“In terms of scandals we’re pretty tame these days.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Carter replied, turning to face Zoe.

The moonlight slashed through the courtyard and her eyes glimmered in the half light. She licked her lips and the moment melted into steam and heat.

“I didn’t tell you how beautiful you look,” he whispered.

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.” Her hands smoothed over her belly.

God, the need to touch her… He’d never in his life felt this way. Compelled.

And before he knew it, before he could stop it, he was leaning down to kiss her. Inches from her mouth, he stopped. “Can I please kiss you?”

Her smile illuminated the darkness. “Yes,” she sighed.

He’d never kissed a woman while smiling and it was a hot sweetness. Honey on his lips, fire on his tongue.

“Give us a kiss, Zoe!” yelled the paparazzi. Then the night exploded in flashbulbs. The whirr and click of cameras.

Dear Reader,

I can’t believe The Scandal and Carter O’Neill is the last of The Notorious O’Neills miniseries. The writing and publication of these three books has stretched over such a singular part of my life. When I came up with the idea I was pregnant with my daughter. While I wrote the first book she was an infant napping next to me on the bed and when this book comes out she’ll be two and my son will be in kindergarten! What?! Where has the time gone?

This series, which was already so much fun and special to write, has also been very personal. Thank you for picking up this book and for those of you who have written me—it means the world.

I hope you like Carter and Zoe’s story. I had such a good time finding exactly the right kind of woman to torture Carter…I mean, make him fall in love. She needed to be zany, courageous, driven and then, come to find out, she had to be pregnant, too!

I have never been one of those writers who believed the characters dictated the stories. They were my creations and I was the boss. But Carter and Zoe would not do what I wanted (remarkably similar to my children). So, once I simply followed my characters’ lead, some really interesting things began to happen, and Carter and Zoe have been two of my favorite characters to date. To say nothing of Vanessa…

I hope you enjoy the last of The Notorious O’Neills. Please drop me a line at Molly@molly-okeefe.com. I love to hear from readers!

Happy reading!

Molly O’Keefe

The Scandal and Carter O’Neill
Molly O’Keefe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Despite how it may appear in her books, Molly O’Keefe has a wonderful mother. She has no experience with bad mothers and cannot explain why many of the mothers in her books are so awful. Molly never intended for her own mother to get those dirty looks at the grocery store. Molly lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two children.

For Sarah, Cam, Robert and Katie-Bear.

Thank you for the Friday night dinners, the Sunday morning skating lessons, the Springsteen dance parties and for teaching my son the “pull my finger” joke.

We couldn’t ask for better friends.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

THERE WERE TWO KINDS of people in Carter O’Neill’s world. Logical people who saw reason and agreed with him about the Jimmie Simpson Community Center. Then there were the others. The others, who wanted his blood. Who wanted to string him up by his neck and shove bamboo under his fingernails, just to hear him scream.

Right now, he was surrounded by the others.

Looking out at the mob of seniors and single moms, all he saw was bloodlust in their eyes. Even the toddlers were sharpening their incisors on their teething rings.

But no one looked more furious than Tootie Vogler, who showed up at every single informational meeting, with her Sunday hat and her white gloves and so much anger in her eighty-year-old body she nearly levitated.

“Mrs. Vogler,” Carter said with as much calm as he could muster, which couldn’t have been much because she bristled, her white curls practically going straight. “Mrs. Vogler, hear me out. As I’ve explained, the activities and services that are currently offered here will be held in the new building.”

“But,” she said, standing in the front row of the small gathering being held in the decaying belly of the Jimmie Simpson Community Center, “what happens while you’re building that new building?”

It took every muscle in his body to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

“Yeah,” one of the mothers said, jiggling a baby in her arms while her toddler ran amuck in the corner, grabbing the cookies they’d laid out. Seriously, she needed to be watching that kid instead of asking the same damn questions he’d heard—and answered—a thousand times already. “How long is it going to take?”

“Once we tear down the existing building it will take a year—”

“A year!” Another one of the mothers cried as if he’d just said he wanted to eat her kid for lunch.

“Well,” Mrs. Vogler said, “that’s what you say now, but what about what happened over at the Glenview Community Center?”

There were rumbles of agreement, and frankly, the others weren’t wrong. The Glenview sat, half-built, a total waste of time and money. There was simply no way the city could finish that project with the limited tax money they had while the existing community centers were in such terrible shape. Never mind the fact that Jimmie Simpson was in low-income Beauregard Town where the programs offered by the center were at capacity and Glenview was over in up-and-coming Spanish Town, where there wasn’t nearly the demand for day care and after-school programs.

He’d tried to explain this, but the message was never received and frankly, Carter was feeling like a broken record. A broken record speaking Swahili.

The Glenview Community Center was this administration’s albatross. And, since Carter wanted to be voted in when the current mayor’s term was up next year, it was his giant hole-in-the-ground cross to bear. “As I’ve explained numerous times,” he said, “that project was spearheaded by a previous administration. And while it’s not currently a priority, we are looking into ways to complete the job.”

What he couldn’t say, though everyone knew it to some degree, was that the previous administration had been so dirty, so backhanded and money hungry, that he still spent half his days trying to make right the terrible wrongs that the former mayor and his staff had perpetrated on this city. But Carter couldn’t say that. Nope, diplomacy was his task.

“Well, why doesn’t your administration go fix that mess and leave this community center be?” Mrs. Vogler said, rallying the troops behind her.

“Mrs. Vogler—may I call you Tootie?”

“No.”

His composure started to snap and fray.

“Fine. Mrs. Vogler, we can’t leave this community center alone because this community center is falling down,” he cried, pointing to the chipped paint and flickering lightbulbs.

“So,” Tootie said. “Fix what’s wrong. We’re not arguing that nothing needs to be done around here, but why are you tearing the whole thing down?”

“Everything needs to be redone here. Plumbing, electrical, a new roof, a new pool. Part of the foundation was damaged during the storms six years ago and I’m telling you the truth—it will cost more to fix Jimmie Simpson, in the long run, than it will cost to rebuild it. I know your lives will be disrupted—”

“I count on the day care here, Mr. O’Neill,” one of the mothers said, steely-eyed and angry. He’d blown it again. This wasn’t even part of his official job as mayor pro tempore, or president of City Council. He’d taken it on at the mayor’s behest, since the totally deserted and decimated Office of Neighborhoods and the overworked Parks and Rec department couldn’t do it. But now he was regretting it; he’d had more trouble with the public than any one man could handle.

“Look,” he said, inwardly sighing and trying to start fresh. Again. “I’ve started this off on the wrong foot.”

“I’d say,” Mrs. Vogler muttered, and he gritted his teeth.

“The parks and recreation department,” who should be handling this mess, he thought but didn’t say, “are working to move your programs to other centers in the city.”

“I don’t have a car, Mr. O’Neill,” a woman said. “It just won’t work!”

“For you,” he said and then winced as everyone sucked in a scandalized breath. Backtrack, Carter. Backtrack. “This is going to be better for this neighborhood in the long run—”

“And what would you know about Beauregard?” another woman asked, who he couldn’t see. She was short and in the back, but he caught a glimpse of black hair and pointy features. She looked like an elf.

Great. He even had elves after him.

Honestly, he wanted to go back to his office and get to work on the budget. Or poke himself in the eye with a pencil. Anything would be better than this.

“Are there any more questions?” he asked, admitting defeat. “About things that haven’t already been covered?”

“Yeah.” A young man, partially hidden behind Mrs. Vogler, stood and revealed himself. Blood instantly boiled behind Carter’s eyes.

All he needed today was this.

“No press,” he told Jim Blackwell, who, for a month, had been chasing him from function to function like a hound after a fox. And there wasn’t much farther Carter could run.

“I’m just a concerned citizen, Deputy Mayor,” Jim said. Smarmy bastard. Carter’s title wasn’t Deputy Mayor; there wasn’t even a deputy mayor position in this city. But when Carter took over the neighborhood issue task force, the Gazette had run a political cartoon of him on the front page with a ten-gallon hat, shotgun and a deputy star. In the background, the mayor, as sheriff, snored at his desk.

The deputy part of the joke had stuck.

“Are you aware your father’s arraignment has been postponed?” Jim asked.

The question drew whispers and gasps from the women in the crowd.

“I do not discuss my family with the press,” he finally said, trying to keep what was left of his dignity in front of the suddenly wide-eyed crowd. He’d worked long and hard to put the Notorious O’Neills behind him, but his father’s arrest last month had stirred up all the old rumors.

“I have a question.” It was the elf again, waving her arm in the back row, but Jim talked right over her.

