The Marriage Agenda (14 page)

Chapter Eighteen

After the initial flush of adrenaline wore off, Chloe felt like a train wreck. It had been one thing to go after a big story but was another to find it. Because it was no longer just a nameless, faceless story but one with real people attached. She didn’t care so much for Rex’s feelings, but she genuinely liked Katherine. And Knox…how could she do this to Knox? He’d married her to launch his career. He wanted to restore honor to the family name. If this story was what she thought it was, what would that do to him? Voters might look past his father’s extramarital affairs, but who would look the other way on corruption? The Hamilton name would be synonymous with filthy politics. Some people would see past that—they’d know Knox was not his father—but that shadow was already deep and dark enough as it was. And the bigger the scandal, the longer the public tended to remember it.

When her phone rang, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Hand shaking, she checked the call. Not her contact but her editor. Beth hardly ever called her…she had a thing about putting everything in writing so she’d have a record of it. This didn’t bode well. Chloe answered the phone.

“I’ve got bad news.”

“No hello?” Chloe asked.

“Not this time. There’s a meeting Monday. They’re making cuts. I’m going to pull for you, kid, but I can’t make promises.”

“I’m going to lose my job?” Suddenly the home-and-garden gig looked good. Better than unemployment.

“Like I said, I’m pulling for you. But they already cut loose a couple of power players. Granted, they cost more than you do to keep on staff, but they were still big cuts. Threw us all for a loop.”

Chloe glanced at her laptop. “What if I told you I had a big story?”

“You can say it all you want, but I need to see it by Monday noon if you want it to count.”

“That bad?”

“Plan on it. Then maybe we’ll all be pleasantly surprised.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Chloe ended the call.

Time was short. Could the stakes get any higher? It was down to her or Knox, and he’d made one thing clear.

It was every man for himself.

…

By Sunday night, Chloe had gone from a wreck to a disaster. She hadn’t talked to Knox. She hadn’t left the house. And every new email, phone call, or text message notification sent her heart clamoring into her throat. She had about fifteen hours to get a story in—a story she had no idea if she could actually write. She contacted the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which had fought vehemently against the power plant. The person with whom she spoke was baffled as to how the project had been approved and offered plenty of reasons it shouldn’t have been, not the least of which was the pollution to the extensive estuary system. But that wasn’t enough. She still needed to hear back from her contact, who was a long-time detective with the local PD. She’d given him the leads. She needed only for him to tie it all together, independent of what she’d found in Rex’s files—something he assured would be no problem. She trusted her contact—he’d come through for her time and time again—but the clock was ticking.

Then, with the delivery of one email to her inbox, it stopped.

She opened the message with her heart in her throat. Not because she wondered what was there, but because she knew. Scanning the email verified it.

She’d gotten her big story…but at Knox’s expense.

Rex was a crook.

He’d made a number of payments to the environmental analysts—more than what she’d found. According to new studies that had yet to go public, the completed plant would have dumped pollutants in sensitive areas at a damaging rate. For one analyst to be off was one thing. For the three initial independent analyses to be in such agreement—yet to all be so wrong—was another entirely.

Rex had paid them off for approval. She didn’t know why, and she certainly didn’t have the power of judge and jury, but she didn’t need it. Everything except the note of thanks from HL had been independently verified. She’d have to leave that out, but she didn’t need it.

She had her story.

And when that news broke, it didn’t matter how well Knox was doing in the polls. His campaign would be thrown into a tailspin, and any hopes he had of restoring honor to the family name would be dashed. Not even Rex Hamilton—third-generation American royalty—would be able to put a good spin on this. He had somehow kept it under wraps this long, but his luck had come to an end.

She dropped her head into her hands. She could not in good conscience keep Rex’s misdeeds from going public, but if she exposed him, she would destroy Knox—the man she loved.

The same man who’d made it clear he’d never love her back.

Chloe had promised her editor a story, and her job depended on its delivery.

