Chapter 4
After the dance with my father, I was led to the dance floor by Grayson Spaulding, my roommate Lily’s father.
Not asked to dance, mind you, just taken to the dance floor and made to dance with the man that was the brains behind my father’s presidential run. And the reason I was even here at the wedding.
“So, governor, huh?” I said to him as he moved me about the dance floor. I found it easier to ask Spaulding about it than my father. I guess that said something about my relationship with my father.
To his credit, Spaulding didn’t even appear surprised that I knew about my father’s running. Hell, maybe everybody knew and I was just, as usual, catching up.
“We’re going to need your support for this campaign, Jane,” he said to me. He looked me in the eyes for this.
This. This was the difference between Grayson Spaulding and Joseph Stratton. Spaulding knew everybody was watching us, and he kept his eyes on me, seeming oblivious to it all.
My father needed to see the people watching him. It was as if he wouldn’t believe it otherwise. That need to see the adoration (as it had been in years past) or the curiosity (as it was now).
Spaulding knew it was there, smelled it like a bloodhound, but didn’t need to visually confirm it.
That’s why some people needed to run for public office and others were perfectly content to be the man behind the curtain, pulling the levers and making the steam rise.
“We already made our deal, Mr. Spaulding,” I said. “Here I am, pretending to be a happy part of the family.”
“I think we’re to the point where you can call me Grayson, don’t you? Typically I’m on a first-name basis with my extortionists.”
“I would say your co-conspirator, if anything…Grayson.”
A small smile crept across his face as he looked down at me. “I like you, Jane. I’ll bet you’re good for Lily.”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be that she’d be good for me?”
He gave an elegant shrug to his shoulder, and I realized the puppet master had strings even I couldn’t see.
And I looked for strings at all times, with all people.
“How do you think I’m good for Lily?” I asked, resigned to the fact that this assumption was part of his plan from the beginning.
He studied my face, almost as if wondering if I could handle the truth. His eyes softened just the tiniest bit, and I realized he now knew that, sadly, at almost nineteen, I could handle just about anything.
“It would appear to most people that Lily would be a grounding presence to you, having the upbringing you did.”
“You mean having a new-age, gold-digging twit for a mother and a douchebag fame-whore for a father? What about that screams instability?”
He didn’t actually roll his eyes at my sarcasm—I would have bet that Grayson Spaulding had never deigned to roll his eyes—but a soft exhale left him, which said he wasn’t pleased with my summation. Accurate as it may be.
“But it is also true that you would have a…liberating effect on Lily. She was truly caught in a ‘middle child who feels they must be perfect to be noticed’ situation.”
Wow. He’d nailed Lily perfectly. And here I’d assumed—and I’m guessing Lily had too—that her father was completely oblivious to her feelings.
“You weren’t afraid I’d lead her down the wrong path of…liberation?”
He studied me again, and I felt like he knew every one of my secrets. It was probably how politicians felt when he told them which way he wanted them to vote on a bill or something.
If he even did that sort of thing. It might all be about the campaign to him, not the actual governing. The race itself might be the crack that Grayson Spaulding smoked.
“No. I was not concerned about that, Jane.”
“Why not? I’ve dragged Lily to parties where I’ve been stinking, falling-down drunk. I’ve had to send her out of the room while I’ve banged a guy silly. And have asked her to join me…in both activities.”
An exaggeration on all accounts, but he didn’t need to know that. Although he probably already did, the all-knowing bastard.
“I appreciate the shock value, Jane. But let’s save that for bragging around the cafeteria table, shall we?”
“I don’t brag around the cafeteria table,” I said, indignant. Sooooo not my style.
“I know,” he said with a tiny smile.
I nodded to him, acknowledging that he’d got me on that one. Then decided to tackle the elephant in the room.
“So just how do you see me being of any help to my father’s campaign? ’Cause I can only see tabloid headlines and paparazzi camped out in front of my dorm in my future.”
He gave the tiniest of head shakes. “That won’t happen. We’ll make sure that Bribury is off limits.”
I imagined that he could probably make that happen.
“What about the tabloid headlines?” I motioned with my chin to the row of approved photographers, and even the people taking photos, and shooting video, with their phones. “Beginning with today’s little farce of a happy family.”
