“And you’re a great believer in doing the decent thing?”

Was that her being coy? Flirting? Or what she felt passed for flirting, she amended silently. What was going on here?

She was both nervous and excited, even as she warned herself not to be.

“Whenever possible,” he replied to her mocking question, fairly sure she was mocking him. He stole a glance at her now that they were relatively alone and unthreatened by traffic. “Whenever possible,” he repeated.

Instead of feeling a sense of relief at his profession of honorability, her nerves instantly spiked even higher than before, fed by anticipation the magnitude of which she had never encountered before.

Just what did she think she was anticipating here? Cindy asked herself. Women were a dime a dozen for this man. Why would he bother singling her out?

And why did she so desperately want him to?

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the first installment of THE KELLEY LEGACY, a family you first met in the pages of the last The Coltons of Montana mini-series.

We have a United States Senator who allowed his ever-growing ego to lead him into regions a more prudent-thinking man would have gone to great lengths to avoid. The purpose of the society he blundered into will be revealed slowly, but the chilling threat is evident immediately.

To the Senator’s rescue comes his estranged son (one of six siblings), Dylan Kelley, a class A trial lawyer. He joins forces with the Senator’s chief staff assistant, Cindy Jensen, who has secrets of her own. A challenge that will take a bit of work. But Dylan soon finds that Cindy is more than worth the extra effort he needs to put in.

As ever, I thank you for reading and, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Marie Ferrarella

About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA, a bestselling and award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Private Justice

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To

Kate Conrad,

a little fighter

if ever there was one.

Keep up the good fight.

Prologue

They were out there, waiting for him. Waiting to feed on his public humiliation.

Vultures!

The hairs on the back of Henry Thomas Kelley’s neck stood on end as his anxiety grew.

He knew they were there before he even opened the courthouse door and walked out of the venerable building. Before he ever saw them, he sensed them. A gaggle of reporters clutching microphones as if they were weapons to be wielded, deadly weapons that, with the echo of one misplaced word, could kill all of a man’s hopes, all his dreams. Kill everything he had built up over these long years.

Backed up by their cameramen, they were ready, willing and eager to record the downfall of what had been, just days before, a fairy-tale life—complete with a breathtaking, meteoric rise in the world of politics.

He’d been king of the world with no limit in sight. And now, now that he’d crossed the wrong people, expressed a hesitation where none had been anticipated or would be tolerated, the king, it appeared, was dead—and everyone wanted their chance to kick the corpse before it was dumped into an unmarked grave.

Hubris was a terrible thing, born of adulation and coming in on the backs of fawning lackeys. And Hank Kelley knew, to his shame, that he had been guilty of it. Been seduced by it. Everyone had wanted to be seen with him, be in his limelight. Use him.

And now, those same people were ready to rend his body into tiny, indistinguishable pieces.

Joyfully.

He had been married to one of the richest women in the world, an attractive woman who had loved him, giving him five sons and a daughter. He and Sarah had been the absolutely perfect couple with the perfect family.

Had been.

And he had let it all go to his head.

He had stopped deflecting the flattering attentions of all those beautiful women who seemingly wanted nothing more than to be with him. To love him.

Vain, flattered, he’d stopped resisting, and the trap, he now realized, had been set. A trap to be used against him whenever it was deemed necessary by the people he’d so naively trusted.

Apparently, now it was necessary.

Now, not one, not two, but six of the women he’d been involved with—calling themselves mistresses when that title hardly fitted—all tall, all willowy, all blondes, had stepped forward to point an accusing finger at the man they were all claiming had seduced them.

It had been the other way around. It was always the other way around. But the end result was the same. He had cheated. Cheated on the wife who had loved him, cheated on the public who had trusted him, and that was all the public cared about.

That and watching his public humiliation, his public fall from grace.

It made for a great show.

Taking in one long breath, Hank braced himself and pushed open the door. He would have lowered his head to avoid looking at them, but it would have been taken as an act of cowardice, and he might be many things, but a coward was not one of them.

With determined steps he began to make his way to his waiting vehicle, enduring a hail of questions that swelled into a storm of noise.

“Senator, Senator! Look this way!”

“This way!”

“Are you the father of that woman’s baby?” Someone shouted the soul-scraping question louder than her fellow reporters.

His mouth, so often seen with a radiant smile, was grim. He kept his eyes on his target, the car, and avoided making any eye contact with the swarm around him, no matter how tightly they closed in around him.

He pushed forward.

“No comment,” he finally bit off as the questions grew and multiplied, choking the very air around him. He was beginning to doubt he was going to make it to his car in one piece. It couldn’t end like this. Not here. Not before he found a way to apologize to Sarah for the grief he had caused her. He had never meant to hurt her. He just didn’t think.

He kept plowing his way through the human throng, making progress by inches. He needed not only to get away, but to find somewhere he could go and think. What was happening was not a coincidence.

But why now? Why this?

He needed answers.

After what felt like an eternity embroiled in an endless journey, he finally made it to his car. The driver, Joseph, was standing holding the rear door open for him, waiting. He was quickly ushered in, his useless lawyer diving in right behind him, and the door was secured.

Exhausted, relieved, he leaned back and exhaled a sigh filled with anxiety.

“Where to, sir?” Joseph asked after sliding into the driver’s seat and slamming the door.

Both sides of the somber, black customized vehicle were besieged by the relentless reporters, still trying to get a sound bite, a single damning word.

“Anywhere,” Hank cried. “Just away from here.”

The car was already in motion, burrowing through the throng. “You got it, Senator.”

“Damn fool idiot!”

Bonnie Gene Kelley was walking by the den where her husband of forty years, Donald, could occasionally be found when he wasn’t up to his elbows in yet another barbecue sauce, trying to create one to top the one he’d breathed life into the time before. All created to be used at his very successful chain of steak houses.

The sound of Donald’s voice stopped her in her tracks and she peered in.

“Talking to yourself again, dear?” she asked. It was getting to be an unfortunate habit, she thought. People were going to think he was losing his mental faculties if he wasn’t careful. “You know, if you want some company,” she told him, walking into the room, “all you have to do is ask.”

Donald continued scowling at the TV.

Glancing toward the flat screen, she asked, “What are you watching?” before she had a chance to focus on the face of the man on the monitor.

Her eyes widened. Oh my God!

“Donald, is that Hank?” she cried, completely stunned.

Donald was still communing with the image on the screen. “Damn stupid idiot,” Donald retorted angrily. With a snap of his wrist, he made the picture disappear, shutting off the set just as the words recorded earlier scrolled across the bottom of the screen. “He never could keep from messing up a good thing!”

“Donald, why was Hank in the middle of that ugly crowd? Is something wrong? Why was he on the news?”

