Unfinished Business (3 page)

“Don't be too sure,” Chase shot back, adding his own grin to the mix. “I've heard that Bitsi's got a set of brass ones down there.”

Bitsi rolled her eyes. “Don't be crude,” she said primly and moved toward a corner of the room. Mark noticed for the first time a three-foot-square box, pushed close to the wall. “I'm a little surprised you got one of these this month. Considering what happened with Mary,” she muttered.

Mary.

The image of the shy, young woman filled Mark's brain. Since she was the daughter of one of his oldest friends and fellow Marines, he'd wanted to help,
offering her a job in his office after graduation. But it turned out she'd had neither the skills nor the temperament for work in the nation's capital. Or around Bitsi.

“I told them to put it here…so you wouldn't fall over it,” Bitsi was saying.

“Let me have one,” he commanded. “After that hearing, Dickey Joe's home brew is exactly what I need.”

Bitsi frowned at him but, for once, kept her mouth shut. With a sigh of resignation, she bent over the box, opened the flaps and pulled up a long, dark goose-necked bottle. “I can't believe they actually bottle up some of that nasty home brew they serve and send it to you,” she said, delivering the bottle into his waiting hand.

“Man, oh, man…” Mark murmured, twisting the cap. The faint aroma of malt and hops mixed with a nuttier, almondlike smell filled the room. “Say what you want, Dickey Joe is the salt of the earth, and his daughter's definitely going to heaven.” He saluted his friends with the bottle before taking a swig. “Cheers.”

“Ugh.” Chase rolled his eyes. “Don't see how you can stand it warm.”

“I don't see how you can stand it all.” Bitsi grimaced in distaste. “Wouldn't you rather have your water and one of those pills? I'm sure they'd do more for you than
this
stuff. I ought to just throw it out.”

“You'll do no such thing.” Mark grabbed his cane and stood, hobbling toward the box. Even knowing how much they reminded him of home and happier times, it would be just like Bitsi to dump every last one of the beers down the drain. Mark had no intention of allowing that to happen. “Bitsi, I swear—”

“Okay, okay,” Bitsi murmured quickly. “Relax.”
She lifted a couple more bottles out of the box and slid them into the little refrigerator hidden in one of the drawers of the large bookcase covering the wall behind her. “I won't destroy your precious homebrewed beer. Just don't drink too many of those, Mark,” she cautioned. “Warm or cold. I can't have you wandering the halls of the Capitol intoxicated.”

The last restraint on his temper snapped like a dry twig.
Intoxicated?
She was making him sound like some kind of lecherous lush!

“That's enough Bitsi,” Mark snapped.

“Enough?” She lifted her brows in wide-eyed innocence. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Mark growled. “How many years have you known me?”

“Feels like forever,” Bitsi said in her worst mother-hen tone. “Ten? No. First year of law school. That makes it thirteen. Thirteen years. Why?”

“You ever—
ever
—seen me drunk?”

Bitsi's lips and forehead crunched toward each other. She shook her head. “I don't think I've ever seen you drink more than one or two, now that you mention it.”

“Then stop treating me like a soft-headed teenager who needs his mother to pick up his beer cans!” Mark hissed, stumping back to his chair and lowering himself into it again, glaring at Bitsi all the while. “When I drink, I drink two. Just two, that's it.”

Two spots of color appeared on Bitsi's cheeks and her faded blue eyes misted over, but her lips stayed in a firm, determined line.

“I'm sorry,” she said crisply, turning away from them and marching toward the door. “If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I've got calls to make.” And she strode out of the room, letting the door close a little too loudly behind her.

“She's
pissed
,” Chase muttered.

“Well, so am I. I don't like being treated like a baby, and she knows it,” Mark grumbled. “If I didn't back her down from time to time, she'd steamroll all of us, and you know it. Wandering the halls intoxicated? What does she think I am? An alcoholic? She knows me better than that!” He frowned, staring into the dark contents of the bottle. The taste was a little off, a little bitter compared to the stuff Dickey served on tap at his little establishment in Billingham, but Mark chalked it up to the effects of bottling and the lack of refrigeration. Even warm, even with the aftertaste, it was still good stuff. Mark could almost hear his friend's laughter in the dim bar, could almost feel the camaraderie of men who stopped in after a hard day's work to swap stories or shoot an hour's worth of pool. And at the end of the hour, he'd go home. Home to where Katharine would be waiting.

