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“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”
It was nice of him to offer, but she didn’t trust the man any farther than she could throw him. Still, he’d rescued her from that mob of reporters and was feeding her in rather spectacular fashion. He hadn’t once behaved like a slimeball toward her. She supposed she should cut him a little slack.
“After Melinda, you never found another woman who turned your head?” she asked.
“Circling back to my love life, are we?” he murmured, amused. “Nope. I guess she ruined me for any other woman.”
The one time Willa had met Professor Melinda Grayson, the woman had intimidated her so badly, Willa had barely been able to form coherent sentences. So, he liked his women aggressive, huh? Count her out, then.
“Actually, no,” Gabe commented. “Aggressive isn’t my style in women.”
Oh, Lord. Had she asked that question aloud? She would just crawl under the table and hide now. Her cheeks fiery hot, she searched frantically for a distraction. “The garden is beautiful.”
Gabe looked outside, and she followed suit. Twilight had descended over the rose garden, softening its hues to muted tones of maroon and mauve.
“Shall I open the doors?” he murmured.
She nodded, and he rose gracefully to throw open the double doors. Even wearing jeans and a casual sport jacket, he cut an elegant figure. He must be, what? Forty? The man was in shockingly great shape for his age. His coat bulged with muscle and his face was smooth and youthful. He was going to be one of those incredibly annoying men who looked fantastic at sixty and beyond.
The sound of crickets chirping swirled into the room on the perfume of roses and the day’s spent warmth. The light of the twin candles on their table began to take over as night fell around them. The waiter brought the main course—spit-roasted quail, crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, that literally melted in Willa’s mouth. The wine was smooth, her companion smoother, and the combination relaxed her in spite of herself.
For his part, Gabe spent an inordinate amount of time studying her over his meal. Finally, she couldn’t resist asking, “Is something wrong?”
“No. It’s just strange to see the little girl all grown up. It’s like I’ve walked into a time warp where you aged overnight.”
“I got old when you weren’t looking, huh?”
It was his turn to roll his eyes. “You are emphatically not old. You’re stunning. That’s what’s got me staring at you. The promise of this kind of beauty was always there, but it’s impressive to see it in full bloom. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable.”
“Uhh, thank you,” she mumbled, flummoxed. He thought she was pretty? Well, then.
“The boys must have been all over you in high school and college,” he commented. “Any of them still around?”
Was he actually fishing to find out if she had a boyfriend? Shock made her choke on a sip of water. She eventually recovered enough to croak, “I’m the only kid in my high school who went up to Lover’s Point to be alone.”
He laughed lightly, disbelievingly even, at her quip. Little did he know how dull her love life had truly been.
She’d taken one ecstatic bite of the most incredibly delicious crèe brûulée she’d ever experienced when Gabe’s cell phone rang, shattering the quiet between them. She raised her eyebrows at the sappy country tune of his ringtone. Not a romantic, huh? He was such a liar.
“Hello,” Gabe said. He frowned, listening in silence for a few seconds and then startled her by saying, “She’s right here, sir. Of course, sir.”
Who would Gabe Dawson call “sir” in that tone of respect? Even God probably didn’t rate that tone of voice from him. She took the phone Gabe held out to her. “Who is it?” she mouthed. He merely grinned and wiggled the phone at her. She took it cautiously.
“Hello?” she said even more cautiously. “This is Willa Merris.”
“Good evening, Miss Merris. This is Wade Graham. I’m sorry to disturb your evening. My people had quite a time tracking you down.”
As in Governor of Texas, Wade Graham? Holy cow. “Uhh, hello, Governor Graham. What can I do for you?”
The governor wasn’t of the same political party as her father, and the two men hadn’t been close, to her knowledge. It was decent of the man to express his condolences. Except she recalled her mother making some vague reference to having received a sympathy call from the governor last week. Why was the man tracking her down, then?
“I spoke with your father’s attorney this morning,” the governor explained. “As part of Senator Merris’s will, he left a letter expressing his preference for how his senate seat should be disposed of in the event of his death.”
“What does this have to do with me, sir?” she asked, confused.
“As you may know, it’s not unusual in the event of a senator’s untimely demise for the senator’s surviving spouse to take the seat until the end of that term.”
Horror blossomed in Willa’s gut. Her mother was flighty at best, and when she’d been hitting the pills hard, Minnie was barely conscious. Her mother wasn’t remotely fit to fill her father’s senate seat.
“In a few cases, however, the senator may request that someone else fill the seat. A trusted colleague or staff member, for example.”