Knox hadn’t given Chloe a choice. She didn’t want to hurt him, but he’d made it clear this wasn’t about feelings. He was the one who’d said she’d find a story. He couldn’t have known she’d find it in his backyard, but protecting his feelings wouldn’t do anything for her bank account when they put this business deal of a marriage behind them.

Her heart breaking, she pushed up her sleeves and began to type.

Chapter Nineteen

Knox spent the whole weekend in hell. He’d hurt Chloe, and his words haunted him. He hadn’t meant to say those things to her, but dammit, it was what they’d agreed. Still, having her notarized signature on the prenup attesting to his righteousness did little to appease his guilty conscience.

And now he couldn’t find her. He’d sent her a text that morning when he’d returned from a breakfast meeting asking if she’d be around. She’d responded that she had an important noon deadline, which he took to mean he’d find her at their home. She did all of her other writing at home, so why would this have been different? It shouldn’t be.

He rechecked the house, then landed in her office. Her laptop sat right in the middle of her desk. She must have met her deadline or she wouldn’t have left that behind. But why had she left it behind at all? The new car Knox had given her was there, but her old car wasn’t in the garage, and he’d run through the house twice. She wasn’t home.

So why was her computer?

Feeling more than a little like an ass, he opened the laptop. After a moment, the password screen greeted him.

Great. What had she said her password was?
Her birthday.
As if she thought he’d never remember.

“Shows what you know,” he murmured. He typed the date and was in. “Got it in one.”

The screen revealed a file. At the top, where the title should have been, was a simple statement.

Knox, I got my story. It’s only fair you see it first. Everything here has been independently verified…it’s all true.

Even before he read another word, a cold, hard weight sat on his chest. Something was wrong—terribly wrong.

Rex. Money transfers. Pactron. Eleanor Byrd.

Fuck. He read the story a second, then a third time. She’d laid everything out, and the truth culminated with the answer everyone wanted to know. Rex hadn’t stepped down because he cared about his family. He’d stepped down because he’d gotten caught with the wrong woman. The truth had been too close. He probably hoped playing the good guy would keep the heat down, but Rex hadn’t counted on his new daughter-in-law.

Neither had Knox. As he read through the article again, he realized why she’d been asking about the files. She’d probably found her story right there in his office.
Use whatever you need. Nothing is classified in here…yet.
And he’d smiled.

Chloe had betrayed him.

He clutched the edge of the desk to keep his hands from shaking, but the unsteadiness only spread to his arms. She’d lied, and he had believed her. He’d believed her when she’d said she cared not about the name but about him.

He had been the biggest kind of fool.

From the moment she stepped foot in his rented room that night at Off the Record, it had been the wrong kind of personal. The Pactron bid had begun long before he and Chloe met, but back then, no one had thought the site would pass the environmental assessments, so it was no wonder she hadn’t mentioned it. Then the approvals had come through, and weeks later, he’d walked back into her life and truly given her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

Access
. He nearly laughed. He’d given her access all right. He supposed it would have been a little much to have asked her to not destroy his life with it, but it was his fault for not seeing it coming. After a lifetime of learning not to trust, he’d believed one time.

In one woman.

Fuck.

He pushed back from her desk so forcefully the chair tipped and fell. He managed to get to his feet before it hit the ground, taking him with it. As he stood there, trying to catch his breath, he realized the grinding in his chest was something more than anger. He’d been angry before, but this god-awful pain went beyond anything he’d ever known.

He was hurt.

He’d trusted her. He’d trusted a fucking
reporter,
and she’d used that trust to destroy him, but he’d have to deal with that later. He pressed his fingers to his temples, but there was no slowing down the headache that had already begun to settle in. Ultimately, he had no one to blame but himself. Believing in her had been his mistake—one he’d never make again. In the meantime, he needed to make strides toward damage control. His father was a crook, and when this story broke, all hell would rain. Toby would have a coronary trying to somehow spin it so Knox looked like the good guy, and Knox’s opponent would have a field day.

