Oh, that went fucking swimmingly.
Aaron’s internal sarcasm came to an abrupt halt when Grace followed him down the front steps of Pendleton’s porch. He only strode faster for the Suburban. No way. No, he couldn’t handle Grace right now. There were committees to assemble, research to perform, incentives to devise. And if he looked into Grace’s sad and brave and beautiful green eyes, he wouldn’t give a fuck about any of it.
God, she couldn’t be an actual, real person. Who just waltzed in and demanded to take the blame—for anything? In his experience, that was the exact opposite behavior most people exhibited. As if her act of selflessness hadn’t been enough to throw him for a loop, she’d actually…made his damn hands shake in there, standing up to her father the way she’d done. For a brief moment, he’d actually considered throwing up the sheaf of documents and shouting, Oh, the hell with it. No matter what he did, no matter who he helped get elected or arguments he won, he’d never feel the kind of pride in himself Grace deserved to feel after the scene in Pendleton’s office. Not even if he exhumed Abraham goddamn Lincoln and got his corpse reelected by a landslide.
Now, Aaron could get Pendleton into office, no sweat. He hadn’t anticipated the pressure of having a new superior, however. No wonder, after his last one had sliced him down the middle with a job termination and a parting shot. This is how you repay me?
Aaron swallowed the beginnings of guilt and picked up his pace.
“Hey, could you just wait?” Grace’s footfalls fell along the path behind Aaron, but he still didn’t turn around. He wouldn’t until they could no longer be seen from the house. Why? Because she was asking to be eye-fucked. Top to bottom. On top of the battle he’d been waging in the office, his cock nearly giving a full salute to those see-through tights had been just a tad inconvenient. And worse, she could have walked in wearing Mrs. Lincoln’s nightgown and his balls would still have filled with weight. Grace simply did that to him. Aroused him. Made him wish he’d been born with whatever vital DNA he clearly lacked. The kind that would allow him to witness her level of compassion and understand it. Or recognize the ability in himself.
He reached the Suburban and jerked open the driver’s side door, using it like a shield between himself and Grace. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a business card and penned his cell phone number on the back, handing it to her. Refusing to witness her reaction to such an obnoxious—but necessary—brush-off, he cut his gaze to the side. There were too many obstacles between them now, and any amount of time spent with her would only tempt Aaron to find ways around them. It couldn’t happen. He’d come too far to screw up now. Screw up again.
“What’s this?” Grace asked.
“My cell number. Do what you can on your end. Get me a list of places, contacts, and their specific causes so I can vet them.” He slid his hands into his jacket pockets, but jerked them free when he encountered the shredded red ribbons. “I’ll get on the phone and work my own angles, locate resources. We’ll touch base later.”
“No.” She leaned to the right, tossing his business card back into the Suburban like a Frisbee. “I’m coming with you.”
Just like that, Aaron’s temper spiked so dramatically, he could see the yellow slash of it paint his vision. “You’re the one. You said we couldn’t be alone together anymore. I’m just following the rules.” He jerked his chin toward the house. “Those rules are even more set in stone now than they were last night.”
God, being this close to her, he could see every nuanced reaction flit across her face. A face that would never be duplicated or even resembled by someone else. She was nervous and excited and trying to be brave, all at once. Brave toward him. Which went another ten miles toward making him a bastard.
“If you leave without me, you’ll shut me out. Make a list?” She blinked up at the sky, which rained winter sunshine down onto her features. “I’m tired of being humored. Don’t do that to me.”
A growl vibrated in his throat, self-preservation clashing with the bitter distaste of picturing her back in the guesthouse, alone in the silence. He tapped his fist against the inside of the car door. “I thought after this morning, after I gave credit to your father for that donation, you wouldn’t lend me a hose if I was on fire.”
Grace’s head gave a slight tilt. “No. What you did, what you said…there was no other way to guarantee the shelter could keep the money.” She peered up at him. “Did you think about that? Was it part of your decision?”
Yeah. Crazy enough, it had been. When he’d opened the cabin door and seen the cameras, he’d had two simultaneous concerns. Keeping the hope of a job alive and making sure Grace didn’t…lose her moment. He’d actually wanted to punch himself in the face for the mental recitation of those words. Grace is going to have her moment taken away. Maybe all we have is moments. Perhaps he’d still been drunk on whiskey, but he’d sobered quick enough, the pleasurable surge of taking charge, solving a problem, overrunning that fleeting goodwill. Thank Christ. “No, Grace. I acted in the only way I could to secure my job on this campaign.” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “I thought the pressure was off after last night. Thought you’d finally stopped expecting good things from me.”
