The Kingmaker (Powerplay #1) Read online

  He rounded on her. “So what do you say? We’ll be the darlings of the political season.” He gave her a crooked smile and a wink that he knew worked wonders on women. He’d been using it since he was twelve.

  Her face was like stone. Immobile, expressionless, cold. Figured. Just when he needed a yes more than he ever had before, he’d met the one woman who could resist the crooked smile-wink combo. Shit.

  “This is not a good idea,” she said standing from the sofa.

  “Why?”

  “We don’t even like each other. How will we convince people we’re dating? And as we’ve both admitted, we’re not really relationship people, our friends will see right through this horrible charade. Or maybe you don’t have friends?”

  He rolled his eyes at her snark and the glint that snuck into her gaze.

  “I have friends, you’ll meet them…while you’re dating me. Because unless you’ve got another idea, this is what we’re going to have to do.”

  “I’ve been so good at staying hidden all these years, I can’t believe this has happened.”

  “Surely you knew you couldn’t lead a double life like that forever?” he asked gently.

  She sighed in frustration, her perfect brows furrowing. “I’ve had a lot of fools for clients, but I think Senator Melville wins the prize. You really believe he’d make a good president?”

  He coughed, trying to cover the chuckle at her description of the men who paid for her company. Any man who had the chance to be with her and then let her go was indeed a fool.

  “I do, even after this. He’s a brilliant statesman and politician but he’s also human, and obviously we’ve discovered his fatal flaw.” And hell, Derek couldn’t even hold it against the man. This woman could become anyone’s fatal flaw. She was like a magnet that pulled you in, her sexuality a swirling vortex that could consume you.

  “And you actually think this will work? Save the campaign and convince people that I’ve reformed?” Doubt dripped from her very words.

  “Yes, this can work. It’s called hiding in plain sight,” he answered, striding closer to her. “We’ve really only got a couple of choices here. We send you abroad for a few weeks while Melville denies it right and left. The press will be relentless looking for you, and as soon as it dies down and we bring you back they’ll be all over you again the minute you set foot in the airport. Meanwhile, my candidate will be crippled by the rumors. He’ll have to defend himself at every turn, and eventually the press will dig up something or someone who corroborates the rumors. Then it’s all over, Melville has to drop out, my reputation is tarnished forever, and you’re a notorious hooker for life.”

  He could see the pain flash across her face. Her lips tightened, and her eyes dropped to the floor as a flush crawled up her cheeks. He hated that he had to be so crass, but this was Washington and politics. There was nothing gentle about it, nothing kind or sensitive. As much as he loved it—the competition, the fangs-bared, balls-to-the-wall heat of the battle—he also sometimes resented it—the demands on his time, the constant maneuvering and jockeying for position, the fake front that he wore like a protective lacquer each day. And right now he wished that there were some way to achieve what he needed without disrupting this woman’s delicately balanced life.

  “And the other option?” she asked. “The hiding in plain sight one?”

  “We give them an alternate story. You were at the hotel to see me, you and I are in love, you’re a changed woman. It’s a distraction at best, but if we can buy some time, and muddy the waters well enough the story will never get legs. It’ll resurface—probably more than once, but it’ll continue to go nowhere because we will have planted too much doubt.”

  One of her perfectly arched brows lifted and her plush lips pursed for a brief moment. “I see why you’re Derek Ambrose,” she said.

  He couldn’t help but smile, his chest swelling just a touch at the fact that she realized he was damn good at what he did. He wasn’t a terribly vain man, but somehow looking good in front of this particular woman felt good. Maybe too good.

  She watched him for a moment, neither of them moving, but his own breath coming in faster huffs as he watched her chest rise and fall. Then her tongue darted out to lick her full, dark lips, and something inside of him snapped. Want spread through him like floodwaters filling an empty river basin. The desire seeped into every corner, every spare inch of his being. And it burned. An ember just waiting to take a big gulp of oxygen and burst into flames.

