“I would say your co-conspirator, if anything…Grayson.”
A small smile crept across his face as he looked down at me. “I like you, Jane. I’ll bet you’re good for Lily.”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be that she’d be good for me?”
He gave an elegant shrug to his shoulder, and I realized the puppet master had strings even I couldn’t see.
And I looked for strings at all times, with all people.
“How do you think I’m good for Lily?” I asked, resigned to the fact that this assumption was part of his plan from the beginning.
He studied my face, almost as if wondering if I could handle the truth. His eyes softened just the tiniest bit, and I realized he now knew that, sadly, at almost nineteen, I could handle just about anything.
“It would appear to most people that Lily would be a grounding presence to you, having the upbringing you did.”
“You mean having a new-age, gold-digging twit for a mother and a douchebag fame-whore for a father? What about that screams instability?”
He didn’t actually roll his eyes at my sarcasm—I would have bet that Grayson Spaulding had never deigned to roll his eyes—but a soft exhale left him, which said he wasn’t pleased with my summation. Accurate as it may be.
“But it is also true that you would have a…liberating effect on Lily. She was truly caught in a ‘middle child who feels they must be perfect to be noticed’ situation.”
Wow. He’d nailed Lily perfectly. And here I’d assumed—and I’m guessing Lily had too—that her father was completely oblivious to her feelings.
“You weren’t afraid I’d lead her down the wrong path of…liberation?”
He studied me again, and I felt like he knew every one of my secrets. It was probably how politicians felt when he told them which way he wanted them to vote on a bill or something.
If he even did that sort of thing. It might all be about the campaign to him, not the actual governing. The race itself might be the crack that Grayson Spaulding smoked.
“No. I was not concerned about that, Jane.”
“Why not? I’ve dragged Lily to parties where I’ve been stinking, falling-down drunk. I’ve had to send her out of the room while I’ve banged a guy silly. And have asked her to join me…in both activities.”
An exaggeration on all accounts, but he didn’t need to know that. Although he probably already did, the all-knowing bastard.
“I appreciate the shock value, Jane. But let’s save that for bragging around the cafeteria table, shall we?”
“I don’t brag around the cafeteria table,” I said, indignant. Sooooo not my style.
“I know,” he said with a tiny smile.
I nodded to him, acknowledging that he’d got me on that one. Then decided to tackle the elephant in the room.
“So just how do you see me being of any help to my father’s campaign? ’Cause I can only see tabloid headlines and paparazzi camped out in front of my dorm in my future.”
He gave the tiniest of head shakes. “That won’t happen. We’ll make sure that Bribury is off limits.”
I imagined that he could probably make that happen.
“What about the tabloid headlines?” I motioned with my chin to the row of approved photographers, and even the people taking photos, and shooting video, with their phones. “Beginning with today’s little farce of a happy family.”
“That’s why we’re getting out ahead of it. Of course they’re going to dredge it all up again—Joe’s affair with your mother, you being born—”
“Him denying he was my father?”
He gave a curt nod, and looked away for a moment. But it was enough.
“Or—wait. Didyoutell him to deny me? Was that your piece of political strategy?”
