The Marriage Campaign

As if proving her point, the wind again tore at her head, loosening more strands. When she’d made the appointment and planned out her day so that she could work in the funeral service, she hadn’t factored in the dreary weather Mother Nature might provide. Lisa was at least grateful it wasn’t raining, taking more time out of a day she wished had twenty-six hours to it.

“When does your work ever let up?” her mother asked. “Never,” Lisa said honestly, readying herself for the forthcoming parental dissatisfaction. “Until the August primary, I’ll be on call nonstop. And after we win that, I’ll be even busier until we win the November election. After that, I might be able to sleep.”

Her mother’s lips puckered. “We haven’t seen you in ages, and seeing you at funerals isn’t quality time. You missed celebrating Easter. While I love seeing Andy and the kids, just having your brother’s family around isn’t enough. Will we at least see you for your birthday?”

“Oh, Mom, please. Of course you’ll see me before that,” Lisa said, acknowledging her mother’s sarcasm. Lisa wasn’t turning thirty until early November, right after the national election. “Tell you what—how about I stop by this Saturday? Herb’s in Kansas City and Bradley’s overseeing.”

“That’s my daughter, the nonstop career woman.” His duties finished, her father came up and embraced her in a warm hug. While her mother didn’t like Lisa’s long hours, at least her former-military father understood her desire to prove herself. He’d been a dedicated career man himself, often spending long hours away from home and his family.

“I see that Herb’s ahead in the polls. How’s the campaign going?” her father asked.

“We can always use more money.”

Her father laughed, but instead of joining him, Lisa pulled her vibrating BlackBerry from her pocket and accepted the call. “This is Lisa.” She listened to Herb for a moment. “I’ll be there in forty minutes. I’m leaving now.”

“He even phones you at a funeral?” Her mother’s censure was evident as Lisa ended the call.

Lisa sighed, the sound lost in the late-April wind. Louise Meyer had stayed home and raised five children, often alone, as Lisa’s father had been away on Air Force business. Lisa had never been sure what her father’s specific job was, but she’d grown up a military brat whose father often didn’t arrive home for dinner and sometimes not even to sleep. Her mother had held down the home front, and having never worked outside of the house, her mother often didn’t understand Lisa’s lofty ambitions or why, as the baby of the family, Lisa drove herself so hard.

“Mom, I had my phone set on vibrate. My clients must be able to reach me at all times. Tonight’s event is the first that I’ve been responsible for here in St. Louis. Entirely my baby.”

Her mother’s sour expression didn’t change. “I’d rather you have real babies. You’re twenty-nine. I’d like some grandchildren before I get too old to play with them.”

Lisa gritted her teeth. Three of her siblings had planted themselves between one and two hours away from St. Louis. Andy, the only son who was close—just across the river in Fairview Heights—had wiggled out of the funeral because of a sick child. As for children, her mother was a grandmother ten times over already.

Andy had provided three of those. While children were a someday goal of Lisa’s, having a family of her own was not an immediate possibility with her travel schedule. And, of course, she needed a man first. Like that one she’d seen earlier…

Time for a tactical retreat. “I love both of you,” Lisa said, hugging each of her parents. “We’ll try for this weekend, okay? Right now I have to go.”

In fact, all around, car engines had roared to life, the mufflers spewing visible exhaust into the frigid air.

“This weekend,” her mother emphasized. “Pencil or type us into that thing, whatever you do with it. Oh, look at that line of cars leaving. Mike, we must get to Jud and Shelia’s before everyone else.”

Her mother took her husband’s arm and faced her daughter once more. “Lisa, I’m serious about this weekend. Don’t be a stranger. We left Warrensburg and moved across the state so we could be closer to our family. Now that you’re living here until at least November, that includes you.”

“I’ll try to make more time. I’ll see you Saturday. Promise.” Lisa hugged her parents again and then headed to her car, a used upscale Lexus that she often chauffeured clients in.

While the car warmed up, she blocked out six hours for her parents on Saturday and entered the information into the BlackBerry’s calendar. She placed the device on the passenger seat and shifted the car into drive.

There was a slight gap between a Lincoln Town Car and the black Porsche following it, and Lisa eased her way into the opening. She glanced in the rearview mirror, and her hand stilled as she began a thank-you wave. Him.

The guy who’d been across the grave site stared back at her, his sunglasses hiding his eyes. His black-gloved fingers drummed rapid-fire on the steering wheel as he waited for her to accelerate. The moment seemed to stretch, and Lisa realized the Town Car had moved.

She turned her gaze forward, took a deep breath and stepped on the gas pedal. She had better things to do than stress over some man she’d never see again, no matter how handsome he was or even if she really did know him somehow. During the funeral, she had missed ten calls, several of which she had to return the minute her family obligations were finished. Other calls were from her best friends, Cecile and Joann. Those could wait, as they often did. Amazing how once you left college, even though you remained friends, you became too busy to see each other as much. What used to be long daily conversations shifted into weekly ten-minute chats, if that.

The BlackBerry also registered that Lisa had new e-mails, meaning it was going to be a long afternoon. She made a left onto Highway 44, deliberately refusing to watch the Porsche disappear in the opposite direction.

“YOU DO REALIZE THAT if you don’t leave, you’re going to be late. Oh, and Alanna’s called three times now.”

The disapproving voice of his fifty-year-old secretary resounded in his executive office, and Mark Smith glanced up from the purchase proposal he’d been reading. Carla stood in the doorway, just as she had any other day during the past five years. The only difference now was that her arms were crossed and she’d lowered her reading glasses so that they hung around her neck by a chain. She arched an eyebrow. “You heard me about Alanna?”

He’d heard her. What bothered him was the first thing she’d said.

