CHAPTER FIVE
The war-room door was a simple conference-room door. Angela had bustled in and out of it a hundred times without thinking. She wasn’t a team leader and had never gone into the field for military operations, but this conference room was her domain. However, now she was stuck outside of it, high heels cemented to the carpet.
A headache that she didn’t want to confront waited on the other side of the door. Sawyer patiently waited behind her. She wasn’t sure she could walk in if he weren’t her backup.
Then again, Jared wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She’d always done a good job as an administrator for the ACES team. Her position went beyond the secretarial role he’d probably envisioned—a job only offered to her out of pity. But she’d surpassed everyone’s expectations, including her own.
Angela handled the normal ho-hum business of paperwork but also scheduled private jets, coordinated safe houses, and arranged for aliases. She shopped for supplies for undercover assignments and managed an assembly of clandestine players and surreptitious clients.
She loved her job.
She was good at it.
But she was never the topic of conversation. That would change when she walked into the war room.
There were three roles Angela could play: Jared Westin’s assistant, Senator Sorenson’s daughter, and Paul Bane’s girlfriend. Each one had expectations heavy enough to drown a whale.
“Don’t let ’em scare you,” Sawyer said under his breath, tacking on, “ Babe .”
The corners of her mouth quirked. “Funny, I don’t want to throat-punch you when you say that.”
“It’s all about the delivery.” He turned her around and squeezed her shoulder. “You got this, Ange.” Then Sawyer stepped back for her to make an entrance. “Head up. Shoulders back. You’ve got this. ”
Her hotter-than-the-Sahara bodyguard was giving her a pep talk to face her in-name-only boyfriend. Nothing weird about that…
She glanced over her shoulder. Sawyer winked. Her stomach and confidence jumped. That was what she needed. Her head was up. Shoulders back. Angela channeled the person Sawyer believed she was and grinned. “Here goes nothing.”
She opened the door and paused to take in the players.
If Angela considered the total length of time she had known each of them, her mother had the most claim to her, but Angela wasn’t often her mother’s top priority. Their relationship was practical, though not without their version of love.
Paul had been in Angela’s life since she was a hospitality major in college. They’d met when he’d interned in her mother’s senate office. He had remained committed to Angela throughout her ordeal with Pham, apparently never losing hope that she’d be found someday. She was. He seemed glad. Their relationship had never been a torrid love affair, but did those things really exist?
How did Jared see Angela? He had the slightest claim on her yet the strongest gravitational pull in the war room. He and his Abu Dhabi-based team had her loyalty. They’d rescued her from Pham. Boss Man provided her with a job in a secure location and the ability to control the minutiae around her. But she never forgot that she hadn’t earned the position in Titan. Someone gave it to her because of her last name.
Jared sat at the head of the table. Her mother and Paul sat on one side. Rich and Rob, the campaign manager and political consultant, sat on the other. The imposing table had never seemed to unnerve Angela before now.
Sawyer followed her into the war room.
Her mother eyed him. “We don’t need anyone else but Angela.”
Sawyer didn’t hesitate as he proceeded next to Rich. “Given that Angela mentioned she has no idea what’s going on”—he looked to Jared—“I’ll defer to my boss.”
“Sit.” Jared gestured to the seat Sawyer was about to take.
Nervousness masked, Angela sat next to Paul and across from Sawyer. Her boyfriend seemed like an old acquaintance, neither friendly nor comfortable, more like the landscape on a road she’d driven a hundred times.
She took a pen and small notebook from her bag as she would have if called into a meeting with any other client. She waited, poised to take notes or handle anything Jared asked of her.
“Good to see you, Angela,” her mother said.
Angela’s grip tightened on the pen, but she painted an acceptable expression on her face. “It’s a surprise.”
“It is,” her mother agreed. “You know how trips like these are. Under the radar.”
Angela demurred and refocused on Jared.
Paul sighed as if he were a petulant child not given attention. “If you had responded to my texts, you wouldn’t be completely in the dark.”
Annoyance rocketed up her neck. Angela pressed her lips together, wondering if now was an appropriate time to mention the text messages from her that he had missed. Instead, she kept her eyes on Boss Man.
Tension ticked in Jared’s jaw. Irritated lines etched over his darkening expression. “Give me a break, Paul.” Jared snorted. “No bullshit in my war room. You understand me?”
