gawking security guards.
Avery closed the door behind them. Everyone had already gone to bed except the four of them. Mandy was sleeping in the adjoining room. An ominous
silence pervaded the suite the calm before the storm.
“Fancy, where have you been?” Avery asked her softly.
She flung her hands far above her head and executed a clumsy pirouette. “Dancing. I had a wonderful time,” she trilled, batting her eyelashes at Eddy. “Of
course, nobody here would think so because you’re all so old. So straight. So ”
“You stupid little cunt.” Eddy backhanded her across the mouth. The force of the blow knocked her to the floor.
“Fancy!” Avery dropped to her knees beside the stunned girl. Blood trickled from the swelling cut on her lip.
“Eddy, what the hell’s the matter with you?” Tate demanded, catching his arm.
Eddy flung Tate off and loomed above Fancy. “Are you trying to ruin everything? Do you know what could have happened if those two cops hadn’t seen fit
to bring you here? This childish stunt could have cost us the election,” he shouted.
Tate grabbed his collar and hauled him back. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“She’s got it coming.”
“Not from you!” Tate roared. He gave Eddy’s shoulders a hard shove that sent him staggering backward. Eddy regained his balance, snarled, and lunged
for Tate.
“Stop it. both of you!” Avery shot to her feet and moved between them. “You’ll bring this hotel down on our heads, and what kind of headlines will that
create?”
The men stood facing each other like two bulls pawing the ground, but at least they were no longer shouting. Avery bent over Fancy again and helped her
to her feet. The girl was still so dazed she didn’t put up any resistance, but she whimpered with pain and remorse.
Tate touched her cheek briefly, then aimed a warning finger at his friend. “Never, never, touch a member of my family like that again.”
“I’m sorry, Tate.” Eddy smoothed his hands over his ruffled hair. His voice was low, composed, cool. The iceman was restored.
“That’s one area of my life where your opinion doesn’t count,” Tate said angrily, his lips barely moving to form the words.
“I said I was sorry. What else can I do?”
“You can stop sleeping with her.”
All were taken by surprise. Eddy and Fancy had no idea that Tate knew. Avery had told him she suspected it, but that was before she knew it for a
certainty. The women remained stunned and silent. Eddy walked to the door.
Before he went out, he said, “I think we all need time to cool off.”
Avery looked at Tate with undiluted love and respect for coming so quickly to Fancy’s defense, then placed her arm across the girl’s shoulders. “Come on,
I’ll walk you to your room.”
Once there, she waited while Fancy showered. Emerging from the bathroom, with her hair held away from her scrubbed face by barrettes, and wearing a
long T-shirt as a nightgown, she looked young and innocent.
“I improvised on an ice pack for your lip.” Avery handed her a plastic bag full of ice and led her toward the turned-down bed.
“Thanks. You’re getting good at that.”
Fancy propped herself against the headboard and held the ice pack to her lower lip. It had stopped bleeding, but was dark and swollen. She closed her
eyes. Tears trickled through her lashes and rolled down her shiny cheeks. Avery lowered herself to the side of the bed and took her hand.
“That son of a bitch. I hate him.”
“I don’t think so,” Avery countered softly. “I believe you thought you loved him.”
Fancy looked at her. “Thought I loved him?”
“I think you were in love with the idea of being in love with him. How much do you really know about Eddy? You told me yourself you knew very little. I think
you wanted to be in love with him because you knew deep down that the affair was inappropriate and had no chance of survival.”
“What are you, an amateur shrink?”
Fancy could put a strain on anyone’s patience, but Avery evenly replied, “I’m trying to be your friend.”
“You’re just trying to talk me out of him because you want him for yourself.”
“Do you really believe that?”
The girl stared at her for a long moment, and the longer she stared, the more tears filled her eyes. Eventually, she lowered her head. “No. Anybody can
see that you love Uncle Tate.” She sniffed her drippy nose. “And he’s ga-ga over you, too.”
She pulled her lower lip through her teeth. “Oh, God,” she wailed, “why can’t somebody love me like that? What’s wrong with me? Why does everybody
treat me like shit, like I was invisible or something?”
The floodgate had been opened and all her self-doubt came pouring out. “Eddy was just using me to get his rocks off, wasn’t he? I’d hoped that maybe he
would love me for something more than just what I was willing to do in bed. I should have known better,” she added in a bitter undertone.
