The Marriage Agenda

by Sarah Ballance

  He glanced at the clock. Chloe’s deadline had been noon, but he didn’t know what that meant in terms of when the story would break. Clearly it hadn’t done so yet, or he’d have gotten a phone call. He should really send the file to Toby so he had time to scrape himself off the floor before the phones lines went crazy.

  He didn’t get the chance. His cell rang. As he consulted the display, his hand shook. Chloe. He thought about ignoring her, but he had a responsibility to his team that transcended the sting of betrayal. He accepted the call.

  “Hello?” He managed to keep his voice even, as though she hadn’t wrecked him. He was surprised by that.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “If you’ve got anything beyond Rex being a crook and my campaign going to hell, it might have to wait for another day.”

  Dead silence followed the icy words.

  He forcibly loosened his grip on the phone. “Is that all?” he asked.

  “I’m not sending the story to the paper. I just…I wanted you to know what I found.”

  “Yeah, that’s understandable. Most people just pick up the phone, but you write an article that will earn a national byline so you can not send it to the paper.”

  All traces of her hesitation vanished. “Look, I’m about to walk into a meeting I didn’t have to attend just so they can look me in the eye when they fire me or lay me off or whatever vernacular they attach to it. Bottom line is I’m losing a job I love because I didn’t send the damned article. If you don’t believe me, then check my sent email. I just wanted you to know… Never mind. I didn’t send it, and that’s all you need to know.”

  The hell it was. “Tell me why. What did you want me to know?”

  “Later. I have a meeting—”

  “Now.”

  “I’m…I’m leaving you.”

  The words hit him straight in the gut. He opened his mouth, but the first words that threatened to escape were to ask why. To ask her to stay. And he had no idea how he could think such a thing after what she’d done. He didn’t want to know.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Say what you need to say, Chloe.”

  “I can’t send it because I love you.”

  He smacked his palm against his forehead in mock surprise. “Of course you do. I’ve been standing here, trying to figure out why the fuck you would do this to me, and that was the one explanation I hadn’t managed to stumble on by myself. You love me.”

  “You’re an ass, Knox. You saw the article, so clearly you saw my note. I thought you deserved to see the whole story, and that’s the truth. Believe what you want, but while you’re coming up with reasons to convince yourself how right you are, just try to think of one time I’ve lied to you. You won’t. You can’t. The only person I’ve lied to is myself, and I’m done. I love you, but I have to respect myself. I can’t do this…and not because you won’t love me but because you’re too stupid or stubborn to admit you already do. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m needed in a meeting so I can lose the other thing I love. Have a nice life, Knox.”

  He listened, stunned, as the air went dead. Was it possible she really hadn’t sent the article? She had everything to lose. She loved her job. If she hadn’t hit send, she was essentially walking away from it…and she’d made it clear she was walking away from him. He’d offered her everything she could ask for—a beautiful home, a faithful husband who couldn’t get enough of her, children, a chance to further her career… Nothing was missing. The only thing that he’d failed to do was say he loved her, but what would that change?

  Nothing. It wouldn’t change anything, and he didn’t want to think about what that meant.

  He righted the chair and sat, staring for a long moment at her computer and the article she’d left for him before he switched to her browser. Her email was open. He clicked the link for sent mail and waited for the page to load. What was her editor’s name? Beth something. He skimmed the list of sent email. No Beth. No anything. Chloe hadn’t sent a single email from that account since the previous morning. He frowned, his eyes landing on the search box. Clicking there, he tried Beth@ and got nothing. Dammit, what was her last name? It was a big paper…odds were they didn’t assign emails on a first name basis.

  “You’re an idiot,” he muttered. @WashingtonTribune. Bingo. BethMahan. He clicked on the result and scanned the titles of recent emails. Each one was clearly labeled with an article title—the last few of which were decidedly home-and-garden-esque—but none had been sent in the last couple of days.

  Frowning, he clicked back to the Tribune results and checked the list in case she’d sent it to someone else.

  Nothing.

  Chloe hadn’t sent the article.

  The proof obliterated what remained of his anger.

  He sat back in her chair, his gaze skirting the wilderness of greenery in her office. The conservatory. She hadn’t been kidding—potted plants filled tables in front of every window. He hadn’t realized how big of a pile they made, but he liked it. They added life to the house.

  Chloe had, too. She wasn’t one of those women who needed to be dressed to kill every waking minute of the day. In fact, he loved her bare feet peeking out from under her sweats and the way she twisted her hair up off her neck. He liked how he could swipe a kiss and not end up wearing red lipstick—for that matter, he’d be hard pressed to admit it out loud, but he actually liked the cherry taste of whatever it was she used to make her lips look deliciously moist all day. She was flawlessly beautiful, but unlike so many other women he knew, she didn’t paint it on. She was real, and that was the one thing he’d been missing all along.

  His knee-jerk reaction to love had been honest, but he’d been lying to himself. He was absolutely the last person to believe in love, but whatever she’d triggered inside him the night they met had only grown stronger with time. He had no idea what had possessed him to shed his skin and go to that bar, but the moment he’d locked eyes with Chloe, something inside him had changed.

