Текст книги "Off the Record"

Автор книги: K. A. Linde

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Brady raised his eyebrows, but did as he was told. It was Liz’s favorite chair in the whole building, and after she was finished with Brady, she was never giving it back to Hayden. The chair was oversize and sturdy, with a rounded cushion and big wooden armrests.

Liz climbed on top and straddled him. He watched her with a big, self-satisfied grin on his face, as though this had all been his idea. She lowered herself down onto him and started working her way up to his pace. She leaned forward and whispered into his ear, “Now I’m fucking you.”

Brady’s hands slapped down onto her ass as soon as the words fell from her lips, and she cried out in surprise. He grasped her ass in his hands until she could feel him leaving indents in her skin, and then forced her down on him again and again.

With him guiding her movements, they moved faster than she could have on her own, and soon they were both breathless from exertion. He would lift her up and then force her down over and over again, until all she could hear over their heavy breaths was the smacking of their bodies colliding.

“Baby,” he murmured, driving her down harder once more, “I’m still the one fucking you.”

Liz threw her head back with a smile. Of course he was. And she didn’t want him to stop either.

“And I’m going to be the only one fucking you.” He accented his words with an ever-increasing tempo.

“God yes,” Liz groaned. She could never disagree with him. Her breasts were bouncing up and down in front of his face as she rocked up and down on top of him. She felt a second orgasm getting ready to tear through her body, and she gritted her teeth and leaned over into his shoulder.

“Baby,” he growled. She already knew what he was about to say.

“Me too,” she panted.

And then they both let go. Liz felt her body sail away as she closed her eyes and entered a state of euphoria.

Brady wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in close. She dropped her head to his shoulder and let out a contented sigh. It was nice to be in his arms, lost in their own world.

They sat like that together until Liz felt herself drifting off. She righted herself, kissed his lips, and then moved off of him. She hated the absence of his body near hers, but there was plenty more time for that tonight, and as many more nights as they could have together.

After they both put their clothes back on and took trips to the bathroom, Liz went to the trouble of locating the papers she had been working on. She wanted them to be there for her when she actually had a chance to get back to them again. With the way Brady was looking at her, it likely wasn’t going to be tonight.

Brady leaned over her shoulder and kissed his way up her neck. Liz giggled and rested back into him. His arms moved around her body and wrapped her up. “Is this the article you were so desperate to work on?”

“Something I’m working on for next week,” she murmured, lost in his kisses again.

“Comparing campaign platforms and student government?” he asked, reading over her shoulder. His voice had changed slightly. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it sounded like campaign mode. She sure hoped he wasn’t offended by what she wrote. He normally liked when she wrote controversial material, because at least he knew it was honest.

“Yeah. I thought it was a great way to engage the campus,” she told him. She didn’t mention that it was Hayden’s idea. She had never brought Hayden up before in their conversations. She hadn’t really thought about it until now.

“Hmm. Mind if I look at it?” he asked, scooping the papers off of the desk and releasing her.

She had printed what she had written earlier so that she could go through and see what she was missing. She caught more errors that way. “It’s not a finished product or anything. It’s all jumbled, still needs a lot of work. Don’t judge me on the disjointed mess that is the beginning of my first draft,” she said hastily.

He smiled and started thumbing through the papers, skimming some parts, and reading other lines word for word. She didn’t want to be rude and read over his shoulder or anything, but she was anxious about what he thought. She wanted to know which parts he was reading more carefully than others.

There wasn’t really all that much specifically mentioned about him. She usually wrote articles about individual politicians, but this one was different. She was already nervous about it. She hoped he liked it.

“Hmm…” he murmured as he flipped to the last page.

“Hmm?” she questioned, dying to know what he was thinking.

“This is good,” he said, finally finishing. “I see what you mean about disjointed, but still the writing is good.”

Liz blushed. “Thanks.”

“I just…I have a suggestion, if you’re interested,” he said diplomatically.

“Oh?” she asked. This was different. Not that Brady wasn’t interested in her work. He read all of her articles, and sometimes they discussed them. Nothing too serious. They steered clear of openly discussing politics together.