Only now, Katharine was gone and no one was waiting.

For some strange reason, he thought of the woman and her T-shirt again, the way her full breasts strained against the cotton, begging for release…

“She can't help it,” Chase said genially, pulling him out his reverie just as he felt a knotting in his groin. “She'll do anything to keep your name in the news. And for what it's worth, you
are
her baby. There would be no Senator Newman—and there sure as hell won't be a President Newman—without her. And you know it.”

“She wants more than that…and
you
know it,” Mark said quietly.

Chase sighed. “She's always going to hope, Mark. Until she sees you've…moved on,” he concluded diplomatically, and Mark knew he was trying to spare him the pain of hearing Katharine's name spo
ken aloud. “Now,” the other man continued briskly, “you want to get something to eat?” He nodded at Mark's cane. “Or are you doing therapy tonight, like Bitsi told you to?”

“No therapy.” Mark sighed. The thing with Bitsi bothered him: Chase might be right. She meant well and he'd responded harshly, but then that meddlesome quality about the woman always worked his nerves and his stomach. He rubbed at his midsection, feeling the bubbles of upset churning almost immediately. “My stomach's in knots,” he admitted to Chase.

“Probably because you need to eat. It's Tuesday. Chinese on Tuesdays, right? We could go to Oh's Place—”

Mark frowned, his mind elsewhere. “She challenged me to explain the war to her fourth graders, didn't she?” he asked himself out loud. “To explain why we have money for war and not for school lunches or something like that, right?”

Confusion. And more than a little surprise. That's what he read in Chase's face when he finally focused his attention back on the man.

“Yeah,” his friend began slowly. “But heck, school lunches are great, but lunches aren't going to matter much when our nation is under attack. We gotta defend the cause of freedom or—”

Mark waved Chase's justification away. “Yeah, I know. I woulda said that if I'd had time before they carted her out of there. Bet you ten bucks that school invitation thing's the sound bite on the late news. And that's
her
point, not mine.” He sighed, took another swig of Dickey Joe's warm home brew and pinned his oldest friend with his most determined look.

“So, what do you want?” Chase chuckled a little. “A rematch?”

He imagined her standing in front of him in that crazy earth-goddess outfit, wild ringlets dancing around her head as she moved. He saw her lips curve up into a smile and down into that irked grimace and felt the same fire knotting inside him that he'd felt the first second their eyes had met.

“Yeah,” Mark said. “That's exactly what I want. A rematch. You know how I hate to lose, Chase. Even to a beautiful woman.”

A smile crept slowly across Chase's face. “Beautiful woman, huh?” he repeated like the phrase had special significance. “Is that right?”

“Well, you saw her,” Mark sputtered, heat crawling up his neck. He clawed at his tie, popped open the top button of his white dress shirt, but the heat didn't stop, not even after another swift gulp of beer. “She was gorgeous. For a liberal, I mean. Even you had to notice
that
.”

“Sure, I noticed it,” Chase agreed, still smiling that annoying little smile. “Just surprised that you did. You haven't noticed much about any woman. Not since”—he paused but could find no way to avoid the words—“since Katharine died.”

Even though Chase said his late wife's name with the same gentle reverence Mark himself always used, the pain of her loss always returned to him with the same hard slap. Mark blinked against the wave of grief that washed over him. People kept telling him that the emptiness would fade in time, but somehow, even three years later, his grief still seemed as fresh as yesterday.

“I only noticed her,” Mark managed to say, even though the mention of Katharine had submerged him in feelings he'd rather have left undisturbed, “because she made me so damned mad with all that wrongheaded talk. See, what we got here is unfin
ished business, Chase.” He washed the words down with a last, long, slow chug of beer, but kept his eyes fixed on Chase's face. “And you know how I feel about unfinished business.”

Chase's gaze was calm and quiet, steady and sure. It was more annoying than any of Bitsi's hovering and mothering, and Mark felt himself about two seconds from barking out something—anything—just to keep his old friend from looking at him another second in that odd, knowing way. But it was Chase himself who broke the stare, bending for the box of warm beer bottles.

