Beauty Queen (31 page)

Not really. She put the Rover in drive. Well see you later, she said as she pressed the gas.

She saw Matt rear back, then in the rearview mirror, saw him staring after her, and thought the fish analogy was about the stupidest thing shed heard in a long while, and in fact, her alter ego urged her to say so. So Rebecca circled back around.

Matt was standing in the same spot she had left him. Yes? he drawled when she let the passenger window down.

I am not doing a fish thing.

All right. Then what are you doing?

Excellent question. I dont happen to know at the moment, but if you will kindly step back, I have a forty-five-minute drive to think about it. Ill let you know.

Matt sighed, shook his head. Thats all I can ask for, I guess. But I gotta tell you, Rebecca, this yo-yo thing weve got going is starting to take a toll. So lets just say the ball

is officially in your court. Ive made it clear that Id really like to explore this thing between us, take it deeper. Youve made it clear that you dont know what you want but I wont press you. Its up to you.

Great. Maybe we can start with you not telling me how to participate in this campaign.

Are you serious? he asked, and leaned over, propped his arms on the window to better gape at her. Come on, Rebecca, that is a whole different issue

No, its not

Of course it is! Thats my role in his campaign. Its nothing personal, its just politics.

Its bullshit, she said evenly. You know what, Matt? I think I know what the problem is here. I think you are jealous of my relationship with Tom, she announced, pleased that she had finally hit on the problem.

Matt just snorted like that was the most absurd thing in the world. Get real! Im not even remotely jealous!

Yes, you are.

Rebecca

Good night, Matt, she said, and pressed the gas again and headed for the street. And as she drove away, she saw Matt still standing there, one hand on his waist, staring after her in bewilderment.

But he couldnt possibly be as bewildered as she was starting to feel.

Chapter Twenty-one

From almost the moment she had called him cheap, Rebecca Lear had managed to turn him, Matt Parrish, the most unflappable guy in the world, upside down and inside out. He did not know which way was up. He was confused about many things, but he knew one thing beyond certainty he was not jealous of her relationship with Tom. Not, dammit!

Jealousy would imply there was something to be jealous about, which there was not. If Tom chose to spend all his time in the company of a beautiful woman, more power to him. Matt had a job to do, and he could not give a shit less that every other time he came to the offices, Grayson was there with Pat or Angie while his mom was off playing the beauty queen role with Tom.

Okay, maybe he didnt give a shit where she wassort of but it was beginning to piss him off that the kid had to suffer through her little ego trip. Its not all the time, Angie had said one day when Matt complained about it. But would you mind watching him? Ive got to get to the post office again. Funny how Angie had to get to the post

office all the time. She was out the door before he could say anything, so he shouted after her, It is too all the time! as she disappeared into the parking lot.

He and Grayson had stood, side by side, watching Angie take off. Got any candy? Grayson had asked once she had pulled into the street.

Oh yeah, he and the kid were spending a lot of quality time together. Enough that Matt knew who SpongeBob SquarePants was, and Grayson knew who Kelly Kiker was. Matt had even visited the childrens section of a bookstore to get more suitable reading material than My Pal the Dog, or whatever it was (his pick, The Day My Butt Went Psycho, was hilarious, thank you), so that Gray would have something to do while he tried to work on Toms campaign. He knew which were Grays favorite pants (the cargo ones with the hole in the knee), his favorite food (mac and cheese, hello), and what time he had to go to bed (eight). He knew what Grayson wanted to be when he grew up (a fireman. Or a policeman. Or an astronaut. Or a nanny, for Chrissakes), knew that he missed his nanny Lucy like crazy, and even penned her a touching I-heart-Lucy letter with fangs and dogs and a man who looked a little like Matt. Well, okay, looked like him and about five million other guys. But still.

He also knew that Grayson loved his mom, but thought she was sort of weird sometimes, which she most definitely was. The kid was very perceptive that way. Mom has a lot of shoes, like five or six thousand! he had confided in Matt one day, all wide-eyed.