“Well, I like the idea of comparing platforms to something students can relate to. Youth is the hardest demographic to access. It’s difficult to get them motivated or interested in politics, because everyone is busy partying. It’s not that that’s a bad thing for their age, but there is something outside of college that they’re going to have to enter in four years. Some people call it the real world,” he said with a shrug. Liz chuckled.

“A lot of students have this idea that the real world sucks and inside the four walls of this institution they’re safe, but there are things directly affecting them in the real world. And if they don’t take part by voting or campaigning or speaking to their congressman,” Brady said, gesturing to himself, “then how can we know how to help them in the future? People thirty to forty years older than this generation are deciding the future, because they vote. If all the students participated, that could change.”

Liz smiled. She loved this stuff. She had always felt very strongly about youth participation in the elections. It was part of the reason she had become so active in the paper to begin with.

“You’re preaching to the choir,” she said.

“Of course I am,” Brady said. “So what I’m saying is that students aren’t actually interested in student government.”

Liz narrowed her eyes. “The student government elections on campus are huge. Last semester campus was overrun with campaigns. Everyone was convincing people to vote. I think it’s a perfect analogy.” Plus, Hayden usually had a sixth sense for what people found interesting. He was a natural talent. She trusted his judgment.

“I believe you,” he said, holding his hands up as if he wasn’t trying to start an argument. “However, I think people might care more if you related it to something like basketball.”

“Oh dear lord,” she said rolling her eyes. “One of my tennis instructors keeps bringing up you playing basketball.”

“You play tennis?” he asked with a smile.

“Yeah. Not that often, though.”

“I love tennis,” he told her.

“Maybe we could play together sometime!” Then she remembered; they couldn’t be seen in public. Her face fell with disappointment. It would have been fun.

Brady leveled her with a look that said the same thing she was already thinking and moved on.

“I’m just saying that this is a basketball school. And think about it like this,” he said, warming to his pitch. “Everyone here likes basketball, but not everyone can play. We want to win. We want to make our school look good. So we recruit great players to represent our school, like voting for representatives in politics. We all have a common goal, and we help achieve that goal through various means—participation at games, donating money, tutoring players to help keep them academically eligible, etc. We’re all working toward the common good here, and if students took an interest in the game, in this case politics, and helped us achieve our mutual goals, then we might all come out on top.”

He had a damn good point. She had never really thought about it like that. She knew that if she wrote that article, though, she would have to start over. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would take a while.

“I see your point. It would make a great article,” she said. She was sure of it. She just had to decide whether or not that was her article. The students would probably love it…

“Well, good,” he said, tossing the papers back on the desk. “That’s my suggestion. I would have been interested in it when I was in college.”

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back into him.

“Are you finished lecturing me?” she teased.

“Baby, not even close,” he said, kissing her slowly and demandingly, until all the tension from their conversation melted from her shoulders. “I think we should go now.”

“Yeah. Like right now.” She grabbed her bag quickly and followed him out of the building.

Chapter 18
BLACK & WHITE

Her article ran the week of the Fourth of July, with only a couple weeks left before the end of the summer semester. Students were packing their bags for the long holiday, but that article still drove a high volume of readers, especially for the summer. The website went crazy with it, and Hayden called to congratulate her. Despite being so busy up in D.C., he had still been calling her more frequently, sometimes to talk about the paper, but more recently just to chat. She didn’t know whether it was because of the article she was writing, or because her planned visit was fast approaching.

Still, it was nice to get positive feedback about her work. She couldn’t wait to get this paper back from her professor. She thought it was the one that would be the tipping point for her grade.

Brady was going away with his family for the Fourth of July holiday, and she wouldn’t get to see him at all this weekend. Every year the Maxwells went to Hilton Head on the South Carolina coast after the Fourth of July rallies and events that were mandated for them to attend.

The one Brady had asked her to go to was in the early afternoon in downtown Raleigh just off the parade route. He had been extra busy ever since their rendezvous in the newspaper office. The Fourth was a heyday of activity for Brady and his father, who was in North Carolina for the long weekend. He wasn’t up for reelection this cycle, but he was there to support Brady. It made them look good having a solid family unit, especially since Brady wasn’t married. Liz cringed at the thought.