Bonnie Gene turned toward her husband, expecting him to give her an answer or at least to share in her confusion as to why Hank was the subject of a news story.

Donald didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet. Not until he got his temper under control.

Shaking his head, his asymmetrically cut, shaggy white hair—that he insisted only she cut—moving about independently, he acted as if he hadn’t heard any of her questions and announced, “I’m going back to the restaurant. That barbecue sauce isn’t going to create itself.”

“Donald,” Bonnie Gene cried, raising her voice as he strode past her to the den’s threshold, “talk to me.”

“That was talking, Bonnie Gene,” Donald said as he walked out. “Thought someone who’s always doing it would recognize it when she heard it.” He didn’t bother turning around.

Bonnie Gene, frowning, picked up the remote and turned the set back on. But the news had moved on and cut to a commercial. A bright, smiling blonde with way too many teeth was extolling the virtues of her shampoo.

Disgusted, Bonnie Gene turned off the set again and, with an annoyed sigh, left the room, promising herself that she was going to get the information out of her husband when he came home for the night. She wanted to know what was going on. The senator from California, Hank Kelley, was Donald’s younger and, for all intents and purposes, estranged half brother. But family was family and she intended to get to the bottom of this.

Donald, she thought, had better come clean if he knew what was good for him.

Chapter 1

Just when I thought there were no surprises left when it came to you, you had to show me I was wrong, didn’t you, Dad?

Several states away, in a prestigious law firm in Beverly Hills, California, high-powered attorney Dylan Kelley was watching the same news broadcast as his much-loved uncle Donald.

Biting off a curse, Dylan aimed his remote at the huge flat-screen TV on the opposite wall and terminated the broadcast. The screen went to black and, for a moment, silence ensued.

Dylan shook his head in dazed disbelief. So much for his father’s straight-arrow image.

“You really outdid yourself this time, Dad,” he muttered under his breath, anger beginning to set in and take a firm hold.

He wondered if either of his brothers or his sister, Lana, knew about this latest turn of events. Worse, what if his mother had caught this bulletin? She was a strong woman, a woman who had, over the years, slowly constructed walls and barriers around herself. He’d been a witness to that, watching the walls as they came up, holding her in.

Holding everyone else out.

He realized now, as an adult, that she’d done it to protect herself against being hurt. As if she somehow knew that this was in the offing.

Had she suspected? Did she know? He felt incredibly bad for her, incredibly angry at his absentee father for having done this to her.

Dylan sighed, sitting back down at his desk for a moment. For just a split second, his knees felt weak. If he felt like this, how must his mother feel?

Just goes to show you, he thought. Fairy tales were just that, fairy tales. They had no bearing on real life. The press and people in general had called his parents’ marriage a real-life, magical fairy-tale. Years ago, he’d stumbled across an old article in a magazine, an interview with his father written when Hank had just been starting out on his political rise—his eye even then on a very lofty prize.

His father had freely admitted, apparently with pride, that he had married an exceedingly rich woman who supported him in every way, eager to make him happy, eager to give him his heart’s desire, no matter what it was. Along the way, she’d also given him the perfect photo op family.

Dylan took in a deep breath as he closed his eyes and remembered being trotted out with his brothers and baby sister, all perfectly groomed, him wearing a suit he’d hated at the time, to stand around his father and mother, big smiles pasted on all their faces for the camera that froze their supposed happiness forever in time.

Or at least long enough to generate a favorable impression with the voting public. His father had been the family-values candidate.

He wondered if his father saw the irony in that now.

Agitated, Dylan dragged his hand through his thick, dark hair, remembering that the creation of those family portraits provided almost the only occasions when he actually got to see his father. The rest of the time, Hank was busy traveling, glad-handing potential constituents up and down the length and breadth of California, professing his undying willingness to work until he dropped for the good of the people of “this glorious, sun-kissed state of ours.”

And the voters had believed him. Believed every single word. They’d sent his father to the United States Senate, confident that he would represent them to the best of his ability, which was definitely good enough for them.

Who his father wound up representing, apparently, was himself, Dylan thought darkly, his mind going back to the jarring news story expounding on the fact that his father was being investigated on charges of illegal activities and criminal misuse of campaign funds.

One of the newscasters, looking properly shocked, said that there were allegations the missing campaign funds had been spent on setting up his mistresses, one of whom was said to be currently pregnant.

Mistresses.

Damn it, Dad, what the hell were you thinking? Didn’t you just once think about this getting out and hurting Mom? Dylan demanded silently.

He hadn’t seen his father in—what? Six months? A year? More?

He’d lost track. The last few times he had been the one to seek out his father, who never just showed up to see how his son was doing or how life was going for the family in general. His father was always too busy to take the time to stay in touch.

And now I know what you apparently were too busy with, Dylan thought angrily.

Well, if the prosecutors had their way, he was still going to have to go to his father in order to see him. And this time it would be because his father was incarcerated.

How the mighty have fallen.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he repeated, this time out loud, addressing a man who was not there.

Who hadn’t been there, even when he was, for a long, long time.

Dylan looked at the framed photograph on his desk. A photograph of the whole family taken for a Christmas card some four years ago. His eyes narrowed as he focused on the handsome older man in the center—his father’s usual position.

“If I had half a brain, I’d just let you stew in your own juices and go on with my life. Just like you’d do for me and the others if we needed you.” He had no doubt of that. What little fatherly love Henry Kelley had available went to Lana, because she was the youngest and the only girl.

And Lana had always worshipped him and defended him, no matter what. God only knew why.

Lana could probably find a reason to defend their father now, Dylan thought.

He leaned back in his chair, rocking slightly, thinking. If he went with his first inclination, if he just continued with his life and did nothing, in effect, he would be no better than the man who had earned his disdain.

Worse, because he knew better, knew how this kind of behavior affected the person on the receiving end. Ultimately, if he turned his back on his father now, he’d somehow wind up hurting his mother, who still, he suspected, deep down in her patrician heart, loved his father no matter what. She was that kind of a person, even though she tried not to show it.

Dylan frowned. When the final analysis was in and all was said and done, blood was thicker than water and that still meant something to him, if not to his father.

But he wasn’t going to do this for his father. He was going to do it for his mother. And also to prove to himself that he was a better man than his father apparently was.

Added to that, Dylan thought as he began to throw a few things into his briefcase and get ready to go to his father’s Beverly Hills office, the family reputation was at stake here. He had no doubt that if his father went down, the stain would mark all of them.

It didn’t matter that the rest of the family had little or no interaction with the man. The shame of his conviction, if it came to that, would be something they would all have to bear. And while his father might have done things to merit the ostracization, he, his brothers and sister and especially his mother, had not.

