I gave him a sly grin. “Is it working?”
He laughed, the sound of it being music to my ears. It seemed like such a long time since I’d heard him laugh or even seen him smile—at least in my direction.
“No,” he said.
I pouted. “Well, will you at least keep me company?”
His brow furrowed. “It gets lonely being the Speaker’s daughter, huh?” he said. “I imagine it’s hard to know who to trust.”
I swallowed, having not anticipated the conversation taking such a serious turn. I lowered my gaze to the floor, this time genuinely focusing on my stretches rather than on him. “No. Being the Speaker’s daughter is all right. It’s lonely feeling like the only child of a widowed potential vice-presidential candidate.”
“You have a sister, right?”
“Yes. Anna.”
“How come she doesn’t come around?”
I shrugged. “She’s busy with her own life, that’s all. She’s older and has always done her own thing.”
“What about the rest of your family?”
I shook my head. “My mom was an only child. And my dad is an only child. So there isn’t much other family.”
“Wow.” Brady ran a hand through his silky dark hair.
“You don’t have to stand there. You can take a seat if you want,” I said, pointing to the chair across the room. It was a comfortable reclining chair that I had been stingy about since childhood, never letting anyone else sit in it. It was where I liked to curl up with a good book and read late into the night whenever I had trouble sleeping. Yet, for some reason, I didn’t mind Brady sitting there.
He crossed the room, removed the pillows from the sides of the chair, and took a seat. With a sigh, he leaned back and closed his eyes for a second.
“Long day?”
“Taking care of you is a lot of work. I mean, looking after you, rather.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling as if I had literally been stung.
He smiled. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.”
I blinked, startled by the sincerity in his voice. I also noted that his face looked slightly flushed, as if he had said more than he meant to. An involuntary smile spread
across my lips, and Brady averted his gaze just for an instant as I went into another yoga stretch.
After a while though, he couldn’t keep his eyes off me. I glanced at him throughout my workout, seeing lust creeping into his eyes each time I twisted my body into an interesting position. Purposely contorting myself into erotic poses, I finished my workout feeling just as hot and bothered as he looked. I suppressed a smile when he reached for one of the pillows he’d removed from the chair and placed it in his lap.
He abruptly cleared his throat. “Uhm…excuse me,” he said, standing awkwardly from the chair and making a rather obvious effort to not face me as he returned the pillow.
Then he bolted from the room.
I had a feeling I wouldn’t see him up close for the rest of the day, which left me feeling a bit disappointed. But thinking of the way he watched me put a smile on my face. I flipped over on my yoga mat and just lied there for a while, my body yearning for him and wishing so desperately that he had taken the bait.
CHAPTER 8
Brady
“Hello, Speaker Harper,” I said. I’d been sitting in the living room, reading news articles on my phone while keeping an eye on the surveillance cameras displaying the surrounding grounds of the Harper estate. When I’d seen the vehicle returning him home, I couldn’t have been more grateful. A couple of hours had gone by since I’d been with Autumn, but I was still overly aware that I was in this big house alone with her, and I’d been fantasizing entirely too much about going back into her room and asking if she would mind doing those yoga poses again, preferably on top of me with her clothes off.
Since the yoga demonstration in her bedroom, I’d heard her retreat to the library. I hadn’t approached her again though, not even to check if she needed anything.
“Hi Brady,” the senator said, his voice friendly, but tired.