1. Stephanie

CHAPTER 1

Stephanie

" I need you to do this for me, Stephanie. God knows you're old enough now to be left alone for five minutes."

My mouth crimps shut. I know better than to interrupt him now.

"I mean, one weekend without anyone to babysit you or do everything for you. You'll be twenty-one in a month!"

Daddy's sentiment is far from touching, but it's as close to it as he gets. I'm used to his moods as well as his frequent trips away.

"I'll be fine, daddy. Really," I assure him. He hates it whenever he doesn't have me all to himself. And not because I'm his only daughter.

He's mentoring me to be his replacement, settling for a senator's daughter over the son he never had to carry on the family tradition.

The tradition he's trying to establish anyway.

All that means for me is most waking hours since I finished school have been flushed with campaign coaching, ‘how to senator' lessons, and endless meetings.

I never get out and Daddy's paranoid about me spending more than two minutes with anyone else.

Daddy can well afford the campaign, but I can tell even he's edgy about it the longer we both wait for the voter support he banked on getting.

Nobody even knew he had a daughter. He's kept me out of the public eye until now. And no, I'm not senator material. A child could tell you that.

I know I wouldn't vote for me, but then again, I never voted for Daddy either. I guess that's one little secret out of the way.

The other isn't really a secret. Not to me anyway.

All this political ‘training' and never having a minute to myself. The idea that if I did have a chance at becoming senator, would it be so obvious to everyone I'm still a virgin?

Sounds silly and not the thing an up-and-coming senator should be having. So Daddy's ‘emergency' trip away, taking the whole staff with him too and leaving me at home alone, is probably just what this girl needs.

Daddy's punishing me for something, or maybe it's more of his tough love, priming me for the rigors of office. Yawn.

A hot bath, a little wine, a little self-care that may or may not involve my toes curling—that's all I'm thinking about.

It never really got me during college. Maybe because it was an all-girls school. Pushing twenty-one and out in the world beyond what Daddy shouted at me, and he's right. A world outside of my own life that I'm learning fast is one that most people only dream of.

But not even having done it yet? It might sound a bit poor little rich girl . But I think a girl, a young woman knows when it's her time, rich or poor. Stunningly beautiful or Jane Doe average like me. We all just know when something needs to be taken care of.

And tonight, this whole coming weekend, in fact, is going to be all about me.

"It'll just be you," Daddy reminds me, sounding as if he's actually testing me somehow. But I know there's some security downstairs.

Besides, anyone who wanted to get in here would have to be a ghost. This place is like a vault.

"I'll be fine, Daddy. Give me a chance to go over my speech practice." I fib out of habit.

"And don't forget to work on that walk. You look like a goddamn duck waddling, just like your mother-"

His own words stop him. The pained flash in his gray eyes that should be begging my forgiveness turns into something else. Something darker before he closes them momentarily.

Daddy changed when Mom died. Always said it was his fault. It made him angry and bitter about a lot of things. The life we've lived, his position in business and politics. It's like none of it is enough for him anymore.

I try to tell myself it's because Mom was the love of his life, but the older I get, the more I see how he really is when he talks about her.

I don't get the feeling he liked Mom much at all. It was her family's money that gave us everything. Without Mom, Daddy's political as well as business career wouldn't have happened.

Sometimes I catch him looking at me the same way, a sort of loathing but not today. Even though we both know I'm just like her in every way.

"I-I'm sorry, Stephanie," he murmurs, absently reaching for me before jerking his hand back, recovering his usual stony composure instantly.

"It's just this meeting… The Whitehouse though, think of it!" he exclaims, his eyes widening with an almost crazed look.

There's been some noise about Daddy running for presidential nominee, but his senatorship and business ties, our family history basically, it's not what the bigger wheels that turn actually want. But for my dad, it's like the Holy Grail.

"You'll be late," I remind him clinically. I gave up years ago trying to reach Daddy anymore. I play the innocent, pure daughter, and he plays the grouchy man of authority with the whole world at his feet.

The list of instructions he reels off as I keep pace with him all the way to the front door is his farewell. No hugs or kisses. No emotion.

Once he is gone—and I make sure he is, watching for his limo still long after it disappears into downtown traffic thirty stories below—I shiver a long breath out.

"Finally."

He's not the only one who can switch his mood. I can play my part to the letter, but as I said, there are just some things a girl—hell, even a future senator—has to take care of before anything else.

I swear, the next man I see, if he has a pulse, I will devour him whole.

Senator Stephanie Foster, virgin.

Not what I want on my tombstone, but more important than that, it's not who I want to be anymore either.