“You really don’t deserve anyone in the family coming to your aid, old man,” Dylan muttered under his breath as he left his office. “You really don’t.”

But he knew he was bound to do it anyway.

If this was fifty years ago—and a romantic comedy, Cindy Jensen added cynically—she would have been referred to as a Girl Friday.

“As well as a Girl Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday,” she said out loud.

However, in this modern world, the official title she bore was Chief Staff Assistant to Senator Henry Thomas Kelley. In reality, she was far more than that. She was his confidante, his mother, his cheerleader, his secretary. In effect, his walking, talking point of reference for almost everything under the sun, plus his gofer and, last but not least, his general smoother-outer of ruffled feathers.

She did a far better job of it than the pretentious fool the senator had hired as his press secretary, she thought grudgingly.

Too bad that with all those various job descriptions she hadn’t found a way to be his private conscience as well, because, Lord knew, as she had found out a couple of days ago, the man certainly needed one.

Desperately.

While she believed very strongly in his political agenda—if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been here, wouldn’t have given her all to work her way up his team—she absolutely hated this other side of him. The side she’d unwillingly had confirmed for her via a news bulletin. The side that, in truth, she had come to suspect whenever the senator had asked her to clear some time for him from his calendar and been more than a little evasive whenever she’d asked him why he needed that time cleared for him. He’d mutter something about having an appointment he couldn’t break and flash that thousand-watt smile of his, once again charming his way out of the situation.

Well, his charm had certainly failed the man this time, she thought.

Feet of clay. That was the term for it, she recalled. The family-values crusader had feet of clay.

The realization cut through her like a knife.

The phone on his desk rang again for the umpteenth time. It had been ringing off the hook all morning, ever since the story had broken about the senator having to go to the L.A. courthouse regarding an investigation into his campaign funds, and suddenly mistresses—mistresses of all things!—had begun crawling out of the woodwork.

Ever since that bulletin had burst on her, her tiny, optimistic visions of this world the senator inhabited and she was working toward promoting had been crushed.

God knew she had few enough optimistic things to cling to. Her private life, well, that was a complete washout, but she had clung to her professional life, viewing it as her one saving grace, telling herself that at least what she was doing had merit for the country and she was going to have to find comfort—and ultimately validation—in that. She sure knew she wasn’t going to find it on the home front, not with the bastard in designer suits she’d had the misfortune to fall in love with and marry.

No, she hadn’t fallen in love with him, she’d fallen in love with the image he’d projected. Fallen in love with a man who didn’t exist. The one who did exist had had a foul temper and swinging fists. Fists that, she was ashamed to admit even to herself, had made contact. And she had taken it. In the beginning.

But after a spate of time when she’d blamed herself for causing his outbursts—just as he blamed her—she’d come to her senses. She’d realized that none of this—his outbursts, his out-of-control temper, his reasons for losing it—none of it was her fault. That was when, with the senator’s support, she had called the police.

It had been the first step in reclaiming her life, her very soul. And except for the curve she’d discovered she’d been thrown, a curve she now lived with every day, she pretty much had reclaimed it. Reclaimed it by throwing herself into her work, striving to make Senator Henry William Kelley the next popular candidate for the presidency of the United States.

It had seemed only right, because he’d been there to take her side, to encourage her not to allow her ex, Dean, to mistreat her. The senator had been the father she’d never really known.

And now this.

It was safe to say that the senator’s chances of gaining the presidency had pretty much been blown to hell. Much the way her faith in him had been.

Damn, it just wasn’t fair! Just how blind could she have been to miss this red flag? How deluded was her state of mind to see a hero where an old-fashioned scoundrel stood?

How could he? How could he?

“This can’t take away from what he’s accomplished, Cindy, it can’t,” she told herself fiercely, conducting an argument that was mostly in her head.

The man was still a good senator, still a man who had the interest of his country foremost in his heart, if not his mind. Still the man who had helped her. She had to remember that. Moreover, she had to do her best to remind the public of all his good points.

Just because it had been discovered that the senator had the personal morals of an alley cat didn’t mean that he couldn’t do great things for the people who voted for him.

“But it sure does rock the boat,” she ground out angrily.

The next moment she jumped as the door opened. She’d left orders not to be disturbed because she had damage control to do.

Who was ignoring her instructions?

And then she had her answer. Kind of.

A tall, well-groomed and quite handsome man who looked to be in his early thirties walked into the senator’s office. His chiseled features were complemented by straight, dark hair, worn slightly long, and his piercing, intelligent blue eyes.

Here was a man who got by on his looks first, then made use of anything he had in his arsenal—if necessary, she thought.

Well, whatever he did, he could do it somewhere else. He was trespassing as far as she was concerned.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she snapped at him angrily, recovering from her initial surprise.

Dylan looked around. Was she the only one in the office?

“I heard you talking to someone,” he said.

She stared at him. It almost sounded like an accusation, Cindy thought. Who the hell did he think he was?

“Even if I were, that doesn’t give you an excuse for barging in,” she informed him, expecting him to offer some apology and then leave.

He did neither. Instead, he remained standing where he was, looking around the office again, as if he expected someone to pop out of the shadows.

Dylan scanned the office more slowly this time, taking in what he’d missed at first glance. The pretty young woman with the pinned-back, golden-brown hair and the damning dark-brown eyes was still the only one here.

“Where is he?” Dylan asked the attractive watchdog. “The senator,” he clarified, even though he had a feeling there was no need to.

Her hands were on her hips, the picture of barely suppressed fury. “He’s not here.”

“But you were just talking to him.” She hadn’t been on the phone when he walked in, so he couldn’t have interrupted a phone conversation. That meant that the woman had been talking to someone in the room. Since this was his father’s office, where had he gone?

Her eyes—rather attractive eyes, he noted—narrowed into piercing slits. “I was talking to myself, if it’s any business of yours,” she said curtly.

Nodding, he accepted the explanation. But he had a pressing question that needed answering. “Okay, where is he?”

Well, that gave her the identity of the mystery stranger, or at least told her his occupation. Her hackles went up.

“Can’t you damn reporters leave him alone? Aren’t you going to be satisfied until you’re chewing on his bones? Even if I knew,” she ended defiantly, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

She was lying, Dylan thought. There was something in her eyes that told him she knew exactly where the “good senator” was. She was covering for his father. Was there more than just professional loyalty at play here? He looked at her more closely.

His eyes swept over her and he took a really good look at the woman standing before him like a member of the emperor’s royal guard.

The woman wasn’t just pretty, she was damn attractive, bordering on downright gorgeous. She wasn’t his father’s usual type—the woman had honey-brown hair, not blond, and her eyes, instead of the usual blue, were the color of an inviting, cool root beer on a hot day. But who knew? Maybe the old man was branching out in his lechery. He certainly wouldn’t put it—or anything else—past his father. Not after that news story had knocked the pins out from under him, Dylan thought.

