The Marriage Agenda(29)

He listened, stunned, as the air went dead. Was it possible she really  hadn't sent the article? She had everything to lose. She loved her job.  If she hadn't hit send, she was essentially walking away from it … and  she'd made it clear she was walking away from him. He'd offered her  everything she could ask for-a beautiful home, a faithful husband who  couldn't get enough of her, children, a chance to further her career …   Nothing was missing. The only thing that he'd failed to do was say he  loved her, but what would that change?

Nothing. It wouldn't change anything, and he didn't want to think about what that meant.

He righted the chair and sat, staring for a long moment at her computer  and the article she'd left for him before he switched to her browser.  Her email was open. He clicked the link for sent mail and waited for the  page to load. What was her editor's name? Beth something. He skimmed  the list of sent email. No Beth. No anything. Chloe hadn't sent a single  email from that account since the previous morning. He frowned, his  eyes landing on the search box. Clicking there, he tried [email protected] and got  nothing. Dammit, what was her last name? It was a big paper … odds were  they didn't assign emails on a first name basis.

"You're an idiot," he muttered. @WashingtonTribune. Bingo. BethMahan. He  clicked on the result and scanned the titles of recent emails. Each one  was clearly labeled with an article title-the last few of which were  decidedly home-and-garden-esque-but none had been sent in the last  couple of days.

Frowning, he clicked back to the Tribune results and checked the list in case she'd sent it to someone else.

Nothing.

Chloe hadn't sent the article.

The proof obliterated what remained of his anger.

He sat back in her chair, his gaze skirting the wilderness of greenery  in her office. The conservatory. She hadn't been kidding-potted plants  filled tables in front of every window. He hadn't realized how big of a  pile they made, but he liked it. They added life to the house.         

     



 

Chloe had, too. She wasn't one of those women who needed to be dressed  to kill every waking minute of the day. In fact, he loved her bare feet  peeking out from under her sweats and the way she twisted her hair up  off her neck. He liked how he could swipe a kiss and not end up wearing  red lipstick-for that matter, he'd be hard pressed to admit it out loud,  but he actually liked the cherry taste of whatever it was she used to  make her lips look deliciously moist all day. She was flawlessly  beautiful, but unlike so many other women he knew, she didn't paint it  on. She was real, and that was the one thing he'd been missing all  along.

His knee-jerk reaction to love had been honest, but he'd been lying to  himself. He was absolutely the last person to believe in love, but  whatever she'd triggered inside him the night they met had only grown  stronger with time. He had no idea what had possessed him to shed his  skin and go to that bar, but the moment he'd locked eyes with Chloe,  something inside him had changed.

He'd grown up with the Hamilton name. He'd never known what it was like  to be a regular guy-not until Chloe. He had never wanted for anything in  his life, but in that moment, he knew she'd given him something no one  else ever had. When she'd looked at him, she had seen a guy wearing  faded jeans and an old T-shirt, and still her eyes had torn through him  as though he was on the dessert menu. He'd been terrified to lose that,  so when he'd introduced himself, he'd given his middle name-misleading,  perhaps, but not untrue-and waited with bated breath for her to make the  connection, but she hadn't.

She hadn't seen a Hamilton. She'd seen a man.

He'd been lost then. Maybe that was why he hadn't broken things off with  her sooner. He'd known ever since he was a kid listening to his mother  cry down the hall that he wanted nothing of marriage. Even before he'd  fully understood his father's infidelities, he'd learned loving someone  meant hurting them. He'd never met anyone with whom he had even thought  he wanted a real relationship, until Chloe, and the last thing he'd  wanted was to hurt her-not like that. So he'd ended it, and if he was  honest with himself, he'd have to admit he hadn't been the same since.

He'd convinced himself he'd asked Chloe to marry him to further his  career, but the truth was he wanted back the piece of himself that had  left with her. He'd been so close to the truth when he'd refused to  marry anyone but her, but he'd also missed it by a mile. He hadn't shed  his skin that night they met. He'd found himself. He'd found himself in  her. And then he'd made love to her, and before the sweat dried, he'd  said she didn't matter enough.