Finding parking in the middle of the afternoon on the Fourth of July was pretty much the worst experience of her life. It was blistering hot, the hottest day of the year. The air-conditioning in her car wasn’t used to handling such extreme temperatures and was having spurts of dysfunction. Luckily, she had opted for white-cuffed shorts and a slouchy red-and-white tank instead of her skinnies. She was just thankful that she had on sandals rather than heels, because by the time she found parking, she had to trek more than a mile to the rally area. She was hot and sweaty when she finally arrived.

The biggest relief was that if she was going to see Brady at all, it wouldn’t be until after the event was over. Her hair was already swept up into a high ponytail off of her neck, but she didn’t want to think about what her makeup looked like. Maybe she would have time to fix herself up.

Liz entered the park from the southernmost entrance and already found the crowd closing in. Food trucks and various activities for children lined the sidewalks. Ponies tramped in a circle with excited kids on their backs. Local high schools and Scout troops were selling American flags and red-white-and-blue headbands. She could hear a marching band in the distance and the sound of laughter and festivity all around her. She couldn’t stop smiling as she walked past a group of people carving up a watermelon. The atmosphere was contagious.

She walked to the center of the park where a stage had been constructed. A band was playing, and people had set up foldout chairs and blankets to cover the lawn in front of the stage. The local band Delta Rae was set as the concert for the evening before the fireworks display.

Liz let her eyes roam the area around the stage for where she thought the Maxwell family might be. She had yet to see the illustrious Savannah, and Brady’s younger brother, Clay, was supposed to be in town today too. Their father kept his family so under wraps; she still hadn’t been able to dig up much more than elementary school pictures of his siblings. And when she had last tried to look, she had felt creepy, as if she actually was stalking him.

As Liz walked the perimeter, she took a bunch of shots of the festivities. She could picture-catalog her activity on site. Students seemed to like that kind of thing. She slid her phone into her back pocket as she approached the stage. A gate was set up so that no one other than staff and guests could wander backstage. Liz wished she had requested a press pass, and then she could have roamed around freely.

She avoided the security guard, found a stretch of unobscured fence, and leaned over the railing to see whether she could see anything. It wasn’t exactly stealthy, but she was just curious. What she saw made her grind her teeth.

Lush red hair swished over Calleigh’s shoulder as she laughed at something a guy said in front of her. She held a microphone loosely in her hand, but she didn’t seem as if she was working at the moment. Liz hadn’t been following her work too closely, but she knew that Calleigh was working in the political division of the paper. She didn’t have her own column or anything yet, which probably explained why she was in Raleigh for the Fourth instead of Charlotte. Whoever was working above her probably sent her here because they didn’t want to make the drive. Or at least that was Liz’s guess.

Ever since that incident with Hayden at the end of the spring semester, she’d had a negative reaction to Calleigh. It was strange, considering she had always looked up to her for her work at the paper. Still, she couldn’t get over the feeling that Calleigh had snubbed her on purpose. It felt personal.

Calleigh glanced off in Liz’s direction, and Liz snapped her head back over the fence. She hoped Calleigh hadn’t seen her, but she was pretty sure she had. This was not what she needed.

“Liz!” Calleigh called. Liz sighed and turned back to look over the fence. Calleigh was walking toward her with a smile on her face. She was in professional attire, with a white flouncy blouse tucked into a red pencil skirt and heels that kept sinking into the soft ground.

“Hey, Calleigh,” Liz said.

“Surprise seeing you here! I thought you would be in Chapel Hill, or home for the summer,” she said, standing against the fence.

“I stayed in Chapel Hill. I’m taking a class and writing my own column at the paper, but I came to town for the rally,” Liz told her.

“How nice! I was talking to Hayden the other day and he said someone was covering the information, but he never mentioned it was you,” she said with a big bright smile, setting her manicured hand down on the railing.

Liz had talked to Hayden only yesterday, and he hadn’t mentioned speaking with Calleigh. Though, why would he? It was none of Liz’s business, but she was damn curious as to why he was still talking to Calleigh, when he had said that it was over between them.