“Are you one of my father’s … friends?” he asked the woman tactfully.

There’d been a long, significant pause between the last two words. Pregnant enough to make her eyes blaze and her temper flare.

“What I am, if it’s any of your business,” Cindy snapped, indignantly drawing herself up to her full five-foot-four, “is the senator’s Chief Staff Assist—wait.” She came to a sudden, skidding halt as her eyes widened and she stared at him. “Did you just say ‘my father?’”

“Actually, I said ‘my father’s,’“ he corrected glibly. “But, for the record, you got the general gist of it.”

For the moment, she took no note of the sarcasm. “You’re the senator’s son,” she said incredulously.

“Yes.” Why did the woman look so surprised at that? Though they were estranged, it wasn’t as if his father kept his family a secret.

Not like his mistresses, Dylan’s mind added tersely.

How did she even know that this was the senator’s son? Cindy thought. For all she knew, this tall man in a designer suit was a reporter—apparently a good one if the cut of his expensive clothes was any indication. And the man was trying to talk—to lie, she amended—his way in here.

“Why haven’t I seen you before?” she challenged.

“Maybe because the good senator’s not being very fatherly these days now that he doesn’t need his wife and family for photo ops.” He fixed the woman with a look that he’d used to take witnesses—and courtroom opponents—down a peg. “I haven’t seen you, either, and yet I’m willing to believe that you’re his—what was it you called it again? Chief Staff Assistant?”

She didn’t like the way his mouth curved when he said that. Didn’t like his tone and she definitely didn’t like the way his eyes swept over her, as if he was taking the measure of a thing, not an actual person. She’d had more than enough of that kind of treatment from her ex-may-he-roast-on-a-flaming-spit-husband.

Her chin went up in an automatic, reflexive move at the same time that her eyes narrowed again.

“Yes,” she ground out. “I’m Senator Henry Thomas Kelley’s Chief Staff Assistant, and if you are actually the senator’s son, I’d like some proof, please.”

His father obviously liked them feisty, Dylan thought, taking out his wallet, not doubting for a moment that while this woman might really be what she claimed to be, she was also one of the growing number of mistresses. In his opinion, she was an infinitely better choice than the three women whose faces had been flashed across the screen during the unsettling news story.

He flipped his wallet open to his driver’s license and held it out to her.

Waiting a beat for her to read it, he asked, “Proof enough? Or would you also like to fingerprint me?” As she pushed back his wallet, he flipped it closed again and slipped it back into his pocket. “You can check my prints against the ones on file with the California Bar Association if you really want to be thorough.” Straightening his jacket, he added, “I could also leave you a sample of my blood if it suits your fancy.”

“No need to get sarcastic,” she informed him stiffly. He was the man’s son all right. Now that she thought of it, she should have seen the family resemblance in his features. It was just that she was too angry to think clearly right now. “It’s been completely insane here the last couple of days.”

As if to back up her point, the phone abruptly started ringing again. She picked up the receiver and then dropped it back into the cradle without stopping to see who was on the other end or even breaking her verbal stride.

“I’ve had reporters all but climbing up the side of the building to gain access to the senator’s office. They’re like vultures circling, looking for a way to swoop by and get their piece of flesh.”

“Sounds like you have your hands full,” he commented with a trace of sympathy.

“This isn’t—” Another call came in and she repeated her movements from a moment ago, lifting and then dropping the receiver into the phone’s cradle, this time a little more sharply than the last. “—what I signed on for,” she concluded.

It did sound like a zoo in here, he thought. The sooner he got his information, the sooner he would be able to leave. “Do you know where my father is?” Dylan asked again.

“If the two of you have been so out of touch,” Cindy pointed out, “why do you want to know where he is?” Another phone call had her losing her temper and she disconnected the phone from the jack in the wall.

Decisive woman, he thought. “Because the senator needs help, and right now, I might be one of the few people interested in actually getting him out of this hole he’s dug for himself.”

She wasn’t buying this so easily, Cindy thought. “Because you love him so much.”

“So pretty and yet so cynical.” He laughed, shaking his head. “No, not because I love him so much. Because he’s my father, and the bottom line is, much as I might think he deserves it, I don’t want to see him torn apart in public. If anyone’s going to tear him apart, it’ll be me and it’ll be in private,” he concluded. “Now, do you or don’t you know where my father is hiding out?” he asked one last time, looking at her pointedly.

Chapter 2

Cindy looked at the senator’s son for a long moment, not saying anything, not volunteering the information he was asking for. But there was a reason for that. She was not one to be cowed by an authoritative voice, at least, not anymore. And not ever again.

“How do I know you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do, Mr. Kelley?” she challenged.

Miss Warmth-and-Charm had lost him. He wondered if everyone who worked in the realm of politics eventually became proficient in a form of double-talk through diligent practice, or if it just came naturally to some, that in turn led them to believe they had a future in the political arena.

“Run that by me again,” Dylan requested.

Okay, she’d approach it differently, Cindy thought. “You’re saying you want to help the senator.”

Wasn’t that what he’d just told her? “Yes, that’s the general idea.”

And he wasn’t going to do it by standing around in his father’s Beverly Hills office if the man wasn’t to be found in it as well, Dylan thought impatiently. At this point, it would take very little for him to throw his hands up and walk away from the whole thing. He hadn’t wanted to be involved in the first place, and if he had to jump through hoops, well, that was asking a bit too much in his opinion.

Rather than immediately volunteering an address, his father’s petite guard dog engaged him in another annoying round of rhetoric.

“How do I know that’s true? How do I know you’re not going to take the information I give you and sell it to the highest tabloid bidder just to get even with the senator?” she wanted to know, assuming, for the sake of argument, that this man was in a bad way when it came to finances and was doing it for the money. For all she knew, the designer suit he was wearing could have been a gift—or borrowed. “By your own admission, your father-son relationship is far from the kind of stuff that they like to immortalize in myopic memoirs.”

He stared at her. Well, that certainly was a mouthful. There was no way anyone would get her confused with an empty-headed bimbo, which, he’d come to learn extremely quickly, was what his father’s mistresses all had in common. Beyond their glamorous, carbon-copy looks, they all had the IQs of dormant peanuts. Maybe his father had decided to add an intelligent one to the body count for variety’s sake.

“So what you’re telling me is,” Dylan said, just to make sure he understood what she was saying, “barring some kind of divine intervention, you’re not going to give me the address of his ‘safe house.’”