Her breath had created a circle of fog on the driver’s side window, and now she dragged a finger diagonally through the center, as if to say, Shut up, you bullshit artist. Or maybe he was the one projecting the sentiment. “It was only a question.” She dropped her hand and made a move to circle the Suburban. “Shotgun.”
In his periphery, Aaron saw the senator move in the window of his den, phone pressed to his ear as he watched Aaron and Grace, and their obvious impasse in the driveway. He could feel the older man’s speculation like a net thrown over his head, ready to drag him up into the trees. Well-warranted concern. “You’re putting me in a real fucking spot here, hippie.”
She must have taken that as Aaron’s agreement, because she tucked her chin down toward her chest, as if trying to hide a smile, and skipped the remaining distance to the passenger door. There was nothing he could do after seeing that, was there? With a muttered curse, Aaron climbed into the driver’s seat and started the ignition, smirking when Grace already had her seatbelt buckled, hands clasped in her lap. Her lap, which was almost entirely visible through the sheer tights, her sweater not even long enough to reach mid-thigh. How he ached to draw it higher, over the curves of her hips. To drive down the street with nothing but nylon separating her backside from the seat. And he’d be the only one to know. The only one able to look, to reach over and cup her, stroke her. “You’re going to freeze your ass off,” he rasped.
Impatient fingers tugged on the sweater’s hem, but it only slid back up in a whispery scratch of fabric. “Just drive, Grandpa.”
A pained smile threatened, but Aaron banished it and threw the car into gear, feeling pretty desperate to be out from beneath the senator’s eyes while getting hard for the man’s daughter. Because, yeah. When it came to Grace’s body—which he now knew to be responsive as hell—his cock didn’t feel like observing the rules. “I, uh…” He turned onto the main road. “I need to take care of a few things, before we get on the phone. Are you okay for breakfast?”
“Yes, thank you.” She shifted toward him in the seat. “What few things are we taking care of?”
The royal we didn’t escape his notice. “I need to find different lodging for my family.” Aaron thought of Belmont’s marble countenance when he’d left the cabin that morning. At least until Sage came in and perched herself on the corner of the closest bed. As Aaron watched from the doorway, his brother had snatched Sage up like a toy and deposited her onto his lap, all but smothering the poor girl with his arms, face disappearing into her hair. Sage had allowed the treatment without complaint, even appearing gratified by it in some way. Aaron hadn’t been able to escape the cabin fast enough. “My brother doesn’t do well around news cameras. Or people. Not that he would say a damn thing about it to me.”
When they reached a stoplight, Aaron tugged the cell phone from his pocket, preparing to make a call to Peggy on speakerphone, instructing her to get packing. “I know where they can stay,” Grace said. “It’s a twenty-minute drive north of Des Moines…”
The way she’d trailed off had Aaron examining her face. “What’s it called? I can phone them and see if they have openings.”
“There’s no one to call…but it’s open.” Grace pressed a finger to her front teeth, the overlapping ones, before she dropped her hand. “Maybe I should bring you there first? It won’t take long.”
Just like the day they’d arrived, Aaron felt invisible fingers trail down the back of his neck. In the past, intuition had usually arrived in the form of a gut feeling, but since arriving in Iowa, that appeared to have changed. “Grace, tell me where we’re going.”
She nodded, as if she’d expected the question. “An old campground that hasn’t been used in a while. But it’s in the preparation stages of housing young people again. Not only as a summer camp, but a year-round place for orphaned children. From Iowa, specifically. It’s nowhere close to being ready, but we—Imelda, the Irish woman you met last night, and myself—have been working on making it functional again.” Her tone changed, grew softer. “It used to be operated by—”
“YouthAspire?” Aaron realized he held the cell phone too tightly when his palm started to ache, so he threw it down into the cup holder. “I’ll take you there, but I can’t be in the dark anymore. Maybe you don’t think I have the right to ask, but I want to know what happened to you. I’m—”
“I know. You don’t like puzzles.” She wasn’t facing him, but he could see her far-off expression in the window. “When we get there, you can take your turn trying to solve me.”
The light turned green, but the car behind Aaron had to issue a beep to get Aaron moving. There was no denying he was anxious to piece Grace’s past together, but a warning also buzzed at the front of his skull. Danger. Caution. He already felt protective enough of Grace without giving himself more reason. Still, he was unable to stop himself from asking, “Which way?”