Chapter 11

It was amazing how quickly a half hour passed when you spent most of the time freaking out, spinning in circles, and trying not to throw up.

She called her lawyer, then called Jenkins and arranged payment to keep her apartment for one more month; she’d figure out what to do with it when things calmed down. She thought about calling Wes, but decided he’d done enough. And then she tried to pack, but she could only stare at her leather and her halter tops and the cut-offs and thin jersey skirts.

She had six pairs of flip-flops. One of them—her favorite pair—was held together with duct tape. The idea of standing next to Harrison wearing anything she owned was ludicrous.

All of this was ludicrous.

Even her nicer stuff, such as the dress she bought on sale for a friend’s wedding last year. Or the cheap business suit she wore to auditions that required that kind of look—it reeked of wrong. Of not at all good enough.

“Screw it,” she muttered, and just threw a bunch of underwear and pajamas into her bag with her toiletries and makeup. She’d get new clothes; half this stuff wouldn’t fit in a few months anyway. She’d buy a whole set of costumes for this ridiculous role she was going to play and then when it was over, she’d burn it. She’d burn it and take her baby and start a new life.

The sound of her cell phone ringing and rattling against the counter broke the silence in the apartment.

With a shaking hand she answered, “Yes?”

“Ryan Kaminski?”

“This is her.”

“I’m the driver who is taking you to LaGuardia. You have a pack of journalists in front of your apartment. I’m idling in the back near the Dumpsters.”

“I’ll be there in a second,” she said and hung up.

She hooked her bag over her shoulder and looked around her apartment one last time.

Once, years ago, she’d thought that it was only a matter of time before her life changed. Before something amazing happened to her. Despite a life that conditioned her otherwise, growing up where she did, how she did, the best she could hope for was an amicable divorce and a kid who stayed out of jail.

Even after what she and Paul did to her family, and then the divorce, she still believed that something fantastic was waiting just around the corner.

That was what modeling had led her to believe. That she was one lucky break, one callback, one random Jumbotron shot at a football game away from her life changing.

Years had passed and she wasn’t sure when she stopped believing that. When she just accepted every day at face value. Something to survive and celebrate in equal parts. She’d lost sight of that strange hope and settled down hard into a life that was constantly in danger of collapsing under its own weight.

Money. Work. Now this baby. Her health. Her family. All of those things could crush her life as it stood. And she lived that way—every day. She was just like millions of other people, barely getting by, not making a dent or a scratch on the world they lived in.

Even in New York City, miles away from Bridesburg, she was living nearly the exact same life as if she’d stayed there.

But here she was standing at the edge of life-altering change. Terrifying change. And she was torn between laughing and crying. It was going to be awful; she knew that. Day in and day out with Harrison’s judgment and superiority, hand in hand with memories of that stupid night.

And a baby! His baby! That he was so willing to walk away from when all of this was over.

What kind of man was capable of that?

The kind of man who would use her and put her away when her use was over. So, she would do the same. She’d get her terms agreed to, change her family’s life, spend her two years smiling and waving and doing God knows what else, and then she’d … put him aside.

At the last minute, she grabbed one of her red teacups and shoved it in her bag.

A reminder for the awful times ahead of who she was and that she was precious. If to no one else, at least to herself.

Ryan spent the surreal trip from town car to private jet to town car arming and armoring herself with information. She was not going to show up at the Governor’s Mansion like some impoverished historical romance heroine who’d been knocked up by the Duke.

Wes had sent Ryan an email full of fascinating tidbits about the Montgomerys, and she studied it like she was cramming for her high school history test.

The Montgomerys were a fifth-generation political family out of Georgia.

They were soldiers and government leaders dating all the way back to the Civil War.

But in recent years, Harrison’s father, Ted, had been a very naughty boy. Politically and perhaps personally. Errant whiffs of scandal had dogged him for most of his career, including a nearly fatal car accident with a young woman who was not his wife. After the accident, Patty Montgomery quashed any rumors that Ted and the girl who’d nearly died were anything but co-workers.

But all of that had the faint stench of “she protests too much” around it.

The family ran an extensive foundation that seemed to fund Ashley Montgomery’s aid trips.

