Red Blooded
Authors: Caitlin Sinead
Red Blooded
By Caitlin Sinead
Instead of eating ramen and meeting frat guys like most college freshmen, Peyton Arthur is on the campaign trail. Traveling with her mother, the Democratic pick for vice president, she’s ordering room service, sneaking glances at cute campaign intern Dylan and deflecting interview questions about the tragic loss of her father. But when a reporter questions her paternity, her world goes into a tailspin.
Dylan left Yale and joined the campaign to make a difference, not keep tabs on some girl. But with the paternity scandal blowing up and Peyton asking questions, he’s been tasked to watch her every move. As he gets to know the real Peyton, he finds it harder and harder to keep a professional distance.
When the media demands a story, Peyton and Dylan give them one—a fake relationship. As they work together to investigate the rumors about her real father and Peyton gets closer to learning the truth, she’s also getting closer to Dylan. And suddenly, it’s not just her past on the line anymore. It’s her heart.
70,180 words
Dear Reader,
This month, Julie Anne Lindsey kicks off a new cozy mystery series with
A
Geek Girl’s Guide to Murder
. When a geek girl finds a friend’s body in her office, she puts her high IQ to work uncovering the killer. Check out this first book of The Geek Girl Mysteries!
Contemporary romance author Caitlin Sinead has a beautiful cover (seriously, go check it out) and a fantastic new story in
Red Blooded
. Peyton Arthur should be helping her mom become the next vice president of the United States, not investigating damaging rumors about her deceased father. And Dylan Torres, a campaign worker, should be keeping Peyton out of trouble, not falling for her.
Also in contemporary romance,
Finding Center
is Katherine Locke’s story of Zed and Aly. Ballet and Zed are two of Aly’s greatest loves, but it will take all of her strength to keep them both in her life. Check out the free online prequel
Turning Pointe
, as well as book one in the District Ballet Company series,
Second Position
.
Marine Sergeant Blaze Johnson kept his promise but Layna Blair couldn’t escape her past—now that Blaze is wounded, it’s up to Layna to save them both in Sybil Bartel’s
Impossible Choice
, the follow-up to her contemporary romance
Impossible Promise
.
We’re pleased to welcome Jill Sorenson to our contemporary romance lineup. This month we’re reissuing her ultra-sexy romance that gives us a peek into the world of motorcycle clubs,
Riding Dirty
. Psychologist Mia Richards wants revenge. Her new client, tattooed Cole “Shank” Shepherd, provides the perfect means. She just has to manipulate the felon-turned-informant into eliminating her husband’s killers—members of a rival motorcycle club. The first step, seducing Cole, is simple. As for walking away before she falls hard—it’s already too late...
Riding Dirty
will be available at a bargain price to lead into her September new release,
Shooting Dirty
.
2015 RITA® Award-nominated author Lynda Aicher’s
Penalty Play
is the third book in the erotic sports romance Power Play trilogy. Starting defenseman Henrik Grenick has almost convinced himself he’s happy—until he meets unassuming Jacqui Polson. Fiercely independent with no need for hockey or the men who play it, Jacqui is the
more
Henrik wants, except sex is the only thing she seems to want from him. Can he change her mind or will the one girl he finally loves be the one who breaks his heart?
We have two fantastic male/male romances to share with you this month. Back with one of her popular erotic historical male/male novels, Ava March’s
Viscount’s Wager
, the third book in her Gambling on Love series, will have you turning the pages and then going back for the stories you missed. When a viscount’s teenage crush returns to London, can the men grab their second chance at love or will the secrets they hide tear them apart once again?
What’s life without a little risk? Or a lot of risk, if you’re Sebastian Carlisle. He’ll never live up to the legacy of his dead brother, so why try? Being the wild child in a family of stuck-up rich snobs suits him just fine. Until he meets Micah Burke and everything changes. Pick up
Reckless Hope
, the next title in the Letting Go series by j. leigh bailey, this August!
Last, what begins as a normal rescue mission turns deadly in Sharon Calvin’s
Jayhawk Down
, book two of romantic suspense series Gulf Coast Rescue. ER doctor and army reserve Black Hawk pilot Stillman Gray has nothing but respect for Coast Guard lieutenant Caitlyn Stone, but he’s not the only one who’s noticed her—a terrorist is looking to hijack a helicopter, and he’s decided Caitlyn is the perfect target.
