The Senator's Wife Read Free Page B

strategists, Miz Honneker. We’re working for you now,” the blond man said dryly as she shook the other man’s hand. His tone made it clear that she had been unsuccessful at concealing her ignorance of their identities. Not that it mattered. Consultants’ opinions were more important than their votes. And since their marriage, Lewis had inflicted so many of them on her that by now they were about as welcome as a pair of buzzing flies.
    “Oh.” Ronnie’s hand dropped to her side, and she stopped smiling. Her cheeks ached so from her marathon effort in the tent that it was a relief to let them relax, if only for a few minutes. Her headache, forgottenfor a moment, returned in full force. Flexing her sore fingers, she glanced at Thea.
    “We got a fax from the Washington office this morning,” Thea said apologetically in response to that glance. “I was going to show it to you later today. I—didn’t realize that they would be joining us this soon.”
    Thea knew how Ronnie felt about consultants. After the last one advised her to gain twenty pounds—“Look how much more popular Oprah was when she was heavy!” he had said—she had vowed not to listen to any more.
    “Mrs. Honneker, you’re supposed to judge the Little Miss Neshoba County Pageant in five minutes,” a plump woman in a gaudy floral dress called as she hurried up to them. The dress struck a chord in Ronnie’s memory: Rose. The woman’s name was Rose, and her dress was bedecked with enormous cabbage roses.
    It was the kind of memory exercise that she usually did rather well. One of her few assets as a political wife was her ability to remember names, she thought.
    “Thank you, Rose,” Ronnie said with a smile. Rose beamed. It was clear that she was flattered to have the Senator’s wife remember her when they had only met for a moment several hours earlier. Things like that, Ronnie had learned, made people feel important. And making people feel important was a way to win votes. And winning votes was the name of the game.
    “Mind if we tag along?” the blond man asked. Quinlan—that was his name, she would remember it by associating the name with a quiver full of arrows, and he seemed to be tightly strung, like a bow.
    Ronnie shrugged her assent. Nodding politely asRose chattered away, she was escorted toward the tent where the pageant would be held. Thea, a fair official, a state trooper, and the two newcomers to her retinue followed close behind as they navigated through the eddy and swirl of activity that made up the fair. Young couples walking hand in hand, women in casual clothes pushing babies in strollers, teenagers in baggy shorts calling to each other, groups of older women in floral dresses: Ronnie smiled at all impartially as they wove through the crowd. A few smiled back.
    A very few.
    Sometimes she felt like the most hated woman in Mississippi.
    They were almost at their destination when it happened. Ronnie had just spotted the white canvas peaks of the large tent on the other side of the busy cotton-candy machine. A steady stream of people were filing in through the front of the tent, past a large, balloon-bedecked placard that said Little Miss Neshoba County Pageant , 2 P.M . As usual, Ronnie was being led toward the back. A trio of officials already awaited her at the tent flap, which was being held open. They were looking her way, their expressions expectant.
    The woman exploded out of nowhere. She came running in from the left, from somewhere beyond the cotton-candy machine, screaming words that seemed to make no sense. She was a big woman, tall and heavy, dressed in too-tight green shorts and a striped blouse, her hair dyed blond and her face florid and sweaty from the heat.
    “Whore!” she screamed, darting toward Ronnie.
    Ronnie stepped back, alarmed, and instinctively threw up her hand as something that glinted silver inthe sunlight came hurtling through the air at her. A smell, sharp and distinctive. A blow, as something