Beautifully Damaged (Contemporary Romantic Suspense)

by Faye, Amy

  There's exactly one exception to that rule. One thing that could ruin him if it got out. One time that he didn't practice self-denial when it counted, and if it bit him in the ass, well… he deserved it.

  And that time was two nights ago.

  There was nothing wrong with Adam Quinn, tech mogul, sleeping with his secretary. Nothing wrong with Adam Quinn, philanthropist, fucking his business partners. It didn't even make the news. Not when there were more interesting sexual partners to explore.

  But Linda was a mistake, because Adam Quinn, possible future Democratic nominee for President fucking his campaign manager was something that could hurt him.

  He should have been kicking himself the past two days. He should have been, but he wasn't, and he didn't feel as if it was likely to come on any time soon.

  He settled into the couch beside her. She can't hide the subtle lean into him, though nobody who wasn't paying attention would have noticed. It wasn't anything as obvious as laying her head on her shoulder, so much as body language. Her body telling the room that she liked being close to him.

  Adam pretended not to notice. Tom Delaney didn't pretend not to. Adam took note of it, but didn't respond to that either. Because they were about to watch the firestorm unfold in front of them, and it was going to be glorious. Too glorious to ruin with a conversation that none of them truly wanted to have.

  "Good evening, I'm Ellen Holden, and you're watching Tonight, on CNN. We've got a great line-up of stories for you, but first, breaking news out of Washington. We've all come to expect scandals from Adam Quinn, since he first started his own line of personal computers in the 1980s.

  "Well, the Quinn Labs CEO now has another title to add to his list, and that is Democratic Candidate for President, and with it, we've got a brand new scandal.

  "A source close to the campaign has informed us, under the promise of anonymity, that there's been a shakeup in the campaign after the discovery of Adam's presence at a masked party specifically for the purpose of casual anonymous sexual encounters.

  "Our producers' attempts to reach out to the Quinn campaign for comment were answered with a stock response: 'We don't know anything about such allegations.' Could this be the first signs of trouble for an already rocky political candidacy? What will Mr. Quinn have to say for himself at our interview Thursday? And what could he possibly say for himself that would deflect such a story?"

  Adam's heart raced, pounding in his chest. He kept himself seated, his jaw tensing and un-tensing.

  It was perfect.

  Chapter Twenty

  The office is dark. The summer heat has just begun, but keeping the lights off keeps the room cool, and the only one still there doesn't mind the dark. At least, Adam Quinn thinks he's the only one there. He barely manages to hide his surprise when Tom's gravelly voice pipes up from the door.

  "How'd we do?"

  "What?"

  "The news report. You still feeling good about it?"

  "You know I trust you," Adam answers, not looking away from the screen. "I hired you because you know what you're doing. Better than I do."

  Adam can hear the heavy sound of his footfalls. "That's great to hear. I wish all my clients were as trusting."

  "Most of your clients don't know how to run a Smash TV campaign."

  "Most of my clients don't know what Smash TV is."

  "No, I guess they wouldn't," Adam answers. He shouldn't really be coding. There are guys working for him who are geniuses at this stuff. Guys working for him who are making too much money to be in the trenches were geniuses. The guys working below those guys, those were the ones who wrote code.

  But here he was, digging into an editor. It made Quinn feel a young again. How had he let himself get away from this? What had taken him away from what he was good at and into all this? He knew intrinsically. He was a businessman now, not a code monkey. He made too much money and too much of a difference.

  "What are you doing here, Tom?"

  "I wanted to figure something out."

  Adam closed the line of code and his fingers flew across the keys as he commented in what he'd planned to do next. Nothing was worse than coming back to the code and not having the least idea what the fuck you were doing with it.

  Then he turned. The light from the hall spilled into the room. It didn't quite touch Adam, but it framed Tom in light in a way that he might not have realized when he'd set it up, but Delaney would have been very pleased to discover.

  "Yeah?"

  "You slept with her," he says. It's not particularly an accusation. There's no hurt in his voice, or anything like that.

  "Is that what you came here to say?"

  "I need to know you're not going to let this get in the way of the campaign. I've seen men who were much less controversial than you go down over just this sort of thing."

  "I know what I'm doing."

  "That's what worries me," Tom says softly. "You always know what you're doing. Always five moves ahead."

  "What's your point?"

  "My point is, you're always five moves ahead, and you like situations that get ugly. I don't care what you do with the girl, but don't ruin her, and don't put me in a position where I can't make the campaign work."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Adam couldn't read his face, shrouded in darkness and surrounded by light. Tom Delaney had never been a sentimental man. It was strange to imagine that he might have suddenly grown a heart after all these years. Extremely strange.

  "I don't think I need to say any of this, but if you're really not sure, then I'll lay my cards on the table." He steps out and away from the light, leans against the back of a couch. "My priorities in this campaign are few. I work for money, and it's money you're supplying. There's no problem there. But I have an image to protect, and I'm not going to let that get hurt. I think of you as a friend, but I'm not going down for you."

