Chapter 10
“Let’s eat and you can fill me in on what’s going on.” Trevor kissed Ford’s temple and rubbed circles on his back. “I brought you dinner from my favorite Italian food place. Meatball Mondays at Uva are not to be missed.”
“Uva? That’s the restaurant you ordered from when I visited you in New York.”
“Yes.”
“I called you to vent.” Ford kept his arms around Trevor’s waist and his face buried against Trevor’s neck. “I can’t believe you flew here at a moment’s notice, got another fancy hotel room, and brought me dinner.”
Go hard or go home. Trevor had followed that philosophy from the first time he invested money in an idea nobody else saw as valuable or marketable. Betting on the safe options might have earned him a living, but taking on the hard ones had made him a billionaire. He never second-guessed himself, never held back, and never shied away from risks. This was personal, not work, but he was still the same man, and after more than four decades of living, his personality wasn’t going to change.
“You sounded upset on the phone.” Trevor leaned back, took Ford’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, and tilted it up until their gazes met. “Of course I came.” Trevor might not know precisely where things were going between them, or even where he wanted them to go, but he was certain about one thing: he cared about Ford. He cared a lot. And he wouldn’t hide that. “And I missed you.”
“Thank you.” Ford grazed his lips over Trevor’s. “I missed you too and—” He licked his lips. “I was hoping you’d come,” he whispered shyly and then flicked his gaze away, as if embarrassed by the confession.
“All you have to do is ask.” Trevor caressed Ford’s cheek.
“We don’t live in the same city. You’re busy. I’m busy.”
“All true statements, but they don’t change the offer.” He threaded his fingers with Ford’s and tugged him farther inside the hotel suite. “Food’s this way.”
“Smells good,” Ford said as they walked to the table.
“Uva’s the best.” Trevor nodded appreciatively. “Their eggplant parmesan and gnocchi are my favorites, but it’s Monday, so we’re having the meatball specials instead.” He waited until Ford had eaten a few bites, before bringing up the reason for Ford’s call earlier that day. “What happened with your father?”
“Nothing happened exactly.” Ford sighed. “My mother is worried that he’s acting strangely or something. She talked to my sister Laura who told her husband Craig who asked me about it when I was home last month.”
Nothing in his upbringing could help Trevor relate to that dynamic, but he admired how much Ford and his family cared about each other. “Have you noticed anything unusual?”
“I hadn’t.” Ford shook his head. “But after I talked with Craig, I paid closer attention and I noticed he looked worn out. We had lunch together today and I asked him if everything was okay.” Ford set his fork down and sighed. “He said it was.”
“Oh,” Trevor said in confusion. Ford’s body language and tone were inconsistent with that statement. “That’s good, right?”
“It should be, but the way he said it…”
“How’d he say it?”
“I don’t think he was telling the truth.” Ford drew his eyebrows together and looked at Trevor. “Why would he do that?”
There were a million plausible answers to that question. What Trevor couldn’t understand was Ford’s confusion. “He probably doesn’t want you to know,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Doesn’t want me to know what?”
Trevor blinked. “Whatever it is that’s going on.”
“Why?”
“Uh.” Trevor set his own fork down and glanced around the room but there was nobody else there to give him a clue about Ford’s issue. “Because it’s private?”
“So he lied to me?” Ford said incredulously. “My father doesn’t lie.”
Trevor bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing or pointing out that everyone lies, both because it would only make Ford feel worse and because it wasn’t relevant.
“No. He didn’t lie,” Trevor said.
“He said everything was okay. If it’s not okay, that means he lied.”
Smiling at Ford’s sweetness and naïvety, Trevor reached his arm across the table and held Ford’s hand.
“He made a dismissive statement in a way that made it clear what he was doing. That’s not a lie.”
Ford furrowed his brow. “I have no idea what you just said. None.”
“If your dad has something he wants to keep private and he tells you that, you won’t know what it is, but you’ll know there’s something, which means it isn’t private. So instead he said he’s okay in a tone that you recognized as him not wanting to talk about it rather than meaning it.” Trevor squeezed Ford’s hand. “Make sense?”
“Maybe,” Ford said reluctantly. “But my mom’s the one who brought this up and he never keeps things private from her.”
“Never?”
“Never,” Ford said firmly as he pulled his hand away and crossed his arms over his chest.
Arguing about that with Ford would be futile, and besides, Trevor didn’t know Bradford and Theresa Hollingsworth. If they were anything close to the way Ford perceived them, then his father’s behavior was out-of-character and that, in and of itself, was enough to justify Ford’s worries.
