Free Campaigning for Christopher by Katy Regnery Page A

trembled and quaked inside.
    “Over here! Over here!”
    Grateful for her meager modeling training, she smiled and waved until the buzz of the crowd had died down and Christopher whispered in her ear again, “Say something, damn it.”
    “H-hello,” she said, clearing her throat before stepping closer to the microphone and starting again. “Hello.”
    No one responded, but the murmur of the crowd before her dulled to a hush so that they could all hear her.
    “I am, um . . . Julianne Crow, Christopher Winslow’s, um, girlfriend,” she said, her hands slick with sweat.
    The hum of the crowd increased tenfold, and her eyes darted around the audience, looking for a friendly landing spot. As the reporters absorbed her words, she found them: smiles of wonder breaking out over the faces of these jaded journalists as they tapped on their tablets or took old-fashioned notes in their little spiral notebooks.
    “Um. Well . . . we have b-been together since, um, since M-May, which is, um . . .”
    “Four amazing months!” said Christopher jovially, his voice as warm as it had been on Saturday night. Warmer, even.
    “Four amazing m-months. That’s right,” she said, taking a deep breath and trying to calm her nerves. “For the sake of Christopher’s campaign and so that we could, um, we could m-move at our own speed, we, um, kept our relationship a secret. On Saturday night, I was waitressing at the wedding of his sister, Jessica. And, um, we snuck away for a few, um, m-minutes.”
    Christopher leaned in, close to the microphone, his cheek brushing hers. “Which of you wouldn’t sneak away if you had Jules waiting for you, huh?”
    As the men in the crowd chuckled lightly, his lips touched her temple tenderly, and Julianne sucked in a surprised breath, looking up at him in shock. His smile didn’t reach his flinty eyes and had none of the warmth from Saturday, when he said, “Tell the rest, baby.”
    Swallowing, she turned back to the microphone and smiled at the crowd again, feeling the imprint of Christopher’s lips against her skin. “Which one of you, um, ladies wouldn’t want to sneak away if you had, um, Chris waiting for you ?”
    And this time, the women of the crowd joined the men in a ripple of soft laughter, nodding and smiling, encouraging her to continue.
    She thought about the story she’d concocted in her head, and even though she hadn’t had time to run it by Christopher and his team, she thought she may as well try it now.
    “I, um, I shouldn’t have taken p-pictures, but I was trying out a new lipstick on Saturday. Um, Skid City’s Rockin’ Robin Red, and, well, you’ve all seen the, um, the p-pictures,” she said demurely, feeling genuinely embarrassed.
    “In a reprehensible act of cowardice and sabotage,” said Christopher in a serious voice, leaning forward to command the microphone and every eye in the crowd, “someone stole Jules’s phone and leaked the pictures to the press.” Julianne cast her glance down, and Christopher pulled her closer. No doubt the crowd read this an act of protectiveness and love, but Julianne felt the iron strength in his arm, the way his chest moved up and down beside her as he controlled his breathing against the rush of anger and hate he surely felt for her. “You can imagine our horror, seeing personal and private memories of a happy night turned into a tawdry exposé about racism and alcoholism.”
    Genuine tears pricked her eyes as she looked up, glancing at the bevy of reporters who looked at her with compassion and sympathy. Several reached for their cameras and clicked photos of her reaction as she swiped a tear off one cheek before leaning forward to speak again.
    “It was . . . well, um, it w-w-was . . .”
    Her voice broke, and she turned to Christopher helplessly, surprised when his face—which had been so ruthless and hard since the moment she walked into his campaign headquarters—softened, almost imperceptibly. But a split second later,