The Truth About Love

by Sheila Athens

  A brief silence filled the air on Suzanne’s end of the line. “And do you? Have a relationship with him?”

  “No.” The answer sounded too fast, even to her.

  “Then what made Donna Crocker ask about it?”

  Gina closed her eyes as long as she dared, then opened them again to watch the road. She’d always been proud of her honesty, but this time it was tougher than usual. “The first night we met . . . the night before he stormed into our office that day—”

  “Please tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”

  “No.” Why would Suzanne even think that? “It was a kiss.” One incredible kiss. “One stupid kiss.” And one more since then, but that one wasn’t currently in question.

  “In front of Donna Crocker?”

  “It was at a bar. On the patio. No one else was even outside.” No way was she going to talk now about the other times they’d seen each other.

  “Honey, you can’t do anything in public with Landon Vista without half of Tallahassee knowing about it.”

  Hot tears of anger rushed to Gina’s eyes. She knew that now, but had no idea then. She blinked back her tears, trying to keep her eyes on the road. One internship and she was already ruining her professional reputation. How could she have been so stupid? “I didn’t know who he was. I mean, I knew he was Landon Vista, but I didn’t know he was involved in one of our cases.”

  “No wonder he was so mad that day in our office. You’re making out with him one day and trying to get Cyrus Alexander out of prison the next.”

  “So what do we do for damage control?”

  “You only talked about Buford on camera?”

  “I responded to one question about Landon.”

  Except it hadn’t been a response. It had been a rant. How could she have been so stupid?

  Suzanne sucked in a long breath, then let it out slowly. “Record the news so I can watch it when I get back in town. And lay low until then.”

  Gina hated the sound of resignation in her boss’s voice. “I’m soooo sorry,” she said.

  “And try to be a little more discreet about your gentlemen friends while you’re in town this summer.”

  Gina felt like she’d been slapped. She couldn’t speak. Her professionalism had always been above reproach before this job.

  “As a matter of fact,” Suzanne continued, “that little bit of advice applies to your entire law career, wherever you are and whoever you’re working for.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Gina said, feeling like a schoolgirl who’d been caught texting during class.

  “And one more thing.”

  “Yes?” Gina wanted to get the conversation over for fear she was about to burst into tears.

  “You’d better call Landon,” Suzanne said, “and warn him about what he might see on the news tonight.”

  Gina’s foot hit the brake pedal the second she passed the community clubhouse at Landon’s condo complex. Even if she hadn’t known what kind of vehicle he drove, the dark, curly hair and bare, broad shoulders of the man washing his truck across the parking lot from the clubhouse could only belong to Landon.

  She pulled her SUV into a parking spot and got out. He seemed unaware of her presence as he took a brush out of the soapy bucket and scrubbed one of the wheels.

  The bright Tallahassee sun glinted off his curls like they were polished onyx. His head beat to a rhythm she couldn’t hear. The muscles in his back ebbed and flowed with the scrubbing motion of his hand—a ripple here, a bulge there. If the circumstances were different, she could certainly enjoy this sight.

  He rose and turned to dip the rag into the bucket of soapy water as she approached. He saw her and straightened to his full height, tugging earbuds from his ears as he turned to face her. He didn’t say a word—just stood there like the bronze statue of some mythological god of muscled, suntanned bodies.

  “I’ve got to tell you something,” she said. “I tried calling you about fifteen times.” She glanced down at the earbud cords dangling from the pocket of his low-slung shorts. He nodded toward the truck. “My phone’s in the console.”

  She swallowed and forced herself to look away from the abs that looked like they belonged in an advertisement for Men’s Health.

  “So what is it?” he said.

  Her gaze returned to him. She forced herself to look at his face, but those broad shoulders still distracted her. Muscles the size of grapefruits bulged under his skin. “Can you . . . put on a shirt or something?”

  He placed his hands on his hips and broadened his stance. One corner of his mouth tipped into a grin. “Can’t handle looking at the goods?”

  “Believe me, it was not my choice to be here.” She knew after their meeting at Morgan’s Ladder that he had so many reasons to dislike her.

  “Then why did you come?”

  She took a deep breath. How many times would she have to tell this man she was making his life more difficult? “Suzanne and I were down at the prison in Starke today. A guy was being let out who’d been wrongly convicted of a murder twenty-one years ago.”

  Landon tossed the rag into the bucket. Water splashed out onto the hot pavement and immediately began to disappear. “And what’s this got to do with me?”

  “Channel Four was there. Donna Crocker asked if I was in a relationship with you.”

  He took a step forward and glared at her. “She asked you that? On camera?”

  Gina nodded. She wanted to fade into the searing pavement, just as the water had done.

  “And what did you say?” Landon’s voice was louder, angrier.

  “I kept turning the conversation back to the guy who got out today.”

  “And . . . ?”

  How did he know there was an “and”?

  “I may have said something about you not liking your job.”