“Well, let’s think.” The obvious answer to something a man wouldn’t tell his wife or his children was an affair. “You said he was acting strangely or he looked worn out?”
“Um. I can’t remember Craig’s exact words, but I noticed he was moving slower and his face looked…” Ford pressed his lips together and flared his nostrils. “I don’t know, haggard or something.”
That didn’t sound like adultery. It sounded like stress or illness.
Clearly frustrated, Ford picked up his fork and stabbed at his pasta. “It’s hard to explain.”
Trevor ate a few more bites of food, watched Ford do the same, and weighed the pointlessness of worrying Ford over something he couldn’t control against the hardline stance he took toward honesty. Measuring his words carefully, he said, “When I was little, I had this babysitter.” He moved his finger over the condensation on the water glass, drawing random patterns. “She used all these charming idioms. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. You can’t get a quart into a pint pot. That sort of thing.” He met Ford’s gaze. “Don’t borrow trouble.”
Ford’s expression flickered from confusion, to comprehension, to anger. “You’re saying I shouldn’t help when there might be something wrong with my dad?”
“I’m saying if there is something wrong, he obviously doesn’t think you can do anything about it, so does your knowing actually help?” Trevor asked calmly.
All the fight drained from Ford, his shoulders slumping. “I don’t know.” He pushed his plate away. “I guess not.”
Trevor’s chest ached in reaction to Ford’s sadness. Racking his brain for something, anything, to make Ford feel better, he said, “Another thing I remember about that babysitter was she let me have bubble baths when I was upset.”
“Bubble baths, huh? My mom always made us hot chocolate with those little marshmallows.”
Without skipping a beat, Trevor tipped his chair back and reached for the telephone on the buffet table behind him.
“What are you doing?” Ford asked.
“Good evening, Mister Moga. How can we help you?”
“Hi. Can you please send up a pitcher of hot chocolate with marshmallows?”
“Of course, sir,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “How many mugs?”
“Two. Thank you.” He put the phone down, righted his chair, and smiled at Ford. “Hot chocolate with marshmallows coming right up.”
“You’re the most thoughtful person I’ve ever met.” Ford glanced down at his plate and then looked at Trevor from underneath his lashes. “Although I have to say, I was looking forward to the adult version of bubble bath therapy.”
“Who said it was one or the other?” Trevor gave Ford his best sultry stare. “You can have both.”
“I think hot chocolate in a bubble bath is my new favorite thing.” Ford leaned his head back, stretched one arm across the tub, and raised his mug to his mouth.
“I think you naked is my new favorite thing.”
“You’ve been seeing me naked for what? Almost seven months now. That doesn’t count as new.”
“It’s still my favorite thing.” Trevor pressed his chest to Ford’s and brushed their lips together. “Mmm.” He licked his lips. “You’re chocolate flavored.” He took Ford’s mug, set it on the floor beside his own, and then dove in for another kiss.
Responsive as always, Ford moaned and dropped his knees open, making room for Trevor between them. He tilted his head, parted his lips, and clutched Trevor’s shoulders. “You feel good,” he mumbled into Trevor’s mouth.
“Mmm hmm.” The water and soap made everything smoother and silkier as they moved against each other, the passion and pleasure rising like it did whenever they were together. “Been too long.”
Ford had been right about their schedules. Both of them were busy and not living in the same city made spending time together difficult. But they’d found ways to make time. Ford had extended a couple of New York work trips to be with him. And Trevor had flown into DC more frequently in the past few months than he had during the entire four and a half years his father had been in the White House.
“Uh-huh. Missed you. Missed this.” Ford curled one leg over Trevor’s thigh. “Thank you for coming when I called.”
“Always,” Trevor said fervently, shaken by how strongly he meant that but also pleased. It felt good to want, like, and respect someone so deeply. He’d never felt those things for anyone and hadn’t expected to, but now that he knew what he’d been missing, he wouldn’t let it go. Not for anything.
“If you keep doing that, I’ll make a mess in this tub.”
“God, yes, do it.” Trevor trembled with arousal. He slammed his mouth on Ford’s again, licking and sucking, and then he rose to his knees, circled his palm around Ford’s erection, and shoved his finger into Ford’s hole.
“Ah!” Ford shouted as he arched his back and grasped at the edges of the tub. “Trev!”
Ignoring the splashing water, Trevor stroked faster and plunged harder. He swept his gaze over Ford’s slick body, slid his thumb across Ford’s cockhead, and tapped his fingertip against Ford’s gland. “Come on,” he grunted. “Give it to me.”
His muscles tight, mouth open, and eyes wide, Ford gasped and shot.
