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“He’s your attorney, Pink. And you like him.” She was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Have you talked to Ed since you’ve been in Washington?”
“Once.”
“You’ve been gone over two weeks. What’s up? Is this about that stupid billboard thing?”
No use lying. It would only prolong the misery. “I was so certain it was Ed who bought the billboard. After Steve Santorelli gave me a Mercedes, Ed made it sound like a contest, like he had to one-up Steve. A few days later, I see a Midland billboard that says Marry Me, Pink. Who wouldn’t think it was Ed?”
“You should have found out for sure before you went over to Ed’s and said no.”
“Gee, thanks, Mom.”
“No need to be sarcastic.”
I sighed and broke a pencil in half. “I’m sorry. Just thinking about that day makes me queasy.” It didn’t help that my first reaction was elation. Ed wanted me to marry him, and how awesomely romantic to ask on a billboard. I remembered feeling euphoric, my mind skipping ahead to what life as Mrs. Ed Ravenaldt would be like. We’d live in Ed’s quaint fixer-upper on the east side of old Midland. We’d get a cat. We’d meet at home during lunch and make crazy, passionate love to each other.
Then, less than twenty-four hours after seeing the billboard, reality set in. Bad memories from my disastrous first marriage moved in on all those squishy, happy thoughts and ruined everything. My ex-husband was a flaming philanderer. Ask any woman who’s been involved with a cheater and she’ll verify, it’s next to impossible to trust another man. I knew I couldn’t take it, the wondering every time Ed was out of pocket. I could hang out with Ed, sleep with him, spend entire weekends with him. But I couldn’t marry him. So I went over there and told him. When he said he wasn’t the one who bought the billboard, it was way beyond awkward.
Ed was pretty pissed, and who could blame him? I mean, what a bummer to get turned down before the question is asked. He was also pretty unhappy that Steve Santorelli was wowing me with romantic billboards. I had only myself to blame for that. Before I said no to Ed, I went on and on about how the billboard was awesome, how much it meant, and how clever. Blah, blah, blah. After that, Ed said he needed some space, that maybe it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while.
It wasn’t just the billboard, and I knew that. As much as Ed and I are a perfect fit, our relationship from day one, when I hired him as my attorney during the whistle-blower thing, has been one of extremes. We’re either completely in tune with each other, or metaphorically facing each other over pistols at dawn.
Three days after the billboard fiasco, a catastrophic earthquake hit China, killing over two hundred thousand people, with thousands more injured or missing. Mom’s sister, Frederica, had spent nine years in China and still has a lot of friends there. Within twenty-four hours of the quake, she’d talked me into going with her to China, to help the survivors. After two weeks of horrors I’d never believe if I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes, I came back to the States. I’d scarcely unpacked before I got a call from Parker, asking me to come to Washington and help out at CERF.
Within the week, I was living in a small furnished loft in Washington, D.C., working for CERF, feeling like I was following my destiny. After what I saw in China, I was as passionate as Parker. Maybe more so.
“Call Ed,” Mom said now. “You’re in a bad spot, Pink, and he can help you. Whatever personal problems you have with Ed are irrelevant.”
She had a point. “He may tell me to go to hell.”
“No, he won’t.” She cleared her throat. “I need to go. I still don’t know why I let you talk me into this. The whole thing is making me antsy.”
Cripes. For at least the fortieth time, I wished I hadn’t convinced Mom to accept the invitation to the birthday dinner Steve’s dad was hosting. She was driving me nuts about it.
Mom grew up on a dirt farm in a family of ten kids, poor as Job’s turkey. She married right out of high school, had me, and became the ultimate hausfrau. When I was in college, she got up from her doormat position and told my dad to stick his autocratic belligerence where the sun don’t shine. She divorced him, went to college, and became a CPA. She’s a pretty woman. She’s a barracuda in business. But deep inside, she’s still a poor kid from the sticks, only one step away from her white-trash roots. Or so she thinks. On top of that, she has real issues with men. Now the thought of a romantic relationship flips her out, I guess because she’s afraid she’ll go back into doormat position. She avoids serious romance as diligently as she avoids IRS audits for her clients.
The birthday dinner posed a double threat. There would be senators, diplomats and Washington bigwigs there, and even though Mom can be as polished as the best of them, that kind of company scares her to death.
The other threat came from Steve’s dad. Despite my assurances that she was invited to the party as a courtesy, her romance antennae had gone haywire because Lou Santorelli called her to offer the invitation long before the invitations were mailed.
Okay, the truth is, Lou did ask Mom because he’s got a thing for her. But Mom couldn’t possibly know that. As far as she knew, she’d never met the man.
