Campaigning for Love novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Rules

After hours Cora and Nelson set terms, and Constance finds the monogrammed blazer in Cora's hands.

At seven that night the showroom was empty, and I was the only person still holding a voter list.

I had stayed on purpose.

I had his blazer folded in my tote, and I wanted it out of my life before it caused a scandal on its own.

The glass office in the far corner had one lamp lit.

Nelson sat behind a desk covered in road maps, with his tie pulled loose and his sleeves pushed up.

He looked up when I knocked on the glass, and for one second he looked at me exactly as he had in the bar.

Then he stood so fast his chair rolled into the wall.

"Come in," he said. "Or don't. Whichever you want."

"I brought your jacket."

I put it on the desk.

He looked at it.

"I took the wrong one this morning," I said. "It was dark."

"I know. I woke up and found yours on the chair, with a gym key in it, and I thought I'd lost my mind."

"I have your speech card. You have my key. We're even."

"I'm not sure we are."

He came around the desk and stopped three feet away from me, and kept his hands in his pockets.

I understood that he was doing it on purpose.

"Cora, I need to say this properly," he said. "You are twenty-three. I'm thirty-eight."

"I'm the candidate, and you're an intern who works for people who work for me."

"That's a power gap. I can't pretend it isn't."

"I know it's a gap."

"So here are the rules, and they're yours to change."

"You report to Hallie, not me. I will never sign anything about you, rate you, or pass your name to anyone."

"If you want out of this building, I'll have a better job for you by morning."

"If you want to stay, nobody hears a word about Sunday from me."

"What if I want to stay and not get a better job?"

"Then you stay, and you get exactly the job everybody else gets."

I tipped my head.

"That's the whole speech?"

"I wrote it on the back of an envelope at lunch," he said. "I'm very bad at this."

I laughed, and the laugh went away fast.

"I'm not scared of you," I said. "I want you to know that. I wasn't scared last night, and I'm not scared now."

His throat moved.

"I'm scared of me," he said.

"Why?"

"Because it's been three years. My wife died three years ago in April."

"I didn't look at anyone. I didn't want to."

"And then a woman I didn't know told me road reports were her hobby, and I looked."

He stopped.

"I'm sorry, that's not fair to put on you."

"It's not too much," I said. "It's the nicest thing a man has said to me this year."

We stood there.

The lamp hummed.

My pulse was in my throat, in my wrists, in the soles of my feet.

I could see the pulse in his neck above his open collar, and I wanted to put my mouth on it.

"This morning in the supply room you told me to go home," I said. "You were trying to protect me."

"But you didn't ask me what I wanted."

"What do you want?"

"I want the job. I want to earn it."

My voice came out lower than I meant.

"And I want to find out whether last night was a fluke."

He took one hand out of his pocket.

He lifted it slowly and tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear with his knuckle.

My breath caught.

"Cora," he said. "If you say go away, I'll go and tell no one."

"I'm not saying it."

His forehead dropped to mine.

For a second I felt every inch of him that wasn't touching me, the heat, the weight, the almost.

"Not here," he said. "Not in the building. You deserve better than a desk."

"I don't mind a desk."

He made a noise that was half a laugh and half a groan.

"You're going to kill me."

"Only if you keep being nice."

Our mouths were an inch apart.

I could taste lime.

I tilted my chin up.

The light in the showroom snapped on.

We jumped apart.

Constance Hubbell stood in the doorway of the glass office in her navy suit.

Her glasses hung on their chain and her phone was in her hand.

She hadn't gone home either.

"Good evening," she said. "Miss Dunn, isn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're here late, for the first day."

"I was returning the candidate's jacket," I said.

It was the truth, and I heard how it sounded.

Constance's eyes went to the blazer on the desk.

She walked in, picked it up, and turned the collar over with one finger.

Stitched inside, in blue thread, were the letters J.K.

"How did you come to have it?" she asked.

Nelson opened his mouth.

"He left it on a chair at the Ingersoll," I said. "I'm staying there, and I picked it up by mistake."

It was true, and it was not the whole truth.

Constance smiled for the first time all day.

It was the smile of a woman who had just found what she was looking for.

"How helpful of you," she said. "Come to my office at eight tomorrow, Miss Dunn. We should have a conversation."

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