Her smile was tight. “Finally,” her eyes seemed to say. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

Okay, if she wanted divine intervention, there was only one way to go. He might not be on a first-name basis with God, but he was, so to speak, with his father. And, he had a hunch that in this case, a word from his almighty father would have the same effect on this overly protective woman.

“Could you at least call my father and let me talk to him?” Dylan requested, doing his best to sound patient. “We can let him decide.”

Cindy paused, thinking. The man standing before her did seem sincere, but that was obviously something that, whether he liked it or not, this bright young lawyer had inherited from his father. The senator was the type of man who could persuade a survivor of the Titanic to book a three-week cruise to Alaska and make the person believe it was his own idea. She’d never met anyone so convincing.

It apparently ran in the family. But she had had her shots, thanks to her ex, and it took a great deal to sway her from her position once she took it.

Determined to get this woman to come around, Dylan tried again. “Look, wouldn’t you hold yourself accountable if you do keep us apart and the senator winds up getting nailed to the cross for his transgressions?” On his way over to the office, he had done a little calling around to various sources. The picture that had emerged of his father’s immediate future did not look good. “Right now, everyone thinks he’s guilty of everything, including starting both world wars. If I don’t at least try to help him, there’s no telling where this is going to end up.” He pinned her with a penetrating look. “You want that on your conscience?”

This time, the silence was a great deal shorter. “You’re good,” she told him grudgingly when she spoke. “I will give you that.”

“What I am,” he countered, “is right. Now, what’ll it be? The new address, his phone number or an eternally guilty conscience?” He laid out her three choices and waited.

“You know, there is always the possibility that the public will come to their senses, the investigation will find him not guilty of misappropriation of campaign funds and those women will all admit to lying for the purposes of blackmail.” She looked at him. He was the personification of skepticism. “You’ve got to admit that’s a possibility.”

He congratulated himself on not laughing in her face. Talk about a cockeyed optimist. He wouldn’t have thought it of her, not after first seeing the other side of the woman.

“Sure it is. Right after pigs fly. They’ll not only fly,” he added, “but they’ll have their pilots’ licenses, pilots’ jackets with little gold wings pinned over the pockets and they’ll all be speaking French. Fluently,” he concluded.

He was mocking her, she thought angrily. Why was it all the good-looking men thought they had a God-given right to put everyone else down and act as if they were the only ones who mattered? The only ones who were allowed to have an opinion—and that opinion was always right.

Her eyes pinned him. “You’re a pessimist, I take it.”

Actually, he saw himself as the reverse in most cases. But in this case, it was neither. “What I am is a pragmatic man who is trying to help the head of his family save face and not go down for the things he hasn’t done, however little that might turn out to be. Now, for the last time, can you at least give me his phone number and let me talk to the man before it’s too late?”

She didn’t like the way this man kept refusing to refer to the senator by his title, but used either a pronoun or something equally as anonymous. To her, that was a sign of how little he thought of his father. She still couldn’t reconcile the notion that he was willing to go out of his way like this for someone he held in such contempt. Was there an angle he was going for that she was missing?

In any event, though she hated to admit it, he was right. The least she could do was give him that phone number he’d asked for. The final decision about a face-to-face meeting ultimately had to lie with the senator. She was not about to presume to speak on his behalf. All she could do was lay the groundwork and make sure that no reporters got to Senator Kelley.

Exhaling loudly as if the act would bring her very lungs out, Cindy capitulated. She pulled a notepad closer to her on the desk and wrote out a telephone number. Finished, she pushed the pad toward him.

Dylan looked at it. It was an 818 area code, but that didn’t mean anything. This was the number to his father’s cell phone; his father could be anywhere in the state. Or out of it. Nobody said this was going to be easy, he thought with resignation.

Tearing the sheet off the pad, he said, “By the way, you know my name because it was on my license, but I don’t know yours.”

She didn’t take the opening he gave her. “No, you don’t.”

This was like pulling teeth. Or, actually, more like questioning a hostile witness under oath, he thought. “What is it?” he asked her.

There was pure suspicion in her eyes. “Why, so you can have me investigated?”

“So I know what to call you when I need to get your attention.”

“Through,” Cindy told him without missing a beat.

The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “First or last?”

Cindy cocked her head. “Excuse me?”

“Through,” he repeated what she’d just said to him. “Is that your first name or your last name?”

He was a lawyer all right, Cindy thought. One who wasn’t going to stop badgering her until he got what he was after. Well, she supposed that it was an easy enough matter for him to find out the name of the senator’s Chief Staff Assistant. She might as well tell him now rather than keep the game going.

“Cindy,” she told him grudgingly. “Cindy Jensen.”

That hadn’t taken as long as he’d begun to think it would. His smile was broad. “Nice to meet you Cindy, Cindy Jensen.”

“You know,” she told him, “you’d get along a lot better with people if you lost that mocking tone.”

Now that amused him. “You’re giving me advice on how to get along with people?” Didn’t that fall into the realm of the pot-and-kettle thing?

She took offense at his response and what it implied. “I’ll have you know I get along beautifully with people. Non-belligerent people,” she qualified.

“I only act belligerently with people who are trying to stonewall me.” He looked at the phone number in his hand. “Now that you’ve given me a number where my father can be reached, we can become best friends.”

Her response was immediate and without hesitation. “I’d rather eat dirt.”

“Odd choice,” he commented, keeping a straight face even though he knew he was goading her, “but I won’t stand in your way. Whatever makes you happy.”

“What would make me happy,” Cindy said under her breath as she resumed moving about the office, straightening things up just so that her hands could remain busy, “is if the senator had remembered to stay a little truer to his own principles and not done anything to allow the media the opportunity to jump on his bones like a pack of snarling jackals.”

Dylan had started dialing, but stopped to listen to her. Her tone had dropped and her voice had softened. Her imagery entertained him.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a very colorful woman?” She gave him a look that told him she was not about to be softened up with compliments. “I guess not,” he concluded.

About to continue dialing, he winced as a piercing noise was emitted from the earpiece of the receiver and a female, almost metallic voice, came on the line, reciting the classic instruction: “Please hang up and dial again.”

He was about to press down the button on the cradle when Cindy did it for him. He raised his eyes to hers, thinking she’d obviously heard the jarring message. “Thanks.”

She gave him an ever-so-slight nod of the head to acknowledge that she had heard him.

As he completed dialing the number, Dylan couldn’t help wondering what it was like to have someone who was as loyal to him as this woman apparently was to his father. His first thought was that his father had to be paying her awfully well. But money didn’t buy loyalty, it bought lackeys, and a couple of minutes in Cindy Jensen’s company had convinced him that this woman was no lackey. So then what was she? The senator’s Chief Staff Assistant/head mistress? Or what?

