Secrets and Seductions (2 page)

Caroline Pearce, Sweet Valley's reigning gossip, loved nothing better than to be the bearer of bad news. Preferably bad,
juicy
news.

Unfortunately, she'd not found any big scoops lately. In recent days, her blog had been decidedly boring. No great scandals, nobody calling her in tears. Readership had been steadily dropping since her last big coup: the bombshell news of Jessica Wakefield and Liam O'Connor's steamy hotel tryst. She'd heard the blog entry, which she'd kindly forwarded to Todd because that's what friends do, had stopped cold any hope of reconciliation between the unhappy couple.

Some people might have felt bad about that, but not Caroline. The truth will set you free, right? She was only doing her duty as a friend. Reporting the truth—give or take a few white lies here and there for the sake of spicing up a good story—was her reason for getting up in the morning.

Caroline knew of one surefire place to get some dirt on the residents of Sweet Valley: her OB-GYN's office.

Everyone Caroline knew who had been anybody at Sweet Valley High used Enid Rollins. She was considered the area's top OB-GYN, and she wouldn't let you forget it, either. Everyone went to see her: Lila Fowler, Jessica, even Elizabeth, who was not an Enid fan at the moment. Enid used to be Elizabeth's best friend, before she became the self-involved snob no one could stand.

“Caroline Pearce?” called the nurse, a tall forty-something woman with a no-nonsense salt-and-pepper bob.

“Where's Alese?” Caroline asked as she put down her magazine and stood. Alese was Enid's regular nurse.

Alese had been a great source for gossip. She was always quick to pick up the phone when a new client came in. She'd tell Caroline—
anonymously,
of course.

“She doesn't work here anymore,” said the new nurse curtly. “My name is Leslie.”

Caroline tried to mask her disappointment as she attempted to chat up Leslie on the way to the exam room. Unfortunately, she got nowhere. Caroline frowned even as Leslie left and Enid came bustling in.

“Oh, it's
you
.” Enid's tone sounded snide and cold as she came through the door, wearing her white doctor's coat.
Well, I guess she hasn't forgotten starring in my blog,
Caroline thought. A few months earlier, Enid had been having an affair with Brad Jones, the married pool salesman. That had been quite the scandal then, but it had been a couple of months. Caroline had thought Enid would have forgiven and forgotten by now.

“Hi, Enid. Great to see you,” she said, ignoring the cold reception.

Nothing irked Enid more than being called by her first name instead of Dr. Rollins. And that held true even for the people she'd gone to school with, whom, of course, she called by first name.

Enid flipped through Caroline's medical file.

“Have you been to your oncologist this year?”

“I'm still in remission,” Caroline said, smiling. Even cancer was no match for Caroline. While other people might have reevaluated their life choices after facing down death, surviving only made Caroline more certain than ever before that running her gossip blog was what she was meant to do. After all, in it she could get back at all those A-list people in high school who had ignored her when all she desperately wanted was a little bit of attention. Now they were frantically sucking up to little old D-list Caroline and, boy, was she loving it.

“Good,” Enid said, but she didn't quite sound like she meant it.

“So, is Lila Fowler okay?” Caroline asked.

“Why wouldn't she be?”

“Well, with the miscarriage and all…”

“Miscarriage? What are you talking about?” Enid glanced up from her chart.

“You don't watch
True Housewives
?”

“That garbage?” Enid sniffed. “Of course not.”

“But I just assumed you knew about Lila's pregnancy anyway. I mean, what was she…like eleven weeks along when she miscarried?”

“What? That's ridiculous. I just saw her not too long ago and she wasn't pregnant! She—” Enid stopped midsentence, realizing she'd accidentally blurted out confidential patient information. “Caroline, you better keep that to yourself.”

“Who me? Of course. My lips are sealed.” Caroline couldn't help smirking.

Enid went pale, understanding the enormity of her mistake.

“I mean it, Caroline! You can't breathe
a word of this
. If you even mention this in your blog…”

“Enid, I promise I won't put this in my blog.”
This news is much too big for my little blog anyway,
Caroline thought. This was national news, at minimum.
TMZ
would pay her big bucks for
this
little tidbit. She felt giddy as she thought about auctioning the news to the highest bidder.

