Vote for Love: The Box Set (Vote for Love ) Page 13

  Landon’s expression softened. “That’s one thing I’m learning about myself during all this: my patience is infinite. Trust me, if you’d seen half the stuff that’s happened behind the scenes during this campaign, you’d be horrified.”

  “I can guess.”

  “We’re in the home stretch, though. And that’s all that matters. Less than two weeks, and I’m going to win this thing.” He lowered his voice. “I just keep asking myself something.”

  “What?”

  “Do you really plan on staying? Through all of it? Or is this a passing phase, something that will bore you in a few days?”

  I swallowed. “Well, I mean—”

  He moved nearer to me, his long stride bringing us toe to toe. I caught the manly scent of his cologne and the aroma of the Manhattans he’d just downed. Still, with him this close to me, I couldn’t focus on anything but his solid chest, the small spray of stubble on his chin, and the sharp edges of his jawline.

  Damn.

  “I’d hate it if you got bored.” Landon lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder to make sure we were alone. “Really hate it.” His eyes searched my face and he took a deep breath. “I don’t think I ever told you this, but I don’t mind saying it now. I had a crush on you during school. A huge crush. I wanted to ask you out, but you were the ice queen—the unattainable one—the girl everyone wanted but no one could have.” He smiled. “But now you’re here. And I want you by my side on election night.”

  He’d had a huge crush on me. The knowledge of that caused something reckless, yet exciting, to bloom in my chest. “Do you mean that?”

  He nodded. “You’re the secret weapon I never thought I’d get. Better than that. You’re…you.”

  I stared at him, unable to form the right kind of reply. Then the elevator dinged and the door opened.

  “I should go upstairs.” I stepped inside the car and placed my hand on the sliding door so that it wouldn’t close. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Bright and early.” Landon stared at me, his eyes intense and clear. “Eight in the morning voter canvassing in Hyde Park, then a 10:00 AM interview on 700 WLW. After that, we’re driving to Cleveland.” He paused. “In the van. Again. We’ll stay there for two days.”

  “Count me in.”

  I leaned back and allowed the elevator door to close. As it did, Landon remained in the lobby, keeping his attention fixed on me, and I found myself unable to break away. Once it began moving, though, I collapsed against the back of the elevator. I took a few deep breaths, but it didn’t help. My hands went to my knees. Still didn’t fix it. Nothing I did would stop the harsh reality of that moment. Landon and I had chemistry—real chemistry—even after more than a decade.

  I hadn’t felt this way about anyone in years. This wouldn’t just be about business. Not this time. This time, I might not get out of Ohio without leaving my heart behind.

  “Cleveland?” my brother, Seth, said on the phone the following afternoon when he called me in the hotel room. “And a Holiday Inn, for godsakes?”

  “By the airport, believe it or not.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever stayed at anything less than a Hilton.”

  “If you want to get into politics, you better get used to it, brother.” I got up from the bed, walked to the large picture window, and threw back the sheers. We’d had a long day, and I needed a nap. If I talked to one more voter, I might scream at them. “You know, if I squint hard—very hard—I think I can see Lake Erie from here.”

  Seth answered with a low whistle. “God love you, you do know how to make sacrifices for the greater good.”

  “Well, Landon Marsh is one.” I closed the curtain and turned around. On the TV at the far end of the room, CNN showed an updated graphic map of the down-ballot races the congressional leadership considered competitive. Patrick Blanco versus Landon Marsh sat at the top of that list, with a current polling of 47% to 45%. “Are you seeing this on CNN?”

  “I read it in The Wall Street Journal today. If Blanco loses, it’s a huge upset, and it might even shake up the power structure in the Senate. Most pundits thought Blanco was headed for a major role this year, and perhaps even another try and the White House.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “My ruthless sister. That’s one of the things I like about you the most.” Seth gave a low chuckle. “Speaking of, did you have a chance to look at the ad that I–I mean Ken—sent over this afternoon from Kellerman and Kellerman?”

