Confidential: Expecting! (4 page)

Logan didn’t smile. “No.”

“Then why?” Her head angled in challenge.

The ball was in his court. He was grimly serious when he said, “Because of this.”

He closed the distance between them as he spoke and pulled her into his arms before he could think better of it. His mouth found hers before she could mount a protest. He should have known Mallory wouldn’t protest. Hadn’t they already established that she wasn’t coy? Instead, she rose on tiptoe and boldly kissed him back. When he would have ended it, she was just getting
started, tilting her head in the opposite direction and deepening the contact.

Zip. Zap. Zing.
He dove back in.

The woman might well be the death of him, but Logan didn’t care. He hadn’t felt this alive in years.

T
HE
encounter with Logan played on Mallory’s mind as she waited for her train to arrive. Actually, it more than played on her mind. It obliterated all other thoughts.

The man sure knew how to kiss.

But then, she’d expected more than mere competency from someone who looked like Logan. What she hadn’t expected were fireworks. These weren’t some piddling display, either, but the kind that lit up the sky for a citywide Independence Day celebration. God help her, they were still going off, raining down sparks on her heated skin, especially when she recalled the wanton way in which she’d responded to him.

She’d wrapped her arms around him, clinging like some sort of human ivy.

The man was a story, she reminded herself yet again. Dinner and an evening sail on his boat had been borderline unprofessional, but Mallory had bypassed her conscience, telling herself she was meeting him in the name of research. Research didn’t include getting physical. She’d crossed the line big-time with that kiss.

Though the sun had set, the temperature hadn’t dipped much, and she was too keyed up to go home, where her air-conditioning was on the blink. There was no way she wanted to sit alone in her hot little box of an apartment and ruminate about Logan’s masterful mouth and her appalling lack of restraint and professionalism. She opted to return to the office.

This wasn’t the first evening that had found Mallory in the
Herald’
s multistoried Art Deco building on Grand Avenue. She’d been known to sleep on the lumpy sofa in the women’s lounge when a story kept her late. When she entered the lobby this evening, the second-shift security guard smiled and sent her a friendly wave.

“Hey, kiddo.”

Kiddo.
Sometimes Mallory felt positively ancient despite not having yet reached her thirtieth birthday. Tonight was one such time.

“Hi, Joe.”

“Cubs are up by three runs in the bottom of the seventh,” he informed her as she waited for the elevator to arrive. “A win tonight will put them three games ahead of the Sox.”

“I’m not switching my allegiance,” she said of her beloved baseball team. She’d been a fan even before moving to Chicago, which was one of only a couple cities to have more than one Major League franchise. “Even if my guys wind up dead last and the Cubs go all the way to the World Series, you won’t find me cheering them on. There’s still such a thing as loyalty, you know.”

The older man merely winked. “You’ll come around, kiddo.”

“Not in this lifetime,” she replied as she stepped into the lift.

Relative silence greeted Mallory when she stepped off on the fourth floor. The
Herald
was an afternoon paper, which meant it went to press before noon. At this time of the evening only a couple of overnight city desk editors and a smattering of reporters, including the one working the night-cops beat, were at their desks. The television was on, tuned to a cable news channel, and static-laced conversations could be heard coming from the omnipresent police scanner. She breathed in the earthy scent of newsprint and the underlying odor of stale cigarette smoke. Smoking had been banned building wide a few years earlier, but even a fresh coat of paint on the walls and new carpet tiles on the floor hadn’t managed to completely banish the smell.

Careers had been made in this newsroom. Mallory would be damned if she would give up hers without a fight.

Pushing Logan’s kiss to the recesses of her mind, she grabbed a bottle of diet cola from the cafeteria vending machine and headed to the second-floor library. In newspaper jargon the library was also known as the morgue. It was as quiet as one tonight when she flipped on the overhead lights and stepped inside.

These days technology made it possible to access every story, photo and caption that ran in each day’s edition from the computer at her desk, which was one
of the reasons the library’s staff of six had been pared down to two, one of whom worked only part-time. The computer system had been in place for a while now, but everything that predated it was stored in this room, either on microfilm or in individual files of clippings that were categorized by both the reporter’s byline and the story’s subject matter.