Harrison … well, Harrison was remarkably boring, really. Smug and indifferent in teenage interviews. There was, however, a hilarious picture of him with Chelsea Clinton looking hugely uncomfortable at a prom. His first year at Georgia he’d been a miserable student and a very serious frat boy. After freshman year he transferred to Emory, where he turned things around. Really turned things around. Double major in political science and history, and then he went to Emory Law and then kept going back to get more degrees. Including a Doctor of Law/Master of Theological Studies.

He started a nonprofit organization that served the families of vets, called VetAid.

Dad would like that, she thought before she could stop herself.

When Harry had told her at the bar that he’d never had a boss, he wasn’t kidding. This run for Congress looked like his first real job.

“Rich people,” she muttered.

“Excuse me?” the driver asked.

“Nothing,” she said. She imagined that this fancy car with its fancy driver, whisking her in air-conditioned comfort from the Atlanta airport north of the city to where the houses got bigger and the lawns got more lush, probably had one of those windows she could raise and lower for privacy. But she didn’t know where the button was.

“How much farther?” she asked.

“Fifteen minutes.”

She closed the email file on her phone, having gleaned as much as she needed for the time being. Basically, she was marrying into a very white, very rich, and pretty boring family.

If it weren’t for the sister kidnapped by Somali pirates and Harry (she’d begun thinking about the version of Harrison she’d slept with that night as a totally different person), there’d be nothing interesting about them at all.

Except, of course … her. And this baby.

She opened her purse and did her best to freshen up. The green sundress she’d decided on wearing had weathered the travel pretty well except for a dark spot near the strap, where she’d spilled some decaf coffee she’d been unable to refuse on the jet.

Private jet. There had been a time, not so long ago, that she’d thought that was her due. A foregone conclusion in her rosy modeling future. Those ambitions were something that Paul had fanned to life in her. Or at least fanned to a larger flame.

And when they didn’t come to fruition, well, that’s when she’d learned the reality of marriage. Her marriage, anyway.

Funny to have those dreams come to fruition now.

She pulled her hair out of its bun and brushed it, letting it lie brown and silky across her shoulders. Casting directors, scouts, reps—they all said her hair was her best feature, and so she played it up.

Harry—Harrison—had seemed to like it that night in the hotel room.

If nothing else, perhaps she could throw him off his stride.

Makeup helped with the dark skin under her eyes and the paleness of her cheeks.

Long ago, she’d learned that most people didn’t see past her looks. Her beauty had been her identity for a long, selfish, and miserable time in her life. But now she would use that same beauty as armor to keep Harrison from seeing all the parts of herself she would like to hide.

And by the time the car came to a stop, she looked pretty good, if she did say so herself. And she felt pretty good, too. Not like a sheep to the slaughter, but rather as a fully capable and intelligent woman who was making a decision to improve her future and that of her child.

I can do this, she told herself, and she believed it.

But the moment she stepped out onto a circular drive in front of a redbrick mansion with white columns lit up with dozens of hidden spotlights, her confidence took a hit.

It’s called the Governor’s Mansion, she thought, tugging on the hem of her cheap rayon sundress. You knew it wasn’t going to be a hut.

The front door opened and she found herself holding her breath, waiting for Harrison, only to be disappointed when it was Wallace trotting down the steps. He was a handsome man, tall and thin. But it was all ruined by his bad ties. This one was yellow and brown circa 1972.

He stopped a few feet from her, as if she were radioactive and infectious. “You are actually going to do this?”

“Hello to you, too.” She peeked behind him, waiting for her would-be fiancé to come out. She didn’t want to talk to any of them, but the guy she was engaged to would be better than Wallace.

“He’s in meetings,” Wallace said, apparently reading her mind.

She thought, Get better ties, but his face didn’t change.

The night around them was thick and lush and hot, and she felt sweat bead up under her hair. I should have left it up, she thought. I shouldn’t have bothered trying.

Because nothing about her impressed this man. Not her armor. Not her beauty. This man wasn’t about to get taken in by anything she had to offer.

Her brother had sent some information about Wallace, too. And having read all about his background, she understood him a little better. It didn’t make her like him, but she understood what he was doing: protecting his friend.

That kind of behavior was all over his file. A ghetto Robin Hood.

“This isn’t going to be a regular marriage,” he said.

