“Hey, what the heck?” Cary glared at Logan, rubbing his jaw, then registered me. “Oh. It’s you. Fake girlfriend.”
“What are you doing here?” Logan hastily rebuttoned his dress shirt, which, when open, had showed a tantalizing hint of his chest that made me recall the hotel suite, when he’d stripped while striding to me. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
I swept my gaze to his shoes. Safer territory. “I came to tell you what I want for my blank check request.”
“And it’s a doozy.” Nora waved a hand at the mismatched furniture around the coffee table. “You should sit. But first, since you obviously need reminding, I told you members of the Antique Car Society are older, upper-income constituents with lots of time on their hands.Eighty-five percentvoted in the last election. They’re a uniquely engaged population and they appreciate an attractive package. You may not be an antique car, but with that second button undone, you’re a package I can sell.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Logan revved their engines.” Cary flopped onto the armchair next to mine and grinned gleefully.
Logan glowered at him. “You know, it was going pretty well. I actually got some decent questions about my retirement reforms in the Q and A. And then the meet and greet started and they mobbed me like I was ’61 Ferrari. I can still feel the phantom hands patting my bum. Pretty sure the wordsAren’t you a nice-looking young man, would you like to meet my granddaughter?are going to haunt my dreams tonight.” He sighed and sank next to Nora on the love seat, dropping his head back and closing his eyes. My gaze drifted down his exposed throat, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, until I realized what I was doing and forced my eyes away.
It was still surreal that less than a week ago, I hadn’t been able to keep my hands off this man in an elevator. The memories kept surfacing at the most inopportune moments. Like this one. The mere sight of Logan’s throat cracked the veneer of my professionalism, causing a hot eruption of longing, a flashback to what it felt like to touch him. It reminded me that I knew the way he tasted, how it felt to be pressed against his chest, the sound of his breath coming shallow and fast, even if none of it would happen again.
One-night stands—even unfinished ones—were a hell of a drug.
“Is it normal for people to be all over you at events?” I asked Logan, trying to distract myself. I hadn’t anticipated running for office would be so much like being a Beatle. Lee had been popular, sure—she’d won her race—but no one had ever mobbed her.
“No,” Logan muttered, his eyes still closed. “Ask Cary why this time was different.”
Cary crossed one leg over the other, nonplussed. “Yeah so, I’m trying to turn Logan into a sex symbol. It’s my contribution to the campaign. I’ve made a ton of headway with people over sixty—don’t ask me why, maybe it’s Logan’s curmudgeon factor. I figured the car society was the perfect place to test his appeal. I might have...you know, hyped the crowd a bit too much in the meet and greet line. In my defense, I forgot how handsy straight people could be.”
“Remind me to fire you later,” Logan sighed.
Nora shook her head. “That’s the third firing this week, Mr. Berry. A new record.”
Cary chuckled, then noticed me staring. “What?”
“Your name is CaryBerry?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t see me making fun of your name, Alex-but-make-it-more-complicated.”
Logan opened an eye and smirked at me. “Drives him nuts when I call him by his full name out on the soccer field. The rhyme just rolls off the tongue.”
Cary sighed. “I still find it outrageous that my personal assistant role has been grossly inflated to include soccer companionship.”
Like the two were in a ping-pong match, I turned to Logan, but he only shrugged. “I had to drop out of my league when the campaign started. Cary said he’d play whenever I needed to blow off steam. The guy’s got no one to blame but himself.”
“Yes,” Cary said dryly. “Don’t you love it when you make ridiculous promises in a job interview and then you’re forced to actually fulfill them?”
Nora tapped her watch. “And that’s your two minutes allotted to nonsense. Alexis, go ahead and tell Logan what you told me.”
Huh. Logan must emit some sort of hypnotic gravitational field, because whenever I was near him, it didn’t matter if I was about to face down reporters or make a high-stakes sales pitch: it was too easy to get sucked into his orbit and forget about everything else, including my fear. Switching gears, I clasped my hands primly on my knees and tried to summon a sense of authority. Best to just launch into what I’d rehearsed and ignore the heat blooming everywhere Logan’s dark eyes trailed.
“In the last decade,” I began, “the legislature has made cuts to the education budget that have resulted in a tremendous blow to the workforce. The number of staff employed in public schools has dropped twenty-five percent in the last five years alone, which in turn has resulted in larger class sizes, less individual attention for students, lower college admissions rates, decreased access to libraries, music classes, and art trainings, and a deeply demoralized teaching body. And it has disproportionately impacted low-income communities and communities of color.” I wasn’t Lee by any means—I lacked her rhetorical swagger—but I had always been able to count on research. I hoped Logan and his team would find the facts and figures compelling enough. “Word is the legislature’s gearing up to cut again, and if the other schools in the state are anything like mine, every teacher feels like the apocalypse is nigh.”
“The budget is something legislators are responsible for,” Nora said. “Not us.”
“Yes, but governors endorse or reject budgets in the end. So Logan has a bully pulpit.” Thank God I hadn’t glazed over the last time Lee vented so I could impress them with the termbully pulpit.
“What exactly are you proposing?” Logan was frowning. I couldn’t tell if he was deep in thought or deeply skeptical.
I took a steadying breath. “That we promise to not only stop the next budget cut, but reverse it. I want to fight for an increase in funding to hire more teachers and staff, and give everyone who works in schools a modest pay raise. At least enough so they can afford the classroom supplies they pay for out of their own pockets.”
“I’m sorry, Alexis.” In yet another sharp suit tonight—this time electric blue—and with her locs pulled into an immaculate French braid, Nora radiated the authority I was striving for. “It’s not that I don’t think it’s a worthwhile cause. But putting aside the fact that doing anything to the state budget is wildly complicated,andthat we’ve already chosen our policy priorities, it’s a conflict of interest. Logan can’t campaign for an increase in funding that would directly benefit his girlfriend.”
“He’s not,” I said. “I’m going to campaign for it.”
She blinked at me.
