Indecent Proposal (30 page)

“You hate me so much you’d bring down your son’s campaign?”

Patty’s eyes blazed. “I love my son so much that I would see that man dead before I allowed him to hurt Harrison’s campaign.”

“You’d have him killed?” Ryan cried, and Patty rolled her eyes.

“Good God, such theatrics. No, I was looking for him so I could pay him to keep his mouth shut.”

Ryan sagged so hard and so fast her ankle turned in her boot.

“Come, sit down before you fall over.”

All out of righteous fury, Ryan stepped to the chairs in front of Patty’s desk and sat. To her surprise, Patty sat in the chair beside her.

“You were right all those months ago—we are more similar in many ways than we’re different. I would do anything for my family.”

“Except hire a hit man,” she said, trying to make a joke.

Patty lifted an eyebrow as if it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

“Oh, you have to be kidding,” Ryan said, unsure of anything.

Patty smiled and crossed her legs at her trim ankles. “In all honesty, I’m glad you’re here,” she said, leaving Ryan wondering what exactly her mother-in-law was capable of. “Harrison won’t talk of losing this election, so you and I should probably come up with a contingency plan.”

“He’s not going to lose.”

Patty shot her a wry look. “Harrison is not here; neither is Wallace. No one will get offended by some honest conversation.”

Oh, that was hilarious coming from her. “I don’t want a contingency plan if he loses.”

Patty took a breath and eyed her carefully. “He will lose. Someday. He might win this one and lose the next. It’s your job to keep him focused. Moving forward. He can’t slip backward into the comfort of VetAid—”

Ryan stood up. “Stop. Right there. I’m not his campaign manager—”

“That’s right.” Patty stood up. “Campaign managers come and go. You are his wife. His partner.”

She shook her head. “Our marriage is not like yours.”

“Are you trying to allude that there is a greater depth of feeling between you and Harrison? I will have to remind you I was at your wedding ceremony. I read that contract.”

“No, I’m alluding to the fact that I have a life of my own. Plans. Things that I want.”

“Well, they’re hardly more important than the campaign, are they?”

At one time she might have agreed. Drunk on the team spirit and the sense that she was fighting for something good and right, she might have agreed. But then Harrison told her to stay home, dismissed her. And it had hurt. And then he’d done it again the next day. And then because her feelings were hurt, she did it the following. And suddenly they were spinning in separate orbits.

If I am more important than this campaign
, she realized,
I’d better act like it. I’d better make plans
.

“There’s no shame in sacrifice,” Patty said.

But at what point does the sacrifice become meaningless? When it’s no longer appreciated? Or valued? Or when you no longer even realize what you’re sacrificing?

“Have you ever loved your husband?” she asked.

“That’s irrelevant, isn’t it?”

“We’re talking about marriage.”

“We’re talking about politics.”

Wasn’t that just a classic Montgomery answer.

“You never loved him?”

“I loved him very much.”

Patty’s cool smile didn’t stick, it flickered and wavered on her face and then finally fell away, revealing a pain more profound for its unexpectedness.

“Is that so hard to believe?” Patty asked, running the flat of her hand over the edge of her desk as if it were a loyal pet she was stroking.

Oh, God
. Patty loved Ted and he cheated. Over and over again he cheated. And she just kept sacrificing, trying to make up the difference.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, because she didn’t know what else to say.

“Don’t be. Teddy’s behavior was never a surprise. I just thought … I thought I could change him. I thought I could make him see the man I saw when I looked at him, all that potential. He’s … he really is a good man. Decent. Caring. He’s just very … weak.”

And so she had to be even stronger.

“Why didn’t you ever run for office?” Ryan asked. It seemed a sudden shame that this woman and all her talents was relegated to cleanup duty. To smiling and waving at the side of the stage. Sacrificing more than she probably even knew. “You seem far more suited for it than Ted.”

Patty tilted her head at Ryan and laughed.

