Governor Page 7

  Carter flips the deadbolt and presses his eye to the viewfinder. “You have fifteen seconds to get in your car and leave,” Carter yells. “You try to fuck with our cars, you’re leaving in an ambulance.”

  He watches, then starts to softly chuckle.

  “What?” Susa and I both ask.

  “He just tripped running for his car. Nearly knocked himself out against the fender.” He remains there, watching for another moment. Then he straightens, nodding, before he turns. “He’s gone.”

  Susa throws herself past me at Carter, giving him a long hug that I’m struggling not to feel jealous over.

  “Thank you!” she says.

  I really didn’t do anything but stand there. Of course Carter’s earned her gratitude—and her hug.

  His gaze catches mine before he returns her hug. “You’re welcome. Anytime. My pleasure.”

  Then she turns and hugs me, too.

  I hope she can’t feel the way my cock hardened in my jeans. And her hug lasts a too-brief forever, leaving me smelling a sweet floral scent that I realize is her shampoo or something.

  She’s wearing a broad grin. “I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t come back.”

  “Can he call your phone?” Carter asks.

  “I blocked him on my cell, and I don’t have a landline. I never answer numbers that aren’t in my contacts.”

  “Good girl,” Carter says, and I note the way she blushes even as she gives him another smile.

  And that her glance lingers a hair too long on him.

  “Dinner smells great,” I say more to break my own growing tension than to interrupt their silent exchange.

  She awards me with a smile. “And now we can sit down and actually enjoy it.”

  * * * *

  The small, four-person dinette set feels even tinier in the large dining room area just off the kitchen.

  “We could have eaten at the breakfast counter, I guess,” she says, “but this way we can see each other.” The table is round, so there’s no “head” of the table, but she’s put Carter between us, with her on his right, me on his left, and the empty chair between me and her.

  At least I’m facing her, meaning I have no trouble stealing long glances at her while she’s talking with and focused on Carter.

  The food is amazing, and I’m still not sure exactly what I did. I know I couldn’t recreate it by myself. I was too distracted listening to their discussion while we cooked.

  Which brings me to a question that I know might sound out of left field to them, but one I need answered.

  “How did you two cook without recipes?”

  They both look at me, then glance at each other before focusing on me again. “I have those recipes memorized,” she says. “I’ve made them, no kidding, over a couple hundred times growing up.” She shrugs. “I don’t need a recipe.”

  We both look at Carter, who’s now wearing an amused smile. “It might piss you off,” he warns both of us.

  My gaze narrows. “Why?”

  His focus returns to his food. “I have a really good memory.” He forks another bite of food into his mouth.

  “Like a photographic memory?” I ask.

  Another of those totally Carter shrugs. “Not quite eidetic, but close enough.”

  Fuck me, now Susa’s re-evaluating Carter. I see the way her gaze narrows, how she seems to be…calculating.

  “Tell me about the Carris-Thompson environmental bill,” she says.

  His eyes unfocus for the briefest moment. I remember them talking about it earlier, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Our instructor mentioned it in class today. I think.

  I’m…pretty sure.

  Maybe?

  Fuck, I don’t know.

  Carter starts not only regurgitating everything the instructor said, but some of what Susa had added during their discussion earlier that evening…and apparently the actual text of the bill, which I remember was in our reading material for the class.

  “Holy fuck,” I mutter when he finally stops.

  She points her fork at him. “We need to get you elected.”

  He slowly shakes his head. “Not me.” He nods toward me. “Owen is the face. I’d be happy to be the power behind the throne for him.” Our gazes lock, and I believe him.

  Totally.

  Then he looks at Susa. “Or for you.”

  She studies both of us for a long moment. “Gentlemen,” she says. “Not to sound clichéd, but I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  Chapter Nine

  I volunteer to wash the dishes. Carter and Susa are still discussing Florida politics, although we’ve moved on to the state’s GOP organization and how dysfunctional it truly is, while the state-level DNC isn’t any better. It only takes me a minute to rinse everything and tuck it into the dishwasher while she brings me plastic food containers to pack the leftover in.

  “So what would you peg as being the biggest problem both parties share?” Carter asks her. “At the state level.”

  “Honestly? Rich, white, older men like Daddy. Especially cishet ones. They’re trying to court a minority hard-core ‘base’ that doesn’t really exist for either party, guys just like them with money, instead of picking a solid platform to run on. They worry about grabbing national cable news channel sound bites instead of actually doing their damn jobs. Or, on the other end of the extreme, they’re too caught up in their political dogma to do their damn jobs. They try to wrap everyone in to everything and, in the end, lose nearly everyone.”

  Carter leaned against the counter. “Example?”

  “State Rep Mitchell Dominguez, three years ago. Democrat incumbent. Lost a state House seat in a deep blue district that should have been his for the taking down in Miami-Dade. He started worrying about what they were doing in DC instead of what they were doing in Miami-Dade. Went national with his platform, when the key issue the citizens in his district were worried about was FDOT wanting to enact eminent domain proceedings on some properties to create new Florida Turnpike on and off ramps, and all the traffic that would bring their region. The GOP guy, new guy, Paul Sanchez, ran unopposed in the primary because no one thought they’d ever unseat Dominguez, and there was a state Senate seat up for grabs, thanks to term limits, that everyone wanted to try for.

