No Stranger to Scandal - By Rachel Bailey Page 0,56

his eyes were as bleak as a winter’s night. “Rosie’s up in my office.”

“Hayden, can I trust that you’ll see yourself out of the building without stopping anywhere you shouldn’t?” Her voice had an edge of contempt that she hadn’t intended, but it was there anyway.

A confused line appeared on Hayden’s forehead. “Sure.”

“Then I’ll say goodbye.” She said the words quickly—like ripping a bandage off, it would surely hurt less if it happened fast. “We won’t be running our exposé now, so you’re in the clear. And you finally have the head you wanted on a platter. I guess we’re finished with what we’ve been working on together.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I guess we are,” he said and turned on his heel. She watched him walk to the elevator from Angelica’s office door—he didn’t glance backward once.

With every step he took, something deep inside her pulled, as if it were attached to him and was being stretched to breaking point. Their rules had made it clear that what they had would only last so long. Both of them had wanted it that way. Catching Graham meant their time was up. But when Hayden stepped inside the elevator, whatever had been inside her was now gone, leaving her empty. Hollow. Gouged out.

She closed her eyes against the emotion stinging them and turned back to Graham. She had a job to do—Graham needed her. She linked her elbow in his and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go get Rosebud and go home.”

“Lucy,” he said, letting her see emotion in his eyes without shying away from it for the first time since she’d known him. “I really am sorry.”

“I know, Graham. It’s okay.” But her heart was dying inside. The only two people she loved in the world were going to leave her. One for—in all probability—jail, and the other for his life in New York.

She’d just lied to Graham, because nothing was okay. And she couldn’t see things being okay again.

Eleven

Sitting on a kitchen stool in her pajamas as the sun peeked over the horizon, Lucy watched the early morning news, a steaming mug of coffee between her hands. It was blanket coverage of Graham’s testimony yesterday at the congressional committee’s hearing. She pointed the remote at the TV and flicked to NCN, where they were replaying yesterday’s footage of Graham being taken into custody. He’d also been ordered by the Federal Communications Commission to sell ANS, or else the network would lose its license. What they didn’t know yet was that Liam Crowe, a self-made media mogul, had already made an offer to buy ANS—that would be announced later today.

They were also reporting that Marnie Salloway would be testifying in a few hours, since Graham’s testimony had been that she’d been the one who’d kept him in the loop about the hacking and brought new developments to him to get approval. She was expected to be charged by week’s end. As Lucy had expected, Graham hadn’t mentioned Angelica once, and hadn’t been questioned about her. The prosecutors and congressional committee had taken the deal Graham had offered, including keeping his relationship with Angelica private, which meant the media hadn’t picked up on the story...yet.

Lucy blinked away tears for Graham. She’d stayed with him the night she and Hayden had overheard his conversation with Angelica, the night her life had fallen apart. She’d taken him to his place and slept in a spare room. Or pretended to sleep—she’d barely had more than an hour’s sleep at a time since then. He’d been taken into custody yesterday afternoon and she’d brought Rosie back here. She’d fallen asleep for just over an hour at about three in the morning, and now she was wide-awake again.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Graham’s miserable future, about his involvement in the illegal phone hacking, about him being Angelica’s father. It was almost too much to comprehend, as if everything she’d ever believed was wrong.

And when she hadn’t been thinking about Graham, her mind stubbornly turned to the one subject she’d been fighting to avoid.

Hayden.

Her eyes drifted closed and she saw his face, his smoldering coffee-brown eyes, his darkened jaw needing a shave at the end of the day. Her chest ripped open, painfully exposing her vulnerable heart. She had no idea how long she’d been denying it, but it was clear now—she loved him. And she’d never been more miserable in her life. Wasn’t love supposed to be uplifting?

All her original reservations about