“I know. I’m flying to California on Tuesday.”
“So …?” Ronnie let her voice trail off delicately.
Tom grimaced. “How about Monday?”
“It’s Labor Day. I’m supposed to go to an arts and crafts show with Lewis in the afternoon. But I think I can get away Monday night.”
“Mark’s going to a dance at his school—I think.”
“Your apartment is definitely out.”
“Definitely.” Tom grinned suddenly. “There’s a motel out on I-twenty. The Robbins Inn. I used to take
girls there when I was in high school. It’s out of the way, and neither one of us is likely to see anyone we know. Suppose I meet you in the parking lot Monday night at eight?”
“I’ll try.”
Tom caught her hand, and pulled her close to kiss her.
“Don’t worry about Mark,” he said. “I’ll handle it.”
They kissed again, and then Ronnie got into her car and drove home to Sedgely.
On Monday they met at the motel. On Tuesday Tom flew to California. This time he left a number where Ronnie could reach him, so she was able to call him, late at night when no one else was around to hear.
On Friday she and Lewis flew back to Washington.
The house in Georgetown was a three-story brick row house, narrow and elegant and old. It was not nearly as large as Sedgely, but it spoke as surely of money and breeding. The ceilings were fourteen feet high, with elaborate crown moldings. There were fireplaces in nearly every room. The floors were polished hardwood covered with antique oriental rugs in shades of maroon and rose and blue. Paintings by such diverse artists as Sargent and Cézanne and Andrew Wyeth hung on the walls. The upholstered furniture was covered in brocades and silk stripes in jewel tones. The wooden pieces were almost without exception museum-quality antiques.
This was the house Ronnie had first come to as Lewis’s bride, and this was the house at which she felt
most at home. Washington suited her as Mississippi did not. In Washington she fit in better. Though she was younger than most of the Senate wives, she was part of their circle. Very rarely, in Washington, was she ever referred to as “the
second
Mrs. Honneker.” At least not within her hearing.
Almost instantaneously she was reabsorbed into the rounds of teas and luncheons and dinner parties. She chatted with friends on the phone, had her hair done, went shopping. She and Lewis attended a dinner at the White House for the president of Zaire, who had come to Washington with the professed object of obtaining financial aid for his country. They went to a benefit at the Smithsonian. She joined the President’s wife for what was billed as a “girls’ club” breakfast in the White House solarium, which was airy and light and decorated with beautiful floral chintzes.
But none of this was as satisfying as it had been in the spring, before she had gone to Mississippi for the summer. She took little joy from the money she was able to spend on clothes, from the glittering parties to which she was invited, from the rich and famous people with whom she was on a first-name basis. Even having breakfast with the First Lady in the White House felt—flat.
All because she was missing Tom.
She hadn’t seen him since they had met at the motel, though she talked to him nightly on the phone. When they spoke, her whole existence narrowed to the receiver in her hand and to his voice on the other end. On the nights when she was out too late to call him, she went to bed and curled up in the bedclothes in a
cocoon of longing. The next day all color seemed to be leeched from the world.
On Friday she and Lewis were to attend a reception at Bill Kenneth’s house. Bill Kenneth was the junior senator from Tennessee, and he had just been appointed to the Ways and Means Committee, of which Lewis was a member.
It was a cocktail reception, scheduled for nine o’clock, which was early in the evening in Washington. Ronnie wore a short black cocktail dress with nude hose and high-heeled black satin pumps. The dress itself was a black satin slip with a black lace overdress. While the slip part was bare, the lace overdress had long sleeves and a jewel neck, making for a covered-up look that was also, with its glimpse of flesh beneath the lace, alluring. She wore her hair down, with diamonds in her ears.
All in all, she was pleased with the way she looked when she walked into the party, which had been in progress for some forty-five minutes. (It would never do to arrive too early.) Lewis looked good in his dark business suit, and seemed proud to have her on his arm. Within minutes they had separated. She was on one side of the room talking to the Peruvian ambassador. He was in a corner with two of his cronies, guffawing over something as they puffed on cigars.
