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slouched his athletic body in a leather recliner and steepled his hands in front of his nose—a sure sign of Jared’s unhappiness.
    He was a Jasper, there was no getting around that, but he was so undercover about it that few people realized he was one of the Jaspers. Remaining above suspicion was almost an obsession with him; he’d never wanted favoritism or to influence decisions that could affect his business. Jana had happily taken up the slack for her siblings, whose interests lay outside the family predilection for politics. “Jared, how the heck did you get mixed up in this?”
    Grandpa shot her a sharp look.
    Don’t talk like a Girl Scout, he always told her, or no one but the teacher’s union and local church leaders will hear a thing you say. “Okay, Jared, tell me what the hell you’re doing in the middle of this shit?”
    The curse words felt strange on her tongue, but Grandpa nodded, satisfied.
    “They say the campaign contributions are from Delta Development,” Jared said through his fingers.
    Double D was a real estate development consulting firm specializing in securing public and private funding for projects across the entire central valley of California. It was easy to see the potential ugliness in the charge that Jared’s business was secretly securing the support of a congressman who could influence legislation to benefit Double D’s clients. A congressman who happened to be his father. “Come on,” she groaned. “They have to know you wouldn’t be that stupid.”
    “They say I contributed under a fictitious name. Donation laundering to hide the source.”
    Jana sat heavily in the chair opposite him. “Hell.”
    “Call it what it is, girl!” Grandpa yelled. He’d gone red, white and blue: white hair, his eyes vivid blue, his face red. It meant he was truly enraged, something that didn’t happen very often. “No need to candy coat it. It’s bullshit, plain and simple.”
    “Your pressure,” Mom warned him.
    He waved her away.
    Jana pushed out of the chair and paced in front of the fireplace. “Let’s take this step-by-step. The charges are blatantly false—that, we know. So, we’ve either got an overzealous action group looking for publicity, or it’s a direct attack, someone who wants us to look bad.”
    “Like that loose cannon, Brace Bowie?” Jared asked. “Mr. Billboard.”
    “He was out to bring me down, not the family,” she pointed out.
    “We’re a single entity to most people. The worse you look, the better he looks.”
    “And after you were so nice to him,” Mom said. Her mother was as protective now as she was two-and-a-half decades ago when Jana was teased in school about not talking.
    “I think it’s too early to point fingers,” Jana said. “Especially at Brace. We haven’t heard anything from him since the city made him take down those signs. This isn’t his style. Nasty billboards are his thing, not charges that could lead to prison, if Dad had been guilty.”
    Grandpa growled, “It doesn’t matter who’s behind it. Don’t you see? Even after the kitchen is clean, this is going to stick around like the smell of rotten eggs. If this sways the election this fall…if Jana doesn’t win…” Gripping the handles of the wheelchair, he hung his head.
    Poor Grandpa. All his hopes and dreams were pinned on her.
    Jana went to him. Kneeling, she rested her hand on his leg. “It’s a long time between now and November, plenty of time to throw open all the windows and air out this stink. Now, tell me, you’ve been in this game a long time—tell me what to do to help get this kitchen smelling sweet again.”
    He grabbed her upper arm. “Stay clean. You say you’re the Girl Scout of politics? Be her, then. Nothing less than virgin snow in everything you do and say until this is over. You hear me, girl?”
    The feelings that coursed through her now brought her back to her childhood when she didn’t want to be the troublemaker, when she was the Jasper