  "I wouldn't ask you to."

  "You've done worse to better men over women."

  "There's no worry about anything like that, Tom."

  "Is it? Because I think she's taking it to be something."

  Adam frowned. He wasn't wrong, and there wasn't an easy answer. It raised questions he didn't particularly want to answer right now. Questions like what it really meant, if it wasn't what she thought it was. If it meant nothing, then why get so uptight?

  And if it didn't mean nothing… what did that mean?

  "Your concerns are noted, Tom. I'm not going to fuck you over on this. I watch out for my people."

  "And as much as it might surprise some to learn," Tom said, his low natural growl almost tamed by the softness of his voice, "but so do I."

  "Then we're together."

  "We'll see," Tom answers. "Don't work too hard."

  "I've never worked too hard in my life," Adam answers. "I could do a lot more if I wanted to burn myself out."

  In the darkness, with his head no longer framed by light, Adam can almost make out a smile on his usually-dour face. "That's what worries me."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Linda knew instinctively that there was no real reason to be worried. She'd been in worse spots than this before. There were problems that were much bigger than a little campaign-staff fling, and much more likely to get leaked to the press.

  After all, who even knew that she had seen him? Sure, it was the second time, but the first time, she'd been nobody in particular, in a room full of women. The second time, who could have seen? Nobody who would tell anything.

  So why was she so worried about it? There was no chance that anything was going to happen. No leaks to the press, no reason to worry. No reason to think that there might one day be a leak to worry about.

  Even still, though, it didn't stop her from worrying. And why exactly should she stop worrying? What was there to convince her that she wasn't in extreme danger of running into trouble down the line?

  A few vague self-assurances? Firm belief that everything would be fine? How many clients had assur
ed her that there was absolutely nothing to worry about? How many in fact had something to worry about after all, when the chips finally fell?

  Nothing made her any different, when it came down to it, except that if she prepared for the eventuality, she'd be able to deal with it. The first part—the most important part—of preparing for any story you know can hurt you is to minimize.

  Minimizing damage comes down to three things, and her case would be no different. The only way to assure that Adam—and, Linda had to admit, herself as well—was going to be protected was to treat her own case just like any other.

  First, you make the story as implausible as possible. If nobody believes the story, then it's a non-starter. If the public has doubts, then that's nearly as good. It's all shades of gray, until you figure out how to get away with it.

  Second, you create deniability. That's not the same thing, though it might seem like it is at first blush. An implausible story is one that nobody believes even without knowing the evidence. 'Hitler was a great guy and only wanted the best for the Jewish population,' for example. Right on the face of it, nobody needs to investigate because it's obviously not true.

  Instead, it's closer to finding an alibi for the night of a murder. Sure, there was a reason you wanted the victim dead. It just so happens that in this case, you didn't kill them even though you could have and wanted to. After all, you were at the bar all night, and everyone saw you there.

  The story is believable, but on further inspection, must be untrue.

  Third, and the most important part, is to minimize the effect that it will have when people do believe the story in spite of your best efforts. The last line of defense.

  And the truth was that in Adam's case, this was already done for him. There are a thousand ways to minimize the damage. Desensitization is one of the most effective. Thirty years of the press reporting on the thousands of women that Adam Quinn has slept with mean that one more doesn't hurt him any more than a report of another big win in the tech field. It's expected at this point.

  It would follow her, though. She'd always be the one who fucked her boss, and there would always be a question of whether or not she'd done it before. Whether or not her entire reputation was built on all the men she'd been willing to sleep with.

  Those questions would be all it took to stop whatever growth she might have been making. By the time that it was time to be seriously thinking about settling down, the difference would be big enough that you'd notice.

  Which meant that she had to figure out some way to protect herself, some way to minimize the damage. It happened, but… But what?

  But it hadn't happened before, and wouldn't happen again; but she'd had diminished capacity; but she regretted it?

  None of them really rang true. All she could think now was that it all sounded like lies, and she had better figure out what she was going to do about it, and she'd better do it now. Or else things could end up going south very quickly.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They shouldn't have had him there alone. Linda was more than a little bit upset that they weren't there.

  She and Tom should have been there to cover bases. An intern, at least, to make sure that everything is above-board. It's not hard to edit footage down to make someone look stupid. That's why you have your people there, making sure that it doesn't happen.

  It was her job to make sure that this Holden thing didn't turn into a hit piece, and if it did, that she was able to respond to it quickly and efficiently. But like it or not, that wasn't what was happening.

  Adam decided, right or wrong, that he was going to go alone, and it wasn't her place to question it. She wasn't about to try to use whatever leverage she had with him, but she wasn't exactly ready to go all-in with her nascent plans to cover her ass if their relationship came out in the press.

