The Marriage Agenda Read Online Free PDF

godmother.”
    “Actually, you’re amazing.”
    “Skip it, Knox. I don’t need the ego boost. Why am I here?”
    “Remember the night we met?”
    Did she ever. It was at a dive bar two hours out of the beltway. He’d bought her a daiquiri that night, too, and they had slow danced to every song, even the fast ones. She hadn’t realized his true identity as a member of the Hamilton political dynasty until a couple of days later when she’d seen his photo splashed on the front page of the newspaper next to some charity headline event. She’d felt like an idiot for not having recognized him, but he’d given her only his middle name, and Chloe wasn’t one to follow the gossip rags. Besides, Knox Hamilton didn’t wear five o’clock shadows, baseball hats, or jeans and faded tees rescued from the eighties as he had that night. And the ruckus that tended to follow him had been absent—he’d found the perfect disguise playing a nobody in a bar. By the time she’d reconciled the face on the front page with the man she knew, she’d spent a whole night in his arms, whispering sweet somethings while they made plans to see one another again. What had happened between them had come fast and hard, every moment filled with a quiet intimacy, his every touch one of fulfilling tenderness. There had been no pretensions between them that night, and in the months of under-the-radar dating that had followed, there never were.
    “I do remember that night,” she said. “Vaguely.” Had the words trembled on her lips? She’d spent a lot of time trying to forget the connection they’d once shared. Past tense . That connection was beyond moot after the way he’d left her—or it should have been. From the moment she’d laid eyes on him in Off the Record, she’d known that route of denial was over.
    He grinned. “I think it’s the first time I’d ever escaped recognition by a reporter.”
    “Says the man in disguise,” she said, matching his smile. Then the weight of her own words sank in, and she realized what had been missing all along. “I never knew the real you, did I?”
    He held her gaze, the moment lasting a beat too long. “Actually, Chloe, you’re probably the only person who has ever known the real me. Which is why you’re here.”
    His words sent delectable little shivers tiptoeing across her skin. She tried to fend them off, but tendrils of that old connection still haunted her. “Get to the point.”
    “I promised you an explanation as to why I left.”
    “Yes, you did.”
    “This life,” he said, “isn’t one I’d wish on any woman.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Fame…fortune…it would be brutal, yes.”
    The theatrics didn’t earn a response.
    “You’re thinking of your father.”
    “His running around has destroyed my mother. She’s outwardly strong—hell, most people think she’s a saint—but it’s killing her inside. This last time was just too public. Too much.”
    “So your father really stepped down for his family?”
    “That’s what he says.” Knox’s tightly indifferent tone suggested anything but indifference.
    She thought better of asking him to elaborate. “And you want his seat?”
    “I do. And I have a good chance. Despite the scandal, my father carries a good portion of the state, and the polls indicate his constituents think favorably of my taking his place.”
    “Polls, already?” She rolled her eyes. “It sure doesn’t take long for the vultures to circle.”
    “We had some lead time before the news broke, which is how I know the fact I’m single and have a playboy reputation could hurt the campaign.”
    She winced inwardly over the playboy part—the last thing she needed was the reminder she was just another smudge on his otherwise impeccably polished headboard. “So, what do you want from me? A signed affidavit attesting to your fidelity?”
    He leaned back in his chair and gave her what had to be his best podium appraisal. “I ended things between us