The Kelley Legacy

Who was ignoring her instructions?

And then she had her answer. Kind of.

A tall, well-groomed and quite handsome man who looked to be in his early thirties walked into the senator’s office. His chiseled features were complemented by straight, dark hair, worn slightly long, and his piercing, intelligent blue eyes.

Here was a man who got by on his looks first, then made use of anything he had in his arsenal—if necessary, she thought.

Well, whatever he did, he could do it somewhere else. He was trespassing as far as she was concerned.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she snapped at him angrily, recovering from her initial surprise.

Dylan looked around. Was she the only one in the office?

“I heard you talking to someone,” he said.

She stared at him. It almost sounded like an accusation, Cindy thought. Who the hell did he think he was?

“Even if I were, that doesn’t give you an excuse for barging in,” she informed him, expecting him to offer some apology and then leave.

He did neither. Instead, he remained standing where he was, looking around the office again, as if he expected someone to pop out of the shadows.

Dylan scanned the office more slowly this time, taking in what he’d missed at first glance. The pretty young woman with the pinned-back, golden-brown hair and the damning dark-brown eyes was still the only one here.

“Where is he?” Dylan asked the attractive watchdog. “The senator,” he clarified, even though he had a feeling there was no need to.

Her hands were on her hips, the picture of barely suppressed fury. “He’s not here.”

“But you were just talking to him.” She hadn’t been on the phone when he walked in, so he couldn’t have interrupted a phone conversation. That meant that the woman had been talking to someone in the room. Since this was his father’s office, where had he gone?

Her eyes—rather attractive eyes, he noted—narrowed into piercing slits. “I was talking to myself, if it’s any business of yours,” she said curtly.

Nodding, he accepted the explanation. But he had a pressing question that needed answering. “Okay, where is he?”

Well, that gave her the identity of the mystery stranger, or at least told her his occupation. Her hackles went up.

“Can’t you damn reporters leave him alone? Aren’t you going to be satisfied until you’re chewing on his bones? Even if I knew,” she ended defiantly, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

She was lying, Dylan thought. There was something in her eyes that told him she knew exactly where the “good senator” was. She was covering for his father. Was there more than just professional loyalty at play here? He looked at her more closely.

His eyes swept over her and he took a really good look at the woman standing before him like a member of the emperor’s royal guard.

The woman wasn’t just pretty, she was damn attractive, bordering on downright gorgeous. She wasn’t his father’s usual type—the woman had honey-brown hair, not blond, and her eyes, instead of the usual blue, were the color of an inviting, cool root beer on a hot day. But who knew? Maybe the old man was branching out in his lechery. He certainly wouldn’t put it—or anything else—past his father. Not after that news story had knocked the pins out from under him, Dylan thought.

“Are you one of my father’s … friends?” he asked the woman tactfully.

There’d been a long, significant pause between the last two words. Pregnant enough to make her eyes blaze and her temper flare.

“What I am, if it’s any of your business,” Cindy snapped, indignantly drawing herself up to her full five-foot-four, “is the senator’s Chief Staff Assist—wait.” She came to a sudden, skidding halt as her eyes widened and she stared at him. “Did you just say ‘my father?’”

“Actually, I said ‘my father’s,’“ he corrected glibly. “But, for the record, you got the general gist of it.”

For the moment, she took no note of the sarcasm. “You’re the senator’s son,” she said incredulously.

“Yes.” Why did the woman look so surprised at that? Though they were estranged, it wasn’t as if his father kept his family a secret.

Not like his mistresses, Dylan’s mind added tersely.

How did she even know that this was the senator’s son? Cindy thought. For all she knew, this tall man in a designer suit was a reporter—apparently a good one if the cut of his expensive clothes was any indication. And the man was trying to talk—to lie, she amended—his way in here.

“Why haven’t I seen you before?” she challenged.