“Last month, your father was arrested in possession of The Pacific Diamond, which was initially part of the Ancient Treasures exhibit stolen from the Bellagio seven years ago. The Pacific Diamond, Ruby and Emerald were all taken.” Jim flipped his notes, putting on a heck of a show for the spellbound public. “One man was arrested at that time, a…Joel Woods, who had the emerald in his pocket. He served seven years, claiming all along that he’d worked alone.”

“What is your point, Mr. Blackwell?” Carter asked, biting every word.

“Well—” Jim smiled, looking around at the crowd he held in the palm of his hand “—this is interesting, though slightly off topic, but Joel Woods’s son is now dating your sister? Is that right?”

Carter didn’t say anything.

“Right, sorry, off topic. Back to your father. According to the D.A., they’re postponing the arraignment in order to reexamine your father’s involvement with the original theft. Both your parents were questioned during the initial investigation.”

“Excuse me?” elf girl was saying, but Carter held up a hand, putting her off. Rude, he knew, but he had a fire to put out. A city-politics mosquito to slap down.

“Whatever my father has or has not done, I’m sure will be handled by the appropriate authorities. I have no contact with him.”

“What about your mother?”

“My mother?” he asked, startled by the question.

Don’t tell me she’s gone and gotten arrested, too.

“I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Would you say…ten?” Jim asked, consulting his notebook, and suddenly the room spun. Carter was dizzy. Sick.

There is no way he could know, he told himself. No way.

“Am I right?” Jim asked. “You would have seen her when you testified on her behalf in court ten years ago.” Jim held out his tape recorder, his bland face crowned with conceit.

Jim had made a career of shining a light into the dark corners of the previous administration, but for the last two-and-a-half years, Jim Blackwell had been stymied in his efforts to pull up any dirt on the current administration.

But Carter’s father’s arrest was changing all that.

“You’ve already done this story, Mr. Blackwell,” Carter said. “When my father was arrested, you took great care in giving the residents of Baton Rouge a good look at my bloodline. And I say now what I said then—I am not my family. I have very little contact with my family. I do not discuss them. I think you’re repeating yourself,” he said.

“I’m just trying to get my time line straight. You testified on your mother’s behalf in a breaking and entering case ten years ago. You seem a bit fuzzy on the specifics, which makes me wonder what else you’re fuzzy on. There is, after all, a thirty-carat ruby still on the loose.”

“We’re done here,” he said stacking his cards, getting ready to leave. Amanda, his assistant and soon-to-be campaign manager, swung up on his left.

“Answer the damn questions,” she breathed in his ear. “Or it looks like you have something to hide.”

And then she swung away.

Nausea rolled through him. He did have something to hide. He had a whole family tree of criminals and rogues that needed burying. But Carter gritted his teeth, and stayed. “Yes, it has been ten years since I’ve seen my mother. We are not in contact. And I have no idea where the ruby is.”

“You were her alibi in the breaking and entering case,” Jim said. “The charges against her were dismissed on the basis of your testimony,” Jim said.

“What is your question?” he asked, knowing in his stomach what the question was going to be.

“No question,” Jim said, and Carter nearly sighed in relief. “Just getting my facts straight.”

So you can come at me later. Carter had no illusions that Jim Blackwell was just here to get his facts straight. Jim Blackwell was throwing down a gauntlet, right here in front of him, Mrs. Vogler, and the kid with a mouthful of chocolate-chip cookies in the back.

His nausea vanished and he was suddenly clearheaded, sharp-eyed. Jim Blackwell was starting a fight, and Carter loved a fight.

“I feel it’s necessary to remind you of my law degree from Old Miss,” Carter said. “I understand the legalities of libel better than the previous administration, and I would say after your last article about my family, you are skating on thin ice.”

“Is that a threat, Mr. O’Neill?”

“Just helping you get your facts straight, Mr. Blackwell.” He glanced over at Amanda, whose smile was sharp, approving. Apparently he’d handled that right. Score one for the Notorious O’Neills.

“We’re done here,” Carter said and stepped away from the podium toward Amanda, who had pulled out her BlackBerry and was, no doubt, already on damage control.

“Your father is giving me heartburn,” she muttered, shooting him one poisonous look. “And now I’ve got to look out for your mother?”

“No one has any idea where my mother is,” he said. “She’s a nonissue.”

“Excuse me!” a woman cried, and he knew, just knew it was elf girl, and he just wasn’t up for more questions about how these women would live their lives without this community center.

It was bad politics, he knew that, but he pretended not to hear her.

“Wait a second!” she yelled, her voice sharper. Carter reluctantly turned.

The elf had gotten on a chair. Great.

She was lovely, actually. Her long, shapeless coat had some kind of wild embroidery on it, and her short, ink-black hair sparkled in the light coming through the dirty windows.

A pixie.

She slowly pushed back her long coat to reveal the swell of a very pregnant belly.

Maybe it was the way this day had been going; maybe it was the bloodthirsty toddlers, but some warning system in Carter’s head went: uh-oh.

“Where have you been for the last five months?” the elf asked, her eyes snapping. Her hands cupped her belly, and Mrs. Vogler sat down like a stone.

“Oh,” she sighed. “You’re a bad, bad man.”

The whispers started immediately, and the only thought buzzing through Carter’s suddenly decimated brain was, thank God there were no cameras.

Jim Blackwell lifted his cell phone and snapped a shot of the pregnant elf on the chair.

“Oh, crap,” Amanda said.

“I’ve never seen this woman in my life,” he said to Amanda and to the crowd.

Elf girl shook her head and got off the chair. “I knew you’d say that,” she whispered, convincingly heartbroken.

Thank God, the little liar started to walk away.

“You need to go after her,” Amanda said, furiously whispering in his ear.

“Are you nuts?”

Amanda pointed to Jim Blackwell, who was writing everything down. “Get to the bottom of it, before he does,” she said. “We can’t let that guy get the drop on us any more than he has.”

Amanda was right. He pushed his notes into her hand, and she immediately stepped forward and began spinning the situation, but it was like waving a tissue in front of a bull. Carter felt every eye, especially Jim Blackwell’s, on his back as he approached the girl.

He caught up with her at the front door and put one hand under her elbow. Carefully, so it didn’t look as if he was manhandling her, he spun her around and led her back around toward the pool, and the second exit onto an alley, where things would be less busy.

“I’m sorry,” she said right away, her voice breathy. “Really, really sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“About what?” he snapped. “Ruining my career?”

“Getting your attention.”

“Really? Nothing but accusing a total stranger of leaving you knocked up and alone?”

“You just kept ignoring me. Which, may I say, was pretty rude.”

“Don’t talk,” he said. “Don’t say one more word.”

“Okay,” she said quickly. “Right. I’ll shut up.” The silence lasted for all of ten seconds, in which Carter recognized the delicious smell coming off the woman. Ginger cookies. Weird. “Hey, sorry, I know I’m supposed to keep quiet, but could you just ease up on the grip?” she muttered. “And slow down—you’re like ten feet taller than me.”

It was true. She barely came up to his shoulder and Carter realized he was practically dragging the woman. He didn’t even want to imagine what kind of headline that would create, so he slowed down.

He even managed to wave at Mrs. Vogler as if this were all normal, all part of the plan, but she wasn’t buying it—she watched, slack-jawed.

He punched open the door to the pool and led her into the giant cavern. As soon as the door shut he dropped her arm, still walking toward the side door onto the alley. Trying to control his suddenly rampaging anger.

“This place really is in bad shape,” she said, staring into the empty tiled hole that used to be a pool. “You sure it’s going to cost less to rebuild? That seems counterintuitive.”

He turned back and looked at her, the pregnant pixie who might have just created the worst scandal to hit this administration, and she was gazing into the deep end.

She must have caught a whiff of his fury because she straightened and managed to look like a very contrite pregnant pixie. Her hands fiddled with the edges of her coat. “I’m sorry,” she said, waving her hand behind her. “About all that.”

“Why the hell did you lie?” he asked. “Do you even know what you’ve done?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Try to explain it,” he breathed, barely keeping it together.

“Let’s go outside,” she said, stepping by him. She gave him a wide, nervous berth, but he still smelled ginger and sugar. Sweet and spicy.

He hit the doors under the unlit and cracked exit sign and led her into the bright warmth of midday. He yanked at his tie.

“Is this a medical situation?” he asked. “Are you off your medication, or escaped from the psych ward?”

The woman was silent, scanning the alley as if searching for someone.

“Do I need to call the cops?” he asked, and that got her attention.

“No,” she said quickly. “No cops. I was told—” She blinked big green eyes, and then shut up.

“Told what? By who?” he asked, his voice hard.