Her pulse thumped in her ears. Angela’s gaze skipped from Jared to Sawyer then back to Jared again.
Her mother cleared her throat. The gold bracelets on her wrist clinked. “I’d suggest business first. Then, Angela, you and Paul can discuss personal details afterward.”
Jared’s scowl deepened. “Samantha,” he growled, “I do not have time for this bullshit.”
“So you keep saying,” her mother returned. “If we did this my way—”
“Your way,” Jared fumed, “nearly killed my people.”
“I wouldn’t call Angela your people.”
The blood drained from Angela’s face. Her veneer threatened to crumble. She focused on Jared and ignored the hurt that sliced into her chest as though her mother had thrown a ninja star with surgical precision.
“First.” Boss Man’s quiet voice reached a deadly baritone that rumbled like thunder across the war room. “You don’t know your ass from your elbow when it comes to my team.” He squeezed his right fist with his left hand, and the knuckles cracked. “Second. You don’t know your ass from your elbow when it comes to your daughter.”
Watery emotion surprised Angela, but she kept her expression cold as untouched gun metal.
“And third, if you ever”—he pushed out of this chair and towered over the table—“and I mean ever , Samantha, interfere, involve, or otherwise include yourself in my domain again unless I expressly request it, I will end you.”
Mother’s bracelets clinked as she shifted. Her iron-clad posture didn’t slip, but her silence spoke volumes.
“Are we on the same page, Samantha?”
Angela’s mother lightly cleared her throat, pressed her red lips together, and relented. “Fine. You have my word.”
Jared turned his attention to Angela and drew a measured breath. Slowly, he let it out as though he were counting to ten. “Angela…”
Panic curled in her gut. Her gaze flicked to Sawyer and then locked back onto Boss Man. She gave him her full, grateful, albeit nervous, attention.
“This foursome”—Jared gestured between Rich and Rob, Paul and her mother—“has been here for a few days.”
Angela’s jaw dropped. “What?” She pivoted in her chair to stare at her mother and Paul. “And you didn’t tell me?” They didn’t answer. She turned to Jared. “You knew?”
Boss Man sneered. “That’d be a big, fat negative.”
“If you’d answered your text messages,” Paul added.
Jared’s fist slammed into the heavy wood table and made the quartet jump. The corners of his lips quirked. “Watch yourself, kid.”
Kid. The jab had the intended effect. Paul’s irritation was palpable and probably close to how she felt about his babe .
“They have been here?” Sawyer’s anger mirrored Jared’s. A tightening fury shifted over his face.
“Yeah,” Boss Man confirmed.
Her slow brewing rage shifted from the secret visit to the implications. She looked between Sawyer and Jared and asked, “Did they blow my cover?”
Jared nodded curtly.
She turned to Paul and her mother. “You blew my cover!” The ramifications snowballed. “Someone tried to kill me—Sawyer’s life was in danger.” Anger skewed her vision. “Because of you two?”
“Babe—”
“Do not,” she hissed, “ever call me that again.”
Undaunted, Paul reached for her hand. “Angela,” he tried.
She smacked his hand away and swung her attention to Rich and Rob. “Why are you here? What do you two need?”
“Well,” Rich said, confidence shaken, “we thought we had a few weeks to discuss this with you—”
“Spit it out before I do,” Jared warned.
“I’m going to run for president,” her mother offered. “And Paul’s going to run for my Senate seat.”
Angela’s jaw dropped. Her mother never wanted to leave the Senate—and Paul? A senator? “What?”
Her mother was unfazed. “It’s not unheard of for a chief of staff to step into a senator’s—”
“Chief of staff?” Angela jerked to Paul. “Since when?”
He reached for her again. “If you were home—”
“I am trying to stay alive until this stupid trial wraps.”
“About that,” her mother said.
Angela’s heart lurched into her throat. “What?”
“We have a problem with the Pham trial,” her mother said with the quick, sharp rip of an unseen metaphorical Band-Aid. “You may have noticed delays in the news.”
“I try not to watch the news.” The pen in Angela’s hand trembled. She let it drop onto the table. “What kind of problem?”
“Pham wants to cut a deal,” Paul said. “The Feds are considering it.”