  Which left her sitting in the office, watching the news. Tom was silently watching on the other couch, as well. Both of them waiting for news, as if they were waiting for the gallows.

  Nothing was happening. A slow news night. Which, in this case, meant talking about Quinn again. The usual stuff, this time. Nothing too exciting, and in spite of what the press clearly thought, nothing particularly damaging.

  He's inexperienced in politics, they say. Sure, he's got plenty of money on the line, and he's been at the edge of politics since he first got into it. Sure, he runs one of the most successful, efficient charities in the country. Sure, he's smart and proven that he can take projects to completion time and time again.

  None of that matters. He hasn't been a politician for very long, only a couple weeks. That means that he's ill-suited to the job because only politicians can be good politicians.

  It doesn't matter that he's strongly defined his positions—focus on education reform first and foremost, then revitalizing the American economy, with no foreign conflict.

  He's incompetent, he's not a real candidate. And that's all they've got to say, so they're going to have to say it quite a few times.

  It should feel like failure for Linda. Her client was getting this kind of beat-down on Television, on a slow news night? Scandal talk constantly. The positives were all but forgotten, while the negatives were enumerated in excruciating, even boring, detail.

  Somehow, it didn't. It felt expected. This was just the beginning of his candidacy. Just the first step in taking the white house. He was an outsider, and he couldn't be safely ignored, which meant that he was going to be marginalized. It was always going to happen, and there was nothing that could be done to prevent it.

  All she could hope for, in the end, was that it didn't hurt, and she didn't feel like this coverage was hurting him. He took it on the chin and his poll numbers went up.

  What worried her was the waiting. She was wasting time. Wasting time responding to new threats that would arise in an interview with someone on Ellen's level. It was only natural, if she went after him at all, that something would come out of it. She was smart, she was committed, and she had enough of a following that there was a real risk of things getting ugly if the interview went sufficiently badly.

  Tom wasn't wasting time. He wasn't supposed to respond, he was supposed to get a response. His job was, at its core, to figure out what people expected least, and what was going to have the most effective results.

  That was what allowed him, on an evening where something was certainly going to come up, to keep doing what he was doing.

  But when your job is to repair someone's reputation, to clean their dirty laundry and empty the skeletons out of their closet…

  Well, those things required that you knew what was coming, that you knew what people were saying. It would have been nice, of course, if there was a way to get the information straight from the horse's mouth.

  She shouldn't have been frustrated, of course. It was part of the job. It was part of why she was paid quite the amount of money that she was.

  If only it weren't her ass on the line this time.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The office was darkened when Adam Quinn stepped back in. The only light in the room came from the two televisions hung on the wall, side-by-side, showing two different channels. Neither one had the sound on; closed captions ran across the bottom with obvious errors visible from the moment that he stepped into the room.

  The light fell on a ring of couches, illuminating a young woman, sitting there. She was attractive, Adam had to admit. Unusually attractive for a woman in her line of work.

  "Linda. What are you still doing here? What time is it?"

  "Late," she said softly.

  "You should be at home. Asleep. We've got a big day tomorrow."

  "I need to get the debrief on the interview with Ellen," she answers. The televisions click off. The light from the hall spills in, just enough light to see by, but only barely.

  "It can wait until the morning."

  "Or you can let me do my job and tell me what I need to be getting ready for."

  "It we
nt great. You'll love it. Perfect."

  "That's good, but I'm going to need more than that."

  She smelled good. Like a woman should, he thought. She was close now, as he walked deeper into the dark room.

  "Is Tom still here?"

  "I talked him into going back to his apartment."

  Two more steps would close the distance between them, now. She'd fit easily into his arms. She'd feel good there, too. It was what he wanted, and he generally got what he wanted. Generally took it.

  "Then we're alone."

  "I suppose so," she says. Something about her attitude rubs him the wrong way.

  "Is everything alright?"

  "Fine," she says. He can barely make out her face in the darkness, but she doesn't look like everything is fine.

  "You look distraught."

  "I'm not. I'm fine."

  He took a step, and the space between them closed halfway.

  "Are you sure?"

  "What's with the third degree?"

  "You're right. My mistake." He took another step, and now he was close to her. His arm wrapped around her shoulder, pulled her in close.

  She stiffened at his touch. She didn't pull away, though, and there was a difference.

  "What?"

  "We can't."

  His lips found the sensitive skin of her throat and pressed themselves against her. She leaned into it a little, and he knew that he had her in his grasp.

  "We can," he told her. "Nothing's going to stop us."

  Her breathing was ragged, caught a little bit in her throat, and he could almost hear the edge of arousal building up in her.

  "We shouldn't."

  "We should," he responded. His lips moved to the other side of her throat, his teeth nipping along the line of her collarbone as he moved across.

  He pushed her a little, stepping into her space until she was forced to step back and make room. Until she was pressed against the foot of a sofa and the only place she had to go was down onto her back.