Indecent Proposal (6 page)

Still, she thought, dodging a couple holding hands on their way to work, the fact that she’d gladly pay the cost for another night with Harry might indicate she wasn’t quite done paying.

Chapter 4

Wednesday, August 7

Harrison Montgomery’s hands couldn’t stop shaking.

In his tumbler of water the ice cubes bounced against the crystal.

It wasn’t the fault of the jet engines, or transatlantic turbulence. The ride, as ever, in the Montgomery family jet was smooth as silk.

The shaking was from him. From inside him. From his muscles. His brain. The damaged edges of his exhausted heart.

It’s done. It’s over. She is safe and we’re taking her home
.

That mantra had no effect on the shaking. He put down the glass and balled his hands into fists, hoping that might help. Exhaustion made him nauseous, but every time he slipped into a doze, all he saw was his sister, beaten and bloody, filthy and unconscious, and his eyes popped open, his heartbeat pounding in his throat.

Ashley had been kidnapped by Somali pirates.

The thought—even though he’d been living with it for the last three weeks—was still surreal.

Who gets kidnapped by pirates?

The statistics of that particular question got skewed by the fact that Ashley had spent the last year as an aid worker in Kenya and a friend had convinced her to take
a vacation to the Seychelles. They’d rented a boat for a day and the pirates had picked them up.

In the last three weeks he’d negotiated her release, gathered the ransom, and found Brody Baxter, a former bodyguard for the Montgomery family, who was the man who actually went into the tiny desert village that had been armed to the teeth to get Ashley. They then spent twenty-four excruciating hours in a Nairobi hospital making sure she was okay to fly, that there weren’t internal injuries or brain trauma.

Thank God there weren’t.

He’d scheduled a more thorough exam to be done by their family doctor once they got back to New York City and called ahead to their grandmother’s building, letting them know Ashley would be arriving and that she didn’t have any keys. Or ID. Or clothes.

In front of him was all the paperwork that would allow her to enter the country without a passport with as little hassle as possible.

Luckily, being a Montgomery had a few perks, and he could count on some political friends on that score.

He’d done all of this—negotiating, ransoming, traveling, waiting—without the press finding out. Which was a miracle, really, considering he was a Montgomery and the press, as a rule, cared about what he and his family were doing.

He’d also done it without major international incident or a SEAL team.

Or sleep, really.

All while running for the United States House of Representatives.

And now, for some reason, with Ashley finally safe and sleeping in the back of the plane, he found himself unable to use his hands. The pen he’d picked up to finish the paperwork shook right out of his fingers.

“It’s the adrenaline,” Brody Baxter said from the seat
across the aisle. His eyes were closed and his head shimmied against the headrest with every small bounce and shift of the plane.

“What is?”

Harrison yanked further at his tie, trying to get some air.

Brody opened one dark eye. “You are jumpier than the Somali boys we got her from, and they were pretty damn jumpy.”

Harrison stared down at the same passport paperwork he’d been looking at for the last twenty-four hours and the words blurred.

Tears stung hard behind his eyes and he had to gasp to catch his breath.

“She’s safe, man,” Brody said. “You did it.”

Until the day he died, he would not forget his first glimpse of her in Brody’s arms as he ran down the tarmac toward the ambulance. Unconscious, bloody, her dress in tatters, her hair a wild mess, filthy.

I’m too late
, he’d thought, putting a hand against the ambulance so he wouldn’t fall to his knees as nurses and paramedics swarmed Brody and Ashley.
If I’d worked faster, done more, she wouldn’t have been hurt. Those men wouldn’t have kicked her. Beaten her
.

“Harrison.” Brody’s hard voice worked on some instinctual level and he brought his head around to stare at the man. “You did it. You did it just right.”

“It was you, actually,” he said, his voice catching on emotion and exhaustion.

Brody had always been an impossibly cagey guy, and the years since he’d started working for the family only made him more so. His dark eyes both lauded him and damned him, which Harrison guessed was fair considering their history. The Montgomerys had not been kind to Brody Baxter.