Looking for more great beach reads to cap off your summer? Be sure to check out our backlist of fun summer reading, including
Slow Summer Kisses
by Shannon Stacey,
Monster in My Closet
by RL Naquin,
Sharing Hailey
by Samantha Ann King,
No One Lives Twice
by Julie Moffett,
High and Tight
by Vanessa North and
Deadly Descent
by Kaylea Cross.
Until next time, here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.
Happy reading!
Dedication
For my dad—we may not always agree on who should be in the White House, but you’ve shown me how to be a good person regardless of political affiliations.
Chapter One
Peyton asked if I was afraid of death.
I
responded honestly—no.
I’m afraid of the transition.
As they say
,
that’s the truly troubling part.
—The Troubling Transition
by Richard Arthur
Lisa taps on her clipboard and calls for more makeup. “She needs more blush.” A brush dances across my nose as a makeup artist examines me without seeing me.
“Remember to smile. A lot. After every question,” Lisa says. Dylan, her intern, stands next to her, gliding his fingers over his tablet. She snaps her intense focus to him. “Torres, do you have them?”
Dylan holds the back of the tablet against his chest so it covers the big Yale on his gray T-shirt. There are three images of me on the screen: me accepting my high school diploma from the principal, me speaking at the US Organization for Learning Disorders’ annual meeting, and me exiting a pizza place with Annie and Tristan.
“Now, remember, we’re going for
this
smile,” Lisa says, pointing at the pizza picture. “You are a natural, welcoming, American girl who’s happy and excited that her mom’s been nominated as the Democratic Party’s Vice Presidential Candidate.”
“I
am
all those things,” I say.
She nods and emits a cursory
mmm-hmm
as she looks at her tablet. “Of course you are.”
I roll my fingers over the armrests and stare at the shiny camera lens in front of me as I attempt to mentally prepare for the onslaught of questions about to assail me. Five via-satellite interviews. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Just as I’m going over what it was like to learn my mom would be the vice-presidential pick, Dylan holds his tablet, with the pizza picture, up to my face.
“Pizza smile, I got it,” I say, with more edge than I mean. It’s not the best time to have a conniption, but I can’t help myself, and more words spurt forward. “Sorry, it’s just—it’s not like I’m a stranger to media attention.”
Dylan presses his lips together and takes a step back.
“Sorry, that wasn’t much of an apology.” I shake my head and some girly mushiness tingles in my chest when his eyes crinkle into a smile. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s got dark, Latin features any girl would get mushy over. “I’m just a little nervous, but I didn’t mean to snap—”
“It’s cool.” Dylan shrugs. Right. As long as I’m performing well, what’s it to him.
“We know you’re used to the spotlight.” Lisa tilts her head and purses her lips in the ever-common—at least to me—sorry-your-dad-died expression. Thankfully, she doesn’t hold it for long. “But this is going to be different than...that. Your dad’s book made you a celebrity, but a sympathetic one. Politics can be, well...”
“Mean?” I supply.
She crosses her arms and nods.
“I’ve been on the campaign trail with my mom before, I know—”
“Only in Virginia, where she’s already very popular. Now we want the whole nation to love her. And, given that many people already feel they know you, and even love you, well, we’d like to use—” she swallows and holds a finger up “—we’d like to
leverage
that appeal and make it an additional asset in this campaign.”
I glance at Dylan. He nods.
“I hope I can be an asset as well,” I say, trying to calm the jitters in my stomach.
“You will be,” Dylan says with a sharp certainty I wish I could catch and stuff in a glass jar for safekeeping.
They back away and in a sliver of a moment the red light on the bulky studio camera bursts on, full force.
I’m streaming through the interviews like a tugboat. Well, a really classy, smooth tugboat. I’m making quality quips, like how I thought if I learned how to play “Hail to the Chief” on my flute it would supply us with good luck, and how I heard there’s a bowling alley in the White House, which makes sense, because prime bowling skills are vital to leading a nation. In fact, I’m downright enjoying myself, until a fun interview ends and Lisa sprints up to me with a strained look.
“So, the next one is with Vulp News Station,” she says.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “Who on Vulp?”
“
Grace and Gary
,” she says. Dylan tenses as though he’s ready to block me if I try to make a run for it, which doesn’t seem like an awful idea.
“Gary is horrible.” My breathing speeds up as my fingernails dig into the plastic armrests. “He hates my mom, he’s—”
“I know,” Lisa says, her voice as calm as I’ve ever heard it. This isn’t reassuring calm; it’s disturbing calm. She’s faking it. “That’s why we need you for this one. Gary would be hostile to Governor Ruiz and to your mom, but how could he be hostile to you?”
