His Surprise Daughter : A BWWM Billionaire Romance

by Tiana Cole

  While Lucky was packing the car with his photography equipment, I dashed across the square to the nearest coffee shop and bought a copy of the Trib. Barely dodging the sleepy small-town traffic, I returned to the car and slid into the passenger seat, already flipping through the folds of newsprint to find “my” article.

  “Oh. Oh, God,” I muttered as my eyes skimmed the words that Skip had published under my byline. The first few sentences were mine, sure, but most of it was Skip’s—some sort of mad fabrication, a literal grasping at straws, a smoke-and-mirrors sensationalist piece. In all the years I’d written for the paper, I had never written nor published such drivel. That Skip allowed, much less penned, such garbage meant there was something bigger than a byline going on.

  Lucky appeared at my elbow, inserting the key into the ignition. “You did a good job holding it together back there. Now are you going to tell me what this is about?”

  The car backed into the square and had mostly left Decatur behind when I spoke.

  “Skip is up to something.”

  Lucky’s voice was even. “Usually, yes.”

  In a few halting sentences, I told him about the article on Derek that Skip had embellished and published in my name.

  “It’s off, Lucky. I mean, yes, Skip wanted it to be a good story, but it’s not. There’s nothing there. I've looked. I tried to play up the pharma angle and he killed it. Even so, Skip is a journalist like the rest of us and I can’t imagine him compromising journalistic integrity just to sell more papers. It’s beneath him and the Trib. Listen…”

  As we sped towards Chicago I read the article out loud. At the worst parts I heard a strangled choke in Lucky’s throat; when I was finished, I watched him ponder, rolling the words around in his brain, before he spoke.

  “I don’t know, Denise. I mean, on the one hand, you’re totally right. That article is crap, and it seems like the kind of thing that Skip would normally rip to pieces. Do you think maybe he didn't write it?”

  I threw my hands up in frustration. “All I know is that my flash drive had only two files on it, both of them about Derek. One was the complete truth about my research—my talks with him and my tour of the lab—ending with my conclusion that he’s basically clean. The second file was a jumble of maybes and what-ifs, but the first paragraph is the same as what I just read to you. The last time I saw that flash drive was when I handed it over to Skip a week ago, specifically telling him, ‘I didn't find anything on Derek. Here’s my write-up on what a great guy he is.’ And Skip told me, ‘I'll bounce this over to Human Interest.’”

  Lucky didn't say anything.

  My finger poked the Trib, spread all over my lap.

  “And today, some jumble of what was on that flash drive is in the Trib. If Skip didn't do it, he handed my research off to somebody and asked them to. Somebody who, I might add, is a shitty writer and has probably ruined my reputation.”

  The corner of Lucky’s mouth lifted in a smile.

  “This isn't funny, Lucky.”

  He sighed. “No, Denise, it’s not. But it’s also not the end of the world. Let’s look at the raw side of what’s happened here. Yes, Derek is angry at you, but you can probably redeem that if you just explain to him what happened with Skip.”

  “If he believes me,” I pointed out.

  Lucky continued with, “As far as your reputation goes, all journalists skew a bit every now and then. Nobody is going to crucify you for writing an article that’s not strictly on the level.”

  “It’s not just off the mark, Lucky, it’s wrong. And what’s more, Derek is a good man doing good things. This isn't a corrupt City Manager with a list of wrongs that we just embellished a bit. It’s an innocent man whose name we have now dragged through the mud.”

  “If that is true,” his began, his voice patient, “and he is a good man, then his friends and coworkers won’t believe it and he’ll weather this based on who he is as a person. Just as, I may add, you will. People in the field that truly know you and respect your work aren’t going to abandon you because of one off article.”

  It was very nice to have a young, unspoiled, rational person in the car to help talk me through this. As we neared Chicago I began to feel slightly better, although there were still a few glaring holes in Lucky’s case.

  “You’re forgetting a few things,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “Why? Why would Skip do that to me?”