“Nice. I’m sure he’s so busy with his internship, it just slipped his mind. I’ll ask him when I go visit,” Liz said, trying not to bat an eyelash or crack a smile.

“Oh, you’re going to D.C.?” Calleigh asked, her fingers curling over the fence.

“Yeah, in a couple of weeks.”

“Interesting.”

“Ma’am,” a security guard called, walking over to them, “you’re going to have to step away from the fence.”

“Oh, she’s with me,” Calleigh said, flashing her press badge.

“Does she have one of those?” he asked.

“I have hers in my bag,” Calleigh said. She gestured to the cameraman standing next to her. Calleigh walked over to her bag and produced a second press pass swinging on a lanyard.

“Make sure she wears it next time,” he grumbled. “Now, move quickly. We have to clear the area.”

“Yes, sir,” Calleigh said sweetly. She handed Liz her extra pass.

“Thanks.” Liz slipped the badge around her neck. “That was fortunate,” she said as she walked to the other side of the fence.

“Yeah. We always get one extra just in case they throw someone else on the case or we need an additional photographer,” she said with a shrug. “You can keep it.”

Liz didn’t know why she followed Calleigh. She didn’t want to be near the woman, but she had given her the pass. It would be rude to walk away now. Also, deep down she knew that this put her one step closer to Brady.

“If they’re clearing the area, that must mean the Maxwell family has arrived,” Calleigh said, stalking over to her cameraman.

Liz smiled. Brady.

“I can’t wait to see Brady’s speech. Every time he opens his mouth…” Calleigh said. “Well, he’s hot.”

Liz almost laughed. For a long time she would have never thought that anyone in his or her right mind would turn down Calleigh Hollingsworth, let alone pick Liz over Calleigh. But now, as Calleigh talked about Brady like that, Liz knew that Calleigh stood no chance next to her. It was a damn good feeling.

“Don’t you think so?” Calleigh asked.

“Up until he opens his mouth,” Liz told her with a condescending smile.

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to agree with him to appreciate his good looks. He was just rated North Carolina’s most eligible bachelor,” she told Liz.

She wasn’t aware of that, but she also wasn’t surprised. He was gorgeous, ambitious, driven. Liz tried not to think too much about it. It was only a matter of time before women started trying harder to get his attention. And she didn’t want his attention diverted anywhere else.

“I’m sure someone will scoop him up soon,” Liz said wistfully.

“I can’t wait to find out who it is.” Calleigh raised her eyebrows at Liz. Calleigh seemed so confident all the time, as if she half expected Brady to find her in the crowd and start making out with her.

Before Liz had to reply, she heard a commotion behind her. She turned back to the gate she had entered, saw it open, and a pair of security guards in slick black suits walked through. The press flocked forward, pressing inward as Brady’s family filed into a private holding space.

Liz followed Calleigh through the crowd as Brady’s father walked past her. He looked dignified in a black suit, with salt and pepper sprinkled in his hair. Brady was going to age well. The smile left her face at the thought. She couldn’t think like that. Senator Maxwell’s wife was at his side, but Liz couldn’t make out much more than a short bob of blond hair before they disappeared.

Someone shoved Liz out of the way and she missed whoever walked past after them, but found a space to look through a second later. And there was Savannah Maxwell—the girl Brady had been with at the town hall meeting in Carrboro. She was dressed professional chic, in straight black pants, a red fitted tank, and a blue blazer with white buttons. Her dark hair fell stick straight to her shoulders. She looked a lot like a feminine version of Brady.

Then he appeared and Liz’s breath caught. There was no way Brady could see her over the crowd of reporters, and he wasn’t expecting her to be backstage. It was like witnessing a private moment.

He was all business today. He wore a stern expression, and his campaign mask was in place. His black suit was crisp and tailored to his build. She could tell that he was worried about something even from the distance. She didn’t know how. Had she really been spending that much time with him that she could tell something like that? Or was she making it up?

Brady kept walking past the sea of reporters and into the holding room without looking up once. Liz was disappointed she didn’t get to see more of his handsome face, but he had to work today. She could understand that.

