The Billionaire's Kiss(43)

"Really though, tell me what's going on. I don't want to say the wrong thing when we show up, and, to be honest, I'm curious as hell." He reached over and turned down the radio, leaving only the sound of the wind between them.

Callie mulled it over for a moment. Logan would find out soon enough one way or another. She might as well earn some trust points by telling him before they got there. "Sex scandal," she said, "a student got a teacher pregnant."

"Good for him!" Logan said. He quickly backtracked. "Provided, you know, they were both the age of consent, what's the problem?"

"I'm going to assume you're kidding,” Callie said.

"No, really, I mean what's the scandal? Unless people know about this, it's just a single woman having a baby. Sure there might be rumors or something, but that's not a big deal for the school. I'm sure they could bury this on their own. Why do they need to call in a hotshot crisis manager? It’s the middle of the summer, why now?"

"We're not going on behalf of the school. We're going on behalf of our client. Michael Callahan,” Callie said.

"Who is Michael Callahan?" Logan asked.

"He's the Governor of Connecticut, and he's thinking of making a bid for the White House in a few years. A Republican who plays well with independent voters but has strong family values to court the right.”

"And his kid is the one who knocked up the teacher?"

"Yup. That about sums it up,” Callie said.

"So we're going up there to pay her to keep quiet so dad can run for president in a few years?”

"In part, yes,” Callie said.

"What's the other part?" Logan asked.

"We're picking up his son. He just finished his senior year."

"How old's the teacher?" Logan asked.

"Twenty three,” Callie replied. She knew where he was going with this and she didn’t like it.

"So an eighteen year old knocked up a twenty three year old? "

"Yeah. Well, he's nineteen, and she's twenty three."

“You’re kidding, right? That's a four year gap, Callie.”

"Just wait. The teacher has been threatening to go public with it."

"Unless she gets paid off, right?"

“No, well, we don’t know yet.”

"What about the money? I mean she must be looking at some serious cash if they're that worried about her screwing things up for the school and the family. When you think about it, it's kind of ingenious."

"What do you mean?"

"Who knows how it started, but let's say that Junior had a crush on her. She knew his family name, their reputation. Maybe she hatched a plan to get in on some of that money. Maybe she invited him to some after school study sessions and came up with a few extra incentives. Man, that would be one hell of a story."

"Except she won't take the money. That's why they asked me to go talk some sense into her."

"What?" Logan asked. "If she doesn't want money, what does she want?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out. Of course, first we need to figure out where exactly she is. The school placed her on leave and barred her from campus. That's as much as I know."

Logan turned and looked at Callie for a moment. “We're driving to New Hampshire, and you're not even sure if the person we need to see is in the state?"

"She's not the person we need to see. We talk to the kid and find out what he knows. Then we get him as far away from Cabot as possible and figure out a way to keep the teacher quiet. Once we've done that, we can figure out the rest."

Logan grinned. "Maybe this is more interesting than I thought."





***

Situated on the rolling hills that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean, Cabot Academy looked more like a country club than a high school. Every blade of grass on the lawn was cut to exactly the right length, and not a brick or a pillar looked out of place. The school's website had boasted that aside from the technological improvements, the campus had been virtually unchanged for over two hundred years. The line Callie remembered was "any of the five presidents or countless governors, senators and titans of industry who walked these halls would be at home at Cabot as much today as they were fifty, a hundred, or two hundred years ago." Cabot was a school raised on power, protected by reputation, and fed by ambition.

Of course, there was the image the school liked to project, and then there was the reality of the place, the daily lives of the sons and daughters of wealth and power. Callie had dealt with enough family scandals to know that half the students drank and dabbled in drugs, and that half of their parents had made generous gifts to the school to keep them in good standing. If "Junior" as Logan had been calling him, had been caught with alcohol or had driven his car into the lake while sneaking off with the captain of the cheerleading squad or committed misdemeanor shoplifting in the campus store, Callie wouldn't have needed to make the trip.