  “Sanchez was a newbie to the GOP, ran without any local party support. Guy’s a literal freaking racist. There were first-hand reports of him being buddy-buddy with white nationalists who are, again, literal Klansmen. He belongs to this small radical evangelical church who, yet again, literally preaches gays are an abomination and should be killed. Massive anti-abortion guy, anti-gay rights. All of that. Fucker never should have made it past primaries.

  “But few people heard any of that because he kept the focus on that one key district issue and hammered Dominguez on his national politics every time the guy turned around. Sanchez controlled the message because Dominguez was sloppy and had a shit-for-brains guy running his comms. Instead of Dominguez looking local and meeting Sanchez there in that battle pit, and saying, oh, by the way, this guy is a flipping racist, Dominguez was chasing his own tail at every debate.

  “But Sanchez looked good to the locals who were showing up at town hall meetings and saying, ‘Hey, I don’t want to lose my house or have all that extra traffic in our area.’ Sanchez found out who all the FDOT people were behind this, by name, was doing the homework, and calling them out at all these local rallies. He wore out more shoes, knocked on more doors, and made more phone calls.

  “So who are these hard-working, middle-class people going to vote for? The guy who’s kvetching about what the assholes in Washington are doing, or the guy who shows up and says, ‘Hey, you elect me, I’m going to be knocking on Joe Smith’s office door in Tallahassee and fighting for you to save your homes.’”

  She looks at me, then back to Carter. “You tell me.”

  Carter had been slowly nodding through all of this as he listened.

 
“Now, fortunately, someone with half a fucking brain got through to Dominguez,” she continues. “He unseated Sanchez two years later, before the asshole could do any real damage to state politics. Didn’t hurt Dominguez could leverage the fact that massively pro-life, fifty-year-old Sanchez got his sixteen-year-old mistress pregnant and paid for her abortion five years earlier.”

  “Ouch,” I say.

  She snorted. “Yeah. Daddy had a personal hand in that ratfuck. I might have asked him how he’d feel if I’d been the mistress. He didn’t have the info the first time around or he would have used it. Again, the GOP couldn’t find someone qualified to run in the district to unseat Sanchez in the primary, so Daddy dropped that bomb about four weeks before the general, when it was too late for Sanchez to mount an effective counter-attack ahead of when early voting opened.”

  The way Carter tips his head tells me that news interests him. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Daddy might be staunchly red, but even he couldn’t stomach the thought of that guy being tagged GOP for another two years.”

  “Wait.” Carter tips his head back and stares at the ceiling for a moment. “That means you were fifteen when all this happened?”

  Holy. Shit.

  When I was fifteen, I was focused on passing my high school classes and when Imagine Dragons were dropping their next album.

  She smiles. “It’s amazing what rich old white guys will talk about when there’s a girl in the room who they completely underestimate. Daddy frequently takes me to events instead of Momma, because I’m better at getting him information. Which works out for both of us, because Momma hates going to those things, and she was usually busy with her own work.”

  “What does she do?” Carter asks.

  “Until three years ago, she was a professor of anthropology at FSU. She retired.”

  “Can I ask a stupid question?” Carter poses.

  She smirks, the dimple returning. “Sure.”

  She’s fucking adorable, and I’m so fucking screwed.

  “When are you running for office?” Carter asks.

  She shrugs. “Well, I’m personally not going to screw around with local-level offices. I am going to leverage Daddy’s name and contacts, in that respect. I’m independent, not stupid. I know how to play the game. Need to be at least twenty-one to run for state House or Senate. Then, I’m going for the big G. But you have to be at least thirty to run for that, and have to be a registered voter in the state for seven years. That means I have time. Now, all I have to do is get my law degree, make my own rep within the state party, and bring it home. Depending on who’s looking strongest when I hit that point, I might run as a lieutenant first. Make deeper connections. I know any GOP candidate will break his own neck trying to kiss Daddy’s ass for political brownie points and name me their lieutenant governor.”

  “Why don’t you want to try for smaller local offices first?”

  She snorts. “You know how much I can make being a lawyer between now and then? I mean, sure, if it wasn’t for Daddy, I’d go that route. Build name recognition and connections. Practice in a populated county where I can run for county commission or school board or something, bring in the poll numbers.” She smiles. “And learn the dirt, where the bodies are buried, so I can leverage that when I run.”

  Wow. She’s really thought this out.

  I had trouble planning my class schedule last year.

  In addition to all of this, she admitted earlier in the evening that she already has a year and a half of college credits completed via dual-enrollment classes she took in high school. So she’s actually academically ahead of me and Carter.

  I feel like not just a slacker, but like a total loser compared to Susa and her work ethic. She possesses a drive I damn sure don’t have at my age, a determination I don’t think I’ll ever have in my life. I’m not hard-wired that way.

