Off the Record

Chapter 20 AN EMOTIONAL TRIGGER

Liz pulled out her phone as soon as the cab drove off. She tapped Carmichael from her contact list and waited for Brady’s secretary to answer. The campaign never slept, and Brady always had someone working the phones so he wouldn’t miss anything important.

“Senator Maxwell’s office. How may I help you?” his secretary answered.

“Sandy Carmichael for the Senator, please,” she chirped.

His secretary paused slightly on the other line before responding, “Yes, Ms. Carmichael. One moment.”

Liz froze at the way she said her name. Brady had had the same secretary all summer. Liz wondered whether Nancy knew in some way…about her and Brady. She couldn’t know for certain, but Liz used this line several times a week lately. She should probably mention it to Brady, but she didn’t want to freak him out. Maybe it was better to tell him than take a risk.

“Ms. Carmichael, how nice to hear from you,” Brady said into the phone. Liz squirmed where she stood at the sound of his voice. She was pretty drunk and ready for him to come pick her up already.

“Please tell me you’re not still at the office.”

“I’m in Chapel Hill, actually.”

“Perfect. I’m drunk on Franklin Street. Come pick me up. I want you…now,” she demanded. She took a step forward, stumbled, and latched on to a bench nearby. She giggled into the phone like tripping was the funniest thing she had ever done.

“Baby, how drunk are you?” he asked, laughter in his voice.

“Just come get me. I’m going to try to walk to the main bus stop,” Liz said, looking at it only a block down the street.

“Maybe you shouldn’t move.” Liz heard his engine rev through the line and smiled.

“Maybe I shouldn’t, but you might not find me.”

“I’ll find you.”

“I’ll be at the bus stop.”

“Be safe.”

Liz narrowed her eyes at the bus stop to keep it from moving and then tried putting one foot in front of the other. It was harder than it looked. Whatever that last drink had been that Victoria had ordered had fucked her up. She needed some water. She glanced over at the store and thought about going in and getting a water bottle. She shook her head. No, she had to meet Brady, and she didn’t trust herself to make it inside and back to the bus stop.

She reached the first post at the bus stop and gripped it until she was steady. This was good enough. Holding on to the post made her feel better, more grounded. Her mind started clearing as long as she kept up deep breaths. She didn’t want to be sloppy when she was with Brady.

A sleek black Lexus pulled up in front of the bus stop, and Liz smiled. There was her ride.

The ten minutes holding on to the bus stop post had helped her addled mind, and she was able to more nimbly walk around the vehicle. She opened the car door and slid into the black leather passenger seat. It smelled like Brady—primal, enticing, and powerful. If that were a specific smell, she would only associate it with Brady.

He pulled away from the bus stop as soon as her door closed. She tilted her head back and stared at him. She reached out and laced their fingers together. He didn’t let go and instead held her hand in his lap. It felt natural, as if he had always been doing it.

“I’m glad you called,” he said.

“Me too,” she said, tracing her thumb in circles on his hand. Whatever had hit her so hard at the bar was fading away to a nice numbness.

“I have a surprise for you, if you’re up for it,” he said, glancing over at her.

“A surprise?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. The last big surprise had been the lake house. What other surprise could he have up his sleeve? “We’re not going to the lake, are we?”

“No. This is better. More important to me.”

Important. That was a big word. “I sure hope that surprise involves a bed.”

Brady chuckled and shook his head. “I’m glad you had fun. How drunk are you, anyway?”

“Gone,” she whispered.

“Are you feeling up to something else? Or should I take you home?” he asked, concerned.

“At least take me to a hotel so I can sleep with you.” She scooted over and rested her head on his shoulder. She was surprised, having not looked at anything aside from his handsome face, that she wasn’t resting on a suit. “You’re wearing a T-shirt,” she mused.

“I do own those,” he said, trying to hold in his laughter.

“You should wear them more often.”

“Are you trying to get me out of my suit?”

“Don’t I always?” she asked with a giggle.

