“Great job, Sydney!” Phil exclaimed as he gave Dr. Parker a loud slap on the back.
Dr. Parker wrapped his arm around his wife, Suzanne, gave her an affectionate squeeze, and kissed the plump woman on the cheek.
“Did I do well, honey?” he asked her.
Suzanne pursed her red lips, looked up at him, and gave him a wink. “I think you did okay.”
“Okay?” Phil nearly shouted. “He did wonderful! He kicked Vincent Dupré’s butt!”
This led to a burst of laughter from the other staffers. Some in the green room then chimed in with their congratulations, but Keisha remained conspicuously silent. She masked her emotions with a tight smile, not giving any hint to what she was really feeling.
“I say we have a toast! There’s no champagne, so everyone hold up your soda cans and water bottles,” Phil ordered with a chuckle. “Hold them up! Hold them up!”
Keisha held her half empty Coke can in the air, though her heart wasn’t in it. She was in a dark mood, and so far the only one she had revealed it to was Will.
Will, she thought angrily. His handsome, deceitful face suddenly came to mind. Don’t get me started on that one, she thought.
“To Sydney, for taking us a hundred steps closer to victory,” he said with a grin. “Cheers!”
“Cheers!” Everyone shouted in unison before clinking cans and filling the room with chatter.
It was nearly midnight, but the staffers were still pumped up. Keisha, on the other hand, was exhausted and ready to head back to her hotel. She gazed at Dr. Parker, a man whom she idolized, and wondered what he was thinking right now. He seemed so happy and unmistakably proud. Did he have any idea how much he had disappointed her?
Dr. Parker had done well tonight—in a conventional sense. In her opinion, he had dominated the debate and come off as both articulate and knowledgeable. But there was something about his answers that had left Keisha unnerved. In fact, one answer in particular had rendered her speechless.
Ten minutes into the debate, the moderator had asked the dreaded question about mandating higher sentences for juveniles. When he did, Keisha watched as Phil closed his eyes, bracing himself for the worst. Both of them knew what Dr. Parker’s answer would be. She remembered the heated argument between the professor and Phil weeks earlier. Dr. Parker wasn’t going to back down, but she wondered how diplomatically he would pose his answer now that he was being put on the spot. Thousands of potential voters were watching, after all. How would he convey the complexity of his position on the issue without discussing his checkered past?
Keisha had waited eagerly for his answer. Her heart went out to him. This wasn’t an easy spot to be put into.
“I am…I am completely for giving our wayward juveniles a second chance,” he began slowly, “but…but there must be…,” he paused, “…there must be no misunderstanding of how our laws operate. As the saying goes, ‘If you do the crime, you must do the time.’ ” He frowned uncomfortably after he said that, as if the words had been forced out of his mouth. He then glanced down at the podium. “Juveniles should be held accountable for their actions. Our citizens should not be held hostage by the tyranny of crime, whether that crime is committed by someone fifty-six years old or sixteen,” he said, pounding the podium, his voice gaining more vigor. “We have to shore up our education system to keep our youth off the street so they won’t be drawn to crime, but juveniles also have to understand the law. If we go too light on them, they’ll never learn to respect the law. That is why…,” he paused and cleared his throat, “…that is why I-I support higher…mandatory sentences…for juvenile offenders.”
At those words, the greenroom had fallen silent. Dupré had gaped openly on camera while Keisha’s face had crumpled in dismay. She had looked over at Phil, only to find him grinning like a hyena and giving the thumbs-up sign to the television screen.
What the hell just happened? Keisha had thought. Had Phil engaged in some arm-twisting behind the scenes that she wasn’t aware of? Why had Dr. Parker suddenly changed his stance? But as the debate progressed, she noticed several changes to Dr. Parker’s answers. Positions that he had held for years now were more tempered. They were more moderate than the liberal views she thought he had. Question after question, Keisha was left to do nothing but helplessly shake her head. What in the world had happened to him?
Keisha now stood silent in the greenroom as staffers buzzed around her. She was filled with a sense of unease and desperately needed answers from her mentor.
Keisha gritted her teeth and wrung her hands nervously. She really wanted nothing more than to go to back to her hotel room and sleep, but she knew she wouldn’t get a minute of rest until she talked to Dr. Parker. She had to resolve this. She had to find out what had happened between the last time they had spoken and the debate. Keisha took a deep breath before walking across the room and tapping Dr. Parker on the shoulder.
“Dr. Parker,” she said quietly. “Dr. Parker, sir,” she said again.
He finally turned to her and smiled. “Keisha, are you still here? I thought you’d be heading off with the rest of them to get drunk and be merry,” he said with a chuckle.
