Something About You (Just Me & You) (7 page)

Fitz had listened to his fair share of callers complaining
about bumbling, uneducated lovers.

Gage sank his head into the pillow and chuckled as he
remembered Sabrina’s remark about kicking dirt. Fitz might have put his own
spin on the tale earlier that morning, but Gage had been almost relieved that
she hadn’t wanted him to take things all the way. He had no regrets about their
steamy, starlit make-out session. But opening himself to anything more would
have been courting the one thing he didn’t need in his life right now — complications.

Because he had discovered something else about Sabrina
March.

Nothing about her would ever be simple.

Sabrina parked Carlton at the front desk and dispatched
Moira on office errands, and then she sat at her desk and stared at a printed
copy of the budget. Certainly there had to be a way to get Violetta back. When
her vision finally blurred, Sabrina wandered back into the reception area,
where Carlton was disgustedly dropping a swathe of Jillian’s dried lotus pods
into the recycling bin for paper.

“If I’m going to be desk-locked all day, I refuse to be
surrounded by dead flora,” he said. Then he shot her a steamy look with his
knock-out green eyes and sing-songed under his breath, “Fitz and Giggles.”

“Carlton,” Sabrina said with an edge of warning in her
voice.

“Can’t say that I blame you for succumbing to his charm,” he
went on, nonchalant. “Jackson Sprinkle fades to invisible compared to the
infamous Gage Fitzgerald.”

“You know who he is?” she asked.

Carlton’s expression registered mild surprise. “You really
need to get out more. His face is only plastered on KCAP billboards all over
Austin. He definitely has that life-after-hockey thing going for him. He’s
totally not your type, Sabrina.”

Of course he wasn’t. That’s what she’d been telling herself
all along. Carlton’s validation only proved her point.

“What did I say earlier, Carlton? No more stupid. Only smart.”
She tapped her brow.

“Not that it’s any of my business, but smart’s been your
problem.” Carlton firmly closed the door to a filing cabinet. “Hell, Sabrina,
we’ve known each other since you were banging on doors trying to get the
neighbors to sign a petition for a new teen rec center. You’ve been smart all
of your life. You got a smart job. You dated smart men, like your recently
dismissed ex-husband. When you got back from that hellish cruise to Iceland,
you finally seemed happy — not just smart. Don’t you think you deserve to
do something stupid, like, oh, I dunno, get drunk and neck on the front lawn of
Green Pastures with one of the bad boys?”

Just brilliant
, Sabrina thought, appalled. While lost
in a gibbering rage earlier that morning, she had apparently missed a critical
part of “Fitz’s” on-air revelations.

“Again, not that it’s any of my business,” Carlton added
smoothly with an innocent smile.

She had been sixteen when Carlton Hayes and his twin sister,
Evangeline, first moved to the Corners. But the two had never been tight
friends until Sabrina, impressed with his tireless volunteer work at the very
neighborhood rec center she had petitioned for, had taken a chance and hired
him as Theo’s communications director. Carlton slipped into his new role with
ease, and Sabrina hadn’t regretted the decision.

She wasn’t fond of including men among her very best buds.
Someone always ended up with a misplaced crush. However, Carlton had discreetly
made his interest in the same gender clear after they’d worked together for a
year. This alone made him nonthreatening. And Carlton could always be relied on
for a good pep talk and noggin rubbing.

Sabrina also knew she could trust him to deliver the
occasional reality check. 

“Was I really that different when I was engaged, Carlton?”
she wanted to know.

“Sabrina, please.” He looked exasperated. “Might I remind
you of the engagement party I threw for you? You blithered on about your bridal
registry, nonstop — at the
San Jacinto Dinner Club
. It’s not like
we were having high tea.” Carlton shook his head sadly. “Any woman who obsesses
over crockery and soft furnishings is definitely
not
in love with her
man. Even Eva said—” He clamped his lips shut quickly.

“What did Eva say?” Sabrina pressed.

“It’s nothing,” Carlton muttered. “It’s stupid, really. It’s
just my sister reading too much into things again.”

“You’re supposed to have my back, Carlton, not protect the
people who stab me in it.” Sabrina gave him a piteous
et tu, Brute?
look.

“Okay, okay,” he sighed, tossing his hands up in
capitulation. “She said, ‘To a career woman like Sabrina March, marriage is
like haute couture. Either she can pull it off with impeccable elan, or she
looks completely ridiculous in it’.”

