Campaigning for Christopher (3 page)

“Take me to the cottage,” she said, tugging him into the nearby darkness, her words slightly garbled and very far away. “Just tell me which way to go.”

“Past the shhhhhhhhheds,” he said, surprised that he was moving. Where was he, again? He wasn’t sure. But it was very dark, and he was holding someone’s hand, walking a little bit behind her. Who was she? Did it matter? He could hear her footsteps, crunching on dry leaves and twigs. Where were they going? His lips were thick and fat as he mumbled, “Brammmmmmbled.”

“Past the sheds and down the brambled path,” she repeated softly, like she was talking to herself, not to him.

His feet weighed a thousand pounds, though somehow they kept up with hers. A blur of shed whooshed past them as they would if he was on a bullet train, and he looked down to see high-heeled black shoes on the forest floor. He was disoriented but not afraid. A low, sultry voice hummed “careful” or “stay with me” or “here we go” as he lurched and stumbled. Her hands were strong, the reassuring grasp of her fingers taking good care of him.

And then suddenly, somehow, he was lying down, staring up at a ceiling—a familiar ceiling, though he couldn’t place it. Where was he? Before he could figure it out, the goddess leaned over him, shaking her head disapprovingly, then angrily, like looking at his face hurt her heart.

Christopher stared up at the shrouded universe in her eyes, desperately fighting the urge to close his eyes and sleep.

“Pleeeeeeease,” he groaned, with all the strength he could muster. “Your . . . naaaaaame?”

Her fingers, which had already unfastened his bow tie and were in the process of unbuttoning his shirt, stilled. She stood up straight, pulled her black hair forward, over her shoulders, and looked directly into his eyes.

Her eyes were cold and black as endless night as she lifted her chin and whispered, “My name is Wichahpi Mapiya Kangee, Christopher Winslow. And this is for my people.”

What? Who are your—?

He desperately tried to concentrate, but the question was too difficult to finish.

The room swirled . . . and went black.

“Chris . . . Chris, come on . . . wake up.”

Christopher groaned, batting his brother’s smacking palm away from his cheek and throwing his arm over his eyes as he fought to hold on to sleep.

“Come on, man. Get up. It’s almost noon.”

Cameron. Fucking Cameron.

Wait. Why was Cameron in his apartment? Cameron had moved out to Margaret Story’s vineyard a couple of months ago.

“Cam?” he rasped.

“Yeah. Fucking wake up, man. Sloth.”

Christopher opened his eyes slowly, adjusting to the light in the dimly lit room. Blinking twice, he took a deep breath and moved his dry tongue around his parched mouth. The first thing he realized? He wasn’t at home.

“Where am I?” he muttered, closing his eyes again. And why was it so goddamn hard to open his eyes?

“At the vineyard. On Margaret’s couch. Exactly where we found you last night.”

Christopher took a deep breath and blinked his eyes open, staring up at the plaster ceiling. The headache he expected to assault him wasn’t forthcoming, so sitting up wasn’t quite as awful as he’d anticipated. He leaned forward and pulled his pants, which were around his knees, up to his hips, focusing his eyes on Cameron, who squatted in front of the sofa with an outstretched cup of coffee.

“Figure you need this, huh?”

Christopher rubbed the rough stubble on his cheeks, then reached for the coffee, bringing it gratefully to his lips and taking a bracing sip.

“What happened?”

Cameron sat back on the carpet, wrapping his arms around his knees and looking up at Christopher with surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . how come I stayed here last night?”

“How the fuck do I know? Margaret and I got back here after midnight, and you were half dressed, asleep on the couch, snoring loud enough to scare away wildlife. Meggie covered you with a blanket, and we went to bed.”

“Half naked,” muttered Christopher, blinking his eyes, which opened a little wider. “Fuuuuck! I wasn’t with someone, was I?”

Cameron’s eyes danced with incredulity and humor. “Uh, yeah. You definitely were. I mean, you went after that waitress like your life depended on it.”

“Waitress?” asked Christopher, feeling deeply off-balance and very confused. “What waitress?”

“Dude, are you kidding me?”

Christopher rolled his aching shoulders, the consequences of sleeping on a narrow, antique couch starting to assert themselves. “No.”

Cameron gave him a skeptical look, screwing up his face and pursing his lips. “You know, I really didn’t think you were that drunk. I mean, you didn’t
seem
that drunk. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Christopher took a gulp of coffee, thinking as he swallowed. The wedding . . . check. The reception . . . check. Brooks’s and Preston’s speeches . . . check. Group hug with his siblings . . . check. Oh, wait. The girl. The phenomenally sexy black-haired girl.

