No Stranger to Scandal - By Rachel Bailey Page 0,36
the end of the investigation, we’ll have the evidence that he’s innocent.” Graham’s nature was to push as far as he could go, but once he hit the edge of legality, he’d stop. He wasn’t the first man to believe in an employee who turned out to be bad.
“Listen,” he said taking her hand and interlacing their fingers. “Something else about Angelica’s announcement bothered me.”
“The attempted-seduction part?” She grinned, inordinately pleased at the thought of Hayden rebuffing another woman’s advances.
He shook his head as if that was inconsequential. “No, that was easy to fend off. It was the venom she has for you. She didn’t even try to hide it.”
“She’s always hated me.” Lucy shrugged. It was something she’d accepted within a week of joining ANS. Angelica treated everyone below her badly and seemed to take special pleasure in targeting the boss’s stepdaughter. She wasn’t the only one—Marnie and Mitch had been the same way. Par for the course with a last name like Royall and a stepfather who owned the network.
Hayden tugged her closer with their joined hands. “This was something beyond hate. Way beyond.”
His gaze was intent, and this wasn’t a man who spooked easily. She swallowed. “Oh.”
“Why would she hate you specifically?” He traced a pattern over her hands with his thumbs. “You’ve never had a run-in?”
“I don’t know. I always thought it was because I was the stepdaughter of the network’s owner. They resent having me in their workspace.”
“Could be. But why is she more vindictive than the others? And if she’s capable of manipulating at least two people in a complicated scheme of illegal phone hacking—and having them cover for her even after their arrests—then she’s not a person to underestimate.”
“She wouldn’t do anything to me,” Lucy said, but even to her own ears her voice sounded unconvinced.
“Lucy, this is my area of expertise. Angelica Pierce would hurt you if she got the chance. I want you to stay close to me, where I can protect you. Tell ANS that you need to stick near me while you’re working on the damn exposé.”
Something inside her chilled. Angelica would hurt her if she had the chance? What sort of person operated that way? She’d known about Angelica’s complete lack of ethics in her reporting and information gathering, but this was something else altogether....
She withdrew her hands from Hayden’s clasp and wrapped them around her waist. Journalism had once seemed a shining light of truth-seeking and integrity. Seeing the tape of Troy Hall and Brandon Ames hiring hackers to illegally invade people’s privacy hadn’t affected her too much, because she’d figured the pair were rogue elements. But Angelica Pierce was a star reporter, and even though Lucy had known she was nasty, before she’d worked at ANS she’d idolized Angelica’s reporting. What was the saying about never meeting your idols...?
She lifted her chin. One thing was for sure—Angelica wouldn’t get the better of her. “I’m not a child in need of protection. I’ll be fine.”
“Believe me, I know you’re not a child.” He ran his fingers down her arm and then drew her against him. “Let me protect you,” he murmured in her ear.
At every point of contact, her skin heated until champagne sparkles fizzed through her bloodstream. But she tried not to lose herself in her body’s reaction to him.
“It’s not your job,” she said against the cotton shirt covering his chest.
He smoothed fingertips down her sides till he reached the curve of her hips and drew her even closer. “I want to protect you. I want you safe.”
She winced. The last thing she needed in her older lover was for him to think of her as a damsel who needed rescuing—couldn’t he see that?
Laying her palms flat on his chest, she eased away so she could see his eyes, so he could understand this was important to her. “Hayden, I don’t want you to see me as someone you need to look after.”
His gaze softened, then blazed. “There are many things I see in you. Your courage and determination. Your lush curves. That someone who’s possibly crazy has it in for you. That I can’t stop thinking about making love to you again. That—”
“Stop there.” She moistened her lips. “Go back to that one.”
“That someone who’s possibly crazy has it in for you?” he drawled with a knowing smile.
She shimmied against him. “The one after that.”
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed one fingertip after the other. “I can’t stop thinking about making