Avery pulled Fancy into her arms. Fancy resisted for a second or two, then relented and let herself be comforted while she cried against Avery’s shoulder.
When her crying subsided, Avery eased her away.
“You know who should be in on this?”
Fancy wiped her wet face with the back of her hand. “Who?”
“Your mother.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. You need her, Fancy. More than that,” Avery said, pressing Fancy’s knee for emphasis, “she needs you. She’s been trying very hard to make up for
past mistakes. Why not give her a chance?”
Fancy thought it over for a moment, then nodded sullenly. “Sure, why not, if it’ll make the old girl feel significant.”
Avery dialed the room. Jack answered sleepily. “Is Dorothy Rae already in bed? Could she come to Fancy’s room?”
“What’s wrong?”
Avery looked at Fancy’s lip and lied, “Nothing. Just a hen party.”
In under a minute Dorothy Rae knocked. She was in her nightgown. “What is it, Carole?”
“Come in.”
The minute she saw Fancy’s face, she stopped dead in her tracks and raised a hand to her chest. “Oh, my baby! What happened to you?”
Fancy’s lower lip quivered. A fresh batch of tears filled her eyes. She stretched out her arms and, in a weak, tremulous voice said, “Mommy?”
“I left them crying in each other’s arms,” Avery told Tate a few minutes later. “This might have been the best thing that could have happened.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Eddy so irrational.” While she’d been gone, he’d stripped down to his trousers. Bare-chested, he was pacing the room, still
spoiling for a fight.
“He’s determined to get you elected. When something happens that could jeopardize that, his temper is explosive.”
“But to strike a woman?” Tate asked incredulously, shaking his head.
“How long have you known that he was sleeping with Fancy?”
“A few weeks.”
“He told you?”
“No, I picked up signals.”
“Did you say anything to him about it?”
“What could I say? He’s a grown-up. So is she. God knows he didn’t coerce her or sweet talk his way past her virginity.”
“I guess not,” Avery sighed. “But for all her sexual experience, Fancy’s extremely vulnerable, Tate. He’s hurt her.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending ”
“Listen!”
Avery held up her hand and signaled for quiet. Then, moving simultaneously, they rushed toward Mandy’s bedroom and burst through the door.
She was flailing her limbs, thrashing them against the bed covers. Her small face was contorted and bathed with sweat. She was weeping copiously, her
lips blubbering.
“Mommy! Mommy!” She screamed the name repeatedly.
Instinctively, Avery reached for her. Tate placed a restraining hand on her shoulder. “You can’t. This might be it.”
“Oh, no, Tate, please.”
He shook his head stubbornly. “We have to.”
So Avery sat on one side of Mandy and Tate sat on the other. Each lived through the hell the child’s subconscious mind was being put through.
“No, no.” She gasped for breath, holding her mouth wide. “Mommy? I can’t see Mommy. I can’t get out.”
Avery looked across at Tate. His fingers were steepled over his nose and mouth, his eyes fixed on his tormented daughter.
Suddenly Mandy sat bolt upright, as though a spring action device had catapulted her head off the pillow. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Her
eyes were open and unblinking, but she was still in the throes of the nightmare.
“Mommy!” she screamed. “Get me loose. I’m scared. Get me loose!”
Then her eyelids began to flutter and, though her respiration was still choppy, it no longer sounded as though she’d been running for miles and each
breath might be her last.
“Mommy’s got me,” she whispered. “Mommy’s got me now.” She flopped back down, and when she did, she woke up.
Once her eyes had focused, she divided her bewildered gaze between Tate and Avery. It was into Avery’s arms that she hurled her solid little body.
“Mommy, you got me out. You got me away from the smoke.”
Avery enfolded Mandy in her arms and hugged her tight. She squeezed her eyes shut and thanked God for healing this child who had become so dear to
her. When she opened her eyes, they melded with Tate’s. He extended his hand and stroked her cheek with his knuckle, then laid his hand on his
daughter’s head.
Mandy sat back on her heels and announced, “I’m hungry. Can I have some ice cream?”
Laughing with relief, Tate scooped her into his arms and swung her high over his head. She squealed. “You certainly can. What flavor?”
He ordered ice cream from room service, along with a change of linens from housekeeping to replace the damp, tangled sheets on Mandy’s bed. While
they waited for the deliveries, Avery changed Mandy into another nightgown and brushed her hair. Tate sat watching them.
