Unfinished Business (4 page)

The smirk widened to a grin. Erica opened her mouth to lower the boom, but to her surprise, he lay a long, strong-looking finger against her lips and leaned close.

“I know you have plenty more to say, Ms. Johnson. And I'm sure I deserve it,” he murmured in a low voice. “But save it for the cameras, okay?”

Erica stared up at him, speechless at his touch, at his nearness. She'd expected him to reek of some perfumey men's cologne, but instead he smelled of soap and something else, too vague to name. There was a callus on the tip of the finger that caressed her lips so gently, and in the instant before he moved his hand aside, Erica had almost kissed it. She raised her eyes to his face. The grin was gone and so was its cousin, that arrogant little smirk. Instead, the man was staring at her with a stricken expression on his face, like
he, too, had forgotten where he was and what he was supposed to be doing.

“You're going to regret saying that,” Erica said, managing to sound irritated and sassy, even though there was no way to ignore the magnetic pull of the man. “I'm going to let you have it, Senator. And in the future”—she inhaled deeply, drawing the last bits of her composure back to her consciousness—“keep your hands to yourself, please.”

“Why? Don't trust yourself?” he rumbled in that low for-your-ears-only voice.

“Excuse
me?” Erica began but there was no time to contemplate it any further, because a voice rang out of the surrounding tangle of cameras and wires,

“Live with New York in one minute!”

An instant later, someone shut off the nearest set of fluorescent lights and plunged the room into near darkness. Only the high beams of the studio lights set around the chairs illuminated the area.

Bitsi Barr hopped up to Erica from out of nowhere. “We're gonna need another chair,” she said in quick, clipped and decidedly un-Southern tones. By contrast, Newman's voice dripped out as slow as honey. She gave the senator a gentle shove into the chair waiting behind him. “Sit,” she commanded, and then frowned. “You all right? You look a little…sweaty.” She snapped her fingers and called out into the darkness, “The senator needs some more powder!” Then, “Where's the sound guy? Check the senator's mike and earpiece, will ya?” Her faded blue eyes assessed Erica critically. “I told you to get some makeup on that,” she said, jabbing a finger toward Erica's forehead. “Too late now, I guess. Oh well. Hey.” She snagged a man in headphones who was hovering over Newman and snapped her fingers in Erica's direction. “Quick. She's got nothing.”

Out of the darkness came an older man with a lavaliere microphone, which he pinned quickly and professionally to Erica's T-shirt like she were a mannequin instead of a live person. He then parked her in a chair to the senator's left.

She glanced at her adversary. His eyes were closed, and for a second, Erica thought he was praying to whatever gods he believed in for the strength to get through the encounter unscathed…. Then she noticed the hand pressed against his stomach, and the wince crimping his lips and the corners of his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Erica began, distracted from her anger by the pain etched into the man's face.

His eyes flew open, centering on her with calm certainty. The smirk reappeared on his lips with a vengeance.

“I'm fine. Breakfast didn't agree with me, I guess. Don't worry your pretty little head about me,” he said, nodding toward the cameras aimed at them like a firing squad. “Worry about
them
.”

Erica shrugged. “All I have to do is tell the truth.”

Newman threw back his head and laughed. “Ms. Johnson,” he drawled, “the truth depends on who's doing the tellin'.”

“That's a politician's answer if I ever heard one,” Erica shot back, her curls bobbing around her head in a wave.

“Obviously,” he agreed.

Erica opened her mouth to respond, but he wasn't looking at her now. His face was fixed on the camera.

The makeup girl gave Erica's forehead a quick swipe, shaking her head as though she, too, believed far more was needed to keep it from shining like new money. The sound man stuffed the earpiece into her ear just as a voice in the darkness surrounding them shouted, “Donna in New York in five…four…”

 

“Why did you go to the Senate's hearing on elementary education, Ms. Johnson?”

It was going to be fine, Erica thought, grateful that the fluffy morning network anchor had handed her an opportunity to talk about everything that needed to change. She said a quick thank-you to God for the opportunity and said,

“Because I'm sick of funding being cut from education while we're spending billions on an unnecessary war, so—”

“And,” the perky morning show host interrupted, as though the pause had been a period and not a comma. “And is that when you challenged Senator Newman to explain the war to your class?”

“I barely remember that part, if you want to know the truth. I was too busy being escorted out of the hearing room in handcuffs,” Erica retorted.

