No Stranger to Scandal

by Rachel Bailey

  “I do.” He’d given it a lot of thought over the past three months. It was the best arrangement for everyone, no question.

  “That’s kinda sad,” she said softly. “I don’t want to think about you being alone for the rest of your life.”

  Her sympathy didn’t sit well. This was his choice and he was happy with it. “It’s not the rest of my life. Only until Josh is older. And I wouldn’t always be alone. Just never married again.”

  She looked out at the view of the town below. “That’s still sad.”

  With a finger, he turned her face back to him. “You only think it’s sad because you have such a good heart.”

  “You have a good heart, too,” she said, but there seemed to be more behind her words. Was she having second thoughts about ending their arrangement? Perhaps this sympathy was Lucy’s way of telling him he didn’t have to be alone, that she wanted things to continue. His chest constricted painfully. He couldn’t let her start thinking that way, let her be set up for disappointment.

  “Maybe once I had a good heart,” he said carefully, needing her to understand this. “But it’s jaded now. Yours is fresh and pure—” he laid a hand over her chest and could feel her heartbeat “—far too pure to be polluted by someone like me. I hate to admit it, but the sooner I’m out of your life, the better for you. Though I can’t deny I’ll miss you like crazy once I’m gone.”

  “I’ll miss you, too.” She drew in a long breath. “Maybe if I’m up in New York—”

  “No.” Though he flinched as he said it. “The cleaner the cut, the better. Remember our rules? No emotional entanglement, just physical. If we let it linger, it’ll turn into something neither of us wanted. Something that might become bitter, and I don’t want anything to tarnish the memories I’m taking of you.”

  “I’ll cherish these memories forever,” she said, and he could see her eyes glistening in the moonlight.

  Unable to help himself, he kissed her again, pulling her flush along his body in the moonlight, wanting to create as many memories as he could before the inevitable moment their time expired.

  * * *

  Lucy and Judith carried the dessert plates into the kitchen an hour later. “Thank you for inviting us. It’s been lovely to see you.”

  Judith pulled her into a hug. “I wish we saw you more.” After long moments, she released her and began piling the plates up. “Shame that man of yours is so dead set against marriage.”

  “He’s not my man,” Lucy said and turned the tap on to rinse out the wineglasses.

  “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He’s yours, even if it’s just for now. Besides, you had no lipstick left when you came in from the garden.”

  Without thinking, Lucy touched two fingertips to her lips, then dropped them when she saw Judith’s knowing smile. Lucy shut the tap off and leaned back on the bench to face her aunt. “It’s temporary. Even if he was interested in anything longer term, with the way people treat me, the expectations they have of me because of Daddy and Graham, the last thing I need is an older man who’s already well connected and wealthy. They’ll think I’ve taken the easy route again, found someone to look after me.”

  “Maybe,” Judith said and scraped some scraps into the bin. “But I like him.”

  “I like him, too.” Lucy bit down on her bottom lip. It was the first time she’d admitted to herself or anyone that she really did like Hayden. Maybe she was even coming to love him. But defining her feelings was a pointless exercise—no matter how she felt, their fling would end soon.

  Judith smiled at her. “The one thing I’ve learned over the years about relationships is that liking each other enough is all that matters.” She tucked some of Lucy’s hair behind her ear then rubbed her arm. “It’s all that matters.”

  Lucy smiled back, but didn’t reply. From where Judith stood—thirty-two years into a happy marriage with her college sweetheart—things might seem that simple. But for the rest of the world, relationships were complicated, messy things that sometimes had luck on their side and sometimes didn’t.

  Maybe if she’d met Hayden in ten years’ time, things would have worked out better for them—she’d have already established herself, would know who she was without being surrounded by strong men, and Hayden would have an eleven-year-old son and be more relaxed about having a woman in his life. Their age difference might not matter so much if they were thirty-two and forty-two instead of twenty-two and thirty-two. But things were what they were, and wishing for them to be different wasn’t going to help her when it was time for Hayden and Josh to leave D.C.

