He threw the ball at her, but she caught it quickly. “Ha. Now I have your weapon.”
“To answer your question, no, not the gala. But things with Michelle.”
“Ah,” Casey said, and set down the iPad. “So you like her a lot?”
He took a deep breath, nodded several times and sat up. This was not a conversation to be had lying down. “I do. I really do. She’s . . ..” He started, but let his voice trail off. He shared more with his sister than anyone, but could he really say all the things that were forming on the tip of his tongue? Amazing, smart, beautiful, direct, open, lovely, funny, and absolutely perfect for him. “She’s great,” he said, and it seemed wholly inadequate, but when Casey flashed her winning smile he knew she understood all that was unspoken.
Casey drummed her hands on the coffee table in excitement. “You should bring her to the gala next month,” she suggested.
Jack narrowed his eyes. “It’s not like that.”
“What? How is it not like that?”
While he might run a sex-centric company with his sister, he didn’t want to dive into the finer details of his sex arrangement with Michelle. So he deflected. “That event will be crawling with photogs. She’s a prominent psychologist. I sell dildos. I should do my best to keep her out of the limelight.”
Casey laughed, then tossed him the ball. “Well, when you put it like that, you are kind of Captain of the Dildos.”
He caught it easily in one hand. “And you’re Queen of the Dongs.”
“I wear that title with pride,” she said. “So when do I get to meet the Princess of the Weiner Dealer?”
Jack cracked up, a deep, rumbling belly laugh. After his shoulders stopped shaking, he threw a question back at his sister. “Why are you so focused on my love life?”
She shot him a look, like he was crazy for asking. “Because I don’t want you to wind up like Mom and Dad,” she said, as if the answer were obvious, and when she phrased it that way, it was. “The last four years when you were already in college and I was still home were the worst. Dinners were painful. I’m just glad you were in school nearby.”
Their parents had met in college, married soon after, and then proceeded to drift apart for the next twenty-one years they were together. He swore they kept a calendar and marked with an X each day until they neared Casey’s high school graduation. Bitter, snippy, unhappy people, they simply didn’t want to be together anymore, but they clearly felt it was their duty to do so until they got Casey out the door. Jack had tried to come home on weekends as often as he could, to rescue Casey, take her to the movies, attend her swim meets, help her with homework and then college apps. As soon as graduation came, their dad walked out the door happily swinging his suitcase, and their mom threw a party.
Never had two people been so excited to sign dissolution of marriage papers.
“I’m glad I was nearby too. And I’d rather not end up like them either, but I think we’re safe in that regard, seeing as I have no plans to get married, or get serious, or anything like that.”
She rolled her eyes, huffing at him. “You’re already too far gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“You just said you didn’t want to fuck this up. She’s not just someone you’re dating. She’s someone you care deeply about.”
He didn’t want his sister’s observation to register, even though somewhere inside, it resonated, hitting a part of him he’d thought was broken irreparably. Michelle awakened feelings in him he’d thought were missing from his very DNA. Her vulnerability, her strength, her humor, and most of all, her openness with him on everything floored him, and had worked its way into his heart, that stupid organ that barely worked. He didn’t know how to handle all he felt for her—but his desire for her went much deeper than the physical.
“And that’s another reason why you should do the story with my friend,” Casey added. He arched an eyebrow in question. “The one at the New York Press. I mentioned it before. It would be good for you.”
He shook his head. “Moving on. Let’s talk about the campaign,” he said, tapping the newspaper spread out on his coffee table. “The metro section says our guy is still getting clobbered. You said you were going to do some digging on Conroy. Did you find anything?”
Casey’s lips quirked up. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
“I knew I wasn’t the only spy in the family. What did you find?”
“Actually, I didn’t dig up any dirt. You saw the picture I sent you of the door. But I don’t think we need to go that way. The people in their district are really responding to Conroy’s message about cleaning up the area, right? Even if it’s not based on the truth, he’s touching a nerve that everyone can agree with. Everyone wants a cleaner, better neighborhood.”
Jack nodded. “Sure.”
“At its heart, that’s a positive message. He might have subverted it with his focus on the clubs, but he’s doing well with that message. And my theory is Denkler’s just backed into a corner now, trying to fight back, and it’s not working. Conroy made the campaign about something else and now Denkler’s on the defensive.”
The cogs in his head started turning. Slowly at first, then more quickly, and soon the train was racing down the path. “He needs to go on the offensive and change the conversation. That’s what we need to do. This isn’t about digging up dirt. This has to be about something better than dirt,” he said, snapping his fingers as the ideas whirring in his head came fully into focus. The data points, the bits and pieces, the clues all came together, and he assembled them quickly into a strategy. “I know exactly how to do it,” he said, then laid out his plan for his sister.