The truth wasn't going to set her free; it was going to make her rich.

“What do you mean you're not doing the Jane Doe story?” Tim White sat in his office at the
Tribune,
glaring at Elizabeth. “Is she just not talking?”

“No. She gave me the interview.” Tim was talking about Robin Platt, the woman who'd accused Bruce of attempted rape. Like all media outlets, the
Tribune
wasn't releasing the woman's real name. Around the newsroom, she was simply known as “Jane Doe.”

“Then I don't understand. What's the problem here?”

“I can't write it, Tim. There's no way I would do that to Bruce. Never. Even if I were a hundred percent sure, I could never be part of that betrayal. It was hubris that involved me from the beginning. I thought I was going to save him, but I didn't. I only made it worse.”

It was one thing to help the girl, and she had, but writing a story that pronounced to the world that Bruce was a rapist, guilty or not, would never come from Elizabeth.

Tim sighed and put his head in his hands.

“Elizabeth, you're a journalist. You're not supposed to take sides, and you write the story, no matter what.”

“I'm not going to talk about it anymore.”

“You leave me no choice.”

“I know. Whatever I've done up till now, I would never do again. I regret it so deeply. I got involved to help Bruce and I turned out to be the one who destroyed him.”

“You did what you had to do, Elizabeth. Plus, it's obvious he's guilty. He ran! We know he's in France. We just don't know where. But you do, don't you?”

Of course she knew. He had houses all over the world, but she suspected he had gone to his villa in the south of France. She'd told Annie Whitman about his house there and she was recently able to confirm that's where he was. But there was no way she was going to tell Tim.

“Clearly, you've lost all objectivity—if you had any to begin with,” Tim said. “What was I thinking, putting his girlfriend on this story? My mistake.”

Girlfriend? Hardly. Ex-girlfriend, more like it. But Elizabeth didn't correct him.

Tim's tone softened a little. “I like you. You know I do. You're a very good writer, but …”

“I know, and you're a very good boss, too.”

Tim genuinely liked Elizabeth. She was a smart, idealistic young reporter, the kind who got into the business because she thought she could make a difference. He hated to see her go.

“Don't make me fire you, Elizabeth. It won't look good on your résumé. And of course, then I can't give you a recommendation.”

“Okay. I quit, then.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. It was the only way out. “Thanks, Tim, for everything.”

Even though it was her choice, Elizabeth felt a sharp stab of disappointment. She loved her job. The idea of quitting after she'd worked so hard to get here felt like she was giving up on a lifelong dream.

She realized she'd been holding on to the naïve hope that despite everything, she could keep her job. Okay, Tim might move her back to beginner stuff like suburban city councils or restaurant openings, a kind of Siberia of reporting, but she could see that wasn't possible.

He was a good guy, but he wasn't going to budge, and neither could she.

“Maybe I should give you a couple of days to think about it.” Tim made one last offer.

“No, but thanks anyway.” Elizabeth had made up her mind. There was no going back.

Elizabeth left Tim's office and went straight to her desk. She could feel everyone's eyes on her. Without looking up, she began packing her things.

“You okay?” That came from Andy, the only one brave enough to ask.

“I'm not going to do the Jane Doe story.” Elizabeth felt a rough ball of tears forming in her throat. She swallowed hard.

“I get it,” he said.

And she knew he did and felt, in the middle of all this shit, she was doing the right thing.

It felt funny to be on the other side. How many times had she been cavalier with other people's lives? How often had she thought, “Hey, I'm a reporter and it's my job,” when she'd run with a story that was sure to destroy people's lives? Now she knew how those people felt: very human and vulnerable. Bleeding.

Elizabeth grabbed her purse, her office plant, and her family pictures: those of her sister, brother, nephew, and niece. She looked at their smiling faces and felt like crying.