Her mind spun. She wanted to testify. She wanted Pham in prison. But the insane part of her cared about the old man who cared— pretended to care—for her. He listened. He knew her likes. He spent time with her. He kidnapped her and kept her for years but acted more like family than the two people at her side. “The Feds have to talk to me first. They told me that. They would do nothing unless they talked to me first.”
“Well, lucky you, with a mother in high places,” Jared muttered.
Her mother snarled at Jared but then softened for Angela. “Dear, look, there’s more to it. We can turn this into a good situation.”
“Samantha,” Jared warned.
“What does ‘more to it’ mean?” Sawyer asked in a voice that mimicked Jared’s. “A good situation?”
Paul and her mother exchanged glances.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Jared waited then shook his head. “Angela’s not going to break. Spit it out.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. Since the day of her rescue, she’d tried to control every part of her life. “What is it?”
“Pham has offered something too good to ignore,” Paul said.
Mother put on a practiced, patient expression. “There might be someone else out there, Angela.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
The gold bracelets clinked. “Like you.”
Angela’s stomach dropped. “Someone else…” Her throat knotted. “Like me?”
“We don’t know for certain,” her mother said softly. “Negotiations are ongoing. But Pham says he has another person, and his lawyers are tough negotiators.”
Angela faced Sawyer. She wanted to leave the war room and for Sawyer to leave with her. She needed a break. Fresh air. Anything but sitting in here, learning that someone was still going through the hell she had been rescued from.
“You okay?” Sawyer asked.
She shook her head.
“Maybe…” Sawyer looked to Jared. “...You all wrap this up without her.”
Jared’s jaw flexed. “Give them another minute.”
Angela felt her stomach bottom out again. “Oh God. There’s more?”
“Actually,” Paul said. “Yes, but it’s on a brighter note.”
Paul’s faux chipper tone warned she wouldn’t like whatever he said next.
“You can come home. Pham cuts a deal. You won’t have to testify.” Paul smiled. “We could get married, announce the Senator’s presidential run. I’ll—”
“Get married?” She jerked back an arm’s length from Paul. “Are you insane?”
“A political dynasty in the making,” Rob suggested, smiling. “The numbers look great.”
“You polled on this already?” she shrieked.
“Angela, would you calm down? You’re overreacting,” her mother scolded.
“Yes. The numbers look great,” Rob continued, apparently unable to read the room. “We tried a couple of different options, different timelines. A few variables: Do you change your last name? How close to the presidential announcement should we have an engagement? Et cetera. Et cetera.”
“ We? ” Angela choked over their subversive casualness.
“Enough,” Boss Man barked. He pointed at Rich and Rob then hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get the hell out of here.”
Both men shrank back in their seats and eyed her mother. Angela didn’t care who they feared more. She wanted them to disappear. No, she wanted everyone to disappear. None of them seemed to notice how deeply they’d violated her. A deep sound rumbled in Jared’s chest. His fist slammed onto the solid wood conference table like Zeus smacking a mountaintop.
The two men jerked to their feet and stumbled over one another on their way out. The conference room door closed with a deafening finality. The air had thinned as though the atmosphere had escaped with the running men.
Jared’s dark scrutiny swung to Angela’s mother and Paul. A sheepish frown pulled at Paul’s features, but her mother didn’t flinch.
“The important thing,” her mother said without a hint of shame, “is that you’ll be safe and at home.”
“I’m not getting married!”
Paul looked at her mother and then back at Angela. “Why don’t we talk somewhere more private?”
“Good luck with that,” Jared muttered.
“They need a moment,” her mother reiterated.
Jared dropped his head back with a disappointed shake but then eyed Angela. “What do you want?”
She balked. “A minute in private isn’t going to change my mind.”
“Five minutes,” Paul suggested.
“They can have five minutes,” her mother agreed.
Jared waited.
Angela nodded. “But my answer is not changing,” she said.
He stood and checked his watch. “Five minutes, the clock starts now.” Jared nodded for Sawyer to walk out with him. Begrudgingly, Sawyer moved to Jared’s side. “You, too, Samantha. The clock is already ticking.”
The corners of Sawyer’s tight glare ticked as her mother pushed from the table. Without saying a word, Angela understood the strength he wanted to convey. Whether Sawyer wanted her to use that strength to knock Paul back to the United States or just hold it together during a conversation, she wasn’t sure. But his message was loud and clear: he was on her side.
