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Sabrina hit the off button; Jake’s head jerked in her direction. “I meant,” she said, “the bit where you said I’m beautiful inside and out.”
His lips clamped together, then parted just enough for him to mutter, “I got carried away with my own rhetoric.”
“A common pitfall for politicians.”
No reply. Just the jump of a muscle in his cheek as he returned his focus to the road.
The buzz of her cell phone had Sabrina rummaging through her purse. One glance at the display and she stuffed the phone back into the jumble of makeup and tissues.
“Reporter?” Jake asked.
“My father.”
“Don’t you want to remind him how you don’t need him anymore?”
“He’ll soon see that.” Her dad’s impeccable sources would have reached him in Dallas where he was playing golf this weekend. He would know she was back and would be intent on shielding her, comforting her. Yet he would deny with his last breath that he had no respect for his youngest daughter—plenty of love, but no faith in her capabilities. Why had she let him, and everyone else, get away with that attitude for so long?
Sabrina realized Jake had taken a turn away from the direction of Buckhead, the exclusive area of Atlanta where they’d both grown up. “Hey, where are you going?”
“My place.”
Her heart jolted, the way it had the first time he’d said those words to her, years ago. “Excuse me?” That came out high, panicky. Because no way could he be planning on doing what they’d done back then. Could he?
“I want to talk to you.”
Talk. Sabrina’s pulse slowed. Thank goodness he couldn’t read her mind.
“Without the risk of one of your sisters barging in,” Jake added.
Sabrina swallowed, licked her lips. “You and I don’t talk.”
Technically, they talked often. Their families were close friends, they met at so many social occasions, it would be impossible to maintain the level of hostility that had consumed them five years ago.
To ease those social connections, they’d fallen into a kind of barbed banter that let them express their dislike in a way that didn’t discomfit other people. Everyone knew their history, no one expected them to be pals. Except Tyler, who, for an intelligent man, had a naive view of their potential for reconciliation.
But they didn’t have private, personal conversations—Sabrina couldn’t remember when she’d last been alone with Jake. Correction, she wished she couldn’t remember.
“Don’t you think it’s time to forgive and forget?” Jake said. “Time we started talking again?”
Jake Warrington, the man who never did anything that didn’t serve his ambition, wanted to be friends? She didn’t even have to think about it. “Nope, I’m good for a few more years.”
His mouth twitched. She looked away. “I want to go home now.” Home. Sabrina had moved back in with her dad when she won the Miss Georgia title. For her security, her father had insisted. He would argue when she told him she was moving out, but this time she would stand firm.
Jake kept driving in the wrong direction.
“This is kidnapping,” she pointed out.
“Only if I ask for a ransom and threaten to cut off your fingers.” He accelerated to get through a light before it turned red. “I’ll deliver you back to Daddy after we talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“I need your help.” He made a face, as if the words tasted of arsenic.
What help could Jake possibly need from her? Fashion advice? She slid a glance at him. She couldn’t fault his style. He looked fantastic whatever he wore.
He wasn’t about to divulge more. Short of wrenching the steering wheel out of his hands—and she would never, ever knowingly do something that might cause another accident—Sabrina had no choice but to go with him. She tipped her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
When it became obvious Sabrina wasn’t about to argue, Jake relaxed his grip on the wheel. He caught himself watching her out of the corner of his eye. That flower in her hair, the orchid, made him think about his father and that in turn made him think about all his problems. He dropped his gaze to the graceful curve of Sabrina’s neck, then lower. Don’t go there. He forced his attention back to the road. Any guy would find her a distraction. From a beautiful, slightly skinny twenty-one-year-old, she’d grown into a stunning woman with curves that made his hands itch. An itch he planned to ignore.
SABRINA SPENT THE remainder of the journey to Virginia Highlands shoring up her resolution. Whatever Jake needed, she wasn’t the one to help him. The distance between them might be all about hostility on his side, but on hers it was self-preservation. Jake had broken her heart five years ago. Just looking at him reminded her of a pain she didn’t want to revisit, a vulnerability she never wanted to succumb to again.
Jake flicked his turn signal and pulled into the driveway of a house that blended modern design and rustic materials—stone base, natural cedar siding, cedar-shingle roof—to stunning effect. Sabrina had never been here before, but she’d heard all about it. The reality was even more impressive. She buzzed her window down, stuck her head out. “This place is fantastic.”
“Built by Warrington Construction.”
She knew from Tyler, whose brother Max ran Warrington Construction, that the basic design was Jake’s, handed over to an architect for refining.
Jake walked around the car to open Sabrina’s door. He hadn’t opened a door for her in years. “What’s going on, Jake? I don’t trust you when you’re nice.”
“Welcome to my world,” he muttered.
