Private Politics (The Easy Part) (15 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Alyse slammed the cabinet closed with a satisfying
thunk
. Then the next one and the next one. Liam didn’t own a coffeemaker, which probably shouldn’t surprise her because he didn’t own much kitchen equipment of any description. Even if he had had a coffeemaker, he probably wouldn’t have any coffee grounds. But she wanted caffeine. And also answers. And some confidence and calm. Really, coffee seemed the most realistic ask at the moment.

Just when she was about to accept she’d have to put on clothes and leave to obtain some, Liam came through the front door with two paper to-go cups and a brown bag.

Alyse opened her mouth to say, “I love you,” and managed to stop herself only just in time. Even she knew that wouldn’t be appropriate now they were, well, sleeping together.

Before she could come up with a better line, Liam said, “Hey, I didn’t know you were up. Did I wake you?”

“No and I am,” she said, answering his questions out of order and watching him cross the room toward her. “I, uh, put on your shirt. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“What’s mine is yours.” His eyes were glued to her legs. “Seriously, wear my clothes every day.”

“Obviously, I need more than undershirts to get me through life. Even if I belted this—” she motioned at his T-shirt, “—it would still have limits in terms of venue.”

“It’s perfect for time in bed with me. Which is where you’re going, today at least.”

She took one of the lattes from him, glaring. “We talked about this last night.” They had, at some length, until they had fallen asleep. He didn’t think she should go to work and she enjoyed arguing with him. It was a symbiotic relationship.

He shook his head. “Please. Stay with me. Geri and Ryan
know
. They think you were there last night hunting for evidence. Conveniently, you
were
there. Let’s go through what we found and make a plan.”

“I already have a plan. This—” she raised her coffee, “—is step one.”

“What’s step two?”

“I’m going to call my dad.”

He raised an eyebrow and she continued talking. “I have to tell the auditor, Fred, what’s going on. No choice. And really, it needs to happen today. Delaying is stressing me out. So I need a lawyer to cover my ass.”

Liam leaned against the counter and watched her. She hadn’t told him much about her family, but he was a perceptive guy. He’d probably surmised that it wasn’t the warmest relationship on earth.

“Do you want some privacy?” he offered. “I could go out for more bagels. Or more coffee. You’re making short work of that one.”

“No. Please stay.” If they were together, he’d see how things were eventually. Besides, he made her feel better.

She drained her latte and fumbled with her phone.

It rang several times. Just when she assumed she was going to get his voice mail, her father answered, “This is a pleasant surprise.”

“Hello, Daddy.” There was an awkward pause while she tried to remember how long it had been since they’d talked. A month, maybe. She wasn’t even sure. Deciding it didn’t matter, she asked, “How are you and Mom?”

“We’re well. We had dinner with Emmanuelle and Thomas last night.”

Her parents thought her sister was practically perfect in every way, including that she was six months’ pregnant with her third child. She’d married a finance guy who seemed nice enough but worked constantly. They had one of those perfect Park Slope existences Alyse couldn’t evaluate. Was it all façade? What was under the play dates, bacon jam and Mommy-and-Me classes? She suspected there was no
there
there but that was probably unfair.

“Oh...good.” And it was. She loved her sister, adored her niece and nephew and liked her brother-in-law. Her ambivalence, her awfulness, came from her rejection of her parents’ belief that Emmanuelle’s life should be aspirational for her.

“You’re coming up for the birth?” he asked.

“I’m not sure she needs me, but listen, I called for a reason.”

She closed her eyes and tried to think about how to start. She should have written a script.

As if sensing her tension, Liam wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled her against his side and settled his mouth on her hair. She relaxed against him and waited for her father to acknowledge her words.

“Oh?” her father said after several beats.

“Something is going on at work.” He didn’t reply. Alyse took a deep breath and spit out, “The annual audit is happening and...someone has altered the letters we send to donors acknowledging their contributions.”

“In what way? And who?” Now she had his full attention.