“Why, Ronnie, how are you? You’re looking really lovely tonight, dear. Those earrings! I just love them to death!” The Armani-clad speaker was Lacey Kenneth, Bill’s wife. Though she was perhaps seven or eight years older than Ronnie, she was still a young and attractive woman, slim, with shoulder-length dark-brown hair.
Ronnie turned, smiling, to do the kissey-face thing with Lacey that was
de rigueur
among political wives. Her eyes widened as, looking over Lacey’s shoulder, she encountered a pair of achingly familiar blue eyes.
Chapter
35
“I
BELIEVE YOU KNOW TOM QUINLAN
, dear? Mississippi is his home state too.” Straightening away from Ronnie, Lacey drew Tom forward with a hand on his elbow.
Tom smiled at her. He looked tall and broad-shouldered and handsome in a navy suit with a white shirt and red tie.
“We’ve met,” he said easily, shaking the hand that she somehow had the presence of mind to hold out to him. “Hello, Ronnie.”
“Hello, Tom.” With the touch of his hand the room suddenly took on a whole new aura. It seemed to come alive, sparkling with color, pulsing with sounds and scents and sights that Ronnie had previously not divined. Pure, unadulterated joy burst inside her. She smiled at him, then quickly recollected herself and her surroundings and tried to dim that blinding look lest it give them away.
Lacey was already glancing from Tom to Ronnie with a touch of curiosity.
“As a point of fact I’ve been doing some work for
Senator Honneker in Mississippi this summer,” Tom said to Lacey as he released Ronnie’s hand. “Ronnie and I are old friends.”
“Well, he’s working for us now,” Lacey said, looking at Ronnie with a proprietary laugh. “Bill’s facing a tough race this time. We’re bringing in the big guns.”
“It’s a while yet till Election Day. There’s plenty of time to do what needs to be done,” Tom said. Then, to Ronnie, “How do you like being back in Washington?”
The three of them charted about nothing: the pros and cons of Washington in various seasons, the weather, the terrible amount of crime in certain areas of the city. Lacey’s suspicions, if indeed she had ever harbored any, seemed to be assuaged. When more people joined their little group, she slipped a hand in the crook of Tom’s elbow and led him away.
She wanted, she said, to introduce him to someone.
Watching Lacey Kenneth walk away with Tom, her hand curled around his arm, her body pressed close to his side as she steered him across the room, Ronnie felt a smoldering dislike for a woman she had previously considered a friend.
She had a pretty good idea of what Lacey Kenneth really wanted from Tom.
“If you sleep with her, I’ll claw your eyes out,” Ronnie whispered threateningly to Tom in one of the few private moments they were able to manage.
He took a sip from the golden-colored drink in his hand, his eyes narrowing as he looked down at her.
“Jealous?”
“Yes.”
“How do you think I feel, seeing you here with His Honor?”
“You
know
about Lewis and me.”
“That doesn’t erase the fact that you’re his wife.”
“You’re avoiding the subject.”
“What subject is that?”
“Lacey Kenneth.”
His tight expression eased and then he smiled at her. “Darlin’, the only woman in this room I have any intention of sleeping with is you. Why do you think I came to Washington?”
“Why did you?”
“To see you.”
“Why didn’t you let me know?”
“I just decided to come this morning. I don’t think I could have survived another one of our telephone conversations without doing something about it.”
Recollecting the steamy turn their conversation had taken the night before, Ronnie saw his point.
“How long are you here for?”
“Just tonight.”
“Just tonight!”
“Tom, there you are! Ronnie, you have to quit monopolizing him! I don’t think he’s had any of our
salmon en croute
yet, and it is mouthwatering! And Lewis is looking for you. I think he’s ready to leave.”
“I’d better go find him, then.” Ronnie kept a smile pinned to her face as Tom was once more dragged away. Lewis was indeed ready to go. After leaving the Kenneths’, she and Lewis were scheduled to attend another party thrown by an important lobbyist. It started at eleven.
She managed one more low-voiced exchange with
Tom as she came back from a quick trip to the powder room for the supposed purpose of freshening her lipstick.
Or, rather, Tom managed it.