“Whom,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry?”

“By…ah…whom? It’s an object-subject…” She blinked again, the pretty green eyes like pine trees in sunlight. “I’ll shut up.”

He stepped up to her and looked down at her glossy black hair. “Unless you give me one reasonable answer right now, there will be cops and you will be in more trouble than you can possibly handle.”

“A woman gave me a thousand dollars to get you out here alone,” she blurted.

Carter blinked, speechless.

“But I don’t know where she is.” Pixie looked around again.

“What woman?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know her name,” she said. “She was blond. Pretty.”

Carter stepped back. No, he thought. This can’t be happening.

Amanda came barreling out the door they’d just come through.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked.

“Take her,” Carter said, gesturing toward the pregnant woman. He didn’t even know her name, which was crazy considering the story she’d just started. “Put her in my car and don’t let her leave.”

“You can’t do that,” she said, her little face all screwed up with outrage.

He leaned in, close enough to see the freckles across her nose, the thickness of her black eyelashes. “You can wait for me in my car or you can wait for the cops in my car, it’s your call.”

She took her full bottom lip between her teeth, biting until the pink went white. “Fine,” she said, and whirled, her pretty coat sweeping out behind her.

“Who is she?” Amanda asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. “But don’t let her leave.”

Amanda followed the woman through the gray doors, and Carter was left alone in the alleyway.

He stared up at the clouds stretched thin across the slice of blue sky between the buildings. All he ever wanted was to do the right thing. Something good. And somehow it always got screwed up.

“Hello, Carter,” a voice behind him said. A voice so familiar, despite its ten-year absence from his life, it made something small and forgotten inside him twist in fear and love. He didn’t even have to turn to see her, the perfect blond hair, the thin body no doubt impeccably dressed, the cold, ice pick eyes.

Of course, he thought, she would show up now.

“Hello, Mother,” he said.

CHAPTER TWO

ZOE MADISON HAD MADE a lot of mistakes in her life. Big ones, small ones, forest-fire-size ones that had burned her life to the ground.

If there were an authority on mistakes, she was it.

And she knew—from the backseat of Carter O’Neill’s expensive car, with its leather seats and fake wood—she knew that what she’d just done, the lie and the drama of it all, was not a mistake.

First of all, Carter O’Neill was going to be fine. A guy like that was born fine. He was simply too good-looking, too cool and calm, to not be fine. He was like James Bond or something. Though, she thought with a smile, James Bond had gotten batted around like a cat toy by that wily Tootie Vogler.

He was actually far more handsome when he was frazzled, which was saying something, because it wasn’t like the guy was ever hard to look at.

That little scene she’d caused in there would simply blow over.

And if she felt any doubt, any little wormhole of guilt, it was because of the reporter-guy asking the questions. She hadn’t counted on a reporter, and that might take some repair work. Maybe she’d write a letter to the editor or something, tell the whole world she was off her meds. Or stalking the handsome deputy mayor with the lips so perfect they should be bronzed.

More likely, though, she’d just be explained away in some kind of press release issued by the mayor’s office.

Yeah, she nodded, liking that one the best. They’d take care of it.

The second reason that what she’d done was not a mistake was that the guy was planning on tearing down the heart of this community as if it was nothing; as if a year without day care and senior bingo nights or after-school dance programs was all just an afterthought. A footnote on some memo.

Beauregard had clawed its way out of the gutters and the programs offered at Jimmie Simpson had been part of that. She was part of that. And pretty damn proud.

And third, and most important, she had a thousand dollars in her pocket. Like a roll of hope, heavy and dense. She tucked her hand in her pocket, just to feel the thickness, the tension in the rubber band.

A thousand dollars.

She had no insurance, and her savings were going to be eaten up by the hospital birth, so a thousand dollars could buy a lot of diapers. A little bit of security.

And for that—she put a hand under her belly, where she could feel her little guppy doing a soft-shoe number—she would cause any number of scenes.

For the baby, she’d do anything.

The woman, Amanda, stood outside Zoe’s door, with a cell phone attached to her ear, a distracted guard.

Zoe rubbed her hands over the smooth leather and the slick wood panel on the door. Was it real, that wood? Who knew, but fake or real wood in a car was weird. Seriously, did the world need such a thing?

Yeah, she thought, sliding over to the other side of the car, her mind made up. She didn’t need to feel bad. Carter would be fine. Money made a lot of things go away, and Carter had money. He had money and shine and polish. Hell, he had a staff.

Watching Amanda’s back, she silently opened the door and slowly crept out of the car. Amanda didn’t even twitch.

Zoe ran off into the side streets.

“I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN Dad getting arrested would make you surface. What are you doing, Mom?” Carter asked, dimly wondering why he still called her Mom. After all she’d done, the years of screwing with their lives, he still couldn’t just call her Vanessa. It was a little sick.

“Let me see you, Carter,” his mother said, her voice gruff with the appropriate amount of manufactured emotion.

He turned, thinking he was prepared, but he wasn’t. Could never be. Her presence was a punch in the gut and a slap in the face. A pain and an offense all at the same time. She was lovely, of course. Looking at her, shrouded in cool elegance, you’d never guess she was one step up from being a grifter. A common thief.

Despite her presence in a dirty Baton Rouge alleyway, she looked like Princess Grace.

She looked, actually exactly like Carter’s sister, Savannah.

Her smile, a sharp little slash in her face, was like opening a door to a burning room, and he was suddenly filled with anger and fury. Smoke and fire.

“I can’t come see—”

“No,” he said quickly. “You can’t. That was our deal. I testified and you were supposed to stay away from me. From all of us.” He stepped toward her, gratified when she flinched, one foot sliding backward.

That’s right, he thought, something primal roaring to life, you’d better be scared of me.

But then she stopped herself, stiffening her thin shoulders as if facing a firing squad. “You’re my son,” she said.

He paused and barked out a bitter laugh.

“I understand you’re mad, Carter, but there are things we need to talk about.”

“Sure there are,” he said. “Like why you broke into Savannah’s house a few months ago. Twice. That broke our deal, too, Mom.” He sneered the last word, because one shouldn’t have dirty deals with their mothers, bargains made to keep the distance between them permanent. “You’re supposed to stay away from all of us. I should send you to jail.”

She blinked the beautiful blue eyes that he and both his siblings had inherited. In the past few years it had gotten so bad he could barely look at Tyler and Savannah and not see his mother. Not see all the ways he’d failed his siblings. The ways he’d let them down.

“We need to talk about the ruby,” she said.

“You want to talk about where you hid it, after you stole those gems seven years ago?”

“I didn’t steal the gems,” she said.

“Dad may go to jail, but I know somehow, you’re at the bottom of this. So take your story somewhere else. I’m not buying.”

He had a pregnant liar to deal with. A public image that was going to take the beating of a lifetime if Jim Blackwell had his way.

“It’s not a story, Carter. I just…is it so wrong to want to see you? To want someone in this family to know the truth?”

It had been twenty years since Vanessa had dropped him, along with his brother, Tyler and sister, Savannah, off with their grandmother, Margot. Ten years since she’d resurfaced to bribe him into lying for her on the stand. And now, suddenly, she thought she deserved a chance to tell her side of the story?

“This family wouldn’t know the truth if we sat on it,” he snapped. He turned to leave, walking up the slight hill toward the end of the alley.

“I didn’t steal the gems and I didn’t plant them in the house. You’re right. I was looking for them months ago, but I didn’t find them. But now that the diamond has surfaced, everyone is going to come looking for that ruby and it could get ugly. For all of us. If they’re not at The Manor, there’s a chance Margot has them on her.”

“Margot?”

“She could be in danger, Carter.”

“I can’t believe this,” Carter sighed. “You’re trying to convince me you care? About us? Or someone else getting their hands on the ruby.”

“Do you think I would be here if I wasn’t worried? If I wasn’t serious?”

“Yes.”

She sighed, exasperated. “I paid that girl a thousand dollars, Carter.”

Right. Money. Not something Mom parted ways with easily.

Vanessa opened her mouth, but from the end of the alley, he heard Jim Blackwell’s voice talking to Amanda.

“I don’t know where he is,” Amanda was saying, very loud.

“You know,” Jim said, “for a PR gal, you’re a shit liar.”

“Monday night,” he said to Vanessa, resigning himself to the fact that he needed to manage his family, because out of his control, they could ruin everything. “At 8 p.m., outside of my office. Anyone asks who you are, you lie.”

She nodded and stepped into the shadows, the faint click of her heels against the asphalt fading away as Jim Blackwell appeared at the top of the alley.

“I never pegged you as the deadbeat daddy type,” Jim said, his face awash with victory. “Not very nice of you.”