Larry Shore was going to be thrilled. The guy was ragingly ambitious, and barely containing his fury that John Merris, whose coattails Larry obviously had planned to ride to the top, had had the ill grace to go and get himself murdered. Larry had briefly been a suspect in his boss’s murder, but he’d been released on bail and was supposedly no longer a primary suspect.
“… his letter, your father recommended that I appoint you to serve in his stead until a special election can be held. Of course, the regular election is in six weeks, and Congress is in recess so its members can return home to campaign. So, this will be mostly a ceremonial appointment….”
Her? A United States senator? “But, sir,” she blurted, interrupting the governor. “I’m a kindergarten teacher.”
“Nonetheless, your father thought you were the best person for the job. He named you in his sealed letter as his choice to finish out his term.”
Frantic, she blurted, “But I’m only twenty-eight. You have to be thirty to be a senator.”
“I’ve already spoken to the president. He’s given permission under these special circumstances for you to finish out your father’s term. The White House Counsel says there have been two senators seated at age twenty-eight in spite of the Constitutional mandate, so there’s a precedent.”
She didn’t know what to say. Shock barely scraped the surface of how she was feeling.
“I’m going to fly up to Dallas tomorrow for a press conference at around noon to make the announcement and formally appoint you. My assistant will give you all the details. You’ll need to prepare a brief statement. Given your recent loss, I doubt the press will expect to grill you too hard. Your father’s chief of staff can help you draft it.”
The line disconnected, and she stared at the cell phone like it was alien technology. A tanned male hand lifted it gently away from her.
“What was that all about?” Gabe asked quietly.
She looked up at him, stunned as the reality began to sink in. “My father requested that I fill his Senate seat until the next election. The governor’s going to appoint me to the position tomorrow.”
“Congratulations!” Gabe exclaimed.
She frowned. “But I don’t want it.”
“There’ll be nothing to it. You raise your hand, take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and then you sit tight until next January.”
“Next January?”
“The election is in November, but your successor won’t be sworn in until next January. You’ll get to serve in a lame-duck session of Congress if you want to.”
Appalled at the size of the task her father had just thrust upon her, she exclaimed, “But I don’t know anything about being a senator!”
Gabe leaned back in his seat and took a sip of brandy. “That’s not true. You’ve lived around a senator for years. You know how to handle yourself in a crowd, and you’re smart.”
She snorted inelegantly. “And as soon as the national media gloms on to the fact that I accused a man of rape today, the scandal will dwarf my father’s murder.”
“Rape?” Gabe echoed ominously.
“What did you think I was doing at the police station? You heard the questions the reporters were shouting at me.”
“I thought Ward assaulted you. Like he hit you and you fought him off.”
“Oh, he did hit. And I did fight,” she replied bitterly. “Not that it helped one bit.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked seriously.
“Nope.” At the end of the day there wasn’t much to talk about. She’d been dumb. Trusted someone she’d known for a long time. Let down her defenses. And he’d turned out to be a rapist.
Gabe’s eyes narrowed to a deadly glare. “Remind me to show you some self-defense moves,” he commented grimly. “There are a few things all women should know about how to take out a bigger, stronger assailant than them.”
She studied him with interest. He looked really mad. Why did he give a darn about what happened to her? She was the enemy. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
His spoon stopped in midair. It paused for a long moment, then reversed course and landed lightly on his plate. “Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”
“Because I’m my father’s daughter. And let’s be frank. My father hated your guts and went out of his way to cause you trouble. He loved nothing better than making you spitting mad.”
The corner of Gabe’s mouth quirked up. “The feeling was mutual. I’m gonna miss the old bastard.”
She sighed. Was it just her father and Gabe, or were all oil wildcatters this cussed? Maybe someday she’d find a nice, pleasant guy who knew nothing about the oil business to settle down with. These force-of-nature-personality men were so not her thing.
But then a flash of blond, charming James Ward made her blood run cold. Everyone thought he was a nice, pleasant guy, too. He would never hurt a flea, let alone viciously attack a woman, right?
“Are you done with your dessert?” Gabe asked, startling her out of her grim recollections.
“As delicious as this crèe brûulée is, that phone call killed my appetite.”
“Let’s get out of here, then.” Gabe came around the table to pull back her chair. The old-fashioned gesture surprised her. The young man she’d known had been brash and unpolished, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who certainly hadn’t held chairs for ladies.
Since when had she become such a snob? So, somewhere along the way, he’d picked up a few points of etiquette. Probably his wife had taught him. Polite behavior did not make the man.
