Beautifully Damaged (Contemporary Romantic Suspense)

by Faye, Amy

  "Linda needs to be left out of it."

  Her face screws up. "I mean, we could run interference on it if they try to bring that up, but why? I'm just nobody."

  "I've had my name raked through the mud more times than I can count. It's more mud than name, these days." Adam looks at Tom Delaney with a hard expression. "I'm not going to have that happening to Miss Owens. Am I clear on that?"

  Tom smiles. It doesn't suit him. He looks like a caricature of himself. He's always frowned, and so he should continue now. But apparently this has put him in a rare good mood.

  "Of course, sir. Just you. Anyone else we should throw under the bus? Just in case?"

  "Do you think it'll be necessary?"

  Linda's nail is back between her teeth. She's rocking her thumb back and forth, as if she hopes that she can counteract the desire to chew her nails by reversing the action, pressing harder against her teeth standing still. Tom, on the other hand, is rearing to go.

  "Necessary? No. It makes it look less targeted, though. They'll bite easier if they don't think it's bait."

  "Without the extra?"

  "They'll bite. How could they not? But it won't have that ring of truth. They'll know right away it came from us, or from someone looking to get you out of the race. Rather than being an organic story."

  "Do what you think you have to, then," Adam answers. His mind races with possibilities that he doesn't want to put words to right now.

  "Are you sure about this, Linda?"

  Her eyebrows crease again. Then she smooths her face over, and it's as if it never happened.

  "Sure I'm sure. I'm not the one in hot water. It fits your image perfectly. It's not going to do anything to you, I don't think. The public perception is already that you're a man of… considerable virility, shall we say. The only thing they're going to get out of this story is that nothing has changed now that you're on the campaign trail."

  "I agree," Tom chimes in. "But then again, this is her specialty, not mine."

  "You're right, it isn't," Adam answers. He can't explain why he's upset. Something he can't put his finger on. And then, all of a sudden, the entire situation clarifies in his mind.

  He's angry because Tom's there. He's there with Linda. Linda, who is his. She just doesn't know it yet. And he's putting her at risk.

  Adam Quinn can take risks. But nobody takes risks with Adam Quinn's woman.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Linda Owens sat there, not talking to Tom. That was how it had been for a few minutes. Tom looked at her, hard, and she looked down at the table, though she was fully aware of what was going on around her.

  It was just easier that way, because it wasn't hard to figure out what he wanted from her. He might be many things—last night had told her that—but he was, at his heart, a man who wanted to see things destroyed.

  He'd turned his gaze on others—that she would be collateral was a pitiable consequence that he wasn't happy with, but he wasn't going to do anything to stop it from happening.

  What he wanted was to be able to throw everything at the story, and that meant throwing her at it. Throwing himself at it meant nothing. Not when they'd know, deep down, that he was the source.

  Throwing the rabbit into the brier patch was the bait. They had to throw Adam. But Linda was the icing on the cake. The exception that proved the rule.

  If they leaked Adam's name, then there had to have been others. Other women. The story isn't "Adam Quinn, homosexual?" but rather "Adam Quinn, dubiously moral stud?"

  Most of the women there weren't politicians' wives. Oh, sure, there was nothing stopping them. It was encouraged, even. But many of them were models, out-of-towners, and celebrities. The ones who weren't were, so to speak, supplied by the house. And there was no spark in either of those stories.

  Linda Owens' appeal was that she was so entirely unlike any of the other options. Going to sex parties wasn't something that she'd been known to do. If they could prove she was there, then they prove the event was real, and newsworthy.

  Linda could see every advantage in outing herself, in the sort of detached way that someone might be able to if they were playing a game about her life. But she couldn't bring herself to tell Tom to go ahead and ignore Quinn's demand that she be left out of the story. Now all that was left to Delaney was to stare at her until she buckled.

  To her surprise, he spoke. "What made you go there in the first place?"

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  Linda would have been very happy if she had woken up to find that the night before had been a dream. She'd have been almost as happy if she had forgotten about it, even if nobody else had.

  "We're going to talk about it," he says. His voice has something to it—the suggestion of a threat that remains veiled and will continue to remain veiled.

  "I don't want to talk about it, and you're not going to force me to."

  "No, I won't. But we're going to talk about it, because you're going to decide to."

  A nervous energy floods through her as if his words have power over her decisions. What's she going to do about the suggestion that she has to do what he says?

  "I don't know why I went," she says. Her eyes shift from the tabletop to the corner of the room. The coffee maker sits near the corner, and she focuses her eyes on it. Someone should make a new pot, but she's not dying for a cup, so it can wait.

  "Don't avoid the question, Linda. You'll feel better."

  "This is a trick to get me to leak my own name."

  "Maybe, sure. Tricks are my bag. I won't deny that much. If it were a trick, I'd tell you it wasn't. Maybe if it wasn't a trick, I'd tell you it was. You can't know, so you'd be better off making your best guess."

  "Do you want a cup of coffee?"

  "You're avoiding my question. Still."

  "I know. Do you want a cup of coffee or don't you?"