“Yes.” Trevor continued stroking, milking Ford’s cock through the long orgasm. Only when Ford was spent, lying boneless in the tub, his chest heaving, did Trevor reach for his own dick. With as turned on as he was from seeing Ford’s pleasure, it didn’t take long. Just a few strokes and he came, pulsing over his fingers. “Damn.” He shivered, heart racing and lungs burning. “Damn.”
“I know. Me too.” Ford weakly raised his arm and tugged at Trevor. “I can’t move. Come down here and kiss me.”
“Always.”
“Hi, Mom.” Trevor stepped back into the hotel room he had just left and closed the door. His mother rarely called him during a workday so he figured he would need privacy for the conversation. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. About to step into a meeting, actually. Listen, that number you asked me for in March?”
The question put Trevor on high alert. “Yes?”
“Do you still use it?”
After a few seconds considering why his mother was asking about Ford, Trevor said, “Yes.”
She sighed. “Then we need to talk. Preferably in person and definitely soon.”
“Are you in DC?”
“Yes.”
“So am I.”
He had said goodbye to Ford a half-hour earlier, responded to emails, and was about to leave for the airport. Though he would have liked to stay longer, Congress was on break in August, which made the last week of July one of Ford’s busiest times. He’d have late nights and early mornings so they wouldn’t be able to spend time together.
“This meeting should last an hour,” his mother said. “If you can be here when I’m done, I’ll push back my next appointment until after we talk.”
“I’ll be there.”
An hour and a half later, Trevor paced across the west sitting room in the White House residence while his mother sat on one of the sofas, scrolling through her texts and emails.
“Do you think it’s true?” he asked, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck.
“Probably,” she said without looking up.
He sighed in frustration. “Do you think he knew about it?”
Still tapping on her phone, she distractedly said, “Hard to say. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, maybe he suspected but looked the other way. Only he knows. But once people hear about it, it won’t matter. The possibility that he did it is enough to end him.”
She was right of course. Aceve Incorporated was known for donating huge sums of money to Republican candidates and they had a longstanding relationship with Bradford Hollingsworth. There was no way for him to avoid being at least somewhat tarnished by the revelation that they had contaminated the water table by illegally disposing industrial waste in uninhabited desert land over a period of years. But if the allegation that Senator Hollingsworth had known about the situation, looked the other way, and even affirmatively taken steps to help the mining company hide it became public, his reputation and his career would be ruined.
“When is it coming out?”
“Tonight’s news cycle. The source wants this to blow up before the District clears out for the August break. He has an exclusive interview lined up on CNN and then a press blitz.”
“Damn it!” Trevor shouted. Ford considered his father a model of virtue and integrity. Having him publicly disgraced would devastate Ford. “Who’s the source?”
His mother set down her phone. “William Brody, a former Aceve vice president turned state legislator who has his eyes on the New Mexico governor’s office.”
“In other words, he’s another greedy politician manipulating the public to get ahead,” Trevor said disgustedly.
Arching her eyebrows, she said, “If he’s right about what Aceve has been doing, and from everything I know he is right, then he’s helping the public by bringing it to light and putting a stop to it. Some people might consider that heroic rather than greedy.”
“Let me guess, Brody’s a Democrat and his adversary is a Republican who has ties to Aceve?” He paused to give his mother a chance to dispute the statement, and when she didn’t, he continued, “The outcome might be good, but if this has been going on for years, that means Brody didn’t bother saying anything until he decided it’d be useful in his quest for the governor’s office. That makes him a typical politician, not a hero.”
Instead of responding to the biting remark, his mother said, “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you earlier, Trevor. I heard about the situation as it was coming to light last week but it wasn’t until this morning that he mentioned Senator Hollingsworth’s role.”
Trevor stopped pacing. “This morning?”
“Yes. I called you immediately.”
“Who else knows?” Trevor asked, an idea forming.
“About the senator’s involvement?”
“Yes.”
“There were four of us in the meeting along with William Brody.”
“The other three are your people?”
Another nod.
“I need you to wipe Senator Hollingsworth’s involvement from this. Having dirt on Aceve is enough for your side of the aisle. He doesn’t need to be part of it.”
“What if what William Brody said is true? What if the senator knew what Aceve was doing and helped them hide it?”
Trevor’s stomach turned. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I want him off limits, Mom.”
“I’ll do the best that I can, although I must point out to you that this is the very thing you’ve disapproved of your father and I doing hundreds of times.”
“No, it’s not,” Trevor denied. “I’m not playing politics.”
