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