“You're right,” he said at last, giving Mark another easygoing smile, as he twisted off the bottle's cap and lifted the beer in toast. “She
was
pretty. And so was her friend. It's been a long time since you and I have admired pretty women, my friend.” He took a long pull, grimaced at the bitter taste, shrugged off the jacket of his sober gray suit and tossed it onto his chair. “To unfinished business with a very pretty, very African-American, very liberal woman,” he said, lifting the beer again. Then, before Mark could object, he leaned forward and grabbed the phone off Mark's desk. “Bits,” he said into the receiver. “Come on back in here. Looks like Mark's going back to the fourth grade.”

“How much longer are you going to hold on to this hunk of junk?” Angelique asked as Erica's decade-old import gasped its way into the school parking lot, shaking and wheezing as though on the verge of collapse.

“You know how much money I make, don't you?” Erica yanked on the parking brake and turned to pull her canvas school bag out of the backseat.

“Pennies, just like me,” Angelique muttered, sliding out of the vehicle and staring at it in disgust.

“Then you know why I can't buy a new car,” Erica snapped. “Be grateful we have wheels at all, considering you don't have a car.”

“I'm saving, though—” Angelique began.

“Can you grab the coffees?” Erica interrupted. “My hands are full.” She didn't feel like hearing the story again of how Angie's part-time accounting work was going to buy a brand-new Mercedes by 2010.

Angelique leaned back in and grabbed the two Styrofoam cups. “You don't have to take it out on me,” she murmured, slamming the door with her hip. “I'm on your side, remember?”

Erica sighed. At times like these, it was tough to have a best friend that you lived with, worked with, commuted with. You had to listen to them talk, even when your mind was busy elsewhere—thinking of broad, blue-suited shoulders wrapped around the most asinine politics in the history of mankind. She tried hard to keep her face straight, hoping Angelique couldn't read her thoughts. “I'm sorry,” she said. “It was a tough night. I was in jail—which was no picnic. And then all those reporters calling.”

“We took the phone off the hook,” Angelique admonished, shaking her head and smiling an irritatingly knowing smile. “Remember? So don't bother trying to blame your agitation on them.”

“Whatever.” Erica shrugged. The look on her friend's face was getting under her skin, stirring up a bunch of stuff she didn't care to admit to just now. “It was stressful. Even after doing my yoga routine it was hard to relax enough to get to sleep…”

Angelique's laughter sounded loud and wrong in the quiet darkness of the parking lot. “That's not it, and you know it,” she teased. “Oh come, Erica. Get real with yourself, why don't you?”

“What do you mean?” Erica tried to sound casual, but even she could hear how her voice had risen a full octave.

“What do you mean?” Angelique mimicked. “I mean, we both know you stayed up all night long watching the tape of you and Mr. Handsome Senator from Down South on C-SPAN, uncut and unedited, that's what. And that's why you're tired. Oh no”—she lifted a hand, silencing Erica's intended interruption—“don't bother to deny it. I have to say, I watched it a few times myself. He's a cutie. Definitely a cutie.”

“Oh him,” Erica muttered with sigh, as if she hadn't
given the man another thought since the hearing yesterday. As if he hadn't been imprinted on her eyelids, wearing that irritating smirk every time she closed them and tried to sleep. “Well,” she continued nonchalantly. “He might be cute, but he's also the Antichrist.”

“He's not the Antichrist. He just disagrees with you, that's all.” Angelique started through the dusty gravel parking lot toward the school's front doors. “Don't be so dramatic.”

“I'm not being dramatic,” Erica snapped. “I'm just telling you in no uncertain terms, I haven't given that sad, morally misguided man another thought.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Angelique replied and walked on without another word, leaving Erica to contemplate her backside as she tiptoed toward the school's main entrance in another crisp pantsuit and those high heels. Like she didn't know she'd be on her feet all day, chasing elementary school kids around. Erica glanced down at her own jeans and “Go Solar, Not Ballistic” T-shirt. On the surface of it, Angelique looked more like the kind of woman who would attract the attention of a senator. And yet…

The image of a handsome white man with piercing blue eyes and dark hair sashayed through her mind, using that old brown cane not for support but as a Fred Astaire-style prop.