  “I watched it once.” I moved over to the bed and pushed the wake button on the laptop. The screen lit up, showing my Van der Loon Global intranet email account. “Very…aggressive.”

  “I thought you might say something like that.” Seth paused, and I knew by my brother’s tone of voice that he was carefully choosing his words. “But Ken said this is the best approach. Hits him where it hurts.”

  The thirty-second ad featured a harsh indictment of Patrick’s love life, with me at the center as the jilted lover. It brought all of it back into the open, and painted Patrick as a wandering philanderer who couldn’t be trusted at home and shouldn’t be trusted to lead the people of Ohio any more. It might be the most negative ad I’d seen this election cycle, and I’d seen a number of them.

  “You’ll have to work really hard to trace that one back to the super PAC, and I doubt the media will try,” Seth said. “We created a shell organization to run it, so someone will have to dig, and my guess is that overworked and underpaid reporters in Ohio won’t do that.”

  “It’s a lie, of course.” I sank onto the mattress, half my attention on the conversation and half on the glossy haired CNN pundit examining each battleground race on TV. “You know it was just business with Patrick. I never cared about him in a romantic way. It was an arrangement, and we all knew it.”

  “He still dicked you over. Dicked us over. No one does that and gets away with it. Besides, the public doesn’t know that relationship was a sham, and we’re Van der Loons. Enough said.”

  “Family over everything.” I repeated our family’s mantra while I studied the laptop again, then I paused a clip of video. “How many other ads like this did the agency make?”

  “Four. Two fifteen-second spots, one thirty, and a full-minute version. Kellerman wants to do a full buy online, too. Facebook, Youtube, the whole bit. Everywhere it can go. K&K just wants the okay from you.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. Let’s do it.”

  My brother didn’t hide his pleasure about this, but after we hung up the phone, I tossed it onto the seat of the large easy chair across from the bed. Then I closed the laptop. I didn’t want to look at polls, emails, potential ads, or spend time thinking about creative Instagram posts. I wanted a break. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, then spread out on the duvet and studied the patterns in the ceiling drywall.

  I’d just managed to doze off when two sharp raps sounded against the door.

  “Coming,” I said, my voice coated with the fringes of sleep. I smoothed my dress, ran two fingers through my matted hair, walked over to the door, and opened it.

  Landon Marsh stood in the hallway with one hand shoved in his back pocket and a wry grin across his face. “Did I wake you up?”

  “Wake me up?”

  “You sounded liked you might have been napping.”

  I smoothed my hair again. “Oh, yes. That. No. You didn’t. I was just lying down and considering a few things.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Well, consider this. I have a last-minute ticket to a charity gala downtown, a fundraiser for The Cleveland Clinic. Want to be my plus one?” He moved closer to the doorframe. “Black tie. I’m a guest of Congressman Hanover and his wife Judith. The eleventh district. He’s been a good friend.” He swallowed. “And I can’t think of anyone better to attend than you.”

  We stared at each other.

  “Count me in,” I finally said. But then I frowned and glanced over my shoulder at the walk-in closet po
sitioned off the foyer of the hotel room. “Except I don’t think I brought any evening gowns in my luggage.”

  He answered with a low laugh. “I figured that, and I already spoke to Kelly about it. She’s able to take you to the Saks Fifth Avenue at Beechwood Place whenever you’re ready. It’s about a forty-five minute drive from here, but it’s the best I can think of, given the short notice.” Landon looked down at his watch. “It’s three thirty now. Gala starts at seven thirty, at the Ritz.”

  “Then I’d better get going, shouldn’t I?”

  His attention fixed on me again, and he held eye contact for perhaps a half second too long. The tension and energy seemed to build between the two of us once more. “I’m sure you’ll look fantastic in whatever you find. You could wear a trash bag and be beautiful.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Because I’m going to do better than a trash bag.”

  After four bad choices, I walked out of the Saks dressing room in a blue Halston Heritage satin and organza gown. The dress had a simple boat neck and a flowing ombre on the bottom that reminded me of a waterfall. When I reached Kelly in the main waiting room, I twirled around in front of her. “What do you think?”

