Private Politics (The Easy Part) Read Online Free PDF

present for the rest of the night. Her distance might be because her roommate was abandoning her, whatever was going on at YWR, or something else altogether, but she was withdrawn and hurting in subtle, diffuse ways. Most distressing, only he seemed to pick up on it.
    An hour later, when Millie yawned twice in a row, Liam rose. “That’s my cue.”
    “Night, man,” Parker said from the couch.
    As she opened the door for him, Alyse said, “I—I’m really glad you came.”
    He was glad he was sliding into his coat so she couldn’t see his smile. He soaked up any and all attention from her.
    “No problem.” He cleared the breathless adoration from his face, then turned back toward her.
    “I mean, where would I have been without you?” She ran one hand over his forearm, squeezed him and smiled.
    Any attention except that. The warmth in his stomach dissipated with each flutter of her eyelashes. He’d seen her glad-handle donors with that precise move. How aware was she of her own act? Was each movement calculated? He hated being one of those guys, indistinguishable from the crowd. He hated the act—and himself—even more when he fell for it anyway.
    “Goodnight!” he said. Okay, snapped. His voice was sharper and louder than he’d intended, but still, he was pissed and he didn’t really care if she knew it.
    She looked taken aback, but he shot down the hallway before he could do something stupid like apologize. After this mess was finished, he was done with her. She never looked out for anyone but herself, and that lesson was the only thing she had to teach him.

Chapter Three
    Alyse practiced her innocent face in the bathroom mirror for the third time. She was going to need flesh memory on her side to get through the next ten minutes. She shook her head as if it were an Etch A Sketch and practiced once more. She smiled in her normal way—at least she thought it was her normal way; did she usually show that much tooth?—then allowed the corners of her mouth to fall a touch, her brows to pull together and her jaw to set in a “no, I’m not up to anything” look. Yes, that was good.
    With another shake, she fluffed her hair and straightened her suit. In the harsh overhead lighting of YWR’s bathroom, she had a Cro-Magnon forehead, but that was only shadows she hoped. Her skin was sallow, as if she were recovering from mono. Maybe the after-dinner mint hue would work in her favor? She should have asked Liam’s opinion. This whole thing had been his idea.
    Yesterday had been a mess. She’d seen those documents and gotten spooked. But the punched-in-the-stomach feeling she’d walked around with for a few hours had been a complete overreaction.
    Millie, Parker and even Liam had made her feel more confident. They would figure this out—the explanation was probably totally obvious and benign—and once they did, they’d all laugh. As long as she didn’t have to go to prison and didn’t have her professional reputation ruined. This was the rare instance when everyone thinking she was shallow helped.
    No, all she had to do was to enact their plan. Their brilliant, brilliant plan.
    Ask Geri.
    Diabolically clever, they were. It had taken four whole college graduates to come up with it. But really, where else could they start?
    One of the guys who worked for Liam—she hadn’t actually realized that people worked for him, that a blog could generate enough income for multiple people, that he was really a small business owner—was investigating the companies and websites she’d found the day before. All off the record, of course, not as something they would ever write about. And she was going to ask her boss.
    There was no computer jujitsu involved, but she thought she’d gotten the harder job. What if Geri were in on it, whatever
it
was?
    For an awful moment yesterday, Alyse had suspected that was the case. But the more she’d thought about it in bed that night, the sillier her distrust had seemed. Geri cared