  A voice inside his head told him he was fucked. Totally and utterly fucked. And this idea was doomed too, just as he was doomed. But that want, that sizzling ember of desire wouldn’t allow him to care. It wouldn’t allow for anything but the fixation on the oxygen it needed to fully live.

  Her. It wanted her.

  She sighed as she turned away, and he saw her hands shaking. Thank God. Maybe it wasn’t just him.

  “Okay,” her voice was quiet, “I’ll do it. But I’m not taking money from you. So please don’t mention that again.”

  He stepped closer, raising his hands as if he were going to place them on her shoulders, then he dropped them and leaned forward, his lips nearly brushing her hair.

  “But no clients, right? You can’t continue working if we’re going to sell this obviously.” Deep down he knew this was about more than someone catching her working. He didn’t want to think about any man being near her if she was his girlfriend—even a pretend girlfriend.

  She turned, gasping when she realized that he was in her space, inches from her body, nearly touching, yet not. Her eyes traveled up to meet his, and her lips dropped open slightly, sending a shock of electricity straight to his groin.

  “No clients.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “Just you.”

  If it were possible he leaned closer, infinitesimally closer, his lungs straining to function when he hadn’t filled them in minutes—or maybe it was hours. A car alarm sounded outside and he jerked back, stunned at how easily he’d lost track of where he was and what he was doing simply because he could smell her, see her, breathe her. “I’ll call the press conference for three p.m. so we can make the evening news cycle. I’ll send a car for you. Wear something like that dress you had on at the hotel. The purple one. It was perfect.”

  She pulled back watching him suspiciously. “You noticed what I was wearing in the middle of that disaster?”

  “I noticed everything about you,” he returned. Then he stepped away and left her standing alone in her living room.

  Chapter 4

  London leaned back in the overstuffed leather seats of the Town Car and sighed. She really had lost her mind. Send a sexy as hell man to sweet talk her and she’d crumbled like a day-old cookie. The damage was done, her life was blown out of the water, and instead of giving up and accepting that she’d lost her friends and the respectable life that she’d built outside of prostitution, she was going to leap from the frying pan into the fire and try to salvage something from this debacle.

  It was a disaster waiting to happen. All the media attention was like begging to have her darkest secret exposed, and then she’d be a pariah beyond salvation, beyond even Derek Ambrose’s considerable spin skills. If America found out about her family, she’d become public enemy number one. Her friends would never get beyond that. Not in the nation’s capitol.

  So why the hell was she doing this? The answer was fairly simple—she loved her life. Not her life as an escort, but her life as London Sharpe. Her townhouse, her friends, her charities. Yes, she’d had to tread carefully all these years, making sure to stay away from things where prominent D.C. men might be involved, and in all fairness, she had run into a few clients in places like restaurants and concert halls. But they didn’t want to acknowledge her any more than she did them, so it had all worked out.

  For eight years she’d been who she wanted to be, not who someone else told her to be. She’d found people who were loyal and kind, and most of all, honest. The irony th
at she’d been dishonest with them all along wasn’t lost on her. But being a prostitute and keeping that from the people she cared about was the price she paid to have control—control over what she did, who she let in. She’d long ago lost control over her history, but she was determined to have control over her present and future.

  And now she was ceding control to Derek Ambrose. She was going to let him spin her life, tell the world that she hadn’t been who they thought she was, and then she was going to become someone she actually wasn’t—his girlfriend. If anyone had told her two weeks ago that she’d be about to stand up in front of the national press and do this, she’d have laughed them out the door. But here she was, and as many reservations as she had, she was going to follow through. Mostly because she couldn’t bear to say goodbye to the London she’d built from scratch over all these years. And if she were being brutally honest, she also had a very hard time saying no to Derek Ambrose.

  After Derek left, she’d spent the rest of her morning fielding phone calls and messages from her friends. Was it true? Was she actually a prostitute? How could she have been doing that all those years and they’d never known?

