The Scandal and Carter O'Neill (4 page)

But still, this reaction of hers, it wouldn’t do. Not while he stood there, calm and collected, as unmoved by her as he’d been when he’d walked in the door.

“Okay,” she said brightly, as if she weren’t shaken down to her feet. “Public hand-holding it is. When do we start?”

“Tonight,” he said, and her stomach plummeted. She’d been hoping for a few days, some time to get her head around this. To warn her mom and Phillip.

“What do I tell my friends?” she asked. “My mom.”

“Nothing would be best.”

“That’s…that’s not possible. They’ll know this baby isn’t yours. That we’re not…together.”

“That reporter—Jim Blackwell—he’ll be all over your life, and that includes your family and friends. The less they know, the easier it will be on them.”

Well, she thought, what was one more secret between her and her mother?

“All right. So where are we going tonight?”

“Bola,” he said, naming the fancy steak house that had opened downtown a few months ago.

Nope. Uh-uh. Not going to happen. She would fakedate him anywhere but there. “I’ve heard it’s awful,” she lied.

He shook his head. “From who? The food there is amazing.”

“Well, if it’s amazing food you want, I know of a great soul food place down on River—”

“The point is to be seen by people,” he said slowly, as if she were stupid. “Get our photo taken.”

“But Bola has cockroaches,” she whispered, as if Zagat were in the room with them. “In the kitchen.”

“Are you trying to be funny?” he asked. “Because I really do not get your sense of humor. We’re going to Bola.”

Of course, she thought, resignation like a brick settling in her stomach. Maybe, if she was lucky, Phillip wouldn’t be working.

At least the food would be good, she thought, happy to see a bright side. This baby loved steak. Zoe, of course, loved it dipped in cream cheese, but she would try to control herself.

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said.

“That won’t work. I teach until seven and then…well, I’ll need to get ready. Eight at the earliest.” More like seven-fifteen at the earliest, but he didn’t need to know that and he certainly didn’t need to have every single thing go his way.

He nodded. “Eight then.”

She managed to smile as if this were a real date, something to look forward to. “Eight it is.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, she thought, watching his long lean body cross the floor of her apartment. He was handsome, wealthy—at least she’d be able to eat a whole lot of steak in the next few months. Plus, he could hold hands better than most men made love. If she could just keep herself together and he managed to not be an autocratic ass, maybe everything would be all right.

Of course, there was Phillip to consider now, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

“Try to wear something appropriate,” he said.

And with that little ego crusher, he was gone.

ZOE WAS RUNNING LATE. As usual. And Mom was not helping.

“No,” she said, tucking the phone between her ear and her shoulder and locking the door behind her. She clicked on the lamp by the door and a puddle of warm light spread around her. “Mom, we’re not…serious.”

“But that thing in the paper, and now this? Dinner?”

“Yes, Mom, it’s just dinner.”

“At Bola? That’s not just dinner.”

“It is. It’s just a fancy dinner.” A fancy dinner that required a fancy dress. “He’s sort of a…fancy guy.” She winced; that wasn’t right at all. He was the opposite. He was stark and serious. Fancy like a rock face, maybe. Or an oak tree. She ran to her bedroom, shedding clothes as she went. Yoga pants—her pregnancy uniform—just weren’t going to cut it tonight.

“And how long has this been going on?”

Zoe rolled her eyes and pulled open the accordion doors to her closet. “Not long,” she said, yanking the ribbon attached to the small chain on her overhead light. She was trying to be vague, like Carter had told her, but her mom was like a hound dog. “A month, maybe. Honestly, we’re just friends.”

“Honey, why didn’t you say something? I thought…” Penny trailed off, her voice leaving behind a little wake of pain mixed with guilt.

A delightful combination that her mother specialized in.

Zoe sighed and sat down on the mess of pillows and blankets she called a bed. She quickly bounced up and pulled a cereal bowl out from the duvet before settling back down. She didn’t like lying to her mother, and she really didn’t like hurting her, but at some point there needed to be some distance. Some breathing room.

Not for the first time, Zoe doubted her decision to come back to Baton Rouge to have this baby.

“I mean, you used to tell me everything. But recently, you’re so different. The baby—”

She didn’t want to talk about the baby with her mom. Not again. For four solid months it had been all they talked about, and now the subject was closed. Closed.

“Mom, listen to me. I sort of blew it with the whole standing on the chair thing, and now we have to go public. It’s not a big deal.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Zoe took a deep breath and jumped right into the new cold waters that swirled between them. “You know why, Mom.”

