Acid rose up in her throat. “I can’t believe I let you touch me.”
He laughed. “And you will again, Barbie. Trust me on that.”
He swaggered back down the hall. She spat at his back, missing by yards. He laughed harder.
“Fifty percent,” she yelled.
He stopped, glanced back at her.
She was choking for air. Dear God, what had she done? “I want fifty percent of the take.”
“The take? Okay, Dick Tracy. I’ll give you twenty-five percent.”
“Fifty. I deserve it.”
He winked at her. “I like you, Barbie. You got the short end of the stick with the Swifts, and you keep on fighting. Yep. I like you a lot.”
“I’m serious. I want fifty percent.”
“Barbie, maybe you should think this through.” He rocked back on his heels. “I’m not a very nice man. I expect you know that by now. My sympathy for you only goes so far.”
She hesitated. Her head was spinning. This wasn’t a time for cold feet, any sign of weakness. “Twenty-five percent, then,” she said.
* * *
Jack Swift poured himself a second glass of wine. It was a dry apple-pear wine from a new winery in his home state. He toasted Sidney Greenburg, who was still on her first glass. “To the wines of Rhode Island.”
She laughed. “Yes, but not to this particular bottle. I love fruit wines, Jack, but this one’s pure rot-gut.”
He laughed, too. “It is, isn’t it? Well, I’ve never been much of a wine connoisseur. A good scotch—that’s something I can understand.”
It was a very warm, humid, still evening. They were sitting out in the tiny brick courtyard of his Georgetown home. Rhode Island, his home state, the state he’d represented first in the House, then in the Senate, seemed far away tonight. This was where he’d raised his son, where he’d nursed his wife through her long, losing battle with cancer. They were both gone now. He’d been tempted to sell the house. He’d bought it in his early days in Washington; it’d go for a mint. He’d even debated quitting the Senate. Barbara Allen had talked him out of both. Over twenty years, she’d saved him from many a precipitous move.
“I don’t know what to do, Sidney.” He stared at the pale wine. He and Sidney had been discussing Barbara Allen most of the evening. “She’s been with me since she was a college intern.”
“You’re not going to do anything.”
“I can’t just pretend—”
“Yes, you can, and you’ll be doing her a favor if you do.”
Sidney set her glass on the garden table. That she had such affection for him was a constant source of amazement. He was an old widower, a gray-haired, paunchy United States senator who wasn’t eaten up with his own self-importance. She was a striking woman, with very dark eyes and dark hair liberally streaked with gray. She wore little makeup, and she complained about carrying more weight than she liked around her hips and thighs; Jack hadn’t noticed. She was intelligent, kind, experienced and self-assured, comfortable in her own skin. She’d worked with Lucy’s parents at the Smithsonian and had known Lucy since she was a little girl, long before Lucy had met Colin.
“Listen to me, Jack,” she said. “Barbara is not a pathetic woman. You are not to feel sorry for her because she’s forty and unmarried. If she’s given herself to her job to the exclusion of her personal life, that was her choice. Allow her the dignity of having made that choice. And don’t assume just because she doesn’t have a husband and children, she must not have a full life.”
“I haven’t! I wouldn’t—”
“Of course, you would. People do it all the time.” She smiled, taking any edge off her words. “If Barbara Allen’s feeling a little goofy and off-center right now, accept it at face value and give her a chance to get over it.”
Jack sighed. “She practically threw herself at me.”
“And I suppose you’ve never had a married woman throw herself at you?”
“Well…”
“Come on, Jack. If Barbara’s nuts unmarried, she’d be nuts married.”
He held back a smile. As educated and refined as Sidney was, she did know how to cut to the chase. “I didn’t say she was nuts.”
“That’s my point exactly.” Her eyes shone, and she spoke with conviction, laughing at his frown. “You are a very dense man for someone who has to go before the people for votes. Jack, the woman made a pass at you. It’s been three years since Colin’s death, five years since Eleanor’s death. You’ve only just begun dating again. I see her actions as—” She shrugged. “Perfectly normal.”
He drank more of his wine. The damn stuff all tasted the same to him, whether it was made from pears, apples or grapes. “Maybe so.”
“But?”
“I don’t know.”
“The unmarried forty-year-old in the office makes people nervous. They never know if she’s a little dotty, living in squalor with twenty-five cats.”
“That’s archaic, Sidney.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s true. If Barbara were married and made a pass at you, you’d be flattered. You wouldn’t sit here squirming over what to do. You’d think she was a normal, healthy woman.” She grabbed up his hand. “Jack, I’ve been there.”
“No one could ever think you were off your gourd.”
She smiled. “I have two cats. I’ve been known to feed them off the china.”
He saw the twinkle in her eye and laughed. That was what he treasured about Sidney most of all. She made him laugh. She was quick-witted, self-deprecating, irreverent. She didn’t take her job, herself, or life inside the Beltway too seriously.
But Jack couldn’t shake a lingering sense of uneasiness. “There’s still something about Barbara.”
“Then there’s something about Barbara. Period.”
“I see what you’re saying—”
“Finally!” Sidney fell back against her chair, as if his denseness had exhausted her. “Now, can we change the subject?”
He smiled. “Gladly.”
She gave him an impish grin. “Let’s talk about my cats.”
Sidney didn’t stay the night. They both had unusual Saturday meetings, but Jack knew that really wasn’t the issue. “I’m just not ready to hang my panty hose in a senator’s bathroom,” she said breezily, kissing him good-night.
He remembered her counsel the next morning when he arrived in his office at eight and Barbara Allen, as ever, was at her desk. Before he could say a word, she gave him a bright smile. “Good morning, Senator.”
“Good morning, Barbara. I thought you were still on vacation.”
She waved a hand. “It was a few days off, not a vacation. I always planned to be back for this meeting. I know it’s important.”
He smiled. “Well, then, how were your few days off?”
“Perfect,” she said. “Just what I needed.”
She flipped around in her chair and tapped a few keys on her computer. She looked great, Jack thought—relaxed, polished, professional, with none of the wild desperation that had made them both so uncomfortable the week before.
Relief