“I take it I fall in the ridiculous category,” Sabrina said
stiffly.

Evangeline Hayes, a journalist for the
Lone Star Monthly
,
had a way of cutting directly to the chase that often involved the use of
imaginative metaphors. But unlike Carlton, who could turn socially correct on a
dime, she had absolutely no filter.

“Eva does have a point.” He looked at Sabrina sheepishly and
shrugged slender shoulders draped in fashionable lightweight wool. “Marriage
doesn’t really become you, Sabrina.”

She retreated to the Think Tank to ponder. She tried and
failed to remember the first time she and Jackson kissed. The first time they
slept together was woven somewhere in a busy tapestry of receptions and
election year events. She couldn’t remember that either. At least not in great
detail. She suddenly wished the day were over. She needed hot cocoa and a hen
session in Molly’s kitchen, only Molly was still in Paris.

“Marriage doesn’t become me,” Sabrina said, staring at a
pile of correspondence.

“Sabrina!” Carlton hissed, popping through the doorway.
“Theo’s inbound!”

“Shit!” She lunged toward the cartons labeled “Austin
Sustainables” and pulled a biodegradable coffee cup from one of the boxes. Then
she deftly peeled the lid from her latte, poured the contents into the cup, and
hastily stuffed the offending Styrofoam in the bottom drawer of her desk, where
it joined a half-dozen others. The biodegradable container immediately began to
wilt at first contact with fluid.

Charisma had been an abstract concept until Sabrina first
laid eyes on the Hon. Rep. Theodore Ward at an inaugural reception at the
Austin Club. The freshman legislator had walked into the room with a stunning
blond wife draped on his arm, and every quark in the room seemed to go haywire
with energy. Theo hadn’t been particularly policy smart at the beginning of his
career, but he was naturally blessed with a statesman’s stature and the gift of
gab. Sabrina had been a lowly research assistant at the time and young enough
to be impressed by appearance. She could tell by the way Theo effortlessly
worked his way around the room that he would wind his way up the political
pecking order in a similar fashion.  

“Carlton, my man! Where’s my distinguished Chief of Staff?”
Theo brayed happily as he strode into the office, his car keys clattering
against his briefcase. The smell of Hermes
Un Jardins Sur Le Nil
snaked
its way into the Think Tank. “Sabrina!” Theo yelled. “Come in here and show me
that pretty face.”

Grasping the flaccid coffee cup and Theo’s planner, she
walked toward his office purposefully, smoothing wrinkles from her
coffee-stained skirt with her free hand. Theo was already inside, unloading the
contents of his recycled leather briefcase onto his desk: manila folders, law
journals, pocket parts to various statutes, energy drinks, and Clif Bars.

“Armed to the teeth with caffeine and schedules, I see.” He
glanced at her amicably, then set the empty briefcase aside and sank into his
big leather chair. “Only my Chief of Staff is this organized first thing on a
Monday morning.”

“I seem to recall that’s the reason you hired me, Theo,”
Sabrina said, sitting down in a smaller chair in front of his desk. The cup in
her hand was rapidly becoming soggy.

“True.” He leaned back and put his feet on the edge of his
desk. “You sure made an impression on the Tide Brothers.” He tossed out the
name of one of his biggest campaign donors. “Just the other day, Josiah Tide
told me, ‘That wingwoman of yours is a rare breed. She has too much ambition to
be stuffed in a trophy case’ — and this was
after
you dumped his
general counsel on a luxury cruise liner.”

“Gee, Theo. Warm my heart,” Sabrina said dryly. Now the cup
of coffee was a sodden mess. She grabbed some recycled paper towels from one of
the boxes lining the walls of his office and blotted up the remainder of the
latte, scrutinizing the Hon. Rep. out of the corner of her eye.

If there were a physical template for notable Texas
politicians, Theo Ward was boilerplate. He had refined Gallic features and
thick brown hair in no need of plugs. During the course of his career, Theo had
acquired the roguish persona of a blockbuster action hero, which led to his
nickname, the “Indiana Jones of the Texas Legislature.”

Sabrina noticed he was leaner and tanner. But something else
about him looked different too.
What?
She remembered the copy of the
budget that she’d tucked inside of Theo’s planner.

“We need to talk business, Hon. Rep.” She drew herself up
authoritatively.

“Not the ‘Hon. Rep.’ again,” Theo groaned. “That means
you’re mad at me. Is this because of Violetta?”

