Читать книгу The Marriage Campaign - Karen Templeton - Страница 7

Her head now pounding, Blythe stared at Wes’s outstretched hand, momentarily considering refusing to let him help her up. Except grace had never been her strong suit in the best of circumstances; in four inches of slippery slop she’d probably look like a drunken giraffe.

“You okay?” Wes said, as he hauled her to her feet.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she grumbled, swatting her backside to dislodge the worst of the snow clumps. “Although my dignity will never live this down.”

“Hey. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of my dignity in years. I’ve learned to live without it.”

Still swatting, Blythe slid her gaze to his, clearly amused behind the curtain of falling snow, and damn if her insides didn’t do a tiny ba-dump. Then she sighed. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.” He lifted his elbow. And one eyebrow. Reluctantly—oh so reluctantly—she accepted. Despite the very likely possibility she’d go down again and take him with her. And, of course, the instant the thought zipped through, she slipped again. Man didn’t even falter. In fact, he easily gripped her waist, effectively bonding her to his ribs. Steady as a rock, this one.

“So I’m guessing you don’t hate me that much,” he said.

Not to mention perceptive.

She wobbled again. And swore again. And, yes, Wes chuckled again. As he caught her.

“Swear to God,” she gritted out, her head now feeling like the Riverdance people were practicing inside it, “I am not doing this on purpose.”

“Didn’t think you were. Since not even you could order this particular confluence of events.” When she frowned up at him, he shrugged. And gave off a very nice man-scent that might have rendered a lesser woman addle-brained. “The snow. Those boots. My being here to keep you from breaking your neck.”

“Or my ass,” she muttered, and he grinned.

“That, too.” As they came to a less snowy spot, he relaxed his hold. “Are you okay?”

Truth be told, her bum was smarting a bit. Not a whole lot of padding back there. Or anywhere else. At least that diverted her attention from her head. Sort of. “I’ll live,” she said as they reached the hotel’s portico-covered driveway, where she wriggled out of his grasp. “I don’t dislike you, Wes. Really. I just … I’m just tired and hungry and have a wicked headache. That’s all.”

The glass doors parted at their approach, but he touched her arm, holding her back. The dimples had taken a hike, praise be. But those eyes …

Oh, dear Lord, as April would say.

Ever since her divorce, Blythe had eschewed messing around. By choice. A choice she’d found, to both her surprise and immense relief, to be incredibly freeing to a woman who’d always thought of her libido as a pet to be cosseted and indulged. Within reason, anyway. But she’d come far closer than she’d realized to being a slave to that pet, resulting in some extremely poor choices along the way. So the “cleansing” period had finally allowed Blythe to begin to see who she really was, what she really needed.

And Wes Phillips’s intense green gaze was not on that list.

“I’m sorry your head hurts—” he said gently.

Or his mouth.

“—but something tells me that look on your face is about more than your aching head. Unless I’m the one making your head hurt?”

Now that you mention it …

Even though her skull wasn’t happy about it, Blythe laughed, ignoring the ping-ping-ping of neglected hormones perking up assorted places that hadn’t been perky in quite a while.

“Only partly,” she said, and he crossed his arms.

“Partly? Oh. Meaning you don’t like my policies, I take it.”

Blythe blew out a breath. “This isn’t my district. I have no idea what your policies are.” Liar, liar … “And I really don’t feel up to talking, if you don’t mind. At least not until I get some food in my stomach.”

“Of course, I … Never mind. Come on.”

Wes let her go through the automatic doors ahead of him, and the dry, warm air in the lobby enveloped her like a grandmother’s hug—not her grandmother, but somebody’s—as she joined Mel, April and the kids, clustered in front of the registration desk. Which was littered with every Valentine’s tchotchke ever invented. Great.

“See you later?” Wes said shortly afterward, key card in hand. “In the restaurant?” When she frowned, that eyebrow lifted again. As well as the corners of that mouth. “You said you needed to eat?”

Blythe’s eyes cut to the others, who were too busy yakking among themselves to witness the little exchange, thank God. “Depends on what Mel got at the store,” she said. “Truthfully, all I want is to stretch out in a dark, quiet room until this blasted headache goes away.”