He was going to need to get that cleared up in order to have a handle on the facts here. And on what was and wasn’t, ultimately, a press liability. Because he knew just as well as anyone that cases were first tried in the press. A victory there gave a victory elsewhere a base to grow from, becoming that much easier to achieve.

God knew he was going to have his work cut out for him.

He blew out an impatient breath. The phone had rung now a total of eight times and there’d been no answer, human or machine. In this day and age, that was pretty unusual in his book. Was she giving him the runaround again?

Dylan looked at her. “You sure this is the right number?”

She didn’t like the veiled accusation in his voice. “It’s the contact number that the senator gave me,” she told him.

Dylan frowned, debating hanging up. If there was someone there, how long could they put up with listening to the phone ring? He had his suspicions that it was a bogus number—unless his father was out, and considering the high visibility of his face after the broadcast, he sincerely doubted that.

Of course, there was also another explanation for why no one was picking up. One that absolved the Chief Staff Assistant of any blame.

“How much does my father trust you?” he asked her suddenly.

Cindy stopped moving around the office, stopped neatening, stopped straightening. She slowly turned around to look at him. Just what was this lawyer who might or might not have pure intentions saying?

“I’m the senator’s Chief Staff Assist—”

Dylan raised his hand to stop her in mid-word. This refrain was beginning to sound like a broken record and it was grating on his nerves. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re his Chief Staff Assistant. You told me. Trust me, you told me.”

Two could take that sarcastic tone, she thought, annoyed. “And you remembered. How nice for you.” The words were delivered with a smile that could have frozen a pond in July.

The woman definitely had an attitude problem, but that was something he’d deal with later. Right now, he needed to find a way to get to his damn father. The old man had picked a hell of a time for a game of hide and seek.

“You being his Chief Staff Assistant doesn’t automatically mean that he trusts you,” he pointed out, less than tactfully. “Maybe he gave you that number to throw you off.”

With a disgusted noise, Dylan hung up the phone. Now what? He supposed he could go back to his firm and see if the private investigator they kept on retainer could locate his father.

Her eyes all but shooting daggers at him, Cindy crossed back to the desk and elbowed him aside.

“Give me that,” she said, commandeering the phone and pulling the receiver out of his hand. On a hunch, she hit the redial button, then watched the caller ID screen as the numbers of the phone call he’d just made popped up one by one. Just as she’d thought. “No wonder,” she declared. Cindy raised her eyes to his face, a look of triumph on her own.

What was she up to? “No wonder what?” he wanted to know.

The phone on the other end began ringing. For a moment, she ignored it as she pointed to the screen for his benefit. “You transposed two of the numbers.”

Terminating the call, Cindy tapped in the right numbers on the keypad and then listened as the phone on the other end began to ring.

Dylan silently upbraided himself for the mistake. That was careless. And he’d been so careful lately, too. It hadn’t happened to him in a number of years now. Most days, when he remembered not to rush himself, he could keep the dyslexia completely under control.

No one at the firm suspected he had it. And except for this one girl—and he’d never confirmed it, saying she had to be mistaken—no one in either his college or the law school he’d subsequently attended, had ever even suspected that he had it.

It was, overall, rather a mild form of the annoying condition. But it was always there, in the shadows, waiting to bedevil him when he least expected it, if he just let his guard down. And it always appeared when he had the least amount of time to deal with it.

Until just now, it hadn’t cropped up for a very long time. He’d begun to think that maybe he was finally free of it. Finally free to feel unencumbered.

Just went to show him he was going to have to remain ever-diligent and on his guard.

He supposed that there were a lot worse things in life.

Like a father courting public scandal.

“Anyone?” he asked his father’s Chief Staff Assistant as she held the phone against her ear.

Rather than answer him, Cindy held the receiver out for him to take. The ringing noise had ceased. A deep, masculine voice on the other end was saying, “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”

Dylan grabbed the receiver from her and placed it against his ear. It sounded like his father, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Dad? Dad, is that you?”

For a moment, there was silence on the other end. It stretched out so long that Dylan thought perhaps the connection had been lost. Or maybe the man on the other end had just laid the phone down and walked away. That, in his opinion, would have been par for the course, representing the sort of behavior he had come to expect from his father.

And then, just as he was about to hang up the receiver, the same voice cautiously asked, “Who is this?”

It made sense that his father didn’t immediately recognize his voice, Dylan decided. After all, it wasn’t as if they spent hours on the phone, talking. Or any time at all, really. When it came right down to it, other than a few calls home from his father over the years, he couldn’t remember ever talking to him on the phone.

Phoning to catch up was just not his father’s way. These days, he seemed to like his family subdued and out of sight.

Too bad you can’t follow your own required behavior, Dad.

“This is Dylan Kelley,” he answered, then added, “your son,” for good measure.

The information was met with more silence on the other end.

Chapter 3

Just as he was about to surrender his last shred of patience and say something really terse to his father, Dylan heard the voice on the other end of the line challenge, “How do I know that you are who you say you are? How do I know that it’s really you?”

He didn’t remember his father being this paranoid. But then, his personal memories of his father were admittedly not only few and far in between, but vague as well.

“Why?” Dylan asked. “You have another son named Dylan?”

“No, but my son Dylan hasn’t spoken to me in months now. So many that I can’t really recall just how long,” his father replied.

It annoyed Dylan that his father made his answer sound more like an accusation than a statement of a situation that he had brought upon himself. “And I wouldn’t be calling now if you hadn’t gotten yourself into one hell of a mess.”

Hank was still wary. Still nervous. “My son wouldn’t care.”

“I don’t,” Dylan answered coldly. “But all of this is ripping the hell out of Mother.”

The last he’d heard, his mother had gone into hiding to avoid having to make any sort of a statement or subject herself to the public’s insatiable appetite for scandal.

For a split second, Dylan debated continuing on this path. Inadvertently, his father was handing him his way out. He could just back away, saying something inane about just wanting to check on his father’s whereabouts and now that he had, he was done with it.

But that wasn’t why he was here, Dylan reminded himself stoically. He was here not just to do damage control but, like it or not, to try to pull his father out of this quagmire.

“I’m offering you my services so we can find a way out of this and spare Mother any further humiliation. After everything you’ve put her through, essentially leaving her to raise the four of us by herself, she doesn’t deserve this.” And if it hadn’t been for his uncle Donald, they would have found themselves to be all alone. The nannies and servants were exceedingly poor substitutes for a parent’s love, a parent’s attention. “The press is hell-bent on hounding her.”

He heard his father laugh shortly. “I know the feeling.”

Dylan knew he should keep his comment to himself, but he just couldn’t. There was a deep-seated anger he needed to vent before he could be of any use to the old man. “I doubt that you’re able to feel anything at all that doesn’t directly affect you.”

