Close to You (5 page)

Five

I
NSUFFERABLE.
A
RROGANT.
R
UDE.
C
ONTEMPTIBLE.
D
ISAGREEABLE.
Egotistical. Discourteous. Dessert-thieving jerk.
Allie struggled for more adjectives as she allowed her cocktail dress to pool around her feet and pulled on her oversize sleeping T-shirt.

Her black mood had only turned darker upon her return to the hotel and the subsequent discovery that a pipe had leaked in her bathroom, saturating the clothes she'd left puddled on the floor in her haste to get ready for dinner and forcing her to change rooms.

Picking up her dress and throwing it over the back of the armchair closest to her bed, she stomped to the bathroom, slapped some toothpaste onto her toothbrush, and started brushing her teeth. Peppermint foam filled her mouth as she scrubbed without restraint.

Who did he think he was? Calling her some small-town tour guide when he was nothing more than a glorified bag carrier. If that. So far she hadn't seen him do anything that gave him the right to call himself Mr. Duff's assistant.

She contemplated calling Kat and getting her to talk her off the ledge before she did or said something that got her fired. Allie couldn't wait to see what her best friend would make of Jackson when they met in Hobbiton. Once that girl got someone in her makeup chair, she got more out of them in fifteen minutes than most shrinks got in months.

Spitting and rinsing, Allie threw her brush down and plucked her contacts out of her eyes. She wrenched the lid off her face wash and slapped some on her face.

He wasn't stupid, though. His little dessert trick had thrown her long enough to make her temporarily forget about her threat to reveal his fakery to his boss. She just wasn't sure if he'd done it on purpose or if it was an added bonus to his uncouth ways.

Seriously, who eats with a stranger's cutlery? She could have a whole legion of communicable diseases. Not that she did, but he didn't know that!

Something about her cleanser wasn't right. It wasn't foaming the way it usually did. Glancing down, she squinted at the small travel-size bottle again. Excellent. She was cleaning her face with hair conditioner.

From the main room, her phone let out a familiar trill. Just when she thought the day couldn't get any worse. Grabbing the washcloth from beside the sink, Allie swiped it across her face while her phone kept ringing.

She wouldn't get there before it went to voice mail, but it wouldn't matter; she'd hang up and redial like she always did. Sure enough, a few seconds later her phone went momentarily silent and then starting ringing again.

Padding back into the main room, Allie swiped her phone up from where she'd left it on the bedside table. “Hi, Susie.”

A puff of air at the other end let Allie know how much her older sister still hated her using the name she'd been perfectly happy with until she went to university, met Grant, and “reinvented” herself.

“Allison.”

Susie, aka. Mrs. Susannah Shire-Thorpe, sounded more like their mother with every passing day. The tinge of dis­appointment with which she managed to imbue those mere three syllables was almost pitch-perfect. Man, she missed her real sister. The one who was fun and could laugh at herself. The one she'd had before Susie hitched her wagon to a guy with political aspirations almost as high as his ridiculous bouffant hair.

She liked to think her real sister was still there, underneath the perfectly polished veneer of social perfection, but she had her doubts given how long it had been since there'd been any evidence of it.

She flopped down on her bed and pressed the phone to her ear.
Make an effort, Allie. She's still your sister.
“How are you?”

“We're great.”

Allie resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the royal “we.” That never would have come out of the mouth of the old Susie. It was like when she'd gotten married she'd ceased to exist as an individual and had simply become a subsidiary of a plural.

“I was calling to let you know that tonight Grant was officially selected as the candidate for Western Bays.”

Allie stifled a sigh. The news was not unexpected, given that Grant and her sister had spent the last six years positioning him for selection when the incumbent retired, but she'd held on to a tiny flicker of hope that something might derail the seemingly inevitable.

Her brother-in-law would now become a member of Parliament at the next election. The seat was so safe it was a standing joke that the people of Western Bays would vote for a piece of furniture to be their MP if it wore an orange rosette.

“That's great. Congratulations. You must be thrilled.” The fact that she managed to imbue the words with any tinge of enthusiasm was a credit to her finely honed acting skills.

“Of course, but honestly, it wasn't as if any other nominee could come close to Grant's pedigree. Between his distinguished career, commitment to the party, and blemish-free personal rec­ord, it really was a no-brainer.”

Translation—her brother-in-law was possibly the dullest human being you could ever hope to find with a pulse. Allie was pretty sure he hadn't so much as chosen a brand of toothpaste since he was sixteen without thinking about how it would poll.

Lying back against a pillow, she waited for Susannah to get to the point of the phone call. Her sister hadn't called to chat in months and certainly not since the so-called scandal that she'd taken as personally as if Allie had caused it solely to derail her sister's social climbing.

“So we'll be having a campaign launch sometime in the next few months. And of course we'd love for you to be there.” Her sister's tone clearly communicated that what they would love was anything but. “However, we were thinking that, with your history, it might be difficult for you, and we wouldn't want to put you in an awkward position, so we totally understand if you decide not to come.”

Allie sat upright and wedged herself against the headboard. She would rather eat a bowl of ghost peppers while dancing across shards of broken glass than go to anything related to
Grant's campaign, but she wasn't going to accept the insinuation that they were inviting-but-not-inviting her out of some kind of thoughtfulness to her.

“Oh, I don't know. It's been two years. Surely everyone has moved on by now, even in your circles.” Highly unlikely, given that some of her mother's friends still liked to bring up social scandals from the seventies, but if her sister didn't want her to come, she was at least going to make her be honest enough to admit it. “It might be good for me to be there if it fits in with my tours. Plus, I'd love to see Katie and Ed.”