“I think you need some water,” Brady said, turning to the side and kissing the top of her head.

“I was going to get some, but I didn’t know how far away you were. Where are we going anyway?”

“You’ll see. Do you need me to stop?” he asked her.

“No. I’ll be okay,” she told him.

“All right. But you have to drink some water when we get there.”

“I can do that. How far away are we?” She had no idea where they were going, and Brady didn’t seem ready to give out any clues. She just wanted to go somewhere where they could be alone. She preferred it that way; then there wouldn’t be any tension holding them back.

“Not too far. Maybe twenty to thirty minutes. Just relax. We’ll be there soon,” he told her. Liz nodded, nuzzled into his shoulder, and closed her eyes.

“Baby,” Brady whispered against her hair, “it’s time to wake up.”

Liz fluttered her eyes open and yawned. She hadn’t even realized that she had fallen asleep, but she had been completely out of it for the entire car ride.

They rounded a corner into a complex of brick townhomes. This was a nice area with well-groomed lawns, a gate around the entrance, and rows of clean cars. This certainly wasn’t student housing. Brady pulled into a spot in front of one of the buildings and cut the engine. Liz looked around, suddenly feeling much more sober than she had when she had first gotten into the car.

Liz looked at Brady in confusion. “Where are we?”

Brady was smiling from ear to ear. He was beyond happy at the moment, and she didn’t know why.

“I’ll show you,” Brady said, exiting the car and coming around the side to help her out.

Brady opened the door for her and she took his hand as she stood. Seemed that the car ride had helped sober her up more than she thought. She wasn’t even that wobbly on her feet. She could still use some water, though. She didn’t want to get sick later.

He slid her hand in the crook of his elbow. Liz looked down in surprise, then around the apartment complex, as if she was worried they might be watched. “Brady, is this all right?” she asked, knowing he would get what she meant.

“Right now. It’s fine. Calm down,” he said with a smile.

Liz walked with him up the stairs to the second floor of one of the buildings. Her earlier buzz had dissipated, and she didn’t like not knowing what she was getting herself into.

Brady knocked on the door twice, and they waited there for someone to answer.

A couple minutes later, the door swung inward and a tall guy with sandy brown hair answered the door. He was wearing a UNC T-shirt and khaki shorts despite the late hour. He smiled when he saw who was at the door. “Brady! Man, I thought you were never going to show!” the guy said as the two hugged each other with pats on the back.

“Sorry. Had to pick up someone along the way,” Brady told him.

Liz was thoroughly confused. Wasn’t Brady going to freak out? Who was this guy? And why was Brady allowing them to be seen together? It felt odd standing there as the two guys acted completely normal.

“Come on inside,” the guy said, ushering them through the door, closing it firmly behind them, and locking it.

Liz walked down a hallway and into a modern-looking living room with an enormous flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. His furniture was low to the ground in blacks and whites and a splash of blue here and there.

Brady smiled big and pulled her into his arms as the guy walked into the kitchen. She complied, though she was sure she looked thoroughly confused. What about their closely guarded secret? “Liz,” he said, bending and kissing her lips lightly, “this is my surprise.”

“Um…” she said, not sure what to say.

He released her as the guy walked back into the room with a glass of water. “Brady said you might need this.”

Liz took it out of his hand. “Thank you.”

“Liz, I’d like to introduce you to my best friend, Chris. Chris, this is Liz, the girl I was telling you about,” Brady said.

She was meeting someone. She was actually meeting someone in Brady’s life—even if they were meeting in secret, in the middle of the night, at his place so that no one would know about it. This was good. This was a step. That meant that someone knew about her…someone important in his life. That must make her important in his life too.

“So nice to meet you,” she said, switching the glass over to her left hand and shaking with her right.

“Nice to meet you too.”

“He mentions you in his speeches,” she said, dropping her hand and thinking of the only time Brady had mentioned Chris around her.

