A Very Important Guest by Mary Whitney Read Free Book Online Page A

He laughed. “A beautiful woman asleep in my arms on the beach in Hawaii . Are you crazy?”
    She laughed, but the same pang hit her again. She began to worry what she had intended to be a fling for her was actually a fling for him instead. On the drive back to Waikiki , doubt began to consume her as soon as he said, “I leave in two days. Early Saturday morning.”
    She nodded but never stopped looking at the road. The fact was he was leaving her alone again. She wanted to kick herself for being a cliché. She was a stupid island girl who had fallen for a tourist. She’d cleaved herself to an ephemeral guy, and not just any guy. Will was a congressman for christsake—a high-profile man with power who probably drew women to him like moths to light. He would never be without female attention as long as he was in office. Lost in her dilemma, she found the most mundane response. “Where are you flying to?”
    “I connect in San Francisco and get into Cleveland really late.”
    “That’s hard.”
    Deafening silence ensued. During that time, she recounted all of their conversations and realized she knew little about him. She knew nothing that gave her any understanding as to where she might stand in his world. When she could endure the silence no longer, she stole a glance at him. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you dating anyone right now?”
    “Given our evening together, I think that’s an appropriate question.” He chuckled. “The answer is ‘no one special.’ What about you?”
    Abby desperately wanted to hang her head. After all she’d told him about her life, could she bare her soul even more? She couldn’t, so she lied. “Same here.”
    The truth was there was no one at all. She and Jesse had broken up right before she’d put her mother in the nursing home. As her mother had deteriorated, so had their relationship. She didn’t blame him, though. She was the one who’d been distant, and it was the distance that killed them. From then on, she’d began her solitary life, one that revolved around a daily waft of nursing home smells, her senior thesis, a newfound power-of-attorney, and hotel toilets.
    Dating of any kind wasn’t on the agenda, but Will didn’t need to know that. Anyone who was dating “no one special” was dating more than one person, none of them special. Abby felt like a notch on his belt. She’d been taken with a sweet, handsome congressman who obviously wasn’t taken with her.
    She put on the brave face she kept close at hand and changed the subject. “Where do you live in D.C.?”
    With no traffic after midnight, the trip back to the hotel was fast, and she kept the conversation filled with questions about living in the nation’s capitol. When they arrived at the hotel, she again pulled into a parking space across the street. “Here you are,” she announced.
    His brow furrowed, and he touched her hair. “I wish you could spend the night, but I’m guessing that’s out of the question.”
    She nodded furiously. And not just because I work here.
    The lines on his forehead deepened, and his lips turned down into a slight grimace. “Too bad.” He leaned in for kiss.
    “Yes. Too bad,” she said and kissed her congressman for what she figured would be the last time.
    After breaking the passionate kiss, he brushed her cheek. “Until tomorrow, then.”
    “Yes, tomorrow,” she said. It was the whitest of all the lies she could’ve told him, because she didn’t plan on seeing the man again.
        
    * * *
     
    The following day, Abby did something she rarely did. She skipped seeing her mother. Even though she was free with no classes or work on Thursdays, she decided she wouldn’t make the journey over the Pali. Honolulu was the last place she wanted to be.
    She expected a call or at least a text from Will by the afternoon when he saw she wasn’t coming into work, but when the first text arrived at eight in the morning, she was surprised.
    Morning. Can’t