III
CJ walked into the darkened press room, frowning. Carol had asked her to step inside a moment, a strange request considering the briefing wasn't until two and the press pool wasn't even here right now. She looked around the empty room, puzzled.
"Hi, CJ!" called a bright and cheery voice from behind her.
Okay, most definitely not Carol. She spun on her heel.
"Danny!"
"Hey, CJ." He grinned at her as she launched herself at him to give him a hug.
She pulled back and beamed at him. "I thought you were still in England?"
"I came back early."
"You were supposed to come back a year ago," she pointed out.
"Yeah, but I wanted to finish my book."
"You finished it?" she asked delightedly.
"Signed, sealed, and delivered to my publisher."
She hung onto his shirt collar. "So I'm going to have a famous novelist in my press room?"
Danny grinned at her. "You'd better hang onto me. I could be worth something."
CJ chuckled easily, still delighted to see him. "So how was England?"
"English. You'd be amazed. I hung out with the press boys at Downing Street, though. Journalists are the same all over."
"Unfortunately."
"Hey!" But he smiled. "Their press room is nowhere near as nice as ours."
"What about their press secretary?" she asked coyly.
He pretended to consider. "Well, Darren's sweet, but he's really not my type."
She giggled, and embraced him again. "Seriously, Danny, it's good to see you."
"I know." He gave her that same old Danny Concannon smirk, infuriating as hell... and adorable. She leaned in to give him a quick kiss. Which turned into a slightly longer kiss.
They were interrupted by a cough from the direction of the door. "Hey, don't mind me," Sam called, amused.
"Hi, Sam," Danny nodded, turning towards him, while CJ quickly recovered her composure.. "Nice beard."
"Thanks." Sam stroked his goatee. He'd had it long enough that it no longer looked like an adolescent attempt at appearing grown up, but CJ still wasn't used to seeing it when she glanced his way.
"Heard you have a boyfriend now," Danny noted cheerfully. Sam just grinned in response.
"Yeah," he said, in a warmly contented tone of voice. CJ reflected again how much happier he seemed now; more... complete, somehow. And she was a modern woman who certainly didn't need a man to make her happy... but something about seeing that quiet smile made her wistful.
And then, as Sam discreetly withdrew, it was eclipsed in her view by Danny's smirk. And that made her wistful in an entirely different way, one that was probably a very bad idea...
But oh, it was good to see him again.
"-Congresswoman? Uh... Congresswoman?"
It wasn't until the conversation came to an uncomfortable pause that she realised she'd been zoning out. Andy shook herself and smiled apologetically.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Miles away."
Instead of shrugging it off, Congressman Garvey leaned in closer and peered at her concernedly. "Are you all right, Congresswoman? You look a little pale."
Andy shuffled the papers in front of her. "Fine, I'm fine," she insisted quickly. She stood up. "But I'm sorry, we're going to have to continue this meeting later, if that's okay?"
He rose with her. "Of course. We can probably do the rest of this over the phone." He still looked unconvinced. "Are you absolutely sure you're okay? You don't want me to get you a glass of water, or-?"
"I really am fine," she repeated, giving her best 'we're done here' polite smile. Matt Garvey didn't know her very well, and he had to leave it at that.
"Okay. Well... I'll have somebody call your office later."
"Thank you."
When he was gone, Andy let out her breath in a long, steadying sigh. This was hopeless; her concentration was completely shot to hell.
She was going to have to call him. She hated to do it; it made her feel weak and needy, unable to cope on her own, but... she needed to talk to him.
She walked out of the meeting room, and Nikki gave her a scrutinising look. "That was over fast."
"Yeah. The Congressman's gonna call me back." She rubbed her forehead tiredly, and tried to ignore her assistant's worried gaze. "Listen, could you put in a call to Bonnie at the White House, and see if he's got some time later today?"
"Okay." Nikki's concerned look only grew, and she ducked back into her office to avoid it.
"Senator McGann."
"Josh." She smiled at him, but it was a smooth, glassy, political smile.
Selena McGann was a political animal. She was somewhere in the upper end of her fifties, and beautiful, in an aloof and slightly distant way. She was elegant, but in a very refined and calculated manner, not the kind of effortless grace he associated with CJ.
She could indeed, as Donna had noted disparagingly, be coyly flirtatious when it suited her; but it was a dangerous school of seduction, the weaponry of a woman who knew what she wanted and was prepared to use all the tools at her disposal to get it. He knew better than to get lured into that kind of power game.
Well, okay, there had been Mandy.
And Amy.
Hmm, maybe Donna had a point, at that.
Today, however, Senator McGann was not in the mood to play with him. "You're here about the leak," she assumed bluntly.
He gave a short, humourless smile. "Yeah."
"You can't possibly think it came from this office."
"It came from somewhere," he pointed out neutrally. You could learn a lot from watching how somebody reacted to a statement like that, but Selena was no political amateur, and she had a poker face. She gave him a faint smile.
"Josh, I have no idea where your leak came from, and if you think I'm not as angry as you are, you're frankly deluded. If you must insist on conducting a witch hunt, I suggest you look to your own office before you start casting stones. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a busy day ahead of me. Amanda!" She called out a young woman hovering on the sidelines. "How does my schedule look for the next few hours?"
The aide had to check a small notebook. Josh thought, with a kind of vaguely irrational pride, that Donna would have been able to recite his own schedule without even thinking about it.
"Uh... I cancelled your one o'clock and arranged lunch with Congresswoman Wells like you asked," Amanda supplied. "And then Steve Onorato straight after. Oh, and Senator Bridges called; he wants to talk to you as soon as possible."
Josh's eyebrows shot up. "You're palling around with Joe Bridges now?" he wondered aloud. The senator gave him a scathing look.
"I should imagine he's calling to gloat. As well he might - I worked hard to get this deal for you, Josh, and I'm most assuredly no friend to Joseph Bridges. Might I suggest that if you actually intend to find out how this happened, you do me the courtesy of taking your suspicions elsewhere."
"Oh, I will," he agreed, with a nod and a plastic smile.
But, he thought as he left, he might just leave a healthy chunk of them in this office while he was at it.