Chris pinned Brady with a glare. “You’re still using that same old shit? Can’t you come up with something original? I moved to New York, just get over it,” he said, shaking his head, then turning back to Liz. “He’s such a sap.”

A sap. Liz would have never in a million years described Brady as sappy.

“People like to hear that I made the right choice by sticking around. You’re a good emotional trigger, or so the speechwriter tells me. Plus, you shouldn’t have moved so far away.”

“If I hadn’t moved, what would you have talked about?” Chris asked.

Brady shrugged. “I’m sure I could have thought of something else to make fun of you for.”

Liz stared between the two guys. She had never seen Brady act like this. Was he actually cracking jokes and laughing at himself? She had always thought he was pretty serious. Sometimes he was sarcastic with her, but that was dry humor…totally different from this.

“Seriously, convince your speechwriter to come up with new material. People are going to start noticing how full of shit you are,” Chris said as he walked past Brady and took a seat on the couch. Liz giggled and then covered her mouth quickly.

“I’ll pass along the message,” Brady said, shaking his head. He turned back to Liz with a bright, breathtaking smile on his face. He looked so happy and relaxed. “What were you laughing at, huh?”

“Oh nothing,” she said, unable to hold back her smile.

“That’s what I thought.” He reached out for her. “See what I have to deal with? Both of you thinking I’m full of shit.”

“Must mean it’s true if your best friend and your girl think so,” Chris said, lounging across the couch.

Liz’s breath caught. Had Chris just called her Brady’s girl? She looked up into Brady’s face and didn’t see any frustration or anger. He hadn’t bit back a retort. He wasn’t correcting Chris. What was happening?

“Must be,” Brady said, planting a kiss on her lips and then pushing her toward the couch.

She was too stunned to even respond. She just sat down.

Brady took the seat next to her and draped his arm over her shoulder. She had so many questions, not the least of which was Why was this okay? She wasn’t complaining; this was incredible. She just didn’t know that this was going to happen. Could she honestly think of a better surprise?

“So, Liz, Brady tells me you’re at UNC. What are you majoring in?” Chris asked, switching gears. He picked up a controller off of the table and tossed it to Brady, who caught it one-handed. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Liz shook her head. Video games. Seriously, who was this guy she had been seeing the last two months?

She broke out of her trance to answer Chris’s question. “Journalism. I work at the newspaper.”

“Nice. I used to read the kvetching column every day.”

“Oh dear Lord, you’re one of those?” she asked, unable to hold back.

Chris and Brady both laughed at that. “I didn’t care about much in college, so it wouldn’t surprise anyone that I’m one of those, as you said.” He turned on the XBOX and the icon blasted onto the enormous screen.

The guys set up their game as they talked, and soon they were trying to kill each other on the television screen.

“So, journalism, huh?” Chris said, bobbing and weaving with his player. “What made you choose that?”

“I’ve always wanted to be a reporter, since I was a little kid. Most people change what they want to do as they grow up, but my goals stayed pretty consistent,” she told him.

She couldn’t help staring at Brady instead of the screen. He was playing video games. His smile was contagious, and everything that he and Chris said to each other was a riot. They could badger each other and still laugh. It was very clear they had known each other for a long time.

She suddenly felt a loss grip her, as if she had missed a part of him for the past two months. He could very clearly enjoy himself and be normal when he felt completely comfortable and didn’t have to hold back.

“Nice. I changed majors about ten times in college. Ended up getting a business degree like Brady. Professors hated having us in classes together,” Chris told her.

“I can see that. You two seem like you could get in a lot of trouble together.”

“Wait a minute,” Brady said. “Professors hated having you in class. They didn’t have a problem with me.”

“Don’t believe everything he tells you. He fucked up as much in college as the rest of us,” Chris said as Brady grumbled curse words under his breath.

Liz laughed again. “I bet he did.”

“Seriously don’t believe him,” Brady whispered into her ear. His lip brushed against her earlobe and she shivered.

“Are you from the area then?” Chris asked.