  Lucky shrugged. “He’s not a saint, Denise. He’s a businessman.”

  “He’s a journalist!”

  “He’s a businessman,” Lucky repeated. “He runs a money-making business. Yes, it’s a newspaper. We walk on a lot of moral high ground around there with our talk of truth and justice and courage, but don’t forget that the Trib makes money, Denise, and that Skip is in charge of steering the ship.”

  Suddenly a picture flashed through my mind: the Jones-Wembly documents I kept seeing on Skip’s desk.

  It was silent in the car for a beat, so long that Lucky grew concerned.

  “You’re not usually this quiet, Denise. What’s going on?”

  “Do you know who Jones-Wembly is?”

  He shrugged. “Our financial backers?”

  I nodded. “Generally Skip has one quarterly meeting with them which he had, I don’t know, two or three weeks ago. He’s told me a million times that it’s a formality. They talk numbers, and he’s finished with them for another three months.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So, every time I've been in his office the past month he’s had a thick JW file open on his desk. Papers. Numbers. Spreadsheets. Like he’s been poring over them.”

  Lucky chewed his lip but didn't say anything.

  “I wonder if the paper is in financial trouble?”

  It was quiet for another stretch. Traffic was picking up and we could see downtown in the distance along with the wide, empty swath of Lake Michigan to the Northwest.

  Finally Lucky passed me a grin. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Derek

  My mood had not improved by the time I left the couch to head downtown to the clinic. Logan stopped me before I left.

  “You don’t look great, Dr. Johnson.”

  With a sigh I passed my hand over my forehead. “Bad day, Logan. I’m working on getting more beauty sleep.”

  The young man chuckled awkwardly. “Well, you’ll be glad to know that the samples are continuing on. There hasn’t been any negative change. No resurgence of cancer cells.”

  “That is good news.” My hand dropped from my face and I mustered a smile. “Really.”

  Logan looked at a loss. His hands hung by his sides and his eyes grew wide. “So, maybe we should run another sample set? Because, you know, one isn't enough to call it a success.”

  “No. No, of course not. Do we have the supplies we need for that in stock?”

  The boy’s nod was slow, as if I was stupid, which maybe I was. “Yes, sir.”

  I took a deep breath. The article in the Trib was a blow, but nobody that mattered believed it. Truly, those I cared about—namely, my boss and Maria’s parents—had called, but both phone calls had ended in encouragement and a feisty attitude on my behalf. As of yet, nobody had come around with any thought that the allegations Denise wrote were true. Logan was staring at me incredulously, his expression a reminder that I had things to do.

  I squared my shoulders. “You busy tonight, Logan?”

  “No, sir,” he grinned.

  “Okay,” I nodded as I gathered my things. “Meet me back here at nine and we’ll get another test set rolling.”

  In all of my years as a doctor, I’d never seen a kid so excited about cell samples. You’d think I was setting him up with a gorgeous coed.

  ***

  Since I was coming back to the hospital later, I opted to take a taxi to the clinic rather than undergo the hassle of moving my car back and forth. During the trip downtown, my boss called me for the second time that day
.

  “Hey, Tim.” My stomach churned in moderate fear. What if he was calling to sack me or something equally mortifying? Beneath the fear was the calming truth that it didn't really matter what he did; I could work for free in the clinic and carry on my research as I pleased. I didn't need the job at the hospital. Still, my equilibrium had been dashed my Denise’s article and I was wary of the unusual phone call.

  “Derek. How are you holding up?”

  “Eh,” I answered, which, although it was honest, wasn't really an answer. “I’m pushing through. I'll be fine.”

  He coughed on his end. “That’s good to hear. I hate it when good men get picked on. But as an aside, I just happened to hear something that might explain what’s been going on down there at the paper.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I mean, it’s probably nothing, but remember last week when I told you that Rashid Pharmaceutical has been courting our hospital as a research partner?”

