The Scandal and Carter O'Neill (8 page)

Always outside.

Carter scoffed at his own melodrama. In or out, Carter? he thought. He went in.

The menu was printed on a chalkboard over the counter and on sticky plastic menus. Even the floor was sticky and Carter had to wonder how much they bribed public health in order to stay open. “Carter?”

The voice was hers and he jumped, spinning around as if he’d been caught doing something illegal.

Zoe’s smile was bright, luminous even, and then as he watched, she controlled it. Tamed it and put it back under wraps. But that first smile…oh, that first smile told him a lot.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, switching her bag from one shoulder to the other. She looked tired and he reached for the bag.

“Here, let me—”

She put up a little protest, but he took the bag from her, swinging the embroidered sack over his shoulder.

“What’s in here?” he asked, astonished at its weight.

“Hard to say,” she said with a weary smile. “I need to clean it out.”

You need to take it easy, he thought but didn’t say. It wasn’t his place. Their relationship was business, and it looked as if it was coming to an end.

Besides, he was in enough trouble with Blackwell and his mother in the same city. He didn’t need to complicate things with Zoe.

And everything about Zoe was a complication.

But he still wanted her, he still wanted to brush back her hair and kiss her pink lips.

Wednesday night, he’d watched her more than the ballet. He’d watched her eyes gleam, her lips part with smiles and sighs. Her fingers dancing across her lap. He’d felt her muscles tense when the ballerina leaped.

He’d felt, it seemed, her spirit—buoyant and happy.

Her joy had been contagious, and his stark life, his strict existence, had soaked up that joy like a sponge.

“Are you here because of the photographers?” she asked.

“What photographers?” he asked, looking out the small front window onto the street.

“The ones still following me.”

His mouth dropped open for a second. “I had no idea. No one is following me.”

“Lucky you. It’s mostly one guy and his heart doesn’t seem to be into it.”

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Like a whale. On my good days. But you don’t want to hear about my swollen ankles.”

“Sure I do,” he said. And he meant it.

She watched him, her eyes measuring his sincerity, as if she were trying to find his angle. His motives for caring.

The moment got small and tight; it was the night of the ballet all over again. The air between them was cluttered with too many emotions: wariness, genuine respect and a heaping dose of lust. At least on his part. And he had the sinking suspicion that he was alone with that.

But then she cleared her throat, her eyes darting away, and the moment shattered.

Apparently his sincerity was unconvincing.

“I have a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, and I’m sure the whale feelings are par for the course. The real question is, what are you doing here? I thought you didn’t like soul food.”

“Someone recommended this place to me,” he said and her smile was quick. A flash, like the memory of the one kiss they shared, and then it was gone. “Truth is, I’ve never had any. I mean, other than what my grandmother cooked and I imagine that was pretty tame compared to…” He gestured toward the giant black woman behind the cash register, who had to be ninety if she was a day.

“Mama is the best,” Zoe said and the woman behind the cash—Mama, Carter deduced—broke into a wide warm smile.

“Hi, sugar,” she said and Zoe let herself get pulled into a monstrous hug. It looked good; Carter couldn’t lie. He was tired and worn-out, and getting folded into that giant hug seemed like a pretty good way to spend a few seconds.

“This is Carter,” Zoe said, turning to introduce Carter.

“I know who he is,” Mama said, and as she tucked her arms up under her shelf of breasts Carter prepared himself for more deadbeat daddy stuff.

“Mama,” Zoe whispered. “He’s not the father.”

“Oh, any fool could see that,” Mama said. “Not sure what’s going on there, but Mr. O’Neill, you got my vote if you gonna be running for mayor. We need to be cleaning up these communities, like you been trying to do.”

Carter smiled, pleased and relieved. Zoe looked stunned, as if shocked that anyone believed in his message.

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“Call me Mama. Now, what you two having?”

“I’ll have what she’s having,” he said.

Zoe ordered catfish and greens, and she reached for her bag to pay, but he put down a twenty.

“Eat with me,” he said, the words popping out of his mouth, inspired by the strain around her eyes and the weary slouch to her shoulders.

