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Don’t tell me she’s gone and gotten arrested, too.
“I haven’t seen her in years.”
“Would you say…ten?” Jim asked, consulting his notebook, and suddenly the room spun. Carter was dizzy. Sick.
There is no way he could know, he told himself. No way.
“Am I right?” Jim asked. “You would have seen her when you testified on her behalf in court ten years ago.” Jim held out his tape recorder, his bland face crowned with conceit.
Jim had made a career of shining a light into the dark corners of the previous administration, but for the last two-and-a-half years, Jim Blackwell had been stymied in his efforts to pull up any dirt on the current administration.
But Carter’s father’s arrest was changing all that.
“You’ve already done this story, Mr. Blackwell,” Carter said. “When my father was arrested, you took great care in giving the residents of Baton Rouge a good look at my bloodline. And I say now what I said then—I am not my family. I have very little contact with my family. I do not discuss them. I think you’re repeating yourself,” he said.
“I’m just trying to get my time line straight. You testified on your mother’s behalf in a breaking and entering case ten years ago. You seem a bit fuzzy on the specifics, which makes me wonder what else you’re fuzzy on. There is, after all, a thirty-carat ruby still on the loose.”
“We’re done here,” he said stacking his cards, getting ready to leave. Amanda, his assistant and soon-to-be campaign manager, swung up on his left.
“Answer the damn questions,” she breathed in his ear. “Or it looks like you have something to hide.”
And then she swung away.
Nausea rolled through him. He did have something to hide. He had a whole family tree of criminals and rogues that needed burying. But Carter gritted his teeth, and stayed. “Yes, it has been ten years since I’ve seen my mother. We are not in contact. And I have no idea where the ruby is.”
“You were her alibi in the breaking and entering case,” Jim said. “The charges against her were dismissed on the basis of your testimony,” Jim said.
“What is your question?” he asked, knowing in his stomach what the question was going to be.
“No question,” Jim said, and Carter nearly sighed in relief. “Just getting my facts straight.”
So you can come at me later. Carter had no illusions that Jim Blackwell was just here to get his facts straight. Jim Blackwell was throwing down a gauntlet, right here in front of him, Mrs. Vogler, and the kid with a mouthful of chocolate-chip cookies in the back.
His nausea vanished and he was suddenly clearheaded, sharp-eyed. Jim Blackwell was starting a fight, and Carter loved a fight.
“I feel it’s necessary to remind you of my law degree from Old Miss,” Carter said. “I understand the legalities of libel better than the previous administration, and I would say after your last article about my family, you are skating on thin ice.”
“Is that a threat, Mr. O’Neill?”
“Just helping you get your facts straight, Mr. Blackwell.” He glanced over at Amanda, whose smile was sharp, approving. Apparently he’d handled that right. Score one for the Notorious O’Neills.
“We’re done here,” Carter said and stepped away from the podium toward Amanda, who had pulled out her BlackBerry and was, no doubt, already on damage control.
“Your father is giving me heartburn,” she muttered, shooting him one poisonous look. “And now I’ve got to look out for your mother?”
“No one has any idea where my mother is,” he said. “She’s a nonissue.”
“Excuse me!” a woman cried, and he knew, just knew it was elf girl, and he just wasn’t up for more questions about how these women would live their lives without this community center.
It was bad politics, he knew that, but he pretended not to hear her.
“Wait a second!” she yelled, her voice sharper. Carter reluctantly turned.
The elf had gotten on a chair. Great.
She was lovely, actually. Her long, shapeless coat had some kind of wild embroidery on it, and her short, ink-black hair sparkled in the light coming through the dirty windows.
A pixie.
She slowly pushed back her long coat to reveal the swell of a very pregnant belly.
Maybe it was the way this day had been going; maybe it was the bloodthirsty toddlers, but some warning system in Carter’s head went: uh-oh.
“Where have you been for the last five months?” the elf asked, her eyes snapping. Her hands cupped her belly, and Mrs. Vogler sat down like a stone.
“Oh,” she sighed. “You’re a bad, bad man.”
The whispers started immediately, and the only thought buzzing through Carter’s suddenly decimated brain was, thank God there were no cameras.
Jim Blackwell lifted his cell phone and snapped a shot of the pregnant elf on the chair.
“Oh, crap,” Amanda said.
“I’ve never seen this woman in my life,” he said to Amanda and to the crowd.
Elf girl shook her head and got off the chair. “I knew you’d say that,” she whispered, convincingly heartbroken.
Thank God, the little liar started to walk away.
“You need to go after her,” Amanda said, furiously whispering in his ear.
“Are you nuts?”
Amanda pointed to Jim Blackwell, who was writing everything down. “Get to the bottom of it, before he does,” she said. “We can’t let that guy get the drop on us any more than he has.”
Amanda was right. He pushed his notes into her hand, and she immediately stepped forward and began spinning the situation, but it was like waving a tissue in front of a bull. Carter felt every eye, especially Jim Blackwell’s, on his back as he approached the girl.
He caught up with her at the front door and put one hand under her elbow. Carefully, so it didn’t look as if he was manhandling her, he spun her around and led her back around toward the pool, and the second exit onto an alley, where things would be less busy.
“I’m sorry,” she said right away, her voice breathy. “Really, really sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“About what?” he snapped. “Ruining my career?”