“I’m not kidding.”

“I know you’re not and it’s flattering, but, no, it’s not anything I’ve considered. And at my age—”

“Hillary Clinton is older than you, isn’t she?”

“Well, that’s … just … I don’t …” Patty was actually blushing, and it was so deeply strange, Ryan felt the urge to get the hell out of Dodge.

Ryan stood up. “You should think about it, because you’d be pretty awesome at it. I’m sorry I barged in here.”

She walked out of the office and past Noelle, who glanced up at her with wide eyes.

“Don’t give up on her yet,” Ryan told Noelle. “You might still get a chance to do something important with her.”

Friday, October 18

It was eighteen days until election night, and Harrison had nothing to do. There was no town hall meeting, no fundraising to do. No staff meeting. Nothing.

The calm before the storm, Wallace called it. What could be done was done. And what was coming was prepared for, so Wallace gave everyone the night off.

Which was suspicious, actually. The way Wallace had been making side eyes at Noelle during the breakfast party a few weeks ago made him think his staff was out somewhere getting wasted and having sex, while he was in the small den off his bedroom writing thank-you letters and clearing out his personal email in-box.

And ignoring his wife.

You would drag me under and never even know you were doing it
. That’s what Ryan had said.

And it was the truth. And it paralyzed him with self-loathing.

His father’s nonsense about putting Ryan into a position to ruin his campaign was ludicrous. She was making his campaign. Things had only been going better since she’d gotten involved, and so he just kept asking more of her. More and more and more of her.

And what did he give her in return? Media scrutiny and sleazy run-ins with his father.

Day by day, he’d been forcing her into the mud where he lived.

Down below him, he heard the creak of the couch as
she got up for something to drink or to go to the bathroom. There was a constant hum of music from her laptop … she was a big fan of Maroon 5.

Occasionally he caught himself listening for her when there hadn’t been any noise for a while, wondering if she was asleep. Wondering if she was thinking about him.

That scene in the car, it haunted him. It woke him up from a sound sleep. Distracted him in the middle of meetings. The other day, standing in front of a podium at a library, he’d lost his way in his speech thinking about that sound she’d made, that whispering sigh that turned into a cry at the end when he’d slipped his fingers beneath her underwear.

Perhaps other men, with different pasts, with different parents, with different plans for his life, would be able to understand how to blur the lines they’d laid down at the beginning of this relationship.

But he didn’t. Every feeling he had felt leveraged because of that contract, felt dirty because he wasn’t supposed to feel it.

Because he was his father’s son there was something in his bloodline, something in his genetic code, that found a way to ask what he shouldn’t ask.

And it wasn’t just the sex.

It was how well she was playing her role. How perfectly she adapted. How she rose to every challenge. How she winked and flirted with all of those journalists when they’d thought she’d cower and run at their questions.

When Wallace had called her his good-luck charm, it had all been hammered home and in one fell swoop, he ended it. Because he was using her in every way.

And if he wanted to argue with himself, defend his actions by claiming to care for her, that was even worse. Because it was a lie he was telling himself.

He didn’t care for people. Not like Ryan would want to be cared for.

Loved. She would want to be loved.

And he didn’t know how to do that.

So the least he could do was try and protect her from his family.

Downstairs the floor creaked, and he shook his head clear from his thoughts and forced himself to settle back into his work.

Buried between press releases, updated schedules from weeks ago, and Wallace’s efforts to get a group of staffers to play basketball on the weekends, he found a series of emails from Ruth Corlo, mother of Michael, the boy in the kindergarten class he and Ryan had visited shortly after their marriage.

Michael had been sitting alone while Ryan read the story to the class and there had been something about the boy’s posture that he recognized, the sideways glances at the group and the stubborn set of his shoulders. He wanted to join the group of kids sitting at Ryan’s knee, but something had been holding him back. Weighing him down.

It didn’t take much to get it out of Michael; he was just a kid, after all.

