The Last White Knight (3 page)

“Thank you again for dropping by, Senator,” she said, kneeling to gather up the utensils. The quicker they gave Gunther enough praise to bask in and allowed him to make his obligatory promises, the quicker he’d be gone. The quicker he was gone, the quicker she would be safe from those all-seeing blue
eyes of his. “We appreciate whatever support you can give us.”

“I’ll help any way I can,” Erik said.

He dropped to one knee on the cracked pavement and reached for a spaghetti spoon, his fingers brushing over Lynn’s as she drew her hand away. She gave him a good poker face, but her eyes betrayed her. They watched him with a kind of caution in their depths that only served to intrigue him more. The lady was trying to give him the brush-off. She was in retreat mode. And yet there was the faint, but unmistakable, crackle of attraction in the air between them. The contradiction was irresistible to him.

A slow smile spread across his face.
You’re not getting rid of me yet, Miss Shaw
. He lifted the spoon and tapped it against his chest. “I live to serve.”

Her eyes watchful, she reached out for the spoon and snatched it away when he offered it, like a wild creature venturing near enough to accept a treat but not near enough to be touched. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Maybe we could discuss it in more detail. Say, over dinner?”

Lynn shook her head. “I don’t think—”

“Great idea, Senator!” Martha bellowed, ignoring the murderous glare Lynn shot her. “The Mongolian
beef is on the way. We can all sit down and have a chat.”

“Maybe the senator doesn’t like Mongolian beef,” Lynn said tightly.

“The senator would eat an old boot with catsup right about now.” Erik pushed himself to his feet and held a hand out for Lynn. “How about it, counselor? Break fortune cookies with me?”

Lynn arched a brow. “Do I have a choice?”

“Do you really want one?” he challenged softly.

Martha and Lillian had already started for the house. No witnesses. Not that they had been any help while they’d been standing there, Lynn thought. They had seemed impervious to the undercurrents, to the subtle ritual of male advance and female retreat that had been going on right in front of them.

She looked up at Erik Gunther, Lillian’s white knight, and wondered just how tarnished that armor of his might be underneath that beautiful facade. He had a spotless record, but she was too worldly-wise to go by that. Politics was a game of favor-trading. Just what favors would Senator Gunther expect for helping her? She didn’t want to find out, but the truth was, she needed his help more than she needed to be rid of him. The old adage about politics making strange bedfellows drifted through her mind, and Lynn pushed it aside, ignoring both the image it conjured
and the unwelcome wash of heat that came with it.

Disregarding Erik’s hand, she rose, clutching her kitchen utensils to her chest. “I guess I’ll take my chances, Senator.”

He gave her a slow smile that seemed wise and warm, as if he alone held the answer to one of life’s great secrets, and Lynn felt her heart roll over in her chest like a trick poodle as he said, “I guess we both will, Counselor Shaw.”

“So, where are your residents?” Erik asked as he set his plate aside. He addressed the question to no one in particular, but his gaze fell on Lynn.

They sat at opposite ends of the coffee table in matching country-blue overstuffed chairs. Lynn picked at a grain of rice on her plate, fighting the urge to rub her head. The medication she had taken was keeping her migraine in check, but Erik Gunther’s presence kept it from disappearing altogether. The knot of pain throbbed dully above her eye. The sexual tension in the room seemed a palpable thing to her, but Lillian and Martha, ensconced on the sofa together, seemed oblivious to it.

“They’re back at the other house,” Martha said,
scanning the contents of the small white boxes on the coffee table. She selected snow peas and mushrooms and deposited a heap of it on her plate.

Erik lifted a brow, his gaze still on Lynn, as if he thought he might will her to speak to him. “Unsupervised? Is that wise?”

Graham’s remark about “their kind” was still too fresh in Lynn’s mind for her not to react. She straightened a little in her chair and gave him a cool look. “Horizon House is a home, Senator, not a prison. We don’t keep the girls under watch twenty-four hours a day.”

He didn’t flinch. His gaze remained steady, warm, searching, curious, trying to find a way beneath her armor even while he kept the conversation to the topic at hand. “I think with all the controversy you’re generating it might be prudent to make an exception to that rule. Purely precautionary, you know.”

“Cover our tails?” Lynn said dryly.

He smiled that soft little secretive smile that hinted at amusement and wisdom. “So to speak. Imagine what might happen if some of Graham’s demonstrators decided to set up a picket line outside the other house. It could be a very unpleasant situation for your girls and a potential public relations nightmare for the home.”

“Well, no one would know more about looking good to the public than a politician.”

“Senator Gunther makes an excellent point, Lynn,” Lillian said with a note of censure in her voice. “It’s important for the girls to know we trust them, but the stakes are too high for us to take chances right now.”

The argument was logical and practical. Lynn probably would have made it herself if Erik Gunther hadn’t come up with it first. She simply didn’t like having him intrude on her territory—not in the physical sense, not in the psychological sense. She was tired and frustrated and in pain, and every feminine warning system she had was on red alert. The combination tended to make her snappish.

She could feel Gunther’s eyes on her, looking for things she didn’t want to reveal, and her instinctive response was to run. But she wouldn’t do that. She had spent enough of her life running to know it never solved anything. Besides, the watchfulness of the senator’s gaze reminded her too much of a wolf. She had the unnerving feeling that if she ran he would automatically give chase.

“Lillian will be taking me back to the other house,” Martha said calmly. “I’ll be staying the night there while Lynn keeps watch over our stuff here. I think the girls will be all right until after I’ve finished my tea.”

Erik nodded. “You’re probably right, Mrs. Steinbeck. Graham’s people didn’t seem too fired up when they left here.”

“Thanks to you, Senator.” She lifted her teacup in salute. “And call me Martha. I haven’t been Mrs. Steinbeck in such a long time I probably won’t answer to it.”

