Unfinished Business (9 page)

“I…uh…wasn't sure anyone lived here,” she stammered, yanking the dog out of the grass. “Sorry.”

Erica closed the front door slowly. It was definitely a good news/bad news situation: The bad news was that there was a fresh load of dog poop somewhere on the front lawn…but the good news was that load of crap wasn't personified by Senator Mark Newman.

Erica smiled at her little joke, and imagined the senator's face when—no, if—he ever got to hear it. He would probably give her that lopsided little
smirk, the look that meant the barb had bounced off that super-inflated ego of his and that his laser-sharp brain had already processed a rebuttal. He was definitely clever, she admitted only slightly grudgingly. And strong.

The feeling of being in his arms surfaced once again, the sound of his voice rumbling in his chest beneath her ear.

Whoa
, she thought.
Down, girl.
But then it occurred to her that
whoa
was exactly the sort of word the senator would have used.

“He's like slow poison,” she muttered to herself, turning the white envelope over in her hands. “Slow, deadly poison.”

The envelope wasn't heavy, wasn't thick. It seemed like there was only one sheet of paper inside. No longer able to contain her curiosity, Erica slid a finger under the adhesive flap and ripped it open.

It was a photograph, printed not on the glossy thick stock of a professional, but on plain white computer paper as though on a home printer. The image was completely familiar and totally disconcerting: herself, sitting on Mark Newman's lap with her head against his chest like she belonged there; Newman looking smug and tender at the same time.

Erica couldn't figure out when or how it could have been taken. There had been photographers at the school, but that was earlier, before the robbery, and the bullet and the gun—before any moment as intimate as this.

He's just trying to embarrass me
, she'd thought, turning the shot over to decipher some red writing scrawled across the back.

“Stay in Washington, nigger bitch,” it read.

Dread swept over Erica in an icy black wave. She was about to crumple the thing in her fist, to rip it into
tiny pieces and burn it to ashes until another calmer voice whispered direction from the back of her brain. She hurried back to the kitchen, found her school bag and stuffed the nasty-gram inside.

Somehow, she'd have to find the time to deliver it to its rightful owner today. Even if it meant finding a substitute teacher to take her place at Bramble Heights Elementary.

“This one says, ‘Senator foils pizzeria holdup.' And here: ‘Robber's case cracked by Senator's cane.' And this one: ‘Newman gets tough on D.C. crime.'”

Bitsi tossed the newspapers onto Mark's desk like she was disgusted.

“Hey, I'm a local hero,” Mark quipped. “Thought you'd be happy!”

But instead of smiling, Bitsi's frown deepened. A conversation was brewing between them, Mark could feel it. Bitsi wasn't stupid: She knew something was up between Mark and Erica. But instead of shooting straight at the target, she was choosing to skim around it—picking off the corners before going for the kill. Mark cut a glance at Chase, but the man kept his eyes on his coffee mug as though it held the power to predict the future.

Mark suppressed a sigh and pulled the newspapers toward him. He scanned the first story quickly, observing that there was nothing damning in the account. If anything, it was a little heavy on the praise, making him sound like the only quick-thinking pa
tron, when in fact Erica, Mama Tia, and Papa Tony had played important roles in the arrest. He grabbed the second newspaper and then the third, skimming through the stories quickly before looking up at his two staffers. “Seriously, I don't see a problem here.”

Chase pushed his glasses higher up his nose, grabbed the top paper and shuffled through it until he found the section dedicated to gossip. He folded the paper with a sharp crease and tossed it back at Mark without a word, while Bitsi paced the office with her white-blonde head down and her arms folded tight across her chest.

With a quick flick of the eye, Mark understood he was reading the gossip column in the Lifestyle section. Someone had outlined the offending blurb in bright yellow highlighter.

Not that there was any way he was likely to miss it, with the headline The Senator's New Woman in bold black letters.

It wasn't long—just a few sentences, really, all conjecture and guesswork. An “available” U.S. senator currently up for reelection in his home state seemed to be choosing to spend time in the company of a certain D.C. public-school teacher and antiwar protester. Perhaps there was a little more going on than debate and policy?

When he looked up, Bitsi was studying him as if he were a Sudoku puzzle.

“Aw c'mon,” Mark slipped into the easy, country-boy style he often used to joke her out of a bad humor. “It's a
gossip
column. These folks make a living out of trying to get something out of nothing.” He gestured toward the story. “They're just trying to justify their existence. They have to talk about somebody. Heck, last year they had me linked to that supermodel who
came to Capitol Hill to testify about health care. We all know how untrue that one was,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Dead wrong,” Chase seconded, but he had that silly little, I've-got-a-secret look on his broad face. Mark felt himself on the verge of a smile, too, and struggled to hold it back. When the time was right, he'd bring Bitsi in on the things they'd spent the early hours of the day talking about. For now, it was a discussion about women best left between men.

