Private Indiscretions

by Susan Crosby

She sipped her wine. “But as far as anonymity goes, Sam, you don’t exactly blend into the background, you know.”

  “Are you flattering me? I can become as invisible as I need to be.”

  “Not when there are women around.”

  He didn’t have an answer to that compliment, so he let it go.

  “Although you scare Lilith,” she said.

  “Well, you know those conservatives. Afraid of their own shadows.”

  They drank Chardonnay and ate an entire platter of antipasto—tangy marinated green olives, a mellow cheese he didn’t recognize, paper-thin slices of prosciutto, and bruschetta piled with diced tomato and drizzled with olive oil.

  “How did you end up in the army?” she asked.

  His gaze was drawn to a drop of oil glistening at the corner of her mouth. Thoughts of the ways he could remove it had his imagination working overtime, but he picked up his wine instead. “My car broke down in front of an army recruiting office. The recruiter bought me breakfast and talked me into enlisting, said I’d have plenty of money for college when I got out. I stayed in for eight years.”

  “Did you go to college?”

  “No.” He hadn’t even regretted it.

  She eyed the tray, then picked up an olive. “Why did you leave home so fast?”

  “You of all people should know the answer to that. There was no reason to stay.” My father was a drunk. Your parents didn’t want me near you. And you—you wouldn’t even look at me at graduation. Any one of those reasons would have been enough. Instead, he’d had all three.

  “I’m sorry you got hurt.” She laid a hand on his. “There’s something you should know.”

  He didn’t want to hear any more about the past. And now the present was getting complicated. “Look, Dana, it’s over and done as far as I’m concerned. End of a very old chapter.” She was asking too many questions. He had a few of his own. Instead, he made a point of looking at his watch then set his wineglass on the tray. “I need to go.”

  “Sam?”

  He froze as he felt her hand against his back. “What?”

  “This is it, isn’t it?”

  “It?”

  “The end of the road. You won’t contact me again.”

  He finally sat back and looked at her. “The stakes are too high. For both of us.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m the invisible partner in my firm, and I like it that way. And you’re one of the most eligible women in the state. People are watching you.”

  “You’re saying we can’t date because it could hurt your career?”

  “Yes.” Among other reasons. “And yours, too.”

  Her gaze was steady, the pause long. “Then, you owe me a kiss.”

  He didn’t pretend not to understand. She was referring to the night of the prom when he’d left her at her doorstep without even a handshake. He’d ached to kiss her. Had hungered for it for so long he thought he might die of it. He had no reason not to kiss her now.

  He slipped his hand under her hair and along her neck, drawing her forward. He hesitated even when he didn’t want to. He shouldn’t do this. It could only cause problems—

  “Don’t think,” she said, soft and urgent, reading his mind. “Just do.”

  It wasn’t only her command that made him close the gap but the fulfillment of a dream.

  Her lips quivered beneath his, then went lax when he pressed a little harder. Ah, but she tasted good, smelled good, felt good. She flattened a hand to his chest, made a sexy little sound as she brought herself closer. He deepened the contact, savoring her. A Chardonnay kiss, full-bodied, crisp, intoxicating. The actuality matched his every fantasy. He felt her lean into him, felt her hands slip around his neck, bringing herself closer.

  Electricity shot through him, surging farther and faster by the second, overloading his system…

  He had to break the contact. He forced himself to pull back. She let her hands slide down his shoulders and re-settle on his chest, keeping the connection, the delicate contact arousing him even more. Her eyes were still closed. If he hadn’t looked away to break the spell, he wouldn’t have seen the shadowy figure at the window, watching them. Hilda. She stepped back instantly. It cooled Sam faster than a loaded gun pointed to his head.

  “Are you sure this can’t go any further?” Dana asked, trailing a finger down his tie, finally opening her eyes.

  He caught her hand. “I’m sure.”

  “How about if we just sleep together?” She looked surprised at her own words.

  Stop fueling my dreams. “You deserve more than that. Too much secrecy for you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yes, you do. Or you would, anyway.”

  “You can’t dictate my feelings,” she muttered, standing.

  He stood, too. “I need to go.”

  He saw her irritation in the way she picked up the tray, which made her fumble the mask tucked under her arm.

  “I’ll carry the tray inside,” he said, reaching for it.

  “Oh, you don’t need—okay, okay.” She reboxed the mask, took a final sip of wine then pointed to a back door. “It leads to the kitchen.”

  There was no sign of Hilda as they made their way through the house to the foyer. He saw a small stack of mail on a chest. She’d arrived at the house with him, so she hadn’t seen her mail yet. He tried to determine if one of the envelopes matched the one Abe had shown him, but he couldn’t tell without thumbing through them.

  In his experience the more specific the threat, the more likely it was to be followed through. This one was specific.

  Talk to me, Dana. Tell me about the threat. Trust me.

  But she didn’t say anything, just looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read. Hell. He wanted to kiss her again. Hold her against him. Help her. Old habits were hard to break, even after a fifteen-year interruption.

  “Goodbye, Dana,” he said, turning to leave.

  “Bye.” A single word uttered with a slight hitch.