“Well, I remember it quite clearly. That's why I'm here,” Newman interjected in that fake sing-a-song drawl, and then chuckled a little.

“And what do you intend to tell the children, sir?” the interviewer continued. Erica couldn't see her—could only hear her voice in her ear, but she sounded so courteous and deferential that Erica knew she was sucking up to the man.

She cast a quick glance at Newman's profile: The man was cheesing and grinning and completely eating it up.

It made her want to wretch. The man was arrogant enough, he certainly didn't need any encouragement from Donna Dale of the
Good Morning Nation Show
.

“I intend to—” he began, but Erica grabbed the sentence away from him.

“He intends to load my kids up with the usual gar
bage about terrorism and September eleventh. And he intends to ignore the truth: that Iraq has nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden—or should I say, Osama Bin Forgotten, at least by the senator and his cronies.”

Newman's dark head swung toward hers, his face clamped into his trademark smirk, tempered with more than a little annoyance.

“Iraq is a haven for terrorists. And Saddam Hussein—”

“Had nothing to do with 9/11.”

Newman frowned. “Not directly, but—”

“But nothing,” Erica scoffed. “And now you're taking food out of the mouths of the children of your own state, for a war that is unnecessary, irrelevant and none of our business! And the young people of your state are coming home in body bags by the dozens!”

Two red spots of ire appeared on the patches of pale skin on Newman's cheekbones. When he spoke, there was nothing fake about his voice. It was only slightly Southern and far more furious.

“You don't know anything about my state, Ms. Johnson,” he said, forgetting about the television cameras, turning toward her and jabbing the same finger at her that only a few minutes ago had caressed her lips. “And you don't know anything about what it means to serve this country. You and your kind are free to sit around and complain about what's wrong with this country thanks to people like the men and women in my state.”

“Me and
my kind
?” Erica's voice rose with her anger. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you ultra-Left, I-don't-eat-anything-that-has-a-face, sandal-wearing, flag-burning—”

“Hold up!” Erica's hand shot up. “Me and my
kind
love this country, too. Enough to start hollering when
it gets off track. We don't just accept every decision that our leaders make with blind obedience. We ask
questions
, Senator. We don't just pat our children on the head and send them off to be cannon fodder in a conflict that doesn't have any purpose—”

“Defending this country against its enemies is the most important purpose there is!” he snapped.

“Educating the populace of this country is the most important purpose there is! Or least it would be if the federal government and states like yours would spend some money on it!”

Newman scowled at her. “I told you before, you don't know anything about my state, so stop talking about it like—”

“I know it's got the second-highest military enlistment rate in the country.”

“We're patriots.”

“No, you just haven't provided any better opportunities for your young people.”

“They choose to enlist.”

“Choose!” Erica spat back at him. “Why on earth would anyone choose to go out and get themselves killed?”

“Some things are
worth
dying for!” Newman's body straightened and there was neither smirk nor smile on his handsome face. The room went suddenly soundless and still, with the weight of his sincerity. A lifetime of commitment and honor in service to the country he loved resonated in the man's voice.

He really believes in that. Honor, duty, country. My country, right or wrong….
Erica sighed. His loyalty would have been beautiful…if it weren't so dangerous.

The cameras were still rolling, but she forgot them in the intensity of the moment. Instead, she reacted
on her instincts, reaching out to grab his hand, curling her fingers around his.

“I'm sorry,” she said gently. “You're right, of course. But,” she stared into those deep blue eyes, reading in them the twin vipers of his absolute courage and absolute certainty. “Are you sure this is one of them?”

He hesitated only a second, answering simply, “Yes,” and then leaned toward her suddenly. “And if you don't know why, it's nothing I can explain to you. But maybe I can show you. The people of my state are the backbone of this country. They know about sacrifice, about believing in something bigger than themselves. They know the meanings of honor and courage. Maybe if you stopped thinking of my state as ‘flyover territory,' maybe if you stopped making all kinds of judgments and assumptions about people from states like mine, you'd understand it better,” he said in an earnest voice. “You've never even been to my state, have you? Forget the little towns and family farms, you've never even been to Billingham, our capital city, have you? Have you?”

Erica hesitated. “No, but—”

“Then you shouldn't talk.” And now that annoying little smirk was back and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction. He settled himself back in his chair as though he had carried the point, and directed his attention to the third eye of the camera again. “See,” he drawled in that made-for-television bullshit voice Erica had come to hate with a passion. “You don't know anything about what it means to live in a rural state, about the way my constituents feel about this country and what we're doing in Iraq. What you need to do is come on down South with me.”