“Getting your attention.”
“Really? Nothing but accusing a total stranger of leaving you knocked up and alone?”
“You just kept ignoring me. Which, may I say, was pretty rude.”
“Don’t talk,” he said. “Don’t say one more word.”
“Okay,” she said quickly. “Right. I’ll shut up.” The silence lasted for all of ten seconds, in which Carter recognized the delicious smell coming off the woman. Ginger cookies. Weird. “Hey, sorry, I know I’m supposed to keep quiet, but could you just ease up on the grip?” she muttered. “And slow down—you’re like ten feet taller than me.”
It was true. She barely came up to his shoulder and Carter realized he was practically dragging the woman. He didn’t even want to imagine what kind of headline that would create, so he slowed down.
He even managed to wave at Mrs. Vogler as if this were all normal, all part of the plan, but she wasn’t buying it—she watched, slack-jawed.
He punched open the door to the pool and led her into the giant cavern. As soon as the door shut he dropped her arm, still walking toward the side door onto the alley. Trying to control his suddenly rampaging anger.
“This place really is in bad shape,” she said, staring into the empty tiled hole that used to be a pool. “You sure it’s going to cost less to rebuild? That seems counterintuitive.”
He turned back and looked at her, the pregnant pixie who might have just created the worst scandal to hit this administration, and she was gazing into the deep end.
She must have caught a whiff of his fury because she straightened and managed to look like a very contrite pregnant pixie. Her hands fiddled with the edges of her coat. “I’m sorry,” she said, waving her hand behind her. “About all that.”
“Why the hell did you lie?” he asked. “Do you even know what you’ve done?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Try to explain it,” he breathed, barely keeping it together.
“Let’s go outside,” she said, stepping by him. She gave him a wide, nervous berth, but he still smelled ginger and sugar. Sweet and spicy.
He hit the doors under the unlit and cracked exit sign and led her into the bright warmth of midday. He yanked at his tie.
“Is this a medical situation?” he asked. “Are you off your medication, or escaped from the psych ward?”
The woman was silent, scanning the alley as if searching for someone.
“Do I need to call the cops?” he asked, and that got her attention.
“No,” she said quickly. “No cops. I was told—” She blinked big green eyes, and then shut up.
“Told what? By who?” he asked, his voice hard.
“Whom,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry?”
“By…ah…whom? It’s an object-subject…” She blinked again, the pretty green eyes like pine trees in sunlight. “I’ll shut up.”
He stepped up to her and looked down at her glossy black hair. “Unless you give me one reasonable answer right now, there will be cops and you will be in more trouble than you can possibly handle.”
“A woman gave me a thousand dollars to get you out here alone,” she blurted.
Carter blinked, speechless.
“But I don’t know where she is.” Pixie looked around again.
“What woman?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know her name,” she said. “She was blond. Pretty.”
Carter stepped back. No, he thought. This can’t be happening.
Amanda came barreling out the door they’d just come through.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked.
“Take her,” Carter said, gesturing toward the pregnant woman. He didn’t even know her name, which was crazy considering the story she’d just started. “Put her in my car and don’t let her leave.”
“You can’t do that,” she said, her little face all screwed up with outrage.
He leaned in, close enough to see the freckles across her nose, the thickness of her black eyelashes. “You can wait for me in my car or you can wait for the cops in my car, it’s your call.”
She took her full bottom lip between her teeth, biting until the pink went white. “Fine,” she said, and whirled, her pretty coat sweeping out behind her.
“Who is she?” Amanda asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. “But don’t let her leave.”
Amanda followed the woman through the gray doors, and Carter was left alone in the alleyway.
He stared up at the clouds stretched thin across the slice of blue sky between the buildings. All he ever wanted was to do the right thing. Something good. And somehow it always got screwed up.
“Hello, Carter,” a voice behind him said. A voice so familiar, despite its ten-year absence from his life, it made something small and forgotten inside him twist in fear and love. He didn’t even have to turn to see her, the perfect blond hair, the thin body no doubt impeccably dressed, the cold, ice pick eyes.
Of course, he thought, she would show up now.
“Hello, Mother,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
ZOE MADISON HAD MADE a lot of mistakes in her life. Big ones, small ones, forest-fire-size ones that had burned her life to the ground.
If there were an authority on mistakes, she was it.
And she knew—from the backseat of Carter O’Neill’s expensive car, with its leather seats and fake wood—she knew that what she’d just done, the lie and the drama of it all, was not a mistake.
First of all, Carter O’Neill was going to be fine. A guy like that was born fine. He was simply too good-looking, too cool and calm, to not be fine. He was like James Bond or something. Though, she thought with a smile, James Bond had gotten batted around like a cat toy by that wily Tootie Vogler.
He was actually far more handsome when he was frazzled, which was saying something, because it wasn’t like the guy was ever hard to look at.
That little scene she’d caused in there would simply blow over.
And if she felt any doubt, any little wormhole of guilt, it was because of the reporter-guy asking the questions. She hadn’t counted on a reporter, and that might take some repair work. Maybe she’d write a letter to the editor or something, tell the whole world she was off her meds. Or stalking the handsome deputy mayor with the lips so perfect they should be bronzed.
More likely, though, she’d just be explained away in some kind of press release issued by the mayor’s office.
