The Senator's Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

that’s what she said,”Thea protested, but her voice sounded lame, and no one appeared to take much notice.
    “I heard,” Rose volunteered. “That’s what she said, all right: whore. ”
    “You were an eyewitness?” The print reporters wrote furiously while Christine turned to the camera, scorning the policeman who was trying to get her to leave.
    “Are you up to running?” Quinlan asked, his head bent close to Ronnie’s. He had turned to face her while the crowd’s attention was distracted. Ronnie glanced up at him from beneath the sheltering folds of his coat. Her knees were weak, her chest felt tight, and she wanted to throw up again. Under normal conditions she would have looked for the nearest place to lie down. But these conditions were far from normal, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do to get away from the press. If running was what it took, she would run.
    She nodded.
    “Come on, then,” he said. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he pulled her through the crowd as she huddled under his coat, out of reach of the cameras. Sheer surprise and a few strategic straight-arm shoves got them out the rest-room door unmolested.
    When the wall of light and heat that was the day hit them, they ran. Moments later the pack was in full cry on their heels.

Chapter
5
    “M R . Q UINLAN . Thank you.”
    “Miz Honneker, you’re welcome.”
    He turned his head and smiled at her, the skin around his eyes crinkling. Ronnie smiled back.
    They were in Quinlan’s car, a late-model Buick Regal with a cream exterior and tan velour upholstery, speeding away from the fairgrounds. The road they were on was picturesque, with verdant farmland stretching to meet shimmering blue sky on either side, but they were speeding east, not west, as they should have been to reach Jackson.
    “There’s something you should know, though: If you’re taking me home, you’re headed in the wrong direction.”
    “I’m not taking you home.”
    “You’re not?” At this, Ronnie lifted her head from where it had been resting wearily against the seatback to look at him with raised eyebrows. A small pile of discarded red-streaked wet-wipes rested in the open storage area of the console between them. Quinlan traveled with a box of wet-wipes in his glove compartment,and Ronnie had used the first few minutes of the ride to scrub away as much of the paint remaining on her as she could.
    “Nope.”
    “Why not?” Sudden visions of kidnapping and worse danced lightning-quick through her head, only to be dismissed. Though in real-world time she had only been acquainted with him for little more than an hour, and she knew nothing about him except for his name and what he did for a living, she discovered that she trusted him completely. He had rescued her, cared for her, protected her when she was vulnerable. The experience had forged a bond between them that Ronnie imagined was probably much like that felt by soldiers who had gone through a battle together.
    “For a minute there you were looking at me like I just turned into Ted Bundy.” A sideways glance and a quick grin accompanied this accurate reading of her thoughts.
    “The thought occurred.” She settled back against the headrest again, glad of the cool blast from the air conditioner. Ditches on either side of the road boasted weeds, not water, and the ponds in the fields they passed looked brackish and stale in the bright sunlight. It had been so hot for so long that even the trees looked wilted. “So why aren’t you taking me home? At the very least I need to take a shower and change.”
    The skin on her legs tingled from the alcohol in the wet-wipes. She had scrubbed at them through the nylon of her pantyhose, but scattered red-paint freckles still marred them.
    “Where do you think that pack of jackals we just escaped from is going to head?”
    “Oh.” Ronnie drew in a breath. She hadn’t thought of that. Sedgely, the Honneker family estate just outside Jackson that was their