“Maybe because the good senator’s not being very fatherly these days now that he doesn’t need his wife and family for photo ops.” He fixed the woman with a look that he’d used to take witnesses—and courtroom opponents—down a peg. “I haven’t seen you, either, and yet I’m willing to believe that you’re his—what was it you called it again? Chief Staff Assistant?”

She didn’t like the way his mouth curved when he said that. Didn’t like his tone and she definitely didn’t like the way his eyes swept over her, as if he was taking the measure of a thing, not an actual person. She’d had more than enough of that kind of treatment from her ex-may-he-roast-on-a-flaming-spit-husband.

Her chin went up in an automatic, reflexive move at the same time that her eyes narrowed again.

“Yes,” she ground out. “I’m Senator Henry Thomas Kelley’s Chief Staff Assistant, and if you are actually the senator’s son, I’d like some proof, please.”

His father obviously liked them feisty, Dylan thought, taking out his wallet, not doubting for a moment that while this woman might really be what she claimed to be, she was also one of the growing number of mistresses. In his opinion, she was an infinitely better choice than the three women whose faces had been flashed across the screen during the unsettling news story.

He flipped his wallet open to his driver’s license and held it out to her.

Waiting a beat for her to read it, he asked, “Proof enough? Or would you also like to fingerprint me?” As she pushed back his wallet, he flipped it closed again and slipped it back into his pocket. “You can check my prints against the ones on file with the California Bar Association if you really want to be thorough.” Straightening his jacket, he added, “I could also leave you a sample of my blood if it suits your fancy.”

“No need to get sarcastic,” she informed him stiffly. He was the man’s son all right. Now that she thought of it, she should have seen the family resemblance in his features. It was just that she was too angry to think clearly right now. “It’s been completely insane here the last couple of days.”

As if to back up her point, the phone abruptly started ringing again. She picked up the receiver and then dropped it back into the cradle without stopping to see who was on the other end or even breaking her verbal stride.

“I’ve had reporters all but climbing up the side of the building to gain access to the senator’s office. They’re like vultures circling, looking for a way to swoop by and get their piece of flesh.”

“Sounds like you have your hands full,” he commented with a trace of sympathy.

“This isn’t—” Another call came in and she repeated her movements from a moment ago, lifting and then dropping the receiver into the phone’s cradle, this time a little more sharply than the last. “—what I signed on for,” she concluded.

It did sound like a zoo in here, he thought. The sooner he got his information, the sooner he would be able to leave. “Do you know where my father is?” Dylan asked again.

“If the two of you have been so out of touch,” Cindy pointed out, “why do you want to know where he is?” Another phone call had her losing her temper and she disconnected the phone from the jack in the wall.

Decisive woman, he thought. “Because the senator needs help, and right now, I might be one of the few people interested in actually getting him out of this hole he’s dug for himself.”

She wasn’t buying this so easily, Cindy thought. “Because you love him so much.”

“So pretty and yet so cynical.” He laughed, shaking his head. “No, not because I love him so much. Because he’s my father, and the bottom line is, much as I might think he deserves it, I don’t want to see him torn apart in public. If anyone’s going to tear him apart, it’ll be me and it’ll be in private,” he concluded. “Now, do you or don’t you know where my father is hiding out?” he asked one last time, looking at her pointedly.

Chapter 2

Cindy looked at the senator’s son for a long moment, not saying anything, not volunteering the information he was asking for. But there was a reason for that. She was not one to be cowed by an authoritative voice, at least, not anymore. And not ever again.

“How do I know you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do, Mr. Kelley?” she challenged.

Miss Warmth-and-Charm had lost him. He wondered if everyone who worked in the realm of politics eventually became proficient in a form of double-talk through diligent practice, or if it just came naturally to some, that in turn led them to believe they had a future in the political arena.

“Run that by me again,” Dylan requested.

Okay, she’d approach it differently, Cindy thought. “You’re saying you want to help the senator.”

Wasn’t that what he’d just told her? “Yes, that’s the general idea.”