Erica quirked an eyebrow at him. “Sounds like an ambush to me.”

“You mean, kinda like your invitation to come
here?” Newman swung his face away from the camera and the smirk deepened into a maddeningly smug expression as he continued, “I've been willing to come here, but you're not willing to spend even an hour in Billingham, actually talking to the people—actually
listening
to the people. You liberals are all the same. You talk about listening, but you never actually do it. You never leave your safe little enclaves. You never—”

“Oh, cut it out,” Erica interrupted. “You want me to go to Billingham? You think it's going to change my mind?”

Another self-satisfied smirk. “I know it will.”

Before she could think better of it, Erica had thrust out her hand. “Invitation accepted. You're on, Senator. And I'll spend more than an hour—more than a day, if you want. I'll come to Billingham. I'll come to Billingham for as long as you want.”

“Think you can last a whole week?”

“Of course I can.”

He stared at her hand for a long second. Then a slow, genuine grin curved over his features. He suddenly looked about ten years younger—and more handsome than ever before. Erica felt her heart do a nervous little side skitter in her chest as he enclosed her brown palm with his pale one.

“You got yourself a deal,” he drawled, just as Erica heard a voice in her ear, frantically insisting they were out of time. She came to herself at last, pulled her hand out of the senator's and turned back toward the camera. Donna Dale chattered in her ear about the spirited discussion and her hopes they would both join her again, to tell the nation about Erica's trip down South.

Tell the nation
…

“Oh shit,” Erica muttered, realizing what she'd
just done. But thankfully, the microphone was dead and no one heard it but Mark Newman, who simply threw back his head and laughed like he'd intended to capture her under this barrel all along.

He was the only white person in the room.

Or at least the only all-white person, since a few of the kids had the light bright skin of children of mixed parents. At the talk he'd given earlier, he'd noticed the same thing: kids of every shade of brown, but not one lighter than tan. It was as though the segregation his state had struggled so hard against a generation before had been reinstated by silent consensus. Mark filed the observation away for further consideration, placing it in the growing drawer in his mind labeled “Erica Johnson.”

She'd done him the courtesy of keeping her mouth shut during the hastily arranged “special assembly” with the fourth and fifth graders after breakfast and before the start of their school day. And he'd met her challenge: He'd explained to them about the requirements of freedom and the necessities of liberty.

The kids hadn't seemed that impressed. Several of them, he noticed, spent more time watching Erica Johnson than listening to him. And when it was time to ask questions, most of them had seemed far more interested in his cane than any issue of war or peace.

“I got hurt in a war,” he had explained.
Before any of you were born
, he thought, looking out at their nine-, ten-and eleven-year-old faces.

“Can't they get you one of them fake legs?” A little boy with cocoa-colored skin raised his hand. “I saw this guy on TV, he had one. He was running a marathon!”

“No.” Mark chuckled. “I've still got a leg, thank God. There's still some shrapnel in it, and some pieces of the bones are fused together—that's why I limp. But I don't need a fake one.”

“Too bad.” The little boy seemed genuinely disheartened. “That fake leg was way cooler than that old cane. You might coulda run a marathon, too.”

Kids
, Mark thought, smiling a little at the memory. On balance they could have cared less about either war or peace, especially when there were such things as fake legs to discuss and discover.

Erica Johnson wasn't a kid.

And now she had that look on her face—the look that meant he'd won today's battle, but the war itself was very much in question. He was about to make a comment to that effect when she said, “Too bad it's not raining,” and stationed him in a chair in the corner near the window. “Sometimes we get a leak right here. You're such a hothead, it would probably feel good to you.”

Mark let that one slide. He eased himself into the low student chair with a sigh of gratitude. He felt a little tired, a little lower energy than usual. The damaged cartilage in his knee burned like fire and he closed his eyes for a few seconds, forgetting the day's mission to finger the pill rolling loose in his trouser pocket. He didn't want to take it, didn't want to give in to the pain today, but he didn't want to be hobbling around cursing, either.

When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him like she'd read him, chapter and verse. It was annoying, really. The way this woman insisted on looking at him like she knew something about him, when she clearly didn't. If she weren't so blasted pretty, he might have really gotten p.o.'d about it.

“Do you always wear those damned T-shirts?” he asked, jabbing a finger at the slogan on her chest. “Don't you own any real clothes? Clothes that make you look like a woman?”