“I had a bad dream,” Mandy told them pragmatically as she used another hairbrush on Pooh Bear. “But I’m not scared anymore ‘cause Mommy’s there to
get me away.”
She’d gotten sleepy again by the time she’d finished her ice cream. They tucked her in and sat at the foot of her bed until she fell asleep, knowing that if
Dr. Webster was right, her sleep would be uninterrupted from now on. As they left the room, their arms looped around each other’s waists, Avery began to
cry.
“It’s over,” Tate murmured and kissed her temple. “She’s going to be okay.”
“Thank God.”
“Then what are you crying for?”
“I’m exhausted,” she confessed with a soft laugh. “I’m going to take a long, hot bath. This day seems like it’s lasted twenty years.”
He had lived through Fancy’s crisis and Mandy’s nightmare with her. But Tate didn’t know that Avery had experienced an anxiety attack at the Spanish
church when she had spotted her nemesis outside the nave, surrounded by clambering media.
Once they had safely reached the limo, she had snuggled close to Tate, linking her arm through his and hugging his firm biceps to her breast. What he’d
mistaken for an outpouring of affection had actually been a reaction to stark fear.
When Avery came out of the bathroom a half hour later, her skin was dewy and fragrant from soaking in bath oil. With the light behind her, she provided
him with a tantalizing silhouette of her body through her nightgown.
“Still exhausted?” he asked.
The room was dim. The bed had been turned down. Avery’s subconscious registered this, because she only had eyes for Tate. His hair was attractively
mussed. The single light burning in the bathroom gilded his body hair. It fuzzily smattered his chest, whorled around his navel, then tapered to a satiny
stripe that disappeared into the unfastened waistband of his trousers.
“Not that exhausted,” she replied huskily. “Not if you have something other than sleep in mind.”
“What I have in mind,” he said, moving toward her, “is making love to my wife.”
When he reached her, he curled one hand around the back of her neck and, without any hesitation, slid the other one inside her nightgown to cover her
breast. Holding her eyes with his, he finessed the nipple.
“I don’t mean just couple with the woman I happened to be married to,” he whispered while his thumb continued giving her nipple glancing blows. “I mean
make love to my wife.”
He drew her face up close to his, paused, probed her eyes, then took her lips beneath his. There was a difference in his kiss. The difference was subtle,
yet tremendous. Avery sensed it immediately. Technically it was the same, as his tongue gently but possessively mated with her mouth. But somehow it
was much more personal, more intimate, more giving.
Minutes later they were in bed. Tate was naked, lying above her, his lips following down her nightgown as he lowered it inch by delicious inch.
When it was completely off, he laid his head on her belly, his shoulders between her thighs, and fervently kissed the yielding softness. “I never thought I
could love you again. But after what you’ve done for Mandy, and for me,” he added thickly, “I’ll be damned if I don’t love you more than ever.”
He slid his hands beneath her hips and tilted them up. His parted lips whisked the smooth skin of her abdomen. He kissed the delta of dark curls, nuzzled
it with his nose, feathered it with his breath.
Catching his hair with her hands, she arched up, offering her open thighs to his caressing mouth. He drew the silky, slippery, softness between his lips,
imbibing her taste and scent, using his flicking, stroking, questing tongue to bring her to one crashing climax after another.
Then she inverted her body and returned the favor. Her lips covered the smooth head of his penis. She sucked it tenderly and used the tip of her tongue to
cleave the groove and pick up the pearly drops of fluid already collected there.
Tate prayed to nameless gods when she took him into her mouth completely, and when he filled it with the very essence of himself, he gave hoarse,
rasping cries that left them feeling perfectly marvelous and replete.
Later that night, while they lay dozing, he drew her back against his chest. He kissed her warm, soft nape. He nibbled her shoulder. He said nothing, but
waited, as though asking her permission to continue.
She merely purred like a drowsy cat and responded when he eased her thigh up toward her chest, leaving her open for his smooth entry. Their bodies
gently undulated against each other with no discernible motion. It was a facile, fluid fuck.
Reaching around her, he caressed her breasts, reshaping them with his hand, then fanned his fingertips across the pebbly nipples.
She pressed her buttocks into the curve of his body, and rubbed her smooth flesh against the dense hair spreading outward from the root of his sex. He
groaned his approval and drew her up higher, closer.