His eyes twinkled. “Quiet? With that group?”

“If the gods are kind, they’ll all congregate in the other room and leave me in peace.”

“Well, if you change your mind—”

“Not likely,” Blythe said as an infant’s wail pierced her cousins’ chatter, and Wes gave her something like a little bow.

“Have a good night, then,” he and his dimples said. Then he ushered his son away, her gaze trailing after them like a confused, dumb puppy.

The puppy hauled back by the scruff of its neck, Blythe was about to break up the jabberfest when she noticed the bedraggled young father clutching the counter in front of the frowning clerk madly clicking her computer keys. Beside him, two young children clung like possums to his even more bedraggled wife, who was jiggling a wailing infant in her arms. Poor things.

“You guys ready to go up to the rooms?” Blythe said. “Don’t know about you, but I’m about to crash.”

“We figured we may as well hit the restaurant first,” Mel said. “Since it’s not as if we have luggage or anything.”

“But …” Blythe frowned at the grocery bags, still in Mel’s hands. “Didn’t you buy food?”

“Munchies, mainly. Although there is a rotisserie chicken in there—”

“Close enough,” Blythe said, grabbing the bags. “Give me a card, I’ll see you guys later—”

“I’m so sorry,” the clerk said to the little family, her words carrying across the lobby like she was wearing a mike, “but we just booked our last available rooms …”

April and Mel exchanged a blink-and-you’d-miss-it glance—which Blythe didn’t—before April marched back to the clerk. “Give ’em one of our rooms. We gals can all bunk together. Right?”

So close. And yet, so far, Blythe thought, even as her hurting head threw a hissy fit. Then she looked again at the woman and her kids, and her heart kicked her throbbing head to the curb.

“Of course!” she said brightly. “Not like we all haven’t shared a room before.” If many, many years ago.

“Are you sure?” the wife said, shifting the bawling babe in her arms and managing to look miserable and grateful at the same time. “We wouldn’t want to put you out.”

“You’re not. At all.” Blythe smiled. “I swear.”

Tears in her eyes, the young mother shifted the baby to hug all three of them in turn, and her cousins trooped to the restaurant and Blythe up to their room, where, for the next hour, she consoled herself with rotisserie chicken, potato salad and the eye-roll-worthy shenanigans of a bunch of surgically enhanced TV housewives whose lives were far more drama-ridden than hers.

Now, in any case. And considering what she’d gone through to get to this point, her hormones could just go hang themselves.

The next morning, Blythe wrenched open her eyes to total darkness, save for the pale gray chink in the closed draperies. As the others slept, she cautiously eased out of bed, cracking open the drapes enough to see the snow already melting, even in the weak winter sun. Hallelujah.

Then she caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser and grimaced. Fortunately her sweater and jeans were wear-again-worthy, even if she had to fend off the ickies of not being able to change her undies before facing the public again. But her hair … eesh. She could, however, wash up and brush her teeth—bless her hide, Mel had bought them all toothbrushes and a few essential toiletries—even if the only makeup she had in her purse was lipgloss.

Meaning, even cleaned up and redressed she looked like a vampire who hadn’t had a good feed in a while. Or access to any decent hair care products, she mused as she doused her head with water from the spigot, then yanked a comb through her cropped hair until it looked … not horrible. With any luck, though—she clicked the door shut behind her and headed down the carpeted hall—she’d be the first one in the restaurant, and nobody would see her. Because the way her stomach was growling, Pringles and grapes weren’t going to cut it. Especially when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, and the scents of bacon and coffee and pancakes hauled her toward the restaurant’s entrance like those little aliens did to Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters.

Blythe stood inside, breathing deeply for a moment until the hostess told her to sit anywhere she liked, and she rounded a huge potted plant to see that Wes and Jack had apparently beaten her by several minutes. Well, hell. She froze, watching, as the boy chattered away, his father leaning over his plate as he ate—bacon and eggs, Blythe saw—clearly intent on whatever Jack was saying. Occasionally, Wes would chuckle, pushing at those dimples, and the adoring expression on his son’s face twisted Blythe inside out.