  He glared at her. “How the hell did that even come up in the conversation?”

  “She said it would ruin your career to have a relationship with me.”

  “Or my life.” His glare intensified.

  She pulled her cell phone from her pocket to check the time. “It’s five fifty-two. Can we go to your place to watch the six o’clock news?”

  He bent and drew the rag out of the bucket. “I learned a long time ago not to pay attention to what people are saying about me.”

  “But I want to see it and I don’t have time to get back to my place. I want to see which parts make the newscast.”

  “Is that what we need here? For a news crew to see the two of us coming out of my condo? Or maybe that’s what you want?” He raised his hands to frame an imaginary headline in the air. “Visiting law student tricks Landon Vista into sleeping with her while she fights to get his mom’s killer out of jail.”

  His words stung, but she didn’t want him to know that.

  “You might want to work on your technique.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Because if we’ve slept together, it was . . . unmemorable.”

  He smirked.

  Gina pulled her cell phone from her pocket and checked the time again. “Come on. It’s about to start.”

  He returned to the truck and bent to scrub the same wheel he’d been working on when she’d arrived. “You should have gone straight to your place.”

  “I thought I was being kind.” Her voice was a mixture of anger and desperation. She wasn’t sure which she hated worse. “I thought I was helping you.”

  His hand stilled on the wheel. His shoulders rose and fell as his lungs expanded with a big sigh. He stood to face her.

  “I learned a long time ago to distance myself from all that crap, but you can go watch it by yourself.” He opened the door to the truck and retrieved his keys. She stepped toward him and reached for them, but he quickly withdrew his arm. The action brought her closer to him. She could feel the heat radia
ting from his body. Smell the soapy, sweaty scent of him.

  “I’m doing this under one condition: you never, ever mention my name in the media again.” He held the keys above his head, exposing the trim right side of his rib cage. “Ever.”

  She nodded. “Agreed.”

  He lowered his arm and handed the keys to her. “The square silver one.” He turned back toward his truck.

  “You trust me in your condo? By myself?”

  He turned back toward her with a glower. “I’m letting you in my condo. But I don’t trust you at all.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Landon watched as Gina hurried across the parking lot toward her SUV, her hips swaying in the same skirt she’d undoubtedly worn to the prison today. The last thing some guy doing time needed was a look at that curvy ass. Hell, Landon had gotten laid on a regular basis and that ass drove him crazy.

  What was he doing, giving her the keys to his condo? And why did he make such stupid decisions when it came to her? He rolled his head around, trying to release the tension in his shoulders. She did this to him. Every damn time he saw her.

  Maybe he’d go for a run tonight. A nice, long, Gina-free run.

  He finished washing the last wheel and returned the bucket and hose to the place the condo association kept them, then got the extra key from the glove box and started the truck.

  When he arrived at his condo, Gina was out front, locking the door closed. She turned and was surprised by his presence. She looked pale. Shaken by something more significant than him startling her.

  “I thought I had your keys,” she said.

  “I keep an extra one in the glove box.” He took the key ring she handed him and unlocked his front door. He motioned for her to go inside.

  She hesitated.

  “Do you really want Donna Crocker to see us out here?” he asked.

  Gina took a deep breath and stepped into his entry hall.

  He followed her inside. She was uncomfortably close. “So what did they show on the news?”

  “Buford Monroe’s release was the top story.” She looked down, but he could still see the redness that blossomed on her chest and neck. “They said Morgan’s Ladder has taken on Cyrus Alexander’s case.” She looked up and made quotation marks in the air with her fingers. “The man convicted of murdering the mother of former FSU standout Landon Vista.”

  He’d heard that before. Had to live with it all through college and after.

  The apologetic look on Gina’s face told him she wasn’t finished recapping what had been on TV. “And that you weren’t happy with your job at the senator’s office.”

  “I can’t believe you’d say that.”

  “You told me you don’t like being used by those people.”

  He swiped his hand through his hair. ”Yes, but it wasn’t for you to broadcast on the local news.”

  “Even if you hadn’t told me, I’ve seen how you act. How you don’t have that passion that you had when I saw you playing football on TV.”

  “You’ve come to this conclusion after knowing me for what, two weeks?”

  “I didn’t mean to say it. She kept badgering me.”

  He paced in front of her. “You do not have my permission to talk about me in the media. Ever.”

  “Okay. I deserve that.” She stood taller and cocked her chin up. “But you still haven’t denied you hate your job.”

  “That is not a topic for public discussion.” What did she not get about this?

  “So what’s holding you here? Your father? Or maybe you like the celebrity? Otherwise you’d go somewhere people didn’t know you so well. Santa Fe. Or Portland. Somewhere not as crazy about football.”

  He stopped his pacing and glared at her, hoping his bravado would hide the truth. No one else had even come close. No one else had seemed to care that he stayed in Tallahassee hoping his dad would one day show he gave a damn.