  He’d grown up with the Hamilton name. He’d never known what it was like to be a regular guy—not until Chloe. He had never wanted for anything in his life, but in that moment, he knew she’d given him something no one else ever had. When she’d looked at him, she had seen a guy wearing faded jeans and an old T-shirt, and still her eyes had torn through him as though he was on the dessert menu. He’d been terrified to lose that, so when he’d introduced himself, he’d given his middle name—misleading, perhaps, but not untrue—and waited with bated breath for her to make the connection, but she hadn’t.

  She hadn’t seen a Hamilton. She’d seen a man.

  He’d been lost then. Maybe that was why he hadn’t broken things off with her sooner. He’d known ever since he was a kid listening to his mother cry down the hall that he wanted nothing of marriage. Even before he’d fully understood his father’s infidelities, he’d learned loving someone meant hurting them. He’d never met anyone with whom he had even thought he wanted a real relationship, until Chloe, and the last thing he’d wanted was to hurt her—not like that. So he’d ended it, and if he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit he hadn’t been the same since.

  He’d convinced himself he’d asked Chloe to marry him to further his career, but the truth was he wanted back the piece of himself that had left with her. He’d been so close to the truth when he’d refused to marry anyone but her, but he’d also missed it by a mile. He hadn’t shed his skin that night they met. He’d found himself. He’d found himself in her. And then he’d made love to her, and before the sweat dried, he’d said she didn’t matter enough.

  Fuck. No wonder she was gone.

  He clicked back to the article and read it once more. Most of her citations he recognized, and he didn’t doubt the rest to be true. Chloe wouldn’t fabricate this—she valued her job, reputation, and integrity too much to risk any one of them. Every damned word of what she had written was true. It had to be.

  She had Rex in her sig
hts, but she hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  Knox boiled with emotion. His father had paid off inspectors, doubtlessly having a hand in getting a factory approved that he’d been publicly against. He was smart—and dumb—enough to keep those payoffs from surfacing, and ultimately the whole house of cards had fallen because he’d chosen the wrong place to get his dick wet. If he hadn’t gotten caught in that high-profile affair, he wouldn’t have stepped down from his seat. There would be no need for a special election, and Knox wouldn’t have married Chloe.

  And she wouldn’t have broken a story every top reporter in the country would have given his or her right arm for. She had everything she needed, but she had refused to hit send. Because she loved him. And that love was deeper and truer than he deserved.

  He shook his head in disbelief. He’d figured she’d dig up something on someone, but never had he imagined it would be at his expense. She was a handful of keystrokes away from making her career and destroying what was left of the Hamilton name…and by extension, Knox. Toby would shit a brick if he knew Knox had prior knowledge of the story, but how the hell could you put a good spin on something like this?

  He’d find out soon enough.

  There was a certain peace in that.

  Knox switched back to Chloe’s story and deleted the message she left him at the top. He saved the changes, then attached the document to a new email. He hesitated only a moment over the To field before typing in his recipient.

  She hadn’t clicked send.

  He hadn’t any other choice.

  Chapter Twenty

  Chloe steered her piece-of-crap car into a parking spot near Belleville Lake, grateful the old girl had made the forty-five minute drive without leaving a trail of pieces on the road behind her. She needed time to think, and she wasn’t going to get it at her old apartment or at Lila’s or anywhere else that bred familiarity. For a person seeking solace, the state park was as good a place as any. Though the recreation area entertained a lot of traffic, it wasn’t typically packed on a weekday afternoon—there were enough people there that she wouldn’t draw attention, and that’s all that really mattered. Toby would probably have a fit if he knew she’d let the old beast out of the garage—keeping up the Hamilton image absolutely required her to drive shiny late-model things—but she didn’t feel right taking the car Knox had bought her. Not when she’d just wrecked what was left of his family by exposing his father.

  Her heart felt as if it had landed in a million pieces, but she’d done the right thing. She’d rather live alone with her conscience than carry the burden of a lie.

  She’d just dug into her grilled chicken salad—courtesy of a fast food drive-through—when her phone vibrated. She hit ignore, then checked her missed calls. Six of them, all from her editor. According to the timestamps, the calls had been coming in since minutes after she’d left the meeting room where she had been handed a bunch of empty accolades to go alongside her pink slip, both courtesy of the publisher, Harry Olander. The calls had been easy enough to ignore. She hadn’t even noticed the vibrations from the phone while on the road.

  She’d just set down the device when another call came in. It was her editor—or her former editor. Chloe was sorely tempted to ignore her for a seventh time, but curiosity got the better of her. Besides, it wasn’t as if she had anything left to lose.

  She answered. “Sorry, Beth,” she said in lieu of a greeting, “the story wasn’t what I thought it was.” Not a shred of untruth there. “I’m sorry if I let you down.”

  “What are you talking about? Why the hell didn’t you mention this story during the meeting?”

  Beth sounded as if she’d just opened the door to find freaking Publisher’s Clearing House standing on her front porch with an oversize cardboard check. ”What story?”

  “The one that just made your career. If it pans out, that is, but all things considered…”

  Chloe sat up straight, spilling her salad in the process. “What things? What story?”