Then some woman barged in on the scene, interrupting Jack in the middle of a sentence to introduce herself to his father, and Blythe watched the kid’s face collapse. True, apology flickered across Wes’s features as he glanced at his son before standing to graciously acknowledge the woman, briefly introduce her to Jack, then listen as intently to her as he had a moment earlier to his child. Also true was the conflict evident in Wes’s body language, that despite his graciousness he wasn’t happy about having his private time with his son interrupted. But far worse, from her perspective, was the hurt and annoyance bowing Jack’s slender shoulders as he frowned at his pancakes, shredding rather than eating them.

“Really, sit anywhere at all,” the hostess said as she breezed past, and Blythe realized with a rush of heat to her face that she’d been staring.

“Right,” she said, watching Wes hand the woman a card, along with a warm smile and a firm handshake before sending her on her way—

“Blythe!” Jack boomed. “Over here!”

So much for slipping into a booth out of their sight. But the way the child’s face lit up … how could she say no? Although naturally they were sitting right next to a window, through which streamed that particularly bright, revealing, après-snowfall light.

Then again, maybe her vampire aura would scare away other potential intruders so Jack and Wes could finish their breakfast in peace.

Gamely, Blythe trekked over, clutching her purse to her empty middle. Once again seated and buttering a piece of toast, Wes looked up, tried—unsuccessfully—not to start, then smiled. He, of course, looked fabulous, in that sexy, beard-hazed way of a gorgeous man right out of bed. So unfair.

“Hey, there,” he said, all gruff-voiced and such. “Join us?”

“I don’t want to interrupt.” When the merest suggestion of a frown marred that handsome brow, she added, “You seemed … involved.”

“She was a constituent,” Wes said. “You’re a friend. So sit,” he said, waving his toast toward the other side of the booth as Blythe thought, Friend? Really? Then he smiled, the picture of solicitude. “How’s your head?”

She sat beside Jack, who’d skootched over and was now grinning at her around an enormous bite of his pancakes, his too-long hair like corn silk in the silvery light. “Okay, actually.”

Actually, she hadn’t even noticed. The others, as worn out as Blythe from the events of the day, had all conked out fairly early, and Blythe had slept like a freaking rock. But Wes was frowning at her like she was trying to keep her game face on after being given a month to live.

“You sure?”

The waitress came, filled her coffee cup, handed her a menu. Blythe nearly smacked the poor kid with it in her eagerness to get coffee to her lips. Once she’d downed sufficient caffeine to hopefully put some color in her cheeks, she let her gaze flick to Wes. Which definitely put color in her cheeks. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m a little washed out without makeup. But thanks for asking.”

She waved the waitress back over, ordered a breakfast worthy of a lumberjack, then turned aside to grin at Jack, exercising every ounce of willpower she possessed not to take her coffee spoon to his pancakes. Almost as much willpower as it was taking not to make goo-goo eyes at his father. Old habits dying hard and all that. She bumped shoulders with Jack. “Those look pretty good.”

“They’re okay. Want a bite?”

“No, you go ahead,” she said, resting her chin in her hand. “I’ll wait for my own food.”

“Quinn awake yet?”

“She wasn’t when I left, but she could be now.” A light-bulb blinked on. “You want me to call her?” And tell them to get their booties down here before I lose what little sanity I have left?

“Oh, don’t do that,” Wes said with a pointed look at his son. “You can see Quinn later. At home.” Then to Blythe, obligating her to look at him. “State Trooper was here earlier, said the roads are clear. We can leave any time.”

“Thank goodness for that. I need to get back to D.C. to work on a presentation for tomorrow morning.”

“Although the trooper did say it was a good thing we didn’t try driving last night. Visibility was horrendous. And road conditions …” He shook his head. “Accidents all over the place.”

“No one was hurt, I hope.”

“No. But not for lack of trying.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Blythe saw the young family file in, looking a lot more mellow than they had the night before. And right behind them, her cousins, none of whom looked like something the cat had dragged in. Mel had this whole mussed-bangs thing going on, and April was pink and pretty as usual with her peachy blond hair pulled back in a headband. And Quinn was ten, so there you were.

