The Billionaire's Last Fling (Scandal, Inc Book 5)

by Avery James

  In the morning, before getting ready for work, she would take the menu from the nightstand and read through the options, making sure Nolan heard her deliberate over each item. Then, when she wasn’t sure what to get, he’d call down and order half the menu.

  They’d quickly come to a consensus on most of the items. Generally, everything was good. But the omelets were worth the wait while the pancakes were not. The lack of real maple syrup was what did them in. One morning, Abby even ordered a hamburger for breakfast. She seemed half surprised when it showed up.

  As Abby took a bite of burger, Nolan shook his head. “If that’s not the most American thing I’ve ever seen.”

  She raised her eyebrows and said, “You know you think it’s sexy,” before bursting into laughter. He just smiled and nodded as he wondered how in the world he’d ever managed to find Abby. She was this vibrant force in his life where once there’d been nothing. She was more than a girlfriend. He felt like she was his better half.

  “Hey, do you want to join me for a charity dinner later this week. It’s 10k a plate, which I think is about a wash with room service.”

  Abby laughed and shook her head. “Just let me know when. I’ll try to ignore the fact that you’ll be spending more than I make in a month on one dinner.”

  “You should ask for a raise,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’ll tell Amy I can’t survive without the ability to drop 20k in one night.”

  Nolan didn’t ask her much about why she wanted to stay at the hotel instead of at her place, but he could guess. The whole deal with Senator Heck was a bit overwhelming, and he didn’t want her to deal with it alone. He had a feeling she felt the same way. The fact that Ruth’s husband had shown up at her place and threatened her probably removed any of the warm and fuzzy feeling she had about home. After the first night she stayed over, he had the front desk make her a key.

  She had the ability to come and go whenever she needed to. If work needed her in the middle of the night, she could call down and arrange for a car to bring her wherever she needed to go. He learned not to ask when he knew she couldn’t tell. He trusted her to tell him whatever he needed to know.

  Nolan found himself hanging around the suite more, too. He spent a few hours a day at the Politicker offices, but he wanted the team to establish their own culture without him around. He meant what he said when he told them he’d be hands off. A little buffer between him and the team would help smooth the process whenever he left D.C. and started up his next project.

  It was a thought that had been lingering in the back of his mind since he and Abby started dating. He couldn’t just pick up his entire life and permanently move to D.C., and he doubted Abby was going to give up her career to run off with him.

  One morning, a week after the Heck story broke, Abby got an early phone call and had to leave at the break of dawn. She’d been assigned to some scandal in Northern Virginia. It wasn’t political at all. In fact, the whole thing seemed out of the pages of one of Nolan’s gossip sites. The CEO had run off with his mistress and an untold sum of the company’s money. Abby was working for the company to reassure shareholders that everything was going to be fine.

  After Abby headed out, Nolan dragged himself out of bed, and decided the early hour was as good a time as any to catch up on a backlog of emails he’d left over the weekend. He made it through nearly two dozen emails from lawyers and accountants about the mundane mechanics of his business before he read something that made him freeze.

  The email had been sent by Erin late Friday night with the title “New Angle.” It wasn’t the title that worried him, though. It was the first two lines. “What do you do when you need to cover up a crime? You call Abby Hardigan.” For a second, he thought it was a joke, but as he read on, his heart sank. Why the hell would they write this? Nolan wondered. This wasn’t just a hit piece about Haven Communications, this was a personal attack against Abby. Nolan clenched his jaw. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.

  He picked up his phone and dialed. “I want everyone in the office in thirty minutes. This is completely unacceptable.” He hung up before giving time for a response. He didn’t want an explanation. He just wanted this to go away.

  He picked up the phone again and went to call Abby, but he stopped himself before pressing send. She didn’t need to know about this, not while she was off dealing with some crisis. He’d tell her later, after he got everything under control. This was his problem, and he wouldn’t let it become hers.

  Chapter 27

  The more Nolan thought about the article, the angrier he got. By the time he reached the office, he was angry enough to flip a table. He strode into the main space to find the writers waiting for him. “Who is responsible for this?” he demanded. He held his phone in the air as if they would know what he was talking about. Half of the assembled staff looked completely bewildered as to why they were there, but Erin stood tall and looked him in the eye.

  “It’s my story,” Erin said. “I think it has legs.”

  “You do?” Nolan said. “What the hell were you thinking writing a hit piece about my girlfriend?”

  “I was thinking you have a massive conflict of interest, one which has reared its head multiple times. You wanted us to dig deeper on Heck, well, this is part of that story.”

  “This is not part of that story, Erin. This is libel.”

  “I have sources for everything,” Erin said.

  “Then your sources are lying,” Nolan told her.

  “She’s neck deep in this, Nolan, and you’re the only person here who can’t see that. Her company, Haven Communications, enables this shit again and again. You want to talk about going after a system. We should be going after them, too.” She looked to the other writers for support, but they all seemed intent on staying out of the fight.

  “This is personal,” he said. “And it’s a hit piece, and this is not what we do here.”