“Theo, this office simply cannot function efficiently
without her,” Sabrina said earnestly. “She was like family. I hope you at least
threw her a going-away party.”

She could tell by the look on his face that he hadn’t.

“I make hard choices, sitting behind this desk. Some of them
aren’t choices I want to make,” Theo told her. He looked so woeful she almost
felt sorry for him until he added, “You and your posse will be able to pick up
the slack. There’s nothing Violetta did that you can’t personally handle
yourself, Chief.”

Sabrina doubted that. The Hon. Rep. knew good and well that
Violetta had relied on a steady income to pay for her oldest niece’s college
tuition. And that the former receptionist had written all of his thank-you
cards by hand, double-checked the school-aged Wardlings’ homework, made daily
runs to the dry cleaner to pick up his suits, and sent Jillian Ward flowers on
her birthday, Valentine’s Day and wedding anniversary.  

Sabrina swallowed hard to suppress the ire rising in her
throat. She crossed her legs, primly opened the planner and began to go over
Theo’s weekly schedule, as was her custom at the beginning of the week.

“—and on Friday afternoon, there’s the ground-breaking
ceremony for the Volunteer Family Counseling Center.” Sabrina reached the last
item on his agenda, aware that Theo was only half-listening, his gaze fixed on
a spot somewhere outside his office window.

“Remind me. What kind of center is that again?” he asked
distantly.

“It’s a nonprofit that helps women — primarily those
with minor children — get out of abusive environments,” she informed him,
trying to hide her exasperation. “This is where you’ll talk to the press about
your bill that increases funding for women’s and children’s issues. Wear jeans,
your oldest boots and a chambray shirt, untucked. Chat with a lot of women, not
just one or two, and for god’s sake, not just the young, pretty ones. What you
want to get across to the press is that you are concerned about
all
women.”

“Speaking of mothers,” Theo casually re-routed the
conversation. “I have some news. Jill’s expecting.”

“Goodness!” Sabrina forced herself to look surprised.
“Congratulations to you both.”

“It came as a shock. I’m thrilled, of course,” he added
quickly, lest she wonder. “Jill’s chin-deep in blueprints. We’ll need more
floor space once the baby comes along.”

“I can only imagine,” Sabrina demurred. She had been invited
to dinners at the Ward residence, a sprawling, split-level in Peyton Heights
where three thousand square feet of house was strewn with diaper bags,
strollers, empty bottles, and small, sharp toys. There were always a couple of
Wardlings in a state of hysterics at any given time. Like an over-wound
karakuri, Jill seemed to be everywhere at once, breast-feeding, burping,
pacifying, and inquiring if homework was done and teeth were brushed. When
legislature wasn’t in session, Theo schlepped into the office looking like he
wanted a drink.

Sabrina had always been career-focused, and unlike Molly,
she had never felt an intense drive to have children. Nurturing romantic
relationships had disrupted her work-life balance enough as it was. But just in
case she ever had lingering doubts about motherhood, the Wards’ shaky marriage
was an ongoing reminder of all the reasons she had opted out.

“Jill’s pressing me to get out of the house,” Theo went on,
a note of wistfulness in his voice. He drummed his fingers across his desk
idly.

“She wants you to move out? Whatever for?” Sabrina played
dumb. Theo had given his long-suffering wife every reason to send him packing,
but not before she gave him a walloping slap on the face first.

The Hon. Rep. shot Sabrina a sharp, incredulous look. 

“God, no. I’m talking about the
House
. Politics. She
wants me to think about dropping my bid for re-election come next November.”

“How do you feel about that?” Sabrina pulled her most
sympathetic face and channeled her inner psychologist. She didn’t have time to
listen to Theo’s problems when there was work to do. The heel of her pump began
to tap reflexively.

“I’d consider it, under other circumstances,” Theo conceded
with a grimace. “But nobody knows this district like I do. There’s no better
man for the job. You made sure of that.”

No better
man
? Sabrina’s heel tapped faster. “Well,
then,” she said briskly. “Sounds like it’s settled.” 

The Hon. Rep. sighed. “You’re a smart woman, Chief. Your gut
told you Sprinkle wasn’t the man. Now, your gut might be a day late and a dollar
short, but it was still right on the money. But you might want to get married
again one day. Before that day comes, get everything out of your system.
Otherwise, you might find yourself sitting behind a desk like this—” He patted
the glossy cherrywood with a look of grim appreciation. “—only to be tempted to
give it up in exchange for more peace at home.”