And before Blythe realized what was happening—or could have done anything about it—Jack asked if he could go sit with the others, and Wes said, “Sure,” right as the waitress brought her food.

Well, hell.

Catching the momentary Oh, crap look in Blythe’s eyes when Jack left, Wes was half tempted to let her off the hook, tell her to go join her cousins. Except fascination trumped logic, apparently, as he found himself unwilling to forgo more one-on-one time with her. Especially since he’d been mulling over something for a while now, anyway. So maybe this was fate tossing opportunity into his lap.

For the next few seconds, however, Wes contented himself with watching Blythe tuck into her huge breakfast, her pale lashes and brows gleaming in the harsh white light. Her skin was luminous, flawless, her prickly attitude so much at odds with what he now saw as her almost ethereal beauty—one she habitually obliterated with more makeup than she needed, in his opinion. A mask, he suspected, in more ways than one.

But there was an honesty and forthrightness to the prickliness he found refreshing. Nor did he miss her easy relationship with Jack—witnessing their short exchange earlier had made warmth curl inside his chest. It was also a nice change to be around someone who didn’t want anything from him. Or so Wes assumed. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips, watching Blythe attack her breakfast.

“You’re really going to eat all that?”

“I really am,” she said, dumping an ocean’s worth of syrup over her pancakes before forking in a huge bite. “As you may have noticed, I’m not exactly petite. Yogurt and juice is not going to cut it.”

And maybe food was the antidote to the prickliness. Feeling a tug at his mouth, he said, “I have a favor to ask you.”

Questioning eyes briefly met his. “Oh?”

“Not so much a favor, I suppose, as a job.”

A grin bloomed and his heart knocked. “A job? Keep talking.”

“It’s not a huge project, but … Jack’s room needs some serious updating. And I’ve seen your work on your website. So—”

“Really? You checked me out?”

Wes felt his cheeks warm. “My mother did, actually. At my suggestion, though. Since Mom’s idea of redecorating is changing the drapes and carpeting for a fresh version of what’s already there.” Blythe laughed and his heart knocked again. “So would you be interested?”

“Absolutely. I love doing kids’ rooms.”

“Good,” Wes said on a relieved sigh. “Decorating was Kym’s thing, not mine. Even if I had the time. But I think the kid’s probably ready to ditch the race car theme his mom did for him when he was six.”

“Let me guess—complete with race car bed?”

“You got it. I have no idea what he wants, though.”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s between Jack and me.” Another, slyer grin slid across her face. Sly, and teasing, and sexy, even if Wes doubted that the sexy part was intentional. And sexy wasn’t quite the right word. Intense? That was closer. He guessed she was the kind of person who fully lived in the moment, relishing it for its own sake. “I assume I have carte blanche to do anything he wants?”

“Short of papering his room with pics of naked women, yes.”

This time her laugh was loud enough to make people turn their heads. “I’ll take that under advisement.” Then her brow knotted. “I’m pretty booked up through March, though—will that be a problem?”

“The kid’s already waited a year, I’m sure he can hang on for another six weeks.”

She nodded, then pushed her eggs around her plate for a moment before asking, “Does that happen a lot? People coming up to you out of the blue?”

Wondering what brought on the subject switch, Wes said, “Not everyone recognizes me, of course. But yeah. Being accosted is part of the job description. I don’t mind,” he said to her slight frown. “That’s why I did this, after all. To listen. And help, when I can. Although my staff handles most of the actual problem-solving. I sure as hell couldn’t do it all myself.”

Laughter from her cousins’ table momentarily snagged her attention; she slugged back half her orange juice, then met his gaze again. “And Jack … is he okay with sharing you so much?”

Over the years, first with his law practice and then on the campaign trail, Wes had gotten pretty good at hearing what people weren’t fully saying. Meaning he immediately sensed more layers to Blythe’s question than a simple answer could address … even if he hadn’t asked himself the same question a hundred times since taking office. And in those layers he sensed both irritation and genuine concern.

Even so, annoyance spurted through him as well, that she’d ripped the bandage off a festering sore. And by rights, he should have changed the subject, re-covered the sore, not poked at it by saying, “You think I’m neglecting him.”