A few minutes later, the elder Brady Maxwell was announced, and he walked onstage. His speech was as customary as it went for him. Liz hadn’t looked through most of his work, but she knew the gist of his campaign. He ran on family values. He always had. It won hearts very easily. Add his personal charisma onstage and he was a guaranteed shoo-in each time he ran for election.

He ended his speech, which had been light and generally emphasized his son’s campaign efforts. They wouldn’t want to talk policy on a day like today, when everyone was having such a good time. They thanked everyone for coming out and encouraged them to do their civic duty by registering to vote and going to the polls in August for the primary, and November for the general election. The crowd cheered as he thanked them and then walked offstage.

Liz sighed when she heard Heather announce Brady, and she watched from her privileged vantage point as he walked onstage. Her eyes were glued to him, and she forgot that she was even standing next to Calleigh or that they were in public. All she saw was her man about to charm a crowd.

He started talking with that radiant energy that seemed to flow out of him whenever he started discussing something he cared about. He easily wove in a story about a Fourth of July celebration at the lake house when he was a kid that had all of the families in attendance laughing along. Liz’s cheeks colored at the thought of the lake house, and she wondered if he had picked it on purpose, knowing that she would be in the audience.

She listened as the story moved away from his childhood and on to a similar values speech as his father. He talked about wanting to raise children in a world where they could access the American Dream, and fighting for human rights. He related his speech to the battle that the country faced fighting for independence, and how the nation as a people grew and rebuilt from that foundation. He invoked the thoughts of the Founding Fathers and urged the crowd to listen to their testaments.

Liz found herself nodding along with him about halfway through and couldn’t seem to stop the longer he spoke. What was he doing to her? She didn’t agree with him. Not that she had always disagreed with everything he stood for. There were points she approved of in his policies, but giving the tax incentives to donors instead of funding education had irked her. Yet standing there on a historic holiday and listening to him pour out his heart to an audience moved her.

Brady wanted the country to work, and not many people she knew actually cared enough to pursue that. Not many people would give up everything to help get the country back on the right track. And he cared about that desperately. He wanted to be there to fight for the people who couldn’t fight for themselves and help those who needed the most help. She could feel his words that day as she never had felt them before. He wasn’t doing this for the money or to get bigger donors or even to be in the spotlight. He was doing it for Liz, for the people there today, and for every other person he could help. He was speaking to her of his sincerity, and she heard him loud and clear.

It felt as though the world had stopped all around her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. It felt as if it had all shifted. When had she stopped seeing the world in black and white? Where had all the gray crept up from? She was a journalist! She was a reporter! There was no gray in her world. There were the facts and that was all that mattered. Why was she suddenly seeing things that she had never seen before in the one person she had never thought she could accept gray from?

Liz’s heart beat harder in her chest at the realization, and she felt like crying. She had never wanted this. She had never wanted any of this. But it seemed that he had been right all along. When they had been dancing, Brady had pleaded with her to just get to know him. If she got to know him, then she could find out that knowing how he voted didn’t mean she could judge his character. The more she got to know Brady, the less his voting record seemed to matter. The more…he seemed to matter. Just him. All of him.

She wanted to reach out to him then, and at the same time run far, far away. What was she even feeling right now? Sick. She felt sick. Her world was tilting off balance, and she was afraid that she would never be able to regain her footing again.

“I, uh…suddenly don’t feel well,” Liz said, touching Calleigh’s arm, who was enraptured with Brady’s speech. “I’m going to go.”

“All right. Feel better,” Calleigh said, barely glancing at Liz as she rushed away from the press box.

Liz catapulted herself away from the crowds. She couldn’t be near crowds right now. She needed a minute to herself. She needed to breathe.

She walked around the press area to the side of a small building and breathed in and out as slowly as she could muster. Everything was crashing down on her all at once. Despite his politics and despite his voting record, Brady was still a good person. He made some choices she didn’t agree with, but that didn’t mean that he was a bad politician or greedy or selfish. It just meant he did what he had to do, that he had compromised in office to get what he wanted. Now she saw him for who he really was, and it was like the floodgates opened. Brady Maxwell was giving her a panic attack.

