An Irresistible Bachelor(40)
His mother walked back across the marble.
"By the way, you'll never believe who I'm having dinner with," she said as she went to the door. "Senator McBride."
Mercedes waved one of her gloved hands and disappeared down the hall.
Jack frowned, wishing his mother was eating with just about anyone else in town. Jim McBride was on the short list of people who were being approached to serve on the exploratory committee. The invitation was supposed to have been extended sometime this week.
Which meant if his mother asked the right kind of questions, she would find out Jack was thinking of running in the next election.
She wouldn't be totally surprised. He had a feeling she might have guessed he wanted to try his hand in politics. He'd deliberately cultivated connections in the Massachusetts statehouse in recent years and had hosted many dinners with powerful legislators and lobbyists at Buona Fortuna. But that wasn't the same as her knowing his plans outright.
In order for him to declare his intentions in a strategic way, he and Gray needed to first assess his chances of getting on the ballot and then the odds of him winning. The exploratory committee would be responsible for rating him against the competition and for doing their work in confidence and with discretion.
His candidacy's groundwork needed to be established quietly, something his mother knew little if nothing about. Jack was only going to tell her he was running right before he publicly announced it and he hoped like hell McBride wouldn't let the cat out of the bag, assuming the guy knew anything.
After Jack heard the big door close, he picked up the phone and called Gray. When he hung up, he went to look for Callie, feeling relieved and pleased with himself.
McBride hadn't been asked yet, so he knew nothing. And Gray was more than willing to meet an attractive redhead.
Chapter 10
"Okay, Artie, my arm's about to fall off." Callie bent down and gave the dog a hug. He was panting heavily, his breath coming out in bursts of steam. "Besides, we're about five minutes away from pitch dark. You'll never find it."
She heard a car and looked up as a Jaguar with Mrs. Walker behind the wheel went down the drive. She hadn't seen much of the woman in the past couple days and was hoping it was the beginning of a trend.
She was walking toward the house when the door opened. Jack was on the other side, the light from overhead illuminating his face. He was smiling at her, a drink in his hand, as she came up to the doorstep.
"I talked to Gray. He thinks he can get free for dinner tonight and should be here in a half hour," he said as he shut the door behind her.
For some reason, the fact that Jack had followed through on the setup bothered her.
Having just finished the documentation portion of the project, and being cross-eyed from so much concentrated work with the microscope, the last thing she felt like doing was meeting one of his friends. Or maybe the idea of being charming in front of Jack and his college roommate was what exhausted her. Pretending to be interested in one man's conversation while ignoring her attraction to another was going to require more coordination than she felt like she had.
She told herself that none of it had to do with the fact that she'd been looking forward to having dinner with Jack alone, which was what they'd been doing the last few evenings. He tended to stay at the office rather late and she'd been putting in long hours with the portrait. When he'd come home, he'd check on her progress with the painting and then they'd eat in the kitchen while trading stories about their days.
She'd pointed out just last night that his skills with the microwave were showing improvement and his obvious pride had made her smile. Apparently, his incompetence was from lack of practice. He'd told her that he usually didn't get home until ten o'clock at night and ate at the office, but now he had a reason to leave earlier. He evidently liked their talks as much as she did.
In those quiet moments, she felt as if she was truly getting to know him and what she was discovering was a surprise. Yes, he was a tough-as-nails businessman, but people mattered to him. One of his senior management team, the Walker Fund's general counsel, had a daughter who was dying of a neuroblastoma at the age of six. Jack was beside himself with grief for the family and she'd never forget the expression on his face as he'd described how helpless everyone felt. All the money and the power in the world were not going to save the little girl. Connections had gotten her treatment at The Dana Farber Cancer Center and had ensured that she'd been seen by the best, Harvard-trained specialists in oncology and pediatrics. But she was still going to die.