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“Shut up and listen to me.” He moved in closer, his face taut with anger. “I don’t know what game you’re playing with me. What’s more, I don’t give a shit. But if you start messing with Mandy, I’ll kick you out so fast your head will spin, understand?”
“No. I don’t understand.”
“The hell you don’t,” he snarled. “This sweetness and light act is a bunch of crap.”
“Act?”
“I’m an adult.”
“You’re a bully. Let go of my arm.”
“I recognize your act for what it is. But Mandy is a child. To her it’s real, and she’ll respond to it.” He inclined his body even closer. “Then, when you go back to being your old self, you’ll leave her irreparably damaged.”
“I—”
“I can’t let that happen to her. I won’t.”
“You give me very little credit, Tate.”
“I give you none.”
She sucked in a quick, harsh breath.
He looked her over rudely. “Okay, so this morning you dazzled the press on my behalf. Thank you. You took my hand during the press conference. Sweet. We’re wearing matching wedding bands. How romantic,” he sneered.
“You’ve even got members of my family, who should know better, speculating that you had some kind of conversion experience in the hospital—found Jesus or something.”
He lowered his head to within inches of hers. “I know you too well, Carole. I know that you are at your sweetest and kindest just before you go in for the kill.” Increasing the pressure on her arm, he added, “I know that for a fact, remember?”
Distressed, Avery said fervently, “I have changed. I am different.”
“Like hell. You’ve just changed tactics, that’s all. But I don’t care how well you play the part of the perfect candidate’s wife, you’re out. What I told you before the crash still stands. After the election, no matter the outcome, you’re gone, baby.”
His threat of dispossession didn’t frighten her. Avery Daniels had been dispossessed of everything already—even her identity. What stunned Avery was that Tate Rutledge, on whose integrity she would have staked her life, was a phony after all.
“You would manipulate the public that way?” she hissed. “You’d go through this campaign with me playing your devoted wife, standing at your side, waving and smiling and delivering silly speeches that are composed for me, only as a means of getting more votes?” Her voice had risen a full octave. “Because a happily married candidate has a better chance of winning than one caught up in a divorce procedure. Isn’t that right?”
His eyes turned as hard as flint. “Good try, Carole. Shift the blame to me if it makes you feel better about your own manipulations. You know damn good and well why I didn’t kick you out a long time ago. I want this election for myself and for the following I’ve cultivated. I won’t let those voters down. I can’t do anything that might prevent me from winning, even if it means pretending to live in wedded bliss with you.”
Once again he subjected her to a contemptuous once-over. “Your surgery made the packaging look fresher, but you’re still rotten on the inside.”
Avery was having a difficult time keeping the aspersions he was casting on Carole separate from herself. She took each insult to heart, as though it were aimed at her and not his late wife. She wanted to defend herself against his criticism, to fight back with a woman’s weapons. Because, while his fierce temperament was intimidating, it was also arousing.
His anger only intensified his sexiness. It emanated from him as potently as the scent of his after-shave. His mouth looked hard and cruel. It became Avery’s goal to soften it.
She raised her head, defying his resentful glare. “Are you sure I’m the same?”
“Damn sure.”
Sliding her arms over his shoulders, she clasped her hands behind his neck. “Are you sure, Tate?” Coming up on tiptoes, she brushed her parted lips across his. “Absolutely sure?”
“Don’t do this. It only makes you more of a whore.”
“I’m not!”
The insult smarted. In a way, she was prostituting herself with another woman’s husband for the sake of a story. But that wasn’t motivating her as much as a growing sexual need more powerful than any she had ever experienced. With or without her story, she had a genuine desire to give Tate the tenderness and love that had been missing from his marriage to Carole.
“I’m not the woman I was before. I swear to you I’m not.”