Bull's-eye.

Those brown eyes flashed “Drop dead” just as sure as if she'd said it aloud. Mark allowed himself a chuckle as he watched her comeback forming in her eyes, and found himself practically holding his breath in anticipation. He couldn't wait to hear what she was going to say to that one.

But instead of picking up with the T-shirt and running with that ball, she took him somewhere else altogether. Somewhere he hadn't intended on going.

“Why are you still here? You had your morning show and gave your speech to the children and a dozen reporters. You're sure to get all the news coverage you want. Why don't you go back to your office and do whatever it is that you people do. Plot your wars. Dream up conspiracies to oppress the rest of us. Chase your secretaries around your desks. Whatever. Why don't you just go away?”

Mark's smile went sharkish. “Why?” he replied in his nicest, nastiest voice. “You up to something you don't want me to see?”

She opened her mouth, but a rustle of interested noise from the children behind them distracted her from coming back at him with her list of objections and corrections. Angry as she made him, Mark couldn't resist watching her hips sway in those jeans as she
marched away from him. He could just imagine them in a nice skirt, maybe a pair of sassy high heels…

Get a grip on yourself
, a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Bitsi reminded him.
She might be gorgeous, but she's the most annoying woman on the planet.

“Settle down, young people,” Erica told them in a voice that walked a narrow line between sternness and encouragement. She turned back to him. “Are you going to be all right here?” she asked coolly. “Do you need anything? A glass of water, maybe? So you can take that pill you've been fingering for the past half hour?”

Crap. How the hell did she know about that?

But all he said was, “Saw that, huh?” pulling on the deepest and most disarming of his Southern accents to let her know she wasn't bothering him in the slightest. He opened his palm to show her the white pill. “I enjoyed the school tour, but there are a lot of stairs, your principal's a bit long-winded and my leg's not what it once was. Hate to take these things, though.” He tapped the side of his head. “Dulls the brain.”

“Really? Is the entire Republican party taking them?” Before he could reply, she fixed those big eyes at him and shook her head. “All you had to do was say you were hurting and Principal Mayes would have cut the tour short. But you'd rather tough it out. War heroes aren't like the rest of us, I guess.”

Mark frowned, his feelings of attraction evaporating. Everything was either an insult or an argument with this woman—absolutely everything. He opened his mouth, but she was already directing her class like he didn't exist.

“Anthony!” she called, summoning a cute little boy with cocoa-colored skin and huge black eyes. He wore a stained white uniform shirt and pair of dark
blue pants that looked like they'd seen better days, but his eyes were bright with intelligence.

“Yo?”

Mark recognized the voice as the loud kid who'd been asking questions about his cane.

“Anthony!” Erica repeated as though the kid hadn't responded and Mark heard the authority in her voice. The kid must have heard it, too, because when he spoke again, his voice was cordial and polite.

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Take one of the plastic cups from the bottom drawer of my desk and go down to the water fountain. Our guest would like a glass of water.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Anthony shot Mark a glance before moving toward his teacher's desk to find the cup and do as he was told. In a flash, he was at Mark's side, nursing a cup that would have overflowed if so much as another drop of liquid were added to its content. As it was, it slopped over Mark's hand as he took it from the boy.

“Thank you, Anthony,” he said, smiling into the boy's inquisitive black eyes.

To his surprise, the child executed a nearly perfect military salute and then turned on his heel and marched to his seat as though he'd been living at boot camp for the past several months.

“Morning journals, please,” Erica commanded, taking her place at the front of the room. Almost immediately, black composition books were produced from desks and backpacks. “All right, young people,” Erica continued, “let's not let our having a guest disrupt our regular routine. Please clear your desks for the daily language worksheet. Keisha and Shawna, you're classroom helpers this week, so please pass these out.” She handed two little girls in dark blue jumpers a sheaf of papers.

A sea of hands rose almost immediately.

“Miz Johnson, can I sharpen my pencil?”

“Me, too!”

“I don't have a pencil. Can I borrow one?”

Erica's mouth folded into a grim line.

“I see we're going to have to talk about personal responsibility again. As young learners, you're responsible for your supplies. You all know that you're supposed to check your pencils when you come to the classroom in the morning, and have them ready before we begin the day's work.”