  "You can't run away from me that easily, you know. I don't take no for an answer very well."

  "I know that."

  "Yes, I'd like a cup of coffee, since you're so worried about it."

  Linda gets up to make a new pot, pours out the last bit. Her hands moving feels nice, but she'd thought that the tension in the room would go away. That she'd be able to diffuse it by running away.

  It doesn't work. She should have known better, but she'd been so hopeful.

  "Now, in your own time. What did you go to that party for?"

  "You know what I went there for," Linda answers. Her shoulders feel tight to the point of pain.

  "I want to hear it from you. My guesses aren't as good as you think they are."

  "No?"

  "I guess I'm off my game. I had you pegged for frigid."

  Linda blinks. "What?"

  "Professional. Turned-off. You think with your head a lot. No gut to speak of. You're too smart to be in this game and still think that there's anything good about it. So you're not an idealist. You're not married, but you're not looking for anything. Well… I suppose we both know now that's not totally true, don't we?"

  "Frigid?"

  "We all make mistakes, but hey. I had statistics on my side for this one. Look at every woman in the Senate, in the Congress, and realize that they all are. No interest in anything but power. Compared to the hyper-sexed men… well, you can see where the problems begin to arise."

  "I put my job first."

  "An admirable choice. Well, I guess I should have gotten a clue before that," he adds, almost to himself. He turns toward the table. What was that supposed to mean?

  The spell breaks almost immediately when he decides that it's time to abandon the subject. Linda notes that she still hasn't answered his question, not really. Tom won't have missed it, but if he lets it go then she's happy regardless.

  She pours out the now-full pot into a couple of cups. Tom stands up.

  "Thank you. I've got to make a few calls." He takes the cup and leaves, and Linda is left wondering what the hell just happened, and what he just learned. That s
he didn't want him knowing it is a foregone conclusion.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Linda Owens settled into her couch and turned on the TV. It was likely the last day before the bombshell dropped. They'd be vetting the story now. Whoever ran it first—it read like tabloid smut, so they would probably be the ones to do it—would get plenty of play for at least a couple of days.

  The others would be kicking themselves for getting scooped.

  And Linda Owens would be hoping to hell that the story turned into a big nothing burger. It was a risk. A hell of a risk, to be honest, and there was no way that they could play it straight no matter what happened.

  Nobody hacked straight through a problem, not even someone as straight-forward and as untouchable as Adam Quinn. Nobody would be surprised that Adam had been there. It had the stickiness that they wanted. Something that wouldn't just slide right off.

  The problem wasn't that people wouldn't forgive him for it, either. He was a known quantity, thank God, and he was known for this kind of thing, so nobody would freak out. Not really.

  The problem was that it didn't damage his personal brand but it reinforced the idea that many were concerned about that he wasn't electable. That if they put him into the office, the Democrats would never get the seat back because they'd forever be the laughingstock of the world.

  A president who cavorts around with prostitutes and sluts, who spends his time at sex parties when he should be—who knows. At some kind of monastery, Linda supposed. There were few men who worked harder than Adam Quinn, regardless of the number of sex parties he went to.

  A number that can't possibly have been as high as some would suggest. But what if he were going to as many as some thought? That would be— That would be a truly intimidating amount of sex. No way.

  Linda lays her head back. The news coverage is thinning out. They're talking about pop stars now. Which is to say, back to the usual news cycle. A holding pattern until something real juicy comes along that they can devote all their coverage to.

  Well, don't worry, Ellen—Tom Delaney's on the job, and he's not going to leave you without a story to report on for long. If you play a nice puppet, he'll make sure you don't have to ever know what it feels like not to be dancing.

  She let her mind drift. It was a luxury she could rarely allow herself. Everything was in reacting and covering bases. There was a distinct advantage in being so far out ahead of the story that there hadn't been any press about it.

  It allows time to breath. Time to think. Time to plan, and time to get real creative with responses. Linda might have been good at it, if she'd been given the chance before. Now was her chance to figure it out.

  But instead, her mind just reeled back to Tom's gravelly voice. Flat and prodding, not curious at all. As if he knew the answer, but he wanted to make her say it. Why had she been at that party?

  She hadn't been lying to him, though. Avoiding the question, sure. But not lying. Why she'd gone was a question that she'd been asking herself since it all blew up in her face.

  What had gotten into her? What had convinced her that it would be a good idea to go to a place where she fit in so poorly? She wasn't exceptionally adventurous. What sort of 'sex party' was going to let her move slow, exploring the boundaries of lovemaking beyond the usual?

  None that she knew of. Which meant that it was out of character for her. But people don't just do that. Not even her. There are reasons for people's actions, and it stands to reason that there are reasons for her actions, as well.

  What her reasons were… that was a question she didn't know the answer to. She'd wanted to get laid. That was the obvious answer, and it was deficient. She knew—or, she should have known—that it wasn't that simple. She should have known that there would be things that tested her limits when she got there.

  Which had to mean that she wanted to have her limits pushed. When she'd gotten there, faced with that fact, she'd shut down. But there was something in her, some spark, that wanted to see where the limit really was.

