The Scandal and Carter O'Neill (5 page)

She leaned out of the corridor, looking at the small crowd of photographers visible through the safety glass door.

“Really?” she asked, clearly hesitant.

“It’s sort of the point.”

“But—” she licked her lips, her fingers fluttering over her belly “—can’t we go slow or something?” she asked. “Ease into it?”

He shook his head, but faced by her nerves and beauty he found himself weakening. He took her hand where it rested against the swell of her stomach. He tried not to, but he couldn’t help briefly noticing the taut warmth of that belly.

A baby, he thought. There’s a baby in there.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said. “Just smile.”

She didn’t smile. Didn’t joke. He realized she was really rattled. “You okay?” he asked, stroking the chilled skin of her wrist.

“Tell me something,” she said. “Anything. About yourself.”

“What?”

“You know everything about me. Well, not everything, but lots. Lots more than I know about you.”

“Why does that matter?” he asked.

“Because we’re supposed to be dating!” she cried. “And you’re holding my hand, and they’re going to take pictures of us, and we’re supposed to make it convincing. And I think maybe that convincing needs to start right now. With me. So spill, Carter. Give me something.”

“I…ah…have a younger sister,” he said, not entirely sure why he was indulging her. “And a brother.”

“You do?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Why is that such a surprise?”

“I don’t know.” She smiled and shrugged one elegant shoulder. “You seem kind of like a lone wolf, you know. Not exactly the big brother type.”

Oh, but he was. He was a big brother, all the way down to his core.

And if that meant staying away from his family in order to keep his mother away from them, no matter how much it might hurt him—then so be it. He could handle it. Because he knew better than to take something he wanted. He lived every minute of his life under sublimation of want. Compromise of need.

Christmas was simply another day. Another day without his family.

“Carter?” she asked. Her hand, no longer chilled, squeezed his.

“I miss them,” he said and felt as if he’d jumped off a cliff, nothing but air under his feet. He cleared his throat, wishing he could suck the words back into his mouth.

But Zoe’s smile was wide and sincere and some of the confidence bloomed back into her eyes, making the green shine bright. Lovely, he thought, slightly spellbound. So lovely.

“All right,” she said, and took a deep breath. “That’s good stuff to know. We can go now.”

She grabbed his hand and tugged, pulling him down the narrow hallway to the front door where the flashbulbs and journalists waited like sharks in shallow water.

They pushed through the front door and the flashes exploded. Zoe stumbled slightly and lifted a hand to cover her eyes.

“Oh wow,” she whispered, sounding lost.

It wasn’t totally an act when he put his arm around her, curling her toward him.

“Mayor Pro Tem?” someone shouted. “Are you the father of the baby?”

Zoe stiffened, a fire igniting in her eyes. It was ugly, the speculation about the baby, and he wished, oddly, that he could spare her some of that—despite the fact that she’d brought it on herself, however unwittingly. She opened her mouth, no doubt about to get them deeper into trouble, and he squeezed her arm.

“The father of Zoe’s baby is no one’s business but Zoe’s,” he said.

“How long have you two been dating?” another person shouted and Carter glanced down at Zoe.

“Five minutes?” she whispered, and he laughed. Flashbulbs exploded again.

“A few weeks,” he finally said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re going to get some dinner.”

Questions were hurled after them, but he ignored them. Why he kept his arm around Zoe, he wasn’t entirely sure.

SHE’D NEVER BEEN TO BOLA, but what Phillip had told her didn’t do the place justice.

Bola was gorgeous, if one liked art deco, red velvet and mahogany floors, and Zoe did. The dark lighting made her want to purr and sashay across the floor, a mink trailing behind her. She could imagine Carter, his blond hair slicked back, his big shoulders tucked into one of those exquisite tuxes from the era.

Oh, yes, she could imagine that very well. Perhaps a boutonniere, a white rose, pinned right onto that impressive chest of his. She’d pat that chest, trail one blood-red nail along his lapel—

Her stomach growled like a semi roaring to life, ruining the image.

Embarrassed, she glanced over at Carter to see if he noticed. He stared at her, blank faced. “Was that you?” he asked as they followed the white-jacketed waiter to their table.

“I’m hungry,” she protested.

“Clearly,” he muttered, but his eyes twinkled, and Carter with twinkling eyes was a very fine sight.

“Your table,” the waiter said, and as Zoe slid past him, she whispered, “Is Phillip working tonight?”

