"I thought women liked a man who was ready to get married," Patrick teased.
"That's a myth perpetuated by men who think every woman wants the same thing."
"So you don't want a husband and kids?"
"I do—someday. But not right now. What about you?"
"I'd like to have a family—someday," he said, repeating her word with a smile. "But I'm not in a rush. Doing what I do, it's nice to have the freedom to be flexible and to work long hours if I need to."
"Exactly," she agreed.
"I will say that after my mom died, the holidays have been depressing," Patrick said. "Our family was always small, but losing my mom created a huge void. My father has never really recovered from the loss. I worry now that the park is done that he won't have anything positive to focus on. It's been his goal for so long; it's what he's lived for."
"He'll find something else. And he has his job, which he enjoys, right?"
"Yes, he likes teaching."
"Does he know what happened to you in the park?"
Patrick nodded. "He came to the hospital that night with my aunt and my cousin, and he's called me a few times since then, but I haven't returned his calls. I should do that. I just don't want to get into details."
"Like the fact that your attacker overdosed behind a gas station under suspicious circumstances."
"Exactly."
"When are you going to tell him that you're investigating your mother's death?"
"When I have something specific to tell, but not before then. I don't want him to worry or to try to stop me."
"Would he do that?" she asked curiously.
"I'm not sure. To protect me—maybe."
She looked down as her cell phone buzzed with an incoming text. "The food is downstairs in the lobby."
"I'll get it," he said, getting to his feet.
"I already put it on my credit card, including the tip."
"You didn't have to do that."
She shrugged. "Not a big deal." After Patrick left, she turned her attention back to the computer. She checked out several other social media sites to see if Vincent Cammerata was more active online somewhere else. He seemed to have a fondness for boating and fishing on Chesapeake Bay. He was a Washington Redskins fan during football season and followed the Nationals for baseball. But what tie did he have to MDT? Or even to Texas?
She couldn't see an obvious link.
She jumped onto another site and saw photos of Vincent at a bar for a St. Patrick's Day pub crawl. She was about to move on to the next picture when a familiar face caught her eye.
Her heart leapt into her throat at the picture of Stephen Phelps standing just to the right of Vincent.
Were they together? Was it a coincidence?
Her lunch conversation with Stephen earlier in the day returned to her head. He'd known an awful lot about her movements and about what had happened in Texas. She'd thought it was because Erica had filled him in. But did Stephen have some other connection to everything that was going on?
But that was crazy. Wasn't it?
Vincent Cammerata had just handed them a phone. What did he have to do with anything?
The door opened, and she jumped, her nerves on edge.
"What's wrong?" Patrick asked quickly, as he strode across the room.
"I found a picture of Vincent in a bar. Stephen Phelps, the senator's press secretary, is in the shot."
Patrick gave the screen a closer look.
"It's hard to say if they're even together," she muttered. "But it seems weird."
"It does." Patrick set the bag of food on the table. "Phelps was at the gala last night. I saw him with Erica."
"Yes, and I had a conversation with him earlier today. I was going to tell you about that. He asked me to go to lunch and then as we were eating he made sure I knew that he'd seen you and me together last night. He said he was going to offer me a ride home when he saw me walking down the street, so he followed me. He saw me get into your car. It felt very creepy to know he was watching me like that. And why go to all that trouble? Up until last night, I hadn't exchanged two words with him. Suddenly, he wants to dance and give me a ride home and take me to lunch?"
Patrick's troubled gaze didn't make her feel any better. "I wonder if he had anything to do with the break-in at your apartment last night."
"How would he have known we weren't going straight to my apartment, though?" she asked.
"Good point."
"And he's a press secretary. Would he break into my home? That seems like a stretch."
"He wouldn't do the dirty work himself. Where did Phelps come from? Is he a Texas boy?"
"No, he's from New York, and he's been in DC for at least ten years. He's been around politics for a while, but he didn't start working with the senator until Erica came on board. They're tight with each other. Anyway, it could all just be a coincidence and perfectly harmless behavior."
"You like coincidences, Dani, but I don't. It's too easy to say something is just fate or luck or a random event, but that's rarely the case."
She frowned, his statement echoing words her sister and brother had said many times before. She closed her computer. "Fine."
"I didn't mean that as an insult, Dani."
"Sure you did. I've heard it before from my siblings.
I'm in denial. I don't like to face the truth. I dismiss anything that doesn't fit with my life. I'm selfish and I don't care about my father's death.
"
"Whoa," he said, putting up a hand. "I didn't say any of that, and if they did, I'm sorry, because the last thing you are is selfish. I know you loved your father."
She felt somewhat better by his vehement response. "I did love him. And sometimes I distance myself from that whole situation. It's been ten years. How long do I have to live in grief? How long do I have to ask questions that can't be answered?"
"You don't have to live in grief. Believe it or not, I understand how you feel."
"I don't see how you could. You're just like Jake and Alicia in your drive to get to the truth about your family mystery."
"But I understand the emotional cost of that pursuit. It can be extremely high, with no reward."
She felt a little better. "Thank you."
"Don't leave, Dani."
"I'm not leaving. I'm too hungry to go." She offered him a little smile, and he smiled back.
"Good," he said, relief filling his eyes. He opened the bag as she put her computer on the bed. "It smells great."
"It is great. I love all the food choices in this city. One week, I had a different ethnic dish each night. It was like a world tour of cuisine: China, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Germany, Japan, and France."
"That's quite a week. What was your favorite?"
"I liked it all."
"I noticed you left off Mexican," he commented as he removed the lids on two containers.
"You can't beat Texas for Mexican food," she replied.
"Very true. I've never found anything better than Maria's Cantina on Forrester Street."