And he wasn’t going to do it by standing around in his father’s Beverly Hills office if the man wasn’t to be found in it as well, Dylan thought impatiently. At this point, it would take very little for him to throw his hands up and walk away from the whole thing. He hadn’t wanted to be involved in the first place, and if he had to jump through hoops, well, that was asking a bit too much in his opinion.

Rather than immediately volunteering an address, his father’s petite guard dog engaged him in another annoying round of rhetoric.

“How do I know that’s true? How do I know you’re not going to take the information I give you and sell it to the highest tabloid bidder just to get even with the senator?” she wanted to know, assuming, for the sake of argument, that this man was in a bad way when it came to finances and was doing it for the money. For all she knew, the designer suit he was wearing could have been a gift—or borrowed. “By your own admission, your father-son relationship is far from the kind of stuff that they like to immortalize in myopic memoirs.”

He stared at her. Well, that certainly was a mouthful. There was no way anyone would get her confused with an empty-headed bimbo, which, he’d come to learn extremely quickly, was what his father’s mistresses all had in common. Beyond their glamorous, carbon-copy looks, they all had the IQs of dormant peanuts. Maybe his father had decided to add an intelligent one to the body count for variety’s sake.

“So what you’re telling me is,” Dylan said, just to make sure he understood what she was saying, “barring some kind of divine intervention, you’re not going to give me the address of his ‘safe house.’”

Her smile was tight. “Finally,” her eyes seemed to say. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

Okay, if she wanted divine intervention, there was only one way to go. He might not be on a first-name basis with God, but he was, so to speak, with his father. And, he had a hunch that in this case, a word from his almighty father would have the same effect on this overly protective woman.

“Could you at least call my father and let me talk to him?” Dylan requested, doing his best to sound patient. “We can let him decide.”

Cindy paused, thinking. The man standing before her did seem sincere, but that was obviously something that, whether he liked it or not, this bright young lawyer had inherited from his father. The senator was the type of man who could persuade a survivor of the Titanic to book a three-week cruise to Alaska and make the person believe it was his own idea. She’d never met anyone so convincing.

It apparently ran in the family. But she had had her shots, thanks to her ex, and it took a great deal to sway her from her position once she took it.

Determined to get this woman to come around, Dylan tried again. “Look, wouldn’t you hold yourself accountable if you do keep us apart and the senator winds up getting nailed to the cross for his transgressions?” On his way over to the office, he had done a little calling around to various sources. The picture that had emerged of his father’s immediate future did not look good. “Right now, everyone thinks he’s guilty of everything, including starting both world wars. If I don’t at least try to help him, there’s no telling where this is going to end up.” He pinned her with a penetrating look. “You want that on your conscience?”

This time, the silence was a great deal shorter. “You’re good,” she told him grudgingly when she spoke. “I will give you that.”

“What I am,” he countered, “is right. Now, what’ll it be? The new address, his phone number or an eternally guilty conscience?” He laid out her three choices and waited.

“You know, there is always the possibility that the public will come to their senses, the investigation will find him not guilty of misappropriation of campaign funds and those women will all admit to lying for the purposes of blackmail.” She looked at him. He was the personification of skepticism. “You’ve got to admit that’s a possibility.”

He congratulated himself on not laughing in her face. Talk about a cockeyed optimist. He wouldn’t have thought it of her, not after first seeing the other side of the woman.

“Sure it is. Right after pigs fly. They’ll not only fly,” he added, “but they’ll have their pilots’ licenses, pilots’ jackets with little gold wings pinned over the pockets and they’ll all be speaking French. Fluently,” he concluded.

He was mocking her, she thought angrily. Why was it all the good-looking men thought they had a God-given right to put everyone else down and act as if they were the only ones who mattered? The only ones who were allowed to have an opinion—and that opinion was always right.

Her eyes pinned him. “You’re a pessimist, I take it.”