Andy gave her a pat on the shoulder as she walked by. He'd had the Bruce story first, and he'd no doubt get it back now. He'd be after the Jane Doe/Robin Platt interview the minute she left. Maybe he would get it, too. Maybe Elizabeth couldn't really protect Bruce, no matter how hard she tried.

But at least the story wouldn't have her name on it. That was something. And maybe he would see how toxic the story really was now that she'd given it up. Maybe it would make a difference.

Elizabeth climbed into her car and drove aimlessly. A black Porsche zipped across the intersection and she instantly thought of Bruce. Her eyes went to the license plate, but of course, it wasn't him. He was long gone.

The tears slid down her cheeks and a sob broke free. Now she'd lost everything.

Over the next few weeks, Elizabeth hung out at her parents' house, the house where she'd grown up, and wondered what she was going to do. As she walked the rooms of her childhood home, she thought,
It used to be so easy.
Sure, high school seemed like a killer—each new day brought some new drama—but in hindsight, all of her problems that had seemed so big then were really pretty small.

As she moped around the house, she made a decision. She wasn't just going to sit and wait for the Robin interview to come out. Andy was a good investigator. He would take his time getting the story. She could count on at least two weeks before it hit the paper. In that time, she was going to do what she could to help Bruce. Just because she'd lost her job didn't mean she'd lost her skills as a reporter.

Maybe it wouldn't make a difference to their relationship, but still she desperately wanted somehow to save him. If his name could be cleared, she was the one who had to do it. And she wouldn't stop trying until she knew for sure it was impossible.

Elizabeth decided that no matter what, she was going to keep digging until she found the truth. And she just prayed it would be Bruce's innocence.

Either way, she wasn't going to give up.

She went back to her first suspicions that Rick Warner, owner of Warner Gas, must somehow be behind Robin and the allegations against Bruce. Ever since Bruce had outfoxed Warner, snagging some of the valuable drilling land right from under his nose in order to turn it into an eco-friendly wind farm, Rick had been his sworn enemy. Elizabeth toyed with the idea of trying to go undercover at Warner Gas headquarters in San Diego to see if she could dig up a link between Robin Platt and Rick Warner, but she knew it would never work. Rick knew who she was, and so did much of his staff. She'd thought about sending someone else from the
Tribune,
but she wasn't sure she could trust anyone else. She needed someone who could blend in and someone she could trust to do what really needed to be done.

Then it hit her. She knew the perfect person she could trust and he was family now: her new brother-in-law, Aaron Dallas. He and her brother, Steven, with Emma in tow, had snuck off to New York the week before to exchange their vows officially. Even if California wouldn't recognize them, the couple had decided, spontaneously, to make the vows to each other, hoping that one day California would change the law.

The rest of the family was a little put out about not being there for the wedding, but both Steven and Aaron said it was just a spontaneous decision they'd made when they were visiting New York.

Elizabeth called Aaron and arranged to meet in an hour at Zee, the new brick-oven pizza place downtown.

Elizabeth parked her car in front of the restaurant and found Aaron waiting for her.

“Hey, brother-in-law, congratulations,” she said, hugging him, since it was the first time she'd seen him since the wedding. He returned the hug. “You took us all by surprise.”

“It was completely spur-of-the-moment,” Aaron admitted. “I'm not sure we even really thought about it. But I had to fly there to visit a client who wanted me to design a hotel for him, and then Steven said he wanted to come along and bring Emma, and then, next thing I knew, we're all at the courthouse saying ‘I do's.'” Aaron took a sip of his water. “You know, since Emma was kidnapped, it just sort of put things in perspective. We've been talking about getting married forever, but Steven didn't want another year to drag on while we planned a ceremony or waited for California to sort out the politics. He just wanted it done. Like he said, why wait?”

“So you don't incur Alice Wakefield's wrath, that's why.” Elizabeth chuckled. “She
will
get her reception, anyway, one way or another.”

“I know, I know.” Aaron held up his hands in surrender. “I hear there are already plans in the works. So…I hate to be nosy, but why all the secrecy with the lunch?”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “I have a favor to ask you. It's kind of a big one.”

“For you? Anything.”

“How do you feel about going undercover?”