Carly Phillips - Simply Scandalous

Didn’t matter if he looked from the bottom up, or the top down, he liked what he saw. A smile edged the corners of his mouth.

“Quit drooling and tell me what you see.”

“A damn sexy penguin,” he muttered.

“Call her what you want,” Emma said, resigned. “She’s the solution to your problems.”

“Didn’t know I had any.” Another glance as she swung back around the bar and he grinned. If he had a problem, he sure wouldn’t mind this woman being his solution.

“Do you want to put an end to Montgomery expectations or do you want your parents and their big-money friends to keep hounding you to run for public office? No peace, no quiet. And bye-bye low profile job at the public defender’s office. Once next Saturday is over, your life will be out of your hands.”

“You don’t have to sound like you’re enjoying this,” Logan muttered. But instinct told him his grandmother wasn’t just trying to shock him now. Emma lived in this mausoleum along with both of Logan’s parents. She was privy to details Logan wasn’t and shared that information willingly. He turned his attention back to the older woman.

“You can keep telling them no thank you.” She patted her perfect bun into place as she spoke. Not even the humidity touched Emma’s coiffure. “But your daddy’s been stubborn as a mule and insistent on having his own way since he was in dirty diapers.”

He stifled the urge to laugh again. She didn’t need an audience. “You’ve really got to watch your mouth.”

“Nonsense. Age gives me the right to say and do whatever youth prevented me from saying or doing. The expression is young and stupid, not old and stupid.”

Logan grinned. “I know now why Dad wants you in a home.” He gazed at the outspoken woman who had given him and his sister their only source of love and affection growing up. In their best interests, she’d undermined his parents’ efforts at making their children clones of their own public-perfect selves. She’d accomplished her goal with his sister.

But with Logan, the only son, things had been more difficult. Though he’d traveled his own path, many of his choices—college, law school and his stint as district attorney—had paralleled his father’s.

No one believed he intended to chart his own destiny. Not even the past two years spent working on the wrong side of the tracks, at the public defender’s office, swayed his family’s beliefs. To all the Montgomerys, Logan was the next generation, destined to follow in past footsteps.

Except to his beloved grandmother. To Emma, Logan was the grandson she’d raised, a man with his own beliefs. He turned his attention back to what she’d said minutes earlier. “Okay, let me have it. What’s happening on Saturday?” he asked.

“I thought you’d never ask.” She nudged Logan, urging him to walk with her. Resigned, he followed the sound of the crinkling taffeta of her long day-dress until she reached her destination. Emma gestured across the patio to where his father was holding court. “In one week your father and his conservative cronies plan on announcing your candidacy for mayor of our fair city. Hampshire needs some young blood and you’ve been handpicked. Perfect son of the esteemed Montgomery family on his first stepping-stone to even higher office.”

“Never happen,” he said.

“That’s right and I’ll tell you why. We’re going to publicly disgrace you. Free you to live life outside the realm.”

He drew a deep breath and forcibly stopped himself from rolling his eyes at her theatrics. “I don’t need scandal to free myself from the family. They can talk politics until doomsday, but without a willing candidate, they’ve got nothing.” And Logan was completely unwilling.

“You drove all the way out to Hampshire, so at least hear me out.”

As usual, the older woman had a point. Besides, he had no place else to be and the view from this angle was good.

Logan folded his arms over his chest. “You mentioned a plan,” he prodded. “So how can she save me?” He pointed to the blonde across the way.

Emma nodded. “You need a public trashing and who better to ruin your reputation than a woman born into poverty with a family history of prostitution behind her?”

He choked on champagne bubbles. “You’re exaggerating.” He glanced at Emma’s target.

She’d left the covering of the bar and now tread with a light step, gliding among the guests, talking quietly with the help serving hors d’oeuvres. Her air of authority set her apart from the other hired help. So did the miniskirt she wore in place of the black pants favored by the rest of the waitresses. A black bow tie nestled below her chin, accentuating her heart-shaped face. How had he missed that before?

“She owns Pot Luck, the caterers. She doesn’t attend every event her company caters, but I insisted she run this one.”

“Of course you did,” he muttered.

“She’s a woman after my own heart. Remember the charm school the cops closed down last year?”

“Vaguely. I was out of state.” He’d graduated from Columbia Law School and snagged a job at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, working there until Emma’s mild heart attack this past year brought him home. He wanted more time with his family. Other than his sister, Grace, with whom he’d bunked in Manhattan, Emma was the only family who counted.

“Well, she and her sister,” Emma said, pointing to the caterer, “inherited that business. Turns out the previous owner, her uncle, was operating a call-girl service in disguise.”

“But she wasn’t involved.”

“Well, no, but it’s family scandal. And to make things even better, she used to work for them when she was in college.” His grandmother clapped her hands in growing excitement.

“She was a prostitute?”

“Bite your slandering tongue. She taught classes for the testosterone impaired. All on the up-and-up. But think of your parents’ reaction if you brought home a woman whose family had dabbled in prostitution. A woman who instructed the single man on how to score.”

Certain she had done no such thing, Logan refused to touch that outrageous comment. “I don’t bring women home,” he said instead.

Why should he? His parents would take it as a sign the prodigal son was ready to settle down. Logan couldn’t say he wasn’t itching for steady companionship. He was. He couldn’t say he didn’t long for someone to come home to at the end of the day. He wanted that, too. But he’d yet to meet a woman who interested him enough to forsake all others, let alone one he could imagine looking at across the dinner table each and every night for the rest of his natural life.

“You would if you met the right one,” his grandmother said, with a gleam in her eyes that alarmed him.

The old lady had an agenda. Logan only wished he knew more. Just because Emma was admitting her scheme aloud didn’t mean she was revealing all.

He knew her too well to be anywhere near complacent, but he decided to humor her for now. “My social life is plenty full, Gran. Too full to settle for just one female out of the bunch.”

His social life was full, all right. Full of renovation and restoration. Logan was busy, just not busy playing the field. But a white lie wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all Emma, who needed to believe Logan was happy and on the lookout for the future Mrs. Montgomery.

While he met, dated and appreciated females as much as any man, he didn’t see a long-term relationship in his future. The women he met at the P.D.’s office and the opposing counsel he ran into around the courthouse cared more for what the Montgomery name could do for them than in Logan himself. Same for the women in his parents’ illustrious social circle. They sought only to marry and keep their steady income streaming in. All were disappointed and disinterested once they discovered Logan lived off his salary and kept himself isolated from the family legacy.