All those acting classes her mother insisted on had really paid off.
Carter cleared his throat.
Right. Matter at hand. Political scandal.
“Are you involved with someone?” he asked.
“Involved?” she asked, yanked sideways by the question.
“Yes. Dating, or—” he heaved a big sigh, as if all this were a distasteful job “—whatever.”
“No,” she said.
“The father?” he asked, gesturing vaguely toward her stomach. “Is he around?”
“How in the world is that any of your business?” she asked, horrified.
“They’re calling me Deputy Deadbeat Daddy,” he said. “You kind of made it my business.”
“I know,” she whispered, guilt choking her. “I saw.”
“Papers in Houston, New Orleans and USA Today,” he said. “Did you see those, too?”
She blinked, her stomach in knots. She shook her head.
“All right, then how about you answer my question. The father—”
“Not…ah…” She got lost for a second in the absurdity of this conversation. “Around.”
“That will make things easier.”
Things like disposing of my body? she wondered. “Look, I didn’t know there was a photographer there. Or that any of this would happen.”
“Clearly,” he said, his tone dubious.
“You don’t believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Or what you thought when you stood on that chair like a child and made up lies about me.”
She gasped. She couldn’t help it, it just came out.
“Don’t you dare,” he whispered, his voice and eyes, everything about him so suddenly menacing that she collapsed backward in the watermelon chair. He was gigantic; his hands could palm her head. He could make mincemeat out of her in a second. Not that she thought he would, but still…
“Don’t pretend for a moment that you are in any way the injured party in this situation. You put us here.” He pointed to the front page of the paper. “And you’re going to do whatever I say to get us out.”
Her eyes narrowed. Whatever he said? Not likely. “I can write a letter to the paper,” she said. “Tell people that I’m off my meds, like you said. That I made it all up. Or we could just tell the truth, that someone paid me a thousand—”
“No,” he said, his laugh not sounding like a laugh at all. “We won’t be telling anyone the truth. Jim Blackwell is all over this like a dog on a bone.”
“So…ah…what are we going to do?” she asked, suddenly light-headed with nerves.
“You,” he said, pointing at her, pinning her to the chair, “are going to say nothing. To anyone. And we—” he waggled his finger between them “—are going to date.”
For a moment, his words didn’t make sense, and when they did she laughed. She laughed so hard she had to put a hand under her belly. And here she thought Carter didn’t have a sense of humor.
“I’m not kidding,” he said, stone-cold serious.
“You’ve got to be!” she cried. “There’s no way in the world anyone is going to believe that I am dating you!”
His face hardened, a cold mask that chilled her from across the room. Cruel and distant, his eyes raked her, pulled off her clothes, her skin.
Got it, she thought, pulling the tutu and mug against her chest as if the pig and the silk might keep her warm against the chill of him. You wouldn’t date me if I was the last woman alive. Message received.
“Then why do this?” she asked, her voice a little shaky.
“Because,” he said, “you’ve made me and this administration a laughingstock and the only way to bring back any legitimacy is to put our heads up and pretend like it was a bump in the road.”
“What road?”
“Our road.”
“We don’t have a road! I stood up on a chair and…” She blinked, shook her head, something awful occurring to her. “People are going to think this baby is yours.”
He stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. “They already do,” he said. “And no one, no matter what we say, or whatever letter you write is going to believe otherwise.”
“So how about we don’t do anything. We lie low—”
“The news crew that’s been following me around all day followed me here. They’re camped out on your front lawn.”
“What?” she cried, whirling in her seat to peer through the light green sheers over her window. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. He was right. A camera crew was loitering right in front of the main entrance to her loft building, smashing the bougainvillea Tootie Vogler had planted last year. This is not good.
“Did they see you come in?” she asked, her voice so high it practically scraped the ceiling.
“They followed me, Zoe.”
“You can leave out the back!” she cried. “Plead the fifth if anyone asks. Just pretend—”
“I’m a public official,” he interrupted. “I can’t lie low, and if this isn’t addressed in some way, the speculation will only grow. And I can’t let that happen,” he said. “I won’t.”
For the first time in the brief twenty-four hours she’d known him, he seemed human. The ice in his blue eyes melted and revealed something vulnerable, as if he had something he cared about and might lose in this whole farce. His job.
“You like your job?” she asked.
He blinked, and after a long moment, he nodded. “I love my job. I have…work I want to do for this city.”
Ah, man, why couldn’t he go on being a jerk? Now she was totally sunk—she couldn’t be responsible for him losing his job.
“So we date?” she asked, still dubious.
He nodded. “We’ll tell people I met you at one of the community center informational meetings. That I fell for your—”
Beauty? Charm? Too-big heart?
“Quirkiness. Your…ah…offbeat sense of humor. We’ll tell them that stunt on the chair was your idea of a joke. Not a good one, but a joke. For a few months, we go on some very public dates. We get our photos taken and then you dump me.”
Dumping him, she liked the sound of that. “What if I was married? Or in a relationship—like you said—”
“I knew you weren’t married,” he said. “But if you were involved in some other more informal relationship, our research might not have—”
“Research?” she interrupted, a cold chill spreading down her arms and across her chest. She stood, a toe shoe falling out of her hands, and she reeled it back in by the ribbon, reluctant to lose any of her armor. “You researched me?”
“Of course.” He sounded as if he researched all of his dates. As if it made perfect sense.
“What exactly do you know?” she asked. “About me.”
“You’re thirty-seven, single.” He arched one of those imperial blond eyebrows. “You were raised by Penny