Free Bad Girls Finish First by Shelia Dansby Harvey Page A

room. He threw his keys on the coffee table—not a good idea, considering that it was glass—and said, “It was all right.”
    â€œReally?” Raven said. “Why don’t I fix you a drink while you tell me about it.”
    Raven poured them each a glass of scotch, straight up, and squeezed onto the love seat with Michael. She rubbed the back of his neck as he talked.
    â€œIt started out fine. I know all of them; hell, I can’t count the number of times I’ve met with the members of that board, as a group, or individually, for lunch or what not. So I felt pretty comfortable, know what I mean?” Michael swirled the scotch around in his glass.
    â€œI put on my show, ran through my routine, and the response was good. It was good.” He pounded the air with his fist. “I got tough questions, but they were fair ones, and I didn’t have a problem with any of them.” Michael stopped, drank a little. “Then, bam! Out of the blue . . .” He abruptly slammed his glass onto the coffee table.
    â€œBaby, I know you’re upset, but if you shatter my table, things will only get worse,” Raven said crossly. “Finish telling me what happened.”
    Michael looked to the ceiling and let out a labored breath. “Jerry Minshew is what happened. Guy ought to be working for one of those sleazy tabloids instead of a major daily. He’s not interested in real news, all he wants to do is sling mud.”
    â€œHmm. That’s usually left up to the candidates.”
    â€œI know.” Michael’s expression said See what I’m saying? He shook his head, mentally chastising Jerry Minshew. “Sweeney and I made a deal at the beginning of the race that we’d fight fair. I’m out to whip Sweeney, but I’ll be the first to tell anybody he’s a decent man. Even if I did find out something dirty about him, I wouldn’t use it unless it had something to do with his ability to govern. If Sweeney’s not trying to throw dirt on me, then Jerry Minshew has no business doing it either.”
    Fighting fair was something Raven and Michael had gone round and round about. She and Dudley wanted to get into the gutter if that’s what it took to win the race. But Michael had other ideas. He and Sweeney had a private meeting, just the two of them, and they emerged with a pact to wage a hard-fighting, clean campaign that focused on the issues.
    â€œI don’t know what I resent worse,” Michael continued, “the fact that Minshew goes around acting like he’s Mr. Black America and then stabs me in the back, or the way he chose to attack me.”
    Sometimes it’s so easy for Michael to get sidetracked , Raven thought irritably, and didn’t bother to hide her impatience. “I don’t even have to know what happened, but I can tell you, the fact that he’s the only black man on the board, and that he’s the one to come out against you? That’s the worst. Publicly he’s given blacks the impression that he supports you, but behind closed doors, he does this? The fact that he attacked you at all is unforgivable. How he went about it is beside the point,” she said dismissively.
    Michael gripped his glass in anger. “You think that because you didn’t hear what Minshew said.”
    Seeing his agitation, Raven softened her voice. “Okay. Tell me.”
    Michael picked up his glass and drained it. He didn’t say anything.
    â€œMichael?” Raven changed positions—she folded her legs beneath her on the love seat and turned her body so that she faced her husband. “It was me, wasn’t it? Minshew asked questions about me.”
    Michael nodded. “Every other word out of his mouth had to do with you. With your past.”
    â€œWhat sorts of things did he ask?”
    â€œThere was the usual, you know—what you had to do with my divorce from Grace. And then he brought up