The waiter nodded and Zoe’s baby did a worried backflip. “He is. Would you like me to send him over?”

“Dear God, no,” she whispered vehemently and then smiled at the man’s slightly stunned expression. “Thanks, though.”

He bowed and left.

“So, should we just have them bring the cow?” Carter asked, glancing at the menu.

And a vat of cream cheese, she thought.

“Just part of it,” she managed to say with a smile. “You…ah…handled those reporters really well,” she said, searching for conversation now that they were here at the table with a dinner to get through. He’d been on the phone the whole car ride over, talking to someone named Amanda about retractions.

“You get used to it in politics.”

“Maybe you should give me some tips,” she said. “You know, so I don’t blow it.”

“Tell them some truth, but not all of it. Keep them wondering. That sort of thing. But you did great, tonight. Very charming,” he said, his smile brief but beautiful, revealing all that potent glamour he hid away.

Phillip was going to lose his marbles.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s what was so great.”

Sticking out her tongue seemed like the right reaction, but she wasn’t entirely sure that wasn’t the hormones.

Carter’s pocket buzzed and he dug out a cell phone the size of a deck of cards. He glanced at the screen and winced. “I need to take this,” he said and left the booth without glancing back at her.

She blinked, taken aback by his rudeness.

If this relationship were real, the cell phone would be the first thing to go, she thought.

“Can I get you something to drink while you wait to order?” the waiter asked when he approached their table, like a polite ghost ready to disappear at the shake of her head.

“I’m ready to order,” she said. “We’ll both have the porterhouse. Bloody. And potatoes.”

“Baked? Scalloped?”

“Both,” she said. “And we probably need something green.” She patted the baby, who was clamoring for cream cheese.

“Our vegetable today is asparagus.”

“Perfect.”

The waiter blinked and nodded. “Drinks?”

“Water is fine,” she said, taking a sip to prove it. “But bring him something fruity. With an umbrella.”

The sillier the better.

The waiter smiled and vanished, only to reappear with a bread basket—bless him—and winked before vanishing once more.

She caught a few interested looks and some very dark glances being thrown her way from other diners, but she just tried to appear Zen as she covered a roll with butter.

Bola was busy and getting busier. Perhaps Phillip wouldn’t have a chance to take a break and come find her. He didn’t know she was here, after all. Would never in this life expect it.

“This is a joke, right?”

No such luck.

“Hi, Phillip,” she sighed.

PHILLIP, GORGEOUS in his white jacket and some tasteful guyliner, stood beside her table, using tongs to replenish her still-full bread basket.

“I’ve been trying to call you all day long,” he said.

“I’ve been avoiding you.”

“Obviously. Are you actually dating Deputy Deadbeat Daddy?” he asked, his voice climbing above the muted din that filled the restaurant. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Zoe glanced behind him for a sign of Carter, but he was nowhere to be found.

“I know, I should have answered—”

“Damn right you should have answered.” He radiated anger and her bread basket was about to overflow but Phillip wasn’t about to walk away. He managed to place one more rye knot on top of her leaning tower of carbohydrates.

“Is this…relationship between you and Carter O’Neill for real?” he asked, dropping his outrage. Now he was just Phillip, her best friend since dance class in the fifth grade.

“Carter and I are just…friends,” she said, the lie falling awkwardly from her mouth like a big fat rock.

He stared at her askance, and she tried to keep her face as composed as possible, like in those books when people are trying to stop psychics from reading their minds by thinking of beaches or something. That was her, trying not to let on that the whole situation was out of her control and freaking her out.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “I’m not buying that for a minute, sugar. Is he—” Phillip glanced behind him, but still no Carter, and leaned down “—the father?”

“No!” She practically shrieked. “Good God, no.”

Phillip stared at her for a long time, his black eyes acute and concerned. “I know you’re convinced you’re not lying when you won’t tell anyone who the father is, but it feels like I’m being lied to.”

Sadness pinged through her, ricocheting off shame and embarrassment. This baby wasn’t even born and was already so scandalous.

“Carter is not the father,” she said, refusing to let the guilt budge her from her decision to keep her baby’s father a secret. She had a plan, damn it, and she was sticking to it.

“Then tell me, honey, what is going on?”

She couldn’t tell him. Shouldn’t.

Phillip traded his bucket of fancy bread for a silver pitcher of water from another passing waiter. “This isn’t another one of your follow-your-heart moments, is it? Because last time you dated one of these suit guys he wanted to change you—”

Mute, Zoe watched Phillip fill her glass with water.

