When Love Calls (30 page)

“As you like,” Kent said.

“Kent, do me a favor, get me transcripts of the Ethics Committee hearing meetings on Dupree.”

“No problem. Your first appointment is here, Pete Lambert and Ursula Rogers from the Foundation for Senior Citizen Reform.”

“Give me about ten minutes, I need to make a quick phone call,” he said, picking up his cell and dialing. After a very agreeable conversation, he walked to the door and greeted his first appointment.

For the next fifteen minutes, Ursula and Pete talked to Randolph about Alyssa, thinking that he’d play along like Goode did. Randolph listened as they stated their case and informed him about their agenda for the upcoming session. Randolph asked pertinent questions as Kent sat in, listening and taking notes.

“We can’t tell you how delighted we were to learn of your and Alyssa’s relationship. She’s like a daughter to me, to us, really. We’ve nurtured her career from the beginning. She’s an astute and very promising lobbyist.”

“Lobbyist? I was under the impression that she was support staff.”

“Oh no, she’s a bona fide lobbyist, has been for some time.”

“Really? Some time, you say,” Randolph said with interest, since both Alyssa and Kent had said otherwise.

“Yes, we’re very proud of her and the fact that she’s attached herself to you is very impressive.”

“Attached herself,” he questioned, “meaning?”

“Uh, in the most innocent and forthright way, of course,” Pete said, suddenly feeling that this wasn’t going exactly as they had expected.

“So you’re saying that Alyssa attached herself to me to further her career?”

“No, certainly not,” Pete affirmed.

“No, of course not,” Ursula reiterated. “Alyssa would never use or misuse anyone. I assure you, her intentions were and are strictly aboveboard in all respects.”

“Her intentions,” Randolph repeated, beginning to enjoy watching Pete and Ursula squirm. “You’re telling me that this was all planned? Because if it was—”

“No, of course not. Maybe
intentions
isn’t exactly the right word. Let’s say her objective.”

“I was her objective, I see.”

“I don’t think we’re explaining this quite well enough. What we’re saying is—” Ursula began.

“No, on the contrary, you’ve explained it very well indeed. I have a very good picture of things and I thank you for your added insight. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another meeting in a few minutes.”

“Uh, but, Senator—” Pete began.

He stood and reached out to shake hands. “Senator,” Pete began again as he shook hands, “yes, perhaps we can speak again. I don’t think we adequately—”

“Yes, and perhaps we gave you the wrong impression of Alyssa and her motives and that’s definitely not what we intended. They weren’t as we—” Ursula added.

“It was good meeting you both,” Randolph said as he nodded to Kent.

“This way please,” Kent said, escorting them from the office as they each tried to explain.

By the time the door closed, Randolph was chuckling. One of his guilty pleasures was watching people like Pete and Ursula squirm, usually by letting them choke on their own words.

Kent returned to the office. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” he said, half chuckling himself.

“Immensely. How about you?” he asked

Kent shrugged, shaking his head. “You really need to get another hobby. Making lobbyists sweat is wrong on so many levels.”

“I know. It’s just that they’re so easy.”

“So, what about what they were saying?”

“You mean, about Alyssa, that she was a lobbyist all along?” Randolph asked. Kent nodded. “Somehow I think I’ll take your research and background checks over a couple of lobbyists any day.”

“So you didn’t believe them, then.”

“No, Alyssa wants to please everyone, particularly her grandmother. That makes her endearing, but certainly not a lobbyist. She needs to step away from her sense of obligation and realize that her grandmother, although interesting in her own way, is hiding behind her.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Right now, I have to go vote, then attend a committee meeting afterward. We’ll see.”

Kent handed him two folders and watched him leave, shaking his head. Remembering the tidbits of conversation he’d overheard of Peter Lambert and Ursula Rogers made his day….

“We need to call Alyssa,” he’d overheard Ursula say. “I think we might have messed this up for her.”

“Yes, yes, definitely,” Peter had responded.

Kent chuckled, then sat down and went back to work.

