Dirty Scandal Page 4

  The door swings open and at the sound of the hinges, I get to my feet.

  Graham comes in first, face set, green eyes glinting in the cloudy light from the windows. We’re not in the White House, but his White House PR consultant comes in directly behind him. His name is Brian Kelting—I remember that much from the phone call I took in the lobby of the Library of Congress.

  They meet me in the middle of the room. I have to steady myself, take a deep breath, because Graham Blackpool is like a storm. When he enters the room, it’s like a cold front colliding with summer heat. I’ve been thinking about that intensity since he visited the coffee shop.

  Not dreaming about it.

  Just thinking.

  “Ms. Leighton.” So, Graham has learned my last name. It would’ve been an easy find, after my face was plastered all over the Internet. “This is my PR liaison, Brian Kelting.”

  I stick out my hand first. Screw them, if they think I’m some delicate flower. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Kelting.” He has a strong grip and a pleasant face, red hair cropped close.

  “Call me Brian.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Let’s all take a seat.” It’s fine with me that Brian is steering this meeting, and we sit.

  Graham leans forward, his elbows on his knees. Brian continues, as if we all want to be here, having this, the most awkward meeting on the planet.

  “As I’m sure you’re aware, Ms. Leighton, there’s been quite a bit of press coverage regarding your meeting with Mr. Blackpool.”

  “I wouldn’t characterize it as a meeting.” My law school instincts kick in. I can reject the premise of anything he says. That’s an available option to me. “Mr. Blackpool was very briefly a customer of the coffee shop where I work.”

  Brian nods. “The encounter wasn’t typical, though, was it?”

  Don’t blush. Do. Not. Blush. I keep my eyes firmly on Brian’s face. “Not entirely typical, no.” It burned. His eyes on me—they still burn. There’s an energy coiled in him that’s angry and lustful and sharp, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

  “The photos say as much.”

  I cross my ankles and fold my hands in my lap. “There’s nothing I can do about the photos, Mr. Kelting.”

  “No, and we wouldn’t expect that from you.” We? “If it were only photos, this would be a news cycle like any other. But that, combined with the accusations against Mr. Blackpool—”

  I laugh, a single ha. “Mr. Blackpool isn’t the one being called a prostitute in front of the entire country.”

  “Solicitation is a crime in the District of Columbia,” Brian says mildly. “For all parties involved.”

  My face goes hot. “I’m not involved. And frankly, if you’re going to frame it in that way again, then I think we can conclude this meeting and—”

  “No, no.” Brian raises his hands in the air. “I’m not suggesting that you’re at fault. I am suggesting that there is a way to take control of the media narrative before it becomes more damaging.”

  “More damaging to whom?” I try my best not to let my voice pitch too high, the way it does when I’m fucking furious. “Who are we worried about here?”

  It’s a stupid question. He’s from the White House. I look down at my hands.

  “You, for one.” Brian ticks people off on his fingers. “Mr. Blackpool, for another. And third, the President of the United States.”

  I can’t decide if he’s joking. But why would he be? “You’re telling me that the president is worried about a few tabloid covers and gossip websites?”

  Brian clasps his hands in front of him. “President Blackpool has some concerns about scandal reaching the White House.”

  “Isn’t it a bit late for that?”

  “Not yet, no.” Brian’s face lights up in a big smile. “But we’ve got a plan in place that should mitigate speculation.”

  Both of them look at me. “And?”

  “We need your cooperation in carrying it out.”

  It’s frigid outside. The bar exam is in two days. I’m too hot in this suit jacket, and I want to leave. Badly. Being this close to Graham, even though he’s just sitting there, watching me, is like sandpaper against my skin. “What do you need me to sign?”

  Brian frowns. “This solution won’t require official paperwork. It would have to be on the honor system.”

  I’m also hungry.

  “Why don’t we cut to the chase? Tell me the details.”

