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After finishing dinner, I managed to make my excuses and retire to my room sooner than was polite. Falling asleep before Reagan came upstairs was the only way to keep myself from sneaking into his room and begging him to share his bed—and his body—with me.
As soon as I woke the next morning, I busied myself with a run on the trail around Lake Wellbridge—also known as Kiss Me Quick Lake, if you fell in the Honeycutt camp—and out of habit, I took several partial selfies of myself in Elustre wear to post on social media. Thankfully, I stopped myself before sending them to Reagan to post. Considering we pretty much weren’t currently speaking to each other, I assumed he wouldn’t welcome texted selfies.
When I returned to the house, I showered, dressed, and threw myself into work in the privacy of JT’s borrowed bedroom until it was time to meet Brant.
January wasn’t surprised by my call and jumped right into work mode with me. The only hint she knew something was off with me was when we were wrapping up the call and she hesitated before asking me one final question.
“So… how’s it going with Reagan?”
“What do you mean?” I snapped, responding without using my brain first. As soon as my own clipped tone hit my ears, I closed my eyes in resignation. “He’s fine. It’s going fine.”
“Huh. Interesting.”
“What’s interesting? January, I don’t have time to sit around gossiping?—”
“I just got an alert from your Apple Watch that you were having a cardiac event, right around the time I mentioned Reagan. Oooh, look, it’s happening again. So odd.”
I glanced down at the offending item on my wrist. “Stop spying on me through my health app.”
“Dr. Anderson only let you out of your frequent blood-pressure checkups if you promised to provide him regular cardiac data, remember? And you tasked me with it, and I quote, ‘to keep that nosy asshole off my back.’ So don’t complain to me when I want to know what’s causing you stress right now.”
I took a silent breath and forced myself to calm down. “I’m not stressed. I’m busy. The Apple Watch can’t tell the difference. Also, I’ve been exercising like he told me, and I’ve taken all the damned supplements you pushed on me. Just ask McGee.”
“McGee,” January said thoughtfully. “You know, he had some interesting things to say about Reagan Wellbridge?—”
I stood up from the desk and searched for my wallet. “I don’t have time to discuss this right now. At this rate, I’m going to be late meeting Brant before heading to the Investment Summit.”
“Good luck! And say hi to Reagan if you happen to see—oh, wow! Would you look at that heart rate spike?”
“Goodbye, January,” I said drily.
After finishing the call, I grabbed my coat and made my way through the house, not bothering to look for Reagan since the housekeeper had said he and Trent were at a campaign breakfast meeting.
So when McGee dropped Layla and me off outside the Tavern, I was surprised to see Reagan there.
And even more surprised to see him hauling my son out of the front door and shoving him bodily against the side of the building and snarling in his face.
Chapter Seventeen
Reagan
I slept like shit, tossing and turning while actively keeping myself from throwing myself across the hall into Thatcher’s bed. Maybe if he hadn’t been sleeping in JT’s old room, I would have tried it, but the thought of sleeping with my dad’s friend while in my brother’s bed was simply a bridge too far.
That, and the fact I was angry at him. Mostly, I was angry at him for being mature and correct, faults that I considered unforgivable at the moment.
He’d pushed one of my buttons by calling me out on my participation in my father’s campaign. The problem was, I hadn’t realized it was a button until he’d smashed it.
But sitting here in the country club’s private dining room listening to a bunch of old white men congratulate themselves on keeping change to a minimum in state government made my insides begin to boil.
Dad’s campaign manager was a woman named Violet. While most of the time she seemed to hold her own in conversations like this one, today, she seemed to be losing every battle she attempted to fight.
“I’d like to get back to the issue of activating the college student population,” she said, leaning forward in her seat and peering at my father over her reading glasses. A notebook full of scribbled pages lay in front of her now that the breakfast dishes had been removed. “As I told the Senator yesterday, our campaign is floundering amongst younger voters, and the polling is… concerning. Research shows that firing up this demographic can have an exponential impact on disseminating critical talking points?—”
Arnold Duffer’s jowls jiggled as he frowned. “I don’t see how that’s possible. Those young folk don’t seem to give a good goddamn about real issues.”
As the ancient CEO of one of the largest sawmill companies in New England, Arnold didn’t seem like the best person to chime in on issues related to young folk, but no one had asked me. As usual.
Violet nodded sympathetically. “I certainly understand your confusion, Arnold. But they are reactive. Get them excited about an issue, and they’ll spread it through word of mouth to everyone they know.”
