Campaigning for Christopher (6 page)

Simon, who’d been outside speaking with the assembled journalists, slipped back into the campaign headquarters, looking troubled. Deeply, terribly troubled. Christopher, who was still seated in front of Elise, stood up, giving his campaign manager a concerned look.

“Si?”

“Chris,” he said, like he was out of breath, his eyes wild.

Suddenly the crowd outside got louder, and Christopher could hear the wolf pack of journalists shouting questions at someone.

“Who’s out there?” Christopher asked, heading for the shaded windows that flanked the door, and pulling the blinds aside. But the angle was wrong—he couldn’t see what was going on.

“Now, Chris, you have to listen to me for one second.”

Christopher turned to Simon, his voice cracking like a whip as he asked, “Who the
fuck
is out there?”

The crazy thing was he already knew. He knew in his gut that it was her. He knew it in the absolute way that he was certain of his name or his blood type or the color of his eyes. She was here. She was standing just on the other side of that door.

“Can you have an open mind?” pleaded Simon, reaching for the doorknob.

“Don’t you dare let that—” Christopher watched in horror as Simon opened the door and the black-haired witch from Saturday night slipped quickly into the room with her head down. “—
fucking bitch
into my space!”

She straightened her spine and raised her chin, her deep black eyes nailing him from two feet away.

“Too late,” she said. “I’m already here.”

If being called a fucking bitch wasn’t enough, Julianne saw Christopher Winslow actually lunging at her, and it was only because the short bald man named Simon jumped between them that Christopher didn’t get a piece of her.

“Fucking mercenary!” he cried, held back by two other men, who had rushed to the front of the office almost as soon as Julianne ducked through the door. “Crooked, rotten, drug-dealing
whore
. . .” He struggled against the men holding him. “Get off me. Get the fuck
off
me!”

They let go of his shoulders, stepping back but standing by, as Christopher raked both hands through his coiffed hair, messing it up, and stared at her like he wished her fates far worse than death.

“Get the
hell
out of my office,” he growled, his tone lethal.

And Julianne considered it. To her great shame, she considered running away. It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? So much easier to run away than make amends.

Your eyes are like the night sky. The universe. The heavens and a million stars.

She reminded herself that he knew how to speak gently, how to smile warmly, how to touch tenderly. But most of all, she reminded herself that she deserved his rage.

She swallowed back her fear and squared her jaw. “I won’t go until you listen to me.”

“There is nothing you could say that would—”

“Listen to her, Chris!” exclaimed Simon.

“
What
?” demanded Christopher, his green eyes skewering Simon. “Are you
fucked
in the head? Why is she even in here breathing the same air I am? She sabotaged my campaign!”

“Which means she might be the only one who can help you!” yelled Simon. “Now sit the—the—
fuck
down.”

Hearing his priggish campaign manager curse seemed to have a mollifying effect on Christopher, and he leaned back against the reception desk behind him and crossed his arms over his chest, his nostrils flaring with hatred.

Her eyes skittered to his arms, and a quick mental image of those arms imprisoning her against the side of the winery on Saturday night made an unwanted shiver rush down her spine.

This might be easier if he wasn’t so beautiful.

And so monumentally furious.

“So?” he demanded. “Speak.”

Julianne didn’t particularly relish being spoken to like a dog, but took a deep breath and met Christopher’s steely gaze.

“We go out there together. We say I’m your, um, your girlfriend. We say—”

“Abso-
fucking
-lutely not. I can’t even—”

“Chris, you need to shut up and listen,” said another man, bearing a strong resemblance to Christopher. He stepped forward and put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder with ease and familiarity.

Yes, of course. She remembered. It was the brother whose wife was newly pregnant. Her eyes flashed to the beautiful, blue-eyed white woman standing just behind him, and Julianne recognized her from the wedding too.

The brother looked at her with cold eyes, but nodded at her. “Go ahead, Miss . . .?”

“Crow.”

“Miss Crow. Finish up your plan.”