  * * *

  Four days later, with one arm around Lucy’s waist, Hayden shut off the faucet in her bathroom’s oversize shower with an elbow and slumped against the wall, chest heaving. They’d made love in her bed, then he’d suggested a shower before they both went to work, but seeing Lucy’s water-slicked body had made the end result of that idea inevitable. It was probably a good thing their time together was only a fling—if this arrangement was permanent, it just might kill him.

  Lucy looked up at him with a satisfied gaze. “Your imagination is a beautiful thing, Hayden Black.”

  “I aim to please,” he said, grinning, and summoned the energy to step out of the shower. He passed a fluffy blue towel to Lucy, but regretted it when she patted herself down and wrapped it under her arms, tucking a corner in to keep it in place. He let out a resigned sigh. Damn shame to cover up a body like that.

  She glanced over at him, one eyebrow arched. “Are you going to towel off, or are you trying the drip-dry method?”

  “Just admiring the view,” he said, then ran the towel over himself till he was dry enough. “What have you got today?”

  She walked through the connecting door to her bedroom and pulled pure-white underwear from a drawer. “More research into your background. Graham is going to run the exposé next week, whether I’ve got enough material or not.”

  She dropped the towel and stepped into the white panties. Hayden swallowed. “Good luck.”

  The idea of the exposé airing didn’t thrill him, but in his line of work, it was a cost of doing business. He had no deep, dark secrets, no skeletons in his closet. And if they made up stories, he’d deal with that when it happened.

  “Give me some hints.” She’d put on the white lace bra and was sitting on a velvet-covered stool at her dressing table, brushing out her damp hair. “Did you cheat on a high-school history exam? Were you involved in a street brawl?”

  “Okay.” The mirror on her dressing table showed another perspective of her movements, giving double the impact and mesmerizing him. “This is the one and only lead I’ll give you. I organized a boycott of the school cafeteria when I was a junior.”

  Her eyes brightened and met his in the mirror. “A radical political statement? Please tell me you burned a flag.”

  “Eight kids got food poisoning in the same week and no one would look into it. We boycotted until the school board sent someone in. They fired a couple of staff who weren’t following safety procedures and tightened up the practices.”

  “Yeah, that’s just the kind of story we need,” she said, throwing him an ironic smile over her shoulder. “You’ll come off looking like a hero. Fighting for truth and justice since you were a kid.” Her words might have been flip, but her eyes shone with pride, and it made his chest swell a little.

  He grinned. “Take it or leave it.”

  “I’ll take it. Maybe I can find a different angle.” She crossed to her closet, took out a pale green blouse and slipped it on. “What are you doing today?”

  He pulled on his trousers, then socks and shoes, giving himself a moment to decide how much to tell her. Lucy had proved herself trustworthy in this investigation several times, but this information was a whole new level—today he was going to a judge to get permission to perform surveillance on Angelica Pierce. The slightest slip to someone Lucy trusted, like Graham, who leaked it to Angelica, would make the whole exerc
ise pointless.

  She stepped into soft cream trousers and secured the buttons before resting her hands on her hips. “Some supersecret mission?” she teased.

  He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “It might be better if I don’t tell you.”

  “You’re joking, right?” she said, her voice incredulous. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me, even not telling Graham about Angelica being Madeline Burch. Why wouldn’t you trust me now?”

  She was right, but this was different. “You’ve been great on this investigation. The difference is you’re helping out to try and clear Graham’s name. If it comes down to it, you’ll choose Graham over any other option.”

  “Of course I’ll stand by Graham,” she said, her voice carefully controlled. “He’s innocent. Are you telling me you’ve got evidence on him?”

  He shook his head, conceding her point. “No, but I don’t think it will be long. And if you had to choose between the truth and your stepfather, where would you stand, Lucy?”

