Whispers and Lies

by Diane Pershing

  Condom. He needed a damned condom. He reached into his desk drawer and found one, ripped the package open with his mouth and managed to put it on with one hand. Then with one quick movement, he grabbed Lou’s hips and impaled her on top of him.

  The pain in Will’s groin was now joined by deep, sensual pleasure. Lou placed her hands on his shoulders and closed her eyes while he worked her hips up and down on his shaft, holding himself back until he heard the hitch in her breathing that let him know she had another climax in her. In no time at all, their rhythmic movements and harsh breathing melded into a symphony of passion.

  It was only as he sensed Lou on the verge of coming that he let himself go, moving her up and down fiercely. Her loud cries filled the room, but this time, his joined hers as, with one final plunge, he burst free and emptied himself into her warm, welcoming passage. And as he did, he heard her cry out, “I love you! Oh, Will, I love you so much!”

  The minute the words were out of her mouth, Lou wanted to take them back. Too late. She’d done it, ruined it all. She knew it by how his body went suddenly still, after which he let out a deep, regretful sigh.

  Which she automatically took as rejection. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Oh, Will, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “No, no, no,” he interrupted. “It’s okay. Really.”

  She felt him softening inside her, and she wanted to plead with him to stay, stay as long as possible.

  But, hands still gripping her hips, he shifted her upward slightly so they were no longer joined. He removed the condom and tossed it into the wastebasket, then pulled her close so she was curled up on his lap again.

  At least he wasn’t shoving her away, but still, Lou was horrified at what she’d said. Out loud. “I told myself I’d wait for you to say it first.”

  Oddly, he didn’t seem angry, not in the least. Instead, he chuckled, but it lacked humor. “You’re braver than I am, that’s all.”

  “I’m what?”

  “Oh, hell, Lou.”

  He leaned his head against the backrest and closed his eyes. “I love you, too. Isn’t it obvious?” Raising his lids again, he said, “I mean, you do know that, don’t you?”

  She allowed herself a pleased smile, one that went all through her body, still rosy from lovemaking and now even rosier. “Well, kind of.” Shyly, she played with a few strands of his chest hair. “I mean, I thought so. I hoped so.”

  With a sudden, startling movement, Will lifted her and set her down on the floor. Then he grabbed his sweats where they lay at his feet, stepped into them quickly, and paced over to the window. “It’s just that—” he emitted a huge breath as he stared out the window “—I don’t want to love you.”

  Standing next to the chair, naked from the waist down, Lou felt her face fall. “Oh.”

  He whirled around, hurried back to her, grabbed one of her hands in both of his. “No, no, please don’t go where I think you’re going. This is not about you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You’re good and sweet and funny and sexy. I mean, you’re perfect.”

  She managed to slant him a look of disbelief. “Hardly.”

  “To me you are, okay? No, this is about me. I’m still fighting who I am and what I want. You represent a real danger to what I want out of life. You’re home and hearth and commitment. A life lived by two people. Side by side. Intimacy. Kids, roots.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “Only because I don’t think I can really follow through on all that means. You have so much love to give, and I’m not sure I’m the right guy to give it to. Okay, sure, I’m different from my father, in some ways. But I still have a lot of him in me. I still think of the story first, people second. I’m still happiest working into the night, canceling social engagements, hunting down the story at the expense of others and their feelings. He did that to me, to my whole family, all the time.”

  “I don’t understand.” She felt genuinely puzzled. “This week, you’ve taken time away from all that to be with me. You’ve made me feel cherished and special, done all you can to show me your city and to give of yourself, in every way possible. If you were a true workaholic, would you have been able to do all that?”

  He dropped her hand, raked his fingers through his hair. As though staying in one place was too difficult, he paced over to the door of the office, stared into the living room, then turned and walked back to the office window. Gazing out, his back to her, he said, “This was a week, I don’t know, out of time and space. It was special.”

  He turned around to face her. “But it’s not who I am, Lou, trust me. Right now, even though I don’t want you to go home, the minute you leave, I’ll be off and running, spending eighteen hours a day if necessary getting what I need to fill out this story, make notes on the next one.” Shaking his head, he turned again to gaze out the window. “That’s exactly how my father was.”

  Lou hurried over to Will and put a hand on his arm. “I’m not expecting you to be perfect. No one’s perfect. And okay, yes, your father had his shortcomings. All parents do. But he was there, some of the time, at least. He made pancakes on Sunday, taught you the newspaper business. At least you had a father.” Her hands flew to her face as she realized what she’d just said. “Sorry, just a little self-pity leaking out there. Ignore me.”

  Will looked down on Lou’s sweet face and, not for the first time, felt her despair. How did the saying go? Something about crying because one had no shoes and then meeting a man who had no feet? For all his many flaws, his father had at least existed, been there once in a while. No man had ever been there for Lou.

  He put an arm around her, drew her to him. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

  “I hate who my father was,” she said, her small body vibrating with intensity. “I hate that Lincoln DeWitt took up with a sixteen-year-old. No, when he took up with her, she might have even been fifteen. Dear God, what kind of man does that?”

