Rogue Affair

by Tamsen Parker

  Indeed they do.

  Epilogue

  Anna

  I never meant to be a DC widow, but that’s what happens when the person you’re involved with is a fucking political genius.

  And if Oscar has his way, I’ll be joining him in DC in two to six more years.

  I keep telling him I’m not even sure I want to run for Congress, but he’s got his eye on a seat anchored by the Boystown neighborhood. Plus a weather eye for the ever-present threat of scandal hovering over the governor’s office. I’m honestly not sure which one he’d like better for me. Especially since I’m getting the feeling his manipulative heart is set on nudging me toward a much bigger, whiter house.

  In the long run.

  In the meantime, we’re both too busy to complain about how rarely we see each other.

  Much.

  I’m working on relaxing my paranoia about sexting, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to get there. Oscar tells me his generation doesn’t give a shit about stuff like that, so worrying about whether or not someone’s going to hack my internet connection and broadcast my porn isn’t worth it.

  I tell him he can get back to me when his generation votes more than my mother’s. And when women having sex are given anything like the high-five-congrats-bro respect men give each other in honor of their dicks finding a temporary home in some woman’s pussy.

  He just rolls his eyes at me and writes me another speech—about strengthening elementary school consent-and-communication-based sex ed last time, if I remember correctly—and I start to think he really will remake the world for us.

  I’m not waiting for him though. My team and I have gotten so much done this term, but my list of changes I want to effect grows longer every day.

  Knowing I have Oscar at my back, even if that’s metaphorical more nights than not, for now at least, is part of what drives me. I know I do the same for him.

  Stronger together. Always.

  Thank you!

  Thank you for reading Fallacies & Flirtations. I hope you enjoyed it!

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  I’m always excited to hear from readers. Please come and find me on my website at http://amyjocousins.com/, on Twitter, and on Facebook. Or email me at amyjocousins@gmail.com.

  Want More Books by Amy Jo?

  If you’re a fan of steamy LGBTQ romance…

  * * *

  Bend or Break

  Off Campus

  Nothing Like Paris

  The Girl Next Door

  Level Hands

  Real World

  Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  The Belle vs the BDOC

  * * *

  Full Hearts

  HeartShip

  HeartOn (coming soon)

  * * *

  Glass Tidings

  * * *

  If you like your erotica straight up, with a chaser of romance at the end…

  * * *

  Play It Again

  Callie, Unwrapped

  Callie, Unleashed

  Gabe, Undone (coming soon)

  No Reservations (coming soon)

  For fans of classic category romance…

  The Tylers

  At Your Service

  Sleeping Arrangements

  Calling His Bluff

  When the Lights Go Down

  * * *

  If you like your romance in bite-size morsels…

  * * *

  Anthologies:

  How We Began (A Charity Anthology for the Trevor Project)

  All in a Day’s Work (“Dance Hall Days”)

  Rogue Desire

  * * *

  Novellas & Short Stories

  Five Dates

  Full Exposure

  The Rain in Spain

  About the Author

  Amy Jo Cousins writes contemporary romance and erotica, both straight and LGBTQ, about smart people finding their own best kind of smexy. She lives in Chicago with her son, where she tweets too much, sometimes runs really far, and waits for the Cubs to win the World Series again.

  * * *

  She is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan of Handspun Literary Agency.

  Find Amy Jo online:

  amyjocousins.com/

  amyjocousins@gmail.com

  The Fourth Estate

  Emma Barry

  About This Book

  Reporter Drew Orlov wants to write about the corrupt president hurting regular Americans, but readers only care about the bombshells penned by his rival Brynn Allen. When he goes after Brynn’s high-level source, though, he finds himself snagged on more complicated—and personal—feelings. Brynn’s been working her tail off and doesn’t have time for Drew, even if he does look good when he smolders, and they’re soon locked in a tussle for the truth with their hearts on the line.

  1

  A sign hung on the door of Drew Orlov’s high school newspaper office: you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. The letters had been cut out of headlines, so it read more like a ransom note than scripture. You will be forced to know the truth, even if it kills reporters to get it to you. That had been Drew’s take, anyhow, and he’d lived up to it with each step of his career.

  Unfortunately, as his editor Steven leaned back and pontificated about Drew’s latest article, it was clear he didn’t agree. “The problem is no one cares about the Sixth Amendment.”

  Drew ground his teeth together to keep a profanity-laced tirade inside. Steven was right—Drew abso-fucking-lutely knew he was right—but he still hated it.

  “Stop getting worked up,” Steven said with a toss of his hand. “I said it was solid.”

  Solid meant the article would appear on page 4 below the fold. The fourth page of the most important newspaper in the world, but that wasn’t the point.

  “Good, because my source says—”

  “No one cares about process?”

  Steven was half-kidding. Under his page-view focused exterior, he cared about legislative process. Drew certainly did. The people whose lives would be affected by the committee’s decisions did too. But none of it was as loud or scandalous as an incompetent president, his corrupt family, and the special prosecutor investigating them—or whatever other John le Carré bullshit Brynn Allen would be revealing in the pages of the Washington Chronicle today.