As if she sensed the exclusion, Bitsi darted a glance between them and cleared her throat. “It's just, we've been getting some phone calls,” she announced.

“Must be a slow news day for the Washington press corps.”

Bitsi shook her head until her hair swung in two blonde sheets toward her face. “They weren't calls from
Washington
, Mark. They were from
constituents
. From the folks back home. They saw
Good Morning Nation
. They've also noticed the…uh”—her lips crunched into a frown of distaste—“chemistry…between you and the Johnson woman.” Her head wobbled some more. “And they don't much like it.”

Mark stole a glance at Chase, but the other man was typing something into his PDA as fast as his thumbs could move. Mark sighed. Last night they'd hashed through the whole thing as though dating a woman were a complex piece of legislation. Chase had seemed like the original answer man. This morning, he was too lost in his electronics to even look up.

“Show me,” Mark commanded his media director. He watched Bitsi lift her notebook off the edge of his desk and produce a series of pink phone messages and white e-mail printouts. These she shuffled through quickly until she found the ones she wanted. “This one calls it chemistry. These say, ‘romantic in
terest' and ‘attraction,' respectively. This one”—she shook a piece of white paper free of the pile—“says you spent the whole interview making ‘goo-goo eyes' at her.” She laid them on the desk in front of him. “And all of them are very specific about one thing: She's black. And that's no good.”

“No good, huh?” he muttered, grabbing the pink sheets and skimming them quickly. “This one really does say ‘Goo-goo eyes!'” Mark exploded, choking back a guffaw. “Chase, did you hear that? Your favorite phrase!”

“Yeah, sure,” Chase murmured, looking up with a confused expression that meant he hadn't heard a word. “Yeah,” he repeated, returning to his device.

“Favorite phrase?” Bitsi asked. “'Goo-goo eyes?'” She frowned. “Why?”

“Never mind,” Mark said, deflecting her. The last thing he needed was Bitsi's input. Not when it was entirely possible that he'd mess it up on his own. “Not important.” And to prove it, he turned his attention back to the dozen or so messages, skimming them quickly. He looked up, expecting to find her staring at him, but instead Bitsi was wearing a tread in the middle of his rug, pacing steadily back and forth.

“Two questions,” Mark began, pushing the pink slips away and holding up two fingers. “Question one: You don't
really
think these few oddballs and bigots are a problem, do you, Bits?”

She looked up, a frown still marring her red lips.

“They could be.”

“Could be,” Mark repeated dubiously. “Okay then. Two: How many favorable responses have we gotten from yesterday's interview?”

Bitsi's eyebrows rose. “Favorable?”

“Yeah, favorable,” Mark repeated. “That means good.”

A pink flush of anger appeared on each of Bitsi's cheeks. “You know,” she said in a carefully controlled tone that failed to disguise how very annoyed she was. “That's not helpful, Mark. I'm doing my best to protect you here, but you're really pushing my buttons now, so—”

Mark sighed. He was always snapping at Bitsi lately, especially since Erica Johnson had entered his life and started rearranging his emotional furniture.

I'll sit down with Bitsi. Later
, he told himself.
After this election is behind us. When there's more time and we're all not on edge.

But just thinking of that conversation filled him with dread. He knew he didn't have the words to explain to Bitsi where his feelings for her ended. She'd get all emotional and he'd lose his way.
Women,
he added mentally.
Almost all of them were impossible to talk to.
Especially when emotions were involved. And Bitsi, for all her intelligence and logic, had emotions a-plenty.

“I know, I know,” he said more gently. “I'm sorry. But you get my point. How'm I supposed to keep this in perspective if all you'll tell me about is the Confederate whackos and the redneck rebs?”

Bitsi sighed. She approached the desk again, reached for a fat folder beneath her notebook and slid it toward him. Inside were dozens of messages and e-mails expressing interest and appreciation for the “Newman/Johnson Project.”

The Newman/Johnson Project
, Mark thought, a smile curving his lips. Leave it to Bitsi to come up with the perfect phrase for the whole affair.

He made a note to run that one up the flagpole with Erica and see if she saluted. She'd probably hate it simply because he liked it, he realized, but instead of
irritating him, the thought made him want to laugh out loud. He didn't realize he was sitting there grinning like a goofball until Bitsi cleared her throat a little more forcefully than was strictly necessary. He focused his attention back on the two staffers.

“Seems to me the positives far outweigh the negatives here, Bitsi,” he said, closing the folder. “I don't think we can let a little gossip and some angry assholes derail us, do you? And if Malloy's desperate enough to try to play some kind of race card, I say let him. He can't actually hurt me, and he'll end up looking like a bigot, right?”