Actually, he saw himself as the reverse in most cases. But in this case, it was neither. “What I am is a pragmatic man who is trying to help the head of his family save face and not go down for the things he hasn’t done, however little that might turn out to be. Now, for the last time, can you at least give me his phone number and let me talk to the man before it’s too late?”

She didn’t like the way this man kept refusing to refer to the senator by his title, but used either a pronoun or something equally as anonymous. To her, that was a sign of how little he thought of his father. She still couldn’t reconcile the notion that he was willing to go out of his way like this for someone he held in such contempt. Was there an angle he was going for that she was missing?

In any event, though she hated to admit it, he was right. The least she could do was give him that phone number he’d asked for. The final decision about a face-to-face meeting ultimately had to lie with the senator. She was not about to presume to speak on his behalf. All she could do was lay the groundwork and make sure that no reporters got to Senator Kelley.

Exhaling loudly as if the act would bring her very lungs out, Cindy capitulated. She pulled a notepad closer to her on the desk and wrote out a telephone number. Finished, she pushed the pad toward him.

Dylan looked at it. It was an 818 area code, but that didn’t mean anything. This was the number to his father’s cell phone; his father could be anywhere in the state. Or out of it. Nobody said this was going to be easy, he thought with resignation.

Tearing the sheet off the pad, he said, “By the way, you know my name because it was on my license, but I don’t know yours.”

She didn’t take the opening he gave her. “No, you don’t.”

This was like pulling teeth. Or, actually, more like questioning a hostile witness under oath, he thought. “What is it?” he asked her.

There was pure suspicion in her eyes. “Why, so you can have me investigated?”

“So I know what to call you when I need to get your attention.”

“Through,” Cindy told him without missing a beat.

The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “First or last?”

Cindy cocked her head. “Excuse me?”

“Through,” he repeated what she’d just said to him. “Is that your first name or your last name?”

He was a lawyer all right, Cindy thought. One who wasn’t going to stop badgering her until he got what he was after. Well, she supposed that it was an easy enough matter for him to find out the name of the senator’s Chief Staff Assistant. She might as well tell him now rather than keep the game going.

“Cindy,” she told him grudgingly. “Cindy Jensen.”

That hadn’t taken as long as he’d begun to think it would. His smile was broad. “Nice to meet you Cindy, Cindy Jensen.”

“You know,” she told him, “you’d get along a lot better with people if you lost that mocking tone.”

Now that amused him. “You’re giving me advice on how to get along with people?” Didn’t that fall into the realm of the pot-and-kettle thing?

She took offense at his response and what it implied. “I’ll have you know I get along beautifully with people. Non-belligerent people,” she qualified.

“I only act belligerently with people who are trying to stonewall me.” He looked at the phone number in his hand. “Now that you’ve given me a number where my father can be reached, we can become best friends.”

Her response was immediate and without hesitation. “I’d rather eat dirt.”

“Odd choice,” he commented, keeping a straight face even though he knew he was goading her, “but I won’t stand in your way. Whatever makes you happy.”

“What would make me happy,” Cindy said under her breath as she resumed moving about the office, straightening things up just so that her hands could remain busy, “is if the senator had remembered to stay a little truer to his own principles and not done anything to allow the media the opportunity to jump on his bones like a pack of snarling jackals.”

Dylan had started dialing, but stopped to listen to her. Her tone had dropped and her voice had softened. Her imagery entertained him.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a very colorful woman?” She gave him a look that told him she was not about to be softened up with compliments. “I guess not,” he concluded.

About to continue dialing, he winced as a piercing noise was emitted from the earpiece of the receiver and a female, almost metallic voice, came on the line, reciting the classic instruction: “Please hang up and dial again.”

He was about to press down the button on the cradle when Cindy did it for him. He raised his eyes to hers, thinking she’d obviously heard the jarring message. “Thanks.”

She gave him an ever-so-slight nod of the head to acknowledge that she had heard him.