  Drew’s paper, the Manhattan Times-Ledger, was no slouch. It led the Chronicle in Pulitzer Prizes won. Its arts coverage was better. It was based in New York, a truly cosmopolitan city compared to DC. But while MTL might be more of an institution, the Chronicle had been breaking news a couple of times a week all year. Big-ass stories no one else had even heard whispers about, and Brynn Allen’s name was on all of them.

  Drew had sources and contacts too. He pounded the pavement and followed the leads and made the calls. He was doing competent work, but from Steven’s perspective, it didn’t matter. Drew’s favorite subject was how this administration hurt average Americans, but those stories weren’t explosive enough for Steven’s taste.

  “No, he said the Legal Aid cuts are likely to stay in the bill,” Drew said.

  “Cuts” was a polite way to indicate the federal government was going to stop providing money for public defenders. It was only your right to an attorney, and how likely were you to be arrested these days? Nice, upper-middle class white people—MTL’s main audience—didn’t get arrested, so if you were arrested, didn’t you probably kind of deserve it? Wasn’t the public defender system filled with waste, anyhow?

  Cheap-ass, faux-liberal motherfuckers.

  But Steven wasn’t listening to Drew; he was taking in the newsroom. The DC Bureau of MTL filled one floor of an office building on K Street. Other than a few big editors with private
offices and a pair of conference rooms along the back wall, there weren’t any doors. It was all openness, light, and half-drunk cups of coffee. The only decoration was noise, from people shouting into their phones, to the rings and buzzes from various electronic devices, to low droning from a row of televisions in the corner tuned to C-SPAN and the cable news channels.

  It was messy and imperfect, but Drew’s pulse still raced every time he walked in. After high school, he’d cobbled together scholarships and part-time jobs to make it through the University of Minnesota, but he’d had no time or money for graduate school. He’d covered city politics in Minneapolis and then the statehouse in St. Paul. Most people had no idea about what went on there, even though those were the levels of government that most affected them and where being loud could make the most difference. How many calls did a mayor’s office get a day compared to someone’s in the House?

  His big break had come when an MTL reporter had fallen on black ice in Lansing, and Drew had been offered a gig writing about the swing-district elections in the upper Midwest. Even if it wasn’t precisely his bag, he’d put tens of thousands of miles on his car, filed stories via the Wi-Fi in Best Western executive lounges, and frozen his ass off transcribing outdoor press conferences in Bismarck in January.

  Drew hadn’t gone through all of that for nothing. He was going to write about the things that mattered and steal the thunder from dumber, flashier stories. Somehow.

  “Don’t worry,” Steven said. “You’ll write about the Legal Aid cuts, and your mom will share it on Facebook, Andrei.”

  “I so regret you ever saw my employment paperwork.” Given current events, cracks about Drew’s full name were hourly. “What you’re saying is I need something snazzier than appropriations markups?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with markups, but no one clicks on them, no one shares them.”

  Which wasn’t the point of the news—not that this was the time for an existential debate. Drew did have something made to order. “I’ve also heard whispers about cuts to the special prosecutor’s budget.”

  “I love Russia.” Steven offered a smarmy smile. “But what you really need to do is find the Chronicle’s source.” This wasn’t the first time he’d made this suggestion. Because that would be easy.

  “I’ll get right on that, boss.”

  But the thought festered for the next hour. Drew wasn’t proud of it, but he’d experienced shivers of envy—okay, tremors of volcanic envy—as Brynn Allen had become a household name. She was nerd famous. The Chronicle had brought down a president forty-five years ago, and everyone thought Allen was trying for another one.

  Scandals weren’t tangible; there were no policy ramifications to them. They didn’t matter. But Drew had to admit Allen had achieved something. What kind of reporter would he be if he wasn’t curious?

  Feeling an idiot, Drew typed Who the fuck is Brynn Allen’s source? into Google and hit enter. He sadly didn’t find a name, not that he’d been expecting it, but he did find pictures of the woman in question. There she was on Evening News Hour wearing huge, hipster-style, black-framed glasses; on Washington Morning, her straw-colored hair pulled back from her face in a wild bun; and on the homepage of the Chronicle in a gratifyingly unflattering headshot. With her narrow chin, pale mouth, and curled-in posture, she looked about sixteen. Or like a bug. Yeah, he was going to go with bug.

  But when he skimmed her resume, his eyelids started to twitch. Brown for undergrad, Columbia for j-school, and a series of gigs at political blogs before landing at the Chronicle, all of which made sense when he saw the next search result: she and her mother at a Women in the Media fundraiser. Her mom being Maeve Allen, one of the first women in the country to land a nationally syndicated column.

  “Son of a bitch.” Daughter of a legend, actually.