  She looked up from her phone with a blank expression on her face. “Great. Perfect.” The words had almost no inflection. “I say let’s get it.”

  I chose to ignore her obvious distaste for me and turned to the personal shopper Kelly had made an appointment with on the drive from the hotel to the store. “This is wonderful. We’ll take it. Exactly right for tonight.”

  “The Hearts of Hope ball is always a huge night,” the salesgirl said. “You’re going to slay it in this.”

  “Just what I want.” I winked.

  “We have another size four in the back,” she said. “I’ll get that one and meet you at the cash wrap in a few moments.”

  Once the personal shopper left us alone in the dressing room, I turned back to Kelly, who still had her attention fixated on her phone. “Listen, I’m not saying that you have to like me, but you don’t have to make it so obvious to everyone.”

  Kelly locked her iPhone and tossed it into her black Longchamp le Pilage bag. “I get it. You’re a political weapon. All campaigns have them.”

  “I’m more than just a weapon.”

  She sighed and zipped her tote.

  “I am.” I sat down across from her in an overstuffed purple chair. “Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”

  “I’m not going to trust you, okay?” Kelly crossed her arms and settled further into her chair. “I just want to get through the next week and a half and see where we are after all this.”

  “Understandable.”

  “I just can’t shake one thing. I keep going back to this.” She narrowed her eyes. “What do you believe in? Do you even care about public policy?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Her gaze floated down to the edge of my dress, then slowly rose up my body before locking onto my face. I wondered if she was trying to size me up, trying to see if she could learn something about me just by looking at me. “I’ve read a lot about you, Kathryn, and you don’t fool me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Carpetbagging your way to the White House isn’t going to work.”

  I recoiled. No one spoke to me like that. Ever. “I’m not carpetbagging. And this is a senate race, not the presidential one.”

  “It’s still part of your little game, though, isn’t it?” She nodded a few times, a small, disgusted smile pulling at her lips. “Power. A chess match. But I don’t know who’s on the other side.”

  I kept my expression blank. She wasn’t going to rattle me. I wouldn’t allow that. No one rattled me—especially no low-level campaign staffers.

  “Do you have any idea what’s really going on in Ohio? What the people who live here really need? What’s really getting under our skin?” Kelly grabbed the edge of her chair armrest and leaned forward. Her long, red fingernails dug into the fabric. “From where I sit, you don’t have any idea, do you? No clue. You grew up in New York City and went to the best schools on the East Coast. You’ve never seen Ohio—except to fly over it. You think we’re all hicks. Uneducated. Products of a rust belt that collapsed a long time ago. And you—people just like you—think we can be manipulated. Hoodwinked. Told one story and then forgotten.” Her voice rose. “And that’s where you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think that,” I said in an even, noncommittal voice. “You’re just trying to upset me. But you don’t know me, Kelly.”

  “I know plenty.” She pointed at her handbag. “And I’ve read the rest on the internet. I have a great picture of you. You’ve had fun in Palm Beach, haven’t you? Fun at polo matches in Wellington. Shopping in Southhampton. At this fundraiser, that restaurant opening, or the Met gala. Flying to London one month and Paris the next. All of it. You’ve certainly looked good doing it as you cultivated this image as the ‘Rich Bitch of Instagram.’” She stood. “But make no mistake, Kathryn Van der Loon. No matter how you spin it to the media, you’re out of touch. You’re a princess.”

  I gave her a smile that wouldn’t melt butter. “Nothing wrong with enjoying life.”

  “But there is something wrong with failing to see how your life affects everyone else around you.” Kelly looked at her watch. “Good grief. We don’t have much time. We need to pay for this dress and go.”

  I stood up. “All right.”

  Kelly sneered and pulled her handbag closer to her body. “If I were you, I’d think about what I just told you. Especially if you’re really sincere about helping Landon win this senate seat. This isn’t playtime. This isn’t revenge. And this isn’t about you. The sooner you understand that, the better.”