Yeah, Matt had sighed. The sad news is, shell get five thousand more, and so will your wife, which youll have one day if you go the astronaut path instead of the nanny path like Im telling you. This is something you might as well learn early on, pal. Women really like their shoes.

That obviously horrified the boy, and he had asked in a whisper, But where will we put them?

I dont know. You might have to build a barn or something.

Grayson had considered that for a moment, and then asked, How come you dont have a barn for your wife?

Okay! Ive got work to do read your book, Matt had said, pushing that question do to the appropriate, fiery, will-not-think-of-that place.

Matt also knew that the dog-loving Grayson had a new one. Tot, they called him (clever for a five-year-old, he thought, until Gray told him it was Rebeccas idea). But of all the dogs, Grayson loved Tater the best, because his father had given the dog to him. And while the kid spoke of the man in reverent terms, Matt couldnt help wonder what sort of dad could leave a kid as cool as Gray hanging, but apparently he did. Matt liked to keep an open mind, but based on the evidence thus far, Graysons dad was sounding like a humongous prick.

When Matt wasnt watching SpongeBob with Grayson, he was working very diligently on getting a meeting with the Hispanics for Good Government (or HGG, they liked to call themselves), which was a grassroots organization that had grown into a voting force to be reckoned with. According to the poll stats Doug and Jeff held, the Hispanic vote was one area where Tom was lacking votes. And while KGG did not like to be lobbied, Doug and Jeff were adamant that Matt get a meeting with them and Tom. The Republican was doing it, and they feared that if Tom didnt get in front of them, they might endorse his opponent. That would be a critical loss among the Hispanic population; a potential showstopper.

What really chapped Matts ass was that Tom didnt seem to care. He was forever off at obscure constituent meetings or working on campaign issues that no one else was privy to. He was not what one might call a hands-on candidate. The only thing Tom did show interest in intent interest was campaign contributions. He subscribed to the theory that the biggest purse won the pot, and toward that end, he hounded anyone who might contribute a little something. And it seemed to Matt, being just one innocent bystander, that he was using Rebecca to get those contributions, carting her

around and letting her charm the pants off some of the big spenders.

Rebecca.

What could he say? He was truly crazy about her, like hed never been crazy before which was pretty sad seeing as how she treated him like chocolate one day, brussels sprouts the next. Short-term, long-term, any way he sliced it, he did not see how she could do anything but end up deranging his life in one enormous way or another. Like her referrals to his law practice. The shoe inserts had been just the beginning (the seniors had quite a network), and now Ben was absolutely beside himself, and had reiterated, emphatically, by slapping his hand on top of Matts desk a half-dozen times, that he DID NOT WANT TO BE KNOWN AS THE PATENT KING FOR A BUNCH OF OLD GUYS WITH HALF-BAKED INVENTIONS!

And what about Rebeccas funky contributions to the campaign? The big giant gala aside, she had lots of really cute, no-place-in-a-political-campaign ideas. Like the e-mail newsletter Gilbert had set up, which she thought would be a lot better received if it was more folksy instead of a just a bunch of blah-blah boring campaign news (her words, not his). So she and Pat started attaching recipes to the weekly newsletter, made it sound like they were coming from Toms wife, Glenda (who, insofar as Matt knew, didnt even boil water). In spite of his arguments that a man running for the lieutenant governors office really shouldnt be disseminating recipes, they went out, every week.

Then, Rebecca took Tom along to Eeyores birthday party. Now, anyone from Austin knew that the annual Eeyores birthday party was the opportunity for a bunch of aging hippies to hang out in strange costumes. Rebecca, who had only recently moved to Austin, mistakenly thought it was a good opportunity for Gunter to shoot Tom with lots of frolicking children. Gunter got Tom with frolicking children, all right, but most of them were in their forties. Worse, the local paper shot him in a staggeringly huge top hat, standing arm in arm with a wolf in sheeps clothing.

Of course Matt had tried to educate Rebecca about how that was going to play. Theyll take those pictures of him and make him look like an idiot.

Who will? she had asked, genuinely surprised.

