Extreme Exposure (24 page)

“Reece!”

“What?”

“Be careful!”

His heart gave an extra beat. So she was worried about him. He liked that. “I will. Now stay here.”

Kara watched him disappear down the hallway, her heart pounding deafeningly in her ears. She felt stupid cowering in her bed while he went to face danger alone. She had just climbed out of bed and wrapped the sheet around herself when she heard him call for her in a loud whisper.

“Kara, come see your night prowlers.”

She hurried down the hallway and found him staring out the sliding glass door, the porch light casting the valleys and ridges of his naked body in high relief.

He held out his hand. “It’s okay. You’ll see.”

She took his hand, looked out the door, and saw three masked intruders. “The thieving, little pigs! That’s who’s been eating the bird food. Don’t they need to go hibernate or something?”

“Raccoons aren’t true hibernators. When it gets warm, they come out to forage.”

She couldn’t help but laugh as they cast her guilty looks and kept eating. “I can’t believe they climbed up there. They look ridiculous!”

“They have opposable thumbs, you know.”

Where did he learn this stuff? “Thanks, Dr. Doolittle.”

Then she turned and found herself staring at his naked body in all its glory. He looked like a classical statue—except for the part of him that was steadily growing thicker, harder, and longer. She met his gaze and smiled.

He shook his head. “It’s two in the morning, Kara. We have to get up in three hours, remember?”

“Last one in bed gives head.” She turned and ran, stifling giggles, back toward the bedroom, Reece one step behind her.

I
T WAS
only later, after she’d given him the blowjob of his life and lay asleep beside him, that Reece realized he’d forgotten to tell her about his confrontation with Prentice.

H
E DIDN
’
T
tell her in the morning either. Somehow, Kara’s alarm didn’t go off, and the two of them were awakened by a curious four-year-old, who climbed into bed between them, looked Reece in the eye, and asked, “Are you having sex with my mommy?”

Still half asleep and unsure what Kara would want him to say, Reece mumbled, “Not at the moment.” Then he nudged Kara awake.

In the mad rush to get everyone presentable and off to the office and day care on time, he’d quite simply forgotten. But when he got to the Capitol and picked up the papers he realized what a huge mistake that was.

There on the front page of the state section in full color was a photograph of him face-to-face with Prentice above an article with the headline, “Senator Sheridan, local attorney come close to blows: Woman at heart of dispute.”

Coffee turned to lead in his stomach as he read an almost verbatim account of his encounter with Prentice. “Sheridan then shouted, ‘Maybe you didn’t want a child, but you sure as hell were enthusiastic about [expletive deleted] her, weren’t you? A pretty young woman right out of college looks good to a middle-aged lawyer. Did you enjoy her? Did you brag to your friends how clever you were when you abandoned her?’ ”

But it was the second-to-last paragraph that clinched it. “The identity of the woman in question is uncertain, but a recent police report linked Sheridan with Kara McMillan, an investigative reporter and columnist with the
Denver Independent
. McMillan, a single mother, and Sheridan, who is also unmarried, were not available for comment Thursday evening.”

He buried his face in his hands and cursed his own stupidity.

Way to fuck it all up, buddy. The voters will think you’re a psychopath, and you’ll be lucky if Kara ever speaks with you again.

He took a deep breath, reached for the phone, and dialed, hoping he would reach her before the newspaper did.

K
ARA FELT
her cell phone vibrate but barely noticed it as she read to the bottom of the article. Blood thrummed in her ears. The floor seemed to tilt. How could this have happened? Why hadn’t Reece warned her?

The identity of the woman in question is uncertain, but a recent police report linked Sheridan with Kara McMillan, an investigative reporter and columnist with the
Denver Independent.

Tom had called her into his office the moment she’d stepped into the office and tossed the paper in her face. Now he sat staring up at her through those flat eyes of his.

She dropped the paper back on his desk and fought to smooth over her shock. “I knew nothing about this, nor was I there. I’m sorry the newspaper was mentioned in the article, but it was hardly my fault.”

“Reporters are not supposed to lead lives that become the subject of public speculation, McMillan.”

