No Stranger to Scandal - By Rachel Bailey Page 0,52

to see if his reactions pointed her to further discoveries to help her exposé. Did that mean she was a triple agent now?

“Sunny and warm, which was nice for Josh,” Hayden said, as if discussing the weather in the ANS elevator was the most natural thing in the world. The man must have nerves of steel. Though he didn’t have as much to lose as she did. For him, this was a case—albeit one he felt strongly about. For Lucy, her whole family was at stake. Graham was all she had.

The elevator arrived on the eighth floor, which housed most of the journalists, but the skeleton staff on the night shift all worked on other floors. Angelica’s office was down at the end, alongside the offices of the other senior reporters, and Lucy had a desk in the cubicles in the middle of the open-plan room.

“This way,” she said, guiding him along a single-file corridor made by glass office walls on one side and waist-high partitions on the other. The moonlight through all the glass in the offices meant there was little need for lights, which was lucky, since turning on lights would only attract more attention.

“Which desk is yours?” His voice was low and it sent shivers down her spine. Even with all she had at stake, sneaking through a darkened room with Hayden at her back, asking where she worked in a deep voice, was enough to distract her from their mission. She shook her head at herself, but led him to her desk anyway, then held an arm out as if showing him a million-dollar view.

“It’s neater than the others,” he said, turning to survey the surrounding desks quickly.

She glanced over the surface—everything in its place, from the pens in the penholder to the little stationery box that held anything else she needed. “I like to be organized.”

He arched an eyebrow. “I’m organized, but my desk is messier than this.”

“Your desk is neat,” she pointed out. And the room in his hotel suite he’d been working from had been so neat, so devoid of personal effects, that she’d had trouble getting a sense of him when she first met him.

“It’s not a real desk—it’s just for interviews on this case. My desk in New York has haphazard piles of documents and trays filled with papers. The way desks are meant to be,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.

She thought back to the mountain of baby manuals she’d seen in Josh’s room, and the way he’d spread papers over the coffee table when she’d been there at night helping him research. Organized chaos matched his personality more than the tidy desk she’d been judging him by. It was as if she’d seen a little further into the man inside, the one he didn’t show everyone, and it made her heart warm.

“So where is Angelica’s office from here?” Hayden asked.

“Just there,” she said pointing to the darkened room across the narrow corridor. “With the way my desk faces, I get to see her smiling face all day.” Of course, Angelica took every opportunity to scowl at her, or to say something cutting when she walked past.

The elevator pinged and they both stilled. As the doors whooshed open, Angelica’s sharp voice filled the air. “No, that’s not acceptable. If you want a credit on the story, you’ll have the research on my desk by 8:00 a.m. End of discussion.” Then a beat later, as if talking to herself, “Moron.” There was silence except for Angelica’s staccato heels clicking on the tiled floor, coming their way.

Lucy looked at Hayden, her pulse jumping. It was one thing to be found by a random ANS staffer, or to have their escapade get back to Graham, but Angelica was a different story altogether. If she saw them, there was a good chance she’d suspect what they were doing and be on her guard, ruining the plan.

Hayden grabbed Lucy’s arm, pulling her down to the floor and quietly squeezing them both under her desk. To fit in the small space, she was tucked into Hayden’s lap, her cheek resting against his chest, their legs intertwined. Her heart thumped hard and she could feel Hayden’s matching beat under her ear, and knew it was only partly due to the chance of being caught. Their current position was 95-percent responsible.

Angelica’s footsteps arrived at her office door, barely four feet from where they were hidden, with only a partition between them. She flicked the light switch