Power Games. Victoria Fox
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Название: Power Games
Автор: Victoria Fox
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Контркультура
Серия: MIRA
isbn: 9781472074690
isbn:
She couldn’t think of it as a person, just a thing inside her that wasn’t yet born.
What kind of life could she give it? She wasn’t fit to be a mother, and as for her situation with Orlando—they could never provide their child with anything stable.
‘I’m glad you feel the same,’ she said. It sounded hollow.
Orlando nodded. Out on the street, car horns blared. Normal life continued; it was only their bubble that had burst. Eve didn’t recognise the serious, dark-eyed man in front of her. Their relationship so far had been defined by sex and secrets, by the thrill of the chase and a no-strings respect that left both their consciences clean.
All that had been severed. Always a string would now bind them, the cord of this misfortune, and it would throttle anything they had.
The ending made her sadder than she expected.
‘Is it mine?’
His question came out of the blue. It hit her like a slap, cold and sharp.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Is it?’
‘How dare you. You arsehole.’
‘I had to ask.’
‘No, you didn’t. You didn’t have to at all.’
Orlando sat down, but she pushed her own seat away.
‘You have to admit,’ he said softly, ‘we don’t know each other. I’m checking.’
‘You’re insulting.’
‘So there’s been no one else?’ His voice was quiet. Different.
To her mortification Eve blinked back the hot stem of tears.
Don’t cry! She never cried. It was the sheer injustice of his accusation, this lead weight she had been carrying around, the fear she had faced all alone, no one to share it with until now—and now she had, he had treated her as little more than a slut.
‘Yes,’ she lied. She didn’t know why. She wanted him to be jealous, maybe, or simply to prove him right, to drive him away for good. ‘But it isn’t his.’
Orlando stayed quiet a while before he said: ‘Who?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does to me.’
‘The timing’s yours. It’s definitely yours.’
But when she looked up she could see that she had lost him.
Fine—if that’s what you think, think it!
She wanted him to hurt. She was hurt, why should he get off free?
‘I need you to go,’ she said.
Orlando looked like he was about to say something, then he changed his mind.
‘You’ll let me know?’ he said, slipping on his coat and making for the door. His bearing was cool, professional, playing out the motions.
‘Yes.’
‘I guess that’s it, then.’
‘I guess.’
The door opened. ‘Goodbye, Eve.’
Eve didn’t say it back. She waited until she heard the door close, a soft, final hush, and his footsteps travel down the stairs. Only then did she let the tears fall.
Washington, D.C.
MITCH CORRIGAN: WHO IS THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK?
In spite of the blonde head plunging determinedly up and down in his lap, Republican senator Mitch Corrigan couldn’t stop staring worriedly at the article that had landed on his desk that morning. He squinted at the byline.
Eve Harley.
Vaguely he recalled her. She had talked to him here at the Farley Senate Building, before he had left for Italy. Tenacious. Persistent. Borderline rude. And now she had published a piece on his ‘hidden persona’. Exactly what he didn’t need.
Mitch squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on the mouth clamped around his dick. His wife’s gem-laden fingers were spread across his thighs, her lips going methodically to work with as much eroticism as a fundraiser bobbing for apples.
Seated at his mahogany bureau, from the waist up Mitch Corrigan was any ordinary politician—tie neat, collar pressed and cufflinks polished. Only his flushed face was a clue to what was going on beneath: pants down by his ankles, shirt untucked, and his wife’s tongue catching and flicking his struggling dick as if it were a melting ice-pop. Finally, Mitch came. It was a ragged, unsettled climax.
He couldn’t stop staring at that venomous write-up.
Mitch Corrigan made me uneasy … He might have been a film star, but the time for acting is over … How can he convince a nation if he can’t convince me?
Melinda sat back and flipped open a compact from her Louis Vuitton purse.
‘Stop looking at it: it’s just some witch out to grab a headline.’
Mitch tucked his shirt and zipped his flies. ‘For a man in my position I’d say that headline was a substantial concern, wouldn’t you?’
‘Our marriage is also a substantial concern,’ Melinda complained, shooting him her best martyred expression, ‘but I don’t see you caring half as much about that.’
Mitch gulped his guilt like a lump of cotton wool. He shuffled the papers on his desk, moving Eve Harley’s Examiner piece to the bottom of the pile. The Melinda he had married two decades ago had been a sweet, innocent girl, unimpressed by money or fame. She had always kept his feet on the ground, stuck with him through the drugs, the drink, the partying and the depression. Now that girl was gone.
‘Don’t you care, Mitch?’ she spat. ‘Go on, have the guts to tell me the truth.’
Truth. The word shivered between them, a caped stranger.
The world would never believe the truth. It could never understand.
His phone buzzed. ‘They’re ready for you, Senator Corrigan.’
‘We’ll talk about this later,’ he told Melinda, clicking his briefcase shut.
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