All the blood rushed out of my body. He knew. As careful as I’d been to make sure those cards never traced back to me, he’d somehow figured out it was m—

“I need a speechwriter,” he said, interrupting my panic spiral.

“You….you need a speechwriter,” I repeated. Confusion replaced the fear and shock.

“Yes, I plan to run for Senate in the next election, and with Virginia increasingly voting for candidates from the other side of the aisle, it will be an uphill battle. So, I need a speechwriter who’s managed to help another candidate in a similar situation fight the same battle.”

I nodded. His logic made sense, even if Eva Rustanov wasn’t in the same party as him. She’d managed to flip one of her state’s two Senate seats, and Josh wanted to do the same thing. So here he was on my doorstep—because he needed a speechwriter, not because of the cards.

My wildly beating heart calmed…. a little.

“Sorry for showing up unannounced like this. I tried to call first, but your phone kept going directly to voicemail.”

“No reception,” I explained, pushing each word out carefully through the white noise that had filled my head. “I usually deal with the campaign manager first, anyway.”

“We can skip that campaign manager part,” Josh assured me. “My dad and I had already decided to hire you, based on the work you did for Senator Rustanov. We couldn’t believe our luck when my sister-in-law told us you were related.”

“You saw one of my Eva Rustanov speeches?” I asked.

“Try all of them,” Josh answered with an admiring grin. “Heck, I would have voted for her based on the words you put in her mouth.”

His praise washed over me like a warm spring wind. But I had to let him know, “That wasn’t all me. I just made her clear so that others could understand how lucky they’d be if they voted for her.”

“Made her clear?” he asked.

“That’s what I do,” I explained. “I talk with candidates, and they make me understand why they’d be the best person for the job. Then I make others—like, a mass audience of others—understand why my clients would be perfect for the job. I hope that makes sense.”

“Perfect sense,” he answered with a firm nod. “So the next step in the process would be for us to sit down and have that talk.”

“If we agreed we were a match,” I edited. And yeah, I heard it. My ears burned as I added. “Professionally, I mean.”

He stepped closer, his brown-green eyes much more intense than I remembered. “What would I have to do to get you to agree to choose me?”

My breath caught. Because Josh. Josh Grant was standing so close to me.

Nothing, I answered him inside my head. Absolutely nothing. I chose you a long time ago.