  “It is personal. That’s exactly my point,” Erin said. “You have to choose. If it comes down to your personal life or your convictions, which one are you going to choose? This is a legitimate story. The fact that Abby Hardigan is your girlfriend is irrelevant. And whether you feel uneasy about the tone is one thing, but you can’t deny the truth. This is a story.”

  “This is not a story,” he said. “I hired you to hold the powerful to account, to go after the Ruth and Andrew Hecks of the world,” he said.

  “And I can’t do that if my boss is interfering because of his personal life,” she said. Erin was glaring at him, and Nolan became aware of the nervous looks on the other writers’ faces.

  Nolan clenched his jaw. He wanted to shout. Part of the reason he was mad was because Erin was at least partly right. He couldn’t be involved in any stories regarding Haven Communications. If it involved Abby, he couldn’t be impartial. He forced himself to take a deep breath. Calm yourself down, he thought. “Erin, let’s talk alone for a minute,” he said, trying to keep any emotions from clouding his words.

  He turned and headed for the office at the corner of the main space, the one with the glass wall that made the whole thing remind Nolan of a fishbowl. He didn’t look back to see if Erin would follow. He knew she would.

  Once the door was closed, and they were in private, Nolan said, “I have faith in this team. You’ve done great work so far, but you need to know where to draw the line.” He was trying to soften his tone, trying to find some common ground with Erin.

  “We’re running the story,” Erin said. There wasn’t an ounce of give in her tone.

  “No, you’re not,” he replied. “I’ll shut the damn website down before I let that story go live.”

  “That’s my point, Nolan. This is personal for you. You can’t separate your feelings for Abby from your ability to do this job.”

  “Do you think you’re the first overeager reporter I’ve dealt with?” he asked. “If this is your way of telling me that I need to reassess my impartiality, fine, your point is not
ed, but like I said, that story goes nowhere.”

  “You could have said this in front of the team,” Erin said.

  “What is your problem with Abby?” Nolan asked. “You want to talk about my feelings clouding my judgment, what about yours?”

  “Do you think I’m jealous of her or something? Get over yourself,” Erin said. “This is about you.”

  “Then you email me and tell me. You don’t threaten to publish an article attacking someone I care about.”

  “You’d just deny any bias and keep doing exactly what you’re doing. This is why I didn’t want to take this job. You’re all alike. You think you’re so noble, and then at the first hard decision, you chicken out. You have to choose between Abby and Politicker.”

  Nolan scoffed. Who the hell did Erin think she was, giving him an ultimatum? There was no hesitation. No question. He’d choose Abby. If it came down to her or his principles, he’d choose her. He’d choose her over anything. It didn’t matter. The past week had shown him that completely. He needed Abby, and he felt adrift without her. He’d spent the past decade of his life looking for something to fill the void inside him, and then he met her.

  It wasn’t like he was whole again. It was like realizing he’d never been whole at all, figuring out that he’d always been destined to be half of something greater. “I choose her,” he said. “If you try to run that story, you’re gone. This conversation is over.” He turned for the door.

  Erin literally dug her heels in, leaning forward like she was bracing for contact. Her eyes widened and she waved her arms in frustration. “Are you kidding me? The guy who lectured me about independence and integrity and leaving the work to the team is now telling me to kill it because it shows his girlfriend in an accurate light.”

  “It doesn’t and you know that,” he said. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “The same thing I’m thinking now,” she said. “That you’re not up to this. This story is going out there. You already scuttled our last story and let Ruth Heck off the hook. Your girlfriend has been running around abetting a felon. Maybe you should reconsider your personal life.”

  “It’s not my personal life I’m reconsidering,” he said. “Go home.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “This is my team. This is my story, and I’m going to run it.”

  “I’m going to give you the opportunity to think about what you’re doing. This is way over the line. You’re heated. I’m heated. Go take a few minutes, and we’ll have this conversation when you’re ready.”

  Erin glared at him. It seemed like she wanted him to fire her, like she was goading him on.

  “Leave. Now,” Nolan said.

  “No.”

  “Fine,” Nolan said, sighing. “I’ll have someone from legal send you your severance package. I’ll have someone clean out your desk and send you the contents. There’s a line, Erin, and you just went far past it.”

  She just stood there, staring at him in disbelief. It was like she’d just expected him to cave. She opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. Slowly, the shock wore off, and he could see the anger growing in her eyes.

  There was nothing more he could do. He’d made his decision. Now he had to deal with the fallout.

  Nolan walked past Erin into the main room. “Everyone, I need your attention for a minute. Who here worked on the Haven piece?” Two hands went up. “How many of you have no idea what I’m talking about?” The rest of the hands went up. “This piece is a personal attack against me and someone I care about deeply. Erin has insisted on running it. I have informed her that we’re not going to do that. Erin was unable to accept my decision, so I let her go.” Nolan stopped talking and looked around the room. Erin had come out of the office. She was seething. She looked like she was going to start screaming, but instead, she walked straight to the elevator without acknowledging another person in the room. She paused, pulled up her phone, typing something out. Then she smiled, locking her eyes on Nolan. The elevator doors opened, she stepped inside, and was gone.

