No Stranger to Scandal - By Rachel Bailey Page 0,30

around the inside collar of his shirt, “but—”

“I’ll handle the rest. I’ve helped out at my charity enough to handle one bedtime. You can show me where things are before you go. We’ll be fine.”

He glanced down at his son—who was gazing adoringly at Lucy—wondering if a good father would leave his son with someone else this way. His gaze flicked back to Lucy. He might not trust her about Graham, but he trusted her implicitly with his son. “Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent.” She nodded decisively. “Go.”

“Thanks,” he said, then removed his hand from the phone to speak to Rowena. “I’ll be there.”

Six

Hayden scanned the crowd in the airport terminal until he caught sight of Colin Middlebury in a café. He headed over and held out his hand. Colin and the woman at his side pushed their chairs back and stood.

“Thanks for coming, Black,” Colin said, shaking Hayden’s extended hand.

“Good to see you again, Middlebury.” He’d met the British diplomat when he’d first taken on this job, but hadn’t met Rowena before.

“This is my fiancée, Rowena Tate.” Colin put an arm around Rowena’s shoulders and beamed at her.

The willowy blonde smiled first at the man beside her, then across at Hayden. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“It’s no problem,” Hayden said, trying not to think about Lucy looking luscious on the sofa back at his hotel suite.

Colin indicated a third chair at their table, and they all sat, both men turning to Rowena and waiting.

“We won’t take much of your time, Mr. Black. I asked you to come because I didn’t want to discuss this over the phone, given the nature of the investigation.”

“Sensible.” He knew his cell was safe from hacking, but he couldn’t be sure about anyone else’s. He glanced around—no one was sitting close enough to overhear. “So what’s your suspicion?”

“It has to do with Angelica Pierce.” She leaned closer over the table, and lowered her voice. “She’s always seemed oddly familiar, but I saw her on the TV reporting a story and the camera caught her at an unusual angle, just off to the side. And I was suddenly struck by her similarity to a girl I went to boarding school with, Madeline Burch. Different-colored hair and eyes, and, if it’s her, she’s had a nose job and some other work. While she was still on the screen, I called a friend who went to Woodlawn Academy with us, and she thinks it could be Madeline, too.”

Interest piqued, Hayden took a small notebook out of his shirt pocket and wrote the name Madeleine Burch. “Any reason a reporter changing her name to something more appealing is suspicious?”

“Madeline was...unbalanced is probably the best word. Always bragging that her father was someone big, but she never said who. Apparently he’d paid her mother some hush money so they couldn’t mention his name. And if anyone challenged her on it, she’d lose it.”

“Define lose it,” he said, suddenly very interested.

“One time she’d had argument with another girl. I can’t remember what it was over. And that night when we went back to our rooms, the other girl’s clothes were all over the floor, cut into pieces.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Anything done about it?”

“They had no evidence.” Rowena shrugged one shoulder in a gesture of helpless frustration. “Madeline told the teachers she saw a younger girl sneak into the dorm room, which was a lie. That girl wouldn’t have hurt a mouse.”

He rubbed his chin as he considered the woman before him. Rowena was showing no signs of lying—she seemed confident and open. On the current evidence, he was inclined to believe her.

“Was that an isolated incident?” he asked, taking notes on what she’d said so far.

“Unfortunately, no. She was unpredictable and vindictive. And even though we always knew it was her, she’d try to blame her crimes on someone else. Even conning younger girls to confess a couple of times. We pretty much gave her a wide berth whenever we could. Until the day she was arguing with another student about her ‘secret father’ and the other student called her a liar and a freak. Madeline attacked the girl and was finally expelled.”

His pulse picked up speed as bits of information fitted together like interlocking puzzle pieces. “Did you see her again?”

She shook her head. “When all this came up recently, my friend Cara Summers and I searched the internet and couldn’t find a trace of Madeline after she was expelled. And, oddly enough, Angelica Pierce doesn’t