  The toughest conversation had been with Joanna of course. Jo had been London’s closest friend since they were in their early twenties and were in the same Women’s Service League class together. Joanna was the closest to knowing the real London of anyone on the planet, although that didn’t include information about London’s profession or family. Their conversation had not been an easy one.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Joanna had cried as she’d barreled her way into London’s house.

  London had blinked at her. How to explain the myriad choices she’d made over the years?

  “Because I couldn’t bear to hear what you have to say.”

  Jo bristled yet again. “And you presume to know what I’m going to say?”

  London shook her head, letting her hair fall over her face as she dipped her chin. “You’ve just found out that I’m a hooker, Jo. You’re a paragon of D.C. society, your husband is an up and coming diplomatic star. What else can you say?”

  Jo’s brow furrowed and she reached out to touch London’s hand. “Before all of those things I’m your best friend. And you never told me about this entire other part of your life. Why?”

  “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you shout from the rooftops,” London answered bitterly.

  “Tell me about it now. Tell me how it happened, how it all works. Tell me why.” Joanna’s eyes filled with tears, and London wondered if this was what she’d been avoiding after all. Not the censure, or the abandonment she’d told herself she’d get from Jo, but this—hurt, confusion, betrayal. Joanna loved London, and London wasn’t sure whether she could bear to see Jo’s pain on her behalf.

  London took a deep, shivering breath. “I left home when I was seventeen. I had a falling out with my mother—”

  “Your mother’s alive?” Joanna’s eyes narrowed.

  “Yes.” London swallowed, her throat dry and tight. “She lied to me, about some very important things in my family, and when I found out I ran away. I managed for a while with fast food jobs and sleeping on other people’s sofas, but as time went on it got harder and harder. When I was twenty-one the boyfriend I’d been living with went on tour with his band. I didn’t want to go along, so I lost my place to live once again. I was so tired, Jo. So tired of trying to make it on my own. I’d cleaned houses, worked at burger joints, manned a newsstand in Union Station, any low paying job that a woman without a high school diploma could get I’d had. I was sick of it, but I didn’t have any other options.”

  Joanna nodded sympathetically, her mouth a tense line in her face.

  “Then one day I was handing out flyers for a window washing company when a man stopped and talked to me. He said he owned a high-end dance club and that I had a great look he thought would be popular. I wasn’t naïve, Jo, I knew he was talking about a strip club, but at that moment, as beaten down as I was by it all, I just didn’t care. So I went to check it out that night, and it wasn’t so bad. The place was clean, the girls who worked there seemed nice enough, and they told me that they made in a single night what it took me over a week to earn at all my other jobs.”

  “No one could ever blame you for that,” Joanna said, patting London’s hand like an approving mother.

  London nodded. Wondering if Jo was going to be so understanding about the next part of the tale.

  “I worked there about six months, and at first it was like a godsend. I made enough to get myself a studio apartment—it was a dump, but I didn’t have to be dependent on roommates. I was able to eat dinner out once a week, and even get some decent clothes, but then I got this pain in my mouth—it was my wisdom teeth, one had gotten impacted. You might be surprised to hear that strippers don’t get dental insurance.” London grimaced wryly and Joanna raised an eyebrow in response.

  “It took me six months to pay off the cost of that surgery, and I knew that I might finally be able to keep a roof over my head, but only if nothing ever went wrong. I was still one bad day away from being homeless.

  “That was when I started listening to the girls in the dressing room. They talked about this other business some of them worked for, an escort service.”

  She stopped to look at Joanna, and her heart lurched when she saw the tears in her friend’s eyes.

  “Jo, don’t feel sorry for me. It gave me everything I have—this house, the place in Vail, my clothes, good healthcare. I earn a thousand dollars an hour having sex with men who wear suits to work. There are worse ways to earn a living.”