He glanced at the clock. Chloe’s deadline had been noon, but he didn’t know what that meant in terms of when the story would break. Clearly it hadn’t done so yet, or he’d have gotten a phone call. He should really send the file to Toby so he had time to scrape himself off the floor before the phones lines went crazy.

He didn’t get the chance. His cell rang. As he consulted the display, his hand shook.
Chloe
. He thought about ignoring her, but he had a responsibility to his team that transcended the sting of betrayal. He accepted the call.

“Hello?” He managed to keep his voice even, as though she hadn’t wrecked him. He was surprised by that.

“I need to tell you something.”

“If you’ve got anything beyond Rex being a crook and my campaign going to hell, it might have to wait for another day.”

Dead silence followed the icy words.

He forcibly loosened his grip on the phone. “Is that all?” he asked.

“I’m not sending the story to the paper. I just…I wanted you to know what I found.”

“Yeah, that’s understandable. Most people just pick up the phone, but you write an article that will earn a national byline so you can
not
send it to the paper.”

All traces of her hesitation vanished. “Look, I’m about to walk into a meeting I didn’t have to attend just so they can look me in the eye when they fire me or lay me off or whatever vernacular they attach to it. Bottom line is I’m losing a job I love because I didn’t send the damned article. If you don’t believe me, then check my sent email. I just wanted you to know… Never mind. I didn’t send it, and that’s all you need to know.”

The hell it was. “Tell me why. What did you want me to know?”

“Later. I have a meeting—”

“Now.”

“I’m…I’m leaving you.”

The words hit him straight in the gut. He opened his mouth, but the first words that threatened to escape were to ask why. To ask her to stay. And he had no idea how he could think such a thing after what she’d done. He didn’t
want
to know.

“Are you still there?”

“Say what you need to say, Chloe.”

“I can’t send it because I love you.”

He smacked his palm against his forehead in mock surprise. “Of course you do. I’ve been standing here, trying to figure out why the fuck you would do this to me, and that was the one explanation I hadn’t managed to stumble on by myself. You
love
me.”

“You’re an ass, Knox. You saw the article, so clearly you saw my note. I thought you deserved to see the whole story, and that’s the truth. Believe what you want, but while you’re coming up with reasons to convince yourself how right you are, just try to think of one time I’ve lied to you. You won’t.
You can’t.
The only person I’ve lied to is myself, and I’m done. I love you, but I have to respect myself. I can’t do this…and not because you won’t love me but because you’re too stupid or stubborn to admit you already do. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m needed in a meeting so I can lose the other thing I love. Have a nice life, Knox.”

He listened, stunned, as the air went dead. Was it possible she really hadn’t sent the article? She had everything to lose. She loved her job. If she hadn’t hit send, she was essentially walking away from it…and she’d made it clear she was walking away from him. He’d offered her everything she could ask for—a beautiful home, a faithful husband who couldn’t get enough of her, children, a chance to further her career… Nothing was missing. The only thing that he’d failed to do was say he loved her, but what would that change?

Nothing.
It wouldn’t change anything, and he didn’t want to think about what that meant.

He righted the chair and sat, staring for a long moment at her computer and the article she’d left for him before he switched to her browser. Her email was open. He clicked the link for sent mail and waited for the page to load. What was her editor’s name? Beth something. He skimmed the list of sent email. No Beth. No anything. Chloe hadn’t sent a single email from that account since the previous morning. He frowned, his eyes landing on the search box. Clicking there, he tried
Beth@
and got nothing. Dammit, what was her last name? It was a big paper…odds were they didn’t assign emails on a first name basis.

“You’re an idiot,” he muttered. @
WashingtonTribune
. Bingo.
BethMahan
. He clicked on the result and scanned the titles of recent emails. Each one was clearly labeled with an article title—the last few of which were decidedly home-and-garden-esque—but none had been sent in the last couple of days.

Frowning, he clicked back to the
Tribune
results and checked the list in case she’d sent it to someone else.

Nothing.

Chloe hadn’t sent the article.

The proof obliterated what remained of his anger.