  “Someone with a strong sense of personal power and entitlement. Someone who feels he’s above normal, ordinary, everyday people and their normal, ordinary, everyday code of behavior.”

  She looked up at him. So small. So sad. “Lincoln? Is he like that?”

  “No, but your father is.”

  The room became eerily quiet, as though time had become suspended. Then Lou stepped out from under his arm and looked up at him. “Excuse me?”

  It had popped out of his mouth before he’d had a chance to vet it. But now, right or wrong, there it was, hanging in the air, and Will had no choice but to follow it through.

  “Your father isn’t Lincoln DeWitt.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly.

  “You met your father two nights ago.”

  The morning light coming in from the window tended to bleach color from the room. Even so, he didn’t think Lou’s face could have gotten any paler without her fainting. He watched her face as it registered, watched as her brown eyes widened with shock. “You mean…?”

  He nodded. “Senator Jackson DeWitt.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth and she backed away from him. As though she’d been punched in the solar plexus, as though this final blow had been too much to take, she sat down on the armchair with a thud. “Jackson, not Lincoln,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “How long have you known this?”

  “Since Monday night.”

  “Since Monday night,” she repeated dully.

  “Yes. It was while you were outside the restaurant on that phone call. I figured it out and asked him and he admitted it. Off the record, of course.”

  It was weird; he was distancing himself. This whole scene felt as though it were happening to someone else. Even so, it was with a sense of dread that he waited for the eruption, which he knew would come.

  And he got it.

  She rose from the chair, hands fisted at her sides. “And you kept this from me for, what? Two nights and a day? While we made love and walked all around a
nd went to museums and discussed love? Even though you knew I was being driven crazy by all the questions I had about my background and who I was?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I promised the senator I would let him do it himself. I was hoping he would contact me yesterday, make an appointment to talk to you. But he hasn’t done that, not yet. I should have given him a deadline, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.”

  “And that’s why? Because you promised him?”

  “Yes.” He raked his upper lip with his teeth, wishing he could make her understand. “I know you don’t want to hear this, Lou, but this is part of that journalists’ code. If I give my promise not to reveal a secret, I have to keep it. If I were to break that promise, I’d never get anyone in this town to talk to me again.”

  She took two more steps toward him, her fists still clenched. He realized suddenly that she was bare-legged and bare-assed, all because they’d just made fierce, intense love.

  Oh, no, he thought; the sense of detachment suddenly vanished. What the hell had he done?

  Lou’s voice rose in volume as she came closer. “You promised him and that’s your excuse? You’re hiding behind some kind of promise made to a man who, from what I can tell, slept with a fifteen-year-old? A man who lies and gives award-winning acting performances and who breaks promises right and left? You, who say you love me and I’m perfect, and yet you can watch me in agony because I don’t have any answers to who I am? You honor him, but not me? Because of some code about writing stories in the great capital of the United States of America?”

  Oh, God, he thought again. When she put it that way, it was impossible not to see the thing the way she did. “I warned you. I told you how important my work was, that I was afraid it would prevent me from being with you.”

  “Yes, yes you did. And, fool that I am, I thought you’d make an exception if it concerned me. Because you promised you would. Because you loved me.”

  She walked up to him, drew her arm back and slapped him across the cheek. “You bastard,” she hissed.

  His face stung like the dickens, but he made no movement, none at all. As he watched the rage and hurt on Lou’s face, he came closer to crying than he ever had.

  She turned abruptly and he watched her walk away, pick up the clothing lying near the chair, walk into his bedroom and close the door after her. His immediate impulse was to go after her, but what could he say? How could he make it right?

  He didn’t deserve to make it right. He didn’t deserve her.

  He returned to staring out the window, his mind curiously blank, until he heard the bedroom door open again about five minutes later. Turning, he began to walk toward her, but she put up a staying hand. She was dressed, her purse over her shoulder, pulling her small suitcase behind her. “Don’t,” she said.

  He watched as she went through the living room toward the front door. “Wait,” he said quickly. “Let me get dressed, I’ll take you to the airport.”

  “I’ll get a cab.”

  “Lou. Don’t leave this way. Let’s talk.”

  She stopped, kept her back to him. “We had this talk before, just last week, if I remember correctly.”

  “But—” he began.

  “But this is different?” she said harshly. “This is a promise made to a senator so it has priority?”

  He had nothing in response.

  Whirling around, she glared at him. Again, her face was puffy from crying. But she stood tall, her posture strong and sturdy. “I’m not a front-page story, Will. I’m your lover. Or I used to be. You sacrificed me. I hope it was worth it.”

  With that, she opened the front door and slammed it on her way out.

  Chapter 14

  Will walked up to the receptionist. “Will Jamison for the senator.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Just tell him. He’ll want to see me.”

  Sure enough, within moments, he was striding through the door to the inner sanctum. As before, DeWitt sat behind his desk, Bert Schmidt nearby.

  “Will,” the senator said, his face carefully neutral. A man on guard, wary, not sure what to expect.

