“Screw the spirit of the agreement. You like this woman, right?”
Nic thought of Desi’s laugh, the way it filled a room and wrapped itself around him. Thought of her eyes, soft and pleasure dazed and welcoming. “Yeah,” he told his brother hoarsely.
“So text her. Make her laugh. You’re good at that. Then ask her out.”
He nodded. Marc was right. Nic was good at that. He was usually really good at this whole dating thing. So what was it about Desi that threw him so completely off his game? He didn’t know, but he figured it was important that she did. And he wanted to find out why he found her so fascinating. Why he’d spent the whole morning thinking about her when she’d made it fairly obvious that she didn’t feel the same about him.
“Okay, yeah. I’ll do that.” He pushed to his feet, pulled his phone from his pocket. “Thanks, man.”
Marc laughed. “I didn’t mean now! It’s barely eight in the morning. Besides, we’re both due in a meeting that started five minutes ago.”
“I’m not a total idiot, you know. I was just…thinking of what I wanted to say.”
His brother came up behind him and clapped him on the back. “Wow, you really do have it bad.”
Nic flipped him off as he led the way out of the office and down the hallway to the meeting room—after tucking his phone back in his pants. And if he spent the bulk of the meeting mentally composing a message to Desi, well, nobody needed to know that but him.
Five
“Desi, get in here. I’ve got a story for you,” Malcolm Banks, her boss, called to her from across the newsroom.
“On my way,” she answered, grabbing her tablet and heading toward the door with an enthusiasm she was far from feeling.
“Good luck,” her friend Stephanie, a junior reporter for the fashion pages, mouthed to her. “Hope it’s a good one!”
But Desi just shrugged. This was going to be another society story, she just knew it. She had, in fact, pretty much given up on getting a story of genuine worth anytime in the next decade or so. Because, despite her hard work generating and following up on numerous important story ideas over the past two months, Malcolm refused to give her a chance to write a story that really mattered.
He kept telling her she had to earn her way out of the society pages, and she kept trying. But she was beginning to think that she would be stuck there until she died. Or until Malcolm did, one or the other. Because there was no way she could get a job at another newspaper or magazine, not after she’d spent the past year and a half of her life covering parties and obituaries.
She didn’t let her discontent show when she went into Malcolm’s office. The only thing he hated more than whiners were salesmen, or so he said. And since local solicitors had long since learned their lesson about calling him—the hard way, but they’d learned it—she had no desire to be the low reporter on his totem pole. From what she’d seen in her time at the paper, bad things happened to those reporters…and she already had the crap assignments. She’d hate to see what would happen if she actually pissed off her boss.
It had taken her less than a minute to get to his office, but Malcolm was already engrossed in something else on the computer by the time she sat down in front of his desk. His distraction wasn’t that unusual of an occurrence, so she settled in for a wait, patiently thumbing through her tablet as she did so. Seconds later, her phone buzzed with a text. Though she told herself not to get her hopes up, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing at it, excitement welling up inside her at the possibility that it might be—
Nope. Not Nic. Just her friend and next-door neighbor, Serena, asking her to pick up some milk on the way home.
Her heart fell as she shoved the phone back in her pocket, despite the very stern talking-to that she gave herself. Of course it wasn’t Nic. It hadn’t been Nic in over three weeks. Which was fine. Better than fine. It was what she’d wanted, after all. Otherwise she would have answered one of the dozen text messages he’d sent her in the seven weeks since she’d snuck out of his house while he slept.
But she hadn’t answered them, no matter what approach he’d taken. Funny, sweet, friendly, sexy. She’d read them all—over and over again—but hadn’t been able to bring herself to answer them. Not because she didn’t like him, but because she did. Not because she thought he was a jerk, but because she thought he was kind of…sweet. And goofy. And far too charming for her own peace of mind.
As she’d looked at those text messages, she could see herself falling for him, and she couldn’t afford to do that. Couldn’t afford to open herself up to him only to find out she was wrong. She’d been hurt doing that too many times before to risk it now. Or ever again.
“So, Desi,” her boss finally began. “I have a story for you to write.”
“Excellent,” she answered with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, even while inside she was rolling her eyes. She could only imagine what he wanted this time. Probably gossip coverage of some socialite’s garden party or something equally ridiculous.
“You know, for someone who’s been begging to get out of the society pages for months, you certainly don’t seem very excited about the opportunity.”
It took a second for his words to sink in, but when they did she felt her whole body come to attention. Her gaze sharpened, her heart beat faster, and she leaned so far forward that she almost fell out of her chair. Even as she told herself to cool it—that she didn’t even know what kind of story he was offering—her brain started racing with possibilities as excitement thrummed through her blood.
Malcolm must have seen the difference, because he laughed before saying, “Now there’s the Desi I was expecting!” He nodded toward her tablet. “Ready to take notes?”
“Absolutely.” If this was just some newly sadistic way for him to assign a high-society story to her, she swore she was going to kill him. And since she’d spent her off-hours moonlighting as the obituary writer for the past few months, she knew a bunch of ways to do it, too.