She climbed out, pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear as she looked up at the house.
Jake’s scanned her, head to toe. “Inside,” he ordered.
The sooner she heard him out, the sooner she could go home and get on with her life. Sabrina stuck her chin in the air and marched up the front walk.
Jake keyed in an entry code and the extra-high, double-wide front door swung silently, easily, on industrial-size hinges.
Sabrina stepped into a slate-floored atrium, glanced at the elaborately framed mirror on the far wall, then up to the ceiling. “This is beautiful.”
“Thanks.” He led the way to the open-plan living and dining area, dominated by a stone-and-timber fireplace. Recesses in the fire surround stored logs and pinecones. Rustic.
“The kitchen’s through here.” Jake pointed to the doorway beyond.
She followed him into the large, south-facing kitchen. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the French doors, making patterns on the white marble floor and the warm wooden cabinets.
“Have a seat.” Jake waved to the stools at the marble-topped island. He filled the kettle and put it on the stove.
“You must love living here, in a place you’ve created for yourself,” Sabrina said as he retrieved mugs, coffee, sugar.
He shrugged. “I wanted to build something distinctive, but with an architectural integrity that would stand the test of time.”
Typical of Jake to reduce this incredible home to something as calculated as architectural integrity. They lapsed into a silence while they waited for the kettle.
At last, Jake concentrated on adding boiling water to the French press. He added half-and-half and one sugar to Sabrina’s cup, nothing to his, then poured the dark, rich brew. He slid hers across the island.
Sabrina blew on the hot coffee then took a sip. She gave him the thumbs-up and a mischievous smile. “Perfect.”
Jake’s scowl told her he wished he hadn’t remembered how she took hers. He reached for the folder on the end of the island and handed her a sheet of paper. “Read this.”
Curious enough to obey, she put her mug down on the island. She scanned the page, a summary of the latest opinion poll about the forthcoming gubernatorial primary. “Ouch.”
“Exactly,” he said. “The public trust me about as much as they’d trust an arsonist with a match.”
She gripped the paper more tightly. “You must have known that would be a problem.”
“Know why they don’t trust me?” His tone was conversational, but she picked up the old resentment beneath the surface.
Sabrina swallowed, though she hadn’t drunk any more coffee. “Because your father broke the law.”
His mouth tightened. “If you could do it over again,” he said, “would you?”
They both knew what “it” was. The back of her neck prickled; she dropped the damning opinion-poll results. “Jake, your father was a hero to me, the best governor a man could be. I thought he was so caring, so principled.” Needlessly, she stirred her coffee. “No one could have been more upset to discover he’d taken a bribe—apart from his family,” she added quickly. “But no matter how much I admired him, I couldn’t let him get away with it.”
“I mean,” Jake said deliberately, “would you do it the same way?”
He had her there. Because with the benefit of hindsight—and a whole lot more maturity—she wouldn’t have been so rash in her denunciation of Governor Ted Warrington. Wouldn’t have made those distraught calls summoning the media to a midnight press conference, thus guaranteeing the story would trounce every other headline off the front pages. She wouldn’t have forced Jake and his family to wake up to a posse of reporters on their doorstep, so that his dad appeared before the nation aging and vulnerable in his pajamas.
She didn’t want to think about that night, or about what happened afterward—the public frenzy that had condemned Ted before he gave his side of the story. And the flaming, bitter end of her relationship with Jake.
“The outcome would have been the same,” she said uneasily, not meeting his eyes. She caught her reflection in the oven door, saw how she’d hunched down in self-defense. She straightened on her stool. “Your father would still have had to quit.”
“People might at least have given him credit for having selfless motives. If he’d been allowed to retain some dignity…” He let out a hiss. “My parents’ marriage might have survived.”
She drew in a pained breath. If he dared suggest that had his parents not divorced, his mom would never have dated the man who’d taken her sailing on a day when no right-thinking person would have gone out, and drowned them both…
Sabrina shuddered—and saw from Jake’s narrowed eyes that she was taking exactly the path he wanted her to. Fortunately, he brought out her fighting instincts like nobody else. “Whatever help you want from me,” she said coolly, “you obviously think you need to guilt-trip me first. Let’s consider that done, and you can tell me why I’m here.”
He blinked. He must have expected her to cave at the first hint of conflict. She could practically see him rearranging his tactics.
“I need your help to establish public confidence in me,” he said finally, matching her bluntness.
“How could I—” That’s when realization dawned. “Ah. You mean, like—” she waggled her fingers, quote marks for an imaginary headline “—Fat-Thighed Beauty Queen Says, Vote Warrington?”
“I mean—” he made quote marks of his own “—Whistle-blower Says Son Is Not Like Father.”