Color bloomed in her cheeks as she picked up her fruit cup, forking through it to spear a honeydew wedge. “Forget it, it’s really none of my business—”

“Don’t you dare backtrack,” Wes said, and her startled gaze shot to his. “Or think you have to spare my feelings. Believe me, I have the hide of a rhinoceros.” He snorted. “Makes it harder for people to take a chunk of it. Worse than that, though, are the kiss-ups, people more intent on telling me what they think I want to hear than what I need to hear.” He leaned forward, seeing something deep, deep inside those deep blue eyes that plunged right inside him and latched on tight. “So out with it.”

Blythe froze, the fruit cup suspended over her plate. Granted, she’d never been one to shy away from a challenge, but did she dare say what she was really thinking? And how could she do that without backing the man into a corner? And yet, for the child’s sake …

Carefully she set down the small glass dish, then lifted her eyes to his. “Fair warning, Wes—saying ‘out with it’ to me is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

“Somehow, I figured as much. So?”

She pushed out a sigh. “Neglect isn’t the right word. Trust me, I know from neglect. That would imply you’re deliberately ignoring him, which I know isn’t true—”

“But you think Jack sees it that way.”

After a moment, she nodded. “From what I’ve observed, and heard, when I’m around the kids …” The space between her brows puckered. “I think he sometimes feels like he has to fight for your attention. And that could …” She felt her pulse hammering. “It could lead to places you don’t want him to go.”

His own breakfast long since finished, Wes leaned back in the booth, his arms tightly crossed, as though to keep his annoyance from escaping.

“You asked,” she said gently.

On a released sigh, he unfolded his arms to prop his wrists on the table’s edge, looking out the window for a moment before meeting her gaze again.

“You know this for a fact.”

The ache in his voice, the fear … her heart cracked. “That it will happen? No, of course not. That it could? Absolutely.”

Their gazes tangled for a long moment. “Speaking from personal experience?”

“Partly,” she said after a moment. “And that’s all I’m going to say about that. I also have no intention of giving you advice, but from what I’ve seen … I thought you should know.”

“And you think I don’t?” Wes lobbed back, his voice low but his eyes screaming with guilt, with ambivalence. “That I’m so engrossed in this job I’m oblivious to my son’s pain?”

“No, Wes, of course not. But—”

“But, what?”

Her hand covered his before she even realized she was doing it. “Redoing his room won’t make up for your not being there.”

“And maybe that’s all I have.” He pushed out a rough breath, then seemed to realize they were touching. Slipping his hand out from under hers, he said, “I know this is far from ideal. Especially since this wasn’t how things were supposed to pan out. The plan was, if I won, that Jack’s mother would be there for him when I couldn’t be. The plan did not include some texting teenager slamming into her and Deanna on a wet road three weeks before an election I didn’t actually think I’d win.”

Then he schooled his features in that way men did when they didn’t want you to see the torture behind them. Too late, Blythe thought as Wes continued. “But I did win. And I’d made promises to those people who put me in office. Not to mention to my wife, who’d been my staunchest supporter through that campaign from hell. Promises I feel very strongly about, that …”

Breathing hard, he shook his head. “I’m between a rock and a hard place, Blythe. And I’m trying my damnedest to find a balance. Jack’s hardly fending for himself, with my parents living in the house. And when I’m in Washington I call him every morning to wake him up, Skype every evening before he goes to bed, if I can—”

Wes signaled to the waitress for the check, waving off Blythe’s noises about paying for her own breakfast. Check in hand, he stood and called to Jack, who was clearly reluctant to leave Quinn, then faced Blythe again.

“I’m making the best of an impossible situation, even though I know … I know it’s not enough.” He dug his wallet out of an inside pocket in his coat, tossed some bills on the table before punching his arms through the sleeves. “But what else can I do—?”

“Dad?” Jack came up behind him, his forehead crunched. “You okay?”

Wes turned to smile for his son. “I’m fine. But we need to get going, I’ve got a ton of reading to get through before I go back tonight.”

After they left, Blythe dumped her wadded up napkin on her plate and lowered her head to her hands, feeling her cousins’ puzzled gazes boring into her skull.

Yeah. The ride back to St. Mary’s should be really interesting.