“A week ago? You were going to cut me out?”
“No. I was just thinking, maybe—”
“Say no more,” I said. “I get it. Of course you wanted the win.” There was Sarah’s whispered warning, already echoing back:There’s a part of him you’ll never touch, you know. In the end, he may love you, but he’ll always put himself first.It was true, wasn’t it? It was always Ben vs. the world: Ben against his father. Ben against his law school classmates. Ben against me, when we nearly killed each other breaking up; when he pressed the nuclear button and drove off to California. Clearly, Ben was still out for himself. And why shouldn’t he be, if the thing between us was only physical? Why would I assume kissing him had changed anything? I’d certainly worked hard over the years to make sure no kissing had ever changedme. I’d made myself a safe life where no matter how men might touch me, they could never reallytouchme. Why had my unconscious automatically rewritten the rules for Ben?
This was the problem with Ben five years ago, and it was the problem with him now: something about him kept slipping past my defenses, like a thief in the night. I kept waking up to find him already in the heart of my kingdom, kneeling over me, sword at my throat.
I turned to leave. My anger was boiling over too fast to remain in public.
“Lee, hold on a minute.”
“No, really,” I assured him, gathering my dress in my hands. “I’m only mad I didn’t think of it first. How silly of me, getting distracted with—” I glanced at Wendy “—everything else. How will I ever make it in politics without your killer instinct?” I turned to Wendy, Cody and George, who were all eyeing Ben like he was Benedict Arnold. “Please excuse me.” Then I shouldered my way out of the governor’s living room.
I needed to get out of this mansion. I could hear Ben calling after me, but I ignored him, walking swiftly down the hallway, flashing the people I passed tight-lipped smiles. This house was a maze, and I was running through it like some sort of demented princess in my ball gown. “Cinderella and the Glass Knife in Her Back.” “Betrayed Beauty and the Ben-Beast.” “Snow Whipped.”
I turned left, then right, trying to remember the little I’d seen of the floor plan from our meeting with the governor weeks ago. Through this door and down the hall, that had to be right, then one more turn and there’d be nothing but a gauntlet of stairs standing between me and my freedom.
I twisted the knob and yanked open the door, only to be confronted by a sight so surreal it honestly took my brain a few seconds to process. I’d thought the door led to a hallway, but it was actually a roomy coat closet. Someone shrieked, and finally, my brain caught up and registered what I was seeing.
Alexis was on the floor, scrambling to pull up the top half of her canary yellow ball gown, lipstick smudged over her face like a drunk clown had painted it on. Her legs were still entangled with none other than Senator James Janus, dashing young friend of Willie Nelson and bullshit turncoat.
“Lee!” Alexis shouted, then slapped a hand over her mouth. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were... I thought you wereMomfor a second.”
“Alexis Rosalie Stone, what are youdoingin here?”
She shot a panicked look at Janus, who was in the middle of zipping his pants back up. He froze, midzip, and she gulped. “Getting to know each other?”
Senator Janus got busy with his shirt, fingers slipping over the buttons. “We were, uh, talking, and maybe we had a few too many cocktails, and then—”
“No,” I said simply, shaking my head. “My sister did not hook up with the senator of District 27, one of three crucial votes for my bill.”
“Oh, shit.” Alexis’s face crumpled. “I had no idea. Wait.” She turned to Janus. “Senator? You’re notmarried, are you?”
He burst out laughing. “Christ, no. Can you imagine?” He gestured at his half-unbuttoned chest. “All of this, locked down?”
“Oh, right,” Alexis said. “This is why you talk first.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to center myself. If only I’d paid better attention at Mac’s yoga meditation retreat, instead of spending all my time trying to trick the employees into giving me my cell phone back. “I am rewinding the video tape in my brain so as to unsee this and therefore remove all emotional scarring.”
“Lee, there you are.” Ben ran up, his eyes intense, hair standing on end, like he’d run his hands through it a thousand times in quick succession. “Listen, I’m sorry about the one-two punch of Sarah and Slittery—” He stopped cold, seeming to realize we had an audience, then peered into the closet. “Is that...Senator Janus?” He squinted. “AndLex?”
The appearance of Ben was one straw too many. I spun on my heel and took off in the opposite direction. All my instincts were clearly wrong. Trying to head toward the exit in this maze of a mansion had only brought fresh horrors down upon me, like accidentally turning the page in some sort of sadistic pop-up book. So I would go deeper inside the house instead. I spotted a grand, gleaming staircase. Even better: I would go up.
That’s right. I pounded the stairs, two at a time. Nothing worse than what I’d just seen could confront me up here.
20
As Nature Intended
I flung open the door at the end of the second-floor hallway, only to be confronted with a guest bedroom that looked like someone’s grandma had designed it in the throes of an acid trip. There was an astonishing number of florals. Chintzy, magnolia-patterned wallpaper, rose-patterned bedding on the four-poster, illustrated flowers in silver picture frames. Ceramic angels peered down from crowded shelves. I stumbled inside and bumped into a side table, cursing as I tugged on a lamp, and—Ah!Jesus Christ, that was a doll. A very human-looking doll with haunted eyes that I was going to place facedown now, so she couldn’t watch me.
I was certain some governor from the 1800s had possessed a madwoman in need of locking away, and this had been her room. All the governors since, including Grover Mane, had clearly been too lazy to bother with redecorating. Or maybe they’d had women, too.
Nevertheless, it would do.
I’d no sooner sat on the bed than the door flung open to reveal Ben. I could tell he was gearing up to say something grand and sweeping, but then he registered the room. And gave a little start. “Jesus, Stoner. Next time you lure a man somewhere to murder him, take it down a notch with the decor. You’re tipping your hand.”
“No one asked you to follow me.”