  Right?

  Linda's nipples start to harden. Is there a chill in the room? She pulls her sweater tighter around her shoulders and turns to lay down in the couch.

  Was there something wrong with that? Was that strange, to want something… else? Whatever that was. She could have had it, if she wanted it. She didn't need to go out to find strangers to sleep with. She knew plenty of debauched men. They were exactly the kind of people who hired her in the first place.

  But something had drawn her to that place, instead. Something had made her want to go into a situation where she'd have control and she'd have deniability, but she'd be available.

  What had Delaney wanted her to say, anyways? Why had he been so insistent on her answering him? There was an answer he wanted. Linda was sure of that. A specific answer.

  He was good at reading people, but more than that, he was good at smelling blood in the water and going after it. He didn't know she was lying when she said she didn't know because she showed some sort of obvious tell.

  She didn't think she knew, but as her fingers start to trace lines around the fabric of her jeans, teasing closer to the inside of her thighs without ever quite getting there, something in her is willing to admit that there were reasons. She wanted something that she wasn't ready to admit to herself, never mind anyone else.

  But Tom—Tom Delaney knew exactly what it was. He sensed her weakness, sensed her uncertainty, knew it for what it was, and wanted… something. Wanted to be there when she finally broke down and admitted it, maybe?

  Or wanted to show her what she was missing out on?

  Chapter Fifteen

  There were many things that Adam Quinn could have been doing with his evenings. There was one in particular he wanted to be doing, which he was slowly realizing, but there were good reasons that he shouldn't. So he wasn't going to, and for a time, Linda's chastity, however imagined, would be safe.

  That was good. It made him feel better, in a sort of far-away kind of way, but it didn't help the itch that he was feeling. It didn't make the want go away, and the truth was that Adam Quinn was about as good at self-denial as anyone else.

  Not very good, and not able to do it for very long. When you've got the kind of money, and with it the kind of power, that the entire Quinn empire had amassed for him, though… little excesses are bigger than usual, so to speak.

  So it wasn't exactly a common experience for Adam Quinn to have to tell himself no, and it was particularly unusual for him to listen to that voice.

  His hands balled up into fists before he knew what he was doing. There was nothing to be done for it, then. His phone was on the table, where it couldn't do any damage, and it ought to stay there. But the urge to go and grab it was building faster than his self-control could brick off the thought.

  He stood and picked it up. His thumb hovered over the contact. He could drop his thumb, and it would call. There was a chance that he'd be refused. He'd been turned down before; it wouldn't be something new. But he'd been surprised by the lack of a refusal before, too.

  He didn't expect her to refuse, though. Not the way that she'd been looking at him that night. The anonymity, however imagined, had let her show what she wanted, but that person was buried inside her, mask or no.

  His thumb fell onto the screen, and he put the phone to his ear. His blood pumped through his veins harder than it should have, desire tugging at the crotch of his pants.

  "Linda? You up?"

  Her voice had a far-away quality to it. "Yeah, I'm up."

  It took him a moment to register what he heard, and when he realized the distracted, tense quality in her voice as arousal that hadn't quite reached its conclusion, his manhood twitched automatically at the idea.

  "Come to my apartment."

  "Is something wrong?"

  "We need to talk."

  "How worried should I be?"

  "As worried as you want to be," he answers, knowing full well that she'll worry more after
he says it.

  "I'm on my way."

  He sets the phone down. He imagines her pulling herself back together, trying to get herself looking presentable. By the time that she arrives, smelling nothing like sex, she'll have complete deniability.

  His teeth feel sharp. His tongue explores their pointed edges absent-mindedly. The wait is almost exquisite by itself. His phone rings and he picks it up automatically.

  "I'm here. What's up?"

  "Come on up, I'll get the door." He walks across the room as he speaks, pressing the button to open the front as he finishes the sentence. Somewhere far away, a buzz goes out, and he hears the door close behind her faintly.

  "Which one are you?"

  "I'll step into the hall," he says softly, and does so.

  She's dressed professionally, just like he expected, and she looks as put-together as she ever has. Yet, she'd come in quite a hurry, at the same time. It was almost a surprise, but not enough to change his mind about what she'd been up to when he called.

  "Are you alright? It's not too late, is it?"

  He asks, knowing first that it doesn't matter, and second that she would deny it regardless. Further, knowing that it isn't too late.

  "It's no problem. What did you want to talk to me about?"

  His teeth still feel sharp in his mouth, and he wants nothing more than to sink them into her sensitive flesh. "We'll talk inside."

  He steps back through the door and back into his apartment. She follows him inside and he shuts the door, and then the tone of the conversation shifts automatically.

  "Is everything okay?"

  "What were you doing at that party, Linda?"

  Her face goes red and her eyes widen, but they turn away from him. "Is that what this is about?"

  "I don't doubt that Tom wanted to know, too. Is that right?"

  "I don't see—"

  "Did you tell him?"

  "No." She's squirming. It's a look that Adam likes. There's a little part of him that can't quite refuse that little desire to see her nervous.