She seemed unsure. As if saying yes might change their arrangement.

“It’s just dinner,” he said, feeling oddly slighted.

She shook her head. “It’s not, Carter,” she said, so forthright and honest it shook him. “Not for me. I like you. I need to go with my head on this one. And my head says dinner would be a mistake.”

“When have you ever gone with your head, Zoe?” He didn’t know much about her, but that she lived through her heart was obvious to the world.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “That’s always the problem.”

“Then how about coffee,” he said. “Thursday?”

“More reputation repair work?”

If that’s all he could get.

You’re pathetic, he told himself, but himself wasn’t listening.

“Yes,” he said. “We can meet at the coffee shop outside city hall.”

Mama slid big takeaway boxes onto the counter.

“Here y’all are,” she said. “Have at it.”

Zoe took her bag, swinging it up over her shoulder, and then took the food.

“Zoe,” he said. “Let me help.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Really.”

She wasn’t going to let him help. She wasn’t going to eat with him. She was shutting him right out.

Just business.

She’d told him—he shouldn’t be so hurt or surprised. But he was.

“Well—” her smile was sharp and false, a knife through his stomach “—I guess…I’ll see you on Thursday.”

“Sure,” he said.

And she was gone.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Zoe climbed the stairs to her loft, feeling harried and fat and more pregnant than any one woman should. Her head hurt as though she had an emotional hangover from seeing Carter. He’d looked faded, somehow, and she’d wanted to ask him what was wrong. She wanted to ask him about his day, tell him about hers. About the two-year-old in her toddler class who’d told the whole room about peeing in the potty.

But she’d done the right thing, saying no to dinner. She was proud of herself. If only proud gave her the same warm tingles that Carter did.

Distracted by her mixed emotions, she nearly collided with a man standing right in front of her door.

“Ohmygod,” she yelped, leaping back and bumping into the wall. Her heart thundered so hard against her chest she saw stars. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m so sorry,” the man said, holding his hands out. He seemed contrite, but she’d been bombarded by people who weren’t what they seemed these days. “I really am, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The guy had kind of a puppy dog face, soft cheeks and heavy eyes. Brown hair that was a little shaggy.

The kind of guy that shocked neighbors said seemed so nice, so unassuming, after all the dead bodies were found in his apartment.

She slipped her hand into her bag for the Mace attached to her key ring. She was a woman alone in the world—she wasn’t a fool.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Not to get sprayed with Mace,” he said, nodding down to the hand in her bag. His smile was lopsided and sweet, and it almost made her forget that he’d somehow broken into her building and had been lying in wait for her.

He reached for his pocket and she whipped her Mace up and out of the bag. “I’m getting my ID,” he said. “That’s all.”

“My neighbors are really nosy,” she said in warning. “One peep out of me and all these doors will open.”

She didn’t say that all her neighbors were about eighty years old and he could overpower them with one hand.

“I’m a reporter. My name is Jim Blackwell.”

Now she recognized him. He was the reporter with the cell phone camera in that meeting. He was the reason she was in the papers.

“I know who you are,” she snapped. “And if you don’t want to get maced on principle, then you’ve got about five seconds to get the hell out of here.”

“Hear me out—”

“Five. Four.”

“The photographers following you have gotten out of hand,” he said. “And I’m here to give you a chance to clear the air. I swear, once you do that, the photographers will leave you alone.”

Alone? Alone was good. Alone was heaven.

“You stopped counting, so can I assume you’re interested?”

“You can,” she said, lowering the Mace.

“Aren’t you usually a city hall writer?” she asked. “The identity of my baby’s father seems a little beneath you. Because it’s not Carter O’Neill.”

“I was pretty sure.” His smirk made her skin crawl.

“So…there’s not much else to talk about.”

“You could talk about Carter,” he said, and something in his voice, the electric expectation on his face, made her nervous.

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I know you don’t have insurance and having a baby is expensive. I’d be happy to pay you—”

“For what exactly?”

“For…” He sighed. “I don’t know, whatever you might find out about Carter. About his family. His mother.”