Lord knew James Ward had been plenty polite up until the part where he tried to kiss her and then went crazy on her. She would never forget that strange and violent look that had come into his eyes. He’d tried to kiss her neck and she’d stepped back from him, and he’d done a no-kidding Jekyll and Hyde before her very eyes. It had been, bar none, the scariest thing she’d ever seen.
“Willa? Are you all right?”
She realized that she’d just been standing there like a zombie, staring at nothing. “Sorry. Went wool gathering for a second.”
“Good wool?”
Her throat too tight to answer, she shook her head. Gabe held out his forearm to her and waited expectantly until she looped her hand around it. Wow, he really had gone old-school in the past ten years.
He led her out to his SUV, which a valet had pulled around for them, and Gabe handed her into the vehicle. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the headrest. A United States senator. Her. The thought just wouldn’t compute. Even if the title was purely for appearances and she never did a darned thing, she would still go down in the history books as having served in the United States freaking Senate.
In a few minutes, Gabe slowed his car and turned a corner. Her eyes snapped open to see an underground parking garage. Panic tightened around her chest. “Where are we?” she forced out.
“I keep a place in Dallas for when I have business in town. Since you have to be here for a press conference tomorrow, I figured it would save you hassle to stay in town tonight. And, it has the fringe benefit of foiling those pesky reporters camped out waiting to pounce on you in Vengeance.
“But my clothes are at home—”
“You have power suits befitting a U.S. senator in your closet at home, Ms. Kindergarten Teacher?” he asked skeptically.
“Well, no.”
“Exactly. And that means you have to go shopping in the morning. Here, in Dallas. Correct?”
“I guess.”
He parked the SUV and came around to open her door. “Then you’re staying at my place tonight.”
She couldn’t argue with the logic of it. But to spend the night at a man’s apartment? Alone with him? Fear tightened her entire body.
Gabe Dawson was not James Ward. Not all men were scary monsters who leaped on unsuspecting women. Her brain could believe it, but her gut wasn’t even close to convinced. Her brain also said that if she was ever going to have any semblance of a normal life, she was going to have to face, and get over, her fear of being attacked by every man she came into contact with.
Yeah. Her gut wasn’t buying that one, either. Besides, her father would croak—
Oh, wait. She was Senator Merris now. She could do whatever she darn well pleased, scandal be damned. Scandal—She groaned aloud.
Gabe froze in the act of reaching for the elevator button. “What?”
“I filed charges against James Ward today. Now that I’m getting this stupid job, it will be splashed all over the news by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Honey, it was splashed all over the news within five minutes of you leaving the police station.”
“Yes, but that would’ve just been the Vengeance newspaper and a few local television stations. Now it’ll go national.”
“So?” Gabe commented as he ushered her into the elevator.
“So!” she exclaimed. “The media will rake me over the coals!”
“Did you lie to the police? Accuse an innocent man?”
“No.”
Gabe took a quick step across the tiny space to loom over her. Abruptly, a wave of danger rolled off him. Who was she kidding? This guy was a whole lot more man than James Ward had ever been, and she hadn’t been able to fend off Ward. She wouldn’t stand a chance against Gabe if he ever decided to have his way with her. Complete and horrifying vulnerability slammed into her. She was alone and at Gabe Dawson’s mercy. Her knees all but knocked together in fear.
His voice was a velvet knife slicing her composure to shreds. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Willa. You’re the victim. James Ward is the one who ought to be squirming.”
He obviously didn’t know a blessed thing about shame. It sunk all the way down to a person’s bones and poisoned them from the inside out. She risked meeting his dark, angry gaze for a moment but he was too intimidating… and she was too humiliated. She looked away hastily, venturing only, “But the scandal—”
He cut her off sharply. “The scandal will be on his shoulders where it belongs.”
She forced herself to shake off the sick feeling gripping her stomach. The two of them were being brutally honest with each other, right? And it wasn’t like she was ever going to spend time with Gabe Dawson again. He was years older than she. Compared to him, she was a gawky kid. He dated sexy, sophisticated socialites, and he was her father’s archenemy. She couldn’t exactly be seen running around with him if she didn’t want to be the center of all the gossip in Vengeance for months to come.
“Face facts, Gabe. The press will come after me as hard or harder than they go after James. Women in these situations always have their reputations dragged through the mud. And now, I’m going to drag my father’s Senate seat through the mud, too. I owe it to his memory not to do that.”
“You don’t owe your father a damned thing. He’s dead.” The elevator dinged and the door slid open to punctuate his forceful statement.