Who? The opposition! Republicans! Heard of them?

Only in passing, she said with a cheerful smile, and continued stuffing envelopes (hand-addressed, of course) with the latest campaign literature. Besides, youre so particular about everything; its hard to know whats real and whats just another of your weird idiosyncrasies.

My idiosyncrasies? Matt echoed in disbelief, but Rebecca ignored him. So he put his hand on top of the stack of envelopes, leaned across the table so that she had to look at him which she did, with those dancing blue eyes that always managed to get him right in the gut. Theyre not idiosyncrasies, Rebecca. Im just practical, and you have to admit I have a little more experience with this sort of thing than you do.

Oh really? she asked, happily wrenching the envelopes free of his palm. And how many campaigns have you worked on?

Thats a mere technicality

How many did you say?

None, he said through gritted teeth.

Thats what I thought, she said missishly.

The point is, Ive been around campaigns, I routinely work with elected officials, and I know how this thing goes down. You, on the other hand, have been too busy running up and down the runway blowing kisses to the crowds to know that Eeyores birthday is not the sort of venue where we want our candidate!

Ah. So you d have him down at the courthouse with all your cronies?

I prefer to think of them as elected officials with statewide contacts.

I see, she said thoughtfully, and, Matt thought, she was finally getting the picture as she picked up her envelopes and carefully straightened them into a perfect stack. Did I tell you? she asked, standing up. We got a

very generous contribution from Judge Gambofini at Eeyores birthday party. He said to tell you hi. With that, she flashed a little smirk and prissed out of the staff office.

Dammit.

Okay, it was obvious that Rebecca was enjoying his frustration, and maybe, just maybe, getting a little too big for her britches. She was taking advantage of the fact that he had, in spite of all the heretofore improbable if not impossible emotions bubbling to the surface (which could only mean an increasingly likely possibility of a major devotion, for Chrissakes), had gone and done something insane and confessed he was nuts about her. He had taken his big old dusty heart and laid it out, salted and peppered it, and served it up to her on a platter. And just when he thought there was hope of getting close to the object of his great affection, shed find a reason to be mad at him again, and theyd go round again. It was almost enough to make a grown man cry.

What was funny, particularly since Matt didnt know it, was that this was precisely what Rebecca was thinking of him. He could be so terribly charming and witty, so very sexy ... and she would think there was really the possibility of something between them, taken, of course, in baby steps and then hed bug her about some little thing she had done. He seemed to think he was the Central Authority on All Things Campaign, giving her a hard time about silly things, such asshe was wasting time hand-addressing the campaign envelopes (but did he volunteer to generate labels? HA!). She was taking Tom to all the wrong events (Eeyores birthday party was for hippies ... and distinguished judges, apparently). She couldnt possibly pull off a bigger gala than THE PARTY was organizing, so why waste her time (but he didnt actually have any of the details of a big PARTY fundraiser, did he?), and he thought Grayson was in the campaign offices too often. He had actually said to her, and these were his exact words, because there was, apparently, no end to the list of topics about which Big Pants was an expert: Grayson is really bored. Dont you think he could use a friendlier after-school environment?

Augh!

She had politely but firmly informed him that Grayson was fine, and politely but firmly ignored the little voice in her head that said Matt was right, because she hated when he was right.

The confusing part about Matt was, when he wasnt trying to mow everyone down with his ideas, he was really great to have around. Like the day he helped her, without any smirking or sarcastic remarks, put up drawings of America Graysons preschool class had made for Tom and they stood there, side by side, admiring the drawings and laughing like old friends. Matt even pointed out that Graysons drawing had a monster in it, which made his stand out from all the rest.

That was another obvious and huge selling point Matt seemed genuinely interested in her son, which was very cool, particularly since Bud wasnt.

And not only was Matts concern for the underdog real, but well known. He had been overly modest when he told her about his involvement with Childrens Aid Services. Gilbert told her about Matts reputation for taking on some difficult and heart-wrenching cases and said hed once read that Matt donated several thousand dollars of his own money to the Childrens Aid Society.