“Look, Rebecca,” Matt said, “no offense, but seeing as how you’re really new to the political scene, what Pat is saying is that it’s really not doable. You’re hitting the start of the campaign season, and if you aren’t already on their agenda, you’re not going to get on it at this late date. And besides, the Panthers are notorious for keeping their meetings closed.”
Rebecca did not care to be lectured to, particularly in a tone that made her feel stupid, and particularly with Grayson hanging, dead weight, off one hand. All it took was knowing the right people, which, okay, she didn’t know, really. But she knew how to find them. “Thanks for your concern,” she said, trying to make Grayson stand. “But I’m not trying to get on their agenda. I’m just talking about a little preconvention party.”
Matt sighed in a way that made Rebecca want to punch him square in the nose. “Well, whatever,” he said, dragging a hand through his hair. “It won’t hurt you to try, I suppose. It will probably be good experience for you.”
Rebecca smiled, shoved a limp Grayson in the direction of the door, and heard herself ask, incredibly, “Would you like to put a little wager on it?”
That certainly got his attention. “What?” he asked, choking on a laugh.
What was she doing? But Rebecca looked at Matt and realized she meant what she’d said. She hadn’t been married to Bud for nothing—if there was one thing she knew how to do, it was throw a bash that would leave people talking. She smiled, slung her briefcase over her shoulder. “I said, do you want to bet?”
Pat’s mouth dropped open, but Matt smiled very darkly as he turned toward her. “I’ll definitely take that bet,” he said, his gray eyes piercing hers with the challenge. “So what’s the wager, Miss Texas?”
“Come on, Mom!” Grayson moaned, tugging on her hand.
Matt’s dark smile deepened, and Rebecca felt a curious shiver race down her spine. “I’ll make it easy,” he said, and honest to God, that cool, steady voice made her weak in the knees. “The winner gets to choose a favor of his or her choice,” he said. “You get Tom in front of the Panthers, and you can make me do whatever you want.” He lifted his gaze from his casual perusal of her, and she could have sworn she saw smoke in his eyes. “Deal?”
NO, REBECCA! Don’t be stupid! Nononono . . . “You’re on,” she said, and let Grayson drag her out of the room with him.
Chapter Nine
From the age of six, I have known that I was sexy. And let me tell you it has been hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it . . .
BETTE DAVIS
In an old Victorian house in the Heights of Houston, Robin Lear was lying on the couch, dressed in her preferred style of jeans and a boy’s T-shirt, her bare feet propped on the arm. She held the phone to one ear as she squinted at the crown molding along the ten-foot ceiling and absently played with the silk fringe of a pillow. “I haven’t talked to her,” she repeated to her father, who was, and had been for the last month, trying to get hold of Mom.
“Are you telling me your mother hasn’t called you in a whole goddamn month?” Dad demanded in his typically subtle, kid-glove fashion.
“No, I’m saying I haven’t talked to her since the last time you called me and interrogated me about it. Mom is in L.A.” Exactly where she’d been for the last few months since Dad’s cancer had gone into remission and he’d gotten impossible to deal with again. For all his jaw-boning about how his three daughters needed to learn to stand on their own two feet and appreciate the important things in life, he could certainly use a lesson or two in that very thing.
“I know she’s in L.A.!” he barked in her ear. “I want to know if you’ve talked to her!”
“No!” Robin shouted back, drawing a look from her significant other, Jake Manning, who was at his drafting table, busy with their latest renovation project and trying very hard to tune Robin out. But he looked at her now, one brow lifted in silent question. She waved a hand at him, indicating it was nothing out of the ordinary. “Try Rebecca,” she suggested. “She might—”
“I can’t get her on the phone, either!” Dad pouted.
Hmm, go figure. “She’s really busy.”
“She doesn’t need to be so damn busy! You tell me—why can’t she just relax and take good care of Grayson and stop trying to one-up Bud?”
“One-up Bud? She is not trying to one-up Bud.”
“Like hell she isn’t. She—”
Fortunately (for Robin anyway, who didn’t want to hear whatever Dad was going to say about Rebecca’s life, because it was Rebecca’s life, a fact he seemed to have forgotten in his determination to make Rebecca lead her own life) was lost behind the beep of an incoming call.
“—that she was wasting time, but she won’t listen to me.”
“Dad, I’m getting another call.”
“I’ll wait,” he said gruffly.
With a groan, Robin sat up, punched the second line. “Hello?”
“Robin, thank God,” Rebecca said breathlessly into the phone. “Listen, you keep up with politics, right? Have you ever heard of the Silver Panthers?”
“The who?”
“The Silver Panthers!” her usually calm, rock-solid sister cried impatiently.
“No. Should I?”