A few weeks earlier, Lou was in Midland, working undercover for an antiterrorist group, looking for terrorist financiers. He happened to meet Mom, who had no clue who he was, or even that he was male, because he was disguised as a very large woman. Lou’s pretty wacky. He was a POW in Vietnam, and like so many of those guys, it did something to him. Rules? Who needs ’em? He got it bad for Mom and asked her to the dinner via telephone, I think so he could talk to her as himself. It’s kinda cute, in a weird way. And I was dying to see how they hit it off.
“Mom, you’re a kick-ass CPA, and you can hold your own with überconservative businessmen. This is no different. Just be yourself.”
“Don’t you get it? Being myself is the bad part. I cuss like a sailor, have a tendency to bite heads off, and I’m way too opinionated. Besides, when I get flustered, this damn hick accent comes out so strong, people think I just fell off the cotton truck.”
“You just don’t get it, do you, Mom? All of that is what makes you so remarkable. You’re unique, interesting and funny.”
“And neurotic. Don’t forget neurotic.”
“So? Everybody’s a little neurotic. Just go to the party and relax. If nothing else, look at it like you and I will have a chance to catch up.”
“That’s true.” She sighed into the phone. “Promise me you’ll call Ed.”
“Fine! I promise.”
Around five o’clock, Taylor came into my office and closed the door. She looked positively radiant. Tossing a stack of invoices toward me with check copies attached, she said smugly, “I called China Pearl and they say all of their invoices have been paid. Then I called Robert Wang at the CERF office in Beijing, and he checked these invoices against the copies he keeps before he mails the originals to us. He doesn’t have any of these invoices. Which means they were generated by someone outside the invoicing department at China Pearl.”
I eyed the invoices. “They’re identical to the ones from China Pearl. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to get these printed. I wonder if they have fingerprints on them?”
Taylor looked like she wanted to cheer. “Yours, Pink. Your fingerprints are all over them. You’re the one who approves all invoices for payment. Remember?” She glanced at my printer. “Did you know every printer has a unique imprint, that printer companies make them that way, so they can trace which printer was used to generate documents?” Her green gaze went to my computer. “And did you know computers have a unique identity, that the cops can trace any Internet transaction?”
My violent tendencies were coming to the fore. I guess we’re not so far from our caveman ancestors. If I’d had a club, I’d have conked her on the head. “Did you know I leave this office every day a little after five and the printer and computer are alone until nine o’clock the next morning?” I leaned toward her and crossed my arms on my desk. “Give this some thought, Taylor. As much as you resent me, would you really feel good about me going to prison if I’m not guilty?”
She glared at me with open hostility. “I’d throw a party, and invite some of the staff from the old firm. You don’t have a clue how many of us hated you, Pink. Always ordering everyone around, demanding we work unholy hours, giving us bad performance reviews for stupid things like wearing the wrong clothes and cussing in front of clients.”
“So I deserve to rot in prison because I insisted the staff present a professional image? Because I took my job seriously and expected others to do the same?”
“You were such a bitch about it all.”
“It was always all about the job, and making sure I did the best I could for the firm. That’s called loyalty.”
“You wouldn’t know loyalty if it bit you in the ass!”
I leaned back, realization dawning on me. “This isn’t about how I did my job at the firm. This is about that night you called and asked me to lie to your husband about where you were. You wanted me to say you’d been at my house, and I refused.”
“We were friends! I needed help, and you blew me off.”
“That was a million years ago, when we were still staff slaves. You’ve been divorced almost six years. And you’re still blaming me?” I shook my head, more disgusted than I would have thought possible. “Face it, Taylor, I wasn’t the one boinking the client’s mailroom guy. That was you, and to hold such a grudge because I didn’t go along with your lie is seriously chickenshit of you.”
“It’s not that you didn’t go along with the lie. You ratted me out to the big dogs at the firm. Because of that one indiscretion, I was way behind everyone else in promotions.”
“You’re wrong, Taylor. I never said a word to anyone.”
“Liar!” She grabbed up the invoices and waved them around. “You’re gonna get what’s coming to you!”
It took a superhuman effort not to lose my temper, but I managed. “If you finger me as the rat, you’ll regret it, Taylor. I’m not behind this, but someone is. I suggest you find that person and lay off this immature grudge-fest.”
So far, so good. I hadn’t lost any ounce of professionalism, or sunk to Taylor’s level.
Then she went over the line. With a smirk on her wide mouth, she said with dripping venom, “I figured out a long time ago, your problem is that you’re a coldhearted, frigid bitch. George told me he had to get it somewhere else because you quit putting out.” She stepped back toward the door and reached behind herself for the doorknob, just before she lobbed a nuclear bomb into my lap. “You divorced him because he slept with whores, but didn’t you ever wonder if he got some he didn’t have to pay for? You were the office joke, Pink, because half the women up there had a little bit of George. We all felt sorry for him, did you know that? I remember a Christmas party when George was doing Beth in the ladies’ room. You went in there, and had no clue they were in the stall right next to you.” She laughed. And laughed.