  “President Blackpool would like to request that you”—here, cheerful Brian has the grace to look sheepish—“simulate a relationship with Mr. Blackpool to capture the attention of the press and put these rumors to rest.”

  I stand up. “Thank you very much for your time, gentlemen.” Where is the front door? This is a private meeting area that, from the outside, looks like a normal house. It reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of the White House’s interior, but up close, I can see chips in the gold paint that covers some of the decor. There are gouges in the hardwood arms of the chairs...if they’re even hardwood. It’s not as real as it seems.

  “Wait.”

  Graham’s voice stops me in my tracks, sending shivers up and down my spine.

  “This is for the entire country, Ms. Leighton.” I don’t like the way he says Ms. Leighton. I want to hear him say Bellamy. It’s a ridiculous, irrational want, and I try to bury it deep when I turn to face him.

  “It’s a lie.” Thud thud thud. My heart pounds so loud the walls vibrate. “I’m not going to respond to a lie with another lie.” With a pang, my mother’s face pops into my memory.

  “Going on this way—” He we are again, facing off, just like that day on the sidewalk. Graham shakes his head. “It might not turn out the way you think.”

  “I like to be honest.”

  “I like to be prepared.” Graham’s voice drops into a register that makes my spine tingle with recognition. I don’t know how I missed it before. He is powerful. His voice rings with it. “This is the best way to defend ourselves against scandal.”

  “It’s not truthful. It’s not honorable.” I want him to see it, to see why I can’t do this, why every cell in my body is reaching for the right thing. This is not the right thing. Another wave of heat rockets up to my cheeks.

  “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Graham Blackpool looks at me, his green eyes razor sharp, and I die a little inside. I die a little because I’m not touching him. Because he’s not touching me.

  I lift my chin. “That would make me a whore, if I took money from you for this.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brian’s jaw drop.

  Graham steps closer. There’s a foot of air between us. That’s it. “Everyone’s a whore for something, sweetness,” he says, the smallest breath of a sneer in his voice. “What’s your price?”

  Fuck.

  His voice resonates so deeply that heat grows between my legs, even as an offended gasp rises to my mouth. I don’t know what’s worse.

  I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t have to have my soul twisted around this rich man’s finger because the President thinks it would play better in the press.

  I lift my purse into the crook of my elbow. “Goodbye, Mr. Blackpool. If you need me, Mr. Kelting has my number.”

  7

  Graham

  “I swear to Christ, Brian, if you call me one more time about the tabloids, I’ll come down there and make your life very difficult.”

  Brian laughs. It wasn’t a joke. “It’s not my favorite item on the agenda, Mr. Blackpool. But I have orders from the president.”

  “Do any of you people ever tell him to screw off?”

  He laughs again. “None of us could ever get away with that kind of thing. Not that we’d ever try.” His tone slides into seriousness. “Mr. Blackpool, it’s important that we focus on the matter at hand.”

  “Do you have new information?”

  “Only what my office has been tracking. The covera
ge hasn’t slowed down at all. In fact, discussions of your supposed meeting with a call girl are popping up everywhere. There’s not a corner of the Internet that doesn’t have—”

  “I get it.”

  “President Blackpool was hoping we’d have more of a headway—”

  I tap my foot on the floor of the office building I own in Foggy Bottom. I gutted all of it and put in shining hardwood floors and real plaster walls. It’s the best space in the District—I made sure of it. “What is it that he expects from me?” There’s a crackle over the phone line that scrapes at the tender flesh inside my ear. The vein at my temple throbs. God. Offer Andrew an inch, and he takes a mile. “Chase her down? Force her to submit to his whims?”

  A beat of silence. Brian is calling from his office in the White House, which means this call will go on official logs. I know he doesn’t like to omit talking points, but this is one he can’t endorse. “Of course not. President Blackpool wanted me to pass along the suggestion that you reach out personally.”

  “Personally. To the woman who accosted me in the street through no fault of my own, and is refusing to work with us.”