Carter stalked up the alley, wishing, truly wishing that politics weren’t so important to him so that he could just haul off and punch Jim in his fat mouth. But his job, the work he did, the work he wanted to do, it all mattered.

“No comment,” was all he said as he stomped by. “And I’ll have your job if even one word of this is blown out of proportion.”

“Come on, now, Carter. I’m a newsman, I only want to tell the truth. I just don’t understand why you have such a problem telling it.”

Carter ignored him and continued to his car, where a very stressed Amanda stood.

“What?” he barked, trying to look past her for a glimpse of the lying pregnant elf. The backseat was empty. “Amanda?”

“She’s gone,” Amanda said. “The girl. She just vanished.”

“THIS REALLY HAPPENED?” Tom Gilbert asked, coming to perch his skinny butt on the corner of Jim’s desk. Tom was to the City Desk what lunch ladies were to playground bullies—ineffective and overzealous. In a word, useless.

“Of course it happened,” Jim said, not looking up from his five hundred words about Carter O’Neill’s testimony for his mother ten years ago.

He’d already handed in his story about Carter O’Neill’s love child.

Honestly, this might be one of the best days of Jim’s life.

“Jim?”

“You’ve got a picture,” Jim said, rolling away from the keyboard to face his boss. “It happened. I’ve got two old ladies saying they had no idea Zoe Madison was having a thing with the mayor pro tem. What more do you want?”

“News,” Tom said, smacking the copy against his knee.

“Carter O’Neill, who is going to announce his candidacy for mayor any minute, knocks a girl up and walks away?” Jim laughed. “That’s not news?”

“I don’t think it’s true,” Tom said and Jim sat up.

“You accusing me of lying?”

“No, Jim,” Tom sighed. “Christ, you’re so defensive I can barely talk to you. What I’m saying is I don’t think it’s a story. The Mayor Pro Tem office is going to issue a statement saying O’Neill’s never even heard of this girl, and I don’t want to have to print a retraction in two days for a story tomorrow.”

“That might not happen, Tom.” You lily-livered, soft-handed coward, he thought. “And right now, you’ve got a public official involved in some pretty crummy stuff. I know it’s been awhile since you were out there, but that is news. The girl’s broke—a dance teacher or something—she has no insurance, and she just accused Golden Boy Carter O’Neill of knocking her up. It’s gonna be all over the region, it’s so good.”

Tom stood up, his freaking king-of-the-world attitude putting a few more inches on his lollipop build. “Your hard-on for this guy is getting in the way of your judgment. You did good work two years ago on the Marcuzzi administration. No one can take that away from you—”

Especially you, you little nosebleed, Jim thought.

“But not every public official is out to ruin this town.”

“Carter O’Neill’s father was arrested with a thirty-carat stolen gem! His sister is dating the son of the man arrested for the original theft. The man comes from a family of crooks. His grandmother was a high-paid whore—”

Tom winced, because he had the stomach of a little girl.

“His mother is a known criminal—”

“Convicted once of grand theft auto.” Tom shook his head. “You did this story when Richard Bonavie was originally arrested and Carter answered every one of your questions. He has very little contact with his family. Not everyone running this town is dirty. I think the Marcuzzi administration ruined you, made you see crooks were there aren’t any.”

“Gem theft!” Jim cried. “If Carter has anything to do with it, he’s dirtier than Marcuzzi.”

“I’m not against you,” Tom whispered. “I want to help you. But you’re young and fairly new to the city—you keep running around here half-cocked and we’re all gonna get burned. There’s a difference between journalism and a witch hunt.”

“What about the love child story?” Jim asked, ignoring Tom’s little pep talk.

Tom sighed. “It runs. Copy already came up with a killer headline,” he said and Jim fought back a smile. Of course it would run. It was top-shelf scandal, and scandal sold papers.

“What else are you working on?” Tom asked.

“I’ve got five hundred words on O’Neill testifying for his mother in a criminal case ten years ago.”

“Are you kidding?” Tom asked. “You’re turning into a one-trick pony here, Jim.”

“You’ve got a hole on page three,” he said with a shrug. “I can fill it.”

“Damn,” Tom sighed. “Okay, Jim, but let’s remember what we’re here to do. Tell news, not stories.”

CARTER DIDN’T WAIT for the emergency Saturday-morning meeting to officially begin. He stormed into Amanda’s office and caught her shoving the last of a doughnut into her mouth.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

“Knock?” she asked, around a mouthful. “Learn some manners?”

He sighed and slapped the Gazette on her desk. The picture of the pregnant elf on that chair stared up at him, mocking him. Jim Blackwell had found out the woman’s name—Zoe Madison. It was right there in the caption, and Carter had spent most of the morning finding out what he could about her.

Her address on a scrap of paper burned in his pocket, and he wanted nothing more than to go over to Beauregard Town and strangle her. Of course, that wouldn’t do much for his image. Maybe he’d be better off parading her around town and making her tell every single person they met that she’d lied about him.

“He’s calling me Deputy Deadbeat Daddy,” Carter said through gritted teeth.

“Actually,” Amanda said, swallowing and standing, as she gathered a stack of papers in her arms, “so are the Houston Chronicle, and the New Orleans Sentinel and—” She tossed the papers on the desk, each one hitting the mahogany with a flat thud like a nail in Carter O’Neill’s coffin. “The real kicker, the pièce de résistance, if you will—”

“Amanda. We don’t need any more theater.”

“Third page in USA Today. They’re all calling you Deputy Deadbeat Daddy.”

He hissed as if burned. And it felt that way; his anger was so hot he had to stand up and walk to the window, looking down on St. Louis Street, quiet and slick with rain.

This was going to be his legacy. He could clean up every neighborhood in this city, but he’d still go to his grave as Deputy Deadbeat Daddy.

He was, at this point, the opposite of Bill Higgins.

Bill Higgins, who came out of retirement last year after the previous administration was finally exposed in its corruption, and who was reelected Mayor-President. It was a quirk of Baton Rouge politics that the Mayor of Baton Rouge was also the President of the Western Baton Rouge Parish, but it hardly mattered. Bill Higgins was king in this city. Hell, in this state.

And Carter wanted to align himself with such a man.

He needed to, if he had any hope of becoming mayor in eighteen months.

But he should have known better. He was an O’Neill, after all—scandal was practically his middle name. He thought that he could keep the dirty part of his life away from the clean part.

But honestly, when had he ever gotten what he wanted?

“You okay?” Amanda asked, and he realized he’d been silent far too long.

“How do we fix this?”

“Well—” Amanda leaned back in her chair “—we can get them to retract, but I’m not sure we can ‘fix’ what’s really the issue here, Carter.”

“Of course we can fix this. Anything can be fixed.” He knew this for a fact. A lifetime of bribery and extortion, holding the worst of his family at bay like wolves in a storm, had taught him that everyone could be bought and anything worth fixing could be fixed.

Amanda stared at him as if he was something wiggling under a microscope.

“What?”

“Sometimes,” she said, “you look like a different person. You get this expression and it’s like I’ve never seen you before.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Amanda.”

“I’m not. I’m telling you, the mask you wear every damn day slips and the guy underneath it freaks me out a little bit.”

He sighed. Amanda was great, but the frustrated novelist under her brittle public relations/press secretary exterior got a bit old. “What are we going to do about Zoe Madison?” he asked.

“The pregnant lady?” She waved a hand. “I can fix that. I can fix that in my sleep. What’s got me worried is what’s happening with your family. The postponement of your father’s arraignment is hurting us in public opinion. And you didn’t tell me you testified for your mother ten years ago in a criminal case.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, picking up the papers and dumping them in the recycling beside Amanda’s desk.

“Worrying about it is kind of my job, Carter. I need an answer when those questions start coming up again, and they will if you’re going to announce your candidacy for mayor after Christmas.”

The sentence hung there, unanswered.

He was going to do that. That was the plan. The goal.

Yesterday, before his mother’s resurfacing, it seemed like the fruition of years of hard work. The only likely outcome for his life.

Today, it seemed ridiculous. Announcing his candidacy for mayor while his father went to jail, his mother was snooping around in the shadows, and there was a missing ruby kicking around somewhere?

“That is still the plan, right?” Amanda asked.

“Yes,” he said, because he still wanted it.

“Then don’t put your head in the sand. We need a strategy and I need the truth.”

“Our strategy,” he said in a tone designed to remind her that she worked for him, “is that you say ‘no comment.’”

“The public—”

“The attention will die down. It always does. We just need to stay the course.”

“Stay the course?” She watched him dubiously. “This can’t be you talking.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you haven’t backed down from a fight once since taking this office. And now you want to stay the course? You think that’s gonna work?”