  Nolan turned his attention to the rest of the staff. “I’ve never dealt with a situation like this so early in the start of a website, so I’ll leave it to you. If anyone would like to step down, now’s the time. I’ll make sure you get a severance package, references, and the rest of it. You didn’t sign up for chaos, and I’ve failed you. If you do stay on, I expect you all to pick up where we left off, looking into Senator Heck and the Attorney General. I want this site to rise above personal drama, and the kind of easy gossip that fuels my other sites. I want us to be something more, but I can’t do that without you. You have the morning to think it over.”

  A few minutes later, Cassidy, the reporter with the pixie cut, approached him. “Um, Mr. Ross? I think you’ll want to see this.”

  “You can call me Nolan,” he replied.

  “She just sent the story to the Post.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The reporter at the Post is a friend of mine. She just emailed asking what’s going on here and wondering if we’ll comment.”

  By handling things the way he did, Nolan had ensured the worst possible outcome. Now the story about Abby was going to leak, and he wouldn’t have any ability to stop it.

  No, he thought. Just no. Whatever it takes, that story isn’t running. If he was going to solve this mess, he’d have to do it one problem at a time. He couldn’t help but note that this was exactly the kind of situation Abby was good at defusing, but Nolan had no clue what to do. So how the hell was he going to stop the story from ever seeing the light of day? To start, he needed to figure out what he was up against.

  So what would Abby do? Nolan thought back to their escapade with the paparazzi in Scotland and he laughed. The first hint of a plan was starting to take shape in his mind. “Can you get me the reporter on the phone right now?”

  “Yeah, give me a minute,” Cassidy said. “Is there anything you want me to tell her?”

  “Tell her I have something else for her,” he said. Now all he had to do was find himself a story.

  He had to reestablish some level of control. He wasn’t just going to sit back and let this happen. He was going to put himself in a position to make things right. He just couldn’t figure out how. “I’ll be in the corner office,” he said. “Let me know when you get her on the line.”

  Another call came in before Nolan could speak with the reporter from the post. Abby. “Hey, you won’t believe the morning I’m having.”

  “You bastard,” she said. “How could you do this?” He could hear the betrayal in her voice, the pain.

  “Abby, what’s going on?” he asked. He was hoping that maybe it was something else, something less serious.

  “When I told you I didn’t want to get in your way, I didn’t mean I wanted to be your next target.”

  Shit. His worst fears were confirmed. Someone must have sent her the article.

  “Abby, I can explain,” he said. His words felt rushed, panicked.

  “No,” she said. “Go ahead and do what you have to do. Goodbye, Nolan.”

  Before Nolan could explain what had happened, she hung up. He tried to call her back, but the call went immediately to voicemail. Nolan felt like the floor had fallen out beneath him. He sat down on the floor and hunched over as he tried to process everything. He needed to come up with a plan.

  A moment later, there was a knock on the door. One of the reporters stepped in and did her best not to acknowledge that he was sitting on the ground. She held out her cell phone. “Mr. Ross, I have the reporter for you.” She handed him the phone and slipped back out of the office, closing the door behind her.

  Nolan lifted the phone to his ear. “This is Nolan Ross. I believe you have my story,” he said. “Before you say anything, I have an offer to make.” This was going to require a bit of luck, but he figured it would be the only way to protect Abby. Of course, convincing her he had nothing to do with the story would be another problem ent
irely, but he had to handle everything one step at a time. Nolan pulled himself up and paced back and forth in the office during the rest of the call. He felt like a caged lion.

  When the call was over, he tried Abby’s phone again, but it went straight to voicemail again. Damn it, he thought. Then, he made four more calls. One to New York, one to London. One to his lawyer, and finally one that was going to require a bit of luck. He stared out the window as he thought it over. It was mad, he knew that much, but it was the only thing he could think of that would work. He wondered if one day Abby would appreciate what he was about to do.

  He pulled the business card out of his wallet and dialed the number. He held his breath as he pressed send. “Hey, Harry, how are you? It’s Nolan Ross,” he said. “This is going to sound a little strange, but I have a favor to ask.”

  ***

  Abby stared down at her phone in shock. She’d reread the article three times since her call with Nolan, hoping to find a clue as to why he’d let his reporter write something like this. It even quoted him, so there was no way he didn’t know about it. When she’d told him she didn’t want to affect his work, she’d meant she would try not to hold it against him if he broke a story about one of her clients. Going after her and her company was something else entirely.

  It just seemed so out of character for him that it made her question whether she really knew him at all. She wondered if she’d let her feelings for him cloud her judgment. It didn’t seem possible, but here she was, sitting in the break room, trying to figure out how not to break down in tears.

  “Hey good lookin’,” Maggie said as she entered the room. “Whatcha got cookin’?” One glimpse of the expression on Abby’s face changed her tone completely. “Abby, what’s wrong?”

  Abby bit her lower lip and looked up at the ceiling in frustration. She could feel the tears forming in her eyes. She handed the phone over to her friend, sick to her stomach and betrayed. The article was a personal attack. Why would he allow it?