Go away, you blue-eyed devil,
Erica told the dancing man, and then struck out after her friend, lugging her heavy bag of textbooks, workbooks, graded papers and treats.

The school building was old—ancient, really. A compilation of aging bricks, and even older plumbing, Bramble Heights had all the problems of many D.C. schools. There were too many stairs and no ramps, too much concrete and not enough grass, too
many windows and not enough heat. The children had so much potential and so little resources. Staring at the building's decrepit backside, thinking of the billions spent for killing and the paltry sum spent on children by comparison, Erica felt her anger toward the Mark Newmans of the world hardening again.

If I ever see him again, he's got some explaining to do,
she thought, as she and Angelique turned the corner toward the entrance.

Be careful what you wish for
. The words rose in Erica's mind the second her brain could comprehend what her eyes were seeing.
Be careful what you wish for:…You just might get it.

She'd gotten it.

Because as soon as they rounded the curve toward the main entrance, she saw them: the big white commercial vans with the satellite dishes on top that the television stations used. Erica faltered and then stopped. Her book bag slid from her shoulders and spilled on the sidewalk.

“Shit,” she breathed, staring around in surprise.

“You can say that again,” Angelique agreed. “And this shit has your name all over it.”

A young-looking white man bounded out of one of the trucks. He wore a pair of headphones and appeared to be listening intently to something. He glanced at Erica as she bent to scoop her books off the ground, and then proceeded at a gallop into the building. As the old double doors swung wide, the sounds of children cavorting loudly in the hallways roared toward her and then were muted as the steel latch reconnected with the bolt.

Erica locked eyes with Angelique.

“Newman,” they said simultaneously. Erica set her jaw for battle and hurried toward the door.

About twenty kids, some with parents, most with
out, played in the large foyer. The doors to the multipurpose room were closed, but the smell of a hot breakfast floated out into the lobby, tempting the assembly with the promise of a meal.

“What's going on?” Erica asked, turning to an adult she recognized, the grandmother of a little girl who'd been in her class two years ago. The little girl's name was Shauntay Jiles, but the grandmother's name escaped Erica's memory completely.

“They's setting up for some interview here,” the older woman said, her eyebrows arching toward her graying hair. “Said the children can come in and get their breakfes' as soon as they get the cameras ready.”

“What interview?”

“Senator somebody-I-never-heard-of.” She rolled her eyes. “They better hurry, tho'. I gotta catch that seven-forty bus.”

“Newman? Senator Mark Newman? Tall, dark hair, shaved close to his head in military style, deep blue eyes? Walks with a cane?”

The woman lifted a weary shoulder in a shrug. “I didn't see all that. Just a bunch of camera folks.” She glanced at her wrist. “And if they make me miss that seven-forty bus, there's gonna be some serious hell up in here.”

With a feeling of annoyance she hardly knew how to explain or contain, Erica thanked the woman and strode to the closed cafeteria door.

“Tall, dark hair, cut military style, deep blue eyes…” Angelique repeated at her heels.

“Shut up, Angelique,” Erica snapped and yanked open the cafeteria door.

The large room was a chaos of lights and cables. Two large chairs, dragged from Principal Mayes' office, sat facing three cameras arranged about ten
yards away. Erica peered toward the long rows of benches where the children sat to eat.

Mark Newman sat on a bench toward the back of the room near the closed doors to the serving line. He was talking amiably to a small crowd of television technicians as a pretty young white girl, her face bright with attraction, patted his face with powder. He clutched a Styrofoam cup in his hand, wooden cane hooked over the table's edge. Bramble Heights' principal, John Mayes, stood near him, also cradling a Styrofoam cup, his graying hair slick with pomade, his moon-round face consumed by a hearty grin as though he were a part of the story the senator was telling. A tiny woman in a tailored gray suit stood in the space between the men and the camera talking animatedly into a cell phone, swinging a blunt cut of white-blonde hair as she spoke. Her skin was very pale; indeed, the only splash of color in her appearance was the bright red lipstick smeared across her mouth. She reminded Erica of a little sparrow with a worm in its beak, hopping around the room with deliberate purpose.