Fuck. No wonder she was gone.

He clicked back to the article and read it once more. Most of her  citations he recognized, and he didn't doubt the rest to be true. Chloe  wouldn't fabricate this-she valued her job, reputation, and integrity  too much to risk any one of them. Every damned word of what she had  written was true. It had to be.

She had Rex in her sights, but she hadn't pulled the trigger.

Knox boiled with emotion. His father had paid off inspectors,  doubtlessly having a hand in getting a factory approved that he'd been  publicly against. He was smart-and dumb-enough to keep those payoffs  from surfacing, and ultimately the whole house of cards had fallen  because he'd chosen the wrong place to get his dick wet. If he hadn't  gotten caught in that high-profile affair, he wouldn't have stepped down  from his seat. There would be no need for a special election, and Knox  wouldn't have married Chloe.

And she wouldn't have broken a story every top reporter in the country  would have given his or her right arm for. She had everything she  needed, but she had refused to hit send. Because she loved him. And that  love was deeper and truer than he deserved.

He shook his head in disbelief. He'd figured she'd dig up something on  someone, but never had he imagined it would be at his expense. She was a  handful of keystrokes away from making her career and destroying what  was left of the Hamilton name … and by extension, Knox. Toby would shit a  brick if he knew Knox had prior knowledge of the story, but how the hell  could you put a good spin on something like this?

He'd find out soon enough.

There was a certain peace in that.

Knox switched back to Chloe's story and deleted the message she left him  at the top. He saved the changes, then attached the document to a new  email. He hesitated only a moment over the To field before typing in his  recipient.         

     



 

She hadn't clicked send.

He hadn't any other choice.





Chapter Twenty

Chloe steered her piece-of-crap car into a parking spot near Belleville  Lake, grateful the old girl had made the forty-five minute drive without  leaving a trail of pieces on the road behind her. She needed time to  think, and she wasn't going to get it at her old apartment or at Lila's  or anywhere else that bred familiarity. For a person seeking solace, the  state park was as good a place as any. Though the recreation area  entertained a lot of traffic, it wasn't typically packed on a weekday  afternoon-there were enough people there that she wouldn't draw  attention, and that's all that really mattered. Toby would probably have  a fit if he knew she'd let the old beast out of the garage-keeping up  the Hamilton image absolutely required her to drive shiny late-model  things-but she didn't feel right taking the car Knox had bought her. Not  when she'd just wrecked what was left of his family by exposing his  father.

Her heart felt as if it had landed in a million pieces, but she'd done  the right thing. She'd rather live alone with her conscience than carry  the burden of a lie.

She'd just dug into her grilled chicken salad-courtesy of a fast food  drive-through-when her phone vibrated. She hit ignore, then checked her  missed calls. Six of them, all from her editor. According to the  timestamps, the calls had been coming in since minutes after she'd left  the meeting room where she had been handed a bunch of empty accolades to  go alongside her pink slip, both courtesy of the publisher, Harry  Olander. The calls had been easy enough to ignore. She hadn't even  noticed the vibrations from the phone while on the road.

She'd just set down the device when another call came in. It was her  editor-or her former editor. Chloe was sorely tempted to ignore her for a  seventh time, but curiosity got the better of her. Besides, it wasn't  as if she had anything left to lose.

She answered. "Sorry, Beth," she said in lieu of a greeting, "the story  wasn't what I thought it was." Not a shred of untruth there. "I'm sorry  if I let you down."

"What are you talking about? Why the hell didn't you mention this story during the meeting?"

Beth sounded as if she'd just opened the door to find freaking  Publisher's Clearing House standing on her front porch with an oversize  cardboard check. "What story?"

"The one that just made your career. If it pans out, that is, but all things considered … "