"I love that place. It's one of my favorites. I probably ate there once a week last year. I'm surprised we never ran into each other. Or maybe we did, and we just didn’t know it."
"I don't think so. If I'd seen you, Dani, I would have remembered you."
She probably would have remembered him, too.
"So what did you get?" he asked.
"There's butter chicken and shrimp curry. Which do you want?"
"You pick. I'll take the other."
"Then I'll go for the chicken. But I think we should each eat half and then switch."
"Deal," he said with a laugh. "See, you're not selfish at all."
She liked that they could tease each other and that they could take a break and just be normal for a few minutes.
As they ate, Dani decided to get a little more information on the man sitting across from her. "I told you about my adventures in dating—what about yours?" she asked.
"I wouldn't call any of my dates adventures."
"When was the last time you had a serious relationship?"
"Years."
"Can you be more specific?"
"Let's see. I had a girlfriend in college and for most of the year after that. We were together about two and a half years."
"You were with her when your mother died?"
"Technically yes, but we hadn't been getting along that well. We were both twenty-two, just out of college, trying to figure out what we wanted to do with our lives and whether we could do them with each other or in the same place. Amanda was actually on a job interview in Los Angeles when my mother's plane crashed. I was working in Chicago at a local newspaper. I went to Corpus Christi as soon as I got the news. At first, there was some hope that there would be survivors, but that didn't last long. Amanda flew back from LA to be with me. She stayed through the funeral. But when it was over, she told me that she'd gotten the job, and she wanted to move to Los Angeles."
"Did you consider going with her?" she asked curiously.
"I did, but Amanda said she wanted to settle in first, concentrate on her job. I didn't fight her. I was in such a shocked state that I felt numb about everything. As you can probably guess, I never did move out to LA. In fact, we never saw each other again. She broke up with me in a text a few weeks later."
"That's cold. She had to understand you were grieving for your mother."
"I was partly to blame. I wasn't much fun anymore, and Amanda didn't want to be dragged down into my darkness. Who would? I can't blame her. She was young, and I suddenly felt a million years old."
She understood that. "I was eighteen when my father died. I was living in a dorm on campus. I'd been at a party that night, and I was actually a little drunk when Jake called me to tell me my father's plane was missing. I sobered up really fast. He picked me up, and we went home. Alicia and my mom were hysterically crying when we got there. It was a really long night and an even longer few days. Our hope went on, because no one found the plane. In some ways, that just made it worse, because when do you give up?"
She paused, swallowing back a knot in her throat. Patrick reached across the table and put his hand over hers, his fingers warming her all the way through.
"You don't have to keep going if you don't want to," he said.
"It's fine." She drew in a breath and let it out. "We all wanted to give up at different times, and it split the family apart. Sometimes tragedy brings you together, but for us it did the opposite. We were all so angry, I think we took it out on each other. We drifted apart for a long time. It's kind of ironic that Alicia's lightning strike last year brought her back into the family."
"My dad and I had a hard time connecting after my mom's death, too. I did have one person I could talk to—my cousin Marcus. But we didn't actually talk much; we just shot a lot of baskets and drank a lot of beer."
"How long did you stay in Texas?"
"About three weeks. Then I went back to Chicago and my job, but I was still so distracted, I eventually quit, probably right before they fired me. I jumped over to another newspaper and then an online magazine. After that, I did some freelance work. I couldn't settle in anywhere. But eventually I started to find some subjects that really interested me. I came up with some hard-hitting pieces, which eventually led to the big idea that turned into a book and maybe a movie one day."
"Your mom would be proud that you got yourself together and moved on."
"I hope so. What about you? What were those first years like after your dad died?"
"I had school to finish, so that was my focus. After I graduated, I got the job in Senator Dillon's office. He was new at the time, and the staff was young and fun. We had a good time together."
"But you were itching to get to DC."
"It only took me seven years," she said dryly. "I wasn’t sure it was ever going to happen, but finally it did." She paused for a moment. "You should let go of my hand, Patrick."
His fingers tightened around hers, and he gave her an endearingly sheepish smile. "I always have a hard time letting you go. The day we met—when we shook hands—it was like an electrical current shot between us. It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. I felt like I'd been waiting my whole life for you to show up."
She drew in a quick breath, remembering that moment in vivid detail, and how strong the connection between them had been. "But you did let go, Patrick, and you should do that now."
He slowly released her hand. "I wish we could spend time just getting to know each other, Dani."
"Why? What would be the point?"
His brows furrowed at her question. "We can find out what's going on between us."
"It doesn't matter what's going on. My life is here, Patrick. I'm finally where I want to be after so many years of waiting. I'm not leaving DC. I'm not quitting my job. There's a chance I'll get fired, but until that happens, I'm going to stick it out. Your life is—somewhere else."
"My life could be anywhere. Don't use my job as an excuse. I can write from any city in the world. If you don't want to see where this goes, then own it. But you can't say that, can you? You can't deny the insane attraction between us. I know you're as intrigued as I am."
She couldn't deny it, but she really wanted to. "I'm going to go home, Patrick."
"No, not yet. We're just talking."
"I'm done talking. There's no point. I know what I want—and it's not you. I'm owning it, okay?" She got to her feet and put her napkin on the table.
"What are you so afraid of, Dani?" he challenged, as he stood up. "Why do I scare you so much?"
"You don't," she protested, wishing she had a stronger defense.
"I told you before you're a terrible liar."
He had a way of seeing right through her. And she knew he wasn't going to let her go until she told him how she really felt.
"All right. Here it is. I'm afraid of caring about someone so much that I'm willing to change my life for them. I'm afraid of loving and losing, because that hurts like hell. And I know I'm jumping the gun by talking about love when all we're really talking about is sex."
"That's not all we're talking about," he said angrily.