“A friend of a friend of a friend,” she had said, waving her hand dismissively.
His smile had brightened then—he was on to her—and he walked closer to where she was standing next to the bulletin board where they posted all the news. “What about Renée Zellwegger? A friend of a friend?” he had asked low, his breath skimming her ear.
“She wasn’t available.”
“Tom will be crushed.”
“Oh no, he was okay with Sandra Bullock.” That was not a lie.
Matt laughed low; Rebecca turned partially around to look at him. His eyes crinkled appealingly in the corners with his appreciative smile, and his gaze fell to her lips. For a moment, Rebecca toyed with stealing a kiss from him, just taking it . . . but she was too indecisive. Matt was already walking away, chuckling softly. “Can’t wait to go to this shindig,” he said cheerfully as he walked out the door.
She was attracted to him. Very attracted. Weak-kneed-butterfly-belly attracted. That was a confusing place to be, because true to his word, Matt had left the ball in her court. He didn’t press her; he didn’t make her even remotely uncomfortable like so many men in her life had done. But sometimes, she would catch him looking at her, his eyes as soft and deep as the river, and he’d smile as he turned away.
Thankfully, Rebecca continued to convince herself (with help from Protecting the Inner Child While Searching for the Exterior Woman) that she didn’t need to be involved with any guy right now. After all, she had just come out of a long-term, toxic relationship, and lest she forget, that toxic guy had been terribly charming at first, too. Worse, she feared that Dad could be right about her, that she was too afraid to be alone.
So the ludicrously topsy-turvy upshot of all this was, when she saw Matt, her heart did a funny little dance. She had a raging desire to see him, talk to him, and touch him that she felt, for the most part, completely at odds with the universe. But she was not so numb that she didn’t recognize that slowly and surely, she was falling like a shooting star, falling fast and headlong into that lovely chasm, at which point she’d slap a big mental red circle and line on him. The practical Rebecca understood why; the real Rebecca often wondered if she wasn’t just completely nuts.
After several days of dancing around their mutual attraction, Matt was growing weary. He did everything he knew how to do to get her to cross over to his side. And while she showed signs of wanting to make that leap, she’d quickly back off. Actually, he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her. He’d never really suffered the pangs of love, but he figured Rebecca must have suffered them to death. Rather than allow himself to feel the pangs of rejection—that sounded like a root canal to him—he focused his attentions on getting a face-to-face with HGG. He was bound and determined to make it happen, and he hounded that group, called in all the chits he could think of. So when he finally got the call, he was ecstatic. He called Tom’s capitol office, told him that the meeting was on, at four-thirty at the Four Seasons.
“Today?” Tom had asked.
“Today. That’s the only time they would give me. This could be a huge boost toward getting the Hispanic vote, you know,” he reminded him.
“Yeah. Okay, I’ll rearrange a couple of things. Four-thirty at the Four Seasons. Great . . . just swing by the campaign office and pick me up.”
Matt was thrilled to have finally snared the big fish they said could not be caught. But he’d been around long enough that he should have known, when his morning took a nosedive at court, that things were not going to go as he had hoped.
Kelly Kiker’s discovery hearing went badly. The ruling against him was especially bad because Matt had not seen it coming. He had arrogantly believed that they would win access to some of the employer records that they both thought were critical to her suit, and therefore, had not been fully prepared when they did not. He apologized profusely to Kelly, but the words sounded empty and hollow, a big fat lie.
“Dude, it’s okay,” she had said, stuffing her papers into her enormous black bag and lighting a cigarette. “We tried our best, and that’s what counts, right?”
He thought about that when he got back to the office, and came to the conclusion that no, it didn’t count, not when people like Kelly Kiker got hurt. Trying just wasn’t good enough and the truth was that he’d been too caught up in Rebecca and this campaign crap to pay proper attention to the case. Matt rarely let a client down, but he had let Kelly down, and to add insult to injury, Ben gave him another speech before he left the office. That, he did not need, and he was, therefore, in a pretty foul mood when he pulled up at campaign headquarters.
He stalked into the offices. There was no Angie. He continued on to the back, saw Pat sitting at a break table with Grayson.