would Gabe Dawson call “sir” in that tone of respect? Even God probably didn’t rate that tone of voice from him. She took the phone Gabe held out to her. “Who is it?” she mouthed. He merely grinned and wiggled the phone at her. She took it cautiously.
“Hello?” she said even more cautiously. “This is Willa Merris.”
“Good evening, Miss Merris. This is Wade Graham. I’m sorry to disturb your evening. My people had quite a time tracking you down.”
As in Governor of Texas, Wade Graham? Holy cow. “Uhh, hello, Governor Graham. What can I do for you?”
The governor wasn’t of the same political party as her father, and the two men hadn’t been close, to her knowledge. It was decent of the man to express his condolences. Except she recalled her mother making some vague reference to having received a sympathy call from the governor last week. Why was the man tracking her down, then?
“I spoke with your father’s attorney this morning,” the governor explained. “As part of Senator Merris’s will, he left a letter expressing his preference for how his senate seat should be disposed of in the event of his death.”
“What does this have to do with me, sir?” she asked, confused.
“As you may know, it’s not unusual in the event of a senator’s untimely demise for the senator’s surviving spouse to take the seat until the end of that term.”
Horror blossomed in Willa’s gut. Her mother was flighty at best, and when she’d been hitting the pills hard, Minnie was barely conscious. Her mother wasn’t remotely fit to fill her father’s senate seat.
“In a few cases, however, the senator may request that someone else fill the seat. A trusted colleague or staff member, for example.”
Larry Shore was going to be thrilled. The guy was ragingly ambitious, and barely containing his fury that John Merris, whose coattails Larry obviously had planned to ride to the top, had had the ill grace to go and get himself murdered. Larry had briefly been a suspect in his boss’s murder, but he’d been released on bail and was supposedly no longer a primary suspect.
“… his letter, your father recommended that I appoint you to serve in his stead until a special election can be held. Of course, the regular election is in six weeks, and Congress is in recess so its members can return home to campaign. So, this will be mostly a ceremonial appointment….”
Her? A United States senator? “But, sir,” she blurted, interrupting the governor. “I’m a kindergarten teacher.”
“Nonetheless, your father thought you were the best person for the job. He named you in his sealed letter as his choice to finish out his term.”
Frantic, she blurted, “But I’m only twenty-eight. You have to be thirty to be a senator.”
“I’ve already spoken to the president. He’s given permission under these special circumstances for you to finish out your father’s term. The White House Counsel says there have been two senators seated at age twenty-eight in spite of the Constitutional mandate, so there’s a precedent.”
She didn’t know what to say. Shock barely scraped the surface of how she was feeling.
“I’m going to fly up to Dallas tomorrow for a press conference at around noon to make the announcement and formally appoint you. My assistant will give you all the details. You’ll need to prepare a brief statement. Given your recent loss, I doubt the press will expect to grill you too hard. Your father’s chief of staff can help you draft it.”
The line disconnected, and she stared at the cell phone like it was alien technology. A tanned male hand lifted it gently away from her.
“What was that all about?” Gabe asked quietly.
She looked up at him, stunned as the reality began to sink in. “My father requested that I fill his Senate seat until the next election. The governor’s going to appoint me to the position tomorrow.”
“Congratulations!” Gabe exclaimed.
She frowned. “But I don’t want it.”
“There’ll be nothing to it. You raise your hand, take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and then you sit tight until next January.”
“Next January?”
“The election is in November, but your successor won’t be sworn in until next January. You’ll get to serve in a lame-duck session of Congress if you want to.”
Appalled at the size of the task her father had just thrust upon her, she exclaimed, “But I don’t know anything about being a senator!”
Gabe leaned back in his seat and took a sip of brandy. “That’s not true. You’ve lived around a senator for years. You know how to handle yourself in a crowd, and you’re smart.”
She snorted inelegantly. “And as soon as the national media gloms on to the fact that I accused a man of rape today, the scandal will dwarf my father’s murder.”
“Rape?” Gabe echoed ominously.
“What did you think I was doing at the police station? You heard the questions the reporters were shouting at me.”
“I thought Ward assaulted you. Like he hit you and you fought him off.”
“Oh, he did hit. And I did fight,” she replied bitterly. “Not that it helped one bit.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked seriously.
“Nope.” At the end of the day there wasn’t much to talk about. She’d been dumb. Trusted someone she’d known for a long time. Let down her defenses. And he’d turned out to be a rapist.
Gabe’s eyes narrowed to a deadly glare. “Remind me to show you some self-defense moves,” he commented grimly. “There are a few things all women should know about how to take out a bigger, stronger assailant than them.”
She studied him with interest. He looked really mad. Why did he give a darn about what happened to her? She was the enemy. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
His spoon stopped in midair. It paused for a long moment, then reversed course and landed lightly on his plate. “Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”
“Because I’m my father’s daughter. And let’s be frank. My father hated your guts and went out of his way to cause you trouble. He loved nothing better than making you spitting mad.”
The corner of Gabe’s mouth quirked up. “The feeling was mutual. I’m gonna miss the old bastard.”
She sighed. Was it just her father and Gabe, or were all oil wildcatters this cussed? Maybe someday she’d find a nice, pleasant guy who knew nothing about the oil business to settle down with. These force-of-nature-personality men were so not her thing.
But then a flash of blond, charming James Ward made her blood run cold. Everyone thought he was a nice, pleasant guy, too. He would never hurt a flea, let alone viciously attack a woman, right?
“Are you done with your dessert?” Gabe asked, startling her out of her grim recollections.
“As delicious as this crèe brûulée is, that phone call killed my appetite.”
“Let’s get out of here, then.” Gabe came around the table to pull back her chair. The old-fashioned gesture surprised her. The young man she’d known had been brash and unpolished, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who certainly hadn’t held chairs for ladies.
Since when had she become such a snob? So, somewhere along the way, he’d picked up a few points of etiquette. Probably his wife had taught him. Polite behavior did not make the man.
Lord knew James Ward had been plenty polite up until the part where he tried to kiss her and then went crazy on her. She would never forget that strange and violent look