“When it stops, if it stops working, we’ll come up with a new strategy.”

Amanda blew out a long breath, said, “You’re the boss,” and leaned back in her chair, kicking her feet up on the desk. “Now,” she said, her eyes alight, “about Zoe Madison. We’ve got three choices. We can issue a statement saying you’ve never seen the girl and you are not the father.”

“Will that work?”

“In time, but in that time, Blackwell’s going to be going through your family’s dirty laundry, of which there seems to be plenty. And sure, we can fight for some retractions, but it’ll be like fighting a forest fire with a squirt gun.”

“We need a distraction.”

“Exactly. We can dig up a whole bunch of dirt and annihilate her in the press.”

“Annihilate?” he asked, liking the idea.

“But she’s practically picture-perfect. If we go after her, it’ll make us look like baby kitten killers.”

“Okay, what’s our second choice?” he asked, sorry to see annihilation off the table.

“Well, I’ve got an idea, and frankly it should take the heat off your shady family.”

“Good,” he said, ready for anything.

“Don’t be too eager,” she said. “This might hurt a little.” There was something about Amanda’s smile that made him nervous.

Very nervous.

THE PREGNANCY CRAVINGS were not to be messed with.

They were primitive and so strong they could last for days, taking Zoe places no sane woman should go.

She’d learned that the hard way in month three when she’d left the house in need of ice cream and had systematically torn the head off every person that had crossed her path. She’d made a four-year-old cry for accidentally riding her bike over Zoe’s foot.

A four-year-old! Zoe was going to be a great mother.

Now, Zoe stayed home and rode the cravings out like she was tied to the saddle of a runaway horse. Or she called in reinforcements.

“You sure you’re all right?” her mom asked, wrapping one of Zoe’s scarves around her neck. “That thing in the paper—”

“A huge misunderstanding, Mom,” Zoe said, lying through her teeth. Her picture in the paper this morning had been a shocker, and that little trickle of guilt she’d been ignoring all night had turned into a geyser. She was on the front page of the paper and the story made it seem as though Carter O’Neill was one step down from an axe murderer.

Deputy Deadbeat Daddy. It was awful.

Well, some cold, no-nonsense voice in her head whispered, what did you expect, standing on a chair like that?

“The mayor’s office will handle it, I’m sure,” Zoe insisted, wanting her mother out of the house with such force it was hard not to just open the door and stand there, waiting for her to get the hint.

But Mom had brought salsa.

So she was trying to be polite.

“You sure you don’t mind if I take this?” her mom asked, looking down at the green-blue ends of the scarf. “It looks so pretty on you.” It did. It does. It was her favorite scarf, but Mom needed to leave so Zoe could dunk her fresh batch of ginger cookies into the salsa in peace.

There were parts of this pregnancy business that required privacy, and this newfound obsession with ginger cookies and salsa was her own little secret.

“Absolutely, wear it in health. It goes great with your new hair,” Zoe said, and as if cued, her mom smoothed a hand down the back of her new short silver bob.

“It does look good, doesn’t it?” she asked, preening slightly in the mirror beside the door.

Go. Zoe thought. Leave. Please.

“You look much younger,” she said instead.

Her mom beamed, tossing the scarf around her neck with a little flair, and Zoe smiled. “You don’t look like you’re about to be a grandmother, that’s for sure,” she said, feeling tubby next to her mom’s hard-won thinness. Seven years ago, Mom had sworn she wasn’t going to turn fifty in a size fourteen and she hadn’t. She’d put her mind to it and lost twenty-five pounds. But that was Penny Madison for you. Once her mind was made up, that was it. Done. Deal. The weight had no choice but to leave in defeat.

“Okay,” Penny said. “I need to get to work, but I’ll see you tonight? We can go get a new slipcover for that couch.”

“What’s wrong with the scarf?” she asked, pulling on the pretty black fringe of the Spanish-style scarf that was draped over the back of her blue velvet couch. It had been part of a costume from La Bohème adaption she’d done in Houston a few years ago.

“It looks a little trashy, sweetie. We’ll get you something in a nice tweed.”

Zoe didn’t get a chance to say over her dead body, because her mom clasped her hands over Zoe’s face, squeezing her cheeks just a little so that her lips pursed. An old routine her mom refused to let go of, despite the fact that Zoe was thirty-seven and five months pregnant.

You will always be my little girl, Penny was fond of saying. And somehow she always made it sound like a jail sentence.

“Okay,” Zoe said, the words distorted by her squished face. “My last class is over at seven.”

“I’ll pick you up here at seven-thirty,” her mom said, and pecked Zoe’s pursed lips. “Remember,” she said, her eyes flicking over to Zoe’s kitchen counter, where a batch of ginger cookies sat getting cold. “Every pound you gain now is one you’ll have to lose after the baby gets here.”

Was it illegal to punch your mother? Zoe wondered, anger billowing through her. Or merely immoral? Because immoral she had no problem with. She was, after all, a political scandal in the making.

“Bye, honey,” Penny said before Zoe could even curl a fist, and then she was gone. The Craving-Goddess-turned-nightmare walked out the door, Zoe’s favorite scarf trailing behind her.

“Oh, thank God,” Zoe muttered and turned back to her cookies.

She cranked the lid off the jar of salsa and poured some into a chipped china bowl, because she wasn’t a heathen, and then dunked the nearest cookie into the tomato mixture.

It was still disgusting, not a good fit at all. Salsa required salt, not sugar. Seriously, what possessed her? She eyed the cookie in her hand and dunked it again.

And why couldn’t she stop?

A knock on the door practically shook the windows loose, and she quickly put down the cookie and slid the salsa into her fridge.

Wiping her hands and any stray crumbs from her face, she opened the door.

“Mom—”

But it wasn’t her mom.

It was Carter O’Neill, in a suit and tie, dwarfing her doorway, his hands braced on the frame as if he were holding himself up. Or back.

Lord, he was big. Those muscles filling out his fine gray suit hard to ignore. And so were the blue eyes blazing through the distance between them.

It was Carter, all right. And he was pissed.

He stepped into her apartment without a word and slammed the door shut behind him, turning her spacious apartment into a linen closet.

“We need to talk,” he said.

CHAPTER THREE

“TALK?” SHE SQUEAKED, because the look on his face said that what he really needed was to take her out back and chop her into pieces.

He nodded, curt and decisive. His jawline was like the marble bust of a Roman emperor—all he was missing were the laurel leaves in his hair.

The truth was—her secret, hidden truth was—that there was something about a man in a suit. She had a history with men in suits. And this man wore a suit like no one else.

She pulled her faded silk robe tighter around her ballooning waist, as if to compensate.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t even acknowledge that he had in fact barged into her apartment uninvited. He just looked around as if he smelled something far worse than ginger cookies.

Anger trickled down through her spine, but the baby fluttered against her hand as if to say, Hold on a second. He is Deputy Deadbeat Daddy because of you.

“How did you get in here?” she asked. Someone had to buzz him in the main door.

“I helped Tootie Vogler with some groceries.”

“I…ah…guess this is about the newspaper?” she asked.

His blue eyes burned like acid.

“Can I apologize again?” she asked. “I’m really, really sorry.” He didn’t respond, and her apology sat there between them like dog poop on a carpet.

“How…ah…did you find me?”

“Phone book.”

“Right.” Her laugh was awkward, and she wanted to take herself out back and end this misery. “Of course.”

The silence was awful. It pounded between them, pulling her skin tighter, sucking out every molecule of air.

He was terribly out of place in the middle of her chaos, a dark spot, leaking menace like a fog into the center of the glitter and beads, the embroidered silk and pillows.

“Would you like to sit down?” she asked, pulling a bunch of pointe shoes and one of her more salvageable tutus off the pink-and-green watermelon chair. It was this chair or the velvet couch, with the much-maligned scarf.

His sharp blue eyes made her so nervous, so aware of the frivolity of her home, that she actually patted the seat in enticement.

Carter O’Neill, the cold fish, didn’t even crack a smile.

“How about something to eat?” she asked. “I have ginger cookies. I just made them and there’s some salsa in the fridge. Not that you’d want that together, obviously. But I have some chips. Somewhere.”

He tossed the newspaper on the coffee table, carelessly knocking her favorite pig mug onto the rug. Luckily it was empty. She leaned over to pick it up and caught sight of herself, right there on the front page of the paper.

On a chair, a little blurry, but obviously pregnant. And frankly, the look on her face was pretty good, if she did say so herself. It managed to say it all—I loved you, but you hurt me so much that I can never forgive you.