Alyssa didn’t sleep all night. She just tossed and turned, praying that she was doing the right thing. By the time dawn came, she knew that there was only one way to make everything right. Ending her relationship with Randolph, which delighted her grandmother, wasn’t enough. She knew that she needed to leave her job, as well.

There was no way she could be effective at work with a political scandal hanging over her head. It was obvious that the foundation would eventually be drawn in, and as it was, Pete and Ursula were still insisting that she use her influence with Randolph for them. If she quit, Randolph wouldn’t be involved in an ethics scandal and the press would leave him alone. In the long run, he would see that what she did was for the best and that his very promising career would continue unencumbered by scandal, gossip and controversy.

By morning, the mess she found herself in had thickened. She was front-page fodder as newspapers and television newscasts ran a “like grandmother, like granddaughter” exposé, mentioning the hint of scandal referring to her relationship with Randolph and her grandmother’s relationship with Vincent Dupree.

Her grandmother, having gone through this before, handled it with dispassionate cool. Her father raged, threatening every reporter in town. She, on the other hand, tried her best to find some middle ground.

As soon as she got to work and sat at her desk, she saw the latest disaster. Randolph had made front-page news in one of those cheesy supermarket rags. She briefly scanned the article, then stoically typed her resignation. She printed it and handed it to her friend.

Nina read quietly, then looked up at her. “Are you sure about this?” she asked.

Alyssa nodded. “I messed up. I ruined my career and almost ruined his. I can’t let this go any further. I don’t have a choice anymore.”

“But are you sure you want to do this? They gave you the promotion, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but I got the impression that it hinged on me bringing Randolph along. I can’t do that to him.”

“Wow, I can’t believe that’s what they said.”

“They didn’t actually say that. It was implied.”

“Still…” Nina said.

“Yeah, still, I think it’s best. That article in the newspaper is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Once they start digging, who knows what they’ll come up with? This doesn’t just affect me and Randolph. It affects my grandmother, my dad, even the foundation, and your jobs are at risk. I have to end this now, for everybody’s sake. “

“It was a supermarket tabloid. I can’t believe that woman sold this to a supermarket tabloid. I wish she would show her face around here again.”

“I can’t imagine where she got all this stuff.”

“She made it up, you know how they do,” Alyssa said.

“But about the bat, that was way over the top.”

“Actually the bat part was true.”

“You beat a man up with a bat?”

“No, not exactly. I was helping my dad out at his place when I was in college. Some businessman in town got drunk and tried to molest me.”

“What?”

“The bar had closed and I was cleaning up. The man came back, saying that he left his wallet. I let him in to look for it and he took that as a personal invitation. He cornered me behind the bar and I grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on.”

“A baseball bat,” Nina surmised.

Alyssa nodded. “Yes, although the bat was plastic I still cracked his head, requiring him to get eight stitches. He told the E.R. and police that I tried to seduce, then rob him. He eventually dropped charges when his wife found out. Apparently he’d done the same thing a few times before.”

“What a jerk. You should have done more than that, like grabbed a real bat,” Nina said. “But still, how would this reporter know all that? It’s not like all that stuff was publicized.”

“No, there’s only one person who could have given her this much information about me,” Alyssa said, thinking out loud.

“Who?”

“Here, do me a favor and see that Pete gets this.”

“Are you sure? Why don’t I hold on to it until the end of the week?”

“It doesn’t matter, a day, a week, I’m still quitting.”

“What about Randolph?”

“After what I said and what Grandma did, I’d be happy if he didn’t sue us for slander.”

“Call him or write him a letter or offer him a mea culpa. Apologies are big right now. Apologize, blame childhood drama, then go to rehab. Everyone else does it, why not you?”

“Saying what exactly? I’m a fool? Sorry?”

“How about a poem?” Nina asked. Alyssa shook her head. “A dirty poem?” Nina persisted. Alyssa shook her head and smiled. “Yeah, a dirty poem like—there once was a girl named Alyssa who—”

“A dirty limerick isn’t exactly gonna win his heart.”

“You already have the man’s heart, Alyssa, you know that. Just let him know how you feel.”

“It’s too late for that.”