  But Gina didn’t need to know that. She’d come dangerously close to a truth no one else had ever discovered. How could she disrupt his life so completely and at the same time be the one person who actually saw him? Not the football player or the poster child for tougher sentencing laws. No. She actually saw him. He studied her eyes, trying to understand what she might be thinking. “Maybe you should just stick to the law. And stop trying to psychoanalyze my life.”

  “I should go.”

  He stood there, his face close to hers, for several more seconds. He felt like kissing her, though he had no idea why. This woman was like a sudden storm, with winds licking at his heels, blowing everything he’d ever known about his life into disarray.

  Finally, he stepped away from her. She made her way toward the door.

  “And, Gina?”

  She turned to look at him.

  “If we ever did sleep together . . .”

  Gina’s eyebrows rose. Questioning him.

  “You’d definitely remember it.”

  Gina was glad her boss was out of town for the next couple of days. Maybe by the time Suzanne got back from visiting her aunt, this whole mess with Donna Crocker would have blown over. Or at least maybe another huge catastrophe would have made it seem like something other than the major screwup that it was.

  She glanced toward her boss’s office. Empty now, but Suzanne would be back in a couple of days and they’d talk through it. Hopefully by then, she’d have her feelings sorted through.

  She wanted to call Landon, but what did you say to the guy whose life you’d messed up in so many ways? Admitting he might not have seen Cyrus Alexander running out of the country store was a major paradigm shift to begin with. But then she had to go and point out that he stayed in Tallahassee hoping his dad would eventually show he cared? And who was she to suggest that Landon needed to move on, to know he was a strong person, with or without his father’s love?

  She wanted to reach out and hold him. To convey to him that she understood—at least in part—how he felt. To share the wisdom she’d gained from the couple of years she’d had to digest the fact that she’d put an innocent boy in jail. To somehow show him that he was a full and vibrant man, regardless of his father’s involvement in his life.

  How had her life become so tangled up in his? How did he make her so angry one minute . . .

  “If we ever did sleep together, you’ll definitely remember it.”

  . . . and make her tingle with anticipation the next?

  She considered calling him. To apologize? For which of the many things? For duping him with that stupid picture of the basketball team? Or to talk about damage control after her comments on the local news? To try to convince him that he’d eventually figure out how to deal with all this?

  But was there anything she could say to him that would make it better? Maybe it was best if she just stayed away. It was hard to jeopardize your job by keeping your mouth shut. And she’d done enough damage already. She was even too embarrassed to call her dad, whom she could talk to about anything.

  The ring of her office phone startled her. She stared at it for a couple more rings, then finally answered. “Morgan’s Ladder.”

  “Gina Blanchard, please.” The woman on the other end was all business.

  “This is Gina.”

  “This is Mrs. Willingham from Senator Byers’s office. The senator is requesting a meeting with you.”

  Everything in Gina’s body stilled. Her heart quit beating. Her blood quit flowing. Could she turn down the request? She wouldn’t even live in this state after a few more weeks. How bad would it be for her career if she dodged meetings with state senators?

  “Ms. Blanchard?” The woman on the other end of the phone seemed impatient.

  “Yes, I’m here.” Maybe he wanted to see her for some business having to do with the task force. Maybe he knew nothing about her screwup on the evening news.

 
“He’d like for you to come to his office this afternoon at five p.m.”

  “Can I ask what this is regarding?”

  The woman paused before answering. “Most people are just happy to get an audience with him.” She seemed to choose her words carefully.

  “Will other people be in the meeting?” Maybe that was a way to get more information.

  “Ms. Blanchard.” Gina knew she’d been scolded by the tone in the woman’s voice. “Are you free to meet or not?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Landon stood at the printer, waiting for the statistics to be included in the senator’s latest presentation to finish spitting out. He’d kept his head down all day, trying to convince himself that no one watched the local news anymore anyway. But what bothered him most was how Gina saw through him. That she’d started out as the lawyer on the other side of the Cyrus Alexander case, but had somehow wormed her way into his psyche. And his life.

  Scott Meredith came around the corner. “The senator would like to see you in his office.”

  Landon retrieved the last of the presentation from the printer’s output tray and followed Scott through the door that led from the worker-bee cubicles into the upscale part of the workplace. Here, glass-walled private offices conveyed stature. Power. Prestige. This was where the decisions were made, where the deals were done, and where plans were made on how to collect more money from donors. The senator’s office was at the end, protected by Mrs. Willingham, an executive assistant who guarded her boss’s calendar and real estate like a pit bull.

  The matronly woman normally cast her prunish smile at people when they entered her area, but she seemed to avoid looking at him and Scott. Instead, she straightened a stack of papers that didn’t need straightening.

  “Landon can go in?” Scott asked.

  Mrs. Willingham, forced to acknowledge them, gave Landon a look that seemed intentionally blank and nodded toward the senator’s office. “Go on.”