All those acting classes her mother insisted on had really paid off.

Carter cleared his throat.

Right. Matter at hand. Political scandal.

“Are you involved with someone?” he asked.

“Involved?” she asked, yanked sideways by the question.

“Yes. Dating, or—” he heaved a big sigh, as if all this were a distasteful job “—whatever.”

“No,” she said.

“The father?” he asked, gesturing vaguely toward her stomach. “Is he around?”

“How in the world is that any of your business?” she asked, horrified.

“They’re calling me Deputy Deadbeat Daddy,” he said. “You kind of made it my business.”

“I know,” she whispered, guilt choking her. “I saw.”

“Papers in Houston, New Orleans and USA Today,” he said. “Did you see those, too?”

She blinked, her stomach in knots. She shook her head.

“All right, then how about you answer my question. The father—”

“Not…ah…” She got lost for a second in the absurdity of this conversation. “Around.”

“That will make things easier.”

Things like disposing of my body? she wondered. “Look, I didn’t know there was a photographer there. Or that any of this would happen.”

“Clearly,” he said, his tone dubious.

“You don’t believe me?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Or what you thought when you stood on that chair like a child and made up lies about me.”

She gasped. She couldn’t help it, it just came out.

“Don’t you dare,” he whispered, his voice and eyes, everything about him so suddenly menacing that she collapsed backward in the watermelon chair. He was gigantic; his hands could palm her head. He could make mincemeat out of her in a second. Not that she thought he would, but still…

“Don’t pretend for a moment that you are in any way the injured party in this situation. You put us here.” He pointed to the front page of the paper. “And you’re going to do whatever I say to get us out.”

Her eyes narrowed. Whatever he said? Not likely. “I can write a letter to the paper,” she said. “Tell people that I’m off my meds, like you said. That I made it all up. Or we could just tell the truth, that someone paid me a thousand—”

“No,” he said, his laugh not sounding like a laugh at all. “We won’t be telling anyone the truth. Jim Blackwell is all over this like a dog on a bone.”

“So…ah…what are we going to do?” she asked, suddenly light-headed with nerves.

“You,” he said, pointing at her, pinning her to the chair, “are going to say nothing. To anyone. And we—” he waggled his finger between them “—are going to date.”

For a moment, his words didn’t make sense, and when they did she laughed. She laughed so hard she had to put a hand under her belly. And here she thought Carter didn’t have a sense of humor.

“I’m not kidding,” he said, stone-cold serious.

“You’ve got to be!” she cried. “There’s no way in the world anyone is going to believe that I am dating you!”

His face hardened, a cold mask that chilled her from across the room. Cruel and distant, his eyes raked her, pulled off her clothes, her skin.

Got it, she thought, pulling the tutu and mug against her chest as if the pig and the silk might keep her warm against the chill of him. You wouldn’t date me if I was the last woman alive. Message received.

“Then why do this?” she asked, her voice a little shaky.

“Because,” he said, “you’ve made me and this administration a laughingstock and the only way to bring back any legitimacy is to put our heads up and pretend like it was a bump in the road.”

“What road?”

“Our road.”

“We don’t have a road! I stood up on a chair and…” She blinked, shook her head, something awful occurring to her. “People are going to think this baby is yours.”

He stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. “They already do,” he said. “And no one, no matter what we say, or whatever letter you write is going to believe otherwise.”

“So how about we don’t do anything. We lie low—”

“The news crew that’s been following me around all day followed me here. They’re camped out on your front lawn.”

“What?” she cried, whirling in her seat to peer through the light green sheers over her window. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. He was right. A camera crew was loitering right in front of the main entrance to her loft building, smashing the bougainvillea Tootie Vogler had planted last year. This is not good.

“Did they see you come in?” she asked, her voice so high it practically scraped the ceiling.

“They followed me, Zoe.”

“You can leave out the back!” she cried. “Plead the fifth if anyone asks. Just pretend—”

“I’m a public official,” he interrupted. “I can’t lie low, and if this isn’t addressed in some way, the speculation will only grow. And I can’t let that happen,” he said. “I won’t.”

For the first time in the brief twenty-four hours she’d known him, he seemed human. The ice in his blue eyes melted and revealed something vulnerable, as if he had something he cared about and might lose in this whole farce. His job.

“You like your job?” she asked.

He blinked, and after a long moment, he nodded. “I love my job. I have…work I want to do for this city.”

Ah, man, why couldn’t he go on being a jerk? Now she was totally sunk—she couldn’t be responsible for him losing his job.

“So we date?” she asked, still dubious.

He nodded. “We’ll tell people I met you at one of the community center informational meetings. That I fell for your—”

Beauty? Charm? Too-big heart?

“Quirkiness. Your…ah…offbeat sense of humor. We’ll tell them that stunt on the chair was your idea of a joke. Not a good one, but a joke. For a few months, we go on some very public dates. We get our photos taken and then you dump me.”

Dumping him, she liked the sound of that. “What if I was married? Or in a relationship—like you said—”

“I knew you weren’t married,” he said. “But if you were involved in some other more informal relationship, our research might not have—”

“Research?” she interrupted, a cold chill spreading down her arms and across her chest. She stood, a toe shoe falling out of her hands, and she reeled it back in by the ribbon, reluctant to lose any of her armor. “You researched me?”

“Of course.” He sounded as if he researched all of his dates. As if it made perfect sense.

“What exactly do you know?” she asked. “About me.”

“You’re thirty-seven, single.” He arched one of those imperial blond eyebrows. “You were raised by Penny Madison, a single mother who works for the post office. You are—I guess were—a dancer. You recently moved back to Baton Rouge from Houston.” She held her breath, a cold sweat blooming across her back. Was this happening? Did he know? Was her secret in a file somewhere, discussed at a meeting as though it was nothing? A bubble of nausea burned up her throat.

“You teach dance classes to kids and grandparents,” he said, leaving Houston and her secret behind. “And obviously…you’re…ah…pregnant,” he said, gesturing, embarrassed, at her belly, as if she were carrying a Shih Tzu in a dress instead of a baby.

“That’s all?” she asked.

“Is there something more I need to know?” His blue eyes narrowed, sharp as knives.

“No.” She edged around the blue couch to get as far away from him as possible. Unbelievably, she still felt the warmth from his body, like a distant sun. “That’s my life,” she muttered, wondering how something so full could be reduced to a few lines.

It occurred to her she didn’t know anything about him. Not his age, not where he grew up. The lack of knowledge felt lopsided, but it’s not as if it would ever occur to her to have him researched. Vetted.

She didn’t work that way.

She looked at him, the compelling stillness of him, the cool of his eyes and the fine bones of his face. He was like nobility or something, a man removed from the messy realities of the kind of life she lived. Who looked, honestly, pained to be here with her. As if he were barely holding back all the disdain he felt for her.

This wasn’t going to work. There was simply no way anyone would believe they liked each other, desired each other, respected each other—not for a minute.

“I know I made a mistake,” she said. “I’m—” she swallowed and shook her head “—prone to that kind of thing, but look at you. You can barely stand to be here and, frankly, I don’t like you being here. No one is going to believe that we’re in a relationship.”

Carter wiped his face and sat down on the edge of her coffee table. His knees a few inches from her legs, the edge of her silk robe trembled as if trying to get closer. “Look, we go out on a few dates. Get our picture taken. We make it…convincing.”

“Convincing?” she squealed, wondering if that was code for sex. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

He rolled his eyes. “We go to dinner, smile at each other. We hold hands.”

“Hold hands?” She laughed. “Like we’re teenagers? That’s not going to convince anyone.”

His hand, big and warm, stroked the kung fu grip she had on her tutu. His thumb surfed the bumps of her knuckles and his fingers found her pulse, which jackhammered against her skin.

Touch. Warmth. He had calluses on the tips of his fingers, and the abrasion sent little shock waves through her body, waking up the parts of her that were hibernating during her long cold winter. Oh, lord, it had been so long.

Her blood slowed, turned to honey, as desire warmed in her belly.

The mug fell from her hand, thumping onto the carpet.

“I think we can make it work,” he said, pulling his hand away and standing up, crossing to the far side of the room.

Golden sunlight burned through the windows, setting him aglitter. He was truly the most handsome man she’d ever seen, and that was saying something. It wasn’t as though the Houston Ballet Company was filled with trolls.

Awareness and embarrassment buzzed through her, and she bent to pick up Sir Piggy as if the dollar store mug were her most prized possession.

The silence between them hummed, loud and awkward. He watched her, quiet. Waiting. But not smug—if he’d been smug, she would have chucked Sir Piggy right at his head.

