by Lisa Jackson
“Is that why you came here tonight?” he demanded, his eyes instantly glittering with smoky blue fire.
“No. But it made me realize I had to see you again . . . touch you. There are things we need to discuss.”
Trevor managed a beguiling smile. “We will, after I fix you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” she began to protest.
“Come on, indulge me, I’m starving.”
“What you’re doing is avoiding the issue.”
“In the manner of a true politician.” He stood up and pulled on his jeans before tossing her clothes to her. “If you want to talk, you’d better get dressed. Otherwise, I won’t be liable for what happens.” His eyes slid seductively down her body and lingered at the swell of her breasts. “You’re too damned beautiful for my own good.”
Ashley smiled wryly as she stepped into her skirt and slid the camisole over her head. While adjusting the zipper of the slim skirt, she caught Trevor staring at her. He was leaning against the fireplace and his arms were crossed over his chest as he watched her work with the obstinate zipper.
“A lot of help you are,” she muttered.
“If I come over there and touch you, you can bet that I would be pulling down instead of up.”
Her head snapped upward. “You were the one who wanted me to get dressed.”
“You got it all wrong, lady.”
“Don’t I always?”
He shook his head and laughed. “You wanted to talk and I told you that would be impossible, unless you had some clothes on. Otherwise, I might get distracted.”
“Promises, promises,” she teased just as the zipper locked into place.
Trevor’s eyes flashed ominously. “I’m not through with you yet, you know. And every time you tease me, I’ll extract my own kind of punishment on you later.”
“Sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Ashley cocked her head to the side and her dark hair framed her face in soft curls.
Trevor shrugged, refusing to be baited by her coy mood, though he wondered to himself how one woman could tear his guts out with a coquettish toss of her head. “With you, I’m never sure of anything.”
Ashley sobered instantly. Trevor took her hand and led her to the kitchen near the back of the house.
“I don’t think there’s much here . . .” he said, beginning to scrounge through the contents of the refrigerator.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not the one who’s starved,” she pointed out, staring unabashedly at the way his jeans strained over his buttocks as he leaned into the refrigerator.
“Hmph . . . Here we go. How about an omelet?”
“Anything—would you like me to cook?”
“Not on your life.” Then, when he looked up, he smiled disarmingly. “It might be safer if you did.”
Ashley was glad for an excuse to keep busy. While whipping the eggs and grating the cheese, she could feel Trevor’s eyes on her and for the first time in weeks she was completely relaxed, as if she had come home from a long and tedious journey.
They ate the meal in silence, and Ashley savored each sweet second she shared with Trevor.
“So tell me,” she insisted, clearing the plates from the small table in the windowed alcove just off the kitchen, “what’s with all this talk about your withdrawal from the race?”
“So far that’s what it is: just talk.”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” she observed.
“You should know all about that.”
She felt the muscles of her back stiffen, but when her eyes met his, she knew that the old animosity had mellowed and that Trevor hadn’t meant to bring up his accusations against her father.
“That reminds me,” she said, wiping her hands on a dish towel near the stove. “I have something for you.”
His gaze sharpened. “You found some proof?”
“I wish I knew what it was,” she admitted. “It’s in my purse . . . in the den.”
Once back in the cozy study, Trevor stoked the fire, while Ashley turned on a table lamp and extracted the documents condemning her father and cousin.
When the fire was blazing to his satisfaction, Trevor dusted his hands on his jeans and approached Ashley. She started to hand him the documents, but Trevor shook his head. “I don’t want to know what you found, if it’s something that will hurt you or your family.”
Ashley’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “I don’t understand. You asked me, no, demanded is a better word, that I look for evidence against my family. For the last six weeks I’ve worked my fingers to the bone. Now you don’t want it?”
“What I don’t want is to hurt you—not anymore. If there is something in those pages—” he pointed to the papers she was clutching “—that would be better off hidden, then I think you should burn them. Right now.”
He was offering her a way out, a lifeline for her father’s reputation, but she couldn’t accept it. If she and Trevor had any chance at happiness, it was by destroying all the myths of the past and laying to rest the lies.
Any future they might share would have to be founded on truth.
“Here.” She put the papers in his hands. “Let’s start over—a clean slate. Remember?”
He took the pages from her trembling fingers and sat on the hearth near the fire. “I’ll be damned. . . .”
“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Proof that my father and Claud were behind the bribery charges.”
His broad shoulders sagged. “Was there anything else?”
“Not that I could find,” she said roughly. “John Ellis and I worked day and night with all the company records. Sure, we could have overlooked something, I suppose, but I doubt it. There was nothing I could find around the date of your accident that would lead me to believe that Claud had any part in it. As for your father’s disappearance . . .” Trevor’s eyes sharpened and he watched her face. “I checked, everything I could think of, as far as ten years back.” She shook her head and the firelight caught in her raven-black hair.
“I suppose that may be one mystery that’s never solved,” Trevor thought aloud. He rubbed the tension from the back of his neck and wondered, for the thousandth time, what had happened to his father. “Now it’s my turn to be honest,” he stated.