  “The story on Rex Hamilton. I’ve got to say, I never saw this coming. You’ve got balls the likes of which I’ve never seen…and I’ve seen plenty.” The woman sounded giddy. Giddy.

  Panic made a shrill sound when it traveled at the speed of light. “Beth, I’m not kidding. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t act like you don’t know. Olander got a call after you left. The memo came through the door, and he shot out of his chair as though he was being chased. Left us all sitting there, wondering when the last time was he’d let anything interrupt a meeting. While I was waiting for him to return, I found your story in my email.”

  Chloe’s story. Beth had Chloe’s story? “Beth, you have to tell me how you got that file.”

  “In my inbox, like I get the rest of them. What’s going on?”

  “Who sent it to you?” Chloe’s pulse thundered in her ears.

  “You did.” Beth sounded puzzled, not that Chloe could blame her.

  “Can you double check that?”

  “Yes, hang on.” The sound of clacking keys drifted through the phone line. “You’ve got me worried. Is this info legit?”

  “Yes, it’s legit. Beth, listen to me. You cannot run that story.”

  “Not a chance. Olander’s already seen it.”

  Chloe’s heart sank. Beth was right. There was no way in hell Olander would drop a story that guaranteed national exposure. “How did he see it?” she whispered.

  “Direct email. The time stamp is 12:46 this afternoon, and it was sent to me with a copy to Olander. I’m assuming that’s why he hightailed it out of the meeting, then came flying back the same way. He was moving so fast, hollerin’ the whole while ‘stop the presses,’ that he lost his toupee in the corridor. I’ve been here over ten years, and I’ve never seen anyone do that. I didn’t know people actually said that.”

  This isn’t happening. “Is it running tomorrow?”

  “If he can verify it, it will. Olander is practically humping the printing press to get it out there, but he’s smart enough to fact-check first. He’s got a whole team of people on it, not one of whom knows what’s going on with the rest, but he’s not going to sit on it. He doesn’t want anything to leak ahead of time.”

  Oh, God. Chloe sank lower in her seat. She’d had no intention of ever submitting that story. She’d written it for Knox—so he could be the first to see the truth. Chloe had gotten to it before any other reporter because she had an insider advantage, but she’d known the story would come out eventually. Rex hadn’t hidden his trail as well as he thought he had—especially in light of that last affair, which connected one too many dots. She’d known the truth would destroy Knox, and she hadn’t wanted to be the one to break the story.

  She couldn’t do that to him.

  And then the truth hit her. He’d done it to himself.

  “Chloe?”

  “The memo Olander got during the meeting…do you know what it said?”

  “Everyone in the meeting knows. He left it on the conference table when he flew out of there.”

  Chloe gritted her teeth. “What did it say?”

  “Don’t quote me, but it was something like ‘Knox Hamilton is offering an exclusive. Holding on line two.’”

  She took a deep, unsettled breath. He really had done it to himself. But why? “Look, I’ve got to go. If the press date changes, let me know.” She ended the call over Beth’s protests and stared through the windshield, picking absently at the spilled contents of her salad. Knox was going to kill her, but she knew what she had to do next. Before she lost her nerve, she scrolled through the contacts in her cell until she found the one she needed. She tapped the screen. The phone rang only once before the call was answered.

  “Toby, it’s Chloe. We need to talk.”

  …

  Katherine Hamilton’s expression was absolutely unreadable. It had been that way the whole time Knox told her about her husband’s latest misdeeds, and when he got to the part abou
t the story breaking, the only shift in her countenance was the slight lift of one of her eyebrows.

  Knox pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand and reached for his coffee with the other. Five in the morning was mighty damn early—especially for this kind of news—but his mother had been off at some charity thing the night before and hadn’t returned his call…not that it mattered. He wouldn’t have told her this over the phone.

  Your husband is a bigger cheat than anyone knew. Oh, and he’s also a felon. Environmentalism was all the rage. The fact that Rex’s cash influence would have led to pollution of an environmentally sensitive area was just the icing on the fucking cake.

  Knox had told her everything.

  Almost.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “There’s more?” His mother looked as tired as he’d ever seen her. He didn’t doubt she’d be fine in an hour—she had that way about her—and for the first time, the thought pissed him off. Why couldn’t she be real? Maybe if she hadn’t perfected the art of pretending the bad stuff didn’t exist, she’d have had a chance at being happy. He thought of Chloe and wished his mother would take a page from her book. Maybe if she’d just once threatened to rip Rex’s balls off and fucking meant it, he’d have thought twice about what he’d done. Knox didn’t blame his mother one bit, but dammit, why did she have to take it?

  Chloe wouldn’t. She’d never know his mother’s unhappiness, because she’d have his nuts in a sling before she let him do that to her.

  He drained his coffee cup, buying time before he answered. “Chloe broke the story.”

  His mother didn’t flinch. She simply stood and turned toward the window, through which reflected the shimmering blue of the brightly lit swimming pool. Knox had grown up with that view beyond his mother’s breakfast table. Funny how it hadn’t changed in so many years, even as it seemed everything else had.