There was a pause again. He was sincerely skeptical that guilt had backed his father into silence. When it came to what the family thought of him, Dylan was convinced that his father had the emotional hide of a rhino.

When the senator spoke again, it was to ask another question. “How did you get this number?”

Dylan glanced toward the woman who had given up all pretense of not paying attention to every word he was saying. She stood on the other side of the desk, unabashedly listening to his end of the conversation, most likely trying to fill in the blanks that she wasn’t able to hear.

“Your Chief Staff Assistant gave it to me.”

“Cindy Jensen gave it to you?’ his father asked incredulously. “She believed you?”

Dylan sighed. He hadn’t come here to play games. His time was too precious for that. Hitting the speaker button, he retired the receiver into the cradle. “Here, why don’t you ask her yourself? I just put you on speakerphone.”

“Where are you?” Hank wanted to know, far from won over.

“I’m standing in your Beverly Hills office,” Dylan told him. And then he turned his attention to Cindy. “Ball’s in your court, Chief Staff Assistant,” he said, deliberately putting emphasize on the word chief.

“Cindy?” Hank asked uncertainly.

“I’m right here, Senator,” Cindy answered, moving closer to the phone on the desk.

“Cindy.” There was relief in Hank’s voice, as if he could now relax because someone he trusted—one of the few individuals he trusted—was there on his behalf. “And you’re convinced that you’re dealing with my son? One of my sons?” Hank said, qualifying his question.

“Yes, sir,” Cindy replied firmly. “He showed me his driver’s license.”

“Driver’s licenses can be faked,” Hank pointed out, then instructed her to describe him.

Cindy frowned. She hadn’t thought of that, that the man could be showing her a fake driver’s license. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the individual on the other side of the desk more closely. Something in her gut told her she was right, despite the momentary uncertainty.

“He’s about six foot one,” she began.

“Six foot two and a half,” Dylan corrected her. It wasn’t that the inch and a half difference was so important, he just wanted her to be accurate. He knew damn well that his father had absolutely no idea how tall he actually was.

Cindy ignored Dylan’s interjection. “He’s got intense blue eyes and really thick dark hair.” She paused for a second, weighing her next sentence before continuing. “He could stand a haircut,” she commented.

He’d gotten nothing but positive responses from the women in his office and the ones he went out with. Obviously this one liked to go against the grain. “I like it this length,” Dylan informed her.

Cindy responded with a careless shrug of her slim shoulders, then went on as if he hadn’t said anything. “But he dresses well. And if I look at him from the side,” which she did now, moving to another vantage point around the desk, “he looks a little like a younger version of you, Senator.”

They heard Hank blow out a breath, as if he’d been holding it. “All right, I’m convinced.”

“Hallelujah,” Dylan enthused cryptically. “Now can we get on with this, please?” He didn’t wait for a response to his plea. “Where are you?”

Ever since the scene on the courthouse steps, Hank had taken measures to keep ahead of the media hounds. “I’ve been moving around, trying to stay a step ahead of the press.” The silence that met his statement told Hank that Dylan was waiting for him to elaborate. “Staying with different people.”

“Your mistresses?” Dylan asked. There was a coldness in his voice.

He didn’t expect the answer he heard. “Hell, no,” his father hooted. “They’re a jealous bunch. They didn’t know about each other,” he confessed. “Now they’re all ready to vivisect me.”

“That would save the government the cost of a trial,” Dylan commented dryly. He found himself relating to this unreal collection of supermodel blondes. “Can’t say I blame them,” he said almost under his breath, but still audible enough to be heard. “So exactly where can I meet you?”

“Then you really are serious about wanting to help me?” Hank pressed.

There was a part of Dylan that still couldn’t shake the thought that he was going to regret this, but he answered in the affirmative. In a manner of speaking. “Unfortunately, I am.”

Hank thought for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind. There were few enough people whom he could trust. Everyone who’d professed friendship and support during the good times had turned on him. The body count was rising as his choices were diminishing.

“Meet me at the house,” Hank told him. “I can be there in an hour.”

“The house” was his sprawling, incredibly opulent estate in Beverly Hills. There were few like it. There were sheiks who had palaces that might lay claim to rivaling the area that Hank whimsically called home, but there was nothing like it around here. And that was saying a lot, given the affluence that could be found in Beverly Hills.

“Aren’t you afraid that the media will ambush you?” Dylan asked. “From what I hear, they’re camped out in front of the security gates at the house.”

After the scene the other day, Hank wouldn’t want to come within fifty yards of the media, but fears had to be faced. “There are ways to get in and out undetected if I have to.”

“Is that how you did it?” Dylan wanted to know.

His father obviously wasn’t following him. “Did what?”

“Stepped out on Mother all those times that you were at home?”

The twenty-room estate, built on the site of a silent-movie great’s one-of-a-kind mansion, had incorporated some of that former legend’s quirky designs, including an underground passage that ran close to a mile and a quarter, eventually coming out into the basement of the estate next door.

Legend had it that the passage had originally been used by the movie star to sneak away for regular trysts with the woman who eventually became his third wife, when both he and the woman in question were married to other people.

Dylan could almost see his father scowling on the other end of the line.

“This isn’t the time for that discussion, Dylan,” Hank informed him.

“No, I wouldn’t think it would be,” Dylan replied glibly. “Okay, one hour,” he agreed. “I’ll see you there.” But then a complicating factor hit him. “But if I go directly to the estate, the newshounds camped outside the estate gates will suspect something is up.”

“As long as you don’t stop to talk to them, we’ll be fine. Knowing and suspecting are two very different things,” Hank pointed out.

“You would be the expert on that,” Dylan couldn’t help observing. “Okay, one hour. I’ll be there.”

Reaching out, he was about to disconnect the call when he heard his father say, “Oh, and Dylan?”

Now what? “Yes, sir?”

“Thanks.” The single word came without a preamble. Not even a mild word of foreshow, a whisper, something to give him a clue this was coming.

The one sure thing was that he hadn’t expected it. Not from his father. Maybe from one of his father’s handlers or from the staff members he was, or had been, running into the ground—that he could see.

But from the old man himself? Not possible. And yet, he’d said it. Who knew that the middle of September was the time for miracles?

The single word of gratitude had sounded genuine. Definitely a first for the old man, Dylan thought cynically.

“Yeah, well, don’t go thanking me just yet. We’ve got a ways to go with this before you’re anywhere in the clear.”

But Hank was not about to take back what he’d said. “Just knowing you’re there, in my corner, means a lot to me, Dylan.”

Like you were there in Mother’s corner, Dad?

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask that, but it wouldn’t serve any purpose, would just stir things up, muddy the waters. The past was the past and his father was not a man who would suddenly have an epiphany because one of his sons had taken him to task for his very tarnished behavior. It just didn’t work that way. Not where his father was concerned.