“That’s why we’re getting out ahead of it. Of course they’re going to dredge it all up again—Joe’s affair with your mother, you being born—”
“Him denying he was my father?”
He gave a curt nod, and looked away for a moment. But it was enough.
“Or—wait. Did you tell him to deny me? Was that your piece of political strategy?”
It had backfired royally. But it would have taken some of the sting out of knowing that it hadn’t been my father’s idea to disavow that he’d ever had an affair with my mother and that they’d created me.
“Yes, that was my idea. And I apologize to you for it, though it’s a little late.”
I studied him, the way he’d studied me so closely a moment ago.
The tiny swelling I’d had for a brief second thinking that my father—though he hadn’t stood up to this guy way back then, when he should have—hadn’t wanted to deny me sank as I realized the master manipulator I was dancing with was at it again.
“You’re lying,” I said. Before he could answer me, I continued, “You want me to believe that now so I’ll get all warm and fuzzy toward good ol’ Joe, but we both know it was his idea to deny the whole thing ever happened.
Including me. Especially me. I’ll bet you even tried to talk him out of it at the time. Am I right?”
God, I desperately wanted to be wrong. How pathetic was that? Still hungry for crumbs of Daddy’s affection even after all these years of knowing I’d never have it.
But I knew I was right.
There was no pity in his eyes (thank God) when he answered me. “Yes.” He twirled me a little then—a showy move for someone who left the showy moves to others.
When we came to rest, he said, “You would make a great candidate someday, Jane. I only wish I’d still be in the game then.”
“Why? And more importantly, hell no.”
He smiled then, a real, genuine smile. It was kind of nice, in a dad sort of way. “Never say never. Especially with your bloodline and connections.”
“I don’t have any connections.”
“Look around you, Jane. This room is filled with your future connections.”
“Why do you think I’d be good at this backstabbing, all-for-show world?”
“Because you have your father’s charm and your mother’s scheming.” I recoiled from his words, but he held on to me. “I mean that as a compliment, Jane.”
“None taken.”
He smiled again.
I shook my head, wanting to shake his words off me.
“That deal you made? So Lily could go on seeing Lucas? That was ballsy and a stroke of genius.”
I shrugged. But yeah, I was a little flattered.
“I’d be even more impressed if you told me you’d played it that way from the beginning. If you had Lily make her deal with me, knowing you’d come back and counter with your deal, getting the outcome you wanted.”
He gave me too much credit. Plus… “You think this is the outcome I wanted?” I motioned with my chin to the proceedings around us, and down to the bridesmaid’s dress I was wearing.
“Perhaps not.”
“Besides, I was on board with Lily being away from Lucas. I didn’t know at the time…” I stopped. This wasn’t really my story to tell to Lily’s father.
“Know what?”
What the hell. Lily had taken Lucas home to meet her parents over the holidays, so Spaulding must have seen it too.
“How much he loves her.”
He stiffened, but not a flicker of emotion changed on his face. It was an okay face. Kind of average for a dad. Not movie-star handsome like my father, but…pleasant. It certainly didn’t show the barracuda of a man that he was.
“You did get that, right?” I asked. “That they’re crazy in love? And not just ‘teen angst, they’ll get over it in a week’ kind of love?”
He swallowed, took his time. “Yes. I got that.”
“Good for you for admitting it,” I said, somewhat surprised that he had. I assumed Grayson would be of the mind that if he didn’t acknowledge it, it wasn’t true.
“I have found it serves me well to see situations as they truly are, not as I would wish them to be.”
“Damn, good line. I’ll have to remember that one.”
He smiled again. “You can have it—use it at will. What’s more, try to live by it.”
I thought that was pretty good advice. Advice I was going to take.
“So, back to me and the campaign. Or, in other words, why would you want me within ten feet of it, and why would I bother?”
He liked cutting to the chase; he was that kind of man. And I found I was becoming that kind of woman.
“We’ll get out in front of it. We can’t hide it—obviously. So instead we use it to our advantage.”
“Having a child with your mistress while your wife was undergoing cancer treatments? How the hell do you take advantage of that?” But I knew how before he even said it.
“Because the two people he wronged the most—Caroline by cheating on her, and you by denying you—will have forgiven him and be by his side during his campaign.”