She nearly dropped her bag.

“Are you asking me to spy for you?”

“I’m asking you to do your civic duty.”

She laughed; she couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry. But, wow, that’s…ah…that’s a stretch. Civic duty?”

“Look, Carter O’Neill is up to no good. His whole family is involved with this gem theft—”

“He’s a good guy,” she said, not entirely sure why she needed to defend Carter. Maybe because he defended her to the photographers the night of their date. Or maybe because he looked so alone inside Mama’s. Or maybe because she was a total sucker. “I mean as far as city officials go, he wants to help—”

“Himself,” Jim said, his puppy dog eyes growing razor sharp.

Everything in Zoe recoiled, shrinking away from the man, and he must have sensed it because he stepped away.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” he said, that charming half smile back on his lips. He nodded down to the card in her fingers. “If you want all this to end, just give me a call. I’m sure you don’t want it to get worse.”

The threat hung in the air like a bad smell and she watched him wave and walk away. That man was a snake, and as bad as her life was right now, she wasn’t going to make it worse by lying down with snakes.

“THE MAYOR WOULD LIKE to see you,” Gloria, Carter’s receptionist, said as Carter stormed past her desk early Wednesday morning.

“He’s in already?” he asked, wishing he’d had a bit more time for damage control this morning before meeting with Bill. On the front page of today’s paper, Jim Blackwell had done his best to make the donation from Lafayette Corp. seem like the administration was selling its soul. And Carter was the devil sealing the deal.

“He’s been here since seven,” Gloria whispered. “His assistant said he’s ticked with a capital t.”

“Great,” Carter muttered. He tossed his raincoat and briefcase across the small couch inside his door and headed back out toward the office at the end of the hallway.

“Good luck,” Gloria called out after him.

“Thanks,” he muttered. He was going to need it.

Julie, the Mayor’s assistant, winced when she saw him. “Go on in. He’s expecting you,” she said.

He took a deep breath outside the door, feeling as if he was about to face a firing squad.

“Mayor?” he asked, stepping into the elegant inner office. The desk, the shelves that lined all the walls, were made of thick, polished oak and the sun bounced off them and made the whole room glow with a warm light.

The river and the highway flowed past his windows.

It was a beautiful room to be fired in, if it came to that.

“Morning, Carter,” Bill said, spinning in his chair to face him. In the early-morning light, the mayor looked his age—which was closer to seventy than anyone wanted to admit.

But his eyes were still sharp and his mind the sharpest this city had seen. He’d served as mayor for two terms in the eighties and had run again after the Marcuzzi administration, in an effort to pull the city back from the brink. Now, he was a year away from the end of his term.

“Sir, I assume you want to talk about the article regarding the Lafayette deal.”

Bill flipped over the front page of the paper spread across his giant desk. “Jim Blackwell is riding you hard these days, Carter.”

“I know,” Carter said. “But the deal is clean. Lafayette is clean.”

“I know, son,” he said with a sigh and a small smile. He stood, his thin body outlined by the sun like a halo. “I know. You know. Eric knows. The city knows. There are always going to be naysayers. Always going to be articles. It’s the way it is.”

“So…?” Carter tried to find a point in this.

“I’m leaving after this term. I’m done. Too old for this nonsense.”

He’d known as much, but the words had never been said out loud. “The city will miss you,” he said, and Bill laughed.

“You’re a politician all the way down to your underwear.” Bill eyed him shrewdly and Carter felt the need to tip his head back and puff out his chest like the troops in front of Patton. “I’d endorse you for the Democratic ticket in the primary, and lord knows the Republicans haven’t got anyone who will cause you trouble. But you haven’t announced your position, and I’m wondering why?”

I might not be right for the job, he thought, the words beating at his lips, words that had never seen the light of day before. And they never would have seen the light of day—ever—if it weren’t for this perfect storm of his mother being back in his life and Jim Blackwell being around to witness it.

“Carter?” Bill asked, looking into Carter’s eyes. Carter found the scrutiny uncomfortable—found any scrutiny uncomfortable, and he was tired of being uncomfortable in his own skin.