“What you did,” Brody said. “There aren’t ten guys
in the world who could have done that as well. She’s safe, because of you. I was just the muscle.”

He thought of the days in New York, talking to senators and lobbyists. Retired generals. The assistant to the President’s chief of staff. Had all of that been time wasted?

Trying to get all of that done on his own, holed up in a hotel room, avoiding press and family. Had that been a mistake?

They heard Ashley in the back, stirring. She’d been in and out of sleep, disoriented and confused, and Harrison didn’t want her to wake up alone and scared. He began to shift to his feet, but his arms would not help him. His knees were jelly.

“I got it, man,” Brody said, clapping his large hand on Harrison’s shoulder. “Try to get some rest.”

Harrison sagged back into his seat and let the big man go sit beside his sister. Briefly, he wondered if this was going to be a problem. Ashley had, at one time, caused quite a scene over Brody.

But Harrison found he did not have the energy to be worried. He couldn’t even follow the thought to any conclusion.

He propped his elbows up on the small foldaway table and scrubbed his hands through his hair and down over his face. When was the last time he showered? Changed his clothes? Slept?

The answer to the last question came in a vision of a tattoo, a woman wrapped in seaweed and vines being pulled underwater, her blond hair a cloud around her composed, nearly blissful face.

Ryan.

Perhaps it was his general defenselessness, or exhaustion, but the thought of Ryan Kaminski slipped into his skull like an assassin.

He couldn’t count that night as a mistake. It was the
first time in his life a woman had slept with him without knowing his family. Without one eye on his connections and his money.

Ryan had picked him, for him. And not at his best. At the very lowest point in his life, she’d held out a hand.

What kind of person did that?

What kind of person found such weakness and confusion interesting? And not just a little … What had happened in that room destroyed him. It wasn’t just the incredible sex, but the honesty. The honesty had been addictive and erotic and rare. So rare he hadn’t realized what a kingdom of lies and half-truths he ruled, until meeting her.

And ironically, he’d lied to her. A lie by omission was still a lie. Maybe worse because of its intrinsic cowardice.

Harry. No one ever in his life had called him Harry.

Oh God
, he had to stop thinking about her.

It was one thing to cling to the mysterious woman and that charged night like a lifeboat while waiting to find out if his sister was alive or dead, but they were returning to the real world. Real life.

And in real life he was Harrison Montgomery, the favorite son of a fifth-generation political family out of Atlanta. And in three months about to be a congressman. The representative in the House for Georgia’s fifth congressional district.

His father was finishing up his last term as governor of Georgia, and appropriately going down with the sinking boat of corruption and scandal that had been his life’s work.

And in order to wipe the mud off his family name, to return some pride to his sister and himself and future Montgomery generations, Harrison’s role, his mission, was to be without weakness. To give no rumors the
chance to find foothold, no reporter trying to make his name even the slightest whiff of scandal.

And his night with Ryan to the outside eye was nothing but scandalous.

That night was an anomaly. Best forgotten.

He took a deep breath. Another. Stretched his hands out and then made fists. Pushed his messy, dirty hair back into some kind of order, straightened his dirty tie. Bit by bit he found himself back in control of himself. His body. His thoughts.

Ashley was safe. She was here.

Ryan was forgotten.

And he was Harrison Montgomery, with a family dynasty settled comfortably, familiarly, on his back.

Brody returned and sat down in his seat.

“She’s sleeping again,” he said.

“That’s good.” Harrison flipped the page on the passport paperwork and began filling it out, his mind clear. His hand steady.

“You okay?” Brody asked.

“Fine,” he answered without looking up. “Just fine.”

Chapter 5

Wednesday, August 14

“The good news! It just keeps coming!” Wallace Jones, Harrison’s campaign manager, a whirlwind of spectacularly bad ties and genius brain cells, burst into Harrison’s office without knocking.

“I could use some good news,” Harrison said, sitting back from the dual, equally unappealing tasks of dealing with his mother and fundraising calls.