“Hold on . . . the waitress. She had black hair.”

“There we go,” said Cameron, nodding encouragingly. “And a banging body just your speed.”

Christopher blinked his eyes, searching for memories that were like tiny splinters stuck in remote crevices of his brain. “She wouldn’t tell me her name.”

Cameron blew out a breath, reaching for something on the floor, then holding up Christopher’s discarded black bow tie. “Well, I think you got to know her a little better in some way or another.”

“Fuck,” muttered Christopher, placing his coffee on a side table and rubbing his hands through his hair. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This could be bad if anyone saw.”

“Yeah. I could have sworn you were laying off pussy until after the election.”

“Jesus, you’re crude.”

Cameron shrugged, standing up and turning toward the stairs that led to the upstairs bedroom. “Meggie’s showering. But there’s a ton of cleanup waiting. Unless you want to get pressed into a day of service, you might want to get dressed and get lost.”

Christopher nodded distractedly. “Hey, Cam . . . seriously, what do you think happened?”

His brother turned around, giving Christopher a shit-eating grin. “Based on the fact that you have no shirt on, your pants were around your knees when we got here, and there was lipstick on your boxers? I’d say you got a little drunk and a lot lucky. Too bad you don’t remember it, bro.”

“Yeah, but
why
don’t I remember it?” he asked uneasily, reaching up to scratch his stubbly jaw.

“It was a wedding. Lots of drinks. Lots of fun. Just chalk it up to a wild night,” said Cameron, waving good-bye and chuckling as he walked up the stairs.

A wild night? That’s the very last thing I need right now. That’s the sort of thing that kills a campaign.

Christopher gulped the last of his coffee, then reached for his shirt on the floor and pulled it on. When he stood up, his pants slipped down, and he saw the lipstick stain on his boxers that Cameron was talking about. An almost perfect imprint of a woman’s lips in fire engine red made his body stir to life unexpectedly.

Unable to help his curiosity, he pulled his boxers away from his body and looked down at his cock, expecting to see erotic smears of bright red coloring his skin. But no. No lipstick there. Not even the smallest smudge. Huh.

The uneasy feeling in his gut magnified as he fastened his pants, buckled his belt, and buttoned his tuxedo shirt halfway, leaving it untucked. He grabbed his shoes and shoved his feet into them, not bothering to look for his socks. Questions were piling up by the second, and he had answers for none, not to mention something about his body felt foreign—like it had a secret record of experiences that his mind couldn’t remember, and the effect was incredibly unsettling.

Quickly reaching behind, he felt for his phone and wallet in his back pockets, sighing with relief when he found both were still there.
Okay. Well, that’s a good thing, at least.

He heard the water in the bathroom turn off, plucked his tuxedo jacket off the floor, and slipped out the cottage door before he saw Margaret.

Following the wooded path around the winery sheds, Christopher had a sudden, dreamlike flash of memory—
your eyes . . . the night sky
—accompanied by the sound of crackling leaves and breaking twigs.

He had no context for the memory, so he assumed it had to do with the mystery woman last night. Huffing with frustration, he wished he could remember more. Aside from the fact that he didn’t like feeling so out of control or like he’d missed out on a sizable chuck of his life, with the election only six weeks away, he couldn’t afford a late-game scandal with some random waitress, regardless of how hot Cameron thought she was.

He winced, slipping on leaves as he stepped over a fallen tree trunk in his dress shoes.

Although, if she
was
that hot, it royally sucked that he had no memory of her. But try as he might, he couldn’t procure a clear picture of her face in his mind. He had only hazy snippets of her—jet-black hair, dark eyes, red lips, her tan hand holding out a glass of whiskey—and the general impression that forgetting her was a colossal loss, which made the entire situation suck even more.

Christopher looked up to find his car exactly where he’d parked it when he arrived for the wedding yesterday afternoon. As he approached it, his phone buzzed.

He took his keys from his pocket and unlocked his car door with one hand as he reached for the phone with his other. Leaning on the roof of his car for a second, he swiped his finger across the screen to find he’d missed over a dozen calls and his Facebook and Twitter alerts were extraordinarily high for a Sunday morning. Furrowing his brow, he tapped on the most recent text message from Simon Mathias, his campaign manager. It contained six words:

WE. ARE. FUCKED. WHERE ARE YOU?