  Which is why I know my secret desire to be able to enact greater good through public office is nothing more than a fantasy I’ll make myself feel lousy and less-than about every time the thought flits through my mind.

  “You must really love the GOP,” Carter says. She snorts. “What?”

  “I hate the bastards. If it wasn’t for Daddy, I wouldn’t be in the party in the first place. Not very fond of the DNC, either, to be honest.”

  “Why not run for office as a third-party candidate?” he asks.

  She snorts again. “I’d love to, but that’s not going to happen in this state. Maybe some guy could pull it off, but no way could a female candidate make it like that. At least, not in the current political environment. I hate saying that, but there it is. A female candidate needs to be red or blue, needs the weight of the state’s party behind her. Especially not for governor. I mean, maybe if she was lieutenant for eight years to a strong third-party male candidate who kicks ass and has good poll numbers? Sure. We’re a closed-primary state, so that part would benefit her, at least.”

  Carter’s gaze falls on me. Something about the way his gaze steadily holds mine for a long, quiet moment twists things deep inside me in a good way. The one thing I’ve learned about Carter in the short amount of time I’ve known him is that he seems genuine and doesn’t need me to try to impress him. I can be myself around him in a way I can’t around my mother and step-father or their friends.

  He doesn’t deliberately make me feel stupid, or in the way.

  But I can’t identify the expression on his face right now as he’s contemplating…something.

  “What?” I finally ask.

  He glances at her, and their gazes meet. The good kind of twisting inside me is suddenly tinged with green, until they both look at me again.

  My face heats under their intense focus.

  I’m totally fricking lost—yet again. “What?”

  Carter seems to do another quick mental calculation. “He’s two years older than you. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I think so.” She smiles at me.

  “Okay, what?”

  “But wait,” she says. “You’ll be eligible in two years.”

  Carter shakes his head. “No, not me. I have no desire to run for any office. I’ll be happy as chief of staff. That’s where the real power is, anyway.”

  “Ahhhh, smart man.”

  I wonder if they’ve even heard me. “Uh, hellooo?” I give a little wave. “What are we talking about?”

  Carter awards me with another of those smiles I can’t process but really like. “Getting you elected governor on a third-party ticket.”

  “Who, me?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  “Um, I don’t even have a law degree yet. Can we not put the cart before the horse?” Never mind the fact that no way in hell could I manage to get myself elected.

  Susa chews on her right thumbnail as she studies me. “Timing doesn’t work out exactly with the election schedule. But that’s okay. We shoot for local and lower offices first.” She nods. “Yeah, it’d be totally doable that way. Build his rep, his name. Little cushion of time, in case there’s a strong candidate we don’t want to go up against.”

  “You guys can quit fucking with me anytime,” I mutter.

  “We’re not fucking with you, “Carter says, his tone completely earnest. “We’re planning.”

  “You’ve got the looks for it,” Susa says. “Being a candidate literally is ninety percent how you appear to the public. If you don’t fuck up in a horrible way, that is. Or they don’t catch you fucking a dog, a little boy, or a dead hooker. I wish I was kidding about that part.”

  Her compliment about my looks is totally swamped by my growing fear. “I don’t have a law degree yet. You remember that, right?”

  She dismisses my objection with an airy wave. “We’ll get there. And don’t worry, I’ll teach you what you need to know.” She smiles at me. “We have faith in you.”

  Later, I’ll look back on that moment and realize that’s when it was all taken out of my hands.

  Believe it or
not, I’m totally okay with that.

  Chapter Ten

  It’s difficult to believe I’ve known Carter less than four days. It feels like I’ve known him for years.

  Then, in the space of less than one day, Susa quickly burrows under my skin.

  Emotions swirl through me that I don’t understand and can’t label. Love? Infatuation? Desire? Eagerness?

  Premonition?

  I don’t know. I usually don’t like not knowing, because, growing up in my mother’s home, I’ve needed to know things like this as a survival tactic.

  Except, for the first time in my life, I make a conscious decision to be okay with not knowing and decide to just…let it all happen.

  While I’d brought my class materials and my laptop with me, we end up gathered in Susa’s living room to talk, with her perched in a comfortable lounger chair and me and Carter on her sofa.

  Other than the coffee table, a low table doing double duty as an entertainment center, and a bookcase, it’s the only furniture in the large area. The vast, gaping emptiness of the room emphasizes the cozy, close gathering of furniture in front of the TV.

  She tucks her feet under her and leans forward a little as she talks, the intensity glowing around her.

  I know comparing her to a furnace might get old, but it’s the most apt term I can think of. She radiates heat and lights the room.

  I would willingly be consumed by her.

  Carter has apparently already read through our textbooks and the course syllabus, because he’s talking with her about things I know are still a few weeks away, at least.

  I finally grab my spiral notebook and a pen to jot stuff down as I listen to them.

  Maybe, if nothing else, this’ll be one class I won’t struggle through.