Unable to stop myself, I stood and shouted, “Get out!”
When she kept standing there, laughing, I reached for my coffee cup and hurled it at her, just as she opened the door. The damn thing flew right through the opening and crashed across Samantha Booker’s desk, knocking over a pencil cup and splashing coffee all over Samantha’s pretty white blouse.
I have never been so ashamed of myself. I looked at Taylor and said in as calm a voice as I could muster, which probably wasn’t very, “Just know this, Taylor. If you don’t do the job Parker entrusted you with, and do it fairly and without bias, you’ll have a lot more to worry about than a tired grudge that’s solely based on your own pathetic paranoia. Do we understand each other?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m warning you. Don’t screw with me, Taylor.”
With one last glare, she turned and walked out.
From across the hall, in the open area of desks in the bullpen, the handful of staffers at CERF all stared at me with wide eyes and slack jaws. I didn’t blame them. How often does a good catfight come along?
Chapter 2
By the time Mom and I got to the dinner party, I was ready to put myself up for adoption. All the way to Steve’s Georgetown town house, she twisted one emerald earring and muttered about how she shouldn’t have left Midland, that she had a million things to do, that her clients would suffer because she was gadding about the nation’s capital, going to some idiotic dinner party with people she didn’t know and probably didn’t want to know. That led into a diatribe about politics in the United States, and it was at that point that I tuned her out.
Regrettably, the cabbie didn’t tune her out, and by the time we arrived, they were in a hot debate about the state of the union. I guess Lou was awaiting our arrival because he opened the door of the cab. Mom didn’t notice until after she’d summarily told the cabbie he was a socialist radical and if he hated America so much, why didn’t he get the hell out?
Then Lou leaned in and handed the cabbie his fare and I honestly thought Mom would keel over in a dead faint. Her face was the color of a ripe strawberry. She took his hand and he helped her out of the cab, and while we stood there on the sidewalk, I introduced my mother to Lou Santorelli. It hit me that the two of them looked alike, with dark hair and eyes, and skin that leaned toward olive.
Lou didn’t smile, didn’t attempt to be gracious and welcoming, which I naturally expected because he was our host. Instead, he said in a curious voice, “If a man has a problem with how things are, does it make him a treasonous bastard who has no right to live here?”
It took her exactly twenty-three seconds to recover. I know because I counted, while I was praying she wouldn’t turn around and walk off.
“If all he can do is blame the government for every stinkin’ problem in his life, and insist how much better it is everywhere else in the world, then no, he doesn’t deserve to live here. He should take his pissy, whiny attitude across the ocean. Any ocean.”
Grasping her arm, he turned and walked her into the house. “It can be difficult to get a leg up, so maybe his pissy attitude is a result of struggling to make ends meet.”
Mom appeared to have forgotten her neurosis. “It is not difficult to get ahead, if a person is willing to work hard. Especially if that person is a thirty-year-old white male, with no disability of any kind except pure laziness.”
“Are you a feminist, Jane?”
Mom pulled her arm away from him. “I’m a hardworking professional woman who’s got no time for labels and bullshit.”
I’m still not sure why, but that struck Lou as funny. He laughed out loud, grabbed Mom’s arm again and walked her into a wide living room with soaring ceilings and quite a few expensive-looking antiques. Steve’s town house is beautiful, if a person is into the museum look.
The birthday boy was in the far corner, talking to a man with snowy-white hair whose back was toward the room. Looking at Steve, dressed in one of his beautiful suits, his short black hair a bit messy and his large, slightly hairy hand curled around a highball glass, I got that strange jumpy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I always get when I’m around him. It’s not unpleasant at all—just unnerving. I’m afraid to put a name to the feeling because I’m fairly sure it would be something like intense, unquenched sexual desire. And as much as I like Steve, as much as I admire him and like being with him, I know it would spell disaster if I ever slept with him.
For one thing, any chance of ever making things work out with Ed would be over forever. And I wasn’t ready to give that up. Not yet. For another, Steve is the antithesis of the kind of men I always assumed moved around Washington. He’s a widower who lost his beloved wife, Lauren, to cancer almost three years ago, and since then, he hasn’t gone out with anyone. Until me. I can’t figure it out, but Steve seems to think I need to be the next Mrs. Santorelli. And that’s without ever sleeping with me. If I did sleep with him, I just know he’d manage to get me to marry him. Imagine my trust issues with a senator. Yeah, it would never work.
After I figured out he was the one who bought the billboard, I told him thank you for the offer, but no. He wasn’t surprised, he said, but he also wasn’t giving up.
When he caught sight of me he waved me over, and I left Mom with Lou, which she failed to notice because they were really getting into it about women in America while the bartender mixed her a whiskey sour.