“I’m aware.”

“You know what I’ve been calling you?”

“I can’t wait to hear.”

“The indentured servant.”

“Aren’t you clever?”

“I am, actually.” He nodded at the driver, who went to the trunk of the car to pull out her bag, and then Wallace turned to walk back inside.

She wasn’t going to start this endeavor being anyone’s punching bag. This family might have more money than God, and this handsome man with terrible taste in ties may have more power than she did, but she was no one’s fool.

“Do you think your mother would have taken this deal?” she asked, and Wallace paused on the wide white steps. Slowly, he turned. And she saw in his blank-faced astonishment the knowledge of every single sacrifice his mother made years ago on his behalf. He knew exactly what his mother had given up for him.

And because of the file, so did she.

“Would she have taken this deal instead of working three jobs, and living in the shitty housing project on Chicago’s south side, all so you could go to the good private school, so you could get the scholarship to Emory?”

“I’m sorry?” he breathed as if he hadn’t heard her correctly.

“Your mom,” she said, stepping closer. Knowledge was power, and she felt her own power return. “When she found out she was pregnant with you. Do you think if some man had come out of the blue and promised to make sure your life was set up in a way she could never dream of making happen on her own, would she have done that?” She tilted her head, watching him. She didn’t want an enemy in this man. She didn’t want an enemy at all; the next two years were going to be hard enough. “I think she would have. I think we both know your mother would have done anything for you. Including agreeing to this proposal.”

“You think you’re like my mom?”

It was obvious he didn’t. His curled lip would indicate she wasn’t fit to sit next to his mother in church.

“I’d do anything for this baby,” she said, brushing her hand over her stomach. “That makes us similar enough.”

He was silent for a long time, looking over her head at the lights around the fountain.

“Well, well,” he said and then smiled at her again, not particularly kind but not mean anymore, either. “Now who’s clever?”

He waited for her while she climbed the stairs.

“All I did was sleep with a guy at a bar,” she told him when she got to his step. “A nice guy who seemed like he was having a bad night. If you want to hate someone, hate Harrison. He knew who he was. I didn’t.”

He nodded slowly, as if mulling over the idea of hating his boss. “Clever and tough. That’s good. You’re going to need everything you’ve got with this family.”

She glanced around the front of the house, the stunning reality of Harrison’s wealth. The stunning reality of what she was doing. Of how unbelievably out of place she was.

“Is my lawyer here?” she asked as they took the rest of the steps together.

“Yeah, he’s with Bruce, discussing your amendments to the contract.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Well, we’re not thrilled with your amendment should he lose this election.”

“If it’s really awful, I want a way to get out of this marriage.”

“He’s not a bad guy.”

“I might have agreed with you at one time, but now I don’t know what he is. And that’s why I want to be able to dissolve the agreement if both parties agree when the election is over.” She gave him the side-eye. “If your mother was in this situation, that’s what you would want her to do.”

“All right,” he laughed. “We can give my mother a rest.”

“What about my other demands?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. Paying the mortgage for your family’s house in Philadelphia, setting up a college fund for your sister, for your child, and keeping your brother’s name out of the press are all doable.”

“And the last thing?”

Poor Wallace looked tortured. “You … you really need that in writing?”

“I do.”

“Then it’s done. No sex.”

“No sex. And separate rooms.” She could not imagine sharing a bedroom with a man she didn’t know, not after years of her own privacy.

If she was going to be spending most of her time pretending to love and be loved by a man who couldn’t be bothered to greet her at the door on the evening of their wedding, then she was going to need a place to regroup.

“The Montgomerys have added their own stipulation.”

“Really?”

“A blood test when the child is born. The results to be kept private.”

She smiled humorlessly. And she wanted to tell him to fuck off, but she had nothing to hide. Harrison had no reason to believe in her; the connection she’d felt that night had been a ruse, the product of grief and her own stupid, wayward heart.

“Fine.”

Wallace nodded and opened the front door.

Despite all her efforts to not be one of those historical romance heroines, walking into the marble foyer and seeing the slick hardwood floors beyond, the glittering chandeliers and sconces, she felt like one.

She felt small and alone. And like maybe her dad lost her in a poker game.

At the far end of the front entry—so large that two of her apartments could have fit in it—a door opened.