Ashley’s heart chilled. Had he been using her? Were all his words of love only to extract what he wanted from her? She couldn’t believe it, and yet her heart was filled with dread. “About what?”
“I had a meeting with Claud.”
His words settled like lead on the room. “You what?”
“I instigated a private confrontation with Claud—just yesterday. That’s why I didn’t show up at Pioneer Square. I was in Seattle.”
“But Everett said you were in Salem.”
“That’s where he thought I was. If I had told him that I was flying to Seattle to have it out with Claud Stephens, Everett would have hijacked the plane.”
“So what happened?” Ashley asked, almost afraid to hear.
“Claud was his usual friendly self,” Trevor replied cynically.
“I’ll bet.” Claud’s words again rang in her ears: We can’t let that son of a bitch win.
“He wanted, make that insisted, that I pull out of the senatorial race. There had already been some rumors to that effect and Claud wanted to substantiate them.”
“But that’s ridiculous.”
“Precisely what I told your cousin.”
“And?”
Trevor rubbed his chin and looked intently at Ashley. “When I refused, Claud got a little nasty. He told me that if I didn’t withdraw, he would see to it that not only was my name dragged through the mud, but yours as well. He thought the public would want to be reminded of our past association, and he insinuated that he thought it would make good copy for the local papers, including the Morning Surveyor.”
Ashley sagged into a recliner by the window. How far would her cousin go to get what he wanted? Her throat was desert-dry, her knees weak,
but her conviction strong. “You can’t be bullied by Claud’s threats.”
“Not as long as I know that you’re with me—on my side.”
Ashley fought against her tears. “I always have been,” she murmured.
He looked as if a terrible weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Now that you’re safe, nothing else matters.”
“Except your career.”
“Damn my career.”
“Trevor, you’ve worked too long and hard to give up now. It’s all within your grasp. Everything you’ve wanted.”
His blue eyes darkened savagely. “What I want, dear lady, is right here.”
“Meaning what?”
“You never have understood, have you? I’m asking you to marry me, Ashley, and I’m not about to take no for an answer.”
“Are you serious?” Desperately Ashley wanted to believe him, and yet, the entire night seemed like part of a dream.
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. Will you marry me?” He strode across the room and pulled her out of the chair, forcing her to meet the sincerity of his gaze.
Tears pooled in her eyes and she managed a weak smile. “Of course I’ll marry you, Senator. I just wonder why it took eight years for you to come to your senses?”
“Because I’ve been a fool, Ashley. A goddamned, self-righteous, egotistical fool.”
“Join the club.”
Trevor laughed aloud before scooping her off her feet and carrying her through the darkened house and up the stairs to his bedroom.
Chapter Eleven
When Ashley awoke the next morning, Trevor was already out of bed. She stretched in the cool sheets and smiled as she remembered making love to Trevor long into the night. They had spent the dark hours passionately entwined in each other’s arms, with the only interruption being one telephone call that Trevor had received in the early hours of the morning.
“I thought you weren’t taking any calls,” Ashley had grumbled groggily when she glanced at the digital display of the clock on the nightstand. The luminous numbers had indicated that it was nearly two in the morning.
“I’m not,” had been Trevor’s cryptic reply. “Only those that come in on my private line, like this one. Then I know it’s important.” She felt as if he were holding back something from her but she was too tired to care. After his brief explanation, he had reached for the phone and taken the call, which had been lengthy and very one-sided.
Ashley hadn’t been able to decipher Trevor’s end of the conversation, and she had been too sleepy to concentrate. Before Trevor had finished talking, she had curled up around him and drifted off to sleep, warm and content as he stroked her hair with one hand while holding the telephone with the other. She had felt the coiled tension in his rigid muscles and had wondered vaguely if there was something seriously the matter, but she had fallen back into a dreamless sleep without any answers to her questions.
This morning the entire incident loomed before her and bothered her a little, but she shoved her worried thoughts aside.
“Your imagination is working overtime again,” she chastised herself with a self-mocking smile.
After taking a quick shower, she put her clothes on and brushed her hair before walking down the curved oak staircase to the main floor of the house. The warm morning smells of hot coffee and burning wood greeted her. Ashley was smiling when she breezed into the kitchen looking for Trevor.
The room was empty. There were signs that Trevor had been there; the coffee had finished dripping through the coffeemaker into the clear glass pot, and the morning newspaper had been brought into the house and torn apart. Several sections were still lying haphazardly on the table near the bay window. Ashley scanned the headlines and noticed that the front page of the paper was missing.
It was then she heard the low, angry rumble of Trevor’s voice coming from the direction of the den. With quickening steps, Ashley followed the sound. What could have happened? The sketchy memory of the late-night telephone call entered her mind and her heart began to race.
Trevor sounded furious. His rage shook the stately timbers of the old house. “This is the last straw,” he vowed and swore descriptively.
When she approached the door of the study, she paused, not wanting to eavesdrop on a private conversation.