“But Miz Johnson,” a little girl with long braids interrupted, her hand waving frantically in the air. “We would have, but they made us go to that assembly as soon as we got here. To listen to
him
.” She jerked her thumb in Mark's direction. “And that's why we didn't have time to…”

From his seat at the back of the room, Mark watched Erica's lips turn downward like she was swallowing a particularly nasty medicine. Mark suspected she was biting back something she desperately wanted to say and he couldn't stop a smile from curving his lips.

She glanced in his direction just in time to see the smile. Immediately, her eyebrows knit together and her dark eyes flashed.

“I had hoped that we would be able to carry on our lessons today as usual,” she began slowly in a voice that barely concealed her irritation. “But that clearly isn't going to be the case, so I say we take advantage of the senator's presence and skip ahead to our civics lesson. We've been studying the Constitution. Perhaps Senator Newman can give us some insight beyond what our textbooks can offer?”

“I'd welcome the chance to try.” Mark stood and crossed the room in a few uneven strides until he was at the front of the room beside her. He leaned against
the edge of her desk and winked at her. “What do you want me to do, Teacher?”

Go straight to hell
.

If he read it right, that was what the look on her face said, but the words that came out of her mouth were a quietly controlled, “Get your butt off my desk.”

The children laughed.

“Don't nobody touch Miz Johnson's desk. Everybody knows that!” he heard called out from the young voices in the room.

“It's rickety,” she said quickly. “I don't want anyone to get hurt.”

“Of course it is,” Mark agreed, giving the desk a shake and pretending not to notice that it hadn't moved an inch. “Very rickety.” He laughed at the way the children's eyes fixed on him, sparkling with interest. He felt movement at his elbow and realized that Erica had placed a chair in the center of the room for him.

“They're too young to vote,” she murmured in a voice for his ear's only. “And I'm immune, so you can bump the charm down a few volts, okay?”

“Hey, if you've got it, flaunt it, that's what I always say,” he muttered back and watched those big brown eyes roll contempt in his direction before she addressed the class again.

“Who wants to give Senator Newman an overview of what we've studied so far?”

All over the room, little brown hands shot into the air, waving with enthusiasm. Mark stole a glance at Erica: her lovely face was suffused with pride.

“Damon. Rise and present.”

At this command, a little boy with a round head shaved bald like an old man, stood up and placed his hand over his heart as if reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

“We've studied the three branches of government,” he began seriously. “There's the executive—that's the president and the cabinet and their agencies. And then the judicial—that's the court system. And then there's the legislative. That's the House of Representatives and the Senate.” His eyes found Mark's. “That's where you work.”

“Right,” Mark said, grinning. “Very good. In the Senate, we—”

“We haven't talked about them yet,” Damon interrupted. “We've been talking about the House of Representatives and how they're elected and how the Constitution says there have to be a certain number from each state.”

“That's right,” Mark nodded, impressed by the little boy's memory and delivery. Whatever Erica didn't understand about the political realities he dealt with every day, it was pretty clear the woman was a good teacher. “But the Senate is different.”

“Wait!” Damon's tone grew suddenly commanding. “I'm not finished with the House of Representatives!”

Mark chuckled. “By all means, young man. Go on.”

The kid hesitated, his hand fluttering from his chest to his side. He looked around uncertainly as though he expected to receive the derision of his classmates, and Mark realized that the boy had misinterpreted his chuckle. After all, the kid was just ten. “I'm not laughing at you, Damon,” he said in as gentle a voice as he knew how to use. “About the House of Representatives. Go on.”

Damon's eyes flitted to his teacher's for a moment, questioning.

“Go on, Damon,” Erica Johnson said in a voice more soothing than he'd ever heard her use before.
“It's all right. I'm sure Senator Newman would like to hear the rest.”

The little boy's hand went back to his chest. “The House of Representatives,” he continued, “is composed by p—p—population. States with more people have more representatives. States with fewer people have fewer representatives. That's to be sure it looks like America—or at least that the states with the most people get to be heard.” Damon frowned. “Only it doesn't look like America really. And the founding fathers didn't intend for it to. Because when they wrote the Constitution, they didn't count the black people. They called them three fifths of a white person because they were slaves and they had no votes at all.” His eyes found Mark's. “Why did they do that? Why do white people always think black and brown people are worth less than they are?”

Twenty-five pairs of childish eyes focused on him, waiting for an answer, and Mark knew he'd been set up. He longed to grimace in Erica Johnson's direction, but refused to give her the satisfaction. Instead, he brought himself slowly to his feet and paced toward the child. When he stood in front of him, he bent over as far as he could, so that he look into the boy's dark brown eyes.