He manipulated her from the front with breathtaking sensitivity, and sometimes replaced his rigid penis with inquisitive fingers that moved deep inside
her, until immense pleasure washed over her like a warm and balmy spring rain, without thunder, without wind, without lightning cleansing and pure and
benevolent.
The rhythmic contractions of her orgasm brought on his. His body tensed. His breathing was suspended for several splendid seconds while the hot tide of
his semen bathed her womb.
When it was over and their bodies were relaxed, but still emanating heat, she turned her head toward him. Their seeking mouths came together in a long,
slow, wet kiss.
Then they slept.
FORTY-FIVE
Since they were scheduled to leave very early that morning, Avery got a head start by waking up before Tate. She disentangled their limbs. Getting her
hair unsnarled from his fingers wasn’t easy, but she finally managed.
She glanced over her shoulder at him as she left the bed. He was beautiful when he slept, one leg sticking out of the covers, his bearded jaw dark against
the pillowcase. Sighing with the sheer pleasure of looking at him, and with the stirring memories of last night’s lovemaking fresh in her mind, she crept into
the bathroom.
The water taps screeched when she turned them on. Avery winced at the noise. Tate needed as much sleep as he could get. Today’s agenda was
arduous. He would spend hours in an airplane. In between, he would be delivering speeches, pressing hands, and soliciting votes.
This day before Election Day was possibly the most important one of his campaign. Today the fence-straddlers, vital to the outcome of any election,
would make up their minds.
Avery stepped beneath the pounding spray. After shampooing her hair, she lathered her body. It still bore traces of Tate’s fervent lovemaking. His mouth
had left a faint bruise on her soft inner thigh. The hot water stung her whisker-rasped breasts. She was smiling over that when the shower curtain was
suddenly whipped back.
“Tate!”
“Good morning.” “What ”
“I thought I’d shower with you,” he drawled, smiling lecherously. “Save time. Save the hotel some hot water.”
Avery stood quaking, as guilty in her nakedness as Eve must have been in Eden when God spotlighted her iniquity. The jets of hot water seemed to turn
icy and sharp; they pricked her skin like frigid needles. Color drained from her face. Her lips turned blue. Her eyes seemed to recede into her skull,
making the sockets appear huge and cavernous. She shivered.
Puzzled, Tate cocked his sleep-tousled head to one side. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Did I scare you?”
She swallowed. Her mouth opened and closed, but she couldn’t form a sound.
“Carole? What’s the matter?”
He looked for something amiss. His eyes scaled down her pale, trembling body, then back up. Avery’s heart sank heavily in her chest as she watched his
baffled gaze move down her once again. It was arrested at her breasts, belly, pubis, thighs places only seen by a lover’s eyes, a husband’s eyes.
He saw the appendectomy scar, ancient and faint and almost undetectable unless bared to clinical fluorescent lighting. Avery had wondered, but now she
knew. Carole had never had her appendix out.
“Carole?” His voice echoed the mystification in his eyes.
Though the protective gesture was a dead giveaway, Avery covered her lower body with one hand and extended the other toward him in appeal. “Tate,
I…”
As sharp and deadly as swords, his eyes slashed upwards to clash with hers. “You’re not Carole.” He stated it softly, while his brain still sifted through
conflicting facts. Then, when the impact of it hit him full force, he repeated with emphasis, “You’re not Carole!”
His arm shot through the shower’s spray to grab hold of her wrist and yank her from the tub. Her shins banged into the porcelain; her wet feet slipped on
the tiles. She emitted a tortured cry, more of the spirit than the body.
“Tate, stop. I’ll ”
He slammed her wet, naked body against the wall and pinned it there with his own. His hand closed tightly around her neck, just beneath her chin.
“Who the fuck are you? Where is my wife? Who are you?”
“Don’t shout,” she whimpered. “Mandy will hear.”
“Talk, goddamn you.” He lowered his voice, but his eyes were still murderous and his hand exerted more pressure against her adam’s apple. “Who are
you?”
Her teeth were chattering so badly she could barely speak.
“Avery Daniels.”
“Who?”
“Avery Daniels.”
“Avery Daniels? The TV …?”
She bobbed her head once.
“Where’s Carole? What ”
”Carole died in the plane crash, Tate,” she said. “I survived. We got mixed up because we had switched seats on the plane. I was carrying Mandy when I
escaped. They assumed ”
He trapped her dripping head between his hands. “Carole’s dead!”