  Shortly before seven fifteen, I walked down the hallway and rapped on Kathryn’s hotel room door. When she answered, my stomach flipped. I’d expected her to look fantastic and immaculate, but she could have stepped into a spread for Vanity Fair or Vogue. I’d met plenty of beautiful women over the years that I considered the total package, but she exceeded all of them.

  “I called an Uber Black car,” I said, slipping my phone out of my pocket. “And it’s waiting downstairs.”

  “Perfect.” She tossed me a red lipsticked smile and grabbed a small, black clutch from the counter in the vestibule. When she closed the door behind her and we stepped into the hallway, she added, “Is this what you’d hoped?”

  “No. It’s more.”

  She laughed, and the sound filled the long corridor as we moved toward the elevator. “Good. I had hoped that.”

  Kathryn’s dress made her look like a princess in a Walt Disney fever dream. The various colors of blue made her waist appear smaller and her hair redder. She’d topped off the look with nude pumps that peeked out from her dress hem, an alligator clutch, and a classic strand of pearls to rival any Jackie Kennedy might have chosen. When she led me into the elevator, I smelled a haze of Chanel No. 5, reminding me of my grandmother, a glamorous WASP with a short brown bob who’d first tolerated and then learned to love Ohio.

  “What are you staring at?” Kathryn asked as the elevator doors closed.

  “You. I’m staring at you.”

  A beat passed between us. The elevator car lurched and began its decent to the hotel lobby.

  “Good, Landon, because I want you to stare.” She propped one leg against the elevator wall. “I want you to like what you see.”

  I could have kissed her right then. Maybe, I should have. I certainly wanted to, and I knew that she did, too. She wanted me, and I wanted her. We wanted each other.

  But then we reached the lobby and the elevator doors popped open. We weren’t alone, and the moment had evaporated. In fact, we didn’t say much more to each other until the driver of the black car pulled under the blue awning of The Ritz-Carlton. Guests and attendees of the ball talked with each other in small groups on the hotel sidewalk.

  In the backseat, I turned to Kathryn and sized her up
once again. “You ready?” I murmured.

  “I’m always ready.”

  I got out of the car first, then helped her, and we walked into the hotel lobby together. A bellman directed us to the large ballroom and the event check-in set in front of the large double doors.

  “Congressman Marsh, so wonderful to see you. I’m so glad you were able to attend tonight,” said a rail-thin man with rimless glasses and long, deep lines across his face. He wore a tuxedo with a red bowtie and sat behind a rectangular table. He flipped a few pages of paper. “Yes. I see your reservation here. Table twenty-six.”

  “Thank you, and good to see you again,” I said, even though I didn’t know the man’s name. When I placed a hand on the small of Kathryn’s back, though, the man’s mouth dropped open.

  “Oh, my,” he said in a raspy whisper. “You’re Kathryn Van der Loon.”

  “I am.” Kathryn tossed him a winning smile and extended her hand. “And you are?”

  “Uh, I’m”—he coughed once and laughed to himself before shaking her hand—“McKinley. James McKinley. But I’m no one, really.”

  “Everyone is someone.” Kathryn stepped closer to the table. “Are you part of the staff at the Cleveland Clinic, James?”

  “Hospital administration. The financial side. I help with the billing.” James’s cheeks reddened and he glanced at a few of the people who had arrived at the event behind us. “But tonight I’m helping with the tally for the silent auction.”

  “I hope you raise a lot of money, and I think it’s wonderful that this goes to helping pediatric heart patients at the clinic. Such a noble cause. You all do wonderful work at the hospital.” Kathryn cocked her head and leaned in, as if she wanted only James to hear what she said next. “My cousin had a congenital heart condition when she was born. Very rare, and very sad. She died when she was five. Too bad she wasn’t able to get help from your wonderful facility. Maybe she wouldn't have…”

  James’s eyes widened. “I'm so sorry, Ms. Van der Loon."

  She swallowed and looked away. “Thank you. But it’s not worth dwelling on.”