As he’d admitted to Holly, he’d taken women to bed, but only when a convenient opportunity presented itself, and, on those occasions, his involvement had ended with his climax. He’d never bothered to follow up with any of them because he simply had no interest in doing so. And he made damn sure his one-night stands didn’t result in unhappy consequences. For anyone.
Last night he hadn’t thought about any of that. Not Beth. Not consequences, none of it. He’d touched Holly and desire as unstoppable as an avalanche had overwhelmed him, and it hadn’t been assuaged by that hard-and-fast in her living room, which was no sooner begun than it was over.
He wanted more of her, and not just that. He wanted more of her. The hell of it was, she was completely, totally unattainable. Because if he continued pinning her against walls and kissing her like he wanted to, he could kiss good-bye any chance he had of getting Georgia back.
He couldn’t let that happen. Nothing, or no one, could interfere with his determination to be Georgia’s full-time daddy. The sun would burn itself out before he shrugged off his kid the way his old man had.
Acting on that resolve, he pulled his SUV onto the shoulder of the road, shoved the gear into park, and reached for his phone. He’d programmed her number on his speed dial. She answered on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“I saw your name.”
“Your friend there yet?”
“No. Is something wrong?”
“Yeah.” Crawford covered his eyes with his hand. “I don’t want to want you, Holly. But I do. God knows I do.”
She didn’t say anything, but her breathing turned unsteady.
“The bitch of it is, I can’t have you. Not if I want custody of Georgia.”
“I understand.”
She didn’t. But he let her believe that she did. Neither said anything for the longest time, but they kept the line open, listening to each other breathe. Finally he rasped, “Good-bye, Holly.”
“Good-bye—”
She clicked off, but he could swear that she’d caught herself just before saying his name.
“Crawford Hunt. It has a nice, masculine heft. What’s he like?”
Marilyn Vidal, despite her glamourous-sounding name, was squarely built and didn’t embellish her plain features by wearing makeup or jewelry. She operated her business from Dallas but had worked in nearly every state, saving foundering candidates for various political offices, but only if she felt strongly about their winning potential. She couldn’t be bothered with losers, didn’t tolerate whiners, didn’t suffer fools.
She gave extra points to clients who could lie with equanimity and eloquence.
Holly wasn’t inclined to lying, and she certainly didn’t do it well. Marilyn’s question about Crawford Hunt filled her with ambiguity. This morning she had vowed to throw away the robe she’d been wearing last night, but when she stepped from the shower only a few minutes ago, it was that robe she’d reached for and wrapped herself in.
She’d also resolved to discard her sofa at the earliest opportunity so she wouldn’t have to see it each day and remember what had taken place on it. But here she was, curled into the corner of it, hugging to her chest one of the throw pillows that had been haphazardly knocked onto the floor as they’d tried to make room.
There was much she could tell her campaign manager about Crawford Hunt—that he wore soft, frayed, button-fly jeans, that the dark blond hair that grew over his shirt collar was thick but surprisingly soft, that he made an erotically animalistic sound when in the throes of passion, and that his recent telephone call—essentially telling her to have a nice life—had left her feeling disconsolate, not relieved, as she should have been.
But of course she said none of that. In reply to Marilyn, who was industriously pacing the width of the sofa, she said, “He’s…I don’t know…cop-like.”
She rubbed the space between her eyebrows, which, she realized, she’d been doing a lot lately, and it was a habit reserved for when she was especially stressed. Marilyn had been under her roof for all of ten minutes, and already she regretted having her as a houseguest.
Marilyn seemed to drain those around her of their vitality, then absorb it, giving her a surplus. It was hard to say whether or not that siphoning of energy was intentional or a trait of which Marilyn was unaware. Holly suspected the former.
In light of yesterday’s events, she had arrived even more super-charged than usual. As she filled a highball glass with vodka, which she’d brought with her, she said, “When I got here, I was surprised not to find media camped out on the lawn.”
“This is a small town, Marilyn.”
“Which made big news yesterday.”
Holly conceded that with a weary nod. “Mrs. Briggs was busy all day fending off calls from reporters. I finally released a statement that didn’t divulge any sensitive information. Essentially it said that I had nothing to add to the police spokesperson’s brief.”
“We’ll change that tomorrow. It’s time you came out from under cover and made a public statement about the whacked-out Michelin man who shot up your courtroom. You don’t get an opportunity like this in every campaign.”