Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,46

himself too much.”

“Yeah, I bet he was.” Ken was pretending to be disgruntled, but he clearly thought it was funny, too.

“It was so embarrassing.” Savannah covered her face with her hands. “And can you imagine being Sam, and waking up with some strange woman pawing at you?”

“You don’t paw,” Kenny said.

“Yeah, well …” Mischief danced in her eyes. “I now know Sam Starrett a little too well.”

“Imagine if you’d climbed into Alyssa’s side of the bed,” Ken said. He grinned, and did a pretty horrendous Groucho Marx imitation. “I’ve actually spent quite a lot of time imagining that.”

Savannah kicked his boot with her sneaker. “That’s awful. I probably would’ve thought you were cheating on me. I mean, when I grabbed Sam, I knew right away that he wasn’t you. But if I’d climbed into bed and found a woman there … I would’ve had a heart attack. I would’ve died of shock. Instantly.” She looked at me. “Ken would never be unfaithful. There are few things I’m certain of in life, but that’s one of them.”

Ken took her hand, bringing it to his lips. “Thanks, babe,” he said, his eyes soft.

She smiled at him, and for a moment, I wasn’t even there in the room.

But I cleared my throat and brought them back on track. “We were talking about Ken’s meltdown.”

“Okay,” he said. “So Van’s having her comedy of errors in San Diego. Meanwhile, I’m in her less-crowded apartment in Manhattan, with an armload of flowers.” He shook his head. “I knew immediately what had happened. I saw some memo about the conference being canceled. I saw her notes about her flight to San Diego. And I just lost it. I just … sat down on the floor and, well, I cried.”

This was clearly the first time Savannah had heard this. Her eyes were wide. “Oh, Kenny.”

“I missed you so much,” he admitted. “It was killing me, not seeing you.”

“That was the same weekend you started talking about moving to New York,” she realized. She turned to me. “I couldn’t believe he was serious. Leave the SEALs? I went home and started packing. I couldn’t let him do that. I couldn’t.”

“She actually talked the partners in her firm into opening a San Diego branch,” Ken told me. “The woman has balls.”

“But now I’ve gone and quit,” Savannah said. She turned a little pale. “Oh, my God, I’ve actually quit.”

“She’s running for office,” Ken announced. “For Congress.”

“We haven’t decided that yet,” she warned him.

He was unperturbed. “Yeah, we have. You want to run, you’re running. You’re sick of sitting around, watching civil rights erode. What am I fighting for, you know? It drives her nuts, so she’s running.”

“I have some clients who are Arab Americans,” Savannah explained. “These are good people, but they happen to have the same name as someone on the terrorist watch list. Turns out my phones have been tapped. My office was searched.”

“She actually stood on a table in a restaurant,” Ken said admiringly, “and gave her first campaign speech.”

“I had my meltdown at the Café Bistro,” she admitted to me.

“You got a standing O,” her husband said.

“I kind of did,” she told me, as if she still couldn’t quite believe it.

“She’s running. And she’s going to win.” Ken stood up. “We’ve got to go, babe. I don’t want to be late.”

“Thanks for stopping by,” I told them, standing too, and giving them both a hug and kiss.

Savannah gave me an extra squeeze. “Thank you so much for writing Kenny into my life,” she whispered.

I just smiled and waved goodbye. I was having too much fun picturing Ken Karmody as first husband of U.S. President Savannah von Hopf.

Now there was a story that would be fun to write …

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

PART I

Spring 2008

This story takes place several months after All Through the Night, and several months before Into the Fire.

CHAPTER ONE

It was surreal, being home.

Of course, this apartment wasn’t really home. It was kind of half-home, but half-not, which added to the weirdness.

When Arlene Schroeder’s reserve unit had gotten called up, she’d given some of her furniture to her brother, Will, but had put most of it into storage, into a self-service garage-sized room.

For twelve dollars a month—special military rate, set up by a friend of a friend—the antique desk and bed-frame her grandmother bequeathed her, her dresser and formal dining room set, all of her books and clothes, and her precious box with Maggie’s baby shoes would be safe and dry and waiting