“It’s never too late for love.”

“It is for me. When love called, I hung up.”

“So call back,” Nina said.

“You’re such a hopeless romantic,” she said as she tossed her purse into the box she’d packed with the rest of her things.

“How else could you win the heart of the most eligible bachelor in the Senate?”

The phone rang on her desk. Nina picked up and listened, then covered the receiver. “It’s for you, it’s Pete and Ursula. They want to talk to you,” she whispered. “They sound panicked.”

Alyssa picked up the box, then shrugged, smiled and shook her head. “See ya.”

By the time she got home, both Pete and Ursula had called three times along with a dozen or so reporters. Nina called once and told her that the Internet blog sites were abuzz with speculation that either she was a plant by Senator Goode to embarrass Randolph or she worked for the opposing party and seduced him in order to damage his reputation.

Add to that, the backlash against Randolph had reached a fever pitch. By afternoon, his once ramrod reputation for being opposed to special-interest groups had been seriously called into question. She was all over the news, being portrayed as either a conniving lobbyist or a scheming harlot. A scenario her grandmother knew all too well.

“You called that reporter, didn’t you?”

Allie sat at the kitchen table sipping her tea. “Yes,” she said softly, looking up at Alyssa.

“Why? How could you ruin him on purpose like this?”

“I did it for you.”

“No, Grandma, you did it for yourself out of spite for something that happened over fifty years ago. What you did was selfish and despicable.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“So you told her about me hitting a man with a bat?”

“No, of course not, at least not on purpose. I called her right after you broke it off with him. Then you went out and I knew you were meeting him someplace. She started talking about how politicians take advantage of people. Then she mentioned that she saw the two of you in the hotel lobby one day and then you went to his house. She asked if you’d ever gotten in trouble before because of a man. Then she twisted my words.”

“Grandma, she was a reporter. You knew that you couldn’t trust her when you called her.”

“I thought she would just go after him. I didn’t think she’d write those things about you, too. But that other stuff about a secret rendezvous at the Capitol…”

“I know, I read them a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry, baby. I just wanted you safe. Then later, I saw how much you were hurting and I knew that you really loved him.”

“Yes, I do,” Alyssa said, then turned and went to her bedroom. It was a long day and she’d had enough.

The next day, the drama continued. Staying inside the house was just fine with her. She finally talked to Pete and Ursula, who urged her to reconsider her resignation and agreed to make her a lobbyist, no strings attached. But she declined. The brief taste of that world was all she needed to know that it wasn’t for her.

Gradually, by midweek, the controversy subsided. Alyssa’s fifteen minutes of fame had vanished like fog burned away at sunrise.

Chapter 21

E
arly Friday afternoon, Kent walked into Randolph’s office smiling. He crossed the room to Randolph’s desk as he concluded his phone conversation. Kent’s broad grin was a dead giveaway. “I presume by the Cheshire-cat grin that you have good news,” Randolph said dryly.

“I don’t know if it would be considered good news or not, but suffice it to say it’s a questionable and unexpected event.”

Randolph sighed heavily. Keeping busy was his goal and, so far, he had succeeded. His desk was piled high with work and he made sure to keep as focused as possible. Thoughts of Alyssa plagued him at times, but he had managed to suppress them. He couldn’t afford another lapse.

In the last three days, as the press steadily grew tired of the scandal and rumors about his ties to Senator Goode, they turned their attention to the next scandal.

Even so, he was booked solid, making the rounds of the Sunday-morning political talk shows. He was asked about his relationship to Senator Goode, his interest in succeeding him as chairman of the Committee for the Aging and his association with the granddaughter of Allie Granger. The last of which he declined comment because of its very personal nature.

Randolph set his pen down on the desk and gave Kent his undivided attention. “Okay, let’s hear it,” he said, steeling himself, preparing for whatever. At this point, after the last few days, he expected anything.

The Ethics Committee had come down hard on Senator Goode, and in response he had named names and offered a list of those involved. Of course, Randolph’s name wasn’t on it. Neither were any of his close associates, but Senator Bob Wellington’s father was.