by Ana Barrons
“Very funny, Joe.”
“I need to talk to you.” The deep voice startled her and she whirled too quickly. Her head swam. In the next moment strong arms took hold of hers, supporting her. “Are you going to pass out?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She found herself looking into the same brown eyes she had gazed into earlier, only this time there was no hint of flirtation or amusement. “It’s you.”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s me.” He walked her to the buffet table with his arm around her shoulders and asked a waiter for a glass of water. “Drink this, then we’ll talk.”
She grabbed the glass with a shaky hand and drank. “Too much champagne, I guess.” She set the glass down. Her equilibrium was returning, at least physically. But something was niggling at her consciousness and she couldn’t quite get a hold of it.
“Let’s step outside for a minute and talk,” he said.
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“Trust me. We need to talk.”
She felt a flare of irritation. “This evening has been unsettling enough without you trying to drag me off to talk about God knows what, and Mrs. Mitchell aiming death rays at my head.”
“Suzannah will get over it,” he said without missing a beat. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” She was thoroughly confused. He was frowning at someone.
“Well, well, look who’s here,” Ned said from behind her. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
“Yeah, listen, Ned,” the stranger said. “Much as I’d like to chat, the lady and I have a few things to discuss, so how about if I take a rain check?” He tightened his grip on Catherine’s shoulder and began to pull her away.
“I’ll admit, I’m surprised Catherine is willing to say a word to you,” Ned said. “All things considered.”
“That’s why I need to talk to her.” It came out more like a snarl than a statement, like a leashed dog straining to bite someone’s leg. Ned didn’t appear the least bit intimidated.
She twisted out from under the stranger’s arm and glanced between the two angry faces. There was some sort of pissing match going on, and she wanted no part of it. “Will someone please tell me what you’re talking about?”
Ned’s expression changed from angry to oddly gleeful in a matter of seconds. “Where are my manners?”
“Back off, okay?” the stranger said. “Just let me—”
“Please,” Ned said. “Allow me to introduce Catherine Morrissey, who’s visiting from New Hampshire. Ossipee, isn’t it, Catherine?”
She glanced at Ned, annoyed at him for the second time that evening. “Yes, that’s right.” The stranger he appeared to be studying the ceiling. Tension radiated from him.
“Catherine,” Ned went on, clearly enjoying himself, “this is Washington Herald reporter Joseph Rossi.”
Joe? She stared at him, paralyzed by shock. How could this be Joe? In her head he’d been slighter. Balding, lighter hair. Why would this guy have been on the phone with her so much?
His voice. That’s what had been niggling at her from the moment they met.
The blood pounded so hard in her head she expected it to fly off her shoulders.
“You bastard,” she hissed. “You used me.”
* * *
“I never meant to hurt you,” Joe said. Lame. Catherine’s face had gone from white to mottled pink to enraged red as he stood there, helpless, wanting nothing more than to punch Ned’s smug face in.
“No?” she said, her green-gold eyes flashing. “You expose the most private, painful parts of my life to the world, and you didn’t think that would hurt me?”
Joe ran a hand through his hair as he searched desperately for the right words. “I’m a reporter, Catherine. That’s what I do. I dig up background information for a story and—”
“Oh, is that what you were doing all those months?”
Her voice had taken on a gritty quality. Joe felt like a boulder had settled in his gut.
“All those late-night phone calls, the emails, the stories about your unhappy childhood. That was all in a day’s work, huh? Laying out the bait to see what kind of haul you’d get?”
All conversation in the immediate vicinity had stopped. “Can’t we—”
“I have to hand it to you. You knew exactly which buttons to push with me.” Long strands of dark brown hair had escaped from the top of her head and were trailing down her neck. The one grainy photo he had seen of her, on her parents’ front lawn, bore no resemblance to the beauty standing before him. And what the hell was she doing here?
“Did you know that the National Enquirer tried to buy photos of me and Blair and my ex-husband after reading those articles?” Tears were pooling in her eyes.
Joe looked away. “No, I didn’t know that.” Any second now she was likely to break down. He laid a hand over his heart and forced himself to meet her gaze. “I swear to you. It was nothing personal.”
The blow was so fast and so hard that he stumbled backward like a drunk. He lifted a hand to his mouth and felt the sticky wetness. She had drawn blood.
Catherine’s voice was harsh with emotion. “That was personal, Joe.”
Chapter Three
Catherine knew sleep would not come easily, so she ran a hot bath and poured herself a glass of brandy. Then she lay back in the tub and replayed the whole ugly scene with Joe Rossi, only this time she imagined how it must have looked to the people in the room. She slid lower into the water—the next best thing to burying her head in a pillow.
Ned had set her up, damn him. He could have excused himself and spoken quietly to Joe, warned him off. But he had been so intent on disgracing Joe that he’d sacrificed her in the bargain—not to mention the vice president, his wife and the rest of the guests.