I’m sure he can find a way. Just last week he berated the parents of a kidnapping victim for not keeping a better watch on their kids. But I get it. He would be even worse with the Democratic President and Vice President nominees.
“Plus,” she says, serene tone pushing through, “this gives their audience a chance to see the ‘mom’ side of your mom.”
She means the “remember how much the nation loved Richard Arthur’s family after he wrote that bestselling book about dying” side of my mom. She means the “me” side of my mom. The famous grieving mother everyone cried with.
“What if he pushes it?” I ask. “Grace doesn’t always rein him in. What if he tries to ask me a question about policy?”
“Remember what we went over in media training.”
I nod. Dylan and I role-played fake interviews, complete with blowup dolls as audience members. Dylan swears they’re cheaper than mannequins. He was just looking out for campaign funds. Yes, I gave him a ridiculously hard time about that.
“If anyone asks you a question you aren’t comfortable answering, deflect it. Respond in a way that addresses the question, but doesn’t answer it, and then pivot and get back to what you want to talk about.”
“Okay, but what if they ask about education reform? I would feel comfortable talking about that. Can I?”
I know the answer, because I’ve asked the question before.
She frowns and taps her pen against her lips. “No, let’s stay away from that.” She must sense my disappointment, because she holds a hand out. “For now.”
I force a smile. “For now.” Now equals the present time until Election Day. Until then, I’m the vulnerable but lovable daughter securing sweetheart points. Little things like opinions would get in the way of my image.
“Let’s pretend that Gary asks about equal pay for women, which your mom brought up in a speech in Colorado two days ago,” she says. “How would you respond?”
“Okay,” I say, straightening my shoulders and mentally shaking away my bitterness. This isn’t about me, it’s about America. “While I can’t speak specifically to that issue, I trust my mom’s views and knowledge of the extensive policy nuances. She works hard to talk with the public as well as experts to have a thorough understanding of the issues facing our nation and the world.”
“Perfect,” Lisa says. She steps back. It’s go time. The cameraman counts with his fingers, his palm nice and big. His fingers fold in on themselves. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Gary and Grace sit on a couch together with matching perfect TV smiles. “Thanks for being on the show,” Gary says.
“Thank you so much for having me,” I say.
“Peyton,” Grace says. “You’ll be entering your freshman year at Georgetown in a few weeks. Now, this would be an exciting time for anyone. What has it been like, balancing helping your mother on the campaign trail with enjoying your last weeks as a kid?” She leans over her shiny legs and waits for my answer.
Okay. I can do this. We talked about college. We practiced this. It’s just, I’ve given most of my good answers in the other interviews. And you can’t say it twice. Even if it’s the most genuine thing you’ve ever said, the late night comedians will roll you saying it to CNN and MSNBC and CBS News and PBS. Repeating things makes it sound like you’re sticking to a script. It makes you sound like you’re inauthentic, which is the worst thing to be if you’re trying to be a political asset.
This happened on a string of interviews after my dad’s book came out. I revealed several times that we used to have my nimbly-bimbly cat decide where we’d go out to dinner. We’d spread sticky notes with King Street restaurant names on our living room carpet and let him run wild. Most people thought it was cute, but some commentators used the repetition as “proof” that I was just a puppet used to sell a book.
I cried after that, of course.
And now I’ve learned my lesson. Always stay fresh.
So I dig up something new, something I haven’t talked about publicly before, that I know Lisa will kiss me for. I’m ready to talk about my dad again if it will get me through this interview and have at least a few Vulp viewers thinking seriously about backing my mom. Sure, I have to concentrate on not crying—and ignoring the swish of guilt in my belly at dusting off my dead dad to gain a political advantage—but I can do it.
“People grow at different times, Grace. The last day I was a kid was the day my dad got me Ben & Jerry’s near our home in Old Town, Alexandria. As we sat on a bench and looked over the Potomac, he told me he was going to die.”
I make a fatal flaw. I look down. You should never look down. I can’t cry now. Not on
Grace and Gary
. I breathe in and prepare to face them again. Grace looks like she just swallowed turpentine, but a gleeful twitch jerks at Gary’s cheek.
Why would he be gleeful?
“You know, Peyton,” he says. “We weren’t sure if we should bring up your father, but, as you seem so comfortable talking about him, perhaps we can ask you a question.”