“My boss. And probably our lobbyist. They made it look like I wrote all the letters and that funds were put in accounts that don’t exist, at least that I didn’t know existed. They did it to hide the true source of the money, which I think is a South African construction magnet.”

There was a pause while her father digested that, probably while all three of them digested it. It was a pretty wacky story.

Her father finally spoke. “How do you—how do you know all of that?”

“I’ve been investigating. Along with, uh, a journalist.” Liam didn’t respond in any way to her description of him. He never seemed to want to own the label, as clearly as it applied. Instead, he remained a solid wall of warmth and strength. At present, she was happy to leech both.

“Investigating?” The word was sharp and disapproving.

“Yes. I sort of stumbled on to it and of course I had to do something—”

“So you took it upon yourself to poke around it?”

His concern was totally valid at some level, but it was also filtered through the entire way he saw her. He’d probably take the same tone if she’d told him she had comparison shopped for the best deal on boots.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said, proud of the strength in her voice. “It wasn’t clear what was going on at first. I didn’t know how to move forward until I had a clearer picture.”

Her father sighed. “But you had help with this, this investigating? A journalist?”

Her chest deflated and she leaned harder against Liam. In response he tightened his arm. Apparently her actions made more sense if they hadn’t been undertaken on her own, but under the auspices of someone else, someone who was smarter than her.

“Yes. A friend of Parker’s.” Her parents adored Parker. They probably thought she should have snagged him.

“All of that sounds...ambitious.” Her father’s voice was ringed with caution. “I think I should call Bertie.”

Bertie was an old golf buddy of her father’s. He’d been a partner at a New York firm, but had relocated to Washington a few years before to support the career of his second wife, who was some sort of consultant.

“I was hoping you’d say that.” And she had been. “I have some evidence, before-and-after scans of some of the letters. Plus, the corporations the money has been funneled through won’t stand up to any scrutiny. I’d like to go to the auditor, today if possible, but I need a lawyer.”

“You’ll hear from him soon.”

That was exactly what she’d wanted to hear. But as long as she had him on the phone...

“There’s one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“The journalist, the one who’s been helping me? I’m seeing him.” Seeing him, kissing him, living with him, doing espionage with him: it was all pretty much the same.

“Oh. Well, that’s good news at least.”

Leave it to her father to always know the right thing to say and to deliver it with absolutely no passion whatsoever. “Thanks, Daddy. I appreciate it.”

“We’ll see you soon? Bring that young man?”

“Maybe.”

Alyse set her phone on the counter. Liam hadn’t loosened his arm. He also hadn’t said anything since he’d heard her confession they were dating. Maybe he wasn’t pleased?

After a quiet moment, he said, “Does step three involve you taking off that shirt, because I’m dying to know what’s under there.”

She laughed and wriggled away from him, mostly so she could turn and see his face. He looked pleased and delicious and very, very interested.

“You’re intimately familiar with what’s under here,” she said coyly.

“Not intimately enough.”

The night before they had waited forever for the Metro and had gotten back to Liam’s very late. Subterfuge and public transportation had taken a lot out of them; they were almost too tired to do anything about their balked lust.
Almost
being the operative word.

The second they’d made it through the door, they’d fallen into bed together and proceeded to kiss until she’d been soaking and aching, until she’d actually said, “Do something about this or get off me,” and he had, frustratingly, chosen to get off. Not in the fun way. Then they’d argued about whether she could go to work together until they’d fallen asleep. Almost the perfect night.

With as much sweetness as she could muster she said, “That is so not my fault.”

“See it from my point of view,” he said, walking across the kitchen to where he’d left the paper bag. He fished out a bagel and attempted to spread cream cheese on it with a flimsy plastic knife. “I’ve been infatuated with you for more than half a year. You fall into my bed through a series of events that puts a Rube Goldberg machine to shame and I’m just supposed to—”

“Fuck me. You’re supposed to fuck me.”