Liz hung her head forward, trying to block out the rest of the world that was going on around her. It was loud and she could still hear Brady, though he was muffled because the speakers were facing away from her.

“Ma’am, are you all right?” a man drawled, coming around the corner.

She glanced up at him. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Do you need me to get medical assistance?” he asked. His cheeks dimpled when he talked.

“Fine. Really. Just a bit claustrophobic,” she told him.

“I’m the opposite. Wide-open spaces kill me. So, I can understand. I usually just need to breathe and not think about it. I can get you some water if you want.”

“No, that’s all right,” she said, trying to do as he said. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe. The longer she stood there the easier it was to think about Brady.

“Thanks for checking on me,” Liz said.

He took the hint, nodded, and left. Liz felt better being alone and not having her panic attack in front of anyone. The only person she wanted to see was Brady, and the only person she shouldn’t see when she was like this was Brady. And yet she had to see him. She needed him to talk to him and let him know about her realization regarding his career. In that moment, it felt like if she didn’t get it out now…then maybe she never would.

Liz heard the crowd cheer, announcing the end of his speech, and knew that she was going to have only a short window in which she could see Brady. So she had to make up her mind right then and there.

When the applause died down, Liz moved into the crowd that was waiting to greet the politicians. They appeared together, shaking hands and kissing babies, as per usual. The press might get a few moments with them before they left, but Liz wasn’t going to wait that long. She wanted to see him. She needed to see him.

He found her in the crowd almost immediately. He shook her hand with his campaign smile intact and said, “Pleasure to meet you. I hope I can win your vote.”

“I enjoyed your speech very much, Senator,” she replied. “I’d love to talk with you about it some more. I do have some questions, though I’d hate to take up all of your time.” She was playing a risky game if anyone picked up on what she was saying.

“I’d be interested in discussing it with you after?” he said, like he was offering him the opportunity to speak with him about political matters.

“I would appreciate you taking the time to do that,” she said, smiling brightly.

He spent the next twenty or thirty minutes smiling and taking pictures before the crowd started to thin. His father announced that he had another engagement and quickly extracted himself. “Brady, five minutes,” he called to his son.

“Looks as if I have a couple minutes,” he said to Liz. She smiled as he walked her far enough away from the crowd that their voices wouldn’t carry. She could tell that he was anxious that they were together in public. She didn’t blame him. She was antsy, but she tried hard not to show it.

“What are you doing?” Brady demanded as soon as they were out of earshot.

“I had to talk to you,” she said, wanting to reach out and touch him but knowing better.

“This isn’t a good idea,” he said simply. Compared to the warmth he was showing onstage and before his audience, to her he seemed frigid. She didn’t know what that was about.

“I just…liked your speech. I…”

“Can we talk about this later? Somewhere not public?” he asked frostily.

“Um…all right.” She wanted nothing more than to wash away whatever was holding him back. He seemed so distant. She had thought they had connected during his speech, even if it hadn’t been directly for her. It had felt as if it was for her. This couldn’t just be because they were in public. He wasn’t like this with her. Even that one time he had given her cold eyes at the town hall, he had apologized for being an ass and hadn’t done it since. “What’s wrong?” she couldn’t help asking.

“What do you mean?”

“Brady…what’s wrong?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“Why do you think something is wrong?” He checked his watch as if he was bored with her. Where was the man who had only a week and a half ago told her he could never be bored with her?

“I know you too well.”

“You put out your article,” he stated, as if that explained it.

“This is about my article?” she asked, confused. “I thought you didn’t care what I wrote?”

“That’s just it. I don’t give a shit what you write about. I’ve always liked that you wrote whatever the hell you wanted and didn’t back down. But if you didn’t like my suggestion for your paper, why did you agree with me?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly agree with it,” she said, backtracking. Liz hadn’t been able to make up her mind about the article, so she had sat down and written both versions. The one about basketball was sitting on her computer, waiting to be fed into the printer. But it felt wrong taking the idea that Hayden had and then using Brady’s example. She had put Brady’s take on the back burner and gone with her gut. Standing in front of Brady now, she was doubting her own decision.