He sat back in her chair, his gaze skirting the wilderness of greenery in her office.
The conservatory.
She hadn’t been kidding—potted plants filled tables in front of every window. He hadn’t realized how big of a pile they made, but he liked it. They added life to the house.

Chloe had, too.
She wasn’t one of those women who needed to be dressed to kill every waking minute of the day. In fact, he loved her bare feet peeking out from under her sweats and the way she twisted her hair up off her neck. He liked how he could swipe a kiss and not end up wearing red lipstick—for that matter, he’d be hard pressed to admit it out loud, but he actually liked the cherry taste of whatever it was she used to make her lips look deliciously moist all day. She was flawlessly beautiful, but unlike so many other women he knew, she didn’t paint it on. She was real, and that was the one thing he’d been missing all along.

His knee-jerk reaction to love had been honest, but he’d been lying to himself. He was absolutely the last person to believe in love, but whatever she’d triggered inside him the night they met had only grown stronger with time. He had no idea what had possessed him to shed his skin and go to that bar, but the moment he’d locked eyes with Chloe, something inside him had changed.

He’d grown up with the Hamilton name. He’d never known what it was like to be a regular guy—not until Chloe. He had never wanted for anything in his life, but in that moment, he knew she’d given him something no one else ever had. When she’d looked at him, she had seen a guy wearing faded jeans and an old T-shirt, and still her eyes had torn through him as though he was on the dessert menu. He’d been terrified to lose that, so when he’d introduced himself, he’d given his middle name—misleading, perhaps, but not untrue—and waited with bated breath for her to make the connection, but she hadn’t.

She hadn’t seen a Hamilton. She’d seen a man.

He’d been lost then. Maybe that was why he hadn’t broken things off with her sooner. He’d known ever since he was a kid listening to his mother cry down the hall that he wanted nothing of marriage. Even before he’d fully understood his father’s infidelities, he’d learned loving someone meant hurting them. He’d never met anyone with whom he had even thought he wanted a real relationship, until Chloe, and the last thing he’d wanted was to hurt her—not like that. So he’d ended it, and if he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit he hadn’t been the same since.

He’d convinced himself he’d asked Chloe to marry him to further his career, but the truth was he wanted back the piece of himself that had left with her. He’d been so close to the truth when he’d refused to marry anyone but her, but he’d also missed it by a mile. He hadn’t shed his skin that night they met. He’d found himself. He’d found himself in
her
. And then he’d made love to her, and before the sweat dried, he’d said she didn’t matter enough.

Fuck. No wonder she was gone.

He clicked back to the article and read it once more. Most of her citations he recognized, and he didn’t doubt the rest to be true. Chloe wouldn’t fabricate this—she valued her job, reputation, and integrity too much to risk any one of them. Every damned word of what she had written was true. It had to be.

She had Rex in her sights, but she hadn’t pulled the trigger.

Knox boiled with emotion. His father had paid off inspectors, doubtlessly having a hand in getting a factory approved that he’d been publicly against. He was smart—and dumb—enough to keep those payoffs from surfacing, and ultimately the whole house of cards had fallen because he’d chosen the wrong place to get his dick wet. If he hadn’t gotten caught in that high-profile affair, he wouldn’t have stepped down from his seat. There would be no need for a special election, and Knox wouldn’t have married Chloe.

And she wouldn’t have broken a story every top reporter in the country would have given his or her right arm for. She had everything she needed, but she had refused to hit send. Because she loved him. And that love was deeper and truer than he deserved.

He shook his head in disbelief. He’d figured she’d dig up something on someone, but never had he imagined it would be at his expense. She was a handful of keystrokes away from making her career and destroying what was left of the Hamilton name…and by extension, Knox. Toby would shit a brick if he knew Knox had prior knowledge of the story, but how the hell could you put a good spin on something like this?

He’d find out soon enough.

There was a certain peace in that.

Knox switched back to Chloe’s story and deleted the message she left him at the top. He saved the changes, then attached the document to a new email. He hesitated only a moment over the To field before typing in his recipient.

She hadn’t clicked send.