“So, I have a story for you. This morning, I got a tip about a business new to San Diego that might not be quite as legitimate as it seems on the surface.”
Her mind started racing. Drugs. Guns. Mexican Mafia. She could practically feel herself champing at the bit to sink her teeth into whatever it was. She’d been trained in investigative journalism from a very early age by her father, one of the best reporters in the business. She could do this story. No, she would do this story.
“Diamonds,” he told her after a brief pause that saw him turning back to his computer.
“Diamonds,” she repeated. “Someone’s using their business to smuggle diamonds?”
“I just sent the file I’ve begun assembling to your email,” he told her as her tablet dinged to let her know she’d gotten mail. “It’s got the basic information that the source gave me along with all of his contact info. I want you to get in touch with him, listen to his story the same way I did. Then I want you to do some digging. I want to know what’s going on with this company, whether or not you think the accusations are true, and how you think it’s happening.”
“The diamond smuggling.”
“I never said it was smuggling.” He shot her a look. “Don’t make assumptions. And look, I’m not just having you dig as an exercise. I really don’t know if what this guy told me is true. If it is, it’s a big damn deal. I just spent the last two hours researching these brothers, and if half of what this guy says turns out to be right, it’s going to explode their whole damn lives. These guys have built their whole business on clean diamonds and—”
“Clean diamonds?” she asked, trying to wrap her head around the term. “Meaning not stolen?”
“Clean meaning responsibly sourced.”
“Oh, of course. We’re talking about conflict diamonds. Blood diamonds.”
“E
xactly.”
“Bijoux.” The name came to her easily, thanks to her time in the society pages. Much of San Diego’s elite had been buzzing for the past few months about the fact that Marc Durand and his brother had come to town. They were big philanthropists and everyone wanted some of their money to support their pet charities—or themselves, for that matter.
She hadn’t met either of the brothers yet. They’d been too busy setting up their business and their foundation to come to any of the galas she’d worked. Or if they had, she’d certainly never run into them. Which might be a good thing considering she was now going to be investigating them.
“Good,” Malcolm told her with a satisfied nod.
“They’re one of the biggest diamond corporations in the world right now, and you think they’ve been lying about where they get their diamonds.”
“I don’t know if they’re lying or not, but your job is to figure out if they are. Right now, all I know is that somebody came to me and told me the brothers were pulling a fast one, masquerading as responsible diamond sourcers and then marking up the prices on conflict diamonds to ratchet up profits. I want to know if there’s any truth to the story, and if there is, I want to know every single detail about it before we run this story and blow their whole business sky-high. You double-, triple- and quadruple-check this source and every other source you come across. Understand?”
“Absolutely.” She opened up the file on her tablet, skimming over the information he’d sent her. Most of it was pretty sketchy, but she’d fix that soon enough. “When’s the due date? And how many words do you want on this?”
Malcolm shook his head. “Let’s just see how it goes. You find out if this is just some disgruntled ex-employee blowing smoke. If he is, the story goes away.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“If he isn’t, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It will be a huge story and I’m thinking you’ll probably need a partner to write it with you.”
“I don’t need a partner—” she started, but he held up a hand.
“Look, I know you’re good. I know you’re ready to show me what you’ve got. But you’re still a rookie reporter and it doesn’t matter how good you are, kid. There’s no way I’m trusting a story this big to a snot-nosed society reporter.”
“You’re going to use me for the grunt work and then cut me out.” She kept her voice calm when all she really wanted to do was curse. This could be her big break, and he was already talking about taking it away from her.
“I didn’t say that. What I said was that I’m going to let you investigate and if you get something, I’m going to let you help write the biggest story of your career to date. If you want to write this story, if you want to see your byline front page above the fold, you need to give me something to work with. Show me what you got.”
“Of course.” She nodded calmly while inside she was dancing. What he said made sense—and it was fair. She would investigate the hell out of this story, find out everything she could and even find out the angle she wanted to take. Maybe she’d even write the article and present it to him as a fait accompli. Then he would see what she could do and make an informed decision about how to proceed. And if she did this right—if she triple-checked her sources and dotted every i and crossed everything that even looked like a t—then he wouldn’t have a choice. He’d have to move her out of the society pages and into news. Or at least into features.
This was what she’d been waiting for. Her big break. The story she’d been dying to tell.
“Got it?” Malcolm asked again.
Oh, she had it. God, did she ever. “Got it,” she agreed.
“Good. Then go do your job. And don’t forget, this is an extra assignment. You’ve still got your society-page duties—including that party tomorrow night. I’ll cut down on you some, so you’ve got time to work on this on the clock, but you can’t let the rest of your stories suffer for it.”
“I won’t.”
He nodded, looking satisfied. Then, out of nowhere, he gestured wildly toward the door. “So go! Does it look like I’ve got time to stand around here chatting all damn day?”