“No, they’re not.” There was no way around that.

“Your boytoy is a state senator, a controversial public figure.”

She winced at his choice of words and felt shock flare into temper. “He’s hardly my boytoy. Senator Sheridan is a close—”

“I don’t care what he is!” Tom’s voice boomed through the office. “You’re fucking a state senator, and it’s making news! At least if you were plying him for information, getting him to spill insider secrets, I could respect it! But I can’t put up with a member of my staff sleeping with the enemy and compromising this newspaper!”

Kara gaped at him in disgust, turned her back on him, and jerked open his office door.

“I didn’t give you permission to leave!”

She spun around in the open doorway and faced him,
beyond fury. “Tom, you are such a dick! Does anyone here question you when you choose to screw members of your own staff? That’s worse than sleeping with the enemy. That’s a lawsuit! Talk about compromising the newspaper!”

The stony mask slipped from his face, and he glared at her. “You are crossing the line, McMillan.”

“
You
crossed the line, Tom. I’m damn good at my job, and I’m tired of your bullshit! If it’s not who I have sex with, then it’s the fact that I’m a mother. Has anything ever compromised my ability to do my job? No! So quit your goddamned yelling and talk to me with some measure of respect, or I’ll quit and take this story across town!”

“I’m writing you up for this.”

“You do that.” Shaking with anger and sure she was about to cry, she turned and walked into a stunned and silent newsroom.

CHAPTER 18

K
ARA WAS
sitting at her desk, trying hard to focus on the documents in front of her, when the roses arrived. Two dozen blood-red, long-stem roses in a vase of Orrefors crystal. She ignored Matt’s whistles and taunts as the delivery woman placed the flowers on her desk. She also ignored the little card that came with the flowers. She knew who’d sent them.

She’d gotten the message Reece had left on her cell and had heard his version of the story, or at least part of it: Galen had seen her leaving Reece’s office and had taken it upon himself to reveal her past and to say unflattering things about her to Reece, who’d leapt to her defense, not knowing a reporter was standing only feet away. His message said he’d meant to tell her about the confrontation last night but had gotten distracted.

How could she have been so stupid? She’d known from the beginning that getting involved with a politician was a bad idea. She’d known it would put her job at risk. She’d known it had the potential to shatter the fragile china-doll balance of her life. She’d walked into it with her eyes open. She’d even gone to his place of work and had sex on his desk, for God’s sake! Now Reece was getting bad ink, and she’d been written up for the first time in her career.

Worse than that—far worse than that—anyone who knew her and had read the article could now speculate that Galen
was Connor’s father. It was a secret she’d kept from everyone except her mother and Holly. Galen’s name wasn’t even on Connor’s birth certificate. Somehow it had seemed kinder to allow Connor to wonder who his father was than to give him the name of a man who didn’t care that he even existed. And if she were honest with herself, it had taken some of the pain out of Galen’s rejection and his accusations to simply deny his involvement with her child.

But now that fact was a matter of cheap gossip.

Well done, McMillan. Frigging brilliant.

Anger seethed in her belly. Anger at Tom, at Galen, at Reece. Anger at herself.

Pretending the roses weren’t sitting there, she forced her gaze back onto the folder in her hands. Mr. Hammond had told her to look for the memo from the Legislative Audit Committee, and that’s what she was doing. No one had yet entered it into the database, so she was now going page by page through the thousand or so pages that had yet to be documented. If it was here, she would find it. If it wasn’t, she would drive over to the health department and raise hell.

“Damn it!” She dropped the folder onto her desk and faced the roses.

They were truly lovely, their scent heady enough to rise above the office odors of stale newsprint, cleaning products, and coffee. She reached for the card and tore open the envelope. On a card of plain white was an apology.

I am sorry to the bottom of my heart. Reece.

He’d signed it himself. She recognized his handwriting.

“What does it say?”

She turned to find Tessa and Sophie standing behind her. She tossed them the card and went back to her work.

“Bless his heart!” That was Tessa’s standard southern belle response to everything, so Kara ignored it. “I like this guy more and more every day.”