He let the comment go.

“Okay,” Dylan repeated, his voice somewhat stilted. “One hour. Security code still the same to get in the gates?” he asked.

“Yes, except that you need to reverse the numbers. I reentered them that way last month.”

Dylan wondered if his father even remembered that his son did that unintentionally more times than he liked to think of. Most likely the old man didn’t remember that one of his children battled dyslexia.

Nothing new there. Actually remembering how many children he had, would be a major accomplishment for his father.

Legitimate children, Dylan qualified. God only knew how many other women his father had gotten pregnant before this latest one had stepped into the spotlight, demanding her due.

Pressing End, he disconnected the call and shook his head. Though he was accustomed to a fast-paced life, this all still felt like a circus to him. A loon-fest about a man who bore little to no resemblance to the man he’d once known as his father.

Or had thought he’d known, Dylan amended.

Just shows that I wasn’t all that bright as a kid, he thought.

Turning from the desk, he saw that his father’s petite guard dog in the smart light-gray suit was watching him. If it didn’t seem so incredible, he would have said that there was sympathy in her eyes. But that was impossible; guard dogs didn’t feel sympathy. Not that he would have welcomed it anyway.

“He meant that, you know,” Cindy told him quietly just as Dylan was about to pick up his hand-stitched leather briefcase and leave.

Which part of the conversation was she referring to? “Meant what?” he asked.

“The part about being grateful to you for offering your help.” She had the sense that the senator was feeling rather alone right now, what with his formerly adoring followers suddenly turning on him, recoiling the way people did when confronted with something dangerous and evil.

Dylan shrugged. “Well, like I said, I’m not doing it for him. He goes down, everyone in the family’s going to be dragged through the mud with him.” He looked at her, wanting no mistake to be made about this. No false intentions attached to what he was doing. “I’m not about to see that happen.”

She nodded, as if she understood. The smile on her lips this time around was neither mocking nor cynical. It was, he caught himself thinking, rather sweet. The next moment, he pushed the thought aside. The last thing he needed right now was to be having any sort of sensual thoughts about one of his father’s women.

“So you’re the family crusader?” she was asking.

He didn’t care for labels. Nor did he welcome any false notions about who or what he was. That was strictly his father’s purview.

Shaking his head to negate her assumption, he told her, “I’m just a guy who doesn’t want to see his mother and his brothers and sister have to endure any more than they already have.”

Feeling suddenly woozy, Cindy leaned her hip against the desk, needing a little support as a vague dizziness threatened to intensify. Her head didn’t feel right. Wouldn’t that be just perfect, fainting in front of the senator’s son?

She struggled to find her way out of the fog. A moment later, much to her relief, the strange dizziness receded. Cindy concentrated, focusing on what Dylan had just said. She wanted to draw attention away from herself.

“And what was it that they—and you—have already endured?”

He shrugged. He wasn’t trying to make her think that his family life was unique, just that it was very far from the perfection his father had purported it to be.

“Nothing that a lot of other families of public personalities haven’t had to put up with. A husband and father who was never there. Who only took an interest—or pretended to—when it suited his need to appear to be an involved husband and parent.”

He shrugged again, but his tone belied this attempt at casualness. “I resented being used,” he confessed.

The next moment, Dylan caught himself. What the hell was he doing? Since when did this become true-confessions time? He was usually a great deal better at keeping things to himself. He was gregarious, but schooled in the art of appearing to say much while really saying very little.

Something, he supposed, he’d actually picked up from his father.

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe that was the only way the senator could relate to you and your siblings?” Cindy suggested.

He didn’t see how she got from point A to point B. There was an entire river between them. “You mean by using us to pad his résumé, to make himself look like a genuine walking, talking family-values kind of guy?”

He had been severely hurt by his father’s inattention, Cindy thought. He just wasn’t about to admit it to anyone, even himself. Sympathy stirred within her.

“I mean, he had to relate to you within the only realm where he felt comfortable,” she said. “The political arena.”

He’d concede that she might have a point. “That could be true about us—he never got to know any of us. We were all just little kids when he won his first election and went off to Washington. But what about my mother?” he asked. The answer, as far as he was concerned, was a foregone conclusion. “She knew him before all this political smoke-and-mirrors garbage came in to distract him. If it wasn’t for her,” he pointed out, “he never would have been able to become the U.S. senator from California. It was her money, her inheritance, he used to fund his campaigns.”

She was aware of the anger in his eyes and would have backed away, but something he’d said had caught her attention. It didn’t add up. He’d said that he and his family had stayed on the home front while his father had gone to Washington. But she’d had the impression that they’d gone with his father.

She asked him about it. “I remember seeing a photograph of the senator with his family with the White House in the background. I got the impression that you weren’t playing tourists.”

“No, we did live there. For a while. Mother was determined the family would stay together, but the social whirl, the long hours, the constant campaigning—official and covert—got to be too much for her.”

He remembered those early years. Remembered wanting to do something to make his mother smile again. Remembered resenting his father for doing this to her. For not giving them a normal life.

“And besides, she hardly saw my father anyway. He was always working late on some committee or other.”

Was that when it started, Dad? Did you connect with your first mistresses there, while using that old chestnut on Mother about having to work late? Was it a woman you were “working on” and not a bill?

There was no point in wondering about that, Dylan decided. The time for mending family fences was long gone. He’d meant what he said about doing this just for his mother’s sake. If she weren’t around, if all this wouldn’t take a toll on her pride, he’d let his father twist in the wind, hanging from a rope that the old man had fashioned out of all his failings and shortcomings.

The woman with the expressive eyes was still looking at him. Was she expecting some dramatic revelation to be forthcoming? He had already said far more than he should have.

“He really hurt you a great deal, didn’t he?” It was in the form of a question, but he sensed that his father’s Chief Staff Assistant wasn’t asking, she was confirming. He didn’t like being backed into a corner, didn’t like being deposited into a labeled space. It wasn’t the way he operated.

Instead of answering, he picked up his briefcase. “I’m going to take off,” he told her. “There’s no telling what I’ll run into, even just trying to get near the senator’s house.” He and his siblings had grown up there, but it had never been much of a home to him. More like a museum with a tennis court and sauna.

She nodded, about to turn back to what she’d been doing before he ever walked in. And then she stopped abruptly.

There was absolutely no point in manning the office or getting the senator’s files in order, not until she knew whether things were going to change drastically. There was also absolutely no reason to organize files that would ultimately wind up being shredded. Or to draw up schedules that weren’t going to be followed.

Looking at the senator’s son, she made up her mind quickly. He was probably not going to like this, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t doing it for him. “I’m going with you.”

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