscale restaurant, and Kay was excited to tell the news she absolutely knew Nico would be thrilled to hear too.
Boy was she wrong.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I’m running for Congress,” she said to him.
They had just finished their meals. But Nico’s every movement stopped as soon as she said those words. He was certain he’d misheard her. “You’re what?” he asked her.
“I’m going to run for Congress,” Kay said. “Representative Holmes, who represents the district I live in, has decided to not seek reelection. He’s retiring, which leaves his seat open and up for grabs. And I’m going to try and win that seat.”
Nico couldn’t believe it. Kay was running for Congress? Didn’t she realize what kind of scrutiny that would bring to him? He couldn’t have that kind of bright light shining on him! “When did you make this decision?” he asked her, his face fixed into a frown.
Kay didn’t get his reaction. “What do you mean when? Now. I mean, I’d been thinking about it for some time. But I wasn’t going to take any concrete steps until he officially announced his retirement. He anno
unced. And I’m ready to give it a shot.”
But Nico looked alarmed. “Congress? You’re running for Congress? What are your chances of success?”
“Nico, what’s wrong?”
“What are your chances of success,” he asked her again. “Answer my question.”
Kay was still amazed that he was behaving that way. “My chances are pretty good,” she said. “I’ve built up a lot of good will all over the state, but especially in Holmes’ district. I live in that district. They know me very well there. Once I announce, I anticipate receiving a swell of support from activists in the community who’ll be willing to speak up on my behalf and work tirelessly for my election. I never say I have it in the bag. But I think I’ll come darn close.”
Nico didn’t know how to react, which puzzled Kay. “What’s the matter, Nico? I thought you’d be happy for me. But instead you look as if . . . as if you’d been betrayed.”
He didn’t dispute her claim. He was looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. “You never told me you planned to seek office,” he said to her. “You never once mentioned that.”
“You knew I loved politics.”
“I knew you loved working for politicians. Not becoming one yourself! You never said that to me once, Kay. You never said you wanted to seek elected office.”
“What difference does it make whether I’m working for one, or I am one? It’s still politics.”
But Nico knew the difference. He knew, if his woman became a national politician, he’d be in severe trouble. There would be reporters and Feds and everybody else nosing around his business. And he couldn’t have that. He had too much to lose.
He was falling hard for Kay, but she had too much to lose too. If the other side of his life ever came to light, her political career would be over. The only job she loved would be gone. And she’d hate him for it.
And that was why, after she changed the subject and they small-talked for a few minutes longer and then made their outside, he knew what he knew he needed to get alone, and do some serious soul-searching. He could be selfish, and keep her for himself. Or he could love her enough to let her go.
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