But still, this reaction of hers, it wouldn’t do. Not while he stood there, calm and collected, as unmoved by her as he’d been when he’d walked in the door.

“Okay,” she said brightly, as if she weren’t shaken down to her feet. “Public hand-holding it is. When do we start?”

“Tonight,” he said, and her stomach plummeted. She’d been hoping for a few days, some time to get her head around this. To warn her mom and Phillip.

“What do I tell my friends?” she asked. “My mom.”

“Nothing would be best.”

“That’s…that’s not possible. They’ll know this baby isn’t yours. That we’re not…together.”

“That reporter—Jim Blackwell—he’ll be all over your life, and that includes your family and friends. The less they know, the easier it will be on them.”

Well, she thought, what was one more secret between her and her mother?

“All right. So where are we going tonight?”

“Bola,” he said, naming the fancy steak house that had opened downtown a few months ago.

Nope. Uh-uh. Not going to happen. She would fakedate him anywhere but there. “I’ve heard it’s awful,” she lied.

He shook his head. “From who? The food there is amazing.”

“Well, if it’s amazing food you want, I know of a great soul food place down on River—”

“The point is to be seen by people,” he said slowly, as if she were stupid. “Get our photo taken.”

“But Bola has cockroaches,” she whispered, as if Zagat were in the room with them. “In the kitchen.”

“Are you trying to be funny?” he asked. “Because I really do not get your sense of humor. We’re going to Bola.”

Of course, she thought, resignation like a brick settling in her stomach. Maybe, if she was lucky, Phillip wouldn’t be working.

At least the food would be good, she thought, happy to see a bright side. This baby loved steak. Zoe, of course, loved it dipped in cream cheese, but she would try to control herself.

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said.

“That won’t work. I teach until seven and then…well, I’ll need to get ready. Eight at the earliest.” More like seven-fifteen at the earliest, but he didn’t need to know that and he certainly didn’t need to have every single thing go his way.

He nodded. “Eight then.”

She managed to smile as if this were a real date, something to look forward to. “Eight it is.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, she thought, watching his long lean body cross the floor of her apartment. He was handsome, wealthy—at least she’d be able to eat a whole lot of steak in the next few months. Plus, he could hold hands better than most men made love. If she could just keep herself together and he managed to not be an autocratic ass, maybe everything would be all right.

Of course, there was Phillip to consider now, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

“Try to wear something appropriate,” he said.

And with that little ego crusher, he was gone.

CHAPTER FOUR

ZOE WAS RUNNING LATE. As usual. And Mom was not helping.

“No,” she said, tucking the phone between her ear and her shoulder and locking the door behind her. She clicked on the lamp by the door and a puddle of warm light spread around her. “Mom, we’re not…serious.”

“But that thing in the paper, and now this? Dinner?”

“Yes, Mom, it’s just dinner.”

“At Bola? That’s not just dinner.”

“It is. It’s just a fancy dinner.” A fancy dinner that required a fancy dress. “He’s sort of a…fancy guy.” She winced; that wasn’t right at all. He was the opposite. He was stark and serious. Fancy like a rock face, maybe. Or an oak tree. She ran to her bedroom, shedding clothes as she went. Yoga pants—her pregnancy uniform—just weren’t going to cut it tonight.

“And how long has this been going on?”

Zoe rolled her eyes and pulled open the accordion doors to her closet. “Not long,” she said, yanking the ribbon attached to the small chain on her overhead light. She was trying to be vague, like Carter had told her, but her mom was like a hound dog. “A month, maybe. Honestly, we’re just friends.”

“Honey, why didn’t you say something? I thought…” Penny trailed off, her voice leaving behind a little wake of pain mixed with guilt.

A delightful combination that her mother specialized in.

Zoe sighed and sat down on the mess of pillows and blankets she called a bed. She quickly bounced up and pulled a cereal bowl out from the duvet before settling back down. She didn’t like lying to her mother, and she really didn’t like hurting her, but at some point there needed to be some distance. Some breathing room.

Not for the first time, Zoe doubted her decision to come back to Baton Rouge to have this baby.

“I mean, you used to tell me everything. But recently, you’re so different. The baby—”

She didn’t want to talk about the baby with her mom. Not again. For four solid months it had been all they talked about, and now the subject was closed. Closed.

“Mom, listen to me. I sort of blew it with the whole standing on the chair thing, and now we have to go public. It’s not a big deal.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Zoe took a deep breath and jumped right into the new cold waters that swirled between them. “You know why, Mom.”

“You’re going to be a single mother, Zoe. Dating isn’t—”

“And there you go,” she said, standing up and wiggling out of her bra. “This is why I didn’t tell you. I don’t need another chapter from your How To Be A Single Mother textbook.”

There was a pause, the silence long and slow, like colliding with an iceberg, and Zoe bit her lip to keep from apologizing. She was right on this.

“Do you like him?” Mom asked, her voice quiet. “Is he nice to you?”

Zoe nearly laughed. Nice? Carter O’Neill? The word simply did not apply. “Of course.”

“All right, just…be careful with yourself, honey.”

“I will. I have to go, Mom. Bye.” Zoe hung up and tossed the phone on the bed.

She approached her closet like Napoleon taking over a battlefield. None of her pants fit, and she didn’t have the money for new special maternity ones, so she shoved aside a small quadrant of black, white and denim pants. It wasn’t a terribly formal sort of place so she pushed away the turquoise beaded gown and the black sheath from her days at the Houston Ballet. Ballerinas needed gowns for those fundraiser things, but why she still kept them she had no idea. Well, they were glittery and she did like glitter.

“This is a disaster,” she moaned, flicking hangers back and forth, contemplating her pink cowboy shirt with the lassoing hearts. There was the red-and-white maternity tent dress her mother had bought her a few days ago, which honestly made her look like a tablecloth at an Italian restaurant. She pushed aside a few cardigans and dug way back into her closet, her heart sinking farther and farther into her stomach.

She wanted to look good tonight. Smokin’, even. Because Carter had mocked her and had made her heart flip over in her chest when he’d held her hand.

The combination stung like salt in a wound.

But it didn’t look like glamorous Zoe was going to make an appearance tonight. Or any other night for the foreseeable future. She was five months pregnant, a political prisoner of her own making, and she was attracted to the stone-cold warden.

Wedged into the back of her closet between her old prom dress and the remnants of her flapper phase, she found a clear plastic garment bag.

Sunshine dawned in her dark loft as she pulled out the hot pink raw silk A-line dress. A few years ago in Houston, she’d fallen in love with this dress, with its big red and yellow appliqué roses on the short hem, its bold color, and the way it made her legs look about a million miles long. The only problem was that it had been a little too big and she’d meant to have it altered, but kept forgetting.

Thank God.

She tore open the bag and pulled the dress over her head, shimmying it down around her belly and hips. She stepped sideways into the full-length mirror and squealed with delight. A little tight around the belly, but she was pregnant, what could one expect?

But the rest of it, oh the rest of it…perfect. The big collar clasped around her neck, a floppy silk rose beneath her chin. Her arms were bare, so she slid on a few silver bangles. And then a few more.

Shoes. Shoes would be an issue. Her swollen feet begged for the low sandals with the ghetto-fabulous gemstones, but she remembered how tall Carter was, how he seemed to tower over her, and she reached into the way back for her black second, secondhand Chanel stilettos.

Yes, she thought, admiring herself in the mirror. Oh. Yes. She pliéd, dipped. Tried to arabesque, but the seams wouldn’t allow it. She felt beautiful in this dress.

Lush and womanly and sophisticated.

Like a woman who owned her life.

She could do this. She could go on this date and hold hands and smile at a man who didn’t like her at all. In this dress, she could do anything.

The walls of her apartment shuddered as someone pounded on her door. It could only be one person and she clapped.

“Eat your heart out, Carter O’Neill,” she whispered and mini jetéd, as best she could, to the door.

“I’LL TRY TO BE THERE, Savannah,” Carter said into his cell phone as he brushed the rain off his jacket.

“You’re lying, Carter,” his sister said. “I can tell. I can always tell. Honestly, why do you bother trying?”

Carter smiled, staring up at the ceiling. He liked it when his little sister called him on his bullshit; it made him feel closer to her, as though it was ten years ago and she still needed him to protect her.

He remembered her a year after their mom had left them on Margot’s doorstep. Savannah had come into his room in the middle of the night, her voice a whisper, her hand against his arm a hot little puddle.

“She’s not coming back, is she?” she’d asked, moonlight turning her eyes black. “Mom’s left us here.”

“I don’t know,” he’d whispered, though he’d known. Of course he’d known. But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. He hadn’t wanted any more injury to befall this little girl.

