Liar, Liar, Heart's Desire

by Suzie Quint

  “Nigel thinks it was a joke,” she said at last.

  He didn’t look up. Swish-swish. “Isn’t it?”

  “No. I’m here to stay.” She hoped he’d show some pleasure about that, but she half-feared he’d ask, “For how long?” or make some rude comment about Martin.

  “I’m sure you’ll do well here.” Swish-swish.

  And she’d thought rude comments were the worst he could do. Didn’t he know what she’d given up to be here? What she’d given up for him?

  Until that moment, she hadn’t admitted to herself that it wasn’t about her career or the work. If that’s all it had been, she’d have swallowed her disillusionment and gone back to the mainstream media. It was about him. Had she thrown it all away for nothing? A wave of anger washed through her. “You know it’s rude not to give someone your attention when they’re speaking to you.”

  Either her words or her tone did the trick. He looked up, scowling, his eyes grim. “I’d think you’d be used to me being rude by now.”

  “Ha!” Now that she had his attention, she walked into the room and sat in her chair. “You’re not rude as often as you think you are.” He’d embarrassed her and sliced her with his wit more than once, but he’d also been kind and charming to her family and even—at times—to her.

  Her anger died out. If she wanted him to understand, she needed to explain. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to be a reporter?”

  An eyebrow twitched as if to say this is how you want to play it? “I’d guess since you were a kid?”

  “Since I was ten, to be exact, when I read a book about Watergate.”

  “So you wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein.”

  Cleo allowed herself a small smile. “That’s what I’ve always let people believe. But I owe you a truth, and the truth is I wanted to be Deep Throat. I wanted to have a secret identity and be a truth teller.” At ten, it had sounded like a superpower to her. “That’s what I wanted to be. Cleo Carson, truth teller.”

  His lips twitched. “So you wanted to be a crusader.”

  “Stupid, huh?”

  “No.” He was listening to her now. “Not stupid at all,” he said softly.

  “Stupid though to think I could do that in the mainstream media,” she said.

  He didn’t reply at first. Just sat, looking at her.

  “And then the strangest thing happened,” she said. “I took a job in the worst place imaginable. A real cesspool of lies. At least, that’s what I thought. And then I found someone there who showed me things about the truth I’d forgotten.”

  “You never forgot a thing in your life.” He could have said that so it came out nasty, but he didn’t. It sounded kind.

  “No, I did. I’d lost sight of the fact that there’s never just one path to the truth. It started to matter more that certain people thought I was good. My dream about being a truth teller had disappeared. I didn’t want to see the quicksand on the path I was following, but it was swallowing me up.” Her throat got tight. She took a breath. Then another. “I lost my way.”

  “So you think you can find the truth here? Where we do stories about Elvis, and alien abductions, and the Loch Ness monster?”

  “I think The Word will let me search for truth wherever it is because everyone here has an open mind.”

  He nodded gently as if agreeing with her, but she wanted more. She wanted to know if there could be anything between them or if they’d left that behind in Las Vegas, but she was also afraid to ask. What if he said it was over? Maybe the smart thing to do would be not to bring it up at all. Maybe, seeing each other every day at the office, he’d realize he wasn’t ready for it to be over.

  “Are you okay with me being here?” she asked.

  His eyebrows twitched. “It’s really not up to me, is it?”

  Her throat seized up and it was suddenly hard to swallow. Apparently, where she was made no difference to him at all. She had to force the words out. “Well, I guess that’s that, then.”

  His eyes suddenly bored into her with laser-like intensity. “Is it?” he asked in a steely voice.

  She wasn’t sure what he was asking, and she was afraid whatever she said would tip her hand. What if she said she wanted more and he didn’t? He’d let her down easy; she knew him that well at least. But co-existing in the same office would become a nightmare once the words were actually spoken. “I—I mean, well, we can be f-friends. Can’t we?”

  Alec was out of his seat and around the desk in a flash. He grabbed the arms of her chair, capturing her, his face inches from hers, their eyes locked. “No. We can’t be friends.” Then his mouth was on hers. He kissed her so hard the chair nearly tipped over backward.

  She didn’t care. She locked her arms around his neck, so he couldn’t escape.

  The kiss left no room for doubt; he was claiming her: heart, mind, body, and soul.

  Unable to pull back, he spoke against her mouth. “You’ll move in with me.”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her some more. “No arguments.”

  “Yes.”

  More kissing.

  “No looking at other guys.”

  “You either.”

  The vibration of his laughter tickled her lips.

  And they kept on kissing until Nigel walked in and caught them.

  Epilogue

  Eleven Months Later

  “Honey, I’m home,” Cleo called as she shut the front door of their apartment.

  “In here.”

  She followed Alec’s voice into the spare bedroom they’d converted into his home office.

  “Give me a second. I just want to finish my thought,” he said without looking up. His fingers flew over the keyboard.

  She flopped down on the couch and kicked off her heels. One of these days, she was going to take a picture of him asleep on this couch, his mouth hanging open like a fly trap. That would stop him swearing he didn’t use it for naps in the middle of the day.

  “How’s the story going?” she asked when he hit the last key with a flourish and looked up, ready to hear about her day. A grin blossomed on his face.

  “You’re wearing your suit.”

  She smoothed the skirt—what there was of it. “It’s my lucky suit. It’s what I was wearing when I met you.”

  “That was certainly my lucky day.”

  “So how’s the story going?” she asked again.

  “Good. I think it might be even better than the first one. Why are you wearing your lucky suit?”

  She stood up, walked around his desk, rolled his chair back, and straddled him. He lifted his face to receive her kiss. She put her all into it. His hand slid up her thigh and under the skirt.