  “I do.” I had not, however, told anyone besides Denise about the mysterious phone calls from an unnamed pharmaceutical company representative. Tim didn't need to know that, because Tim didn't need to know what I was doing on the 8th floor.

  “Well,” Tim said, and seemed to lower his voice, although he was probably talking to me from behind his locked office door. “I was talking to our lawyers about Rashid, you know, wanting to check their financials so we could make a wise decision. If you’re going to accept someone’s money, you should always check to see if they have money, and where else their money is going. An association with Rashid equals an association with everyone Rashid is associated with, you know?”

  I grunted an assent. The taxi stopped in front of the clinic; I shoved a twenty through the glass and found a fairly quiet spot on the sidewalk.

  “Anyway, our financial team did some digging,” Tim continued, “and found that Rashid also invested in the Chicago Tribune last quarter. Apparently nobody knows this, but the paper is going through a bit of a slump and has been trying to cull whatever investors they can to make their budget this year.”

  I'll admit I had only been half-listening to Tim until that point. I’d already decided that, if the hospital went through the partnership with Rashid, I’d move my lab offsite. It would be time consuming, but thankfully not too difficult. It was just the first of many changes I’d entertained in my mind since reading Denise’s article about me.

  However, the news that Rashid, which was actively pressuring me and pursuing my hospital, was a confirmed financial backer—nay, a financial savior—to Denise’s boss was intriguing. It lent a little bit of credence to her shock at the article’s appearance and her claim that someone else wrote it. What I needed was a few hours to draw out the tangled mess of connections on a whiteboard.

  I didn't currently have such time at my disposal, though, so instead I answered Tim in as measured a voice as I could. “Hmm. That certainly is interesting.”

  “I thought so,” Tim’s voice was deceptively mild. “Seems timely that the Trib would suddenly push a distracting shit-pile of half truths about you just as their biggest financial backer was also courting your research.”

  “It does.”

  He cleared his throat and asked, “Are you familiar with the writer?” I heard papers ruffle in the background. “This… Denise Willard? In the article it sounds like you know her.”

  I knew her in every sense of the word, but he didn‘t need to know that. “I know her passably. We’ve met.”

  “Might be worth a phone call to her. See what kind of pressure she was put under to write that about you.”

  With a sigh I entered the clinic. “You’re right, Tim. It might be worth a phone call.”

  Chapter 23

  Denise

  It was good, old-fashioned, sneaking around.

  Lucky and I had pulled a similar stunt before. Once, when we were trying to catch a school superintendent with his pants down (literally), and similarly when we tried to see into Derek’s lab from the rooftop across the alley. For the most part, I felt like Lucky and I enjoyed playing dress-up-like-the-FBI; honestly, I felt like Skip was a step ahead of us and the creeping around the Trib late at night would yield nothing but a lack of sleep.

  But it was fun while it lasted.

  We crept, black-clad, up the back stairs of the Trib offices, which were housed in a literally hundred-plus-year-old building that was constructed after the Great Fire left a bunch of downtown real estate open. In the lower levels of the office, the people that actually made the paper were hard at work getting it printed and ready to send out across the city well before dawn. But the ‘soft’ employees—the writers, the layout people, the folks that clicked on computer screens all day—were gone. That included Skip. Although he’d put in his time working late at night for years, he had a current habit of meeting Chicago’s Finest in the most upscale clubs for a nightcap. Since it was now after ten, the upper floor was clear.

  We reached the top of the stairs and quietly pushed the door open to make sure there were no lights on. It was dark except for a few emergency lights, and a sleeping monitor or two emitting a slight blue glow. After a few minutes of holding our breaths to listen for noises, we were confident that we were alone. Still, we padded silently down the hallway on sneakered feet until we reached Skip’s office. There we stopped, shoulder and shoulder, and stared at the locked door as if it was the end of the earth.

  “Behind here,” Lucky whispered, “There be dragons.”

