Private Politics (The Easy Part)
Read Private Politics (The Easy Part) Online
Authors: Emma Barry
Private Politics
By Emma Barry
Book two of The Easy Part
New York socialite Alyse Philips is not the airhead people take her for—she’s great at convincing DC’s rich and powerful to open their wallets. Never one to coast on her family’s connections, her real dream is to help charities in a bigger way. Before she can pursue her ambitions, she discovers a money-laundering scandal that’s got her signature all over it. If Alyse can’t clear her name, she’ll never work in nonprofits again.
Political blogger Liam Nussbaum has been pining after Alyse for six months, certain she’d never go for a quiet guy like him. Helping her with the investigation is a no-brainer. But going up against a seedy network of money and influence isn’t just a romantic opportunity or a chance to grab the headline that will take him into the big time—it’s a gamble that could destroy his blog’s reputation.
As Liam and Alyse dig deeper, their hearts collide alongside their ambition. Will they choose love or politics? Because in Washington, everything comes at a price.
70,000 words
Dear Reader,
September might herald the end of summer fun and the vacation season, but the one thing you and I both know, as avid readers, is that we can always escape the daily grind thanks to books! This month, Carina Press is placing extra emphasis on the mystery genre, with the last week of September dedicated to not only our entire backlist of mysteries, but also four brand-new frontlist releases in four different subgenres of mystery.
Within the mystery program, we welcome debut author Ricardo Sanchez with his novel
Elvis Sightings
. In this unique mystery that absolutely delighted our team from the first moment we read it, Floyd is a private detective who lives his life the way he thinks Elvis would have wanted him to—fast and hard in a sequined jumpsuit—and if he can avoid the billy clubs of government agents, a Viking reenactment and the amorous attention of the bearded lady sheriff, he just might prove, once and for all, that Elvis is still alive.
Rosie Claverton brings us the second book in The Amy Lane Mysteries (a series that has some of my favorite Carina Press covers!). Welsh amateur sleuths Amy and Jason return in
Code Runner
, with Jason framed for the murder of a gang runner. When his prison transport is broken open, Jason is caught between the police, the gangs and the mastermind behind Jason’s downfall, while Amy races to prove his innocence.
In
Mistress of Lies
, a historical mystery by Holly West, a young beggar girl claiming to be Isabel Wilde’s niece—previously unknown to her—shows up unexpectedly and reveals that Isabel’s brother Adam was murdered, compelling Isabel to take up an impossible task: discover the truth about her brother’s death, twelve years later.
And joining these three in the mystery category, with a new release in her Patience Price Mystery series, Julie Anne Lindsey brings us
Murder in Real Time
. When a popular reality show host is murdered at the local bed-and-breakfast, Patience’s small town is overrun with grieving fans, paparazzi and a gunman who puts Patience in the crosshairs.
If mystery isn’t your favorite genre, we have nine new releases in September in romance subgenres. Starting with contemporary romances, first up is
Breaking His Rules
by Alison Packard. If you love the friends to lovers trope as much as I do, you’ll love this story of two good friends pretending to be a couple at a coastal wedding, who find things get passionate when their true feelings rise to the surface.
Rebound flings are supposed to have soft landings, but one sexy cop is about to fall hard in Christi Barth’s fun romantic caper
Love on the Boardwalk
. And in Emma Barry’s
Private Politics
, when a glamorous non-profit fundraiser becomes entangled in a political scandal, she turns to a savvy DC blogger for help clearing her name. As their hearts and ambitions collide, they find that everything in Washington comes with a price.
If you like contemporary romance with an edge, reach for new adult romance
Losing Streak
by Kristine Wyllys. Rosemary Young was just another bartender until her boyfriend, Brandon Williams, lost a bet, leaving them with no choice but to sell their souls to the Lane’s crooked king.
Author Stina Lindenblatt returns with
Let Me Know
, a contemporary romance with a new adult flavor. College freshman Amber Scott is propelled into the media spotlight when love letters she supposedly sent to her stalker surface prior to his upcoming trial.
Switching gears to three books outside the contemporary romance genre, I’d like to turn your attention to Tyler Flynn’s newest male/male historical romance,
Hunting the Spy
. Nathan Kennett is hunting down a traitor who is selling the secrets of England’s defenses to the French rebels—could it be Sir Peter Ross, the man he loves?
Don’t miss the final book in Jeffe Kennedy’s fantasy romance Covenant of Thorns trilogy. In
Rogue’s Paradise
, our scientist heroine discovers the origin of the fae and of her own nature, and whether she can make true love actually work. And it’s not too late to catch up with the first two books in this fantastic trilogy,
Rogue’s Pawn
and
Rogue’s Possession
.