“All right, Martha.” Erik nodded. “And I’d like it if you would all call me Erik. I’m not much for standing on ceremony with friends.”

Lillian and Martha beamed smiles at him. Lynn watched him, her gaze steady and slightly wary, like a she-wolf who was too intelligent to turn down his help but was not about to drop her guard and let him get too near. Erik wondered where she had come by that much caution, wondered if it was politicians in general she didn’t trust or him in particular.

“What do you think our chances are for staying here, Erik?” Lillian asked.

Tearing his thoughts and his gaze away from Lynn, he took a sip of his tea and set the dainty cup down on its saucer on the coffee table. “Hard to call. It’ll depend on how tenacious Graham’s group is, and how shrewd. They’ve promised to put pressure on the church. They could try for an injunction against you, demand a community viability study, but they should have done that before now. The
nearer you are to actually residing here, the less likely a judge is to prevent you from moving in.” His gaze skimmed the living room and the hall beyond, taking in a fair amount of furniture and boxes piled in precarious-looking stacks. The old house still had an empty feeling to it with its blank white walls, but it wasn’t far from being made into a home. “They can’t challenge you on any zoning ordinance. They can call for a new ordinance against group homes of this type in residential neighborhoods, but even if they succeeded with that, they couldn’t touch you. An ordinance of that type only applies to what happens after it goes on the books.”

“You’ve done your homework, Senator,” Lynn murmured.

Erik met her gaze, letting her know without saying a word that he’d caught her deliberate use of his title. He had taken that boundary away; Lynn had put it back. He let it be for the moment.

“I’m interested in more than just getting my picture taken while supporting a cause,” he said evenly. “I wouldn’t have come here tonight without knowing all the facts.”

“I thought you said you came here from the golf course.”

He flashed her a grin. “I may insist on fighting my
own battles, but I don’t have any trouble asking my staff to do the legwork.”

She conceded the point with a tip of her head, then went back to the real issue. “If Graham’s group has no legal recourse other than getting the church to kick us out, then are we home free?”

“No. They can make it so unpleasant for you to live here that you’ll want to leave.” Erik leaned forward and settled his forearms on his thighs, hands dangling between his knees. “From what I saw tonight, that’s a real possibility.”

Lynn put her plate down, her meal virtually untouched. One winged brow lifted. “Isn’t that called harassment?”

“Not as long as they have a permit to demonstrate and don’t trespass on private property or break any laws,” Erik said, thinking she would have made a great queen with that look. “Democracy is a great system but it can be a real pain in the fanny sometimes. Graham and his followers are entitled to freedom of speech. You may not like or agree with anything they say, but you can’t stop them from saying it unless it’s slanderous.”

Sluts
. The word came back to Lynn like a memory from a bad dream. Erik Gunther’s face faded from view as images of the crowd on the lawn came back to her. She knew what it was like to feel unwanted,
unwelcome. So did her girls. Their faith in humanity wasn’t going to be restored if they were subjected to that kind of ridicule day after day. And that was what her job was all about—restoring their faith in people, making them feel welcome and loved, coaxing them back into the mainstream before they became so alienated they could never fit in. But people like Elliot Graham stood in her way, spreading venom to everyone around him until she and her girls were surrounded by a moat of it, more isolated than ever.

“Well, nothing else is going to happen tonight,” Lillian declared. Lynn started from her trance, catching the worry in her boss’s eyes. Lillian may have liked to play the cool sophisticate, but inside she was marshmallow—a mother hen with swan’s plumage. Even as she addressed herself to their guest, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from patting Lynn’s hand, which gripped the arm of the chair. “And we have no way of knowing the future, so we might as well not worry ourselves too much before the fact.”

“Maybe we can see the future in the senator’s tea leaves,” Martha said with a wry smile. She hefted herself forward on the couch and reached for Erik’s cup.

He looked at her with skeptical surprise. “You read tea leaves?”

Lynn fought a chuckle. He was obviously struggling
with the idea, too polite to scoff outright, too staid to believe. She liked seeing him off balance. It tempered those Norse-god looks of his with a little human frailty.

“Our Martha is a woman of many varied and weird interests,” she said. “Ask her to read the bumps on your head sometime.”

“Maybe when we know each other a little better,” he suggested, shifting in his chair as if the mere mention of this kind of thing made him physically uncomfortable. Still, he watched with interest as Martha swirled the last of the tea in his cup, then poured the liquid into the saucer. She set the cup down on the table and stared down into it, frowning like a bulldog. Cautiously, Erik leaned over and peered into the china, then cast an expectant look at Martha. She smiled like a medium who had just heard a joke from someone on the other side.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t know about the rest of us, but your future looks interesting, Erik.”

Erik sat on the edge of his seat, poised to hear the details. Martha dismissed the subject, planted her hands on her knees, and rocked herself to her feet.

“I’d better get back to the house. Come along, Lillian.”

“But—but you didn’t tell me—” Erik rose to his feet, looking bewildered.

Martha waved a plump hand at him. “Oh, that would take all the fun out of it, now, wouldn’t it?”

“But—”

“Don’t worry, Senator,” Lynn said as she pushed herself out of her chair. “She’d tell you if you were in danger of being hit by a bus.”

They all made their way into the front hall. Lillian pulled her keys out of her purse. Martha stood on tiptoe to give Lynn a kiss on the cheek.

“We’ll see you in the morning, sweetheart. Have a good night.”

“It’s been swell so far,” Lynn said sarcastically.

Martha took her by the arms, her round face suddenly a study in seriousness. “Make lemonade,” she said clearly.

Lynn blinked at her.

She repeated the line as if it were a vital piece of coded information. “Make lemonade. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Something good will come of this. You’ll see.”