  “Yes. But if you feel like that would be unproductive—”

  “It would be worse than unproductive. It would be detrimental.”

  “Are you certain? Is there any chance that a positive outcome—”

  “She and I can’t communicate. You saw that firsthand.”

  “She was perhaps a little sensitive to some of your humor.”

  I laugh. “That’s a nice way to put it. Tell me, Brian. Man to man. Could you come back from that?”

  “Me?” He seems to be taking the question seriously. “I’m a Public Relations officer for the White House, not a multibillionaire.”

  “Waving my money around didn’t work very well at our meeting.”

  “Don’t wave it then.” Brian’s voice gets an edge to it. It’s a dull edge, like a butter knife, but I hear it nonetheless. “Use it to your advantage.”

  “She didn’t want my money.”

  I’m being a complete asshole again. I know it. It takes a superhuman effort to recognize it, but I feel it in my pounding heart, in the heat of my skin, even though I’m alone in my private office and Brian’s across the city in the West Wing. A month into Andrew’s presidency, and I’m already sick of being handled by his people.

  Brian doesn’t sigh, but I’d bet my entire fortune that he wants to. “All I’m saying is that you have options that aren’t open to others. President Blackpool would be very grateful if you’d explore them.”

  I want to tell him that President Blackpool only cares about maintaining his status as the most powerful man on the planet, but I don’t. Brian is only the messenger. He doesn’t deserve to die. “I’ll look into it.”

  “The media isn’t letting up, Mr. Blackpool. I think you know what happens next.”

  “I can handle more negative coverage.”

  “They’ll start digging into Ms. Leighton’s background. You’re an easier target, but they need more fuel for the fire.”

  It shouldn’t be the thing that takes my brain in its fists and forcibly re-centers my thoughts. I shouldn’t care at all about Bellamy Leighton. She’s the reason we’re in this position in the first place. If she’d acted like a normal person and kept the money for herself, or even ignored it—

  But she’s not a normal person, is she?

  I knew that the moment I looked into her eyes.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t call me again.”

  “You know I can’t promise—”

  I end the call.

  In the silence of my office, I turn over Brian’s request in my mind. Use my money. That’s his solution. What, am I supposed to convince her by hiring a fucking skywriter? Fireworks show? What?

  I sit down at my desk and flip open my laptop. It’s entirely possible that Brian is exaggerating the situation.

  I choose a news website at random.

  It loads.

  There’s my face, right there at the top of the screen. There’s a huge screen-width photo of Bellamy and me from that day on the sidewalk. I’m touching her in the photo, a little grin on my face, and it looks for all the world like I know her, like this is a lovers’ spat.

  Christ.

  Three more news websites.

  Three more pictures.

  The paparazzi were paid handsomely this week, that’s for fucking certain.

  My heart beats into my throat. Normally, I would be a non-item. Another rich man stepping out of line? A dime a dozen. Those are the kinds of flames that die out as soon as the match is struck.

  Not this one. This one is a brushfire that’s going to consume thousands of acres of delicate forestland.

  There are other pictures.

  Pictures from the night before I met Bellamy. Pictures that aren’t on the Internet—not yet—because in the hours before Jameson hustled me into the car, in an attempt to make me look like a regular, upstanding citizen, I paid the photographer handsomely.

  I met him myself.

  They’re on my computer now. They’ve burrowed into my brain like a cancer, like an earworm I can’t get out of my head.

  Me, through a window, darkly.

  Me, in a slouch that looks suspiciously drug-related.

  Me, with my hands on a woman’s neck.

  A woman I don’t remember, but who has been identified by one of my friends as D.C.’s most expensive call girl.

  Photographic evidence.

  If it ever comes to light, Andrew is right. He won’t be able to stop the accusations from flying.

  I close the folder and type in the password to re-encrypt it.

  My phone rings. It’s Henry.