“What the…?” Erica muttered in amazement.

The birdlike woman holstered her cell phone and was at Erica's elbow in the speed of light.

“There you are,” she said, pulling Erica away from Angelique's side and yanking her school bag off her shoulder. “We've been trying to reach you!” She put her hand on her hip and shook her hair at Erica. “Don't you
ever
answer your phone? Sit down, sit down….” She practically shoved Erica into a waiting folding chair. “We're on national TV in less than five minutes!” She waved impatiently at the young makeup girl. “Over here! Quick!”

Erica blinked at her. “Who the heck are you? What the heck is going on here?”

“I'm Bitsi Barr, the senator's media-relations direc
tor,” the woman said, and a flush of pride colored her white face. “As for the rest, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? You challenged the senator to explain the war to your fourth graders during your doomed little protest yesterday”—she flicked her eyes over Erica measuringly, taking in every minute detail of her, right down to the number of millimeters of arch in her brow—“and since he's not the kind of man to back down from a challenge, he's here.”

“Apparently he's not the kind of man to pass up an opportunity for a little free publicity, either,” Erica retorted, making no effort to conceal the sarcasm in her tone.

Bitsi Barr's red lips curved into a small smile that told Erica exactly how much the other woman disliked her and everything she stood for. “The morning shows took
us
up on our offer to cover it,” she replied, nodding to the room around them. “We'll be talking with Donna on
Good Morning Nation
in”—she glanced at her watch—“less than four minutes. Be sure to get some powder on your forehead, right
there
,” she instructed, peering disapprovingly at Erica's face. “That's going to howl like a siren when the light hits it.” She read the slogan on Erica's chest, frowned and shrugged. “Could be worse, I guess,” she mumbled to no one in particular. Then her phone rang and she hopped away.

The young makeup artist approached Erica's face with a large powder brush, but Erica slapped her hand away and slid out of the chair. “Excuse me,” she said, aiming her eyes and her feet toward the men at the back of the room.

John Mayes, a smallish black man with very fair skin, saw her first.

“Ms. Johnson,” he began, “I was afraid you wouldn't make it!”

Erica barely glanced at him. “Oh, I made it okay,” she replied and watched Mark Newman's head swivel in her direction.

The girl's makeup had done its work: concealer and a bit of bronze powder gave him a handsome, cover-boy look that would have made him irresistibly sexy if Erica hadn't been too mad to notice. He rose somewhat unsteadily, grabbing the cane for support, while an irritatingly condescending smile immediately covered his face.

“We meet again,” he drawled in that totally fake, old-style Southern-gentleman voice. All he needed was a goatee, a white suit and a mint julep, and he could have been Colonel Sanders.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Erica demanded.

Newman's eyebrows rose in false surprise.

“My dear Ms. Johnson, you
invited
me!”

Erica frowned. She would have loved to tell him she had no idea what he was talking about, but that wasn't true. The news stations had been replaying her shouted invitation all night, and unfortunately, she knew it. She wasn't exactly surprised to see him here. This was just the kind of thing she would have expected him to do…if she hadn't spent the night having hot dreams about covering every inch of his body with her lips and her tongue and—

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Senator. This is a disruption at best,” she sputtered at him. “And at worst, you're trying to catch me off guard, just so you can win. Well, it's not going to work, so you can just take your staff and your cameras and go back to Capitol Hill!”

And there it was. The smirk. Deepening on his handsome face, while those sky blue eyes sparkled deliberate mischief at her and killed any attraction
toward him she might have felt. In an instant, she saw him as he was a child—about the age of one of her fourth graders—and knew he was up to something, something no damn good. She frowned up at the man, her mind racing, guessing at the plot behind that smirk of a smile. And while she was staring, it was impossible not to notice that he was ridiculously tall, ridiculously broad shouldered…and ridiculously full of himself.

“I'm glad to see you, too,” he said. He had the nerve to chuckle at her while she sputtered her discomfiture for a number of agonizing seconds.

“You—you—you really take the cake, you know that?” Erica managed when she'd fought down the feeling of heat those eyes had sent soaring through her. “You pretend to be so concerned about education and children, but all the while you're only thinking of how much time you can get in front of the camera. Otherwise, you could have just—just—”