“No? What would you call it? You’re asking me to bury information that’ll hurt a politician. You’re taking away people’s opportunity to know who might be responsible for what happened and you’re doing it for politics.”
“No, I’m not.” Trevor walked to the far end of the room. “I don’t give a damn about politics. I’m doing it because having his father wrapped up in this will devastate Ford.”
“That’s all well and good, Trevor. But you’re asking me to hide information that would be the lead story in the next news cycle. A story, which by the way, would help your father a great deal because Senator Hollingsworth opposes almost every piece of legislation we seek to pass. I’m going to do it because you asked me to, but the way I’ll do it is to manipulate my political connections. And the reason you want me to do it is to save Bradford Hollingsworth’s political reputation. Any way you slice it, this comes down to politics pure and simple.”
She was right and it rankled Trevor deeply. He’d spent a lifetime resenting the manipulation and games that overshadowed every aspect of his childhood and family. When his parents and their friends had suggested he run for office, Trevor had strongly and not so politely refused to step foot into the snake’s den, even going so far as rejecting all requests for political donations.
“Don’t look so downtrodden, Trevor.” His mother stood and walked over to him. “Being like your parents isn’t the end of the world.”
Trevor thought about how hard his father and mother had worked during the campaigns, how many favors they had promised to donors. He earned more in one year than the total cost of his father’s last presidential bid and yet he had stood on principle and hadn’t contributed a dime to the campaign. To his parents’ credit, they’d accepted his stance on politics and hadn’t asked him for money. Maybe he hadn’t grown up with a family like the Cleavers on television or, from what he’d heard, a family like Ford’s, but his parents had shown their love for him in their own way. And as he thought about it, he realized the same was true for their love toward each other.
The women who came and went from his father’s bed and the men who came and went from his mother’s had always sickened him, making him feel as if their marriage was a sham. But those people moved in and out of their lives without fanfare. They didn’t matter. His parents didn’t sleep in the same room, but they spoke to each other every day, confided in one another about everything, trusted each other implicitly to always put their joint goals first. Thinking about it from that perspective, Trevor realized that while his parents’ relationship wasn’t the stuff of Disney fairytales, they did love one another. And they loved him.
“You’re right, Mom.” If he was in Ford’s family, he would hug her, but his parents had never been physically affectionate, so he stayed where he was, looked her in the eyes, and said, “Thank you for doing this.”
“Don’t thank me yet. My staff will go along with this but William Brody is exceptionally ambitious and he fancies himself a maverick. I’m not sure how he’ll respond to a push for silence about the senator.”
Trevor narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “If Brody gives you any pushback, let me know. I’ll deal with him.”
Instead of flying to Boston, Trevor cancelled his meetings and stayed in the White House, waiting for the results of his mother’s efforts. As promised, her staff fell in line, but she didn’t feel as confident about William Brody’s decision so she invited Trevor to join them and then cleared the room.
“What is this?” Brody asked, darting his gaze around the small East Wing conference room directly across from the First Lady’s office. “Where did Mrs. Moga go? Why are you here?”
“Should we do introductions?” Trevor asked, pulling out a chair.
“I know who you are.”
“Good. That saves us time and I need to wrap this up quickly and get to work. I’ve already lost the morning.”
“Wrap what up? What’s going on?”
Getting straight to the point, Trevor said, “You’re not going to mention Bradford Hollingsworth’s name on CNN tonight or any other time.”
“What? You can’t—”
“I heard you’re a state legislator.”
“Yes, I—”
“And you hope to be governor. Is that right?”
Brody looked at him warily.
His face impassive and his tone even, Trevor said, “If there is even a scintilla of an indication that Senator Hollingsworth was involved in this mess, I will fund whoever runs against you in every election until the end of time. You think you can win with my bank account on the other side?”
Brody’s face paled. “Why would you—”
“Or, let’s say you decide to go into consulting or lobbying. That’s what a lot of you do when you’re out of office, right? I’ll fund whoever is on the other side of your employer and make sure they know why. Can you guess how likely you are to get a job once people figure that out?”
“You’re just like your parents,” Brody said angrily.
“Thank you for the compliment.” It had taken nearly forty-three years, but Trevor now realized that it was indeed a compliment, regardless of how Brody intended it. He stood and tugged on his shirtsleeves, straightening them. “Back off from the Hollingsworth angle and win whatever battle you’re waging on the merits instead of ruining a good man’s reputation.”
“He isn’t a good man,” Brody said indignantly. “Bradford Hollingsworth has—”
“You know what? I don’t care.” The only thing Trevor cared about was protecting Ford. He stepped toward the door and put his hand on the handle. “Kill his part of the story. This conversation is over.”