He walked right up to her, bold as brass in front of them all, which of course was the only way
not
to look guilty. The only problem was Ronnie had trouble remembering that.
“It was good seeing you, Ronnie,” he said, adding, under his breath, “The Ritz-Carlton. Room Seven-fifteen.”
“You, too, Tom.” She smiled, shook hands, and mouthed, “I’ll try.”
“You take care of yourself in Washington, now, boy, you hear?” Lewis said, joining them and clapping Tom on the shoulder. “Next time you come into town, let Ronnie and me know, and you can stay with us.”
“I’ll do that, Senator,” Tom replied, his voice crisp. Then Lewis put his arm around Ronnie and swept her out the door. Ronnie could feel Tom’s eyes boring into her back until the door shut behind them.
She and Lewis did not get home until nearly three
A.M
. By then it was too late to go see Tom at his hotel. There was no possible excuse she could give for leaving the house at such an hour. And as for phoning him, that wasn’t possible either. Lewis stayed up after Ronnie went to bed, and she was afraid he might pick up an extension—the one in the library, where he spent most of his time, had a button that lit up whenever anyone was on the line—and overhear.
So, unhappily, she went to sleep. When her alarm went off, at six
A.M
., she got up, and dressed in running shorts and a T-shirt as though she were going out for a
run. It was early, much earlier than she usually awoke, but in Washington she ran instead of swam, and her absence for such a purpose would not raise any questions. It was likely she wouldn’t even be missed. Mary, the woman who kept house for them in Washington, didn’t arrive until nine, and Lewis probably wouldn’t miss her no matter what time he got up. He never went into her bedroom; there was no reason for him to.
Fog had rolled in from the Potomac during the night and lay over everything, Ronnie saw as she let herself out of the house. Its fine, gray mist wrapped around the stately residences like a blanket, and muffled the sounds of traffic from the busier streets nearby. She jogged to the corner without seeing anyone she knew-tourists were always up and about in Georgetown. There she was able to hail a cab.
The lobby of the Ritz-Carlton was busy, even this early in the morning, mainly with businessmen and -women standing in line to check out. As she came in through the revolving door, Ronnie glanced around with some apprehension. But no one paid the least bit of attention to her, and she had an elevator to herself.
Tapping softly on the door to Room 715, she looked anxiously around. The chances of running into someone she knew at this particular time in this particular corridor in this particular hotel were slim, but they existed. Washington was a small town really. Sometimes it felt much smaller than Jackson. Here everybody really did seem to know everybody else.
There was no answer. Ronnie frowned, and knocked again, a little louder. Still no answer. It began to occur to her that perhaps he was not there. Perhaps he had not spent the night in his room at all.
Which left open the question of exactly where he
had
spent it. Lacey Kenneth’s face flashed into Ronnie’s mind. Or perhaps, like Lewis, he had a thing for hookers. Washington was a city of endless opportunity if that was the case.
Even considering the possibilities made her angry, and now she pounded on the door with her fist, making enough noise to rouse the dead. If Tom had spent the night with another woman, he could kiss any hope of continuing to see
her
good-bye.
Plus, she would kill him.
The door opened just as she was getting ready to beat on it with both fists and possibly kick it for good measure. Tom stood there glowering at her, one of the white terry-cloth robes provided by the hotel tied haphazardly around his waist. He was unshaven, barefoot, and bleary-eyed.
Obviously she had rousted him out of bed. For a moment they simply eyed each other, exchanging black looks.
Without a word he stood aside to let her in. Then he shut the door and pulled her close. Holding her with both hands gripping her waist, he scowled down into her upturned face.
“Where were you?” he growled.
“We didn’t get home until after three,” Ronnie said apologetically, her arms sliding inside his robe to wrap around his hard middle. Her anger faded as she realized that he had not in fact spent the night with another woman. “It was too late to come, or call.”
“I was worried, dammit.”
“I’m sorry.” She snuggled closer, and the robe, which had not been securely tied to begin with, fell
open. He was wearing boxers, red plaid ones, which he had obviously slept in. She liked him this way, all warm and tousled and bristly and just roused from sleep. She nuzzled his chest with her nose. The hairs there tickled. He smelled of man.