The room emptied, leaving her alone with Paul for the first time in over a year. The man was absolutely insane if he thought they should talk about marriage. Angela crossed her arms over her chest. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Have you?” Paul rolled his chair closer to hers. “This is everything we’ve planned for.”
She shirked. “I never planned any of this.”
“We’ve been together for almost ten years. You’re acting like marriage isn’t the next step.”
“We have been apart most of that time.”
“But you’re safe now, and we can fix the proximity problem.”
“We haven’t had sex in the last—”
“Jesus Christ, babe.” His cheeks turned pink. “Since when does sex make a relationship? You want to have sex? Let’s go have sex.”
She threw her hands into the air. “I don’t want to have sex.”
“I know. It’s never been your thing. I know you .”
She blanched. “You know me? You don’t know me.”
“If that’s what you want, Angela, that’s fine. Tell me what you want, and it’s done.”
Her mind spiraled. Never her thing? What was his thing? He’d never wanted to flirt and cuddle. He’d never tried or initiated—she usually hadn’t either. But not her thing ?
“Babe—sorry. Angela . See. I’m listening, and I’m telling you what I want. That’s what we do. I need this. You need that. We operate as a team.” He looked at her funny. “I thought that we’d be on the same page.”
The only thing she recalled him asking for was scheduling appearances. A headache punched behind her eyes. Paul didn’t want her. He wanted access to her mother. Was that what he always wanted? She knew that. She’d just told that to Sawyer. But hearing it out loud, sounding as cold and lifeless as a stock report, was sickening.
Her stomach dropped. Did he ever want her—or had he always seen her as a means to an end? “What did you mean by ‘that’s never seemed like my thing’?”
Paul faltered, and his blush returned. “We all have our things.”
Her brow furrowed. “What are your things?”
“I mean, damn, babe—”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Damn, Angela , I’m trying,” he snapped. “You’re getting a little personal.”
“Paul, you just asked me to marry you. That’s about as personal as it gets.”
“We’re a team. I asked you to continue our partnership.”
She pressed her fingers to her temples and wanted to curl up in her chair and disappear. “Oh my God.”
“Angela, if sex is important to you—”
“Is it important to you?” she hissed.
He blinked as if seeing her for the first time. “Yeah…”
“With me ?”
He didn’t answer.
“Oh my God,” she repeated, shaking her head. “You need to leave.”
Paul ran a hand over his face. “This isn’t going the way I thought it would.”
“Leave.”
He stood, towering over her, and rested his hands on her shoulders. The inauthentic touch was repellent.
His audacity fueled a fury in her veins. “Do not touch me.”
“Fine.” Paul crouched in front of her. “Look, Angela, from day one, I thought, I don’t know. You and I were a team. We had the same end goal.”
She smirked. “And here I thought I was your girlfriend.”
“Now you can be my wife.” He smiled and squeezed her knee but saw the gesture hadn’t landed like he’d hoped. “We’ll have sex.”
Her stomach roiled. “You’re going to say whatever it takes to get me to say yes, aren’t you?”
Paul stood up and paced. “I didn’t think I had to sell you on this.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and returned to his chair again. Upon regaining his composure, he scooted in front of her once more. “I didn’t think we had a romantic relationship. I thought we had a pragmatic one.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“You never complained,” he pointed out.
“I wasn’t around to file grievances,” she countered.
“But when you were around…” He crossed his arms, deciding to change tactics. “I’m going to be completely honest, okay?”
She lifted her hands in exasperation. “Yeah. Spit it out, Paul.”
“I didn’t think you were that into, I don’t know…” He had the good sense to appear sheepish. “Doing it.”
Angela blinked, unsure what to say.
“Like,” Paul continued, “you know how some women are, hell, I don’t know what it’s called.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Frigid?”
Her jaw fell open.
He gestured toward her. “I thought maybe… that was you.”
“Maybe it’s you,” she snapped.
“Babe—”
“For God’s sake, stop calling me that—do you even find me attractive?”
“Of course I do. You’re an attractive woman. We make an attractive couple.”
How much of that attraction was her mother’s Senate seat? They could be an attractive couple printed on campaign mailers and sitting on the steps of an attractive house in a campaign commercial. Angela grabbed her purse and breezed by Paul at the table. “I hope you didn’t buy a ring. We’re through.”