“I want to know who in the hell is responsible,” Trevor nearly shouted into the receiver and then waited impatiently for the person on the other end of the phone to respond. “Well it’s a hell of a way to run a campaign, if you ask me. . . . What? Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.” He looked pointedly at his watch. “See ya then.”
Ashley noticed the lines of strain in the rigid set of his jaw and she remembered his look just the night before when he had seemed so beaten. Her mouth went dry when she realized that he hadn’t been honest with her. There was still a secret gnawing at his insides and she knew instinctively that it had something to do with her. He looked as if he were a man possessed.
When he slammed the receiver down, his mouth was drawn into a thin, determined line. Rubbing the tension from the back of his neck and shoulders, he closed his eyes and stretched. “Damn!” he muttered, thinking he was alone.
“What happened?” Ashley asked. His eyes flew open and he turned his head in her direction.
“What hasn’t?” His fingers rubbed anxiously against the heel of his hands. “Looks like Claud beat me to the punch.”
“What do you mean?”
Trevor cocked his head in the direction of the front page of the newspaper, which was lying near the phone on his desk. “See for yourself,” he invited with a dark scowl.
Ashley crossed the room, reached for the paper and as her eyes scanned the headlines her stomach began to knot painfully. “Oh, my God,” she whispered when she found the article about Trevor. The by-line indicated that the story had been written by Elwin Douglass, the young reporter who had accosted her at Pioneer Square just the previous afternoon. Ashley felt her knees beginning to buckle and she had to lean against the bookcase for support.
The article was a scandalous piece of yellow journalism about Trevor and his affair with the daughter of Lazarus Stephens, who was currently president of Stephens Timber Corporation. Slanted in such a manner as to present the worst possible image of Trevor, the story, which had fragmented pieces of the truth woven into a blanket of lies, suggested that Ashley and Trevor had been lovers for the past eight years, even during her brief marriage to Richard Jennings.
Ashley swallowed against the nausea rising in her throat. There were enough facts within the text of the article to make the report appear well researched. It would be blindingly obvious to any reader that someone close to the story had been interviewed.
The premise of the article was that since Trevor was so close to his own family’s business, as well as entrapped in a relationship with Ashley Stephens Jennings, of Stephens Timber, he couldn’t possibly support a campaign of wilderness protection and environmentalism with any modicum of sincerity in his bid for the Senate.
The truth of the matter is, the article concluded, that our would-be senator spends more time with people closely associated with business and industry than with the environmentalists who support him. Trevor Daniels seems to be able to speak out of both sides of his mouth with great ease and little conscience.
Ashley’s face had drained of color and she was trembling by the time she finished reading the condemning article. “This is all a lie,” she said, shaking the crumpled paper in the air indignantly.
“You can thank dear cousin Claud for that,” Trevor replied, pacing the floor.
“Dear God, I’m so sorry,” Ashley whispered, lowering her head into her palm.
“For what? Being related to that bastard? You didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“No, you don’t understand. I don’t think Claud was behind this. Yesterday, at Pioneer Square—I had gone there to look for you, and when you didn’t show up, I approached Everet
t. . . .”
Trevor’s head snapped up to look in her direction and his dark gaze hardened. “Go on,” he suggested. A cold feeling of dread was beginning to steal over him. What was Ashley admitting?
She lifted her palms in a supplicating gesture before letting them fall to her sides in defeat. “When Everett left, I began to walk back to the office and this guy, Douglass, started walking with me and began asking questions. You know: Wasn’t I Ashley Jennings? Didn’t I know Trevor Daniels? Was it true that I was president of Stephens Timber? That sort of thing.”
“And you talked to him?” The gleam in Trevor’s eye was deadly.
“No! At least I tried not to. But he wouldn’t stop walking with me . . . kept requesting an interview.” She shook her head at her own folly. “I refused, of course, only answering his questions as briefly and politely as possible. I guess I didn’t want to look like a snob. Anyway, he kept asking about an interview and I told him to talk to the office and make an appointment.” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “It was stupid of me.”
Trevor squeezed his eyes shut tightly and rubbed his temples. “So how did this guy know you would be there?”
“He couldn’t have. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Not even Claud?”
“He was out of town, remember, in Seattle talking to you.”
“But he must have known. Somehow. Someone at the office must have told him.”
“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t have gone to the rally if I thought he would find out about it.”
“So you don’t trust him either?” Trevor cocked a questioning black brow in her direction. A guarded secret lurked in his dark gaze.
“Of course not, at least not since we found the evidence against him. And one day I walked into his office and overheard him telling someone that . . . well, I don’t know for sure if he meant you, he never said your name, but he said, ‘We can’t let that son of a bitch win. . . .’ When he saw me he pretended that the conversation was about an ad campaign, but—”
“You didn’t believe him?”
“No.”
“Unless I miss my guess, Claud’s behind all this.” The doorbell rang and Trevor frowned. “That must be Everett. Watch out, he’s fit to be tied.”