“Yes,” she gulped. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Since the crash? She died in the crash? You mean you’ve been living … all this time …?”
Again, she gave a swift, confirming nod.
Her heart broke apart like an eggshell as she watched him try to comprehend the incomprehensible. Gradually, he released his stranglehold on her
cranium and backed away from her.
She snatched her robe off the hook on the back of the bathroom door and pulled it on, hurriedly knotting the tie belt. She reached into the tub and cut off
the faucets, which she instantly regretted doing. The resulting silence was deafening, yet it shimmered with the brassy reverberation of disbelief and
suspicion.
Into that silence lie threw her one simple question. “Why?”
The day of reckoning had arrived. She’d known it would come eventually. She just hadn’t counted on it being today. She wasn’t prepared.
“It’s complicated.”
“I don’t give a damn how complicated it is,” he said in a voice that vibrated with wrath. “Start talking to me now before I call the police.”
“I don’t know how or when the initial mix-up was made,” she said frantically. “I woke up in the hospital bandaged from head to foot, unable to move or to
speak. Everybody was calling me Carole. At first I didn’t understand. I was in such pain. I was afraid, confused, disoriented. It took several days for me to
piece together what must have happened.”
“And when you realized it, you didn’t say anything? Why?”
“I couldn’t! Remember, I couldn’t communicate.” She caught his arm in appeal. He slung it off. “Tate, I tried to get the message to you before my face was
restored to look like Carole’s, but it was impossible. Every time I began to cry, you thought it was from fear over the upcoming surgery. It was that. But it
was also because I was being robbed of my own identity and having another imposed on me. I was powerless to get that message across.”
“Jesus, this is science fiction.” He plowed his fingers through his hair. Realizing he was still naked, he grabbed a towel from the rack and wrapped it
around his middle, “That was months ago.”
“I had to remain Carole for a while.”
“Why?”
She threw back her head and gazed up at the ceiling. The first explanation had been a breeze, compared to what was coming. “It’s going to sound ”
“I don’t give a shit how it sounds,” he said menacingly. “I want to know why you’ve been impersonating my wife.”
“Because someone wants to kill you!”
Her urgent reply took him by surprise. He was still poised to do battle, but his head snapped back like he’d taken an uppercut on the chin. “What?”
“When I was in the hospital,” she began, clasping her hands together at waist level, “someone came to my room.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who. Hear me out before asking me a lot of questions.” She drew in a deep breath, but the words continued to tumble rapidly over her lips. “I
was bandaged. I couldn’t see well. Someone, addressing me as Carole, warned me not to make any deathbed confessions. He said that the plans were
still in place and that you’d never live to take office.”
He remained unmoved for a moment, then a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. Eventually, he barked a hateful laugh. “You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth!”
“The only truth is that you’re going to jail. Now.” He turned and headed for the telephone.
“Tate, no!” She caught his arm and brought him around. “I don’t blame you for what you’re thinking about me.”
“Your worst guess couldn’t even come close.”
The invective smarted, but for the time being, she had to ignore it. “I’m not lying about this. I swear it. Someone plans to assassinate you before you take
office.”
“I’m not even elected.”
“As good as, so it seems.”
“You can’t identify this mystery person?”
“Not-yet. I’m trying.”
He studied her earnest face for a moment, then sneered, “I can’t believe I’m standing here listening to this shit. You’ve been living a lie all these months.
Now you expect me to believe that a total stranger sneaked into your hospital room and put a bug in your ear that he was going to assassinate me?” He
shook his head as though marveling over her audacity and his culpability.
“Not a stranger, Tate. Someone close. Someone in the family.”
His jaw relaxed. He stared at her with patent incredulity. “Are you ”
“Think! Only family members are allowed into the ICU.”
“You’re saying a member of my family is plotting my assassination?”
“It sounds absurd, I know, but it’s the truth. I didn’t make it up. I didn’t imagine it, either. There have been notes.”
“Notes?”
“Notes left for Carole in places only she would have access to, letting her know that the plan was still in place.” She rushed to the luggage rack in the
closet and opened a zippered compartment of one of her suitcases. She carried the notes, including the desecrated campaign poster, back to him.
“They were typed on the typewriter at the ranch,” she told him.
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