The problem with best friends, she thought, is that they know too much.

“Carter doesn’t want to change me,” she whispered. He doesn’t even know me. Or like me.

It was killing her not to tell him, and she realized that Phillip wasn’t going to go run off to USA Today and spill their secret. Phillip wasn’t like that. He was her friend, and frankly, she needed a friend right now. “Listen, I shouldn’t tell you this, but—”

“Zoe.”

Carter was back, standing right behind Phillip, making her friend’s own spectacular glamour seem somehow childish. That was the thing about Carter—all other men seemed like boys around him.

“Enjoy your bread,” Phillip said, glaring at Carter as he walked away.

Carter sat, folding his napkin into his lap with precision. “Who was that?” he asked.

“Phillip,” she said, feeling as though she’d been caught doing something wrong. “My friend.”

“You were going to tell him?” he asked.

“It’s not like he’s a reporter,” she said. “He doesn’t even know any reporters.”

“Trust me, by tomorrow, he’ll know a bunch of them.” He reached out his hand, touching her fingertips with his own and then retreating, leaving her skin tingling.

She was annoyed by and attracted to the man—a gross combination.

“Is this the hand-holding part of the evening?” she asked, feeling miserable.

His smile was so surprising, it disarmed her right out of her misery. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Why don’t we order?”

“I already did,” she said and his eyebrows shot up.

“What am I having?” he asked, and she couldn’t tell if he was angry. The phone at his elbow buzzed and he glanced at the screen, his body poised to stand up.

“You know, if you really want to convince people that we’re dating, you’d turn that thing off for an hour or two.”

“I don’t ever turn my phone off,” he said, staring at her as if she’d asked him to take off his clothes and dance the hula.

“Ever?”

“I turn the ringer off, but no, I never turn off my phone. I’m the mayor pro tempore of a major metropolitan city.”

Zoe sat back, seeing Carter in a new way. A sad new way. “That’s not all you are,” she asked, “is it?”

He blinked, his eyes heavy and dark for just a moment, as if he understood the truth of what she’d said, and then he grabbed his phone. “This is my world, Zoe, and you’re only passing through. Don’t make judgments on things you don’t understand. I’ll be right back.”

Zoe’s entire body flushed and buzzed with anger and embarrassment. She just got a dressing-down from her fake date.

“Well,” she muttered, grabbing another roll. “No wonder he’s alone.”

A few moments later he was back. He hesitated at her chair, his fingers brushing her shoulder and sending sparks down her body, straight to her breasts.

Down, girls, she thought, sternly. Those fingers are all wrong for you.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

“Probably not,” she said. “If this were a real date, I would have left.”

His chuckle was dry. “It wouldn’t be the first time a date left me.”

She gaped at him. “And you’re okay with that?”

“I love my job, Zoe, and I’ve never met a woman that made me want to put my work second.”

“Hmm,” Zoe murmured, wondering why that sounded noble. Sexy, even. As though he was just a hardworking man looking for the right kind of woman.

Her hormones, absolutely out of control with baby power, really liked Carter in that light—as if he was the hero in a romance novel and she was the young virgin secretary there to change his life.

Zoe crossed her legs and tried to think of smelly pointe shoes. Dancing on broken toes. Blisters. “What are all the phone calls about? Mayoral espionage? Is New Orleans trying to take our land?”

He laughed. “I wish. Actually, I don’t wish. I’m getting some personal funding for the Glenview Community Center debacle, and I think the deal is getting pretty close to going through.”

“Oh,” she said, her roll forgotten in her hands. He needed to stop doing that. Just when she’d convinced herself she didn’t like him, no matter how good he looked in a suit, he confessed to fixing a community center debacle. “That’s good.”

“It’s great,” he said, leaning back, his jacket sliding open to reveal his trim waist in a crisp white shirt.

Delicious, she thought, which was ridiculous but true nonetheless. She kind of wanted to dip him in cream cheese.

“With that community center being finished, hope fully we can get some more community support to repair the centers that need it. Get some much-needed programs up and running in underserviced neighborhoods.”

“The lights didn’t work in my room at Jimmie Simpson today,” she said. “I had my toddlers dancing outside in the ball diamond.”

“That’s what I mean,” he said. “If we want to cut down on crime and vandalism and increase our graduation rates, we need to give kids a place to go besides the street. It’s the only way to curb the total downward spiral our teenage population is currently experiencing. Without programs that interest kids and plug them into something positive—and without a place to have those programs—I don’t know how to turn things around.”

