Chapter One

 

Linda Owens sits at her desk and closes her eyes and tries to ignore the fullness of her bladder. This has always been a big job. There's nothing new about it. She shouldn't be letting herself get this worked up over it, but worked up is exactly what she's getting.

Normally, her clients knew how to hide old girlfriends. They'd just go the hell away. Sure, sometimes they'd pop up as suicides—two bullets in the back of the head, classic suicide.

But the one thing that they sure as hell didn't do, at least not usually, was have those girlfriends just show up on national television, hoping for their five minutes of fame as the woman who used to fuck Adam Quinn.

Well, apparently, Adam Quinn was the exception. Sure, maybe Marilyn and John Kennedy had their thing, but nobody talked about it.

Well, apparently, if Quinn had been in Kennedy's place, there wouldn't be much secret. It creates a bad image. It makes you look like a philanderer to have a thousand ex-girlfriends come out and say, well, sure, we used to play around. What's the big idea anyways?

Then they get passed around until someone manages to get them to say something that isn't positive.

Then it just makes Linda's job that much harder. Which is why, right now, she should probably have been working, but she just had her head stuffed into her hands. Because clearly, her hopes to settle into the new job weren't going to happen.

She'd only been in the office for twenty minutes, and she was already thinking how she was the only person on the face of the earth who could bring Quinn out the other side of it looking squeaky clean. She's had three cups of coffee, and there hasn't been time between segments to run to the bathroom.

The media will start with the girlfriends, of course. They haven't said anything yet. Adam Quinn is a real ladies man, he's a great guy, he never said a bad thing toward me. So far, nothing but positive coverage. Which is good.

It can only last so long. Nobody's a saint. Adam Quinn, doubly so. You only have to spend five minutes in a room with him to know that he's never going to be a saint and you're never going to paint him as one.

He just has to look presidential. He just has to seem like he's going to be able to pull it back. And right now, Linda is looking at her options, looking at the future, and trying to figure out where things are going from here.

Which leaves the bigger problem. This is going to be big, it's going to be frustrating, and there's not a whole hell of a lot that she can do about it.

There's an incredible amount of media about him now. If her previous campaigns have been any indicator, then that will continue. She's got to watch just about all of it. A 24-hour news cycle on three channels, with only so many hours in the day.

Then she's got to figure which parts can be safely ignored. There are two TVs talking at once, now. The audio on the left one is turned up, the right one is muted. They were never going to get good coverage on Fox in the first place.

So there's not much point, as long as it doesn't say they've got breaking news that's going to ruin Adam Quinn's career, it really isn't a big deal. CNN, on the other hand… they could have favorable coverage. Or unfavorable.

Which is why you have to watch them. Because they'll lie if they think they can get away with it, and Linda's job is to make sure that none of it sticks. And if some of it does stick, wash it away by throwing money at it until it comes unstuck.

It's a good gig, all told. With the one problem being, of course, the candidate that she's dealing with now. Or, at least, the candidate they tell her she's dealing with. Usually, they meet beforehand. With a ten million dollar paycheck coming at the end of the election cycle, and another ten million bonus if he wins, though…

Linda let it slide.

She taps her thumb on the hard wooden desk to try to get her mind off the discomfort in her gut. It makes her nervous to think about leaving, but the pressure is starting to build into frustration as well, and that's honing a fine edge of nerves that makes it seem like every little cut of the camera is suddenly going to be met with disaster.

Linda takes a deep breath again, closes her eyes again, and steps out the door in as much of a hurry as you can go in heels and a tight-fitting skirt. Which isn't as fast as she'd like, which in turn is why she's not paying close enough attention to avoid the broad-shouldered man in a thousand-dollar suit.

He's surrounded by advisers, a few reporters with their microphones pointed right at his mouth, but the powerful strides keep him out in front of the swarming mass, and in a perfect position for Linda to ram right into him.

"Miss Owens. Glad you could make it," he says. He smiles. His voice is warm and inviting. Just like it sounds on the television. She's heard him since she was a little girl. He was younger, then. Age hasn't slowed him down a bit. She takes in a breath and forces herself to still.

"Mr. Quinn. Nice to finally meet you."

He sweeps an arm around her waist and turns to the crowd. She can't help noticing the way that his arms seem to fit around her waist. She can't help letting him guide her, as if he were there just to control her.

"I'd like you all to meet my new campaign manager, Miss Linda Owens. She's great, you're all going to love her." A microphone gets shoved into Linda's mouth.

She wasn't supposed to be dealing with an announcement right now. Not until the press conference Friday afternoon.

But then, running a political campaign, whether it was for Mayor or for Governor, for Congress or for President, was about dealing with the unexpected.

In Adam Quinn's case, of course, the unexpected was a little more common.