Fair Game Read online

  FAIR GAME

  Doreen Owens Malek

  Published by

  Gypsy Autumn Publications

  P.O. Box 383 • Yardley, PA 19067

  www.doreenowensmalek.com

  First printing April 1989

  Copyright 1989 • 2012

  by Doreen Owens Malek

  The Author asserts the moral right to be

  identified as author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recoding, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the author or Publisher.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  “An extremely talented author…writing

  with conviction and power.

  Ms.Malek excels in detailing

  human relationships under fire.”

  – Rave Reviews

  “SHH.”

  She put her finger to his lips, and he kissed it.

  Ashley moved her hand and touched his face, running her index finger over the hard line of his jaw.

  “It’s like a miracle to be able to touch you, after wanting it for so long,” she whispered.

  “You could always touch me,” Tim said. “Anytime.”

  “If only it were that easy,” she murmured, her eyes filling. “You’ll lose your job if your captain finds out you were doing anything more than guarding me.”

  “What have I done?”

  “Oh, Tim, don’t be naive. This wasn’t supposed to happen, and you know it.” She bit her lip, her eyes searching his.

  He reached for her and pulled her into his arms. When he kissed her, the satisfaction was so intense for both of them that they remained for a long time locked in a fierce embrace, like teenagers who are loath to lose contact for fear the magic may never happen again.

  Then Tim finally lifted his head and Ashley buried her face against his shoulder.

  “Come down to my room with me,” he said huskily.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  New Releases by Doreen Owens Malek

  Chapter 1

  ASHLEY FAIR glanced into the giltedged mirror over the hotel dresser and automatically straightened the bodice of her silk dress. It was going to be a long day, like many others before it. She knew she had to look flawless because of her position, and she accepted the burdens along with the perks.

  She lifted a few errant strands of ash blonde hair out of her collar and surveyed herself with wide gray eyes. Good enough. Then she reached for the cup of coffee that sat steaming on the room service tray and took a sip, mentally running through the morning’s schedule. Ashley grimaced at the coffee’s bitterness and began to add more cream, when a knock sounded on her bedroom door.

  “Come in,” she called. It was very early, but everybody she knew got up in the dark these days.

  Meg Drummond, her father’s assistant, walked in through the adjoining sitting room and said, “My, don’t you look nice. New dress?”

  Ashley nodded. “Giancarlo contributed it to the cause.”

  “What cause?” Meg asked dryly. “Your father’s election campaign or Carlo’s design career?”

  “Both,” Ashley replied, smiling. “I want to look my best for Dad, and when Carlo sends me things I don’t have to waste time searching for clothes. But I told him we’re paying full price, no freebies, no discounts. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Meg replied crisply.

  “Don’t let him talk you into anything else. He wants me to be indebted to him so he can collect later, and that’s exactly what I want to avoid. He’ll go along in the end. What he wants more than anything is to get his creations before the public eye, and I serve that purpose very well.”

  “Speaking of eyes,” Meg said. “Jim thinks Carlo’s got his on you.”

  “Don’t be silly. The only figure Carlo’s got his eye on is his future sales total. Did I mention that he’s hired a team of chemists to create a new perfume? He’s going to sell me an advance sample as soon as it’s ready.”

  “What’s it called? ‘Avarice’? That guy is a bandwagon jumper; if your father loses the Presidential election, Carlo will disappear like a mist at sunrise.”

  Ashley gazed at her friend levelly. “I know that,” she said quietly. “But you’re the political animal, Meg. I don’t have to tell you that it pays to deal with people like him. For the moment, we can help each other, and that’s what counts.”

  “Yeah, well, I still don’t like him,” Meg said darkly. “All that oily charm. After I shake hands with him, I always want to take a shower.”

  Meg grinned. “One hand washes the other. Now, what’s on the agenda for today?”

  “This just arrived by messenger,” Meg said, handing Ashley a thick manila envelope with the Justice Department seal on its cover.

  Ashley slit the flap with a fingernail and glanced inside the parcel. “Oh, this is the case Harry called me about yesterday, remember? He wants me to read the briefs and give him some suggestions.”

  “I don’t know why the Department felt they had to give you a leave to work on your father’s campaign when they know they can continue to send you mounds of paperwork,” Meg grumbled. “You have enough to do as it is.”

  “I told Harry when I left that I would continue working in an advisory capacity,” Ashley replied, draining her cup and setting it down.

  “Well, the way things are going you’ll be reading that file in the bathtub,” Meg said. “I don’t see how you’ll find any other free time. You have the regional Bar Association meeting at ten o’clock and then the League of Women Voters luncheon at twelve-thirty, with your father and stepmother in attendance.”