Michael had told him that his dad was coming home from Iraq and his mom was scared, because the last time he’d come home all they did was yell at each other.

He’d given Mrs. Tellier his card to give to Michael’s mother. She’d emailed right away and he’d tried to answer her questions personally, but lately he’d just been too busy, so he got the acting director of VetAid to step in.

Ruth Corlo had just sent him a thank-you note for his help.

Things aren’t great
, she wrote,
and might not be for a long time. But they are better, thanks to you and your organization
.

When he started VetAid, he’d gotten drunk on the very specific pleasure that came from seeing a need and being able to fill it.

But those moments in the campaign, after events when he and Ryan stood onstage or walked through a community center, talking to people and shaking hands and answering questions. The policy meetings with Wallace, the staff meetings, the ideas and brainstorming. The plans. They felt right on a whole different level.

And Congress, Washington, D.C., whatever trajectory followed, he couldn’t wait. His sister once told him that the work she did, the stuff in the camps, the disaster relief—she felt compelled to do it. Like she was more herself in those situations than at any other time.

That was exactly how he’d felt these last five weeks. More himself, his purpose fulfilled.

There was a scratch at the door to his den just before Ryan poked her head in.

“You busy?” she asked.

Yes
, he thought, the sight of her filling him with a sort of panic. Busy ignoring her. Busy trying to pull this desire for her out by its corrupt roots.

“No, I’m not busy,” he said, pushing away from his laptop. He shoved the pile of dirty dishes on the corner of his desk behind the printer and grabbed the socks off the floor and threw them in the shadows in the corners.

“I’ve been doing some research,” she said, stepping onto a rug just inside the room. “And I am not going to go to Washington with you.”

Chapter 23

“Once you are elected, you have to go back and forth from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta a few times a year to keep everyone happy,” she continued. “But I can stay and take some psychology classes at Georgia Tech, maybe help out at the food bank …”

“And not have to suffer living with me?” He tried to make it a joke, but it didn’t come out that way and they both knew it.

The room was hushed, the moment heavy, and he didn’t know what to say about it. Or do about it.

Every time he looked at her, all he was aware of was how much he wanted her and how wrong that felt.

“That good-luck charm thing,” she said. “You know it’s not true. You’re ahead because you’re the right guy for the job. And the world knows those ads are bullshit.”

He waved it off. Painfully. Her being good luck had been true, and now it seemed he was working hard to make it untrue.

And she’d backed right off since that Monday. Choosing not to come with him on any more events unless he asked.

And then he’d stopped asking.

Why, he was not sure.

Because I want her to be beside me because she wants to be
.

That sounded ridiculous; he understood that. They’d signed a contract. He was in fact paying her.

But he wanted her to want to share this with him.

See
, he thought,
she was right. You would drown her and not even notice
.

“I was sort of thinking you wouldn’t have to suffer living with
me
,” she said, her eyes carefully someplace else. “You’d be able to work and I wouldn’t get in the way of anything.”

“You’re not in the way of anything.”

“Well, I’m not really
in
anything, am I?” She tried to make that sound like a joke, but it didn’t work. The night broke open around him, revealing all kinds of ache.

“I know you’ve stepped back from the campaign, and that’s fine, but you can come back anytime.” He stood up from his desk, stepping out of the golden pool of lamplight into the shadows by the door where she stood.

I’m sorry
, he thought, remembering the morning he told her to stay home. The way she’d been unable to hide the disappointment. The hurt. She’d backed off because of him.

God
, somehow this complicated relationship had gotten even more complicated.

“But isn’t this ideal?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not like we have a real marriage. Why continue pretending?”

There were a thousand answers he could give right now. Polished, political, perfect answers, the types of which he’d been giving to almost every question asked of him in the last month.

But instead he was silent. Totally silent.

Because he couldn’t stop thinking,
what if we stop pretending?

What if we just stop?