“I’m late?” he parroted, running a hand through his dark brown hair as if the motion could make him remember exactly what he was late for. Just because he was turning the ripe age of thirty in June didn’t mean his brain cells had already stopped functioning. Thirty was the new twenty, forty the new thirty—or so the ads and magazines claimed.

Heck, he still was height-weight proportional thanks to a healthy diet-and-exercise regime, had a full head of hair thanks to great genetics and had a ninety-nine-percent punctuality record thanks to his meticulousness.

Mark admitted to being anal about little things like timeliness and he’d even managed to arrive at the funeral this morning on time, not that he’d wanted to be there in the first place. With the responsibility of selling his family’s die manufacturing company resting solely on his shoulders since his father’s heart attack, Mark had a lot of purchase proposals to read and he was falling behind.

“You’re going to be late for the fund-raising dinner,” his secretary prodded gently, her expression a tad concerned that Mark hadn’t clued in yet.

“Oh—” Mark bit off the expletive that threatened.

The dinner! He hated political events. Whereas his father loved politics and once toyed with running for state senate, Mark avoided anything to do with politics like the plague. Like a good citizen, he voted, but that was about it. He’d wiggled out of half a dozen dinners his father had invited him to attend over the years, and finally his father had stopped asking.

But as the new president of Smith Manufacturing—an interim position until the company was sold—Mark knew his responsibilities. He’d fulfill them, as he’d been raised to do and always had—just as he’d done by attending the funeral of one of his father’s business associates this morning. This time Mark’s mother was sick, and even though the doctor said it was only a spring virus, Mark’s dad had felt it best to stay home with her. The conversation this morning had been quick.

Mark stood and grabbed his leather trench coat.

The drive from Chesterfield to the Millennium Hotel wouldn’t take but twenty-five minutes, tops. As he accelerated the Porsche onto Highway 40, he glanced at the dashboard.

He’d only be about five minutes late, if at all. The wind blew, beating against the Porsche as the car crept over the posted speed limit. The day seemed as if it belonged more in January than in April, and Mark resented for a moment having to attend. Although, what else did he have to do? His relationship with Alanna was over; he’d broken it off last week. She’d become too clingy, too simpering, as was still evident in her repeated phone calls to his office. Three months of dating did not constitute a relationship. His secretary, Carla, was a saint for putting up with the nonsense.

As for Mark, when a man came within reach of hitting thirty, his thoughts did turn to marriage. He wanted his own Mrs. Right, whoever she might be. Definitely not Alanna. Nor any of the other women he’d dated over the past few years. He’d rather be a bachelor than make “death do us part” vows with the wrong woman.

Maybe that’s why he seemed to run through girlfriends like water. Dating was like shopping. When a guy went to the store, he found what he wanted and bought it. If not, he left. Mark wasn’t a big believer in wasting time. Wrong woman—nice to meet you, but goodbye.

However, he admitted he was ready to settle down, which was why he was out there searching. His fraternal twin sister Joann had three kids already, and Mark had none. He liked kids and wanted a houseful, but only after marrying the right woman. If he found her. When he did, he wouldn’t let her go.

Mark lifted his foot off the accelerator, slowing the expensive sports car to only five miles above the speed limit. Just six more miles and he’d be there, amongst the people jockeying for position, for political favors, for a slice of power that, in the end, was meaningless. Mark shivered despite the climate-controlled air. Joann’s friend Lisa had always loved politics.

Lisa. Mark frowned. Joann had attended the University of Missouri and become best friends with her three Rho Sigma Gamma pledge sisters. Nicknamed the Roses, all four had been inseparable until graduation. After that, life had gotten in the way. Oh, they kept in close touch and still maintained confidences, but seeing one another was hard to do when you lived in different towns and had different obligations.

That girl at the funeral today had reminded Mark of Lisa. Same blond hair, same overall build. Attractive. But he hadn’t seen Lisa since Joann’s wedding eight years ago, when Lisa had disappeared and stood him up. His best friend Caleb’s girlfriend had gotten sick, and Mark had walked her outside to get some air. By the time he’d found Caleb and passed off the sick girlfriend, it had been well past the time Mark was to meet Lisa. She hadn’t waited, and after a fruitless search, Mark had gone to bed alone.

And since Lisa had been from Warrensburg, on the other side of the state, he doubted that had been her freezing at the cemetery. For a second he wondered if she was married and made a mental note to ask Joann.

Mark whipped the car onto the Broadway exit ramp. Almost there. Mark braked and shook off the melancholy. Duty called.

“LET’S HOPE THERE WILL be some single men here tonight.”

Upon hearing Andrea Bentrup’s announcement, Lisa looked heavenward, studied the pattern on the hotel ballroom ceiling and mentally counted to ten. Unlike her twenty-two-year-old area assistant whom she’d been working with for the past week, Lisa had been around the political block a dozen more times than the wide-eyed, idealistic, nonstop romantic standing in front of her. Love and politics did not mix. Ever.

Lisa plastered on a businesslike expression and faced Andrea. Hiring her hadn’t been Lisa’s idea last November; Herb had traded political favors with Andrea’s father, a very influential party member. Except for her rabid wishes to settle down and marry, Andrea did a decent job. She was a natural social butterfly who easily made everyone comfortable.

“Well, Andrea, you’re free to hope, but don’t hold your breath. Political fund-raisers aren’t the place to find single men. Besides, our job isn’t about finding a husband but helping Herb win the election.”

Andrea’s skin turned the color of her hair, a light shade of red. “Oh, please don’t think I’m saying that I don’t want to help Herb win the election. But at least some of these guys have to be going stag and, darn it, I don’t want to work all my life.”