  Ashley didn’t quite make a face, but her mien altered slightly. Her stepmother meant well, but her main interests in life were shopping and redecorating the Harrisburg mansion she shared with Ashley’s father. Ashley didn’t have an hour to waste making mealtime conversation about the deplorable lack of variety in the spring collections or the shades of color in fabric samples. But the image of solidarity must be preserved, so she resigned herself to the lunch. She hoped she would be seated near somebody more lively.

  “And Jim is picking you up at eight for the Democratic dinner. It’s at Congressman Marshall’s house,” Meg was saying.

  Ashley nodded.

  “And, oh, I almost forgot,” Meg concluded. She snapped into a salute. “The boys in blue are arriving this afternoon.”

  “The boys in blue?” Ashley asked, staring.

  “The police bodyguards the commissioner is sending over to stay with us during the Pennsylvania tour. Don’t you remember?”

  Ashley remembered. The Senator was launching an eight-week tour of his home constituency to build grassroots support before widening out to canvass the nation. He had his own security force, of course, but his advisers had insisted on taking a couple of local professionals along for high-visibility protection.

  “What time?” she asked Meg.

  Meg looked at her notes. “After lunch.”

  “Do I have to see them?” Ashley inquired.

  “You kno
w better than to ask me that. Your father will be rushed; he’ll just meet them quickly and pass them on to you. You’ll have to do the official welcome.”

  Ashley sighed. As a civil rights lawyer, her impression of cops was a somewhat jaded one, and she was not looking forward to making nice with a couple of flatfeet when she could be preparing for the congressman’s dinner, which was important. Her father was a prominent Senator with a healthy groundswell behind him, but he still needed the wealth ard influence of the Philadelphia contingency to launch him into the national spotlight.

  “Okay, I’ll come right back here after the lunch. By the way, what are we going to do with them?”

  “I’ve booked suites all along the route. The plan is for them to sleep on convertible couches in the adjoining sitting rooms.”

  Ashley closed her eyes, then opened them. “Can’t they stay in separate accommodations? We’ll be tripping over them, for God’s sake.”

  “Be reasonable, Ashley. How can they guard you if they’re off somewhere down the hall? You could be dead before they realized anything was wrong. I’m booking rooms for them to shower and change and store their clothes, but they’re sleeping with you and your father. In a manner of speaking.”

  “How many?” Ashley asked, picturing the Assyrian horde camped out in her anteroom.

  “Only two.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  The telephone rang, and Meg picked it up. She listened for a moment, said, “All right,” and replaced the receiver in its cradle.

  “Our master’s voice,” she said briefly to Ashley. “Gotta go. I’ll be in your dad’s room if you need me. See you later.”

  Ashley lifted her hand as Meg left and then turned to the window to look down at the street. Her beloved Philadelphia was waking up below her. She thought of the town house her maternal grandmother once had only a few blocks away, in what was now Society Hill. But her grandmother had been dead for ten years, the brownstone long sold, and the happy Christmases she’d spent there now only a cherished memory.

  Her mother, an only child, had died in an auto accident when Ashley was a year old, and her father had remarried four years later. He and his new wife raised three other children, and despite his efforts to include Ashley in everything, she had always felt like an outsider with his second family. She knew her decision to work with him on his Presidential campaign, a position her stepmother was too unskilled to fill and her stepsiblings too young to assay, resulted in part from a desire to fit into his life, in some essential way, at last.

  Dad, she thought, gazing unseeingly at the increasing traffic. Joseph Randall Fair III, senior Senator from the state of Pennsylvania. She had watched his rise from state representative to lieutenant governor to his current pursuit of the highest office in the land. And in many respects he was still a stranger, a smiling, competent, charming stranger.

  Fair was a liberal democrat, like his parents before him, bastions of the Main Line for many years. Joseph Fair II had been Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, and his widow, the candidate’s mother, was even now a dowager socialite active in local and national charities. The candidate’s younger brother, Ashley’s uncle Will, ran the family business, a real estate conglomerate, and his sister was a prominent clinical psychologist with a hospital practice. Achievers, all of them. Ashley thought it was as if their collective liberal conscience forced them to work like demons and to contribute disproportionately in order to justify inheriting all those millions.

  And I’m carrying on the tradition, she thought wryly. Dean’s List, Law Review, shunning private practice for the less lucrative but sociologically correct Justice Department. There she was able to prosecute white-collar criminals who took unfair advantage of the system she and her family believed in so strongly. Yes, she had done everything right, all down the line. Then why, when Ashley had five minutes alone to think about it, did she feel so empty? She filled her days with frenetic activity and fell into her bed exhausted so those reflective intervals didn’t come too often.

  The phone rang again, and she roused herself from her reverie to answer it.