Mallory started with the clip files, grabbing a handful by a senior lifestyles reporter who’d covered the city’s social scene at the
Herald
for more than three decades. Logan was a born and bred Chicagoan, and his wealthy parents regularly made headlines for charity work and other good deeds. Maybe, just maybe, she’d get lucky.

Two hours later Mallory rubbed her bleary eyes and finished off the last of her now warm diet cola. She’d gone back through several years’ worth of clippings and had found nothing more controversial than a photograph of his father christening a sightseeing boat for a company that was the top competitor of one that now regularly advertised on Logan’s program.

She was ready to call it a night when she spied a folder titled Engagement Announcements that had accidentally been filed with the other. A light bulb clicked on. Logan wasn’t married now, but had he ever been?

Her question was answered forty-five minutes later when she opened a folded yellow clipping that announced the engagement of Logan Reed Bartholomew and Felicia Ann Gable. He was nearly a decade younger in the photo, but he looked the same even though his hair was a little longer and his face less angular. The woman
standing at his side smiled adoringly at him. She also was stunning and Mallory’s polar opposite with long blond hair and classical features.

Mallory’s stomach knotted. She passed it off as excitement though it felt suspiciously like disappointment or, more ominously, dread. But that was ridiculous. She
wanted
to find dirt. That’s why she was in the newspaper’s morgue scouring clip files for leads. It was why she’d accepted Logan’s invitation for dinner and a sail. Of course, the fact he had been married wasn’t exactly dirt. His wife could have died. Or he could be divorced. A lot of marriages failed. Statistically speaking, half of them, as her mother liked to remind her. Divorce wasn’t a story…unless it was the result of something serious such as spousal abuse or some kind of addiction.

Logan an abuser…either of women or substances? That didn’t seem possible. But during her years of reporting, Mallory had encountered people every bit as seemingly upstanding as Logan with even darker secrets to hide.

“A fall wedding is planned,” the notice read.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she murmured half under her breath.

From a filing cabinet at the back of the room she pulled out a stack of files of wedding announcements starting in late September of the same year and running through March of the following one. Sometimes it took newlyweds months to turn in the notice, especially if they were waiting to receive proofs from their photographers.

She’d just settled back in her seat when the door opened.

Sandra Hutchens eyed Mallory in surprise. “You’re here kind of late, aren’t you, Stevens? Or has another screw-up caused you to be busted back to night file clerk?”

“Funny,” Mallory muttered between gritted teeth. “What are you doing here?”

“Gathering a little background for an investigative piece I’m working on with Tom Gerard.” Tom was one of the reporters assigned to district court. “You remember those?”

Did she ever. God, she missed real news.

“All the Freedom of Information Act requests we had to file are finally paying off. Heads are going to roll after this story runs.”

It was all Mallory could do not to salivate, especially since she knew her demotion was the only reason a hack like Sandra was now working on such a meaty story with Tom.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Mallory muttered, knowing an explanation of “it” was unnecessary.

Sandra grinned. “Oh, I intend to.”

It was all Mallory could do not to snarl. She and Sandra tolerated each other in a professional setting, but it was an open secret that no love was lost between them. Their adversarial relationship dated to Mallory’s days as an unpaid intern at the paper. Sandra, who had been at the
Herald
for nearly a decade by that time, had covered Chicago government, and she’d balked at
having to take a rookie around on her beat. Not long after, that “rookie” had made a fool of her.

After a seemingly mundane city council meeting, they had returned to the newsroom where Sandra had filed a straightforward story about the city not renewing its contract with the current waste management company. Mallory, however, had acted on a hunch and done a little more digging.

Two months later, her piece exposing a scandal involving three aldermen receiving kickbacks from the new firm ran across the top of page one. Then it was picked up by the Associated Press wire service and printed in newspapers from coast to coast. Sandra had hated Mallory ever since, and she had celebrated Mallory’s fall from grace by buying a round of drinks for patrons at the Torch, a hole-in-wall pub that catered to reporters and other working stiffs rather than tourists.

“Wedding announcements.” Sandra’s eyes narrowed. “What are you up to?”