Eleri Stone’s
Gun Shy
has a wonderful
Firefly
-esque Western feel in a paranormal romance world. When criminal boss Gideon Moore sends men to steal the fort’s dwindling supply of Reaper cure for sale on the black market, Jane Fisher offers to guide Lieutenant Lyle Dalton through the shady side of Stormking Territory in an attempt to recover the serum.
And last this month, we’re thrilled to present
Shattered Bonds
, the final book in Lynda Aicher’s Wicked Play erotic romance series. At the same time, we’re sad to see these characters go, as Lynda has captivated us with the emotional ups and downs of the relationships between this compelling cast of characters. Don’t miss this book, in which everything could change when the past comes back to destroy the members of The Den. Look for
Game Play
, the first book in Lynda’s new erotic romance trilogy, in spring 2015.
Coming in October 2014, Dana Marie Bell returns us to the world of Maggie’s Grove, we welcome co-authors Eileen Griffin and Nikka Michaels and their incredible male/male romance duology, and R.L. Naquin is back with her urban fantasy Monster Haven series.
Here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Editorial Director, Carina Press
Dedication
To Brooke.
Love is the best thing humans do—a lesson you’ve been teaching me since we were four. You are wise and fierce and I’m so proud to be your friend.
Acknowledgments
Books rise from networks of friendship and support, mine perhaps more than most. This one is my editor Alissa Davis’s fault. When she bought a trilogy, I was forced to write one. Can you imagine the nerve? Because of her, I had to turn my vague ideas about an opposites-attract romance and a nonprofit giving scandal into words—that she liked those words was the strangest thing of all.
I never would have finished
Private Politics
without my critique partner, Genevieve Turner, whose snark and notes kept me going through bad early drafts. I am immensely grateful also to my beta readers, Tim and Kimberly Truesdale, for thoughtful feedback.
I am indebted to Leif and Brooke for notes about the law and nonprofit policy. Any remaining errors are surely my own.
I wrote this book to the strains of The Postal Service, Stars, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The National, Imagine Dragons, Parachute and Muthmath. It would not have been possible without them.
I am thankful to everyone at Carina who promoted, supported and believed in the book; to all my DC friends who’ve eaten at all these restaurants with me; and to the idealists and optimists who make our government work better in spite of all the corruption (seriously, get the money out of politics).
Most of all, I want to acknowledge my family who love me and feed me and who care about what I think and write. I am particularly appreciative of my husband and my children. You amaze me and I love you.
Contents
“I was involved in a system of bribery—legalized bribery for the most part.”
—Jack Abramoff
Chapter One
Smart, capable and in awe of her: was that really too much to ask from the men in her life? Alyse Philips dragged perfectly manicured nails through her blond hair and flipped it over her shoulder. But did the accountant across from her so much as acknowledge it? A practiced movement that had melted bartenders on three continents, received appreciative smiles from congressmen and even caused her father to once issue a compliment—and
Fred
of all people was unmoved.
Sitting in the cramped conference room at Young Women Read, Inc., the nonprofit where she worked, staring into the annual audit, she could have used a man whose reaction to her was a little more typical. A little more, well,
dazzled
.
But no, dazzled did not appear to be an emotion in the Fred Hammond playbook. The man probably hadn’t been so much as impressed since 2002 and really, who hadn’t felt a strong stirring of emotion in the face of Halle Berry’s Oscar dress?
Fred’s stoicism was a surprise—and like the decaf you hadn’t ordered, this surprise was unpleasant.
“As the Special Events and Fundraising Director, you write the donor receipt letters?” Fred asked, not looking up from the yellow legal pad he scribbled on.
“Yes. Sometimes.”
This was his second attempt at this particular question, but because he apparently hadn’t been satisfied with the first go-round they were detouring back. She and her boss both sent the letters, which were informal and tax documents at the same time. Nonprofit stuff was so weird.
Accountants, on the other hand, were not. Nearing fifty and wearing an ill-fitting department store suit, Fred sat across from her preparing his agenda for the next two weeks. The annual audit was, to put it mildly, a pain.
He formulated his next question, blinking behind wire-rimmed spectacles. He looked like someone who would call them spectacles.
“How long have you held the position?”
“Nearly two years.”
This went on the paper.
“And before that you were?”
What hadn’t she been? She had started at YWR seven years ago, fresh out of college as an intern answering phones and fetching coffee. Now she ran the fundraising operation. She got her own coffee these days.
“The office manager,” she answered. Anticipating his next question, she continued, “And before that a staff assistant.”
After graduation, she knew if she didn’t get out of the city she’d never leave. As much as she’d loved New York, she’d needed a break.
The choice of Washington had been almost accidental. It was the only offer she’d received—perhaps the result of spending too much time drinking and not enough time pondering the future—but whatever events had led to it, once she’d started at YWR she hadn’t been able to leave, despite other offers.