“You’re lying,” she’d said. “You’re always lying to me.”

Suddenly, in this hallway, Carter felt a million miles from his sister. From his family. From the man he was. And it was his own fault. Every time he tried to protect them he ended up putting more than miles between them.

“Savvy,” he sighed, “I promise I will try to get there for Christmas.”

Even as the words came out of his mouth he knew it was impossible. With Vanessa back in the picture, there was no way he could go home, not with her trailing behind like a spiked tail.

“Hey,” he said, unable to believe he was going to ask this question when he’d sworn to himself that he was going to stay out of the gem drama. “You guys haven’t found the ruby, have you?”

“Tyler hunted all over the place last month when Dad was here. He says it’s nowhere to be found.”

“What does Margot say?” he asked.

“She says there’s no way it’s in The Manor. She’d know.”

“Well, she sure as hell didn’t know about the diamond, did she?”

“I guess not,” Savannah said. “She was as surprised as the rest of us when Tyler said he found it and Dad stole it from him.”

“Is Margot there?” he asked.

“She’s in West Palm Beach with her boyfriend.”

“Oh, come on,” he said, trying to scrub the mental picture of his grandmother with a boyfriend.

“Don’t be such a prude. They’re companions.”

“Has anything strange happened at The Manor lately?”

“Not more than usual.”

There, he thought, he’d satisfied the worry his mother had planted in his brain. He could go on with his life.

“How is Katie?” he asked. It was easier in a way to stay apart from The Manor, Bonne Terre and his family. When he didn’t see them for months at a time, he couldn’t picture them at the breakfast table, going to school, getting ready for bed, couldn’t think of his niece, Katie, growing up and him not seeing it.

He didn’t have to think about all the things he was missing.

“If you really cared, Carter, you’d come see her.”

It was a direct hit, and his body stung with shame that quickly fizzed and exploded to anger. His life wasn’t that simple. Had never been that simple. From the moment Savannah came into this world he’d been protecting her, watching over her, doing everything in his goddamned power to make sure that her life was that simple.

Carter turned and hammered on Zoe’s door, using the side of his fist.

“I’ll call you soon,” he said, and hammered again. What was taking Zoe so long? he wondered. She lived in like a one-room loft.

“Think about Christmas,” Savannah said, subdued, as if she knew she’d pushed too hard.

“I will,” he said, and heard the door behind him rattle, the chain lock being lifted. “Gotta run.”

He felt the door give and he turned, dropping his phone in his pocket. “Good God, Zoe, it took you—”

The world narrowed down to one color. One hot pink blast of color that seared his eyes, harpooned his brain. There was no other color like it. Ever. In his life.

“—long enough,” he finished lamely. The color belonged to a dress, a short one and he couldn’t believe it, but Zoe the pregnant elf had legs that hit the ceiling and met the floor in a pair of heels that made his heart pound in his crotch.

“Hi,” she said, and he jerked his eyes up to hers. They were smiling, the green depths aglow with a feminine confidence that zinged through his blood stream. She knew she looked good.

The desire was a huge surprise. An unwelcome one, like being cut off at the knees.

“Hello” he answered, trying to cool himself down, pull himself away from the magnetic allure of her.

Of that damn dress.

“Ah…” She blinked, her confidence crumpling slightly. “Give me one more second.” She swirled a finger around her face.

He nodded and she trotted off to a dark corner of her loft, leaving him in the dimly lit doorway. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. She had lamps everywhere, some covered by scarves, casting a rosy glow over the wood floors and high white walls.

She was a candle person, he just knew it.

“So,” she yelled, “did you come in the back?”

“Nope,” he answered, picking up a framed photograph of a young girl in a sequined dance costume, her smile revealing two missing front teeth.

Zoe, he could tell by the eyes. The exuberance with which the girl smiled, like her whole body was required to do it right.

“Were the photographers still there?” she asked, ducking her head out a doorway. She was using some kind of contraption on her eyelids, a cage or something.

“Yes,” he said.

“They were gone when I came home tonight,” she said.

“Because they were following me,” he said, having spent the day feeling like Britney Spears.

She grimaced. “That’s no fun.”

He nearly laughed at her understatement. Nothing about this was fun, except maybe looking at her legs.

“All right,” she said, stepping into the hallway. She grabbed a tiny pea-green bag off a small table and emerged from the shadows. “I’m ready for steak.”

She was lovely, more than lovely, really. She was like a rare creature. All eyes and legs and lips. Her black hair shone like an oil slick, and her skin glowed as if there were a candle burning inside her.

If this were a real date, he’d say something now. Kiss her hand and breathe a compliment across her skin. Truthfully, if this were a real date he’d back her into those shadows and up against a wall and he’d explore the secrets of those endless legs. Thinking about it, his fingers twitched. His pulse hitched.

But this wasn’t a date, and this woman was doing a number on his reputation and future political career.

“Good,” he said, brusquely, holding open the door for her. “Bring a coat. It’s raining.”

They went down the stairs and in the main hallway she turned left to head for the back door but he stopped her. “We’re going out the front.”

She leaned out of the corridor, looking at the small crowd of photographers visible through the safety glass door.

“Really?” she asked, clearly hesitant.

“It’s sort of the point.”

“But—” she licked her lips, her fingers fluttering over her belly “—can’t we go slow or something?” she asked. “Ease into it?”

He shook his head, but faced by her nerves and beauty he found himself weakening. He took her hand where it rested against the swell of her stomach. He tried not to, but he couldn’t help briefly noticing the taut warmth of that belly.

A baby, he thought. There’s a baby in there.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said. “Just smile.”

She didn’t smile. Didn’t joke. He realized she was really rattled. “You okay?” he asked, stroking the chilled skin of her wrist.

“Tell me something,” she said. “Anything. About yourself.”

“What?”

“You know everything about me. Well, not everything, but lots. Lots more than I know about you.”

“Why does that matter?” he asked.

“Because we’re supposed to be dating!” she cried. “And you’re holding my hand, and they’re going to take pictures of us, and we’re supposed to make it convincing. And I think maybe that convincing needs to start right now. With me. So spill, Carter. Give me something.”

“I…ah…have a younger sister,” he said, not entirely sure why he was indulging her. “And a brother.”

“You do?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Why is that such a surprise?”

“I don’t know.” She smiled and shrugged one elegant shoulder. “You seem kind of like a lone wolf, you know. Not exactly the big brother type.”

Oh, but he was. He was a big brother, all the way down to his core.

And if that meant staying away from his family in order to keep his mother away from them, no matter how much it might hurt him—then so be it. He could handle it. Because he knew better than to take something he wanted. He lived every minute of his life under sublimation of want. Compromise of need.

Christmas was simply another day. Another day without his family.

“Carter?” she asked. Her hand, no longer chilled, squeezed his.

“I miss them,” he said and felt as if he’d jumped off a cliff, nothing but air under his feet. He cleared his throat, wishing he could suck the words back into his mouth.

But Zoe’s smile was wide and sincere and some of the confidence bloomed back into her eyes, making the green shine bright. Lovely, he thought, slightly spellbound. So lovely.

“All right,” she said, and took a deep breath. “That’s good stuff to know. We can go now.”

She grabbed his hand and tugged, pulling him down the narrow hallway to the front door where the flashbulbs and journalists waited like sharks in shallow water.

They pushed through the front door and the flashes exploded. Zoe stumbled slightly and lifted a hand to cover her eyes.

“Oh wow,” she whispered, sounding lost.

It wasn’t totally an act when he put his arm around her, curling her toward him.

“Mayor Pro Tem?” someone shouted. “Are you the father of the baby?”

Zoe stiffened, a fire igniting in her eyes. It was ugly, the speculation about the baby, and he wished, oddly, that he could spare her some of that—despite the fact that she’d brought it on herself, however unwittingly. She opened her mouth, no doubt about to get them deeper into trouble, and he squeezed her arm.

“The father of Zoe’s baby is no one’s business but Zoe’s,” he said.

“How long have you two been dating?” another person shouted and Carter glanced down at Zoe.

“Five minutes?” she whispered, and he laughed. Flashbulbs exploded again.

“A few weeks,” he finally said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re going to get some dinner.”

Questions were hurled after them, but he ignored them. Why he kept his arm around Zoe, he wasn’t entirely sure.

SHE’D NEVER BEEN TO BOLA, but what Phillip had told her didn’t do the place justice.

Bola was gorgeous, if one liked art deco, red velvet and mahogany floors, and Zoe did. The dark lighting made her want to purr and sashay across the floor, a mink trailing behind her. She could imagine Carter, his blond hair slicked back, his big shoulders tucked into one of those exquisite tuxes from the era.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.