God, how selfish could she be? Ned wasn’t the one who had made the scene. That was all her doing. He had to have been every bit as embarrassed as she when he rushed her past all those dumbfounded guests. Tomorrow she’d have to call Betsy Eberhart and apologize. She slid still lower.
The worst part was how powerfully attracted she’d been to Joe. Her body tensed just thinking about him, which disgusted her. She took a long sip of brandy and welcomed the burning sensation, as though it could somehow cleanse her of her shame.
How many times had she stretched out in the bathtub with her cell phone to her ear, laughing with Joe? Joe! Exchanging war stories—hers about the latest outrage perpetrated by one of her high school students, his about life in the newsroom or some secret about a politician.
We told each other secrets, you and I.
She closed her eyes and tried to pretend they were different men. That the ruthless, deceitful reporter who had abused her trust in the worst possible way was not the warm and funny faraway Joe she had let herself fall for.
For God’s sake, Joe, I was beginning to think I loved you.
She missed his phone calls, his quirky sense of humor, the nights he would wake her up to make sure she was okay and then say good-night. Somehow over the course of those long, agonizing months when they didn’t know whether Blair was dead or alive, Joe had become her confidante, her safety net. Her fantasy.
And when he betrayed her, he broke her heart.
A shrill ringing jarred her, and she nearly shattered the glass on the side of the tub. The phone. Damn it. Another loud ring. Who could it be at this hour? Oh, God, not a reporter. Her parents couldn’t take any more news stories about her, not on top of everything else. The sound of Blair’s voice sent a wave of shock through her.
She hadn’t deleted the message from her sister’s answering machine.
There was silence for a moment after the beep, then a deep, male, all-too-familiar voice came on the line. “Catherine, I know I’m the last person in the world you wa
nt to hear from, but I need to explain.”
“Joe?” She shot to her feet so quickly, water sloshed over the edge of the tub and she started to slip. She grabbed onto the curtain and stepped out, then wrapped herself in a yellow towel.
“I didn’t write that article to hurt you or your family. If you’ll just talk to me—”
Catherine snatched up the phone with one wet hand. “How dare you call me,” she said between clenched teeth. “I have nothing more to say to you.”
“Please, just listen.”
“I listened to your lies for months, Rossi. You wanted dirt on my family and you got it in spades. All it took was a little persuasion and I spilled my guts to you. Over and over.”
“Stop, damn it! I didn’t know it would spin out of control like that.”
“You mean you didn’t care!” she shouted. “You were after the headlines.”
He hesitated. “It wasn’t only that. There’s more, and I want to talk to you about it. I’m convinced there’s something big going down. I sensed it from the beginning, months before they found her body. I don’t buy that handyman crap for a minute, and neither should you.”
“Well, what do you know,” she said. “We actually agree on something.”
“We agree on lots of things. Listen, I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I know it sounds lame, but I was just doing my job, okay? If you’ll give me a chance to explain why I brought the affair with Alan into it, maybe you’ll understand. Believe it or not, I have a reputation for defending my sources.”
She was silent for a moment. Is that all I ever was to you, Joe? A source? She gripped the receiver, wanting something she could never have again.
“You let the cat out of the bag when you wrote that first article,” she said, suddenly weary. “Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
He let out a long breath. “You make it sound so premeditated.”
“Do me a favor. Don’t insult my intelligence. You cultivated my friendship so damn carefully.”
“Catherine—”
“Do they give Pulitzers for covert reporting? Or is that only during wars?”
Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Catherine closed her eyes.
“Let me come over there and talk to you,” he said softly. “Please.”
“No.”
“We can’t leave it like this.”
“Oh no?” She hung up the phone.
* * *
Sam Mitchell was tired of the silence. He leaned across the leather seat of the limousine and grabbed his wife’s hand. It was ice cold. “It doesn’t matter, Suzannah. If anything, it made the evening more memorable. And he had it coming.”
Suzannah pulled away. “You would think that. How dare she make a scene? And Ned! What on earth was he thinking, introducing them in the middle of Betsy Eberhart’s living room?”
Sam tried to appear disapproving but couldn’t quite pull it off. Watching Catherine Morrissey throw a punch at Joe Rossi was worth losing a few million dollars in donations if it came to that. But of course, it wouldn’t. He decided to send Ned a case of that California Chardonnay he liked so much.
“I think you loved every minute of it.” Suzannah’s tone was accusatory.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” When he had walked into that room this evening and seen Catherine Morrissey standing there in that dress he couldn’t believe his eyes. The resemblance between the sisters had knocked him off balance, in spite of the difference in hair color. Lord knew he had studied every angle of Blair’s lovely face. But there was something about Catherine, a kind of elegance and purity—Yes, that was it—that made her the polar opposite of Blair.
They pulled up the driveway to One Observatory Circle, the thirty-three-room, Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion that had been home to vice presidents since 1977. Suzannah’s silence told him she was too preoccupied, for once, to feel sorry for herself because they weren’t pulling up in front of the White House.
