At Okasa's request and because she couldn't seem to walk away completely, Brianna sent cards and letters to Charisma in care of Okasa. She trusted Mama O not to open them, but to give them to Charisma if the day ever came that she asked after Brianna - or if the right set of circumstances ever presented themselves. Okasa kept them in a locked box in her closet, hoping that one day Charisma would talk about Brianna or ask if Okasa ever heard from her. But she never did.

So while the Tagherty family shared their lives and holidays with Charisma, they also made an effort to do the same with Brianna. Without Charisma's presence they celebrated holidays and birthdays together on odd weekends, and Brianna fell more in love with the family she had come to appreciate as her own. Sometimes it hurt so much to be with them, but Brianna treasured the time she was able to spend with them.

And so life went on.

Brianna finished law school at the top of her class, and was immediately snapped up by the most prestigious firm in the city. She spent inordinate amounts of time making a name for herself, and soon she was as respected and feared outside of the courtroom as much as she was in it.

When the District Attorney approached her to join his office, she chuckled wryly. "Are you sure you want to work with someone from the dark side?"

He laughed, appreciating her cutting sense of humor in a way that many didn't understand. "Ms Walker, if I could lure you from the dark side, I wouldn't be facing you across the aisle in the courtroom. What better incentive could I possibly need?"

"And what's in it for me? I am exceptionally good at what I do and I am paid very lucratively for it. Why would I want to give it all up to become a public servant?"

"Because beneath that cutthroat demeanor beats the heart of a poet. I read the play you produced in college," he continued in answer to her startled look. "It was exceptional." He cleared his throat. "You have an eighty-six percent win ratio in court; ninety-seven if you include the deals made outside it. With those stats, you could have my job in a few years if you really wanted it. And you could use it as a stepping stone to other, bigger things - judge, state representative, even Congress."

The mention of Washington made her eye twitch slightly and the man watching her didn't miss her reaction. But he hadn't gotten to his position by being stupid - he knew when to push and when to back off. "Think about it, Ms Walker. You could do great things."

Brianna didn't take his offer immediately. She had no desire to do more than be the best lawyer she could; she certainly had no desire to end up in Washington - not with all the effort she'd put into staying out of Charisma Tagherty's life.

Still, the District Attorney was persistent and eventually Brianna gave in, becoming a rising star in his office before being appointed by him as his successor. That was when she started to really come into her own.

Meanwhile, Charisma had done her internship in Washington, making a number of contacts and impressing the hell out of those she came in contact with. It didn't take long for the party to take notice of her and soon they were grooming her for a position in Congress.

Charisma missed Brianna's presence in her life, but she had reconciled herself to the fact that for whatever reason, Brianna had said goodbye forever when she'd walked out of her life at the end of their trip. She'd decided to wait for Brianna to contact her again, not delving too deeply into the reason she was willing to let Brianna go so easily.

She wanted to ask her mother about Brianna - sure in the depths of her being that Okasa would never allow Brianna to simply leave the family, no matter what excuse she used. But Charisma had no desire to have her mother question the reasons behind her estrangement from Brianna - not sure she had answers to share and unwilling to look deep enough to find anything that might satisfy Okasa.

So Charisma went along - making time for her family on holidays and birthdays, but otherwise keeping to Washington until it came time for her to start stumping for a seat in the House of Representatives. Then she schmoozed her way across the state, collecting votes and support as she went, and when all was said and done, the Honorable Charisma Tagherty was a junior congresswoman in the House of Representatives.

"So how do you like being a hotshot Congressional Representative, sis? Everything you thought it'd be?"

"Eh," pinching the bridge of her nose. "It's not the Presidency, but it's a start."

Her brothers laughed. "Figures you'd want to start at the top. Does it at least keep you busy?"

"Yes, Hunter. That would be why we have to schedule time together," Charisma replied dryly. The brothers exchanged glances, knowing that wasn't the only reason they had to schedule time with Charisma. They each wanted so badly to say something? anything? to Charisma about Brianna. But Okasa had given them strict orders not to, and none of them were stupid enough to go against Mama.

Time passed and Charisma's responsibilities in Congress took more and more of her time. When it came time for re-election after her third term, Charisma surprised everyone including her family, by declaring her intention to run for the Senate instead. And she won by a landslide.

That was when her life started to change.

************

I'm going to show you something - something I think you need to see instead of me just filling in the blanks to bring you up to speed. If we had the time, I'd prefer to show you everything - from both Charisma's and Brianna's lives from the moment they separated at the airport up to this point. But we don't - I'm on a schedule and I can't make that kind of investment just to satisfy your curiosity for detail.

However, I do need to show you the next bit of excerpts to get you to the same page I'm on. And I need you to understand the importance of what I've told you so far.

When Charisma first arrived in Washington, she was young and single and for the most part, idealistic. Of course that last bit didn't last very long - it couldn't if she wanted to become a real player on the political stage. But she had a good mentor? someone who taught her the ins and outs of life in the political arena that is the Nation's capital. So by the time she became a representative, Charisma Tagherty was quite a force to be reckoned with.

Charisma was smart and she had learned from the best. She kept her nose clean and made a name for herself - sponsoring bills and making impassioned speeches that attracted voters and congressmen alike to her fold.

And all was well for a time, because you just can't argue with success.

As the end of her first tenure as a senator approached, however, people started to talk. You see, Charisma Tagherty was a wildly successful woman that employed only women. Not that this fact in and of itself was a matter for gossip and speculation. As Charisma herself was so fond of pointing out, there was absolutely no reason she shouldn't give other competent, successful women the chance to earn equal pay and establish a reputation for excellence. Because let's face it - when someone of Charisma Tagherty's caliber recommended your work, others tended to sit up and take notice.

No? where the difficulty arose was that Charisma Tagherty was not only a wildly successful woman, but she was a wildly successful *single* woman. A single woman who seemed to have little or no time to dedicate to finding the right man and settling down as her peers had already done.

Oh, don't get me wrong - she dated, if you could call it that. Hooked up with influential men by well-meaning friends and occasionally escorted to events by a friend of one or another of her brothers or by her brothers themselves. Unfortunately, except where her brothers and their friends were concerned, most of the men she was introduced to either simply wanted to bed her or desired her to be a wife and mother first and foremost. The friends knew better - they had been warned ahead of time and knew the score.

And although Charisma's biological clock had started ticking rather loudly as she approached her fortieth birthday, none of the men she dated were willing to accept a second or third place role in her life. As far as she was concerned, none of them were worth giving up her career for.

So the rumors started flying - about her frigidness; her unwillingness to settle; her demand for perfection and her concern for image. Then of course were the rumors about her girls - the women she employed for everything from household chores and landscaping to her personal assistant and office workers.

It infuriated her - she had worked so hard to maintain a sterling reputation in both her private and personal lives and suddenly she was under attack for not adhering to someone else's goals for her life. Finally, she had enough and took off one weekend to talk to her father.

************

"Well, well," Patrick drawled out his brogue, pulling a smile from Charisma's face. "What brings Senator Tagherty to my humble abode?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye - a twinkle that diminished when he noted the sadness lurking in her blue eyes. "What's wrong, Princess?"

She followed him into his study, but where he took a seat in front of the fireplace, Charisma continued walking until she was looking down into the darkened fireplace.

"I think it is time for me to find a husband," she stated bluntly. "There are things being said that could destroy my career."

"Are they true?" watching her head jerk up. He saw her eyes shutter and he wondered at the secrets she was keeping from herself before they pinned him in place.