The Next Mrs Russo

“Did you lose something?” Warren asks from behind me.

“Do you think a mouse would be happy here? It’s a pretty good spot, right?” I gesture at the flower bed and the nearby trash can. “A place to hide, a food source.”

“I suppose so.” Warren shrugs and I try not to notice that someone clearly works out between legislative sessions. “Unless it got eaten by a coyote,” he adds.

“What is wrong with you?” I gasp.

“Was that the wrong answer?” He’s looking at me like I’m insane, which, fine. Fair point.

“Why are coyotes even allowed in the park?” Oh, my God. I’m a monster. I thought I was rehoming the mouse in an idyllic park setting and instead I’ve dropped him off in the Wild West to fend for himself. I crouch down to see if the half-apple I left him with is still here. It’s gone. That’s good, right? He probably ate and then moved on. Probably met a girl mouse and found a little tree stump to live in.

“Do you think a mouse could carry half an apple?” I ask as I turn and rejoin him on the jogging path.

“Honestly?”

“No, lie to me.” I roll my eyes in exasperation. “Yes, honestly,” I add a bit testily as we pick up our jog.

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know? You know everything.”

“Do I?”

“Well, I’ve never once heard you reply ‘I don’t know’ during a press conference. You always have a thoughtful and thorough answer like ‘Yes, reporter, a mouse can carry three times its body weight due to having an extraordinary strength-to-weight ratio.’ Then you’d add a sports metaphor about some baseball player who died forty years ago.”

“Would I?” His voice is teasing and I risk a glance in his direction.

“You would.”

“Well then, I’ll have to circle back to you with an answer on that.”

“See that you do,” I retort with all the seriousness that a woman can when talking about the wellbeing of a mouse. “And do something about the coyotes while you’re at it. They’re obviously a menace.”

“For mice,” Warren clarifies.

“Right.”

“Should I take care of the owls too?”

“What’s wrong with the owls?”

“They also eat mice.”

“Ugh.” I groan. “Forget it. It’s hopeless.”

“Should I give you a little pep talk about the circle of life and tie it up with a charming sports anecdote?”

“I never said the sports references were charming.”

“But you thought it, surely.”

I bite my lip to make sure that the words, ‘Yes, I absolutely do,’ don’t slip out. Because of course I find them charming. Even if I don’t understand them, I know he enjoys them and somehow that makes me happy. It’s silly, really.

And could I Google them the way I Google everything about Warren Russo? So that I had a clue about random sports facts? Sure, I could. But understanding them isn’t really the point.

“I’ll take your silence as a ‘yes,’” he says, smirking.

“You’d be wrong,” I say, trying for my own stab at “aloof” but likely just sounding like I have nothing intelligent to say back. Which is true, but whatever. Besides, I’m a little breathless from the run. No other reason.

A cell phone I didn’t even know he had on him rings as I’m contemplating a better comeback. I can tell from my eavesdropping that he’s gotta run. Literally.

“Well,” he says, “I’ll see you tonight.”

I flip my ponytail and accidentally smack myself in the face with a mouthful of hair. By the time I’ve escaped the strands, he’s already jogging off in the other way, laughing again in that way that makes my crush intensify to dangerous proportions.

I’m going to need an extremely hot dress to make up for this. Like, scorched-earth, possibly-made-in-hell-itself level hot.

And I think I know just the dress to do it.

Chapter Ten

My jogging adventure with the governor revealed one very important fact that I’m pretty sure would never have come up during my research, and that is that Warren Russo is, without a doubt, an ass man.

I’m not saying he’s exclusively an ass man. In fact, in my own extremely varied and not at all subpar personal experience, men aren’t usually just one or the other. Like, if I encounter an ass man and I am wearing a top that shows off my chest, they’re not gonna pass on a glance. Nope. Not at all. But Warren’s attention to my leggings, zebra print and all, gives me an idea for which dress to start with.

It started as a Chanel dress from the late 90s with a dark, watercolor print on the top, beaded trim and straps, and a flouncy skirt on the bottom. The bottom was torn, and not in a clean way, either. More like a dog got a hold of it. A dog with very sharp teeth and a grudge.

Or possibly, if I’m being fanciful, someone wore it to a fundraiser sort of thing and it was so boring that they decided to just hack away at it with a butter knife until someone noticed.