Suzannah, ever mindful of her appearance, ran a hand over her hair before she stepped out of the limo. Secret Service Agent Leonard Ryan, a member of the vice president’s personal protection detail—the official, government sanctioned detail, not the tiny circle of men Sam would trust not only with his life but with his secrets—held the door for Suzannah. Sam slid out behind her and frowned. Had she deliberately rubbed up against the agent, or was it just his imagination?
“Good evening, Mrs. Mitchell,” Ryan said. “Mr. Vice President.”
“Don’t crowd my wife next time, Ryan,” Sam said gruffly.
The agent blinked in surprise. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
Sam barely caught the amused smile on his wife’s lips as she made her way regally up the steps.
Chapter Four
Frank Nolan laid his fists on Joe’s desk. “How bad does the other guy look?”
Joe rubbed a hand over his bruised jaw and swollen lower lip. “Would you believe I fell down the stairs?” At Frank’s expression, Joe said, “No, huh? Well, the other guy is actually a woman, much as I hate to admit it.”
A slow smile spread across Frank’s face. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Big woman?”
“Oh, about five-seven, slim, dark hair piled on top of her head.” Joe gestured with his hands. “A long, elegant neck, the most gorgeous green eyes you’ve ever seen, lips—” He stopped. Forget the superficial description. All he could really see was the pain in her eyes when she accused him of using her all those months. As though he was too shallow to have felt anything real for her. He wished that were true.
“What, did you come on too strong?”
Joe shook his head. “It was Catherine Morrissey.”
Frank straightened and ran a hand over his mostly bald head. “Jesus. Where’d you run into her?”
“Fundraiser at Betsy Eberhart’s. Don’t ask me why she was there.” He’d pondered that question several times during a mostly sleepless night. The whole experience had left him feeling hollowed out. “And get this. Ned Campbell was squiring her around.”
Frank said nothing but pulled up a chair and straddled it. Joe could see the wheels turning in his editor’s brain.
“I called her later, to try to explain about the articles,” Joe said, “but she wasn’t having any of it. I’m a no good scumbag and that’s all there is to it.”
“If you could get her to come around... How long is she in town for?”
Joe shrugged. “She didn’t share her itinerary with me.”
“Where’d you call her?”
“Blair’s apartment. I took a chance and she answered the phone.” He’d nearly called her cell phone, but it had caller ID. She hadn’t taken a single call from him since the day the Herald ran his article.
“Ah. So she’s probably packing the place up,” Frank said. “And she’s good and pissed. This could be the break you’ve been waiting for in this story.”
Joe pressed a cold can of ginger ale against his swollen lip. “How’s that, exactly, Frank? The woman called me a lying, underhanded bastard seven different ways. Should I call her back and ask for an exclusive?”
Frank waved his hand dismissively. “She wants to know who killed her sister at least as much as we do. That must be why she was with Campbell, right? Maybe she contacted him and he’s helping her out.”
“I thought about that,” Joe said. “It makes some sense, considering Blair worked on the Hill, but Ned’s a busy guy. He must’ve gotten a look at her and then decided to be Dudley Do-Right. She’s beautiful.” And a decent person. And she had soft skin and she smelled like spring and he couldn’t get her out of his head. But then, she’d been in his head for months, long before he’d seen her.
“Does she look like her sister?”
“Once you know w
ho she is, I guess. Obviously I didn’t spot the resemblance in time. The dark hair throws you off.”
Frank nodded. “She’s a schoolteacher. Teachers are forgiving by definition.”
“You never had Miss Benedetto.”
“Okay, so you grovel a little.” Behind them, someone’s phone was ringing off the hook. “Send her flowers, tell her again how sorry you are—”
“I was already planning to do that.”
“So we’re on the same page,” Frank said. “Once you’re in her good graces you convince her to work with you. She used to trust you, right? You told me the two of you had quite a rapport going there for a while. She could open doors for you.”
“That’s not why I’m apologizing.”
“No, I’m sure you’re apologizing because you have a hard-on for her, but that doesn’t matter.”
“Damn it, that’s not—”
“What matters is getting her to see you as someone who can ease her frustration over the fact that the police won’t tell her zip about the investigation or the suspect.”
Joe stared at him. “She thinks I’m slime, Frank. Are you hearing me?”
“She could get you into all the congressional offices that have been slamming the door in your face. What are they going to say? Are they going to refuse to spend five minutes with the grieving sister? They’ll do it for the good press.”
“Which I would supposedly be providing.”
Frank pointed a finger at him. “Which you will be providing, until somebody starts looking guilty.”
Joe leaned forward. “So you want me to exploit her grief, more than I already have, to get the story? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
Frank shrugged. “It’s a win-win. You both get what you want.”
“No.” He couldn’t remember Frank ever being so dense. “Read my lips. N-O. The woman doesn’t trust me as far as she can throw me.”
Frank shook his head. “You’re not getting it. You owe her, big-time, am I right?”
“I would say that was putting it mildly.”