“Right. I’m going.” She quickly picked up her stuff, headed toward the door. But she stopped right before she crossed the threshold, turning back to look at him. “Thanks for giving me a shot. I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t, kid. I knew the second I saw that picture that you would be perfect for the job.”
“Picture?” she asked. “What picture?”
“The one of you and Nic Durand at the Children’s Hospital Gala in San Diego a few weeks ago. It was in the files under Bijoux when I went to look. Pretty dress, by the way.”
She felt all the blood drain from her face as his words sunk in. “Me and Nic Durand?”
“Yeah. You look surprised. Didn’t you get his name before you danced with him?”
Oh, God. Oh, God. Ohgod! Panic hit her like a freight train as she figured out that Nic—her Nic—was actually Nic Durand. But that was impossible. He’d said he was a PR guy. She remembered every second of the time she spent with him and she remembered, very clearly, him saying he worked in public relations. Then again, maybe he hadn’t.
Something like that.
Those were his exact words when she’d asked him what he did. She’d leaped to the conclusion that he was a PR guy and he’d let her make the leap. More, he’d encouraged her to do it.
Typical, she told herself as she tried to tamp down the fury and the fear rocketing through her. He hadn’t wanted her to know who he really was, hadn’t wanted her to know how much money he was worth, just in case she decided to try to sink her claws into him. As if she’d ever do something like that. As if she would ever even consider sinking her claws into any man.
But figuring all this out now didn’t make her current situation any less precarious. What was she supposed to do? Obviously, this was a very clear conflict of interest. She’d slept with Nic Durand, for God’s sake. And then blown him off. And now she was supposed to investigate him? Fairly and impartially and with a very definite eye on the prize of becoming a reporter who did real stories as opposed to one who covered whose designer dress was actually an imitation?
How could she do it? How could she not do it, when she was standing in the middle of Malcolm’s office and he was looking at her so expectantly? Maybe even paternally. She didn’t want to disappoint him, but she also didn’t know if she could do this. Didn’t know if she could investigate Nic and his brother for something so despicable when—up until two minutes ago—there’d been a part of her that had longed to see him again for very nonbusiness reasons.
She must have been standing there trying to figure things out for longer than she’d thought, because Malcolm suddenly put a bracing hand on her shoulders. “Everything okay there, Desi?” he asked gruffly.
“Yes, of course,” she lied. “Sorry, I was just thinking about what angle to take with my investigation.”
“Well, I’d start by using the gala angle.”
She looked at him blankly. “The gala angle?”
“Sure. You’ve already met him at least once, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then call him up. Ask him for a tour of his business. Tell him you’re writing a story about Bijoux since they’re new to the area and set to become a major power player in Southern California. Men like that enjoy having their egos stroked.”
“You want me to lie to him?” Was it possible for her to feel any sicker about this whole situation?
Malcolm glared at her sternly. “You’re an investigative reporter, Maddox. You use whatever contacts you have to find out the truth. That’s the way the job works.”
“I know that, sir. It’s just that—”
“Just what? I gave you this story because I figur
ed you already had an in with Nic Durand. Was I wrong about that? Should I give the story to someone else?”
He looked far from pleased at the prospect, and she knew if she followed her gut, if she told him yes he should give the story to someone else, he would do just that. And it would be a cold day in hell before she ever got another chance. She’d be writing obituaries and party gossip for as long as she worked for the Los Angeles Times. And maybe even longer.
“No, of course not,” she told him, putting every ounce of conviction she could muster into her voice. Which wasn’t much, if she was being honest, but at this point she would take what she could get.
“You don’t sound too sure about that.”
“I am sure. I’ve got this.”
Malcolm finally nodded, satisfied. “Well, go get them, then. And don’t forget to ask for help if you need it.”
“I won’t,” she told him before making her way out of his office and back to her desk. As she did, her stomach pitched and rolled at the thought of the mess she had gotten herself into.
What was she supposed to do?
Then again, what could she do?
The questions echoed in her mind like a particularly terrifying mantra. But no matter how many times she asked them, no matter how many scenarios she ran through, she couldn’t find a solution. She was going to have to investigate Nic Durand. And if he was guilty of what he was accused of…if he was guilty, she was going to have to write an article that exposed that guilt to the whole world.
The thought made her sick.
Because whatever his reasons for not telling her who he was—and she was forced to admit his omission could have been for any number of reasons besides him thinking she was a gold digger—after all, she hadn’t exactly told him what she did for a living, either, had she?—he didn’t deserve her using their connection, or whatever it was, to trick him into letting her inside Bijoux.
She had never used her body to get what she wanted, and she’d be damned if she’d use it now, even after the fact. No, she decided as she sat at her desk scrolling through the folder Malcolm had emailed her. If she had to do this investigation, then she would do it her way. Without involving Nic until she had no other choice in the matter. And when she’d reached that point, when she’d gathered as much information as she could on his company’s diamond procurement, she would go to him. But she would do it the right way. She would be totally honest about who she was and what she wanted.