in bed. No doubt they’d be surprised to see me at breakfast in the morning.
Just thinking of Theo interrupting our intimate evening made me cringe. When I’d climbed into the back of the helicopter, I’d not been able to look him in the eyes, fearing he’d guessed what we’d been doing. Since he and Damien shared a place in the city, I was certain they knew each other well enough to talk about such things.
I’d fallen asleep in the helicopter with my head resting on Damien’s shoulder. The fact he’d let me stay so close to him felt like a small victory.
I expected the month leading up to the election would be strained, but I’d not foreseen this level of chaos, or that it would encroach on my life to this extent.
My fingers trailed along my forearm in a self-soothing gesture, as I tried to mimic how I’d been caressed so seductively in that lofty hideaway.
Damien was devastatingly charismatic. Time with him was never boring, which was probably why I was already missing him. My hands cupped my still sensitive breasts, my body tingling all over as I thought about what Damien had done to me…the memory of that blinding orgasm making me shudder.
Seeing his steely armor relax a little had me liking him all over again.
Damien could easily be invited into the center of my fantasies where I could mold him into doing what I wanted in my imagination.
I sat there wondering what had been so important to drag him away, hoping it didn’t have anything to do with his father’s campaign. It had been grueling, but the Senator had held up well for a man of sixty-two. He seemed to thrive on the stress.
But having his strategist fly all the way out to the beach house to retrieve his son was a clue that something serious had happened.
“Pandora?” my mom whispered from the top of the stairs.
I turned to see her wearing that familiar Oscar de la Renta satin robe with the feathered cuffs.
I cringed. “Did I wake you?”
“The car lights woke me up.”
“Sorry.” I stood and ascended the stairs. “Damien had to come back.”
“Right.” There was no surprise in her tone. “He couldn’t leave you at the beach house?”
“Um…no.”
Her eyes widened when she saw the engagement ring. “He proposed?”
If throwing a ring across the room could be called a proposal.
She examined my hand and her eyes watered with the emotion of someone who hadn’t seen this coming. She’d virtually shoved me at the man at the Debutante Ball.
“They announced it in the Times.” I studied her reaction. “You didn’t see it?”
She reached out to hold me. “I’m happy for you, Pandora.”
Relaxing a little, I hoped she wouldn’t smell champagne and cigarettes and sex on me. What would Mom think if she knew about those red silken ties? The ones that had made my wrists tingle deliciously.
“You look tired,” she said soothingly.
“Do you know why Damien might have been called back?” I asked.
My father appeared down the hallway. “Everything okay?”
“She has a ring,” Mom told him.
He approached us, peering over his spectacles at us as he passed by. Heading down the stairs, he said, “I’m going to get a nightcap.”
That’s strange. I hadn’t expected him to gush over the emerald, but actually taking the time to look at my ring would have been nice.
When he’d disappeared from sight, I asked, “Is he even happy for me?”
With a gesture, my mother offered to walk me to my room.
My throat tightened. “What happened?”
“Not here,” she whispered, as though hinting a wayward member of staff might overhear.
Just as we had on all those days since Jefferson had left home, we swapped a knowing glance when we reached my brother’s room. It was only used when he was in town because he lived in Texas.
My rambunctious older brother had hurtled loudly into manhood. I missed him, but his place was in Dallas running the business as the CEO of Bardot Petroleum. The role filled his days and gave him nightmares.
There were suffocating expectations for everyone living beneath this roof. This was the umbrella of doom we all huddled under.
Mom sat on the edge of the bed and patted the duvet so I would join her. It was a sweet gesture she’d begun using when I’d reached my late teens when she wanted to have a talk.
The gray hairs I saw now had softened her appearance, and so had the lines on her fiercely beautiful face. She had become gentler since entering her