“I’m worried about my family,” Carter blurted.

“Ah, yes, your disreputable family tree.”

“Disreputable.” Understatement of the year.

“Everyone’s got secrets, son. Hell, my father had a boyfriend, and in the eighties, that was a huge liability. But right now, your family is the least of your worries.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re good for this town,” Bill said, and the compliment filled Carter with pride. “No doubt about it, but right now—you’d be a shit mayor.”

Carter’s mouth fell open.

“The Lafayette deal is a good piece of work. And the article in the paper is just an article in the paper—there will be millions of them. But this—” he snapped open the paper to the back inside page and held it up to Carter “—is going to be the end of you.”

Carter was sucker punched. Gut shot.

“Holy…” he breathed, taking the paper from the mayor. Zoe stared up at him from a black-and-white picture in the local section. The sign for a free clinic was in the background—she’d clearly been ambushed coming out of her doctor’s appointment yesterday.

The look on her face was pure panic. Pure fear.

She was scared and it was his fault.

“I understand that this woman was supposed to help your public image,” Bill said, “after all that Deadbeat Daddy nonsense.”

“She was. I mean, she is.”

“If you want to be mayor, it’s time to act like it. No comment isn’t working anymore.”

Carter nodded and folded the paper, hiding Zoe’s face because he couldn’t take it.

“I’ll take care of this,” Carter said.

“When you walked into my office two years ago, I had you pegged as a fighter. But the last few months you’ve been turning yourself into a politician, which is too bad, because politicians ruined this city. We need someone who will fight for what they want and for what is right.”

What I want, Carter thought. Fight for what I want. It was a foreign concept, but he was tired of lying back and waiting for his family to take away the things he wanted.

He wanted to be mayor and he wanted Zoe.

He was ready to fight.

CARTER STORMED BACK TO his office, a whirlwind of purpose finally forcing him into action. If he wanted to be mayor, he needed to fight for it.

It was time for him to choose his own fate, stop being dictated to by his family. By the mistakes they made.

“Everything okay?” Gloria asked, half standing from behind her desk as he strode by.

“Great,” he said and, surprisingly, he meant it. Dormant action burned in him, waiting to get out. “Get me Lafayette Corp. on the phone.”

“You bet.”

He kicked the door shut behind him and checked his watch; only quarter to eight, too early to call Zoe. He didn’t want to start her day with a phone call about this garbage.

That was assuming Zoe would even take his call. He’d been tempted to call her over a dozen times since Sunday night at Mama’s, but had resisted each time. Now, after this incident outside the doctor’s, who knew if she’d ever want to talk to him again.

He took the folded paper out from under his arm and smoothed it out across his desk and felt his rib cage shrink.

The fear in Zoe’s eyes made him sick to his stomach. The way she had her hands crossed across her belly as if to protect the baby made him want to murder someone.

She looked trapped. Scared.

There wasn’t a story attached, just a caption: Mayor Pro Tem’s Mistress Uses Free Clinic. But Carter knew who was behind all this continued interest in Zoe—Jim Blackwell. It had to be. No one but him would still care.

Zoe and Carter were an ice-cold story.

Suddenly, despite the fact that Zoe had been the one to stand up on that chair, Carter felt wholly responsible for that look on her lovely face.

This had to change. Right now.

The intercom buzzed and he punched the button.

“Janet from Lafayette Corp. on line three.”

“Got it,” he said and put the phone on speaker.

“Hi, Janet,” he said, sitting back in his chair.

“Well, hello there, Mr. O’Neill. What can I do for you?”

He smiled at the woman’s Southern peach accent. Janet ran that office like it was D-day every day, but she never broke a sweat. “I need a favor.”

“I specialize in favors.”

He laughed, feeling better every moment. He had control again and control felt good. Right. “I know you do. Can you send an invitation to that casino fundraiser you’re throwing on Saturday to Jim Blackwell at the Gazette?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. O’Neill. This morning’s article in the paper didn’t make him any friends around here.”