He nods to Grace, who grimaces and folds her hands on her lap. “We were wondering, out of concern of course, how you’re handling the recent rumors about your father. Do you give them any credence?”
I will not bite my lip. The dark lipstick—lipstick you’d only wear on TV, never in real life—would get all over my teeth. But I want to bite my lip, because I don’t have the foggiest idea what she’s talking about.
“I’m sorry, what rumors?”
She purses her lips and looks at Gary. He slaps his knees and displays that horrid sneer again. “They must be keeping you in a pretty tight bubble over there,” he says. “It posted over an hour ago.”
I want to look off camera at Lisa. Is she surprised, or worried, or calm? I want to look off camera to see Dylan.
But if my vision veers off screen, that would look even worse. Plus, they’re ready to go in for the kill—I have to do my best to stop them. Pivot, pivot, pivot.
“Not at all,” I say. “But between getting ready for college, working on the campaign, and keeping up with the issues, I confess I don’t have a lot of time for tittle-tattle. For example, I—”
“Tittle-tattle,” he scoffs. “You think it’s tittle-tattle to find out why your mother has been lying to you? You don’t think it’s important to know who your real dad is? Knowing who your real father is, well, it’s part of knowing who you are.”
“Real father?” I mumble. I can’t help it, I shoot a glance over to Lisa and Dylan. It’s quick, but I take in Lisa’s deer-in-headlights look. Dylan’s jaw is stiff and something simmers behind his eyes. He isn’t looking at me though. He’s looking at the screen.
I refocus. “Okay, who do they say my real father is?” I smile. Smile. Smile. Smile. If they’re insistent on keeping up this line of inquiry my best shot is to play along, make it a joke. Make it
my
joke.
He straightens on their salmon-colored couch. “They don’t know.”
It’s my turn to sneer. “This sounds like a very newsworthy story, especially as—”
“Don’t you think it’s strange...” Gary leans forward as Grace just lets him run with this. I wait but he’s still, as though he’s wondering if I deserve to hear his profound insight.
Fuck this.
“What’s strange?” I ask.
“Don’t you think it’s strange,” he says, “that you have red hair, when both your parents have, or...had, dark hair? There’s no red hair on either side of your family. Also, no one has your amber eyes.”
I glance at a monitor that displays pictures of my aunt, my grandma, and my dad’s brother. Vulp had these pictures lined up. They had this ambush planned. But, they’re right. Aside from my dad’s mom, who had beautiful dirty-blond hair when she was younger, my family’s hair is dark. Not a strand of red. Not like mine, which looks like the part of the fire you use to get the best-toasted marshmallow for a s’more (at least that’s what my dad used to tell me).
And the eyes. My mom’s family has blue eyes, and my dad’s has a mix of green and dark brown. None match mine. It’s hard to think.
Dylan points to a stress ball in his hand. Right, they left me one next to my chair. I squeeze it, off camera, and remember other things Lisa and Dylan taught me, like thinking about a cool, calm lake.
And, of course, I smile. “Genetics can be funny sometimes.”
It was the best I had.
“That’s the thing.” Gary talks with sweeping hand movements, obviously too excited to sit still. “Several leading geneticists have weighed in. They’ve looked at pictures of your family, and they don’t think it’s possible your parents could be your parents.”
“I’ve got my mom’s nose.” I instantly realize this was the wrong thing to say.
Gary smirks. “Yes, there’s an undeniable resemblance between you and the Carmichaels. You have your mom’s nose. You also have your aunt and grandmother’s smile. You’re fair skinned, like them. But look at your father’s family. What did you get from them? What did you get from your father?”
“My spirit,” I say, because that’s what my mom always told me. I have my dad’s creative and adventurous spirit. Sure, I’m more dramatic than he was, but in my best moments I like to think I have the same mischievous ambition.
Lisa flails her hands about as though she’s creating a new dance. She points to a poster that Dylan holds. It has intense, black scrawls in marker: Wrap It Up, Refocus On Election.
“As much as I’d like to continue talking about my looks,” I say, with the most playful grin I can muster, “I have another interview in just a few moments, one where I’ll be discussing the Women’s Care Act, which my mom championed. But, by all means, I hope you’ll continue discussing my hair.” I pat my head in an exaggerated way and then beam as I wait for them to say goodbye. Gary doesn’t. Instead he laughs. Grace’s face is tense and pained.