Liam snorted and gave up on the cream cheese. Taking a huge bite, he said, “I was going to go with ‘be thankful,’ but sure, that works too. But I can’t—” he paused to swallow and then drink some coffee, “—fuck you or be thankful because my head hasn’t stopped spinning yet. I’m still operating at reduced cognitive capacity from the moment when we kissed.”

Alyse couldn’t say in all honesty that she wasn’t either, but before she could point that out, he continued, “I swear, I’m not a prude and I do want to and am grateful, but mostly, I’m scared. And not just because of the threats and the breaking-and-entering, though okay, those too. We’re not two people who have been dating less than week. Less than a few days, actually. My feelings are far more advanced than that. If I do—”

“Fuck me?”

“Yes. I might not recover.”

“Because if something happened and we broke up in ten minutes, you wouldn’t have any pain?” she asked. He blanched. “This is hypothetical, Liam. I’m not breaking up with you.”

“Of course there would be pain.” His face was so soft and boyish she couldn’t imagine a circumstance under which she would hurt him, which was probably precisely why she would end up doing precisely that.

“Okay. So what assurance can I give you? What guarantee would make whatever increased pain you might have if we sleep together and then breakup a reasonable risk?”

“You can’t. There isn’t one.”

“So what’s the holdup then?”

For a long moment, he stood there blinking. When she was certain he was going to argue, he scooped her up in his arms and marched to the bedroom.

* * *

His bed was a messy tangle of covers. Obviously making it hadn’t been as big a priority for Alyse as coffee had been, which was fine because it reflected his own feelings.

Liam dispatched the rumpled comforter with a tug and laid Alyse down. She was wearing one of his undershirts and as far as he could tell, that was it. Her hair was sleep-tangled, but her eyes were hungry. And he was tired of telling her “no.”

His sweater was still cold and smelled like the street. He rolled it over his head and tossed it into the corner with a swish, and appreciating how she studied him with frank interest. Her mask was gone. She wasn’t playing with or teasing him anymore. All of that was finished.

He crawled onto the corner of the bed, moving the hem of the shirt an inch to reveal a bit more of her upper thigh. Lowering his head, he kissed the white skin he’d exposed.

At first he just brushed his lips over her leg. When he felt goose bumps, he repeated the process with his tongue.

For what seemed like an eternity, he edged the shirt up and explored what he found, until he revealed a pair of pale pink satiny panties. If one could call them panties. They were gratifyingly tiny, though they still covered too much of her.

He looked up at her. Her hands were linked over her head, fingers twined tightly, as she watched his progress. She looked breathless and hopeful, her eyes anticipating his next move.

He rearranged her legs, creating a space for himself and licked over her panties. She squirmed and he held her hips still while he licked again and again until she was drenched and moaning.

Releasing one hip, he rubbed her clit, his thumbnail catching on the fabric as he tried to figure out what she liked. He’d touched her over the past two days and she seemed to enjoy, well, everything.

“Like this?” he whispered.

“Not enough.”

He increased the pressure.

“Still not enough.” She gasped, contradicting her protests. “Now, please, in me
now
.”

Not on her life. Without warning, he pulled his T-shirt over her head and then tugged her panties off. She was gloriously naked, open to him and wanting. Whatever had led to this minute had been worth it, utterly.

He buried his face in her thigh and breathed. Her hands drifted down into his hair, but he reached up and pinned them down by her side with his free hand. Outside of his bed, she had so much power. All the power. Here at least he wanted some of it back.

Half-holding her down, he parted her folds and licked. He did it again, with more pressure, and then again. He knew he’d found the right approach when she arched off the bed and gasped his name.

“Jesus Christ, Liam, don’t stop.”

Obviously he wasn’t going to deny her. With his mouth and one hand, he worked until he could feel the climax grab and wring her out. His name bubbled out of her at the very last minute. He kissed her stomach with soft, brushing kisses until all the aftershocks had passed, until she opened her eyes and smiled at him with surprising shyness.

“I’d like to do that to you one of these days,” she whispered.

“What’s stopping you?”

“You actually.” They both laughed and then she freed one of her hands. “Take these off, please.” She tugged ineffectually at his pants.