“You’re going to be a single mother, Zoe. Dating isn’t—”

“And there you go,” she said, standing up and wiggling out of her bra. “This is why I didn’t tell you. I don’t need another chapter from your How To Be A Single Mother textbook.”

There was a pause, the silence long and slow, like colliding with an iceberg, and Zoe bit her lip to keep from apologizing. She was right on this.

“Do you like him?” Mom asked, her voice quiet. “Is he nice to you?”

Zoe nearly laughed. Nice? Carter O’Neill? The word simply did not apply. “Of course.”

“All right, just…be careful with yourself, honey.”

“I will. I have to go, Mom. Bye.” Zoe hung up and tossed the phone on the bed.

She approached her closet like Napoleon taking over a battlefield. None of her pants fit, and she didn’t have the money for new special maternity ones, so she shoved aside a small quadrant of black, white and denim pants. It wasn’t a terribly formal sort of place so she pushed away the turquoise beaded gown and the black sheath from her days at the Houston Ballet. Ballerinas needed gowns for those fundraiser things, but why she still kept them she had no idea. Well, they were glittery and she did like glitter.

“This is a disaster,” she moaned, flicking hangers back and forth, contemplating her pink cowboy shirt with the lassoing hearts. There was the red-and-white maternity tent dress her mother had bought her a few days ago, which honestly made her look like a tablecloth at an Italian restaurant. She pushed aside a few cardigans and dug way back into her closet, her heart sinking farther and farther into her stomach.

She wanted to look good tonight. Smokin’, even. Because Carter had mocked her and had made her heart flip over in her chest when he’d held her hand.

The combination stung like salt in a wound.

But it didn’t look like glamorous Zoe was going to make an appearance tonight. Or any other night for the foreseeable future. She was five months pregnant, a political prisoner of her own making, and she was attracted to the stone-cold warden.

Wedged into the back of her closet between her old prom dress and the remnants of her flapper phase, she found a clear plastic garment bag.

Sunshine dawned in her dark loft as she pulled out the hot pink raw silk A-line dress. A few years ago in Houston, she’d fallen in love with this dress, with its big red and yellow appliqué roses on the short hem, its bold color, and the way it made her legs look about a million miles long. The only problem was that it had been a little too big and she’d meant to have it altered, but kept forgetting.

Thank God.

She tore open the bag and pulled the dress over her head, shimmying it down around her belly and hips. She stepped sideways into the full-length mirror and squealed with delight. A little tight around the belly, but she was pregnant, what could one expect?

But the rest of it, oh the rest of it…perfect. The big collar clasped around her neck, a floppy silk rose beneath her chin. Her arms were bare, so she slid on a few silver bangles. And then a few more.

Shoes. Shoes would be an issue. Her swollen feet begged for the low sandals with the ghetto-fabulous gemstones, but she remembered how tall Carter was, how he seemed to tower over her, and she reached into the way back for her black second, secondhand Chanel stilettos.

Yes, she thought, admiring herself in the mirror. Oh. Yes. She pliéd, dipped. Tried to arabesque, but the seams wouldn’t allow it. She felt beautiful in this dress.

Lush and womanly and sophisticated.

Like a woman who owned her life.

She could do this. She could go on this date and hold hands and smile at a man who didn’t like her at all. In this dress, she could do anything.

The walls of her apartment shuddered as someone pounded on her door. It could only be one person and she clapped.

“Eat your heart out, Carter O’Neill,” she whispered and mini jetéd, as best she could, to the door.

“I’LL TRY TO BE THERE, Savannah,” Carter said into his cell phone as he brushed the rain off his jacket.

“You’re lying, Carter,” his sister said. “I can tell. I can always tell. Honestly, why do you bother trying?”

Carter smiled, staring up at the ceiling. He liked it when his little sister called him on his bullshit; it made him feel closer to her, as though it was ten years ago and she still needed him to protect her.

He remembered her a year after their mom had left them on Margot’s doorstep. Savannah had come into his room in the middle of the night, her voice a whisper, her hand against his arm a hot little puddle.

“She’s not coming back, is she?” she’d asked, moonlight turning her eyes black. “Mom’s left us here.”

“I don’t know,” he’d whispered, though he’d known. Of course he’d known. But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. He hadn’t wanted any more injury to befall this little girl.

“You’re lying,” she’d said. “You’re always lying to me.”

Suddenly, in this hallway, Carter felt a million miles from his sister. From his family. From the man he was. And it was his own fault. Every time he tried to protect them he ended up putting more than miles between them.

“Savvy,” he sighed, “I promise I will try to get there for Christmas.”

Even as the words came out of his mouth he knew it was impossible. With Vanessa back in the picture, there was no way he could go home, not with her trailing behind like a spiked tail.