She gave a pained smile. “That’s not really my style, sir.” She cleared her throat. “Actually,” she began quietly, “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes…privately. I wanted to talk about tonight’s debate and—”
Dr. Parker let out an exasperated sigh. “Keisha, is that why you haven’t gone?” His smile widened into a grin as he waved his hand dismissively. “Believe me, we can save the recap for tomorrow. Go ahead and enjoy yourself.”
Keisha opened her mouth to argue, but he quickly shook his head and placed his hand on her shoulder. He gave it a fatherly squeeze.
“Keisha, tonight is a night when we can enjoy ourselves. You all have worked very hard; no one harder than you, it seems,” he said with a chuckle.
“Mandatory sentences,” she blurted out, now meeting his eyes. “Mandatory sentences for juveniles. You said you supported it but…but you told me…you told us that you didn’t.” His smile faded. “And the other things you said tonight, Dr. Parker, I just…I just don’t understand why you said them.”
“Keisha,” he said with a loud sigh, “tonight was a televised debate. That’s all. It was just a bunch of sound bites and talking points. If the constituents really want to know my position on the issues, they can go to my web site. They can come to me! But I can’t be expected to fully articulate my opinion in two minutes. I realize that in that type of venue, I’m allowed some wiggle room. I’m allowed to—”
“Rework your stance,” she said bitterly, recalling the words that Phil had used, that she thought she and Dr. Parker had both staunchly opposed.
“Keisha,” he began quietly. “We’re winning now, and that was something I had not anticipated. When the Dems asked me to run, I had no idea that I’d actually have a chance of beating the great Vincent Dupré, and now I do. You don’t just give up a lead like that.”
“But what about principles, Dr. Parker? Sure, it’s one issue here, one issue there. But what about…”
She stopped when she felt Dr. Parker’s grip on her shoulders tighten. He released his hold and dropped his hands to his sides.
“Keisha, it’s been a long day.” He tilted his head. “Please go out. Have fun. Any discussion like this can be, should be, saved for tomorrow, okay?”
When she didn’t nod her head, but instead opened her mouth again, he held up his hand.
“O-kay?” he repeated slowly.
Dr. Parker was smiling but the smile did not reach his eyes. It was futile to protest. She knew that now. Maybe she should just save her questions for tomorrow. Maybe she was being too hard on him. They should be celebrating their victory, not arguing about principles and meaning.
“Yes, sir,” she said finally, forcing a half-hearted smile. He nodded then turned to his wife and several people who stood around them.
Keisha stared at Dr. Parker’s back and sighed deeply.
Let it go, Keisha, she silently told herself. Just let it go. He said you’ll talk about it tomorrow.
So why did some nagging part of her suspect that despite Dr. Parker’s promise, the conversation would never happen?
* * *
Keisha obeyed Dr. Parker’s request and walked downstairs with the other staffers to head to one of the local bars to celebrate. It wasn’t until she hopped into her Ford Focus that she realized she had left her binder upstairs. She called Jason on her cell phone and told him that she would probably be late to the bar. Lucky for her, the security guards had not locked all the doors to the building. One of the side entrances was still open, allowing her to get upstairs.
Keisha walked back alone to the greenroom, hoping that her leather binder was still where she had left it, perched on one of the coffee tables. She was frustrated with herself for leaving something so important behind.
Thankfully, it was right where she left it. She tucked it into the crook of her arm and glanced at her watch. If she hurried she could still make it to the bar only fifteen or twenty minutes after the other staffers. She turned and headed towards the door. When she saw a dark figure looming in the doorway, she yelped in surprise. Her binder fell to the floor.
“Sorry,” Will said as he quickly pushed away from the doorframe and walked toward her. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Dammit, Will!” Keisha shouted. She raised her hand to her chest, feeling her heart thud against her ribs. She cursed under her breath. “Do not sneak up on me like that!” she said as she bent down and retrieved her binder.
He licked his lips. “I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you, Keisha. I just happened to walk by and I saw you were in here. So I thought—”
“—that it would be a good idea to scare me half to death?” she exclaimed, shooting back to her feet.
“No,” he said. “I thought…I just thought that we should…talk.”
Keisha pursed her lips and slowly shook her head. “We have nothing to say to one another, Will.”
“Oh, we don’t?” he asked incredulously as she attempted to walk around him.
Keisha sighed. “Besides ‘good night’?” she asked, pushing a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. “No. Not really.”
“Good night?” He raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “That’s all you have to say to me?” He grabbed her arm, stopped her, and turned her around to face him.
She pulled out of his grasp with irritation. “What am I supposed to say, Will?”
“Something, anything,” he spat. “Just don’t ignore me. Don’t act like what happened a few weeks ago didn’t happen.”
“Are you kidding me?” She glared up at him with outrage. “What do mean, don’t act like it didn’t happen? What about you? You didn’t say a damn thing after we kissed! You just walked away like we had just shaken hands.”
He sighed and shrugged. “I was…confused.”