She felt like she made a difference—simple as that. Every year, they sent tens of thousands of books around the world to schools and other literacy programs. They funded teacher salaries, built and repaired schools, paid for electricity: anything to support women’s and girls’ education.
Okay, not exactly a controversial subject, teaching girls to read. It wasn’t difficult to raise the money or to get people on board with their goals, but it had vitality nonetheless. It felt like the absolute least she could do some days. Obviously girls needed to be literate, but the very simplicity was what drove her to keep on doing it.
If she stopped, would the next person be as good? The difference between an annual operating budget of $8 and $10 million—and surely she made at least that much of a difference—was huge in terms of what they could provide. So she had stayed, year after year, confident she, and her work, mattered.
Fred turned back to his legal pad, but before he did, she caught a slightly nefarious gleam in his eye. Faux-casually he asked, “Geri O’Reilly’s bookkeeping—what do you think of it?”
He had to know what a difficult position he was putting her in, know that she couldn’t answer this question diplomatically, and he asked it anyway. Fred apparently had a bit of a mean streak.
Geri ran YWR like a ship. A ship with a weekly staff meeting generally clocking in at two hours immediately before close of business on Thursday, which preparations for the annual audit had thankfully displaced this afternoon. Alyse’s boss was excellent at her job, except for her terrible taste in meeting times and her disdain for digital files.
Articulating each word like a perfect die-cut, Alyse said, “I haven’t ever been able to convince Geri of the merits of going paperless.”
Fred outright chuckled—the first moment of levity they had shared in half an hour. Maybe he was a slow thaw. Maybe she could get him. Because it would
so
help lubricate the next two weeks if he were at least a little bit astounded. The audit was grueling and stressful under any circumstances. The organization’s reputation was at stake. But if Fred were even infinitesimally on their side, rather than prosecuting them, it would be easier.
Hell, at this point, she would even settle for impressed.
“Because our files are antiquated.” Alyse leaned on the table conspiratorially and flashed the hint of a smile. The effect was flirty. It was the kind of practiced move she usually reserved for bribing the checkout guy at the grocery store not to charge her for plastic bags when she forgot the canvas ones her roommate insisted they use. “Maybe you could give me the list of documents you want to see so I can get everything ready for you on Monday.”
Blinks resulted. Many, many blinks. That had to be a good sign.
“Right.” Fred stretched the word out as if it were confused. He reached up to scratch his cheek, revealing a beat-up wedding ring. Maybe the guy did have a dazzled side. “That was my plan all along.”
“Oh. Well, then, it’s good we’re on the same page.” She was going to need to practice charming; obviously she was slipping.
He turned from the legal pad to his computer, struck a few more keys, then his tiny, portable printer rattled to life.
“Here’s what we want,” he said, passing the pages to her.
One sheet was followed by another and then another. The list of receipt letters was longer than she would have guessed. There were more letters listed here than she remembered writing, actually, but it had been a record-breaking year.
“Thanks, Fred,” she said, rising and favoring him with what she hoped was a better showing of her appealing, persuasive side. He swallowed before taking her outstretched hand. Oh yes, she’d get him on her side before the audit was over. “See you next week.”
Outside the conference room, several people were debating where to go to happy hour and others were packing up to leave. The cancelation of the staff meeting was indeed cause for celebration. Alyse wove back through a thicket of cubicles to drop off the notebook in which she’d scrawled the date and a few phrases at the beginning of her meeting with Fred. She would need only her list to tackle the storage room.
“Oh, thank goodness.” The voice belonged to one of her more needy coworkers, Linda. Alyse turned to find the woman clutching two belts, a pretty light green patent leather and a tacky gold lamé. “Which one?”
“The green.” The words shot out of her mouth and Alyse felt the error immediately. Never, ever announce a decision too quickly—it inevitably encouraged skepticism.
And indeed an all-too-familiar tightness began to edge her coworker’s eyes. Linda had arrived in this world unconvinced and thus would she leave it. The woman would require coaxing to wear vintage Givenchy. The correct approach to handling Linda was to demonstrate careful deliberation, not instinct or common sense. Particularly not the latter.
“Really?” Linda asked. She stretched the word out to three syllables.
“Yes. Chartreuse is having a moment.” Perhaps reason would convince her if nothing else would. Metallics were acceptable at the holidays, maybe in the summer, but not in March, and not
that
particular metallic. Not ever.
“Even with black?”
Tamping down her incredulity, Alyse said, “Yes, even with black. Especially with black. Black is a neutral. The chartreuse will define your waist and make the ensemble modern.”
Linda’s eyes brightened and she nodded. “Thank you. I knew you’d have the right answer.”
There were few words on earth Alyse liked better than those. She
was
an expert on the subject of accessories. Truth wasn’t flattery.
