DC Affairs by Selene Chardou Read Free Book Online Page B

into my mouth.
    Russell licked a dab of chocolate off his lips before he followed up with a scoop of my ice cream. “Since he ran for mayor of Baltimore. My sister brought me on because she thought it would be a great opportunity for me. That was six years ago and we haven’t looked back.”
    “Whoa, so you’ve been with his campaign since you graduated from college?”
    He nodded, his intriguing blue-green eyes never leaving my face. “I got into Yale for graduate school and I was supposed to go back but I never did. Not that I have to…I mean my dad is loaded. I’m a trust-fund kid, I don’t need to go to graduate school but I didn’t want to be an American idiot under the new media.”
    I laughed out loud. “Really? Green Day called and they said they want their slogan back.”
    Russell smiled though there was a hint of smirk to it. “I didn’t even think you would know who Green Day was. You don’t exactly seem like a hip chick.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Do I look that sheltered to you? My God, I volunteered in east Baltimore as a teen. My dad used to take me along when he went to work at John Hopkins during the summer months. I worked with gun shot wound patients and kids my age suffering from PTSD thanks to living in violent west Baltimore neighborhoods. Don’t treat me like a freakin’ square. I’m not as innocent as you think.”
    He stared at me in a beguiling manner and I almost felt my heart swell to epic proportions. In one day, I’d gone from despising this man to finding him quite possibly one of the sexiest men on the planet. There was definitely something wrong with me.
    “I see you, Sigourney Stewart.”
    I leaned toward him and placed both my hands on the table. “Is that a good thing, Mr. Berkeley?”
    “Absolutely. You’re intelligent, self-aware and incredibly beautiful. What’s not to love about a combination like that?”
    “I’m not exactly sure.” I smiled back as one crept across his handsome features. “You’re not too bad yourself for a trust fund kid.”
    “ Kid ? I’m older than you,” Russell expressed in mock anger.
    “Well, I certainly can’t argue with that.”
    A comfortable silence settled between us. We observed one another with the less-than-sly stealth of two people who’d first met and knew they’d find getting to know one another interesting.
    I had no idea how Russell could have such a positive attitude when his mother had died weeks before.  Perhaps the time off had given him some perspective on the whole situation. I’d never know entirely because he knew how to deflect questions he deemed too personal.
    He talked about his relationship with Kylie but only on a surface level. They were close siblings, despite their age difference and the contentious way their mother had abandoned one family to make one with another. Although not exactly ambivalent about her brother, Kylie still cared about him despite the lack of emotion she wouldn’t show for her own mother.
    I realized this was all supposition because I didn’t know the whole story. I wasn’t exactly forthright about my own family history except our ethnic makeup. Few people except those closest to me knew I had a thirty-year-old brother, Sebastian, who was also a doctor but practiced in Norway where he lived with his Norwegian partner and their two children. Those not close to me never knew about my twenty-two-year-old sister, Sofie, who resided in Copenhagen. She attended university there after a brutal rape happened to her while she’d attended Harvard and later, attempted suicide before deciding to leave the country.
    I knew better than to think anyone came from normal families, after all, what was normal? Mine was no more or less fucked up than anyone else’s but my mother came from a cold country filled with people who were emotionally isolated as they were physically due to their geographical separation from mainland Europe. She didn’t process the showing of emotions very well, hence