already called twice to ask if she needed them to return, but Karolina had insisted that she was fine by herself. A local woman came a couple mornings a week to clean, but she didnât come on Fridays. With no choice but to actually leave her house, Karolina padded to the kitchen. Unable to resist, she swiped open her email on her iPad and scrolled through the new messages. She didnât make it past the first one, a note from her aunt that contained only two items: an attached photo with a long chain of question marks preceding it. The quality was grainy, since her aunt had taken a picture of the picture using her phone and then emailed itâsurely on the lowest resolutionâto Karolina, but it didnât take long to make out the players. Seated at Capitol Prime in D.C., known as the power lunch place for politicos, were Trip, Graham, and Joseph, Grahamâs chief of staff. The interesting addition was the striking woman seated to Grahamâs left. Regan. The Ice Queen . Thecamera caught her only in profile, but she was gazing at Graham while tossing her head back slightly and laughing. Graham was cutting his food and grinning a smile much wider than his grilled salmon probably warranted. All four wore business suits. To the normal onlooker, it appeared to be exactly what it was: a business lunch among colleagues. Your average Joe would not look at that photo and immediately think, Those two are fucking , but Karolina would bet her life they were. And so, obviously, would her aunt.
Close it, close it, close it , she coached herself, possibly aloud. Her hands moved to flip the screen cover back on, but she couldnât stop herself. Up came Google and in went the womanâs name: Regan Whitney. Karolina paused for a moment, knowing that she couldnât undo what she was about to discoverâsimultaneously proud for never having given in to the temptation before and ashamed for being too weak to resist it nowâand then hit âreturn.â
Karolina skipped over the Wikipedia entry, the Facebook link, and a handful of the most current news articles and clicked directly on âimages,â where she was rewarded with thousands of photos. Regan Whitney at four different inaugural balls, wearing four different gowns, posing with four different guests. Teaching English at a mud hut schoolhouse in rural Nigeria. At a gala benefiting the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Holding hands with a small, sad Syrian child who had been granted a visa to the United States. Looking positively luminescent in all white at a Hamptons clambake.
Karolina clicked back to the nitty-gritty bio details that sheâd never allowed herself to read. Some were familiar, because as the daughter of a former president of the United States, Regan had been in the public eye since childhood. Like the fact that Reganâs mother had died in childbirth and she, the youngest of five children but the only girl, was her fatherâs favorite. But some she hadnât paid much attention to years earlier, during President Whitneyâs administration. Karolina either didnât know or didnât remember that Regan had gone to Sidwell Friends and played two varsity sports and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. There were picturesof her being picked up at the White House on prom night by her date. Princeton. The Peace Corps. Then finally a masterâs at Harvard. The closest thing to a scandal Karolina could uncover was an embarrassing photo of Regan clutching a bong and exhaling a long stream of smoke in what was obviously a fraternity room with half a dozen other well-scrubbed, white, and preppily clad college kids.
Karolina snorted. Regan Whitney was the closest thing to real live political royalty in this generation. Twenty-nine years old, brilliant, accomplished, gorgeous, polished, and a humanitarian to boot. As pretty as the young woman was in her blue-eyed, blond, all-American way, Karolina knew Regan couldnât compete with her
Close it, close it, close it , she coached herself, possibly aloud. Her hands moved to flip the screen cover back on, but she couldnât stop herself. Up came Google and in went the womanâs name: Regan Whitney. Karolina paused for a moment, knowing that she couldnât undo what she was about to discoverâsimultaneously proud for never having given in to the temptation before and ashamed for being too weak to resist it nowâand then hit âreturn.â
Karolina skipped over the Wikipedia entry, the Facebook link, and a handful of the most current news articles and clicked directly on âimages,â where she was rewarded with thousands of photos. Regan Whitney at four different inaugural balls, wearing four different gowns, posing with four different guests. Teaching English at a mud hut schoolhouse in rural Nigeria. At a gala benefiting the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Holding hands with a small, sad Syrian child who had been granted a visa to the United States. Looking positively luminescent in all white at a Hamptons clambake.
Karolina clicked back to the nitty-gritty bio details that sheâd never allowed herself to read. Some were familiar, because as the daughter of a former president of the United States, Regan had been in the public eye since childhood. Like the fact that Reganâs mother had died in childbirth and she, the youngest of five children but the only girl, was her fatherâs favorite. But some she hadnât paid much attention to years earlier, during President Whitneyâs administration. Karolina either didnât know or didnât remember that Regan had gone to Sidwell Friends and played two varsity sports and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. There were picturesof her being picked up at the White House on prom night by her date. Princeton. The Peace Corps. Then finally a masterâs at Harvard. The closest thing to a scandal Karolina could uncover was an embarrassing photo of Regan clutching a bong and exhaling a long stream of smoke in what was obviously a fraternity room with half a dozen other well-scrubbed, white, and preppily clad college kids.
Karolina snorted. Regan Whitney was the closest thing to real live political royalty in this generation. Twenty-nine years old, brilliant, accomplished, gorgeous, polished, and a humanitarian to boot. As pretty as the young woman was in her blue-eyed, blond, all-American way, Karolina knew Regan couldnât compete with her
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