Financially, he was tapped out. Between getting his sister free and the campaign, he was running on fumes. And credit.

And his mother was here to harass him about Ashley.

So, yeah, he could use some good news.

“Poll numbers!” Wallace said, lifting a handful of papers into the air. “The Education Initiative is working; so is VetAid. We’re still up across all demographics. We’re spanking Glendale in women under fifty, minorities, and college students.”

Harrison left the jubilation to Wallace—he was far better suited for it. Punching the air felt stupid to Harrison. But the 100-proof relief poured through him all the same.

He allowed himself an unchecked smile and loosened his tie. Practically a party.

“College students don’t vote,” Patty Montgomery said.

Across his small office, on the large couch where he’d been spending far too many of his nights since getting
his sister back on American soil, sat his mother, Patty Montgomery. Her black suit matched the black of the couch and the gray light from the window illuminated her in a strange way, and he had the brief impression of her sitting on a stage.

And despite having grown up in Manhattan, her Georgia accent with its Buckhead polish was flawless. She sounded local. Several generations of local.

Wallace whirled to see Patty—his enemy in so many ways—on the couch and tossed his hands up in the air. “Jesus, Harrison. How many times do I have to tell you having your mother here does not help our campaign? We are trying to distance ourselves from the mistakes your father has made.”

“Family issues, Wallace. Not political,” Harrison said, though Wallace was right. The education scandal, the housing market, unemployment skyrocketing, increasingly disturbing race relations in Atlanta—all of it Harrison was trying to fix. All of it happened on his father, Ted’s, watch.

“With your family it’s always political!” Wallace sat in the chair across from Harrison’s desk instead of flopping down on the couch, as was his usual practice, and glared at Patty. “I assume this is about your sister?”

“Ashley is safe. That’s all that matters.” Harrison was trying to finish the argument his mother seemed hell-bent on rehashing.

“All that matters?” She laughed, as if the safety and well-being of her only daughter was far down on her personal list of things that mattered. She ran a hand over her perfect, unmoving blond bob, the gold and diamond rings on her fingers gleaming, using all the meager light to her advantage. “You are running for Congress. Your father’s approval rating is at an all-time low, and she is somewhere pouting because I asked her
to answer a few questions. Runs off with that man without a word to us? Tell me, how am I wrong?”

“That man’s name is Brody,” Harrison said.

After Harrison and Brody got Ashley back into New York City, Brody had then whisked her away somewhere to recuperate after Mother bullied Ashley with press conferences. Ashley, concussed with bruised ribs and recovering from severe dehydration, exhaustion, and probably PTSD, had not been up for press conferences.

“I knew going to him was a mistake.”

“He was the only choice we had. She’ll call us when she wants to.”

“Does this mean we can actually talk about business?” Wallace asked.

“Ah yes,” Mom said, putting on the Steel Magnolia routine, something she did only when she was truly angry or there was a journalist in the room. “The spectacular approval ratings among people who just don’t vote?”

“In the political stone age, that might have been true. But the world is changing, Patty.” Wallace was young and black, a political street fighter with very little respect for the old guard. Mother would never say it, but Wallace was her worst nightmare.

“Well, one thing doesn’t change,” Patty said. “Money. And Arthur Glendale is getting some big money from contributors. His media budget is three times ours.”

“And so far it hasn’t mattered,” Wallace said.

“You’re foolish if you think it won’t.” Patty got to her feet. “A million will barely keep us on the air.”

“I’m working on the money,” Harrison said, lifting the call sheets.

“There’s not a million on that list,” Patty said. “Not even close. So we need a miracle.”

“By miracle,” Harrison said, “you mean I need to get
Ashley to show up to some campaign events. And I’ve already said I’m not doing it. She’s been through hell.”

“Your sister is a Montgomery,” Patty said. “She knows her responsibility, and I’m not sure why expecting her to be grateful for your part in getting her out of Somalia makes me the bad guy in this.”

Of course she didn’t.

“The press release about her kidnapping and rescue gave us a bump,” Harrison said. “Let’s just give her some time to heal.”