“Holy shit, Caroline is willing to do that?”
I’d played my cards wrong, and just the tiniest tic at the corner of his eye alerted me to that fact.
By jumping right to Caroline, it made him think that either I’d do it if Caroline would, or that I found Caroline’s involvement more shocking than the idea of helping myself, so maybe I’d be open to the idea.
Damn. And he’d be right, too, if that was indeed what he thought. And it was. I was coming late to the party, but I learned the rules quickly.
I always had.
“I mean, not that I’m willing to…”
He quirked a brow up at me. Yeah, he had me, and he knew that I knew he had me.
I rolled my eyes (I wasn’t above it) at him. “Whatever. Seriously. Caroline is going to go out and stump for her slimeball ex-husband?”
“She will make herself available as needed for the father of her children.”
“Oh. Yeah. Okay, I get it now. She’ll toe the line so her kids’ father isn’t dragged through the dirt. Again.”
“Something like that. And, of course, for their legacy.”
“Doesn’t seem like Joey wants anything to do with that legacy. He’s hightailing it to Africa just to get away from it.”
Grayson didn’t seem all too happy being reminded of that fact. “Yes, the timing of that trip is…unfortunate. As well as Betsy being in Europe. But we can spin it into something positive.”
“Do-gooding runs in the family? Something like that?”
“Jane, you do catch on quickly. It’s going to be a pleasure working with you on this.”
“Whoa. Haven’t agreed to anything yet.”
He quirked a brow again.
“Or even begun discussing terms,” I added, which garnered me another smile.
“Plus, the new semester starts next week.” Which, of course, he knew because of Lily.
He only nodded. “I don’t want to miss school.
I’m not going to leave school to get on some campaign bus or anything.
I just want to clarify that right now, before we go any further in discussing this whole ludicrous idea. ”
“I can fix things at Bribury if you’re—”
“It’s not that I’m afraid I’ll flunk freshman courses or anything. I just don’t want to…miss out.”
He looked at me for a long while, and I looked away, not able to meet his eye. Not wanting him to see how much being Jane Winters at Bribury, where nobody had heard of me, meant to me.
“We’ll do most of the prep work these next few months. Announce it. Have interviews done with you, and also Caroline, with friendly journalists. But we’ll keep you out of it as much as possible during the school year. During the summer is when we’ll use you.”
Use me. Yep, that pretty much summed me up. I was used by my mother to try and catch my father. I was used by the opposing party to bring my father down. I was used by the press to sell magazines.
Bribury was immune to all that, so far. I was smart enough to know I wouldn’t be able to outrun my parents forever, but longer than freshman year would have been nice.
Okay, time to put on my big-girl panties and make the situation work to my advantage.
Just as I was about to start negotiating in earnest, I saw a man walking along the edge of the dance floor that made me miss a step in the dance.
“What’s Montrose doing here?” I asked, and Mr. Spaulding followed my line of vision.
“Billy Montrose went to Brown with Betsy and Jason,” he explained.
“Seriously? I didn’t see him at the wedding.”
“Neither did I. I’m glad he made it to the reception,” Spaulding said.
“Why?”
“His star is a bit tarnished, but he was quite the storm in the literary world a few years ago.”
“So there would be more ‘names’ here other than political ones, right?” I asked.
“Doesn’t hurt.”
I kind of knew Montrose had been a big deal when he’d first published, but how big of a deal could he have been if only some years later he was relegated to guest-teaching Intro to Creative Writing to freshmen at Bribury College?
But damn, he was hot. And I’d had him in my sights since day one.
“Okay,” I said to Spaulding. “I’ll think about it and get back to you. I’ll certainly have some requests for my participation.”
The song was ending, and I kept watching Montrose move through the group of people at the edge of the dance floor. He stopped to shake hands with one of the groomsmen, another Brown crony.
I broke away from Mr. Spaulding, intending to get Montrose to dance with me. It must be fate that he was at this wedding—an event I in no way wanted to attend. And I wasn’t his student anymore, so he couldn’t use that rebuff on me as he had the night I’d seen him at a club in Chesney last fall.
And yes, it was not lost on me that this was exactly what my mother had probably done all those years ago—got my father in her sights and went in for the kill.
Regardless, I would make my move.