“You’re making a mistake, Lee.”
“I have a business to run. But it’s been good talking to you, Brian.” And with that parting line, he hung up. Daniel tried to turn his attention back to the latest reports on the marketing campaign for the Beaumont Brewery’s launch of a new craft beer. But for once, Daniel couldn’t focus.
He found himself staring at pictures of Christine Murray as his mind spun out all of the possibilities. Naïvely, Daniel found himself hoping that her father’s opponent would leave Christine Murray out of it. He went back to his search results. There wasn’t much. There was an announcement that her child had been born, a daughter. There was a teaser article that suggested she was going to sign for the next season of Ballroom Dancing With Superstars—but that was from the previous season. Clearly, she hadn’t.
After digging deeper, he found what he was looking for—a small bio with the standard headshot attached to the First City Bank of Denver’s website. It had to be her—those blue eyes were unmistakable. She was a loan officer at the First City Bank. And she was in Denver? He’d been out of the game too long—he hadn’t realized she was so close.
Christine had nothing to do with her father—especially not if she had been in Denver for the last year and a half. She might not get dragged into this special election.
But Daniel knew that wasn’t how things worked. The opposition’s campaign manager would size up the competition. It would take all of twelve seconds to dig up every piece of useful information he could on Clarence Murray and when he did, Christine would be at the top of that list.
They would come for her again.
Daniel didn’t like guilt. And he shouldn’t care.
But he stared at the small picture on the bank’s website. She didn’t look trapped in that photo. She looked cautious, though. She looked like a woman who believed putting any picture of herself on the internet was inviting abuse.
If Daniel had any faith in Clarence Murray actually being a spiritual man, he might try to convince himself that Murray would close ranks around his daughter, try to protect her.
But Brian White wouldn’t allow that to happen. Christine Murray was a liability. Daniel was willing to bet large sums of money—and he had large sums of money to bet—that Brian would attack her first. He would make an example out of her to show that Clarence Murray did not engage in nepotism and stuck by his beliefs.
Daniel picked up the phone and dialed the executive office. “Yes?” his half brother, Zeb, said into the phone. “Do you have those numbers?”
Daniel absolutely should not get involved. But two well-funded, cutthroat political campaigns were about to descend upon Christine Murray. “Not yet. I need to be out of the office for a little bit—hopefully just a couple of hours, but it has the potential to become more involved.”
Zeb was quiet for a moment. “Everything okay?”
They had a tenuous relationship that was part stranger, part boss, part brother. The familial bonds felt awkward for both of them. “It should be. But if it becomes more involved, I’ll let you know.”
Zeb chuckled. “Yeah, that was reassuring. Good luck.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it.”
Which didn’t change the fact that he was going to need all the luck he could get.
* * *
Christine Murray looked longingly at the coffeepot in the break room. She needed something stronger than green tea, but she had learned the hard way that if she had coffee this late in the day and then nursed Marie at bedtime, the girl would be bouncing off the walls all night long.
Not that Marie would sleep, anyway. She was teething—again—and all Christine could do was cling to her sanity in a blind stumble toward the weekend, where she would at least get to nap when Marie went down in the afternoon.
It was days like today that she gave thanks that she was a loan officer instead of a teller. She’d always liked being a teller—the job had paid her way through college. But she did not have it in her today to be perky.
Tea in hand, she settled in at her desk and stared at her computer without really seeing anything. She allowed herself a moment of indulgence to think what if. What if Doyle, her fiancé, had stuck by her during her father’s last campaign? What if they had gotten married like they planned? What if she had some help with Marie?
But if she was going to dream about the impossible, she might as well go all out. What if her mom hadn’t died? What if her father hadn’t been on a quixotic journey toward political office for the last fifteen years? What if she had grown up in a normal household with normal parents?
Her phone rang, snapping her out of her reverie where life was perfect and everybody got at least seven hours of sleep every night. “Thank you for calling First City Bank of Denver, this is Christine. How can I help you?”
“Good afternoon, Ms. Murray.” Something in the man’s voice set her teeth on edge. “We haven’t been properly introduced but my name is Brian White and I’m calling on behalf of your father, Clarence Murray,” he added, as if Christine could possibly forget who her father was.
She slammed the phone down before she even realized what she was doing. She would never forget the name of the man who had ruined her life.
Brian White had been a campaign manager for the opponent in her father’s last attempt at higher office.
The phone rang again and she knew it was him. She didn’t want to answer it but she was at work. There was a chance that someone was calling about a loan. So, squeezing her eyes shut, she answered.
“Ms. Murray—I believe we were disconnected.”
The bottom fell out of her stomach and she sat bolt upright at her desk. “What do you want?”
“Ms. Murray. There is no need to sound alarmed,” he went on in that slick voice, which of course only scared her more. “Your father has asked me to reach out to you.”
“Oh?” Her voice wavered, darn it all. “He couldn’t bother to call me himself, I guess? I’m only his daughter, right?”
Mentally, she high-fived herself. She was still getting used to standing up for herself. She was not going to cower before political consultants or campaign managers or even her father.
That victory was incredibly short-lived because she realized a call from a campaign manager could only mean one thing. One terrible, awful thing.
“Your father is going to be running for the US Senate seat in the state of Missouri—were you aware that it recently became open?”
Christine did not throw up all over her desk. Score one for adulting. “I was not.”
“Sex scandals are such a tricky thing to negotiate. And the people of Missouri are going to be looking for someone with an unimpeachable character and record—someone like your father.”
Maybe she was so tired that she had fallen asleep at her desk and was having a nightmare. Wake up, she told herself.
Brian White kept talking. “What we’d like to do is make you a part of this campaign. A redemption story, if you will.”
Oh, God. “No, I don’t think I will.”
Because she had a very good idea of what a redemption story would look like to her father. There would be a public confession of her many, many sins. Probably something resembling a walk of shame. And that was just for starters. Her father would expect her to go on talk shows and accompany him on the campaign trail. Knowing him, he would expect her to find a nice man and then make Marie legitimate by getting married.
Her