Sophie rolled a spare chair up next to her, making it clear this invasion of space wasn’t over yet. “Kara, I think it’s time we had a girls’ night out. It’s been ages.”

Kara set the papers aside and turned to her friends. “I know you both mean well, but right now all I want to do is get the Northrup story and this entire damned day behind me. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want advice.”

“Which is why you need it,” Sophie insisted. “It will be great—you, me, Tess, Holly, and Connor. We’ll go to Red Robin. Connor will be so distracted by the fries and balloons he won’t realize what we’re talking about.”

Kara moaned and buried her face in her hands, remembering Connor’s words this morning.

Are you having sex with my mommy?

“Oh, lord!” They were supposed to have woken up early enough for Reece to leave before Connor got out of bed. But Kara had somehow turned off the alarm in her sleep—or been so preoccupied that she’d forgotten to set it.

“Ah, poor baby!” Tessa cooed. “Look at her! She’s a damned wreck. I could kick Tom’s ass.”

“You’ll have to beat me to it, Tess.” Sophie put a hand on Kara’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “You’re not squeaking out of this, kid. If you try, we’ll show up at your front door with a bottle of tequila.”

“Beautiful.” Kara knew better than to think Sophie was bluffing. “All right. You win. Red Robin at six.”

S
HE HADN
’
T
returned his calls. He knew she’d gotten the roses, because he’d called the florist to make certain. Clearly, she was furious with him. Hell, he was furious with himself. While Prentice certainly deserved everything he’d gotten and more, Reece had let his temper get the best of him and, in trying to stand up for Kara, he’d dragged her into the mud. He’d handled the situation poorly, and she was paying the price.

Certainly, the incident wasn’t likely to boost his political career. But it wasn’t likely to hurt him, either. It would die down once the press found some other morsel to chew on.
No one was going to fire him. If something like this was enough to keep him from getting elected for a second term then he probably wasn’t pleasing his constituents in the first place. Besides, teaching, not politics, was his job.

He picked up the phone, intending to call legislative legal and get an update on his request for a list of all open-records requests Kara had filed, when his fingers dialed the
Independent.
“Kara McMillan, please.”

To his surprise, she was at her desk and took the call. He heard ice slide into her voice when she realized it was he. “I can’t talk now.”

“I’ll come by tonight. We can talk then.”

“I won’t be home.” She said it with finality.

“You’re angry, and I don’t blame you.”

“I came close to losing my job today, and the entire newsroom is now speculating on my love life and Connor’s paternity. You bet I’m angry!” A quaver in her voice hinted at tears.

The jagged edge of regret pressed into his gut. “God, I’m sorry, Kara. He said things . . . There’s no excuse. I lost my temper.”

“That part of my life is private.” Her voice was a strained whisper, and he knew she was trying to keep from being overheard. “You had no right getting involved, no matter what he said!”

“I shouldn’t have lost control. But hell, Kara, I had just made love with you and then he came along.” How could he explain what it was like to still have the scent of a woman on your skin and then have to listen while another man bragged about abusing her? But Reece was making excuses. There were no excuses—except perhaps one. “I care about you, Kara. And I care about Connor, too.”

She gave a joyless laugh. “We need to talk about that.”

He could tell where this was headed. “Don’t try to shut me out, Kara. We both know there’s more to this relationship than sex.”

He could hear the hesitation in her silence. “I have to go.”

So did he. He needed to call legislative legal, and he was due on the Senate floor in forty-five minutes. “I know. I’ll call.”

Then, with so many things still left unspoken between them, he hung up the phone.

I
T WAS
late afternoon when Kara found it. An innocuous-looking memo, it was dated last November and stamped “CONFIDENTIAL” in big, red letters. She read through it quickly, shaking her head in disgust.

Mr. Hammond’s continual pursuit of Northrup raises disturbing questions about his objectivity and his ability to conduct his duties in a rational manner. After reviewing his inspection reports, it is clear that there are improprieties in his conduct and the manner in which this inspection was carried out. Further harassment of Northrup could result in a performance audit of the air-quality division.