Read Protect and Defend for Free Online

he declared himself for senator, and undertook the itinerant life of a candidate for office.
    If not enthused, Allie was tolerant. Perhaps it was because she now had a place of her own, and a daughter to love. Perhaps Kyle’s problems, appearing in her teens, consumed her. And, Chad thought ruefully, perhaps she still loved him enough to know—and appreciate—that whatever his faults and ambitions, Chad Palmer now loved her far too much to touch another woman.
    Allie finished with his tie. “There,” she said. “You look handsome enough for your
own
inauguration, God help us.”
    Chad kissed her forehead.
“And you
,” he said lightly, “look hot enough to create a scandal.”
    “Tonight all eyes will be on Lara. I wonder how it feels to be thirty-one, and have the
Post
calling you ‘either the most beautiful about to be First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, or the most scintillating presidential girlfriend since Marilyn Monroe.’”
    Chad smiled. “I don’t know how
she
feels. But Kerry told me a couple of weeks ago it’s like being two teenagers with two hundred seventy million parents.”
    Allie eyed him curiously. “Do you think he’ll really marry her?”
    “I don’t know—Kerry’s not big on revealing himself, especially to someone who may run against him four years fromnow. But I wonder more if
she’ll
marry
him
. Sometimes I think there’s stuff going on there I don’t quite understand.”
    “Something personal? Or does she just not want the life?”
    “Not sure. The life’s hard, as we all know.”
    Allie looked up into his face. “
Will
you run next time?”
    “I wanted to run
this
time, Allie. You know that. So you know what it depends on, and that you’re part of it.”
    She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I do know, Chad. I’m sorry.”
    “And I understand.”
    After a moment, Allie turned. “Zip me?”
    “Sure.” The zipper was no problem, Chad thought—it was the damned eye-hook. “Is Kyle coming?” he asked.
    Allie shook her head. “It was sweet of Kerry to ask— especially with all he’s got on his mind. But she says she wouldn’t know what to say, or who to bring.”
    Was there anything more crippling, Chad wondered, than lack of self-regard? Or more mysterious in origin? It would ease his conscience, he supposed, to think that Kyle was born this way. But then Chad had too seldom been there for her. Whatever the causes, the Palmers had a twenty-year-old daughter as fragile as she was lovely, and the lingering worry for her shadowed Allie’s face as she turned to him again.
    “What did Mac Gage want?” she asked.
    Chad grimaced. “Supreme Court politics. The Chief’s not dead three hours, and Mac’s trying to position me. Either I use the committee to put the screws to Kerry’s nominee— whoever he is—or Mac may try to cause me trouble.”
    Allie considered this. “When,” she inquired, “have you ever avoided trouble?”
    Once more, Chad’s thoughts circled back to Kyle. “Maybe,” he promised her mother, “it’s not too late to learn.”

EIGHT
     
    “W HAT WOULD
you
do?” Sarah asked.
    “Me? Run like a thief, of course.” Turning from the stove, the Honorable Caroline Clark Masters gave her former clerk an ironic glance. “The case you’re imagining is a nightmare— legally, politically, and professionally.”
    They sat in the open kitchen of Caroline’s penthouse on Telegraph Hill, spacious and tastefully furnished, with floor-to-ceiling windows which afforded a panoramic view of the San Francisco skyline. Each detail, from the modern art and wire sculpture to the flavorful Chassagne-Montrachet the two women sipped as Caroline cooked, reflected Caroline’s tastes, as elegant as the woman, and yet, like the woman, un-revealing. The one personal touch was a photograph of a beautiful young woman with olive skin who, when asked, Caroline had identified as her niece. But Caroline said little else about her: despite her relative celebrity,