Chapter 28

It was a dark and stormy night...

Really.

It WAS a dark and stormy night on my newer, bigger, faster and much more expensive private campaign jet. Snoopy would be proud. The storm we were flying through had already cost us an hour of extra flying to circumvent the worst of it. Outside my window the lightning show was spectacular, so it wasn’t all bad, just delaying. Behind me sat a bunch of campaign aids, pollsters, Secret Service Agents and a smattering of crew to care for the plane.

Because we were rather comfortably ahead, the press had lost interest in the Vice Presidential candidate. The only reporter on board this night was Summer Steel because she went everywhere I went except the men’s room. I was certain that she would have been happy to accompany me even there if the Secret Service would let her get away with it.

From time to time the plane would hit turbulence sufficient to upset a coffee cup, or laptop. I’d given up writing my remarks because the seat pocket table kept jumping all over the place. With the cabin lights dimmed and most of the passengers attempting sleep, I was enjoying the quiet and contemplating the world floating outside my window, at forty-three thousand feet.

Summer quietly slipped into the facing seat giving me a tight smile. “It’s pretty bad out there, huh?” She sounded frightened.

“No.” My voice was gentle. She needed comfort not heightened anxiety. “These storms can be bumpy but this one is nothing compared to some I’ve flown through. You haven’t lived until you fly directly through one, because the soldiers depending on what you are carrying are pinned down and need help right now.” She accepted my words as true and visibly relaxed a bit.

“Mr. Secretary,” she began.

I never gave her a chance to go further. “Mrs. Steel, if you are going to continue to cover me wall to wall for your network, please call me Tom when we’re alone. My father was Mr. Morrison. I’m just plain, old, Tom.”

That got me one of her professional smiles. Summer Steel could melt and iceberg with that patented smile. It had disarmed many hard boiled politicians, making them vulnerable for the question they never saw coming.

She smiled.

I REALLY wanted to tear her clothes off and do her right on the seat.

She smiled like she knew exactly what I was thinking and probably did. I wouldn’t put it past her to be clairvoyant as well as disturbingly sexy.

How in the wide world was I going to make it through the rest of the campaign, assuming we won the nomination at the convention? This woman was obviously sent to torture me by a universe with a sadistic streak as wide as the earth.

Mr. Johnson knew a good thing when I saw it and he was painfully pointing me towards the goal line. I just knew Summer Steel would become my worst enemy if she even glimpsed the agony occurring inside my shorts.

With my modesty barely intact because of the blanket draped across my lap, I allowed Summer Steel to openly stare at me.

I stared back.

So did she.

For a long time.

And it wasn’t pretty.

Actually it was.

It was very pretty.

I mean, they were.

Her.

Her eyes were lovely to gaze into.

Exactly when did I go from staring to gazing rapturously?

“What DOES a girl have to do to get you to notice her, Mr. Secretary?”

“Huh?” Her voice broke my concentration. That put me off just a bit because staring, or gazing, as the case may be, into THOSE eyes could very well turn into a full time job.

“What? What?? What???” My elocution training was really paying off.

Summer Steel smiled like a black widow spider just before she mates and then devours her new lover. “This dress,” She spoke with just a hint of pride, tinged with disappointment. “I bought this one-of-a-kind, little black dress, thinking about how best to catch your eye.” Her hands gracefully smoothed the hem of her lovely dress, drawing my inadvertent attention to her waist, under which dwelled ... Ummm ... Yep. I’m a goner.

“These shoes,” she lifted both feet just enough to make me dip my eyes enough to follow her movement, which distracted me from being distracted by her soulful eyes. “These shoes were terribly expensive but instead of buying them, I simply took them off the shelf inside of my closet, because shoe manufacturers would just die to get me to wear their creations. I donned them specifically to go with this devastating dress.” She raised herself just a hair from her seat, in a vain attempt to help me appreciate the whole package. The problem with that whole package was how much trouble I would in if other members of the press core started to burn me down for being single, hetero sexual and attracted to another single, hetero sexual of the opposite sex, while supposedly indulging nothing but my brain, and never my libido.

Of course she would have to torture me some more, before relenting and letting me suffer in silence. “This hair,” she said, flicking it just so... “You see my hair? My hairdresser spent hours getting it to look like just right. We were going for that, ‘I just threw my hair on top of my head and forgot all about it,’ look. That was my strategic plan to see if you could be motivated to strike up a conversation with me. I’ve given you every possible hint that I am open to your approach and yet you hold back. Mr. Morrison.”

“There,” she said. “Can I be any more clear? Is there something else I should have said, bought, borrowed, had done, or acquired to catch your eye?”

At that instant Sumer Steele reminded me so much of Regina that I went far away for just a few seconds, remembering how anxious and how strategically she went about getting me to unburden her of her virginity out on the yacht. For some reason looking into Summers’ eyes as she stated her case brought back to those wonderful days when I allowed Regina and her painfully lovely beauty, to tiptoe her way into womanhood.