  “Wow,” he said when she pulled her lips back. “You, Ms. Carson, are one hot enchilada in this suit. You’ll be hotter out of it.”

  Yes, the old get-the-hot-new-reporter-out-of-the-sexy-suit was a game they’d played more than once. She loved indulging the fantasies that had been born the day they met. And they’d undoubtedly play the game today, too, but she had some news to share first.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me about my day?”

  “How was your day?” he asked dutifully.

  “Nigel called us all into Mr. Phillips’ office this afternoon. It seems the Pulitzer committee is impressed with the stories we’ve broken in the last year. They’re considering making The Inside Word eligible for their little prize. The scuttlebutt is we’ve got the votes.”

  Alec stroked her thigh. “That’s great.” He was her staunchest cheerleader. “By this time next year, I could be sleeping with a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. That’ll be a real step up.”

  She swatted his arm, but he just grinned.

  “Nigel wants to know when you’ll be coming back to work.”

  His grin turned into a toothy grimace. “I don’t know. It may be a while.”

  “Oh?” she arched an eyebrow at him. They’d talked about this. After Vegas, he’d taken
a year off to write a book about Sebastian. Instead, he’d gotten sidetracked with the idea for a smutty romance novel.

  He’d written it in four months, spent two months in edits, then self-published it. It was doing well enough he’d been approached by a New York publisher who wanted to take it to the big time. Alec was still considering the offer. In the meantime, he’d started a second book.

  But his year was almost up.

  “Annaliese called today,” he said.

  Apparently, he wasn’t ready to talk about his plans. “She called you?” Cleo asked.

  “Yes, she called me.” The unspoken comment, Yes, me. Not you, was there between them. Alec loved her mother. Of course, it was easy for him. He wasn’t related to her. It was getting easier for Cleo too. She’d forgiven Annaliese for so much.

  “You’re mom’s doing great, by the way. Still having the time of her life. Hollyweird suits her.”

  “I always knew she’d fit right in.”

  “She says none of the dancers in the movie are worth crap.”

  Cleo laughed. Annaliese had parleyed her notoriety into a job choreographing for a Broadway musical and impressed all the right people. Hollywood had come calling, wanting her for a movie she described as a cross between Chicago and Eyes Wide Shut. Cleo wasn’t sure she’d be old enough to see it when it came out.

  “She wants to know when I’m going to make an honest woman of you,” Alec said, pulling her back into the conversation.

  “My mother asked that? Are you sure you didn’t hallucinate that part?”

  “I didn’t hallucinate it. And why is that so weird?”

  “Annaliese doesn’t give two figs about marriage.”

  “No, she doesn’t. Not for her. But you need different things. She understands that.”

  A year ago, Cleo would have been mortified by her mother brokering her wedding, but it seemed a year working for a tabloid had inured her to embarrassment. Besides, she liked the idea. With one caveat. “Do you want to get married?”

  He let a beat pass before answering. “Yeah, I think I do. I want the world to know we’re in this for the long haul.”

  It wasn’t the most romantic proposal, but somehow it felt right. Like it was no big deal. Just the next logical step.

  “Besides, once you win a Pulitzer, I’ll have more competition. We should do this while you still think I’m the best you can do.”

  She grinned. “All right, then. I think we should have an Elvis minister marry us in Vegas.”

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  She’d known he’d see the humor in that, but the cheesy wedding seemed right for them. After all, they’d met working at a tabloid and fallen in love in Las Vegas. How could they not have Elvis perform the ceremony?

  “Okay. Vegas it is,” Alec said. “Oh, and Annaliese also said she gave my first book to her producer.”

  Cleo drew back and looked hard at him. “Are you serious?”

  He grinned. “The poor dumb schmuck wants to option it.”

  “That smut?”

  “It’s not smut. It’s a romance.”

  “An x-rated romance.”

  “If they can make Fifty Shades of Grey into a movie, they won’t have any trouble with mine.”

  “Then we have a cornucopia of things to celebrate.”

  “What do you suggest?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her suggestively.

  “Champagne?” They’d get to the suggestive part later.

  “Chilling in the kitchen.”

  “Why don’t you get it?”

  “And leave you alone here?” He made a rude noise. “I don’t think so.”

  Damn. She’d been dying to sneak a peek at his second manuscript, but he had it double-password protected and guarded it like Cerberus at the gates of hell.

  “Although, we could skip the champagne.” With his thumbs, he spread the lapels of her jacket and peeked inside. A small smile pulled at his lips. “Ooh. Lace.”

  “You like?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “I’ll let you borrow it sometime.”

  “How about now? You’ll need to take it off, of course.”

  She bent her head and kissed him. “Anytime. Anywhere.”

  “That’s an offer that’s hard to refuse.”

  “Refuse?” she asked in mock indignation. “You want to refuse?”

  “No. I want it all. But I’m only flesh and blood. I’ll need to take this in installments. The first installment today. The last one on my death bed.”

  Cleo melted. She wanted that, too.

  If you enjoyed Liar, Liar, Heart’s Desire, please consider leaving a review

  Other books by Suzie Quint:

  The Liar, Liar Series

  Liar, Liar, Tabloid Writer

  Liar, Liar, Heart’s Desire

  The McKnight romance saga

  A Knight in Cowboy Boots

  Knight of Hearts

  All’s Fair

  A Dark & Stormy Knight.

  And if you like fairy tale retellings, the real story of Snow White, as told by the eighth dwarf Bitchy is also available:

  Snow White & the Eighth Dwarf

  Come visit me at my website or on Facebook. I love hearing from readers