She swallowed and looked at Christopher again. “So, we, um, we say that I’ve been your girlfriend for weeks, but you were p-protecting me from the public eye, um, because I wasn’t ready to share our relationship and anyway we, um . . . we didn’t want to distract voters. We both d-drank too much at your sister’s wedding because we were celebrating her, um, her happiness. We snuck away, started, um, m-making out and took some . . . p-private photos, but my phone was stolen yesterday evening and the photos were leaked. We are embarrassed in the m-manner that our relationship was suddenly exposed, but because we’re deeply in, um, in love, we’ve decided to roll with it.”

Christopher’s scowl had not lessened throughout her speech. Now his eyes narrowed and his voice dripped with loathing. “You weren’t
there
as my date. Though my memories are hazy from the drugs you slipped me, I believe you were waitressing.”

She flinched, resisting the urge to draw her thumb to her mouth and go to town biting the nail. Instead she kept her voice as level as she could and replied, “My being your, um, your girlfriend and my b-being a waitress are not mutually exclusive. P-plus, I’m not just a . . . a waitress. I’m also a, um, a m-model.”

Christopher rolled his eyes, looking away from her like the very sight of her disgusted him to no end. “Wow. A profession with real depth.”

Her temper flared. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“Wrong!” he thundered. “I
do
know the
first
thing! I know you hurt people for no reason. I know you do despicable things for money. How do I know you don’t have a disgusting reputation? Why in God’s name would I want to hitch my name to yours?”

“Because I p-promise you that—”

“Your promises mean
shit
to me, honey.”

She blinked, realizing, with some horror, that her eyes were filling with tears. He was so fierce, so wrathful, so implacable, she almost imagined she could see white heat emanating from him.

I’m not helping. I’m upsetting him more before his press conference.

She turned to Simon. “I’m so sorry for coming here. I think I should, um, should go . . .”

“No!” said a woman from behind her.

Julianne turned to see a dark-haired woman holding up her hand. Her eyes were sharp and burned with interest in her otherwise plain face. She turned to Christopher.

“I just checked her out online. No record. Nothing. Just a few modeling pics and a video credit at a college in South Dakota.”

“Lori, we don’t know her from—”

“Chris? I have never bullshitted you. Not once. Can we agree on that?”

Julianne twisted her neck to look at Christopher, who grimaced before nodding once.

“Then I need to tell you that this—
her
—
she
is your Hail Mary.” She took a few steps closer, walking around two desks, and coming to stand beside Julianne. “You hate her guts? I get it, but I don’t care. Because the press is going to eat this up sideways with a spoon. A hidden relationship built on trust and protection?” Christopher scoffed loudly at the dark-haired woman. “Two attractive young people in love who were taken advantage of? And, pardon me for asking, but are you Native American?”

Julianne nodded. “I’m a Lakota.”

“Christ, that’s perfect,” she said with hushed reverence, then turned to Christopher with a no-nonsense plea: “You cannot—I repeat, you
cannot
—pass this opportunity by. This is how you recover. This is how you win.”

After what felt like an eternity, Christopher’s face fell. He looked around the room at each person: Simon, the brother, the pretty blonde pregnant lady, a frowning Asian man, the mouthy, dark-haired lady named Lori, and then back to her. His gaze drilled through Julianne like a red-hot bit, but she remained rooted where she stood, answering his stare with her own.

“I don’t know if I want to win that badly,” he said in a soft, broken voice.

“Well, that sucks. Because I didn’t realize I was campaigning for a loser,” said Lori. “When you hired me, you told me that you’d win. You told me you’d give it everything you’ve got. You promised me. You promised Si and Slater. Even Pres and Elise have been out stumping for you over the past few weeks, using Elise’s fame to boost your numbers. You’re going to let us all down because you can’t act nice with this lady here for one lousy press conference? Well, shit, son. Then you’re not the candidate I thought you were. Times get tough and you take off, huh?”

Julianne turned slowly to look at the dark-haired woman with admiration, doing her best not to smile, but feeling her lips tremble with awe. To her great surprise, Lori winked at her, then gestured back to Christopher, who cleared his throat to command Julianne’s attention.