  “And better ones too.” Jo’s voice hadn’t been recriminating, only sad, and she reached out and put a palm against London’s cheek, looking at her earnestly. “Did you never think about going back to school, even getting some sort of vocational training? Beautician, bookkeeper, something?”

  London shook her head. “It sounds so easy when you’re looking in from the outside. We all say it, ‘why don’t those women go back to school?’ There are loans, scholarships, all kinds of programs. But here’s the thing—you spend every day being this perfect fantasy, creating this flawless shell of a woman, one who doesn’t get hurt feelings, or a headache, one who hides it if men touch her in a way that disgusts her. Being an escort is really like being a giant doll, and it takes more mental energy than you might think. And after you’re done for the day, you have to try to remember who you were before you went inside that hotel room. You have to find the energy to peel that façade back and be you again. A lot of days you barely manage it. A lot of days all you want to do is go home and go to sleep before you have to get up the next day and do it again.”

  She reached over to the tea she’d been drinking and took a sip.

  “Don’t get me wrong, being an escort wasn’t horrible. I chose it, I’m not a victim, but it’s also not an easy job. It requires you to put a certain part of you away, locked up in a box that you don’t dare open. That’s the part that might go to college, Jo. I thought I’d put that part away a long time ago.”

  Joanna watched her thoughtfully for a moment. “It makes so much sense now.”

  London quirked an eyebrow in question.

  “How detached you often are. Those days when I feel like you’re not really with me. I always thought it was because you’d been traumatized by your parents dying, but now I see it was the leftovers from your job. You couldn’t always come back to the rest of us after…that. Am I right?” she asked tentatively.

  “I suppose so.” London thought for a moment. “Some days…” She paused, her hand clenching around the delicate handle of the teacup. “Some days are harder than others. Some…clients…are harder than others. And it takes a bit to be in sync with the rest of the world again.”

  Jo paused, seeming to tumble it all around inside her mind. “I talked all about Melville, said what a great family man he was, and you’d been having sex with him just hours before that
?”

  Then London had to go further, lie yet again to the friend who was ready to forgive her, trying to understand the twisted path she’d taken to get to where she was.

  “No,” London was quick to correct. “Melville is not a client.”

  “So what is all this about then?”

  “I wasn’t there to see Melville.”

  Joanna paused. “And?”

  London chewed on her bottom lip then put it out there, cringing as she waited for the ensuing tsunami of disbelief. “I was there to see Derek Ambrose. I’ve been—” she had to clear her throat, “—I’ve been dating him.”

  “No way!” Jo shrieked. “No way have you been dating Derek Ambrose! He’s rich, he’s hot. I’ve heard he never dates anyone more than twice. My cousin’s best friend went out with him once and said that he was the sexiest man she’d ever slept with but he never called her again. Holy shit.”

  London stayed quiet, resisting the urge to laugh at how quickly Joanna shifted from sophisticated D.C. political wife to gossiping teenage girl. Then she waited for the second wave to hit. Joanna just needed to catch a breath after all.

  “So you’ve been keeping this a secret from me too? For how long? Weeks? Months? And yesterday you said Derek Ambrose was, and I quote, ‘big and mean’. What was that all about? Were you at that hotel to break up with him?”

  Okay, wave two was going on longer than expected. London interjected. “No, I didn’t go to break up with him. We did have a little spat, so I said that because I was mad at him right then.” Better to stick as close to the truth as possible. “We’d just had an argument. It’s already over. We’re together, Jo. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  Joanna sighed. “Why? Why couldn’t you tell me?” The hurt in her voice sliced through London.

  “I’m sorry. It was something he and I decided together. He gets attention from the press, they put him in the gossip columns when he dates someone. We were afraid of just what’s happened. The press would want to know who I was and discover that I’ve been a prostitute. Neither one of us has ever been in a serious relationship. We wanted a chance to get to know each other before we had to face all of the things we’re facing now.”