“You were confused?”
He gritted his teeth and threw up his hands. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t expected it to play out that way. I had planned to ignore you the whole night. I had planned not to talk to you, but then I saw you standing alone in the gym and then…and then…” His voice trailed off.
“Will,” she began as she stared up with bemusement, “you kissed me. You initiated it. How could you not…”
Enough, she thought while shaking her head. You should know better by now, Keisha. You’re not going to win with him. He’s too smart and too good at playing these games. It’s not worth it.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, feeling a headache coming on. She barely knew him, yet he seemed to know her so well. He knew which buttons to press, what levers to pull. Will was like sandpaper, shredding away at her outer layers, leaving her bare and worn down. She had to get away from him.
“I’ve got to go,” she said quietly, feeling the urge to run from the room.
“Tell me what I’ve done,” he said as she began to walk to the door again. “What have I done to you that would make us go on like this, Keisha?”
She could hear the desperation in his voice. It’s a trick, she suddenly thought. It’s all a trick.
“Don’t shut me out because of what other people told you about me!” he argued.
Keisha stopped, leaned against the door jam and sighed. When she finally turned to face him, she couldn’t deny it. He looked desperate. He was gazing at her earnestly, holding out his hands like a hopeless beggar.
“How can I not shut you out, Will, when I don’t know the truth? I don’t know who you really are. You say one thing and…they say another.”
“So why don’t you just ask me?” Will asked impatiently, making his voice boom in the darkened room. “Why don’t you just ask me for the truth?”
Keisha tilted her head and gazed up at Will. “If I ask,” she began quietly, “will you really tell me?”
Will firmly nodded his head. “Anything you want to know.”
She pursed her lips and stood silently in front of him for several seconds. “The people you used to work for said that premarital sex causes cancer,” she finally ventured. “Do you really believe that?”
“That’s your first question?”
She pursed her lips indignantly. “Yes.”
“No, I don’t believe it causes cancer. Of course I don’t. And there are about 30 percent of things at America’s Bright Future I don’t believe or agree with. But I don’t think it’s necessary to agree totally with someone to work for them. I liked and respected their overall objective, which is to hold parents and schools accountable for children’s education.” He shrugged. “So occasionally they put out a press release about some stupid medical study. There are worse things.”
The answer was well articulated, but, from him, Keisha had expected as much. She narrowed her eyes again. “Like outing someone to win an election?” she asked, making Will frown. “Is that a worse thing?”
“What?”
“I’m talking about the 2002 election, Will,” she said in annoyance as she brought her hands to her hips. “How could you possibly forget? You worked for Congressman Taylor the year that he was running against Mitch Waldren in Wisconsin. Mitch was ahead in the polls and, somehow, three weeks before the election, the press found out that Mitch was gay. Not only did he lose the election but he almost lost his foster kids, too!” Keisha said angrily as she pointed up at him. “There’ve been rumors for years that you’re the one who did it, Will. You called the reporter and you leaked that information!”
Will stared down at the accusatory finger she jabbed up at him. “Are you telling me I did it or asking me if I did it?” he asked, pushing her finger aside.
Keisha recoiled from his touch, not wanting the distraction. She adjusted her suit jacket and shrugged her shoulders. “Asking, I guess.”
“Okay then,” he muttered. “Well, first of all, whoever told you that rumor—and I suspect I know who did—needs to get her facts straight,” he said curtly. “I didn’t work for Taylor’s campaign that year. He hired me as a legislative aid for his office on the Hill, so legally I couldn’t be on his campaign staff.” Will sighed. “But I’ll admit that I didn’t like all the guys who were running things over there. The campaign got pretty ugly toward the end. I saw the articles and the TV coverage. Taylor was losing and I could tell they were getting desperate.”
“Desperate enough to trash Waldren?” she asked.
“Probably,” he admitted. “Look, Keisha, I wanted just as much as everyone else in our office for Taylor to get re-elected. I wanted to keep my job. But I realize some things shouldn’t be compromised. I didn’t like how Taylor handled the election. I didn’t like what it turned into. I didn’t think Mitch deserved what happened to him. It was hard to watch.” Will slumped back against the edge of a nearby desk and closed his eyes.
“Hard to watch but you kept watching, right?” Keisha asked reproachfully, making his eyes flash open. “You didn’t do anything to stop it, did you? Did you talk to Taylor? Did you tell him how you felt?”
Will glared at her for several seconds, not saying a word. Finally, he slowly smiled, catching her off guard. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Miss Reynolds.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve got a lot to learn,” he repeated slowly. “Look, I did tell Taylor how I felt and almost lost my job because of it. I discovered it’s really hard to fight the tide of fifty other people who are telling your boss one thing when you’re saying another. You’ll figure that out, too, one day when you’re on the wrong side of a debate.”