She wanted it to be Harrison coming through that door as much as she was dreading seeing him again. And now she was grateful that it had been Wallace at the front door; it gave her a chance to regroup. To fortify her walls. To be reminded in no unclear way that this was business. And nothing else at all.

But it wasn’t Harrison coming through that door.

“Oh Christ, brace yourself,” Wallace whispered, placing his hand at the small of her back as if to help hold her up. His solicitous concern was terrifying.

The woman that came across the foyer to stand in front of Ryan was small, though she gave the impression of being bigger than she was. Her dark suit was tailored to fit her thin body. Her long blond bob was perfect in every way, the highlights subtle, not a hair out of place. Her makeup was the same, elegant and restrained. She wore gold hoops in her ears and a small crucifix on a thin chain around her neck. A diamond the size of a grape on her ring finger.

Ryan knew a stylized look when she saw one, a costume top to bottom created to tell a story, to force a reaction. This woman wanted everyone to believe she was in the background. Nonthreatening. Vaguely forgettable.

But it was a lie.

She was chilling in her practiced innocuousness.

Behind her, another woman came out the door. Blond and rumpled, a pencil in her hair, two phones and clipboard in her hand.

“I’m Patty Montgomery,” the woman in front of her said.

Ryan had of course read plenty about her in the files and knew that what she was really wearing wasn’t that St. John suit or the god-ugly round-toed pumps, but ego. She was cloaked head to toe in her own hubris.

Unable to resist stirring the pot, Ryan shrugged, as if the name meant nothing to her. Beside her, Wallace swallowed a laugh.

“I am Harrison’s mother.” She said it slowly, as if Ryan were stupid. Or didn’t understand English.

“Nice to meet you. I’m his fiancée.” Ryan put out her hand to shake, but Mrs. Montgomery simply sniffed. As far as snubs went, it was expected and unimaginative.

Really? Too good to shake my hand? That’s what you’re leading with? Ryan thought, surprised by how pissed the lame insult made her. It seemed that all the anger and resentment that she wasn’t going to let herself feel about this strange turn her life had taken had found an incredibly handy outlet in this woman.

“Wallace, where is Harrison?” Patty asked, looking past Ryan as if she weren’t there. “Reverend Michaels is in the south parlor and he doesn’t have a lot of time to wait.”

“He’s got a conference call with Gibbs in Washington. He should be done shortly.”

“Wonderful.” Patty gave Ryan another long look. “You have a half hour, I imagine, before the ceremony if you’d like to change.”

“Nope.”

“No … nope?” Patty asked, her perfect eyebrows nearly hitting her hairline.

“This is it. My wedding dress. I got it from a guy in the garment district who only had one eye. It’s my lucky dress.” She was hugely gratified to watch Patty’s face nearly implode with distaste. Honestly, this woman was really too easy.

“Tomorrow morning we have a press conference, and after that you will be doing a school visit. Do you plan on wearing … that?”

“I’ve got some skinny jeans.”

“Noelle!” Patty called, and the messy shadow woman behind her stepped forward.

“Yes.”

“Clearly, Ms. Kaminski is going to need a new wardrobe. Could you see that done?”

Noelle nodded and wrote a note on the clipboard she carried.

“I’m size four,” Ryan said, watching Patty from the corner of her eye. “Size eight shoe. Yellow looks terrible on me, and keep the skirts short. I may be a politician’s wife, but I’m not dead, am I?” She laughed, pouring it all on thick. For a woman who just seconds ago had thought she needed no enemies, she was doing her damnedest to make sure her future mother-in-law was going to be one.

It was her perverse streak, the rebellion she had against anything that wasn’t genuine. She’d take a hot mess over a woman pretending she was perfect, projecting a lie. She had no patience for that.

And this gut reaction to prove an act was false had gotten her in more than her fair share of trouble.

“We’ll need a stylist,” Patty said, eyeing Ryan’s hair. “Tony should be able to come in first thing before the press conference.”

“My hair is fine,” she said.