  The big secret was that Allen was every WASP who’d ever waltzed past him for a job? She was every well-connected intern calling in her family’s favors? That was how she got her stuff?

  Of course. Watch American meritocracy at work.

  The next results were her Twitter, where she talked mostly breaking news. So he jumped to her Instagram, because reporters in 2017 couldn’t just say what was going on in the world: they had to sell it and themselves. What a crock.

  Here he started to get a sense of Brynn Allen the woman. Based on her feed, she liked iced coffee, fancy pastries, and pedicures…and her toes were adorable.

  Wait, no. Drew had never thought a woman’s toes were adorable in his life. Everyone’s toes were just weird. Toes were why shoes had been invented.

  But Brynn Allen’s toes, with the nails painted bright pink, were adorable. They didn’t resemble a matched set. The baby toes were pudgy, while the second toes were longer than the big ones. Her feet themselves were knobby, as if the ratio of bone to skin was off. Nothing about her toes or feet was pretty, but they were imperfect, endearing—vulnerable.

  He wiped his eyes. This year was rotting his brain.

  Drew skimmed Steven’s notes, but he couldn’t focus on his edits. Not now that he’d let his imagination wander down this path. He opened a file he kept of Allen’s stories: a highly-placed source in the administration… an aide with knowledge of this meeting… a subcabinet official… a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. The biggest scoops, those related to the investigation into the president, seemed to come from a single person.

  He reached for a Bic he’d chewed up and tapped the pen against his lips. If Allen had one source, one big one, maybe Steven was right. Drew could find it. He could flip it. It could be his big source, his explosive stories. Once he had more power, more visibility, he could write whatever the hell he wanted.

  Drew reopened Brynn Allen’s Instagram. She liked to photograph her cold brews, and he recognized the table top in that shot, the blackboard behind the coffee machine in that one, and the floor under her (adorable) feet in this one.

  Her favorite coffee place was three blocks away.

  He quickly addressed and sent the edits on the committee markup article back to Steven. Then he pulled his phone off its charger and headed out. It wouldn’t hurt to get a look at the competition.

  Brynn Allen’s brain could no longer hold a thought. No, she had to deal with fifty-three at once. She’d read once about string theory, the idea the entire universe was made out of vibrating strings. She hadn’t believed it until this president had reduced her to an oscillating rubber band.

  “Right,” she said to Grace Kim, her editor who was cajoling her over the phone. “I don’t think the story is going to be ready today.”

  “Are you sure?” Grace was ever breathless, ever demanding. “Because—”

  “No, we don’t have it yet. We have a quote, but no confirmation, and I don’t know what it means.”

  “But you’ve got calls out?” Grace asked.

  “Twenty-five of them.” More than that, probably. But what Grace was really asking was whether Brynn had a call out to her, to Brynn’s main source, the one Grace and everyone else in DC wanted to know the identity of.

  Brynn didn’t message or call Lee; she waited to be summoned. But she wasn’t going to tell Grace that, not over the phone, not in public, and probably not ever.

  “Okay,” Grace acquiesced.

  Hell yes it was okay.

  Brynn hung up and sent a text message—Sorry, distracted—to her best friend, Corey, with whom she was supposedly planning a baby shower gift for another friend. Then she took a gulp of her coffee. She was drinking enough of it to support a measurable slice of Brazil’s GDP.

  All her days now started before six, when she’d roll over and check the encrypted app she used to message with sources, then she’d skim the foreign headlines and take a speedy shower. She’d munch on a piece of toast while walking to the Metro, and when she hit the mostly empty newsroom, she’d start her daily check-ins.

  She might call the scheduler to the Senate Majority Leader who’d
once shared a house with a close friend of Brynn’s. Or a guy from the White House Legislative Affair’s Office she’d met at a New Year’s Eve party. She had fifty or sixty active contacts now, all over the District and at every level.

  So much of being a reporter was saying tell me, and then shutting your mouth. If she hadn’t known it prior to this year, she did now: listening was just about the hardest thing in the world. Everything, everyone, was clamoring for her attention, and she had to pay it out like shiny quarters at an arcade. Because if she wasn’t focused, she might not hear what was important. The sources themselves rarely knew what they had until Brynn put the pieces together.

  The more she wrote, the more information fell into her lap and the more she had to listen. She was the District’s favorite confessor. She couldn’t grant absolution—though an increasing number of people needed it—but she could trade more bits of herself for the truth. Since January, she hadn’t see her friends or her family much, she’d worked fifteen-hour days seven days a week, and she’d become a stress-addled mess.

  As if to prove her point, she tossed her cup back to slam the rest of her coffee, and several tablespoons dribbled down her blouse.

  “Goddamn it.” Spilling on herself wasn’t, like, an unusual situation, so she’d grabbed a hank of napkins with which she began blotting herself.

  That was when she saw him.

  Brynn hadn’t been on a date since before the inauguration, and she hadn’t had sex in far longer. She’d lanced that part of her life to focus on work…but this guy made her think second thoughts.