“No, my family lives in Tampa. My dad’s a professor at South Florida,” she told them.

“Your dad is a professor?” Brady asked, stopping his movements on the controller and turning to look at her. Chris proceeded to kill Brady’s character off.

“Yeah,” she said, staring up into his dark, intense eyes.

“I didn’t know that.”

“You never asked.”

“What does he teach?” Brady asked, suddenly very interested.

“Calculus primarily.”

“Huh. And you’re not a math person?” he asked.

“I’m a Morehead scholar. I’m perfectly fine at math. It’s just not my area of interest,” she told him diplomatically.

That got Chris’s attention. “You’re a Morehead scholar?” he asked, sounding very impressed. “Isn’t that the highest merit scholarship in the school?”

Liz shrugged, her cheeks flushing. “Yeah. It is.”

“Damn,” he said, appraising her.

“That’s impressive,” Brady said softly.

“Thanks,” she said, embarrassed. She turned away from his heated look and let them get back to their game. She hadn’t thought her answers would distract them so much, but she couldn’t deny that she liked how interested Brady had been in her background.

The guys played a couple games together, and Liz felt herself dozing off again. She rarely got much sleep when she was with Brady, but it tended to be for other reasons entirely.

“Hey, are you falling asleep?” Brady asked, nudging her lightly.

“Oh, no,” she said, jumping up. “I’m not.”

“You guys need to come up to New York sometime,” Chris said. “My place there is smaller than this and I pay ten times as much on it, but you can’t beat the location in Manhattan.”

Liz looked up at Brady as he turned to look at her. She could read his expression. Chris clearly knew that they weren’t out in public. Brady wouldn’t have brought them here otherwise.

“What are you doing in North Carolina, anyway?” she asked, changing the subject so Brady didn’t have to respond. Brady kissed her lips once before returning to his game. She wondered if that was her thank you.

“Oh, I’m here for Brady’s fucking gala event or whatever it is this weekend,” Chris told her.

“Oh, really? I didn’t know you would be there,” Liz said. That was promising. At least she would know one other person besides Brady.

“Yeah. Are you going?”

She looked up at Brady expectantly. “Yeah, I got her a ticket,” he said.

“You two are going together?” Chris asked, mashing one of the buttons repeatedly with his thumb.

Brady sighed and looked down at her. She could tell he wasn’t happy with that question. She knew they couldn’t go together. She really, really wanted to go with him, but he wasn’t going to let that happen…not right before the primary. This was what she had signed up for, but she couldn’t help silently pleading with him to change his mind.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea with the election coming up,” Brady said.

Chris looked as if he wanted to say more about it, but he didn’t. And that closed it. “You know, you could always go with me.”

“What?” Brady asked before Liz could speak.

“Hear me out. I don’t have a date, and she doesn’t have a date. It would be better for both of us if we went together. Then no weird old ladies will try to hand me off to their sons, and, yes, that has happened before,” Chris told them.

“I don’t know,” Liz said, trying to read Brady’s reaction.

“It’s really a flawless plan,” Chris said.

“What do you think?” Liz asked Brady.

He leaned down and whispered in her ear so that Chris couldn’t hear. “I don’t want anyone else even near you, but compared to the alternative, Chris is tolerable. As long as you know, baby, you’re going home with me.”

“I don’t want anyone else,” she whispered back.

Brady smiled and nodded at Chris. “I think that will work better than you both showing up alone. I can send you the details for the weekend.”

“Sounds good,” Chris said, stretching exaggeratedly. “I think I’m beat. I’m going to go to bed. You guys feel free to stay. I have a guest room down that hallway.” He pointed off in the opposite direction of where he was walking. “Really nice meeting you, Liz.”

“Nice meeting you, too.”

Chris walked up the stairs to the second floor and out of sight. Brady planted his lips on hers, cradled her body against his, picked her up, and carried her into the guest bedroom.

“Look,” Brady said, kicking the door closed with his foot and setting her down, “the surprise comes with a bed.”