I was almost to Steve when I realized the old man was Richard Harcourt, a retired Speaker of the House. Steve took my hand and folded it into his, then kissed my cheek and introduced me. “Richard, this is Whitney Pearl, but she goes by Pink. We met when she testified before the senate finance committee during the Marvel Energy investigation.”
Richard shook my hand and smiled warmly. “I watched it all on C-SPAN. You’re a true hero.” He dropped my hand, but continued smiling. “Interesting nickname you have. Lotta redheads get dubbed Red, but I’m not seeing why they call you Pink, especially with all that blond hair.”
“I’m a CPA, sir. Because my last name is Pearl, people started calling me Pink Pearl, like the erasers.”
“Ah, I see. Very clever, that! Mind if I call you Pink?”
I returned his smile. “Be my guest.”
“Good, and you should call me Richard.” He winked. “Or Very Handsome and Wonderful Old Man, if you prefer.”
I couldn’t help laughing, and decided I liked Richard Harcourt.
“Steve tells me you were in China for a couple of weeks just after the earthquake.”
Of late, it was my favorite subject and I admit, I got kinda wound up about it. When I was done, and after I’d made the case for people to donate money to CERF, Richard chuckled and said in a pseudowhisper, “You’re preaching to the choir, Pink. I wrote a check with a lot of zeroes on it just last week.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, and thank you.”
He lost a bit of his joviality and said, “Pretty damn good speech you’ve got there. I suggest you spin it to a few well-heeled people who’ve convinced themselves your boss should be the First Gentleman. Tell them their money’s better spent on the Chinese relief effort than a lost cause.”
“Sir?”
He harrumphed loudly. “Didn’t you know Madeline Davis is planning to run for president?”
“I hadn’t heard, no.” Why hadn’t Parker mentioned it? I glanced at Steve. “So a woman’s going to run for president, and she’s got some big money behind her. Imagine that.”
“Will you vote for her?”
“Well, she is a smart woman.” I turned again to Richard. “Who’s supporting her?”
“Top of the list is Bill Mulholland.” At my puzzled expression, he added, “Old New York family. Got money dating back to the Mayflower, no doubt. Sits on lots of corporate boards and hobnobs with royalty.”
“And you think I should call and ask him for a donation because you’re convinced any campaign money he gives to Madeline is wasted?” Maybe I didn’t like Richard so much. I drew myself up a bit. “You’ll pardon me, sir, if I decline to follow your suggestion. Insinuating that Madeline hasn’t a prayer of winning without knowing who else might run can only indicate a gender bias I obviously don’t support.”
Instead of taking up the gauntlet, Richard laughed as though I’d just told a great joke. He leaned close to Steve and said, “She’ll do, son. She’ll do just fine.”
Then he was gone, and miraculously, Steve and I were alone in the corner. But not for long. An entire flock of guests were descending on us from across the room. I quickly asked Steve, “What did he mean, I’ll do?”
He grinned at me. “Richard is convinced I should throw my hat in the ring for president. He says the first thing I need is a wife, and he thinks you’re just the ticket.”
I was speechless. Seriously. Maybe it was the whisper of the thought of becoming First Lady of the United States of America, or maybe it was the thought of sleeping with the leader of the free world on a nightly basis, or maybe it was thinking about living at the most primo address in the country.
“What’s wrong, Pink? Don’t you think you’re up to being First Lady?”
My mom’s neurosis can sometimes be mine, as well. “Steve, I’m a CPA from a dusty oil town in West Texas. I went to a public university. I don’t even have china. Come to think of it, after my apartment was broken into and ransacked last month, I don’t have any dishes at all.”
“The guy living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right now is from your hometown. In fact, so is the First Lady. If you ask me, it’s sort of cosmic. And by the way, they have plenty of dishes at the White House.”
I didn’t have a chance to respond, because the gaggle of guests were upon us. The rest of the cocktail hour, Steve guided me around the room, introducing me to senators and representatives, high-ranking military personnel, the IRS commissioner and the Mexican ambassador. After that we went for dinner in a dining room large enough to land a plane, where I was seated next to Steve at the head of the table and Mom was seated next to Lou about half a mile down at the far end. I was excited when the Chinese ambassador, Mr. Wu, was seated just across the table from me.
Steve noticed my enthusiasm. He leaned close and said quietly, “Most men give flowers and jewelry. You get the Chinese ambassador.”
Startled, I looked into his dark Italian eyes. “You invited him just for me?”
He nodded and gave me a funny little crooked smile. “Now’s your chance to ask him about Mrs. Han and the China brides.”
That bizarre jumpy thing in my stomach morphed into a warm, intense feeling that was as foreign as Mr. Wu. I swallowed hard. “Thank you.”
