had cleared up the picture completely. If he had called the police that
night, there would have been trouble, but not for him and Collin. The
President and his skirted sidekick would’ve taken all the heat. The
woman had snookered him. And now he was barely hanging on the edge of
all that he had worked for, sweated for, taken bullets for.
He knew far better than Russell what they were all confronted with. And
it was because of that knowledge that he had made his decision. It had
not been an easy one, but it was the only one he could make. It was the
reason he had visited Seth Frank. And it was also the reason he had had
the detective’s phone line tapped. Burton knew his course of action was
probably a long shot, but they were all well outside the range of
guarantees of any kind now. You just had to go with the cards you had
and hope Lady Luck would smile on you at some point.
Again Burton shook with anger at the position the woman had put him in.
The decision her stupidity had caused him to make. It was all he could
do not to run down the stairs and break her neck. But he promised
himself one thing. If he lived to do nothing else, he would ensure that
this woman would suffer. He would rip her from the safe confines of her
power career and hurl her right into the shit of reality—and he would
enjoy every minute of it.
GLOM RussELL cHEcKED HER HAIR AND LIPMCK IN THE NHR_ ror. She knew she
was acting like a damned love-struck teenager, but there was something
so naive and yet so masculine about Tim Collin that it was actually
starting to distract her attention from her work, something that had
never happened before. But it was a historical fact that men in power
positions usually got some action on the side. Not an ardent feminist,
Russell saw, nothing wrong with emulating her male counterparts. As she
saw it, it was just another perk of the position.
As she slipped out of her dress and underwear and into her most
transparent nightgown, she kept reminding herself of why she was
seducing the younger man. She needed him for two reasons. One, he knew
about her blunder with the letter opener and she needed absolute
assurance that he keep quiet about that, and, second, she needed his
help to get that piece of evidence back. Compelling, rational reasons
and yet tonight, like all the nights before, they were the furthest
things from her mind.
At that moment she felt she could fuck Tim Collin every night for the
rest of her life and never tire of the feelings that flooded through her
body after each encounter. Her brain could rationalize a thousand
reasons why she should stop, but the remainder of her body was, for
once, not listening.
The knock on the door came a little early. She finished primping her
hair, quickly checked her makeup again, and then awkwardly slipped into
her heels as she hurried down the hallway. She opened the front door and
it felt like someone had plunged a knife between her breasts.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Burton put one foot inside the half-opened door and one massive hand
against the door itself.
“We need to talk.”
Russell unconsciously checked behind him for the man she had expected to
make love to her tonight.
Burton noted the glance. “Sorry, lover-boy ain’t coming, Chief.”
She tried to slam the door closed, but couldn’t budge the
two-hundred-and-forty-pound Burton an inch. With maddening ease he
pushed open the door and went inside, shutting the door behind him.
He stood in the entrance way looking at the Chief of Staff, who was now
desperately trying to understand what he was doing there at the same
time she was trying to cover up strategic parts of her anatomy. She was
not succeeding with either.
“Get out, Burton! How dare you come barging in here?
You’re through.”
Burton moved past her into the living room, barely brushing against her
as he walked by.