She stared at him, spellbound. Mesmerized by his passion.

Did she think Carter O’Neill was cold? Fool. He was fire under ice. He was crimson coals, waiting for the chance to ignite.

“Sorry,” he said, after a moment. The passion banked, vanished. Like it never was. It was quite a trick, as disarming as his smile. “I get carried away.”

“You’re right to,” she said. “We should all get carried away about this.”

“Why don’t you tell me about dance?” he asked.

She laughed. “What about it? The history? The modern movement? Teaching two-year-olds?”

“You,” he said, leaning forward, slicing away the rest of the world with the sharpness of his focus. “Tell me about dance and you. About Houston.”

“I was a part of the ballet company there,” she said. “For three years.”

“Did you like it?”

“Like it?” She smiled and then laughed. “I loved it. It was everything I had worked for since I was four. The artistic director was a genius, and fair-minded. The company had its drama but for the most part we believed in what we were doing. And the city loved us. It was a dream.”

“And now you teach two-year-olds.” She stiffened at his tone but chose to laugh it off. It might seem like she’d fallen down in the world, but this was a choice. Everything that led her to this moment and place in her life had been a choice.

And teaching dance was a choice she’d made at a young age. A greater calling than being on the stage. A passion far brighter than her star had been.

“Let’s not forget my seniors samba class.”

“How could I?” His smile took away the sting. “And is that what you want?” he asked, all joking aside. “To teach.”

“It’s all I want,” she said, surprised that she was telling him this. She hadn’t expressed this to her mother, or even Phillip, afraid that they would laugh at her or think she was lying to save face. But Carter just leaned in, his eyes alive with interest, and she found herself unleashing her plans, her dreams. “I love it. Even more than I love dancing myself and when…well, hopefully, in a few years I can get the money together, and I plan to start an academy.”

“The Zoe Madison School of Dance?”

“Something like that. A permanent building. I’ve got my eye on one off St. Louis Street, a nice storefront with lots of space and it’s central, right by bus stops and the highway. I can do all types of classes for all ages. Scholarship programs and maybe even ties to local gymnastic groups. I want it to be a dance community, for anyone interested in being a part of it. I can—” She stopped, her tongue suddenly too big for her mouth. She felt her cheeks incinerate with high heat. “Sorry,” she mumbled, echoing his words. “I get carried away.”

His smile was like booze—too much of it and she’d be drunk.

“Your passion is exciting,” he said and cleared his throat, glancing down at the tablecloth. “Infectious.”

He opened his mouth as if to ask something else, but shut it, second-guessing himself.

“What?” She laughed.

“I don’t want to pry—”

She tipped back her head and howled. “We’re fake-dating, Carter. Ask what you want, I won’t guarantee an answer, but let’s not make this more complicated than it needs to be.”

“Fine. Why did you leave?” he asked. “Houston, I mean. You’re young. You obviously loved it. Why come back here?”

She blinked at him. “I’m pregnant.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure other ballerinas have had babies and kept dancing. And Houston has a bigger market for an academy like the one you dream about.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I was alone in that city. My mother, my real friends, the ones I could count on to help, were all here.”

“The father…?” He trailed off then held up his hand. “I know. None of my business.”

She smiled, toying with her water glass.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re the only person in my life who seems to respect that concept.”

“Well, reporters can be relentless.”

“Reporters have nothing on my mom.”

Now he blinked. “You haven’t told your mother?”

Her anger spiked and she pushed away her glass. “I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to get. The first person I’m going to tell is my baby. It’s our lives. I mean, am I crazy? Isn’t that what makes sense?”

He didn’t answer for a long time.

“It is crazy,” she muttered.

“I think it’s laudable,” he said and cleared his throat, fiddled with his tie. Carter was cute when he was uncomfortable. “Respectful. Of your child, of that relationship. It says a lot about you.”

“That I’m crazy.”

“Oh, you’re crazy,” he said with a laugh, and somehow it didn’t seem like such a bad thing when he said it that way. “But not for this.”

Her body buzzed. Her hormones did a long slow rumba through her veins.

“No one has said that,” she murmured.

And she wished, so badly, that they would. And now, here was this man she didn’t want to like—reaching into her head.

This dating business wasn’t going the way she thought it would. She thought a fake date would be business-like, that they’d talk about the weather or professional sports. Good God, she didn’t want to bond with the man.

“Tell me something,” she said.