“Hey,” he said, unable to believe he was going to ask this question when he’d sworn to himself that he was going to stay out of the gem drama. “You guys haven’t found the ruby, have you?”

“Tyler hunted all over the place last month when Dad was here. He says it’s nowhere to be found.”

“What does Margot say?” he asked.

“She says there’s no way it’s in The Manor. She’d know.”

“Well, she sure as hell didn’t know about the diamond, did she?”

“I guess not,” Savannah said. “She was as surprised as the rest of us when Tyler said he found it and Dad stole it from him.”

“Is Margot there?” he asked.

“She’s in West Palm Beach with her boyfriend.”

“Oh, come on,” he said, trying to scrub the mental picture of his grandmother with a boyfriend.

“Don’t be such a prude. They’re companions.”

“Has anything strange happened at The Manor lately?”

“Not more than usual.”

There, he thought, he’d satisfied the worry his mother had planted in his brain. He could go on with his life.

“How is Katie?” he asked. It was easier in a way to stay apart from The Manor, Bonne Terre and his family. When he didn’t see them for months at a time, he couldn’t picture them at the breakfast table, going to school, getting ready for bed, couldn’t think of his niece, Katie, growing up and him not seeing it.

He didn’t have to think about all the things he was missing.

“If you really cared, Carter, you’d come see her.”

It was a direct hit, and his body stung with shame that quickly fizzed and exploded to anger. His life wasn’t that simple. Had never been that simple. From the moment Savannah came into this world he’d been protecting her, watching over her, doing everything in his goddamned power to make sure that her life was that simple.

Carter turned and hammered on Zoe’s door, using the side of his fist.

“I’ll call you soon,” he said, and hammered again. What was taking Zoe so long? he wondered. She lived in like a one-room loft.

“Think about Christmas,” Savannah said, subdued, as if she knew she’d pushed too hard.

“I will,” he said, and heard the door behind him rattle, the chain lock being lifted. “Gotta run.”

He felt the door give and he turned, dropping his phone in his pocket. “Good God, Zoe, it took you—”

The world narrowed down to one color. One hot pink blast of color that seared his eyes, harpooned his brain. There was no other color like it. Ever. In his life.

“—long enough,” he finished lamely. The color belonged to a dress, a short one and he couldn’t believe it, but Zoe the pregnant elf had legs that hit the ceiling and met the floor in a pair of heels that made his heart pound in his crotch.

“Hi,” she said, and he jerked his eyes up to hers. They were smiling, the green depths aglow with a feminine confidence that zinged through his blood stream. She knew she looked good.

The desire was a huge surprise. An unwelcome one, like being cut off at the knees.

“Hello” he answered, trying to cool himself down, pull himself away from the magnetic allure of her.

Of that damn dress.

“Ah…” She blinked, her confidence crumpling slightly. “Give me one more second.” She swirled a finger around her face.

He nodded and she trotted off to a dark corner of her loft, leaving him in the dimly lit doorway. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. She had lamps everywhere, some covered by scarves, casting a rosy glow over the wood floors and high white walls.

She was a candle person, he just knew it.

“So,” she yelled, “did you come in the back?”

“Nope,” he answered, picking up a framed photograph of a young girl in a sequined dance costume, her smile revealing two missing front teeth.

Zoe, he could tell by the eyes. The exuberance with which the girl smiled, like her whole body was required to do it right.

“Were the photographers still there?” she asked, ducking her head out a doorway. She was using some kind of contraption on her eyelids, a cage or something.

“Yes,” he said.

“They were gone when I came home tonight,” she said.

“Because they were following me,” he said, having spent the day feeling like Britney Spears.

She grimaced. “That’s no fun.”

He nearly laughed at her understatement. Nothing about this was fun, except maybe looking at her legs.

“All right,” she said, stepping into the hallway. She grabbed a tiny pea-green bag off a small table and emerged from the shadows. “I’m ready for steak.”

She was lovely, more than lovely, really. She was like a rare creature. All eyes and legs and lips. Her black hair shone like an oil slick, and her skin glowed as if there were a candle burning inside her.

If this were a real date, he’d say something now. Kiss her hand and breathe a compliment across her skin. Truthfully, if this were a real date he’d back her into those shadows and up against a wall and he’d explore the secrets of those endless legs. Thinking about it, his fingers twitched. His pulse hitched.

But this wasn’t a date, and this woman was doing a number on his reputation and future political career.

“Good,” he said, brusquely, holding open the door for her. “Bring a coat. It’s raining.”

They went down the stairs and in the main hallway she turned left to head for the back door but he stopped her. “We’re going out the front.”