“Here neither, Janet, trust me. But I want him to see there’s nothing to hide. He can ask all the questions he has, make all the accusations he wants in plain view.”

“Ah—you’re keeping your friends close but your enemies closer?”

“Now you’re quoting The Godfather, Janet?” he asked. “Is there any way I can get you to come work for me?”

Janet laughed. “No sir, but maybe we could get you to come work for us.”

“Not likely, Janet. Sorry.”

“Well, it’s worth a shot. I’ll send an invite out right now.”

“Thank you,” he said and hung up.

He dialed the Gazette himself and routed by machine to Blackwell’s voice mail.

“Stop harassing innocent women, Blackwell,” he said. “Makes you look desperate. You have questions? Want to talk? Fine. I’ll talk. Call my office.”

He hung up, and riding a serious upswing in adrenaline, he dialed Zoe’s number.

“Hello?” A woman answered on the second ring, but it wasn’t Zoe.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m looking for Zoe.”

“Who is calling?”

“Carter O’N—”

He jerked the phone away from his ear, but he could still hear the blistering tirade loud and clear. “Ma’am,” he said when she stopped to catch her breath. “Ma’am—”

“Don’t you ma’am me, boy,” she said and Carter blinked. Only Margot called him boy, and he guessed she was the only one with the right. “This is Penny, Zoe’s mother, and I have spent the last twelve hours trying to comfort a hysterical pregnant woman.”

Guilt squeezed his brain. “I just want to talk to her.”

“Haven’t you done enough?” she asked, and the truth felt like stepping into an ice bath.

I’m making it right, he thought, resolve a bright light in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I think after today the press will stay away from her.”

“Bully for you, Carter O’Neill. If it weren’t for you they would never have been following her in the first place.”

Carter bit his tongue against the need to remind her about Zoe standing up on a chair accusing him of being the father of her baby, but he knew a protective mama when he was forced to talk to her.

“Penny, if you could please tell her I’m on the phone so that she can decide whether or not to talk to me.”

“Her decision would be no if she was here, but she’s not.”

“Where is she?”

“Working. Trying to make an honest living.”

“Jimmie Simpson?” he asked, knowing she worked at several community centers around the city.

“Figure it out yourself, smart man,” she said then hung up.

Carter stood, stretching his neck like a boxer going back in the ring for another round.

Suddenly, his office felt too small, the air too stale. Instead of asking Gloria to make another call he decided to take a walk.

But before he left, he called Amanda.

“Let’s get a press conference set up,” he said.

“Why?”

“I want to announce I’m running for mayor.”

“Before Christmas?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that’s more like the Carter I know. I’m on it.”

He disconnected, feeling better than he had in months.

He left his office and headed down two floors to the parks and rec department in the hopes he could convince someone there to break a few HR rules and tell him where Zoe was teaching today.

Because now he had a reason to see her, and nothing was going to stop him.

“THREE IS BETTER THAN ONE,” Zoe said, trying to force optimism upon her and Phillip, but Phillip wasn’t having any of it.

It was their first free Wednesday after-school class, and things weren’t quite starting the way she’d hoped.

“Well, that one’s just here for the snack,” he said, pointing to a six-foot teenager in the corner doing his best to eat the whole bag of chips she’d left out. “I told you, you shouldn’t have said there were snacks.”

“Then we only would have had two people,” she said.

One teenager was here for the snacks, another had clearly been dragged here by her grandmother, and now, said grandmother was sitting in front of the doors, a knitting barricade.

But the third one was a young girl who was working some booty-shaking moves in the mirror. Not much talent, but lots and lots of enthusiasm.

“We can work with that,” she said. “I mean lots of enthusiasm is better than a little talent, right?”

Phillip didn’t answer; his eyes were on her face. She knew what he saw, the dark circles under her eyes and the strain around her mouth.

“You should take a break,” he said. “After the paper this morning—”

“I’m fine,” she said, though prickles of adrenaline still fluttered over her skin. Being ambushed yesterday coming out of the clinic had scared her nearly to death, and the photograph this morning had made her sick to her stomach.