Page 31 of The Senator's Secret

I’ve almost calmed my heart back to a healthy range when my cellphone, sitting face-up on my desk, rings flashing my mom and dad’s smiling faces as they stand in front of the Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska. I stare at it like it’s a living, breathing thing as it flashes and buzzes around on my desk. I know I can’t wait much longer. If it goes to voicemail, they will only get more desperate for my attention.

How could I have been so stupid? In the whirlwind mess that has become my life, I forget to mention to my parents that the cats and I were now living with a U.S. senator—fake relationship or otherwise?

I am in so much trouble.

“Hi, Mom,” I answer with false cheer in my tone. I hold my breath and hope to God they buy it.

“What the fuck is going on?” my dad thunders from the other end of the line. My dad was a brilliant attorney working for the county they still live in outside the city, ensuring that all children had access to vaccines and well-child exams. But before that, he was a Marine. He sounds like he’s still ready to charge into battle at a moment’s notice. I can count on one hand the number of times I had either worried him so badly or made him angry enough to speak in that way, with his emotions so close to the surface. Apparently, today I’m adding one more to the list.

“A lot.” I laugh into the phone. “It’s been a busy week.”

“I’ll say,” my mom mutters somewhere in the background.

“How long have you known Senator Chancellor?” my dad asks, and his tone is still not a happy one.

“I’ve known Jake since he first came home,” I answer. Fortunately, I never confided in my parents my complex feelings toward the man of the hour.

“And how long have you been involved with him?”

Shit. How do you make three days so plausible?

“It’s been a whirlwind,” I admit. “But it’s been building for some time.” There, that didn’t sound like I’ve lost my damn mind, did it?

“Did you have to move in with him?” Dad asks, and I can’t help but laugh. I’m thirty years old, and my dad still treats me like a fifteen-year-old virgin with her first boyfriend.

“Dad—” I start.

“I don’t want to hear it!” he shouts.

“She’s a grown woman, honey,” I hear my mom whisper to him.

“I know,” he says after he lets out an audible sigh. “We expect you both to be at dinner tomorrow night.”

“Dad, Jake is a very busy man,” I explain gently, while internally I am freaking the fuck out. This is not good. “He’s running a presidential campaign. Who knows where he might be tomorrow night?”

“I know where he’ll be,” my dad says confidently.

“Oh yeah?” I ask. “Where’s that?”

“Brooklyn.” I shouldn’t have asked. “See you both at six on the dot. Don’t keep your mother waiting.”

“Okay,” I whisper.

“We love you,” Dad says gruffly.

“I love you too.”

“See you tomorrow.” And then he ended the call.

I was wrong. My life could get more complicated. And all the while, I’m still wondering when the other shoe will drop with my mysterious blackmailer. I haven’t heard anything from them since the original note was delivered to my office. I know real life isn’t anything like the oldMagnum PIepisodes I watch late at night, but something still seems… off. I think back to the stilted meeting with my boss and wonder if maybe the perpetrator is closer to home than I thought.

I would find out much too late that I should have been paying better attention.

“Will Love Last for the Eternal Playboy?”

Chapter 9

Better together