  He ignored the way it made his gut clench and kept walking.

  His mood was foul when he got back to his hotel. Twenty minutes later his cell phone rang.

  “Mr. Remington, it’s Abe Atwater. She got a second letter tonight.”

  He mouthed a curse. “What was in it?”

  “A veiled threat this time. ‘I’m waiting for your press conference. I won’t wait long.’”

  “What did Dana say?”

  “She’s upset, of course. Her husband’s reputation means a great deal to her.”

  Her husband. Sam tended to forget about him. “I’ll call her. But unless she asks me, I’m not getting involved in the investigation.”

  “That’s fair. You’ll let me know?”

  “Yes.” Sam cut him off then dialed Dana.

  She answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “You said earlier there was something I should know,” he said, keeping his voice businesslike. “I cut you off. What did you want to tell me?”

  Six

  Dana welcomed the opportunity to explain what she’d tried to tell him. She sat on her bed. Her gaze landed on the note she’d just received. “It’s about our graduation ceremony.”

  “When you wouldn’t talk to me?”

  Sam’s words sliced into her, the pain still fresh after all these years. Until now she could only guess how hurt he’d been. “Harley told me if I even looked at you, he and his friends would make sure you wouldn’t walk again.”

  His silence ratcheted up her anxiety a notch. Finally he said, “You were protecting me?”

  “Of course I was protecting you. Why does that seem ridiculous? You’d rescued me from Harley,” she said, bringing the issue into the open. “Then when you told me not to tell the police, I did. And you were beaten up because of it. How could I possibly take the chance that something else would happen to you? How could I live with that?”

  “So instead you made me think you hated me?”

 
Dana looked blindly around her bedroom. A chill came over her, whispering along her skin, raising her flesh in goose bumps. “I did what I had to do.”

  “I thought you were stronger than that, Dana. Even then.”

  The accusation in his voice startled her. “Meaning what?”

  “If Harley had followed through on the threat, you could’ve testified. I was safe. Or did you think he would hurt you, too?”

  “I didn’t think. I was scared.”

  “You should’ve trusted me. Believed in me.”

  Dana caught her breath at the intensity in his voice, which seemed to say so much more than the words themselves. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Again she was met with silence, as if he was waiting for more.

  “I don’t know what else to say, Sam.”

  “Then I guess that says it all.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

  Dana fell back on the bed and closed her eyes. What did he want? For her to go back and change history? She would if she could. He was seeing the experience through adult eyes. They were teenagers then, without much life experience. She’d believed in the legal system. She thought if she reported Harley for attempted rape he would be punished. Sam had known better, had tried to convince her of it. He’d asked her not to involve the police, but she had anyway, thinking he was wrong. She’d been so naive. Harley’s rich daddy had taken care of everything. And Harley and his friends had taken care of Sam.

  Her fault. All her fault. She’d lived with the guilt ever since.

  She rolled onto her side, tucked her hands under her cheek and stared at the telephone. He’d been making a point on the phone—that he was trustworthy. That he’d wanted her to believe in him—then and now, she realized. Was she wrong not to confide in him about the letters she’d received? But what if something happened—again—because of her? This time to his hard-earned reputation.

  You should’ve trusted me. Believed in me.

  His words echoed. She sat up and dangled her legs over the side of the bed, her gaze fixed on the carpet. Finally she picked up the phone and dialed. Her hands shook. She put her head back, lifted her chin and swallowed.

  “Sam Remington.”

  “I need your help.”

  A long pause, then, “Dana?”

  “Yes.” She found strength in knowing he was there. “I’ve gotten a couple of notes in the mail. I—”

  “Don’t say anything else. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  He hung up. She swallowed the burn in her throat. Then she changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt and waited for him.

  Dana opened the front door as he walked from his car. He wore jeans and a white shirt, the long sleeves rolled up a few turns. His leather jacket was slung over his shoulder. She wanted to burrow into him.

  “Where’s Hilda?” he asked, low, when he stopped close to her.

  “In her room.”

  “Where can we go so we’re sure not to be overheard?”

  Dana considered it. “There’s a sitting room off of my bedroom. But Hilda wouldn’t—”

  “Take me there.”

  She led the way up the staircase. He seemed to have taken on height and weight yet moved so quietly she couldn’t hear his footsteps, even though he wore boots, and she had to turn twice to make sure he was there.

  She was fascinated by how he’d taken charge instantly and could move soundlessly.

  When she stopped to grab the note from her bed she saw him make a quick survey of her bedroom, then they went into the adjoining sitting room, her private refuge. He sat in a wingback chair. She took a seat on the blue toile sofa and tucked her feet under her. She passed him the note.

  “The first one came on Tuesday. It said—”

  “I know the contents,” he said, examining the paper in the plastic bag.

  It wasn’t at all what she’d expected. “How?”

  He met her gaze. “Your chief of staff came to see me today. Then he called me tonight about the second note.”

  “I specifically told Abe not to contact you.”

  “That’s between the two of you.” He leaned forward. “What’s your take on the situation?”