She had to admit, it had a certain poetic beauty. If the woman who’d blown the whistle on crooked Governor Ted Warrington endorsed Ted’s son for office, voters would have to believe Jake was on the level. But the thought of getting involved with him again, even politically…
“I don’t understand why you’re even running for office,” she hedged. “You knew this would be a problem.”
“Susan did some polling before I decided to run. The results suggested that my grandfather’s and great-uncle’s years of public service to the state were enough to outweigh Dad’s mistakes.” Susan Warrington, Jake’s aunt and Tyler’s mom, was Jake’s campaign manager, as she’d been his father’s before him. Jake came from a long line of Georgia governors. “None of the numbers we’ve polled since then support that conclusion,” he finished.
Sabrina tapped the page in front of her. “That tells me why you thought you could win. You still haven’t said why you want to be governor.” Jake had always thought bigger than Georgia; he’d had his heart set on national politics, starting with Congress, back when he and Sabrina were dating.
The bribe scandal had ended that ambition. Jake had quit politics to work with Max at Warrington Construction.
“My father cheated this state, and I want to put that right,” he said. “I want to move on. I’m sick of being ‘crooked Ted Warrington’s son.’”
Sabrina swallowed and ducked her head. The poll data caught her eye. “This isn’t all bad news. People think you’re intelligent, likable and—and you have a nice smile.” According to the demographics data at the bottom of the page, seventy percent of the respondents were women. Sabrina knew they meant his smile—the one that adorned campaign posters around town, the one she never saw—was sexy. “Maybe Susan’s original numbers were right, and people will look past what your dad did.”
“They won’t,” he said flatly.
“My support would be more of a handicap than a help,” she assured him. “You saw those photographers at the airport. I’m a bad joke.”
He barked a laugh. “I guess you haven’t seen the local papers. The media might be poking fun at you, but there’s been a swell of public sympathy like you wouldn’t believe. The newspapers are full of letters saying what a wonderful Miss Georgia you are. And you’re Saint Sabrina of Talkback Radio.” The sweep of his hand encompassed the Georgia airwaves.
“You’re exaggerating,” she said, a part of her hoping he wasn’t. That the entire state didn’t hold her in contempt.
“Sabrina.” Jake gripped the edge of the island. “Would you trust me as governor?”
She would never trust him with her heart again, and would recommend no other woman should, either, but she did trust him as a politician. Unlike his father’s, Jake’s integrity was unshakable.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then we don’t have a problem.” His fingers relaxed. “Do we?”
She almost agreed. Then she realized what Jake was doing. In short order, he’d had her feeling grateful for his intervention at the airport, sorry for him over his poll results, guilty about the role she’d played in his family’s breakup…He was manipulating her emotions, just as he had five years ago. Back then, he’d left her shattered. Thankfully, he’d been too mad to see how he’d hurt her.
“Your getting involved in the governor race will take everyone’s minds off your legs,” he coaxed, as if offering her an irresistible enticement.
“Politics being even weightier?” she said sharply.
He grinned, almost amicably, and she guessed he thought her agreement was in the bag.
“I need you to tell the world you have complete trust in me,” he said. “And to attend some of my campaign events between now and the primary vote in June. We could start Monday—I’m opening an art exhibition at Wellesley High School. Your dad will probably be there, his firm is one of the sponsors. You could come along. What do you say?”
Sabrina studied her fingernails to avoid the compelling pressure of his gaze. “I say no.”
Chapter Two
JAKE SHOVED HIMSELF off his stool and took a couple of paces away from the island. “No to the high school art show?”
“No to all of it,” Sabrina said. No, I’m not dumb enough to get sucked into helping a guy who knows exactly how to reel me in. She cringed at the thought of how he’d led her to this moment today. Sabrina Merritt is a beautiful person, inside and out. Jake knew her looks were the source of her confidence, and he’d pandered to that. It felt just like the old days, when he’d played on her vulnerability to dissuade her from reporting his father the moment she’d learned of the bribe. What next? Would he try to use the attraction that still shimmered in the air between them, the heat that rose above their enmity?
“Dammit, Sabrina,” he said. “I’m not letting you out of here until you agree to help.”
She pressed her right hand palm down onto the island, slid it toward him. “Is this where you chop off my fingers for the ransom note?”
His gaze dropped to her manicured, Crushed Raspberry nails. “Just tell me why,” he said tightly.
“I have plans for my future, and they don’t involve revisiting the past.”
For long seconds he processed that. “When you say plans, do you mean like your plan to climb Everest?”
That stung. “When I said that, I was back on my feet for the first time after the accident.” She hated thinking about the car crash that had killed her mom and left Sabrina, then still a teenager, unable to walk for eighteen months. She glared at Jake. “Cut me some slack, will you?”
“Like you cut my father some slack?” he retorted.