Patty stepped closer, bringing with her the crackling energy and disapproval of five generations of money and power. Ryan swallowed. “I don’t think you understand that whatever rock you have lived under is gone. Your sad little existence as a waitress and a would-be model—it’s over. The way you lived your life, the things you believe, they do not matter anymore. You are a Montgomery, and you will behave as such, or I’m afraid you’ll find this golden ticket you’ve managed to weasel out of my son will vanish. You. That baby. You will disappear right back into the hole you came from with absolutely nothing.”

“All right, Patty.” Wallace stepped forward, but Patty’s gaze was so cold that he froze in his spot.

“Is this the same speech you gave that girl who almost died in the car crash with your husband?” Ryan said, deliberately baiting the bear, because she’d been taken out by her knees by this woman. And the only thing to do when you were going down in a fight was to make sure you weren’t going down alone.

“Ryan,” Wallace breathed, as if a warning to take cover. To tip over that ugly chair and hide behind it. But she stood her ground, because it was all she had left.

“Do you think not caring makes you brave?” Patty’s low voice cut her to pieces. “It doesn’t. It makes you stupid. More than your lack of education, or where you come from, not caring just makes you stupid, Ryan. And you don’t know this about Harrison, but he cares. More than anyone else in this family, he cares. And you may have impressed him one night in a bar. But you are in his life now and he won’t be impressed by you at all. Now, you’re getting married in the south parlor. You have twenty minutes.”

Patty’s heels nearly bored holes in the granite and hardwood floors as she left, Noelle her shadow trailing behind her.

“Holy shit,” Ryan said, finally sucking in a breath. Panic roared around her. “What the hell am I doing?”

“Hey, hey,” Wallace said, grabbing a stiff armchair next to a table covered in flowers. “Don’t pass out. Please don’t pass out.” He shoved the chair behind her knees and Ryan collapsed gratefully into it.

She put her head in her hands and let her hair fall down around her. A cave that smelled like the shampoo that was still in her tiny shower back in her apartment.

The hole I come from.

I want to go home.

“This is ridiculous,” she said, torn between angry tears and hysterical laughter. Because Patty had been right; where she was from, not caring was the only way to survive. Where she came from you learned not to get your hopes up and then you learned not to hope.

After that, all you had left was bravado.

“No. No, it’s not.” She felt and heard Wallace get down in a crouch in front of her.

She shook back her hair, staring at this strange ally. “Ten minutes ago you would have given me the same damn speech.” Oh, now she was turning toward tears. Because this guy had a nice face.

“Yeah, and now I’m telling you to suck it up. Harrison, his career, hell, even his mother needs you to see this through.”

“I don’t give a shit about his mother,” she spat.

“Excellent. Me neither.”

She smiled, but sagged farther into the awkward chair. “This is going to be a disaster.”

“Maybe,” Wallace said. “But you’re here. You’ve come this far and you’ve done all right.”

That made her laugh. “All right?”

“Yeah, you know, better than all right,” he said, settling into his pep talk. “The lawyer. Making sure you get something out of this. That your family is taken care of. You’re clever. You’re tough. How’d you know about the girl in the car crash?”

“My brother sent me some information about the family, and I just put two and two together.”

She was tempted to ask him why he was being nice. If it was real. Because she could use something kind, something real right about now.

But tough was lonely. So was proud.

And she had a lot of practice with those things, having lived alone with them for years. Exiled from every Christmas and birthday with her family. Weekends at home, Olivia’s performances, Dad …

The thought of Dad got her to her feet.

This was how she made things right with Dad. The money her lawyer was making sure she got—that would go a long way toward fixing what she’d done.

She grabbed her leather purse. It used to be one of the nicest things she owned, but now, sitting on the granite floor under the chandelier, it just looked cheap.

I don’t care, she thought. I don’t care how I look to these people. I have a job to do, a past to make right, and a future to secure.

And I’m not stupid.

“Show me where the fucking south parlor is. I need to get married.”

Wallace pointed toward the door that Patty and Noelle had vanished through.

“Right.” She threw her hair over her shoulder and crossed the foyer.

“Ryan?” Wallace asked.

“Yeah?”

“You were right about my mom.” He was running a hand over that ugly tie. “She would have done this, too. For me.”

It felt like a blessing. But maybe that’s what any kind of approval looked like when you were lying down flat at rock bottom.

Whatever, she thought. I’ll take it.

She winked at Wallace, which made him laugh, and she opened the door to the unknown beyond.