Christopher’s heart raced into a gallop, and the uneasiness in his stomach tripled when he scrolled down to find a dozen pictures of himself in poses of pure debauchery—half naked, surrounded by several half-empty alcohol bottles, with lipstick smudges on his chest and underwear, and jet-black braids draped across his torso, which implied a woman’s head in his crotch.

The waitress from last night.

Holy shit.

He had been set up.

***

Less than an hour later, Christopher parked in the parking lot behind his campaign headquarters, astounded that he hadn’t been pulled over for speeding. He had his keys ready and jammed them into the back door lock, slamming the door behind him before the bevy of reporters circling the building could ask him any questions. He turned the dead bolt, then stalked down the dim hallway to the main headquarters’ bull pen, arriving in the doorway to find a small group of pissed-off faces staring back at him.

The shades of the storefront had been drawn, but Christopher could see the outlined shadows of the reporters waiting just outside the office. Simon sat on top of a desk, his mouth covered by his hand, his face a mask of disappointment. Sitting behind Simon in a desk chair, was Lori Friedman, Christopher’s press secretary. Standing beside Lori, with his arms crossed over his massive chest, was Slater Cheung, in charge of both grassroots fund-raising and technology. Christopher’s brother Preston, a respected entertainment lawyer, rounded out the group.

Christopher stood there in the doorway for a moment, staring at his team, completely at a loss. The air hummed with disappointment bordering on disgust, and even though he knew he was the victim of foul play, he felt a profound feeling of regret and shame. These four people had worked their asses off for him, and last night’s misadventures might well have negated all their hard work. They had every right to be furious with him.

Deciding only a few months ago to enter the Pennsylvania congressional election on an Independent ticket had meant that Simon, Lori, and Slater had their work cut out for them. They’d scrambled to collect the signatures Christopher needed to secure a place on the ballot, and then worked insane hours to vault him to a place of public prominence. According to the last polls, he was gaining considerable traction among Pennsylvania voters—so much so that the Republican incumbent and Democratic forerunner were starting to sit up and take notice.

Try as they might, the worst thing his competition had been able to say about Christopher Winslow was that he was young (twenty-nine) and independently wealthy, by means of inheritance. He didn’t have any angry ex-girlfriends or hidden love children. He’d never worked for a financial group that had cheated old ladies out of their life savings. He’d never been arrested or busted for drug use in college. And though they probably didn’t like his nonpartisan platform, his conviction on issues from both sides of the aisle made it difficult for them to blindly attack him.

Christopher was young and idealistic, good-looking, and well-spoken. He’d graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and gotten his master’s in political science at Georgetown University while interning for an Independent congressmen on the Hill. His views were middle-of-the-road for average Americans: he supported the right to bear arms but also sensible gun control reform, he supported education reform without withdrawing support from teachers and administrators, he supported a minimum wage increase but not an extension of unemployment benefits beyond thirty-six months, eschewing handouts for better job production.

Pundits had started called Christopher the UA candidate, for “universally appealing,” a reference to both his platform
and
his boyish good looks. The papers were already predicting record numbers of women voters on Election Day.

And while Independent candidates typically had an uphill battle in overtaking congressional seats held by one of the two major parties, the outlook for Christopher, compared more and more frequently to a young John F. Kennedy, had seemed promising, even overwhelmingly positive.

Until now.

His Achilles’ heel was—and had always been—his age and his money. Voters were reluctant to support someone so young, who’d had such an affluent and privileged life. What could he possibly know about the woes of the common man? But the loss of his father at an early age and his brother Brooks’s successful Olympic bid had somehow balanced voters’ objections to his wealth. They reasoned that if Brooks and Christopher came from the same family, both had managed to overcome tragedy to live their lives with determination, honor, and integrity. Brooks had represented his country in the Sydney Olympics. Voters seemed anxious to give Christopher the chance to represent Pennsylvania in Congress.

But that tenuous trust—that he wouldn’t turn out to be some spoiled, entitled playboy—had just been soundly shattered. He could see it on the faces of his core team, and his personal remorse was breathtaking.

“Chris,” said Preston softly. He shook his head, at a loss for words. “I just don’t even know where to start.”

“I do,” said Lori, standing up from her seat. “What the fuck? How could you do this?”

Christopher took a step forward just as Slater put in his two cents. “You’re a monumental asshole, Chris. I can’t even . . .”

Wincing, Christopher took another step toward the defeated group, meeting Simon’s eyes—Simon, who had given up his promising career as a political science professor at Drexel University in order to run Christopher’s campaign.