Hard Way by Katie Porter Read Free Book Online Page A

Liam wasn’t the man she’d married. He’d changed. Across a decade together, his earnest and forthright nature had become some mix of show and fantasy, truth and obfuscation.
    Except she’d found truth from him in the last twenty-four hours. He wanted to force her. She shivered against a shocking rush of want. Need. Her brain fuzzed out again. She couldn’t think about that or about how wrecked she was on the shoals of that depravity. She’d followed a siren and loved every moment.
    The offices were quiet, but that was no surprise. Representative Rueland was still in Washington to hobnob with lobbyists, which meant no mundane appointments or constituents hoping for a walk-in. She would work in Vegas while ending things with Dash, before she had to return to her new life in DC.
    Not had to.
    She wanted to go back.
    Crystal looked up from the receptionist’s desk. “Hello, Mrs. Christiansen.”
    Sunny made sure her steps never broke rhythm. That name. It was her name as well as something absolutely foreign—like some version of herself she’d never managed to fully realize. “Haven’t I told you to call me Sunny?”
    Crystal was a pretty girl, with blonde hair that bobbed around her ears. Best of all, she wasn’t completely vacant. Rueland encouraged growth in his employees, and she’d taken advantage of his tuition-matching program. At her elbow was a sociology textbook. She twiddled a highlighter between her fingers. “I know. But you’re, like, the only one who wants to be informal. It’s easier to call everyone Mr. and Mrs. than slip up.”
    “Fair enough. Any messages for me?”
    “No, but Mr. Manfried is in your office.”
    “Jake?”
    He’d attended a conference in L.A. but had also scheduled two vacation days after it wrapped up. Instead he’d come back to Vegas early? Because of work or because of her?
    Sunny’s cheeks pinched and the tips of her ears combusted.
    Crystal’s eyes widened. “Did I do something wrong? I thought it would be okay. He said it would be fine, that you’d be happy to see him.”
    Making herself smile, Sunny patted the air in a calming gesture. “Yeah. Sure. Absolutely no problem.”
    Shouldn’t she be happy to see Jake?
    Instead, her hands tingled with frozen fear as she moved down the hallway toward her office. She was taking tiny little steps. Concentration honed over years of martial arts training calmed her breathing from near panting to a semblance of control.
    Jake was sitting behind her desk when she walked in. She managed a smile before piling her attaché case and laptop on the small black couch she kept opposite the desk. “What happened to a few days of down time?”
    “The interns have fouled up the press conference briefing for Rueland’s stump speech tomorrow. I needed to sort out their mess. Then I had a pile of work to do on the new bill. I hope you don’t mind me camping out here. The paint fumes in my office were giving me a migraine.”
    He had spread dozens of papers in front of him, with his own dark gray laptop open at the far right. His hair was bright golden blond, and he had crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was a man who smiled often, but his smiles were different than Dash’s. Open. Clear. There was nothing weighted in his eyes. If he was happy, he smiled. End of story.
    Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be? Not constantly guessing what was going on inside a walled-off brain?
    The worst of it was that she remembered another version of her husband. He’d always been a clever, complicated man, but she’d have sworn that once upon a time, his smiles had been pure too.
    Once upon a time. What a crock.
    “I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m late as it is.”
    Jake folded his hands on top of what looked like a spreadsheet—maybe the most recent poll numbers. She hoped so. If Representative Rueland was assessing lobbyists’ interests based on their contributions again, so blatantly as to make it into a PowerPoint presentation,