  * * * *

  Timothy Martin strolled into his office and set his Styrofoam cup of muddy coffee on the scarred desk. Thin spring sunlight filtered through the film of dirt on the leaded windows of the precinct house as he loosened his tie and tossed his coat on a chair. The walls of his office were painted institutional green and everything within them was made of metal: the desk, the chair, the filing cabinets, the trash can, even the arc lamp positioned to shine its light over his shoulder. The police force was utilitarian in its approach. Metal didn’t crack and it didn’t burn, and if treated with sealant it didn’t even rust. The room resembled its counterpart on the other side of the law, a prison cell, similarly appointed and just as practical.

  Martin was so used to the cheerless surroundings, however, that he didn’t see them, concentrating instead on the pile of paperwork waiting for his attention. He was staring at it morosely, debating where to begin, when his frosted-glass door popped open and a head of red-gray hair appeared. The face below it was grinning wickedly.

  “Well?” Martin said, eyeing his boss warily. Experience had taught him that Captain Rourke wearing this impish expression was never delivering good news.

  “Got a job for you, Timmo,” Rourke said happily.

  Martin waited. Rourke explained himself in his own good time.

  “Special assignment,” Rourke announced, handing him a typewritten sheet of paper. “They practically requested you by name.” He stood back, rubbing his hands together, savoring the younger man’s response as he scanned the letter.

  Martin perused a few lines and then looked up from the page. “Gerry, what is this?” he demanded.

  “You can still read, I hope,” Rourke replied. “They need two men to act as bodyguards to the good Senator while he’s on the campaign trail in his home state. He’ll be on this tour for a couple of months, and the Philadelphia Metropolitan Police Force has been selected, for its outstanding record of service, to give up a couple of its own for the effort.”

  “Gerry...” Martin said slowly, aware of what was coming.

  “You’re elected,” Rourke said triumphantly. “So to speak.”

  “Like hell I am,” Martin said flatly, tossing the letter in his wastebasket with a flick of his wrist.

  “Didn’t you see what it said?” Rourke inquired, wide-eyed, his lips twitching. He retrieved the paper from the trash and read aloud. ‘The officers should be between five-ten and six-two and between 170 and 200 pounds.’ They’re describing you, boyo.” He reached up and patted Martin’s cheek. “They want you should look nice on TV.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am. Pack a suitcase and take an unmarked car. You’re attached to the Senator like lint on his suit for the next two months.”

  “I won’t do it,” Martin said, meeting his superior’s amused gaze.

  “Oh, yes, you will. Orders from the top. Go on, take Capo with you. It’ll be like a vacation.”

  “Come on, Gerry. It’s baby-sitting.”

  “Sure it is. So go sit with the baby. Is this place gonna fall down while you’re gone?”

  “I’ve got the Carson murder cooking. The stakeout starts tonight.”

  “Jensen can handle that for you. I’ll have him take over your cases while you’re away.”

  “Jensen!” Martin snorted. “He couldn’t supervise a Girl Scout Jamboree. By the time I get back, everything will be in chaos.”

  “Timmo, get used to it. You’re the man for this job.” Rourke grinned. “The Senator’s daughter is traveling with him, heading up his campaign staff. She’s a civil rights lawyer. You can have a nice discussion with her about how hard she works to spring the criminals we take off the streets.”

  Martin threw him a dirty look.

  “Now, don’t pout,” Rourke said cheerfully. “I hear the daughter isn’t bad looking. Great legs, Carmino s
ays.”

  “What does he know?” Martin said scornfully.

  “He saw her at the hotel when they arrived yesterday.”

  “Then send Carmino,” Martin shot back.

  “But Timmy, he’s a little too short and a little too fat to match the stated requirements,” Rourke observed, batting his lashes. “They want a couple of pretty boys. Like you and Capo.”

  “Capo will go nuts when he hears this,” Martin warned.

  “He’ll do what he’s told,” Rourke said gruffly, sending the message to Martin as well.

  “What’s it matter what we look like, anyway?” Martin asked, irritated, certain that he was doomed but still trying, out of habit.

  “Photo opportunities, Tim. Don’t you read the papers? They want a couple of clones for the Senator. If you’re too tall you make him look like a dwarf, very bad for image. If you’re too short, he’s the jolly green giant by comparison. You just don’t understand politics, son.

  “I don’t understand you, sending me on this... this...”

  “Modeling assignment?” Rourke suggested, deadpan.

  “Go on, yuk it up, old man,” Martin said bitterly.

  Rourke chuckled agreeably. “You’ll have a ball, hobnobbing with all those high-tone, ritzy types.”

  “The only person I’ll be hobnobbing with is Capo, and we’re already sick of each other.” Martin tried a final, desperation measure. “Look, can’t you send a couple of rookies? They’d be easier to spare than Capo and me.”

  “Oh, but they wouldn’t have the polish, the finesse, that refined quality you experienced officers project so beautifully,” Rourke replied solemnly. “Good public relations is my life.”

  “I’m glad you’re getting such a charge out of this,” Martin said. “Why does Fair need bodyguards, anyway?”