  Eyes blazing, she seemed to grow about two inches. “You’re questioning my personal integrity now?”

  The accusation hit him square in the chest, but he didn’t waver. “Most people have a line in the sand somewhere. Many don’t know where that line is until they reach it.”

  “And you, the famous investigator—who even as a child stood up for truth and justice—do you have a line?” She stared at him, waiting while he didn’t answer. Then, suddenly, her eyes softened. “Josh,” she said.

  He nodded, every muscle in his body tight. He’d let Josh spend his first nine months being raised Brooke’s way, against his better judgment. Nothing, nothing was more important than Josh. And there was nothing he would choose over Josh’s best interests ever again. Not a woman. Not his career. Not his own life. Josh was his line in the sand.

  Lucy’s line was Graham. And Graham was tangled up with Angelica, he had no doubt.

  “Tell me honestly,” he said, sinking down onto the side of her bed and resting his hands between his knees. “Let’s say Graham had done something illegal, not phone hacking, some other crime, just to take it out of this context. Hypothetically, if Graham had done something illegal that had hurt someone else, would you turn him in?”

  She frowned. “That’s an impossible question. No one could answer that without knowing what the crime was.”

  “That’s an answer in itself.” Hedging her answer just showed that there were crimes she would cover up for Boyle.

  She crossed her arms under her breasts and tapped a foot on the carpet. “Then you answer a question for me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Is whatever you’re doing today legal?”

  “Of course it is,” he said, taken aback at the question.

  She waved away his implication of being affronted without pausing. “Is it ethical?”

  “To me, without question.” Everyone had their own ethics and principles, but he was pretty certain his plan would be within Lucy’s framework of ethics, as well.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. “Then tell me what it is and I swear I’ll help you.”

  Hayden looked at her, weighing the options, then made his decision. He could use her help, and if she’d given him her word, he could trust her. “I’m getting an order from a judge to put Angelica under surveillance.”

  “That’s it?” she asked skeptically.

  “If this leaks back to her, say, via Boyle, the surveillance will be pointless, so I have to be extremely careful. But understand, I have the evidence to get the judge’s order for Angelica. If I had evidence on Boyle, I’d get an order for him today, too.”

  “Key word there is if. If you had the evidence on him.” She arched an eyebrow. “You don’t have it because it doesn’t exist.”

  “The surveillance on Angelica will flush something out on Boyle.” Though he knew nothing would convince her until he uncovered the evidence. “You still willing to help?”

  “You betcha,” she said without hesitation. “I want to be there when Angelica incriminates herself and whoever’s been helping her.”

  “You and me both.”

  Ten

  “Hi, Roger,” Lucy said to the ANS night guard as she walked Hayden past the security desk over to the elevators. It was just after midnight, so, aside from the studios where the anchors reported the late-night news broadcast, the place would be relatively deserted. It was the only time Hayden would be able to put the wiretap on Angelica’s phone. As soon as he’d been granted the court order, Hayden had brought some tech guys from his company down to do some more elaborate work on Angelica’s phone lines, but he wanted nothing left to chance with this case, so that meant also planting a good, old-fashioned tap on the phone, as well.

  The elevator doors closed and they were alone, except for the cameras she’d told Hayden about during the briefing in his hotel suite. Josh was back there asleep and the nanny was staying the night in Josh’s room. A rush of nerves filled her stomach. This had to work—the surveillance had to find who Angelica was working with and clear Graham’s name. She sent up a little prayer that they’d thought of everything in their preparations and this would all go off without a glitch.

  “The weather was lovely today,” she said, making small talk. Silence would look suspicious for the elevator cameras. If they were caught, Lucy would tell Graham that she’d played double agent—luring Hayden to the office so she could show him some of the information she’d uncovered, ostensibly helping him, but really hoping to see if his reactions pointed her to further discoveries to help her exposé. Did that mean she was a triple agent now?

