The Waterfall by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page A

scotch—that’s something I can understand.”
    It was a very warm, humid, still evening. They were sitting out in the tiny brick courtyard of his Georgetown home. Rhode Island, his home state, the state he’d represented first in the House, then in the Senate, seemed far away tonight. This was where he’d raised his son, where he’d nursed his wife through her long, losing battle with cancer. They were both gone now. He’d been tempted to sell the house. He’d bought it in his early days in Washington; it’d go for a mint. He’d even debated quitting the Senate. Barbara Allen had talked him out of both. Over twenty years, she’d saved him from many a precipitous move.
    â€œI don’t know what to do, Sidney.” He stared at the pale wine. He and Sidney had been discussing Barbara Allen most of the evening. “She’s been with me since she was a college intern.”
    â€œYou’re not going to do anything.”
    â€œI can’t just pretend—”
    â€œYes, you can, and you’ll be doing her a favor if you do.”
    Sidney set her glass on the garden table. That she had such affection for him was a constant source of amazement. He was an old widower, a gray-haired, paunchy United States senator who wasn’t eaten up with his own self-importance. She was a striking woman, with very dark eyes and dark hair liberally streaked with gray. She wore little makeup, and she complained about carrying more weight than she liked around her hips and thighs; Jack hadn’t noticed. She was intelligent, kind, experienced and self-assured, comfortable in her own skin. She’d worked with Lucy’s parents at the Smithsonian and had known Lucy since she was a little girl, long before Lucy had met Colin.
    â€œListen to me, Jack,” she said. “Barbara is not a pathetic woman. You are not to feel sorry for her because she’s forty and unmarried. If she’s given herself to her job to the exclusion of her personal life, that was her choice. Allow her the dignity of having made that choice. And don’t assume just because she doesn’t have a husband and children, she must not have a full life.”
    â€œI haven’t! I wouldn’t—”
    â€œOf course, you would. People do it all the time.” She smiled, taking any edge off her words. “If Barbara Allen’s feeling a little goofy and off-center right now, accept it at face value and give her a chance to get over it.”
    Jack sighed. “She practically threw herself at me.”
    â€œAnd I suppose you’ve never had a married woman throw herself at you?”
    â€œWell…”
    â€œCome on, Jack. If Barbara’s nuts unmarried, she’d be nuts married.”
    He held back a smile. As educated and refined as Sidney was, she did know how to cut to the chase. “I didn’t say she was nuts.”
    â€œThat’s my point exactly.” Her eyes shone, and she spoke with conviction, laughing at his frown. “You are a very dense man for someone who has to go before the people for votes. Jack, the woman made a pass at you. It’s been three years since Colin’s death, five years since Eleanor’s death. You’ve only just begun dating again. I see her actions as—” She shrugged. “Perfectly normal.”
    He drank more of his wine. The damn stuff all tasted the same to him, whether it was made from pears, apples or grapes. “Maybe so.”
    â€œBut?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œThe unmarried forty-year-old in the office makes people nervous. They never know if she’s a little dotty, living in squalor with twenty-five cats.”
    â€œThat’s archaic, Sidney.”
    She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s true. If Barbara were married and made a pass at you, you’d be flattered. You wouldn’t sit here squirming over what to do. You’d think she was a normal,