“You know those fluff pieces we get to do for the Lifestyles section,” Mallory evaded. “Who cares what styles of dress were in fashion a decade ago?”

Sandra snorted out a laugh. “Wedding fashions. My how the mighty have fallen.”

Offering a brittle smile, Mallory rose to her feet and raked the files into a pile, intending to leave.

Sandra laid a hand on her arm. “Have you filled out the form to check those out?”

“I’m just taking them to my desk.” Actually, Mallory
was planning to take them home. Per usual, she had no other plans for the weekend.

“It doesn’t matter. If you’re taking clip files out of this room, you need to fill out a form,” the other woman insisted and pointed to the stack of papers on a high counter next to the door.

Mallory snorted. “Right. And you do that every single time you walk out of here with clips.”

“No.” Sandra’s smile was smug. “But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. And for someone who’s basically on probation, I’d think you’d be eager to follow the rules.”

“How kind of you to remind me of that,” Mallory muttered.

“Don’t mention it.” She smirked. “Really, it’s my pleasure.”

Mallory filled out the necessary form, jotting down the file numbers, the date and, because she was feeling peevish, she put Sandra’s name down as the person checking them out.

Logan’s apartment was quiet when he arrived home. He’d loitered on his boat for a couple of hours after Mallory left, thinking as much as puttering. As he’d washed the dinner dishes, stowed the small barbecue grill in the hold and checked the rigging, he’d tried to figure out what his next move with Mallory should be.

He still hadn’t reached a conclusion, though he knew he shouldn’t have kissed her. Hell, even as he’d drawn her into his arms, he’d known that. But just as he hadn’t
been able to resist the temptation she’d posed then, he couldn’t muster any regret now.

At home he prowled his penthouse, which offered stunning views of the lake from the living room’s large windows and a generously proportioned patio. Where once he’d welcomed the high-rise’s solitude and privacy, it just seemed lonely now. He poured himself a drink and headed outside.

Part of him had hoped that whatever magic spell Mallory had cast on him would wear off with that kiss. It hadn’t and the other half of him was damned relieved. Despite all of his uncertainty, one thing was clear: tonight wasn’t the end of it.

The phone on the bedside table rang before eight the following morning. Logan grabbed for it, muttering a sleepy hello even as he folded the other arm over his eyes to block the light coming from the window.

“You didn’t call last night,” the woman on the other end of the line accused without the courtesy of a greeting.

“Sorry.” Squinting, he levered up on one elbow, more amused than irritated. “Am I grounded?”

His agent dismissed the teasing question with an audible huff. “What happened with Mallory Stevens? I want to know everything.”

That statement cut deeply into amusement’s lead over irritation. “I don’t believe in kissing and telling.”

Logan regretted the words instantly.

“Dear God!” Nina exclaimed. “Please tell me nothing happened between the two of you.”

“Nothing happened,” he repeated in monotone.

“This isn’t funny, Logan.”

“No, it’s not.” But Nina failed to detect the edge in his voice.

“You can’t trust her,” she went on. “Reporters like her are sharks. They get one whiff of blood in the water and they go on the attack.”

“That’s rather dramatic,” he drawled. “Besides, I thought you said Mallory was a pit bull? Sharks and dogs are two different species, you know.”

“Logan—”

He sat up fully and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Look, Nina, as touching as I find your concern, my personal life is just that…personal.”

“I guarantee you that Mallory doesn’t see it the same way. If she finds out something about you that can help sell newspapers, she’s going to use it. And unless it’s out and out false and maliciously published, we won’t be able to do a damned thing about it because you’re a public figure.”

His agent was right, of course. As a celebrity, he was fair game. If Mallory sniffed out a story, she would write it. What did it say about him that he didn’t care? Besides, he rationalized, what did he have to hide?

So he told his agent, “There’s no need to worry. She’s curious about the syndication deal. She’s not the only reporter who is.”

Maybe he would give her an exclusive when the terms of the contract had been hammered out.

“In the meantime,” he continued, “there’s nothing Mallory Stevens is going to discover about me personally that’s exciting enough to grace the front page of her newspaper or any other. As much as I hate to admit it, Nina, my life is pretty damned pedestrian.”

“Are you sure about that?”