  “Sunny and warm, which was nice for Josh,” Hayden said, as if discussing the weather in the ANS elevator was the most natural thing in the world. The man must have nerves of steel. Though he didn’t have as much to lose as she did. For him, this was a case—albeit one he felt strongly about. For Lucy, her whole family was at stake. Graham was all she had.

  The elevator arrived on the eighth floor, which housed most of the journalists, but the skeleton staff on the night shift all worked on other floors. Angelica’s office was down at the end, alongside the offices of the other senior reporters, and Lucy had a desk in the cubicles in the middle of the open-plan room.

  “This way,” she said, guiding him along a single-file corridor made by glass office walls on one side and waist-high partitions on the other. The moonlight through all the glass in the offices meant there was little need for lights, which was lucky, since turning on lights would only attract more attention.

  “Which desk is yours?” His voice was low and it sent shivers down her spine. Even with all she had at stake, sneaking through a darkened room with Hayden at her back, asking where she worked in a deep voice, was enough to distract her from their mission. She shook her head at herself, but led him to her desk anyway, then held an arm out as if showing him a million-dollar view.

  “It’s neater than the others,” he said, turning to survey the surrounding desks quickly.

  She glanced over the surface—everything in its place, from the pens in the penholder to the little stationery box that held anything else she needed. “I like to be organized.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “I’m organized, but my desk is messier than this.”

  “Your desk is neat,” she pointed out. And the room in his hotel suite he’d been working from had been so neat, so devoid of personal effects, that she’d had trouble getting a sense of him when she first met him.

  “It’s not a real desk—it’s just for interviews on this case. My desk in New York has haphazard piles of documents and trays filled with papers. The way desks are meant to be,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.

  She thought back to the mountain of baby manuals she’d seen in Josh’s room, and the way he’d spread papers over the coffee table when she’d been there at night helping him research. Organized chaos matched his personality more than the tidy desk she’d been judging him by. It was
as if she’d seen a little further into the man inside, the one he didn’t show everyone, and it made her heart warm.

  “So where is Angelica’s office from here?” Hayden asked.

  “Just there,” she said pointing to the darkened room across the narrow corridor. “With the way my desk faces, I get to see her smiling face all day.” Of course, Angelica took every opportunity to scowl at her, or to say something cutting when she walked past.

  The elevator pinged and they both stilled. As the doors whooshed open, Angelica’s sharp voice filled the air. “No, that’s not acceptable. If you want a credit on the story, you’ll have the research on my desk by 8:00 a.m. End of discussion.” Then a beat later, as if talking to herself, “Moron.” There was silence except for Angelica’s staccato heels clicking on the tiled floor, coming their way.

  Lucy looked at Hayden, her pulse jumping. It was one thing to be found by a random ANS staffer, or to have their escapade get back to Graham, but Angelica was a different story altogether. If she saw them, there was a good chance she’d suspect what they were doing and be on her guard, ruining the plan.

  Hayden grabbed Lucy’s arm, pulling her down to the floor and quietly squeezing them both under her desk. To fit in the small space, she was tucked into Hayden’s lap, her cheek resting against his chest, their legs intertwined. Her heart thumped hard and she could feel Hayden’s matching beat under her ear, and knew it was only partly due to the chance of being caught. Their current position was 95-percent responsible.

  Angelica’s footsteps arrived at her office door, barely four feet from where they were hidden, with only a partition between them. She flicked the light switch and brightness streamed out, but it was still fairly dark under the desk. Hayden’s fingers stroked along her arm, and even through the fabric the caress gave her goose bumps. She glanced up and found him looking languorously down at her, a devilish gleam in his eyes. She shivered.

  “I want you,” he silently mouthed.

  “You’re crazy,” she mouthed back. His grin showed he was pleased with that pronouncement, and he undid her top button. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or melt. Then when his mouth covered hers, she didn’t have to think at all. His hand inched inside her shirt just seconds before he froze, his mouth now a hairsbreadth from hers.