  “You might not want your aide here, Senator.”

  “I have no secrets from Bert.”

  “If you say so.” He remained standing. “Senator, I just want you to know that Lou McAndrews knows you’re her father.”

  DeWitt muttered a curse under his breath, then said, “How did she find out?”

  Instead of answering, Will went on the offensive. “Why haven’t you told her yet? It’s been two days. Have you broken it to your wife?”

  Silence greeted his question.

  “Does the name Emma Mae Hendricks mean anything to you?”

  More silence.

  Whipping out his reporter’s notebook and a pen, Will said, “I’m putting the story together today, Senator, and this is your chance to tell your side of it. What I have now is that it’s highly likely that thirty-four years ago, you had either an affair or a one-night stand with an underage girl, and that a child was the product of that affair or one-night stand. The nature of that relationship is still being investigated. Any comment?”

  There was none. But the tension in the room was of the proverbial knife-worthy thickness.

  “That underage girl died under mysterious circumstances—lots of alcohol in her bloodstream, her body washed up out of the ocean. Any comment?”

  None.

  “That until today, the child of that union, born Sharon Lou Hendricks and now known as Louise McAndrews, had no idea of her parentage. That you tried to suggest that your brother Lincoln was her father, but that was a lie. That you’ve built a fabric of lies about this incident from your past, which naturally leads to speculation about how many other lies you’ve told the American public.”

  Will stopped and stared at DeWitt. The older man’s eyes, normally a lively blue, were now two orbs of hard, cold steel. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Watch me. But I’m here now to get your comments before I publish. This is your chance to come clean, Senator. And we’re on the record.”

  Senator Jackson DeWitt was furious with him. Hell, Will was furious with himself—letting Lou get to him, allowing himself to let her get to him, allowing her to leave. Disgusted with himself for getting sucked into DeWitt’s story, his request to put off telling the truth because of a “wife who wasn’t well”—the oldest piece of bull in the business—and how he, Jackson, wanted to do the honorable thing, to be the one to inform his bastard daughter that he was her father.

  Lies, lies, lies.

  And Will had bought into all of them.

  For a few moments, DeWitt seemed to weigh his options. Then he placed his elbows on the desktop and steepled his fingers. “First of all, what I told you about being that woman’s father was off the record, so you can’t use it.”

  “There are other ways to get that same information without having to quote you. And I’m curious. When what you tell me off the record is a lie, should I respect it? Why did you say Rita Conlon was the mother of the child? To cover up what happened with Emma Mae Hendricks, that’s why. If I start tracing back all your lies, I’ll come up with a way to link you to her.”

  “You have no proof of anything.”

  “I have a private investigator interviewing all kinds of people from back then. We’ll get proof.”

  DeWitt expelled a breath, then shook his head. “Will, my wife, she hasn’t been…”

  “Bullshit!” Will spat out, wondering just how stupid the man thought he was. “Don’t go there, Senator. As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Now, do you wish to confirm or deny what I’m asking you? I’m being generous here. If you cooperate with me, give me an exclusive, tell the truth from your perspective, it’ll look better for your case.”

  DeWitt glanced over at Bert Schmidt, sitting there the whole time, an unlit cigar in his mouth, his fa
ce completely devoid of any expression. Some signal must have passed between the two men because the senator returned his gaze to Will and shrugged. “No comment.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “All right, then.” Will turned to go, but was stopped by the senator’s voice.

  “If you do this, Will, you will regret it.”

  Will thought of a lot of things he could say in response, but instead, he simply walked out the door.

  Out on the Mall, he stopped at a coffee kiosk and bought a cup, then sat down on a bench and, adrenaline racing through his bloodstream, scribbled down as much of the conversation as he could remember. When his cell phone rang, he muttered, irritated with being interrupted. The number calling was Restricted. Pretty sure it was DeWitt summoning him back to his office, Will opened the flap and said, “Yes, Senator?”

  “Will?”

  It was a DeWitt, but not the one he’d been expecting. “Lincoln? Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

  “Damn it, man,” Will said, “I’ve been trying to find you for weeks. Where are you?”

  “Look, that’s not important—” he began, but Will interrupted him.

  “Yes, it is. People have been worried. Hell, I’ve been worried.”

  “Why, Will, I didn’t know you cared.”

  “Cut the crap, Lincoln. Where are you?”

  “Okay, okay. I…well, the thing is, I finally got scared. About the booze. I’ve been at a private rehab in West Virginia, incognito, for the past couple of weeks. I have another four weeks to go, but I need to talk to you. Now. Today.”

  Will hesitated. The timing of Linc’s call made him uneasy, which made sense. Right after he’d left his brother’s office, out of nowhere, to receive this call from the missing sibling. “Have you been talking to your brother?”

  “Jackson?” Lincoln seemed genuinely surprised. “Not recently. No.”

  He sounded sincere. And Will had never known him to be anything but sincere—rowdy, tactless and vain, sure. But Lincoln didn’t lie. Or so Will believed; hell, with the DeWitt family, who really knew? “Why do you need to talk to me?”