Read Online Campaign For Seduction by Ann Christopher - Free Book Online
Authors: Ann Christopher
Ads: Link
several nights a week on the network’s cable affiliate. She’d also use all the behind-the-scenes footage for a one-hour special, Inside Sitchroo, to air either after the primary season ended or, if the senator won the nomination, after the general election in November.
Liza and Takashi’s instructions for today and every day were therefore the same: shut up, observe and shoot. After the meeting ended in a little while, Liza would have five minutes to question the senator about whatever she wanted; then she’d do the morning show, and then they’d all traipse off for another full day of campaign activities.
Simple, right?
Not even close.
The trying to be quiet and observe part was generally no problem for Liza. Trying to banish the senator’s taste from her mouth, well, that was impossible.
He still wanted her. The heat in his eyes had been banked since the other night, yeah, but it was still heat and still there. It was real, this attraction between them. Powerful, real and dangerous.
She’d almost convinced herself that she’d imagined the whole interlude with him the other night, but seeing him again proved that the worst-case scenario was not a figment of her imagination. He was as violently attracted to her as she was to him, and every endless day on this campaign was going to be a tormenting exercise in futile longing and unfulfilled desire.
Spending time alone with him had only thrown gasoline and kindling on her fire. He was genuine, to her everlasting dismay, and she liked him. He was also shrewd, funny and nice. What you saw with him was what you got, and she couldn’t be more furious about it. What was he trying to do to her by being likable? Why couldn’t he be a jackass like everyone else?
And why, Liza thought as she irritably uncrossed and recrossed her legs in this uncomfortable chair, was she evaluating him as though he were relationship material?
Feeling glum about her apparent lapse in sanity, Liza watched and tried not to doze while a couple of staffers debated the latest poll numbers. Had she thought covering Sitchroo meetings would be exciting? Ha. So far this morning it’d been a yawn fest. The only good thing about it was the opportunity to stare at the senator, and since her breasts always swelled and ached at the sight of him, that wasn’t really a good thing, now, was it?
He wore today’s dark power suit, white shirt and yellow tie and looked as though he’d been sent over from central casting to play the president in some blockbuster action-adventure movie. Everything about him aroused her, including his hands, which were the current objects of her obsession.
Those long fingers with their neat nails were now wrapped around his omnipresent soccer ball, the one he allegedly couldn’t think without, as he strode around the room listening to various reports from assorted people. That was another bit of trivia about the senator: his relentless energy rarely let him sit still for long and he did his best thinking, or so he said, while holding his soccer ball and pacing.
When Adena changed the topic to the tabloid photos of Francesca Waverly, which had just hit the stands, Liza stopped daydreaming and started paying attention. Waverly was a size-two Hollywood airhead with no talent and a bikini collection vast enough to outfit every woman in America. What had the senator been doing with her? The question suddenly had a whole new relevance.
Takashi passed Liza a copy of the magazine, which was flipped open to the right page, and Liza studied the picture with a bitter taste in her mouth and a concrete ball in her gut that felt a lot like…jealousy.
Under the caption Business and Pleasure? was a close-cropped photo of the good senator smiling down at the starlet—she of the big eyes, thirty pounds of hair and teeny-tiny dress—while holding her in his arms at a fundraiser in L.A. just before Liza came aboard the campaign.
The article had the usual speculation about whether
Liza and Takashi’s instructions for today and every day were therefore the same: shut up, observe and shoot. After the meeting ended in a little while, Liza would have five minutes to question the senator about whatever she wanted; then she’d do the morning show, and then they’d all traipse off for another full day of campaign activities.
Simple, right?
Not even close.
The trying to be quiet and observe part was generally no problem for Liza. Trying to banish the senator’s taste from her mouth, well, that was impossible.
He still wanted her. The heat in his eyes had been banked since the other night, yeah, but it was still heat and still there. It was real, this attraction between them. Powerful, real and dangerous.
She’d almost convinced herself that she’d imagined the whole interlude with him the other night, but seeing him again proved that the worst-case scenario was not a figment of her imagination. He was as violently attracted to her as she was to him, and every endless day on this campaign was going to be a tormenting exercise in futile longing and unfulfilled desire.
Spending time alone with him had only thrown gasoline and kindling on her fire. He was genuine, to her everlasting dismay, and she liked him. He was also shrewd, funny and nice. What you saw with him was what you got, and she couldn’t be more furious about it. What was he trying to do to her by being likable? Why couldn’t he be a jackass like everyone else?
And why, Liza thought as she irritably uncrossed and recrossed her legs in this uncomfortable chair, was she evaluating him as though he were relationship material?
Feeling glum about her apparent lapse in sanity, Liza watched and tried not to doze while a couple of staffers debated the latest poll numbers. Had she thought covering Sitchroo meetings would be exciting? Ha. So far this morning it’d been a yawn fest. The only good thing about it was the opportunity to stare at the senator, and since her breasts always swelled and ached at the sight of him, that wasn’t really a good thing, now, was it?
He wore today’s dark power suit, white shirt and yellow tie and looked as though he’d been sent over from central casting to play the president in some blockbuster action-adventure movie. Everything about him aroused her, including his hands, which were the current objects of her obsession.
Those long fingers with their neat nails were now wrapped around his omnipresent soccer ball, the one he allegedly couldn’t think without, as he strode around the room listening to various reports from assorted people. That was another bit of trivia about the senator: his relentless energy rarely let him sit still for long and he did his best thinking, or so he said, while holding his soccer ball and pacing.
When Adena changed the topic to the tabloid photos of Francesca Waverly, which had just hit the stands, Liza stopped daydreaming and started paying attention. Waverly was a size-two Hollywood airhead with no talent and a bikini collection vast enough to outfit every woman in America. What had the senator been doing with her? The question suddenly had a whole new relevance.
Takashi passed Liza a copy of the magazine, which was flipped open to the right page, and Liza studied the picture with a bitter taste in her mouth and a concrete ball in her gut that felt a lot like…jealousy.
Under the caption Business and Pleasure? was a close-cropped photo of the good senator smiling down at the starlet—she of the big eyes, thirty pounds of hair and teeny-tiny dress—while holding her in his arms at a fundraiser in L.A. just before Liza came aboard the campaign.
The article had the usual speculation about whether
Similar Books