  “He’s a dragon all right,” I muttered in response and darted forward with my ace in the hole—a skeleton key that Skip had given me ages ago in order to monitor the habits of another writer. With a casual wave of his wrinkly hand he’d said, “This key will open any door in the whole building, Willard—even mine!” Then he’d guffawed, cigar hanging on his lips, knowing that our relationship was airtight with trust and that I’d never use the key to invade his privacy.

  But that night, I was invading everything.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” Lucky whispered as it slid home into the lock. I easily turned the knob to his office and we were in.

  “Don’t turn on the lights. You never know who’s watching this place,” I warned when Lucky’s hand shot towards the switch. “Just use your phone or a flashlight.”

  We immediately went towards Skip’s desk, cell phone lights illuminating the space in small batches as we pilfered through the stacks of files scattered around.

  The Jones-Wembly file was gone.

  “Dammit,” I muttered. “Now… Now you want to take it with you?”

  I continued to lift stacks of stories, other newspapers, and various articles with more urgency.

  “Denise,” Lucky called from the corner. “Here.”

  He was standing at an antique file cabinet in the corner made of old wood and wrought-iron handles. He’d had no qualms about digging into the drawers, though, a fact for which I wanted to take a bit of credit; after all, Lucky and I had been tagged together on a dozen stories and I’d claim him as a protégé as often as anyone would let me.

  “What do you have?” I whispered as I joined him.

  The Jones-Wembly folder was open in his hand. We quickly leafed through the papers but saw nothing really amiss. Numbers appeared to tally together and add up just fine, which wasn't exactly what we wanted to see.

  A sigh escaped my mouth and I stomped my foot softly on the wood floor. “Well, why the hell aren’t we finding anything? You know it’s fishy, Lucky. I mean, it is, isn't it?”

  Lucky’s brown eyes found mine over the open folder. “I don’t know, Denise. I like to reserve judgment until I see proof, as should anyone.”

  I blew out my breath in frustration. “But it doesn't make any sense that Skip would turn on me like this. It’s not good business.”

  “Did the paper sell big today?” Lucky pointed out, and in a mock voice added, “‘Hey Jim, did you read the Trib today? They’re calling out a fancy uptown do
ctor for doing illegal crap.’”

  I made a face and shrugged. “Probably.”

  “Then it’s good business.”

  “But not our type of good business. We’re not a rag,” I huffed. As I turned away from Lucky to walk back to the desk my feet caught on something and I tripped. I nearly fell on my face on top of the leather office chair, which would have spun against the desk and caused a healthy crash, but Lucky caught my elbow.

  “Easy, kid,” he warned in a stern whisper. “Walk much?”

  Yanking my elbow from his grasp, I knelt on the floor. “I walk fine, thank you. I tripped on a…” I stopped and held my light over the floor. “Lucky, look!”

  He joined me as I slid my fingers under the thick Persian rug and extracted a blank manila folder. Our eyes met, wide, as we sat on the floorboards and opened it.

  “It’s a ledger,” Lucky whispered.

  “Someone is putting tons of money into the paper. Look at all of these deposits.”

  “This stuff wasn't in the JW spreadsheet,” he pointed out.

  “Because it’s probably illegal. Why else would it be shoved under the damn carpet?”

  I ran my finger town the list of totals. Skip had meticulously kept a true record of the paper’s finances, where about every two weeks we dipped into the red—way into the red—and some mysterious benefactor pulled us back out.

  “Whoever is paying this money is the only reason the Trib is afloat. How could we have tanked so badly?”

  “We have no idea how money is spent,” Lucky shrugged. “And if Skip is faking the numbers, there’s no telling where the actual money is going.”

  At the back of the ledger was a folded-up sheet of paper. It was a contract, all secret with letters rather than names, which detailed the essence of what we were seeing. Twice-monthly deposits that kept the paper solvent. Skip’s only pledge to his benefactor was ‘things promised.’

  Lucky scanned the contract. “Who is RP? I don’t see any names, but I see RP.”