Throughout the dark-haired woman’s arguments, he had been staring at Julianne with a hatred bordering on malevolence, but now his brows knit together, and he shifted his gaze to the Lori, his eyes begging her for a reprieve. “You’re asking the impossible.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not. Pull up your big-boy panties, and put your arm around your girlfriend. You two have a press conference to attend.”

***

Christopher stared at the beautiful, totally reprehensible, woman standing beside Lori, his gut so clutched and tangled, he thought he might vomit.

The fact that he still found her physically attractive after what she’d done to him made him hate her a thousand times more, and he wasn’t positive there was enough rage in the universe to express how angry her presence made him. He couldn’t even muster up a grudging respect for her courage in coming to find him all on her own. She had been the weapon of his destruction, the very mechanism of his present distress. And
now
she wanted to fix it? Well, to hell with her. She could go fuck herself.

But Lori’s words resonated like a gong in Christopher’s head:
You told me that you’d win. You told me you’d give it everything you’ve got. You promised me. You promised Si and Slater.
And he had. Damn it, he had. He had promised all of them. With the youthful naïveté of a callow candidate, he had promised to pull out all the stops and win. “Anything ethical,” he’d said. And yet someone dirty dealing and corrupt had trapped him into this fresh hell. And now she—the living, breathing virago of his destruction—was also his only salvation.

“Do it for us, Chris,” said Simon softly. “We’ve come too far.”

Christopher inhaled sharply and looked at . . . who? Who was she?

“What’s your name again?” he said and the words, which were the same he’d asked flirtatiously of her on Saturday night, made him wince.

“Julianne Crow.”

He nodded. “Is there a paper trail for the money you took to drug and frame me? A check? A bank transfer?”

“No,” she responded, two patches of pink highlighting her tan, high cheeks. “I didn’t . . . No, there’s nothing like that.”

Good
, he thought, staring at her blush with surprise.
At least she has some shame and decency.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked.

She took a deep breath, staring at him, her back and neck ramrod straight, her chin high. “None of your business.”

“
Fuuuuuck
!” he exclaimed, his cooling temper zipping back up to blistering as his eyes blazed with fury. “It goddamn well
is
my business.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, which made her pitch-black hair sway lightly around her shoulders in a way that was decadent and sensual. “It’s not. The p-past is done, and I am here offering amends. You can reject them or accept them, but you are not entitled to m-my secrets.”

If he didn’t hate her to the depths of his soul and the ends of time, he would have taken a moment to truly admire her composure and the quiet strength of her response. She was right. He didn’t have a right to her secrets, but damn if it didn’t bother the fuck out of him that she’d tried to destroy him. He wanted to know why, even if it
wasn’t
his right.

The crowd outside was getting rowdier, and faced with no choice, he nodded. At least she’d dressed for the part of politician’s girlfriend, in a simple dark blue dress that hugged her Christina Hendricks–style curves, a simple silver necklace, and heeled shoes. She looked beautiful and classy, and if she wasn’t such a calculating bitch, Christopher would have been honored—and incredibly turned-on—to stand beside her.

As it was? He’d do his damndest to ignore the turned-on bit.

“Fine. We’ll do it. You’re comfortable doing the talking?”

She flinched noticeably before nodding. “Yes.”

“This doesn’t change what you did,” snarled Christopher, watching as her eyes hardened to black onyx.

“I am well aware of that.”

He reached for the doorknob. “After you.”

***

Faced with hundreds of eyes staring back at her, Julianne recited
Oun she la yea, Oun she la yea
over and over again in her head.
Have compassion on me. Have compassion on me.

For someone with a light stutter that got markedly worse when she was nervous or upset, the thought of speaking in public was an unadulterated horror. But after she spoke to
Ina
, she had promised herself that she would make amends to the best of her ability, and if that meant giving an impromptu speech to a sea of reporters, so be it.

She stepped out onto the narrow stoop, moving to the side so that Christopher could stand next to her. As the door to his headquarters clicked shut, she felt his arm slip around her waist, and she battled the sharp desire to lean into him and try to find some comfort in his closeness. He was intensely, incredibly handsome, but his hatred of her surrounded him like an implacable shield, and she knew there would be no comfort in his eyes, no warmth in his touch.