  “You’d better be calling with good news.”

  “Mr. Blackpool.” The moment he says my name, I know it’s not good news. “We’re hemorrhaging staff. There’s some concern that the coverage is going to scare away clients. People on all levels are jumping ship.”

  “Tell them to calm the fuck down.”

  He laughs nervously. “I don’t know if that will have the effect you’re—”

  “I’m containing this. Okay? I have a solution. Convince them, Henry. That’s your job.”

  I end the call.

  Andrew’s presidency. My business. They’re all riding on this.

  Still…

  I’m not going to hunt down Bellamy Leighton, as much as I’d like to.

  I need another plan.

  I lean back in my seat and let my memory travel down over the curve of her lips, the gentle slope of her neck, the rise of her breasts underneath the pink shell blouse she wore to the meeting with me and Brian.

  My phone rings on my desk.

  I could ignore it and keep thinking of her. It’s a D.C. number I don’t recognize.

  But I’m a fucking adult, so I answer the call.

  “Graham Blackpool.”

  “Mr. Blackpool?” The voice is tentative but determined. “This is Bellamy Leighton. I—I need to talk to you.”

  8

  Bellamy

  “We’ll start with the Montrachet.” Graham’s eyes sweep down over the wine list. “But if it’s not sweet enough for my counterpart, we’ll be ordering something else.”

  “Very good, sir.” Our waiter turns on his heel and walks away from the table, his gait smooth and graceful. I’d bet anything he’s in one of the Broadway shows. If I was here with Everest, I’d ask her about it.

  I’m not here with Everest.

  Graham puts the wine list at the edge of the table. “Should we start this battle now, or when the wine arrives?”

  I blink at him. I don’t know what Graham Blackpool’s game is, especially given— “Do you always bring thousand-dollar bottles of wine to a gunfight?”

  “A gunfight?” A little grin quirks at the corner of his mouth, curling up from the set line of his perfect lips.
“I don’t think things need to be that...antagonistic.”

  “I disagree.” My heart flutters, has been fluttering since the moment Graham’s driver pulled up in front of my apartment building. I’m probably sick, probably burning with fever. That’s the only explanation for how hot and flushed my skin feels beneath the perfectly modest little black dress I bought in a fit of nerves earlier this afternoon. “You basically called me a whore.”

  Okay. Not perfectly modest. The neckline plunges a little more than I’d wear to a meeting at, say, the White House.

  His green eyes flash in the candlelight. Graham was the one who insisted on having our meeting at the Inn at Little Washington. He wouldn’t take “any meeting room” for an answer.

  “It might have been a joke in poor taste.” Goose bumps prick the back of my neck. I don’t know Graham Blackpool, but I know that when he asked me if I’d rather be his whore than anything else, he wasn’t lying. “But we’re not here because of what I called you. We’re here because you called me.”

  I smirk at him. “Clever.”

  “I thought you were a stickler for accuracy.”

  “I’m not proud of the fact—”

  The waiter comes back with the wine and pours two glasses.

  Fuck me. It’s delicious.

  “I’m not proud of the fact—” This place is so upscale, even the tablecloths feel like they’re a thousand-thread count. That doesn’t mean our table isn’t snugged up to one on each side. So far, one’s empty, and the other is occupied by an older couple who seem to be communicating mainly through raised eyebrows. The entire place could be listening in, for all I know. “You know, the fact that I had to stoop so low.”

  “I can’t imagine what would make you feel like you had no other option but to acquiesce to a scumbag like me.”

  “I don’t think you’re a scumbag.” I take another sip of wine. “I think you’re irresponsible.” Why can’t I stop blushing? Why can’t I cool it, literally?

  Graham laughs. “You say irresponsible like it’s a curse word.”

  A defensive tightness grips my throat. “It is a curse word. It’s—” Echoes of my mother’s court appearances swim up in my brain before I can tamp them down. “We don’t need to talk about it.”