“Right,” Chase muttered absently to his PDA.

“Wrong,” Bitsi asserted firmly. “I don't know what you're up to, Mark, but I'll tell you this: I will not stand idly by and allow you to alienate your supporters on the eve of an election, just because you're horny or you've got jungle fever or whatever. You've decided to get back into the dating game and that's fine. But I really think you'd be better off with a white woman.”

Anger overtook his body in an instant and before he knew it he'd grabbed the crutches from the credenza behind him and swung himself toward Bitsi to hiss his fury into her face.

“What?” Mark glowered at her. “What did you say?”

She whirled at him, eyes flashing. “I said, I really think—”

The buzz of the intercom interrupted her.

“Senator?” The voice of the intern
du jour
—a coed who giggled nervously every time Mark entered the room and whose name he couldn't remember for the life of him—filled the room. “There's a Ms. Erica Johnson here to see you.”

Bitsi stopped, her mouth still open, her finger still
aimed in a point in midair. Chase finally pulled his face out of his PDA, a startled, deer-in-the-headlights look on his face.

“Send her in,” Mark replied, immediately pushing the blowup brewing with Bitsi to the back of his mind. Cursing the unwieldy crutches, he maneuvered himself toward the door, averting his face from his colleagues long enough to get his expression under control. But there was no way of checking the way his heart skipped in anticipation.

He didn't remember thrusting the crutches behind him, as though he could somehow hide them, and he didn't feel the customary twinge of pain as he tested his weight on his bad leg. All he remembered was that within seconds of the young intern's announcement of Erica's presence, he was standing in front of her, staring down into her lovely face.

She was wearing a pair of dark slacks and an odd capelike thing, made of a fabric that looked like fur but, he suspected, given her convictions, was more likely to be some kind of synthetic. Over her shoulder was draped the strap of her duffel bag. Mark peered closer. The bandage the paramedics had taped to her earlobe was still securely in place.

She glanced around the room with an expression that made his smile of welcome freeze on his face.

He'd never seen her eyes so uncertain or her forehead so drawn. Her lips were held tight together, like she was biting back a scream. He didn't know her well enough to be sure, but she looked scared.

“I'm sorry to interrupt you,” she began.

“You're not interrupting me,” he said quickly, limping as close to her as could, the better to search her face for an explanation for that frightened, worried look marring her features. “What's wrong?”

Her eyes darted away from his, taking in Chase and Bitsi with apprehension.

“Oh, forgive my lack of manners,” he said. “This is Chase Alexander, my chief of staff and one of my oldest friends. And I think you know Bitsi Barr, my media director?”

Chase crossed the room quickly, offering Erica his hand and a nimble smile, but Mark knew his friend's quick mind had absorbed every detail about her, from the Birkenstock clogs to the colorful African tie she wore around her unruly hair like a headband. “Nice to meet you at last,” he said, pumping her fingers with his own. “The senator speaks very highly of you…and very often of you,” he added with a chuckle.

“Nice to meet you,” Erica Johnson murmured graciously enough, but she let the remark pass without a response. Mark could tell she'd barely heard the man. Even Chase quirked a puzzled eyebrow in Mark's direction.

“Hello,” Bitsi said in a brittle voice, without moving an inch in Erica's direction. The disrespect in her tone was palpable, and Mark felt his anger re-ignite in the pit of his stomach. He made a mental note to finish their conversation and to back Bitsi up—way up this time—but for now he satisfied himself with shooting an evil glare in her direction.

“Hello,” Erica replied, not seeming to notice Bitsi's brush-off any more than Chase's attempts at charm. In fact, her eyes had barely left Mark's face. “If you have a moment,” she said in a low voice. “I need to speak to you. Alone.”

“Alone?” Bitsi hacked into the conversation like a buzz saw. “I'm sure that's not necessary. We're both Mark's closest advisors. Anything you say to him, he's only going to tell us later, anyway, so—”

“That may be,” Erica interjected in a no-nonsense voice that sounded more like the woman Mark thought he knew. “Who
he
talks to is his business. Who
I
talk to is mine.”

“Of course,” Chase said, taking Bitsi by the arm and giving her a not-so-subtle yank. “But don't sneak off without saying good-bye. We need to talk to you a bit about what to expect during your visit to Billingham. Mark's campaigning for reelection, you know. Primary voting is in a week, so we're down to the wire. Got a busy few days planned. We'll be sure to get you a rough itinerary, so you'll know what to expect. Right, Bitsi?”

Bitsi folded her lips and glared at Erica like she was the most hated of enemies.

“Right, Bitsi?” Chase repeated even more forcefully.

“Sure,” Bitsi muttered through gritted teeth. “Absolutely. Unless”—Bitsi managed an ugly, red-lipped smile—“you've decided not to go, for some reason.”