Рейчел Бейли – No Stranger to Scandal (страница 1)
He had an investigation to run and involvement with Lucy Royall would compromise his objectivity. Compromise him. He was ethically bound to keep emotional distance between them.
“Hayden?” she asked breathlessly.
He gripped the steering wheel until his fingers hurt, trying to anchor himself to something. “Yes?”
“Were you about to kiss me?”
His heart stuttered to a stop. He should have known Lucy wasn’t the type of woman to let things lie, to choose the sensible path. “There was a moment, before I thought better of it,” he admitted.
“I wish you had.”
About the Author
RACHEL BAILEY developed a serious book addiction at a young age (via Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddleduck) and has never recovered. Just how she likes it. She went on to earn degrees in psychology and social work, but is now living her dream—writing romance for a living.
She lives on a piece of paradise on Australia’s Sunshine Coast with her hero and four dogs, where she loves to sit with a dog or two, overlooking the trees and reading books from her evergrowing to-be-read pile.
Rachel would love to hear from you and can be contacted through her website, www.rachelbailey.com.
No Stranger
to Scandal
Rachel Bailey
For my father, Colin.
You didn’t live to see my name on a book cover,
but I know you’d have been proud. I miss you.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks to Barbara DeLeo and Sharon Archer
for reading early drafts of this book and your
insightful comments. And to Bron and Heather
for the cheer squad.
Thanks to the other authors in the Daughters of Power
continuity—it’s been a pleasure working with you.
And to Charles Griemsman, the editor for the series—
as always, your guidance was invaluable.
One
Hayden Black flicked through the documents and photos scattered across his D.C. hotel suite desk until he found the one he needed. Hauntingly beautiful hazel eyes; shoulder-length blond hair that shone as if polished; designer-red lips. Lucy Royall. The key to his investigation for Congress that would bring down her stepfather, Graham Boyle.
After his preliminary research from his New York base, he’d decided the twenty-two-year-old heiress who’d been handed life on a silver platter was the weak link he’d target to gather all the information on Graham Boyle’s criminal activities. His first appointment this morning had been to get a colleague’s take on Ms. Royall so he would be prepped when he met her.
He flicked the photo to the side and picked up another—this one her publicity shot from Boyle’s news network, American News Service, where Lucy worked as a junior reporter. Even with the professional tone and her eyes heavily made up with expertly applied gray smudges and mascara, she looked far too young, too innocent, to be mixed up in the dirty business of ANS illegally hacking into the phones of the president’s friends and family. But looks could be deceiving, especially when it came to pampered princesses. No one knew that better than he did.
Lucy Royall had been billionaire Graham Boyle’s stepdaughter since she was twelve, and her own deceased father had left her a vast fortune. She hadn’t been born with a plain old silver spoon in her mouth—hers had been pure platinum and diamond-encrusted.
He dropped the photo and picked up one of another blonde journalist—ANS senior reporter Angelica Pierce. Only ten minutes ago he’d completed an interview with Ms. Pierce, so he could vouch for both the perfectly white, straight teeth in her plastic broadcast news journalist smile and her aqua eyes. There was something strange about that shade of blue—it looked more like colored contacts than natural. But she spent half her life in front of a TV camera. Angelica Pierce wouldn’t be alone in the industry if she was trying to make the most of what she had to look good for the viewers.
Angelica had been eager to help, saying the phone hacking scandal tainted all journalists. And she’d been especially eager to help on the subject of Lucy Royall. Apparently, when Lucy had graduated from college, Boyle had handed her the job of junior reporter over many more qualified applicants, and now, according to Angelica, Lucy could be found “swanning around the office like she’s on a movie set, refusing assignments she doesn’t like and expecting privileges.”
Hayden glanced back at Lucy’s photo, with her silk shirt and modest diamond earrings—all tastefully understated yet subtly conveying wealth and class. He could believe she had a sense of entitlement.
But during the interview, Angelica had done something particularly interesting. She’d lied to him about Lucy threatening her. The signs in her body language had been almost imperceptible, but he’d interviewed countless people over the years and was used to picking up what other people missed.
Of course, there were reasons she might lie—a star reporter watching a young, pretty journalist who happened to be related to the network’s owner coming up through the ranks would be nervous. People lied for less every day.
But something told him there was more to the story. Admittedly, his first instinct was always to distrust journalists—they were too used to manipulating facts to make a good story. But this whole investigation centered around journalists, so for objectivity’s sake, he’d have to put that aside and take them as they came for now.
He shuffled the photos till he found one of Graham Boyle. Hayden’s background research for the congressional committee’s investigation into phone hacking and other illegal activities kept leading him back to Boyle.
And his stepdaughter.
Angelica Pierce might have lied about Lucy Royall threatening her, perhaps to protect her job. But he had no trouble believing that Ms. Royall was a spoiled princess playing at being a journalist. Which suited him just fine. Coaxing an admission from her about Boyle’s dirty dealings would be a piece of cake—he’d had enough experience with pampered heiresses to know exactly how to handle them.
Lucy Royall was going down, and taking her stepfather with her.
Lucy wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear and kept typing up the questions for Mitch Davis, the anchor of one of ANS’s nightly news shows. He was interviewing a Florida senator in four hours and wanted the list by midday to give himself a chance to familiarize himself with it. Which gave her exactly ten more minutes, and she had an appointment with the congressional committee’s criminal investigator, Hayden Black, at one. So the call from Marnie Salloway, one of the news producers, was bad timing. Though that was exactly how this job always seemed to work—too many tasks, too many bosses.
“Marnie, can I call you back in fifteen?”
“I’ll be in a meeting then. I need to talk to you now,” Marnie snapped.
“Okay, sure.” Lucy smiled so her voice sounded pleasant despite her frantic mood. “What do you need?”
“What I need is a list of locations to send the cameraman this afternoon to get the background footage for the story on the president’s daughter tonight.”
Lucy frowned and kept typing. “I emailed that this morning.”
“You sent a list of ten options. Not enough. Have twenty in my inbox by twelve-thirty.”
Lucy glanced at the glowing red digital clock on the wall. Nine minutes to twelve. She held back a sigh. “All right, you’ll have it.”
She replaced the receiver and wasted a precious twenty seconds by dropping her aching head to her desk. When she’d graduated, Graham had offered her a job as a full-fledged reporter. She’d refused, so he’d offered her the spot as a weekend anchor. He was just trying to help her, as he’d done since she was twelve, but she didn’t want a top job.
No, that wasn’t true—she definitely wanted a top reporting job. But she wanted to earn it, to be
But days like today had her questioning that decision, or at least questioning the decision to take a junior-reporter role at ANS. She wasn’t the only junior here, but she was the only one treated like an indentured servant. And the person who’d treated her the worst had been her former hero, Angelica Pierce. Drawing in a deep breath, she went back to typing the last questions for Mitch Davis’s interview and emailed them to him with three minutes to spare, then called up the list of locations she’d emailed Marnie for the background footage and opened her web browser to look for alternatives.
It had been made very clear to her on her first day that the other ANS staff resented having Graham’s stepdaughter in their newsroom. Rumors had made it back to her that they suspected she was a spy for Graham. Lucy was pretty sure their antagonism was misplaced resentment for authority—people always loved to dig the boot into the boss, and she represented the boss to them. In some ways she couldn’t blame them, but she wouldn’t let them get to her. Her policy had been to keep her head down and do every menial task the more senior staff asked of her, ridiculous or not.