Keisha crossed her arms over her chest. She would never tell Will but she suspected that, for the first time, she was already on the wrong side of the debate. Dr. Parker was a winner now and that had changed him. Her advice no longer reigned supreme with him, either. She was already starting to feel shut out.
“You know…it hurts when people disappoint you like that,” Will murmured slowly. He was saying the words aloud that she had been thinking all evening. “You think you know a person. You respect them and then suddenly they just…change.” He sighed. “Like I said before, I don’t think it’s necessary to agree totally with someone to work for them, but Taylor pushed me past my limit. I can only look the other way but so many times. So after the election was over, I tendered my resignation. He didn’t have to fire me because I didn’t want to work for him anymore.”
Keisha stared at Will, dumbfounded. He had quit over what happened during the election? Tanya hadn’t told her that part of the story. Keisha could feel the walls she had erected between her and Will quickly tumbling down with each thing he told her. It was easy to hate him when she believed him to be a monster, but it was much harder now that he was proving otherwise.
“So does that answer all your questions?”
Keisha dropped her defensive stance and shrugged. “I guess so.”
At those words, Will took several steps towards her. Keisha took a few hesitant steps back toward the door, ready to bolt at a second’s notice. His eyes were growing intense again, making her pulse quicken. He was staring at her mouth and he looked as if he wanted to kiss her.
Wait a minute! Wait a minute, a voice yelled in her head as her stomach began to tie itself into knots. Her eyes widened as he took her right hand and then her left within his own. Tanya had warned Keisha to be on her guard with Will, that things weren’t always what they seemed with him. Will was a great tactician. He knew how to play people. “He’ll say and do just about anything to win, girl,” Tanya swore.
Keisha blinked rapidly as he abruptly tugged her towards him and wrapped an arm around her waist. He’s winning! He’s winning, she thought with panic, feeling herself falling underneath his spell, unable to pull away from him. Her breathing quickened as he lowered his mouth to hers.
“You don’t like coffee, only cream!” she blurted out against his lips.
Will leaned back, squinted down at her and frowned. “What?”
Keisha swallowed loudly. Okay, that didn’t come out right, she thought.
“I mean,” she cleared her throat. “I-I-I mean I-I heard that when it…comes to women, you don’t take your coffee black, if you…know what I mean. You just…prefer…cream.” She winced at Tanya’s phrasing.
His grip around her waist loosened. “I see.”
“Th-th-that’s…that’s what I heard anyway,” she stuttered. She attempted to step out of his grasp but Keisha suddenly felt his hold tighten around her waist again. He pulled her back toward him, tilted his head, and smiled.
“Not so fast,” he said, running his thumb along her bottom lip. “Don’t you want to hear the truth about that, too?”
She blinked and slowly nodded.
“Well, let me correct you by saying I do ‘take my coffee black’…more than you think,” Will said as he toyed with her chin. “Black coffee, cream, coffee with cream—it makes no difference to me. I have and will always be an equal opportunity coffee drinker,” he muttered with a smirk.
Despite herself, Keisha laughed, and Will joined her. It was a good and hearty chuckle that made all the tension between them disappear. She opened her mouth to give some quip in return but the words never made it past her lips. Will leaned down and kissed her with enough force that it almost knocked the air out of her.
The kiss was ravenous and deep and sent enough chills throughout her body that it left her weak-kneed and almost in a daze. Their heads twisted for better access. Their tongues danced. Keisha’s nipples swelled with arousal against the silk of her shirt and she felt the overwhelming urge again to disrobe and have him touch and kiss the skin beneath her clothes. Just as she moaned, her stomach grumbled loudly, filling the quiet space with noise. Will pulled back his head and smiled.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered languidly against his lips. She tried to bring her mouth back to his.
He grinned. “I meant for food.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed. Her eyes widened as she loudly cleared her throat. “Umm, yeah. I mean…yes, I’m…I should eat.” She gazed down at her feet with embarrassment. “Sorry about the stomach noise. I skipped dinner.”
Will released his hold around her and nodded. “Don’t apologize,” he said reassuringly. “If you’re hungry, you’re hungry. I know a nice Italian place that is twenty minutes from here, if you’d like to go. They stay open pretty late.”
Keisha looked up at Will. She slowly smiled. “Are you…are you asking me out on a date?”
He shrugged. “Shouldn’t I? You need to eat, and, besides, don’t you think we should rack up one date before we end up in bed together?” he asked casually as he took her hand and led her toward the door.
Keisha blinked in astonishment. Excuse me? Now she remembered why she found him so egotistical in the beginning.
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” she insisted. “What makes you think we’re going to end up in bed together?”
Will smiled confidently as he gazed back at her and chuckled. He tugged her toward the open door and into the hallway. “Trust me. We will,” he said.
Her eyes widened as she gulped nervously.