Free Searching for Home (Spies of Chicago Book 1) by Jessica Keller Page B

how it’s legal for him to run.”
    Whitney snapped up. “Legal? What are you implying?”
    Nate tossed his hands in the air in mock surrender. “Don’t send for the firing squad. I just meant that I don’t know the laws but he seems a bit young for the position. Aren’t most mayors in their fifties?”
    “Owen’s legit.” She yanked down the next box with a thud.
    Nate grimaced. “Just because he’s famous—”
    Whitney stopped thumbing through the box. “Famous has nothing to do with it. In the City of Chicago the rules are you have to be eighteen years old, a registered voter, a resident of the City, without any unpaid debt in Chicago, and you can’t have a felony conviction. Besides that, once a candidate gets the 12,500 signatures, they just file with the Board of Election Commissioners and they’re on the ballot.”
    “It’s that simple, huh?” He braced his hand on the metal shelf.
    “Yes. Even you could run.”
    “No, I couldn’t” Turning back to the archives he hunkered down beside her.
    “What did you say?”
    He pulled out a stack of papers. “I couldn’t run.”
    She poked him in the arm. “Let me guess, you haven’t registered to vote?”
    “No, but I’m afraid there’s an unpaid parking ticket or two lost in the recesses of my glove box.” Nate replaced the papers and stood.
    “You could just pay them then run.”
    “And give Owen a tight race? Naw.” Turning his back to her he scanned the boxes remaining in the row they were working in. He cleared his throat. “But he’s still older, isn’t he? I mean, older than you?”
    “He’s thirty-four, only seven years older than me.”
    “And he’s your boyfriend?”
    “It’s complicated.”
    “Try me.”
    “I work as a reporter for Life in Chicago , I interviewed him for a column called Friendly Faces . We talked an hour longer than scheduled. The article ran and his numbers skyrocketed. He called the office and asked me out, and we’ve been seeing each other ever since.” She pulled down the next box. “Actually, I wasn’t honest with you when you asked why I’m so interested in finding out about Lewis. Owen’s my real reason. He dumped me when the story ran and we can only get back together if I find information that exonerates my great-great-grandfather.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    Whitney yanked the cover off the paper box and thumbed through the files. “It’s life. People don’t want to date people with baggage. I have to do this to win him back.”
    “But everyone’s got baggage.”
    “Not Owen.”
    “Except for the fact that his father was murdered when he served the city as mayor and Owen’s most likely trying to fill his place. Let’s face it besides his status, money, the whole pro-athlete appeal, and good looks—I don’t judge that kind of thing mind you, but Chicago Bachelor named him their number one guy this year so there’s that—what makes him so special?”
    “He’s stable. A life with him would be secure.”
    “Funny. I expected you to say he’s your true love or something along those lines.”
    “Please. True love? That doesn’t exist.”
    “It exists. Believe me. I saw it with my parents.”
    She fanned out black and white photos of a nameless family. There were five kids in the picture. What would it have been like to have siblings or a father who stayed around after she was born for that matter? Her only family had been her scatterbrained, childlike, date-a-holic mother. “Owen’s a decent guy on a good track and he, for some reason, wants to be with me.”
    She’d never understand why Owen wanted her, but she wasn’t about to let go of a stable future. Not when the power was in her hands to keep it.
    Nate ceased combing through a box to make eye contact. “Stable, decent, secure. Sounds boring .”
    “I’d rather have bland and predictable than the opposite.”
    “But that’s not love. Love’s daring and dangerous—you decide to take a chance on another