A sharp intake of breath told her this was not the response her sister had been expecting. “Well, you know, there probably wouldn't be much time with Katherine and Edward with all their extracurricular commitments. Katherine is taking ballet, Mandarin, and violin this term, and Edward is quite busy with piano, soccer, and swimming.”

Her niece and nephew were aged four and two respectively and had been immersed in “extension” activities since their hospital wristbands were snipped off. Allie was surprised neither of them was learning Te Reo M
ā
ori. Having his kids learn the indigenous language was exactly the kind of thing she expected from her politically correct brother-in-law. No doubt an oversight that would be rectified soon.

She switched tack to keep her sister off-balance—the only way she would get anything better than a preplanned sound bite out of her. “Are you also having this same conversation with Grant's brother?” It was doubtful, considering that getting caught committing white-collar fraud had become the trend
de rigueur
in their circle for the last few years.

Her sister's tone turned frosty. “Simon has paid his dues for
his mistakes. Whereas, last time I checked, your little indiscretion was still an ongoing court case. And given that you've hardly shown your face in Auckland since your whirlwind romance dragged the family name through the mud and made you the laughingstock of society, you can hardly pretend it's all water under the bridge.”

Allie shoved down the tornado of emotions that Susannah's words stirred up. She didn't need her sister to remind her of that. Susannah wasn't the one who had lost everything. Her career. Her reputation. Her assets. Her
heart
.

Allie took a deep breath and counted slowly to three. “This is New Zealand. The country of three degrees of separation. If anyone gave a fig about the lives of the in-laws of wannabe politicians, no one would ever get elected to public office.” Lucky for Grant, since her parents' dysfunctional marriage would provide some excellent fodder for anyone interested in it. “But if you don't want me there, the least you could do is be honest and say so instead of pretending it's out of some sort of concern for me.”

Her sister's tone softened. “Look, of course we would love to have you there. And you know you're welcome to come and spend time with the kids whenever you want; it's just that this is a big deal for Grant and he doesn't want to take any chance of there being any distractions from the main event.”

“And he thinks I'm the bigger risk of being a distraction even after what happened at the naval ball?” That event had become family legend after her mother had a couple too many cocktails and spent the evening shamelessly hitting on a poor waiter twenty years her junior.

A pause. “Well, I didn't want to mention it, but there is something else.”

There always was. “What?”

“Derek will be there too.”

Allie's head reared back and smacked against the top of the headboard. Her sister couldn't have stunned her more if she'd announced she was leaving Grant for the nanny. “Excuse me?”

“He and Grant ran into each other at some sort of networking event a few months ago. He's going to be helping with the campaign.”

Allie opened her mouth, but nothing came out except jagged air. Her sister couldn't be serious.

Susannah read something into her silence and got even more defensive. “He'll be a great asset with his communications and marketing experience, and it'll all be behind the scenes . . .”

Allie could name many other skills Derek possessed that were more often associated with politicians.

“ . . . this really isn't about you, Allie.”

She was glad she'd missed the first half of her sister's sentence, since she suspected it might have tipped her over the edge. Not about her? She would stake what little she had left that this was about her somehow. Derek didn't so much as put on his pants in the morning without an ulterior motive.

“You know what, Susannah? Since you clearly know him better than I do, do whatever you like. But when it all goes bad, you can't claim that you had no idea what kind of snake you and Grant were climbing into bed with.”

Her sister's outraged gasp was the last thing Allie heard before she pitched her phone across the room, where it struck the wall with a satisfying crack.

* * *

J
ackson looked up as a loud snap resounded just above his
head. Either the person in the room next door had hurled something at the wall or the building was about to come down. If it was the first, he could sympathize. If the second, it was probably too late to save himself, so no point in moving now.

Stretching his legs out along his bed, he pushed his laptop off his knees and onto the comforter beside him. He didn't know why he did it to himself. Between the business pages lauding Evans's company reaching a new share price high and the society pages featuring him and Nicole at some glitzy charity gala presenting a big check to the cause du jour, it was enough to give a guy an ulcer.

Especially when the check was only good because of money that should be his.

He picked up one of the cheat's guides and attempted to read a few pages on Tolkien's villains but threw the book aside after a few minutes when orcs, trolls, bolgs, goblins, and a myriad of other types of badness all merged together into one large puddle of evil. The guy'd clearly had too much time on his hands.

Folding his hands behind his head, Jackson stared at the ceiling and pondered the following day. He had to come up with a plan to keep Allison off his back. Or, at the very least, buy him more time.

It would have to be something close to reality too, since even this middle-of-nowhere country had access to Google so he'd almost inevitably get busted if he tried to manipulate the truth too much.

Rolling over onto his stomach, he typed his name into the search engine to see what the current top results were. Even after six months, he couldn't help but wince as the familiar headlines appeared on the screen.
SILICON VALLEY DARLING TUMBLES FROM FAVOR.
INVESTORS LOSE BIG ON XAVIER FAILURE.

It wasn't the ones with plenty of money to throw around who haunted him. It was the people who had trusted him with their children's college funds or their retirement savings. They were the ones he would do everything in his power to repay. He never would have taken their money if he'd thought for one second they wouldn't get it back tenfold. But no, he'd been too busy dining out on his own PR to recognize betrayal when it lived under his own roof.

He was clearly going to have to tell her he'd experienced some “business difficulties” in case she Googled him, but how much was going to be required beyond that? Letting her in on the fact that Louis was his uncle? That the old man was Jackson's only chance at getting back on his feet again? That he would spend now until Christmas dressed up in as many stupid costumes she could send his way for a chance to try and right the many wrongs he'd left half a world away?

As if triggered by something divine, Skype started trilling at him. He checked his significantly reduced list of contacts and hit the button to take the call. After a few seconds, his niece's gap-toothed smile appeared on the screen.