“Stopping you.”

“What have you been doing since you got here?”

“What have I been doing?” she asked, her eyes going wide.

“Yes. What have you been doing? Flirting with my brother, making a scene when I come to see you—what is wrong with you?” he demanded.

“I’m not sure I can even justify that with an answer!” she said, shaking her head.

“Is this because of Amber? Because if it is, then you need to get your shit together. Did you forget that I’m on the campaign? That I have an election to win?” he asked gruffly.

“How could I possibly forget?” she demanded.

“I don’t know, but you’re fucking acting like you have. I thought you knew what we were doing.” He clenched his hands into fists.

“That’s right. What we were doing,” she said, trying to brush past him to get to the door.

“What the fuck does that mean?” he asked. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into him.

“We aren’t doing what we started out doing anymore. If you want the girl who you met in May, then sorry…she’s long gone,” she told him, staring up into his dark, intense eyes.

“You’re not leaving, Liz,” he told her. She arched an eyebrow, wondering whether he was daring her. “I don’t want that girl. I want you. Do you hear me? I want you.”

Liz felt her anger deflate at his words. She knew it wasn’t enough for them to move forward. It wasn’t enough to change the course of their relationship. But it was something; it was a start.

“I want you too,” she whispered in the silence.

Brady’s lips found hers again, soft and warm. He wasn’t trying to kiss the life out of her; he was just kissing her. The woman he wanted.

He wrapped his arms around her waist, and she tangled her fingers in his hair. Her chest rose and fell in time with his, and she felt all the remaining fire in her body dissolve.

Brady wanted her.

When they broke apart this time, she was wobbly on her feet and had to rest her hand on his chest to hold herself steady.

“Are you all right now?” he asked, tilting her chin up to gaze into her blue eyes.

“Doing better,” she whispered.

“Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“Brady, why did you bring her? Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked softly. She still wasn’t comfortable with the idea, but she wasn’t angry. Not in the same way, at least.

“I had to bring her.”

Liz looked up at him incredulously. “Really?”

“Some things are for appearances. It’s complicated. Heather really insisted on this one. My bachelor appearance only accommodates me so far, but in social situations it doesn’t look good to show up alone. And it’s useful to have someone else there to entertain the people I’m not speaking with directly. As much as I’d prefer to go alone, Amber is the least troublesome of the choices I was given.”

“You didn’t even ask her yourself?” she asked, surprised. How did all of this work?

“No. I’m too busy to date, or at least that’s what I tell my press secretary.”

“Does she want you to date?” Liz asked, concerned.

Brady shook his head solemnly. “She doesn’t want me to date. She wants me to get married.”

Liz let out a peep at that word. Married! He couldn’t get married!

“Don’t worry,” he said, planting a kiss on her lips. “That’s not on my horizon for a long time. She can’t badger me into something that extreme. That’s not like a date at a gala.”

Thank God! Liz thought.

“So…why were you flirting with my brother?” he asked, a storm cloud forming over his features. So that was what he had been holding back when he’d had his campaign face on while talking to Clay.

“I didn’t know he was your brother. Nor did I know I was flirting with him. I was trying to defend you,” she said, pointing her finger into his chest.

“Defend me? Why would you need to?”

Liz bit her lip. Whoops! Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. It was clear that there was something wrong between him and Clay. But she had already put one foot forward; she might as well take the step.

“He was talking about you and the campaign and politics in general. I didn’t know who he was, but they weren’t exactly uplifting words,” she said as tactfully as she could.

“Fucking Clay,” Brady said, shaking his head. “He needs to learn to keep his mouth shut. I promise he was trying to charm you.”

Liz swallowed and didn’t say anything. Charm ran in their family.

“I would stay away from him.”

“I probably won’t see him again anyway, will I?” she asked. “He’s at Yale. He should be going back soon.”

“Not soon enough, unfortunately,” Brady said.

Liz wanted to ask what the problem was between them, but it didn’t really seem like the time. There were other more pressing concerns…like where they were going from here.

“Brady, what are we doing?” she asked, trying to keep from choking out the words. She couldn’t ask too much. She couldn’t push too hard. She couldn’t lose him.

He opened his mouth to say something and was cut off by a sharp rap on the door. Brady hung his head and sighed. “That’s my cue. Can we finish this conversation later?”

“Will I get to see you later?”

Brady smiled that gorgeous smile he seemed to reserve specifically for her and pulled something out of his tux. Liz peered down into his hand and saw a little silver key. She glanced up at him, confused. “What’s this?”

“A key to my house.”

Liz’s throat went dry. A key. To his house.

She had never been to his house. She wasn’t allowed to go there. They had always met somewhere that couldn’t be tracked or traced…somewhere the campaign couldn’t find them.

“What’s that for?” she whispered, not able to tear her eyes away from the key.

“That’s where I was planning to have you stay tonight.”

Liz’s eyes slowly rose to his and her mouth popped open. He bent down and kissed her lightly.

“That is—if you still want to.”

He slid the key into her palm, and she closed her hand over the metal, feeling the light weight in her hand.

“I want to,” she responded.

“I have a driver tonight, and he can take you. I’ll see you tonight, baby.”

He placed one more kiss on her lips and then exited the room. Liz stared down at her hand. She had a key to Brady’s house.

Liz left the bathroom a few minutes later and walked back into the gala ballroom. Her heart beat a soft rhythm in her throat from her time with Brady, and she couldn’t seem to relinquish that feeling. Her emotions were swirling around inside of her like a tempest raging through a storm. She couldn’t believe Brady had given her a key to his place. He was slipping. They were both slipping away from their arrangement. The more he let her in, the more she craved from him. Even though she was still mad about Amber, their conversation had tempered her anger so completely that all she could think about was getting back to Brady’s house as quickly as possible.

Chris smiled at her as she walked toward him. She wondered what he thought had happened back there. He must think they had worked everything out or he wouldn’t look so smug. At least he was a good friend to have arranged a way for them to talk.

He handed her a drink as she approached. “I thought you’d want another,” he said with a wink.

“Yes, I would,” she said, taking it and sipping on the whiskey sour.

The key felt like the business card Brady had given her the first time they had met and he had told her to call him. She couldn’t stop feeling like the tiny thing was weighing her bag down.

The next hour was a blur of Brady, taking pictures, shaking hands, schmoozing all around. She couldn’t drag her eyes away from him, and Chris wouldn’t let her have more than one more drink. Apparently she hadn’t been as sober as she had thought when she had met Chris the first time. He was probably right about it anyway; she shouldn’t trust herself to drink in this environment.