As Linda put the ugly belt in a drawer and put on the green one, the right one, Alyse asked, “What’s the occasion?”
“Anniversary dinner at Matchbox.”
Alyse felt a slight stab in her abdomen. Indecisive though she might be, Linda was a nice woman and Alyse should be happy she was happy. But lately, when confronted with romantic bliss, she felt vaguely ill.
Just the night before, she had watched her best friend and roommate, Millie Frank, wilt under attention at a dinner celebrating her engagement. She wasn’t jealous
per se
, at least not of Millie’s fiancé, Parker. He would have made her crazy, even as he’d turned Millie’s watercolor to Technicolor. No, they were annoyingly right together.
The problem also wasn’t the demure ring her friend now sported on the third finger of her left hand. If Alyse had wanted to be engaged, she could have accomplished
that
eons ago. Steven probably would have proposed; Quentin definitely would have. But she’d never let them. She’d kept saying marriage was something to be dealt with later. Later like when she went back to New York.
No, what tugged was the way Millie whispered in Parker’s ear. The knowing gleam in his eyes as he nodded back. Those words, those gestures, communicated volumes of intimacy. Sympathy. Communication. Trust. Things Alyse had never really known.
Thinking about it wasn’t helpful. She was the maid of honor. She needed to be bubbly. To be fizzy. To provide discernment about the merits of gardenias and the differences between varieties of domestic sparkling whites. But now, when she thought about the wedding, she felt actively uneasy. She felt longing—and WASPs simply weren’t supposed to. Particularly not when an auditor was sniffing around.
She shook off the introspection and crossed the now-emptying office, Fred’s list in hand. The annual audit was the first step in the end of the fiscal year crush. Close on its heels would be the annual report. Both required a complete accounting of all the money that had come in and all the money that had gone out, including the tricky subject of influencing policy.
They did it of course, tried to get Congress to spend more money on foreign aid, but they had to be careful with their tax-exempt status. They could lobby, but not too much; they just couldn’t be directly political.
Alyse pushed open the door to the storage room and fumbled for the light switch. The recessed bulbs came to life slowly, sputtering as if they resented her request. They probably did. They didn’t get used all that often.
The bulbs in the storage room finally clicked on all the way and flooded the space with a too-bright light. The harsh blaze cast sharp shadows over the boxes and binders stacked before her.
She finally located the binder she needed on the top shelf. As she pulled it down, dust fell like downy snow on her hair and shoulders. She smothered a sneeze and then batted at her gray pencil skirt and pink silk blouse with a crumpled tissue from her pocket.
After seven years at YWR, she knew what to expect in the storage room. Dust bunnies the size of, well, bunnies, a thick blanket of filth and massive amounts of paper that really should have been digitized.
She began flipping through the receipt letters. She recognized most of the names, big corporations and foundations that supported nonprofits. Leaders of business looking for tax write-offs. Rich folks from all over the country. Even some celebrities. All the people she’d gotten to open their wallets.
Closing the binder in her hand, she grabbed two others, then headed back to her desk. The office was delightfully dark and quiet now. She knew from experience she had a good hour before the cleaning staff showed up.
As she began to locate the letters Fred wanted scattered through the binders piled on her desk and started to plug them into the chart, she clicked her tongue in frustration. It was odd, so odd, that they still did so much only via hard copies. She’d been pushing for years to go paperless. It would be cheaper, plus it would make all the disclosure stuff easier. But Geri always resisted; the woman was stuck in the past.
As she plugged numbers into her spreadsheet, she noticed a lot of medium-sized donations from businesses incorporated in Delaware. Okay, so that was hardly unusual, many businesses were, it was just that she didn’t recognize the names on many of them.
Usually, contributions of any size came from foundations she knew well. It wasn’t like the past few years had been good ones for American businesses, like they suddenly had all this excess cash that needed to be given away.
When she plugged one of the unfamiliar names—Harding Investment Group—into a search engine, she found the group’s website. A little cheap-looking, but still, legit. At the next, Alyse sucked in her breath.
R. Cross LLC’s site was identical to Harding Investment Group’s. Only the banner at the top was different. She clicked the “about” tab.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
...
Her high school Latin might be inaccessible, but that was the dummy text that appeared on a website template until you put something else in. She checked the copyright at the bottom of the page; it was dated from three months prior, around the time of the donation.
This...wasn’t right. Why couldn’t a company that had enough money to give YWR $10,000 not afford a real web designer? Why would they still have the filler text up? What was going on?
The back of her neck tingled; she glanced over her shoulder. No one was there, of course. Her colleagues were all long gone.
Feeling a bit self-conscious, she scooped up the binders and headed for the copy room. She duplicated the pages for each donation she couldn’t remember, all the ones that seemed fishy, and returned the originals to storage.