As he completed dialing the number, Dylan couldn’t help wondering what it was like to have someone who was as loyal to him as this woman apparently was to his father. His first thought was that his father had to be paying her awfully well. But money didn’t buy loyalty, it bought lackeys, and a couple of minutes in Cindy Jensen’s company had convinced him that this woman was no lackey. So then what was she? The senator’s Chief Staff Assistant/head mistress? Or what?

He was going to need to get that cleared up in order to have a handle on the facts here. And on what was and wasn’t, ultimately, a press liability. Because he knew just as well as anyone that cases were first tried in the press. A victory there gave a victory elsewhere a base to grow from, becoming that much easier to achieve.

God knew he was going to have his work cut out for him.

He blew out an impatient breath. The phone had rung now a total of eight times and there’d been no answer, human or machine. In this day and age, that was pretty unusual in his book. Was she giving him the runaround again?

Dylan looked at her. “You sure this is the right number?”

She didn’t like the veiled accusation in his voice. “It’s the contact number that the senator gave me,” she told him.

Dylan frowned, debating hanging up. If there was someone there, how long could they put up with listening to the phone ring? He had his suspicions that it was a bogus number—unless his father was out, and considering the high visibility of his face after the broadcast, he sincerely doubted that.

Of course, there was also another explanation for why no one was picking up. One that absolved the Chief Staff Assistant of any blame.

“How much does my father trust you?” he asked her suddenly.

Cindy stopped moving around the office, stopped neatening, stopped straightening. She slowly turned around to look at him. Just what was this lawyer who might or might not have pure intentions saying?

“I’m the senator’s Chief Staff Assist—”

Dylan raised his hand to stop her in mid-word. This refrain was beginning to sound like a broken record and it was grating on his nerves. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re his Chief Staff Assistant. You told me. Trust me, you told me.”

Two could take that sarcastic tone, she thought, annoyed. “And you remembered. How nice for you.” The words were delivered with a smile that could have frozen a pond in July.

The woman definitely had an attitude problem, but that was something he’d deal with later. Right now, he needed to find a way to get to his damn father. The old man had picked a hell of a time for a game of hide and seek.

“You being his Chief Staff Assistant doesn’t automatically mean that he trusts you,” he pointed out, less than tactfully. “Maybe he gave you that number to throw you off.”

With a disgusted noise, Dylan hung up the phone. Now what? He supposed he could go back to his firm and see if the private investigator they kept on retainer could locate his father.

Her eyes all but shooting daggers at him, Cindy crossed back to the desk and elbowed him aside.

“Give me that,” she said, commandeering the phone and pulling the receiver out of his hand. On a hunch, she hit the redial button, then watched the caller ID screen as the numbers of the phone call he’d just made popped up one by one. Just as she’d thought. “No wonder,” she declared. Cindy raised her eyes to his face, a look of triumph on her own.

What was she up to? “No wonder what?” he wanted to know.

The phone on the other end began ringing. For a moment, she ignored it as she pointed to the screen for his benefit. “You transposed two of the numbers.”

Terminating the call, Cindy tapped in the right numbers on the keypad and then listened as the phone on the other end began to ring.

Dylan silently upbraided himself for the mistake. That was careless. And he’d been so careful lately, too. It hadn’t happened to him in a number of years now. Most days, when he remembered not to rush himself, he could keep the dyslexia completely under control.

No one at the firm suspected he had it. And except for this one girl—and he’d never confirmed it, saying she had to be mistaken—no one in either his college or the law school he’d subsequently attended, had ever even suspected that he had it.

It was, overall, rather a mild form of the annoying condition. But it was always there, in the shadows, waiting to bedevil him when he least expected it, if he just let his guard down. And it always appeared when he had the least amount of time to deal with it.

Until just now, it hadn’t cropped up for a very long time. He’d begun to think that maybe he was finally free of it. Finally free to feel unencumbered.

Just went to show him he was going to have to remain ever-diligent and on his guard.

He supposed that there were a lot worse things in life.

Like a father courting public scandal.