  Dana was still trying to digest the fact he’d already known about the note when he’d been here before. He hadn’t let on at all. He hadn’t even asked her why she hadn’t told him about it.

  “I don’t know what to make of it,” she said. “In fact, I almost thought the first one was a hoax. My office gets threats on occasion. They never amount to anything.”

  “These came to your home.”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “You took precautions to preserve evidence this time?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  “You have no theories about who’s behind it?”

  “None.”

  “Do you think there’s truth to it? That your late husband had a secret?”

  He’d voiced her fear out loud. “He was a good man, Sam. The best. I know it. I believe it. I don’t believe Randall had anything to hide, but…”

  “But how would you know for sure?”

  She nodded. “Look, I get hate mail like any other politician, and my staff handles that. This is different. This is personal. I won’t allow anyone to tarnish Randall’s legacy. He’s not here to defend himself, so it’s up to me.”

  “Again, I remind you that these letters came to your home, not your office, which puts a different spin on things. Even though there’s no death threat, it’s a threat, nonetheless.”

  “Who can I trust? This is a stab at me more than Randall.”

  “Why don’t you just announce now you’re not running?”

  “Because then the blackmailer wins. And—I’m trusting you with this part—the party leaders asked me not to announce yet.”

  “Asked or told?”

  She waved a hand. “Both, I suppose, but I’m respecting their wishes. We know who’ll run if I don’t. He’s divisive, and the party needs cohesion. The opposition will be particularly strong without an incumbent to run against. We need our guy in place first, with my full support as well as the party leaders’. As long as everyone thinks I’m running, we keep a level of control. And the longer we wait, the shorter the time for others to campaign.”

  “Can’t the process be speeded up?”

  “I don’t know what time frame I’m working within, but the notes seem to indicate I don’t have much time at all. Plus, the party leaders would need to know why I wanted to push things up by two months,” she said, noticing he hadn’t moved since she’d started talking but rested his arms on his thighs and never took his eyes off her.

  “Sam, Randall was forty-eight years old when we married. He’d lived a life already. If he had secrets, they stayed secret. He seemed genuine, but how can I be sure?”

  “Do you want to call Abe and include him in this discussion? He may know something he doesn’t realize he knows.”

  She smiled, grateful she could. “That actually made sense to me. No. He wasn’t happy about being given the task.”

  “All right. Let’s start at the beginning.”

  Sam finally sat back and looked at the room they had shared for an hour. Her bedroom was clearly Mediterranean-style—dark wood, the same antique-gold walls as the foyer, heavy drapes and ornate architectural details. But the sitting room was blue. Light. Feminine. Dana.

  He’d sent her for a snack because he needed a few minutes alone to sort through what she’d told him. He ran down the facts in his head. She’d met then-Congressman Randall Sterling when she was a junior at UC Berkeley and he was a guest lecturer. Believing in his platform and his ideals, she worked on his campaign for Senate. After he won she volunteered and interned in his San Francisco office while she earned her B.A. in political science then became a paid staff member during the six years it took to get her master’s and Ph.D. She married the senator the same month she finished her studies, and he died a year and a half later.

  She said th
ey hadn’t been more than friendly until three months before their marriage, when they suddenly took a different kind of notice of each other.

  It was obvious she’d loved, respected and admired him.

  Sam didn’t think the marriage was a political move on Randall’s part. He was in his second term, having won by a landslide. His marriage to Dana was his first, but Sam couldn’t get a handle on whether it was a passionate relationship as well as a comfortable one. He was going to have to press the point if she expected him to see what potential source of blackmail existed—or if it was an empty threat. She wasn’t going to like it.

  He wandered around Dana’s sitting room, picking up a framed photo here and there—her parents; Lilith’s wedding picture; an invitation to a party thrown by Lilith to celebrate Dana’s Senate victory; Dana with Lilith, Candi and Willow when they were about sixteen, grinning, arms wrapped around each other like teenage girls do. The picture made him smile, too. Beside it was a small photo of Dana with her husband in some tropical paradise, leis around their necks.

  Their quick, private wedding had been cause for speculation. Sam had followed the story more than he cared to admit, but when she didn’t turn out to be pregnant, and Randall’s staff all expressed how much they liked and respected Dana, the talk stopped.

  Sam returned the picture to its place. They were an attractive couple, well matched and physically fit. In the photo they were smiling at each other but she wasn’t leaning into him. He wasn’t touching her. If this was their honeymoon…

  Jealousy slammed into him even as Sam tried to convince himself he had no right to feel it. He’d forfeited his chance by not seeking her out when he left the army and returned to California. He’d made it a point to find out where she was living and what she was doing, but he’d left it at that.

  Now he regretted kissing her earlier, even though he’d believed he would never see her again. Even though he’d wanted to take that memory with him. The intimacy brought an element to their relationship that interfered with the business at hand, especially considering how personal he was about to get with her.

  He turned away from the bookshelf with all its photos and spotted a wide-mouthed ceramic urn on a side table, the cork top sitting upside down on the tabletop. He peered inside. His stomach clenched. The notes. She’d saved the notes. And she’d been looking at them, as he had been.