Chapter Five #2
“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. ”