Leah Vale - The Rich Boy

He added, “Considering the guest list, I would think your producers would be damn near giddy with the job you did.”

She slid into one of the comfortable round-backed, mahogany-and-leather chairs facing his desk. “Oh, they’re pleased, all right.” She didn’t appear particularly excited to have made her bosses happy. She steadily met his gaze. “But I’m not done here yet. I still need to talk to you.”

She held up a hand to stop him before he could open his mouth to say forget it. “I know you prefer to be the ‘behind the scenes guy,’ staying mostly out of the public eye. Which is why I came without Dan Gurtings, my cameraman, or a recorder or my notebook.”

She spread her hands wide as if to offer proof that there were no unusual lumps or bumps on her person. With the way her silky blouse and flat-front slacks fit her curves, he’d already noticed.

He snorted at her concession and set his coffee back down untasted. “Funny how that also made it easier for you to slip past security.”

One corner of her lightly glossed mouth twitched upward before she visibly schooled her features. “Joseph has given me an interview, albeit a short one, and Cooper Anders called me to set up a meeting….”

Alex did his damnedest not to react. Heaven help them if Cooper had spoken to Maddy before Sara had convinced him with good old-fashioned love to give up his quest for revenge against the McCoys.

But if Cooper had revealed anything negative, Maddy wouldn’t be fishing so hard. Cooper would have also warned them, especially now that he and Sara were engaged.

When Alex continued to do nothing more than impassively watch her despite the tension slow to leave his body, her delicate nostrils flared slightly in exasperation and she continued. “But I’d really like to talk to you about…everything that has happened to your family as a result of Marcus’s death.”

“I thought I’d made myself pretty clear the other night—”

“I know there is more going on here, Alex. I know it in my gut just from looking at you. You’re not yourself.”

Lord, there was a truth if he’d ever heard one. Everything he’d based his sense of self on had been a lie. Just as in the stable, the temptation to open up and confide in her about his confusion, his heartache, pulled at him with remarkable strength.

She had been so easy to talk to all those years ago, always willing to simply listen rather than trying to impress him in some way. Madeline Monroe had been the first woman he’d met who appealed to him physically but at the same time had made him feel so at ease.

After she took the on-air reporter job with Entertainment This Evening, he’d tried to convince himself that her approachability, her understanding, had all been an act to get closer to Joseph. The eldest McCoy’s influential ties to the media far exceeded his own, but a huge part of him had wanted to believe better of her.

Now was not the time to risk testing her sincerity.

He rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and tented his fingers in front of him. “As you said the other night, people change.”

“Not without cause,” she protested.

He lobbed the argument right back to her court. “And what caused you to change?”

“Nothing. I—we’re not discussing me. We’re discussing you.”

“No, we’re not, Maddy. You’re leaving.” He leaned forward and reached for the intercom button on his phone. “Peggy?”

“She’s not at her desk,” Maddy interjected.

“She just brought me this coffee—” He stopped himself. “I’m sure she wasn’t at her desk when you arrived, or you would never have been able to slip in. She’s undoubtedly back by now.” He pressed the buzzer that would signal he needed his executive assistant.

Peggy normally let him know if she was stepping away for any amount of time. But thanks to his dark mood this morning, she’d probably figured he’d prefer not being disturbed.

“I doubt it. Seems someone told her that her car alarm had been triggered, and she had to go down to disarm it.” Only a vague smugness could be found in the slight upward curl at the corners of Maddy’s mouth. Otherwise, she was all wide-eyed innocence.

Yeah, right.

“Is it?” he asked.

She nodded. “Funny how those things just keep going off.”

“Is that where your cameraman is? Bumping a certain white BMW?” He automatically cocked his head to listen, despite being fourteen floors up behind a curtain wall of thick tinted glass.

A perfectly arched blond brow twitched higher and she shrugged. The woman had no shame.

Ridiculously he found himself liking her spunk and drive, much the way he had all those years ago when they’d dated.

Before he’d found out he’d been a mere stepping stone to get to his father—damn it, his grandfather—for help landing a job. A stab of hurt, surprisingly strong despite the long passage of time, nailed him in the ribs at the thought of how she’d used him.

And he hadn’t even slept with her.

She leaned forward, her gaze intense. “What is going on, Alex?”

His tenuous grip on his control slipped and he slammed his palm down on his desk. “Marcus McCoy was mauled to death by a freakin’ huge bear, and because of that, we found out he had sons out of wedlock. Is that entertaining enough news for you, Maddy?”

She bolted up from the chair and reached over the desk to cover his hand with hers, her eyes glistening. “I know, Alex. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She ran her thumb gently over his. “I should have realized it was grief. I just…Frankly, I didn’t think you and Marcus were that close.”

Alex dropped his gaze to their hands and clenched his jaw against the cutting certainty of how close he and Marcus should have been.

In that soft, caring voice of hers, Maddy continued, “And Joseph has been so overjoyed to have discovered his grandsons…Is he simply hiding his grief?”

The soothing touch of her hand on his jumbled Alex’s emotions further. “No, he really is overjoyed to have Marcus’s children in his life.”

And aside from omitting the fact that Marcus had paid each of their mothers a million dollars to tell no one he was the father, Joseph was willing to let the world learn the truth about them. Only Alex would still be saddled with barbed secrets.

The bitterness from having been lied to for so long seared Alex from the inside out. He slid his hand from beneath Maddy’s, shoved out of his chair and paced toward the floor-to-ceiling window. His head had started to pound again.

From behind him she said, “I only wondered because Joseph—”

He halfway glanced at her over his shoulder. “Look, Madeline, I don’t want to talk about my grandfather, either, okay?”

He turned back to the window and raised a hand to rub his temple. He didn’t want to so much as think about Joseph, Marcus or Helen. How was he supposed to pretend that nothing had changed when everything about his world had changed?

“I knew it,” Maddy almost whispered.

Certain his refusal to talk about Joseph couldn’t be that surprising to her, he faced her. “What—?” Her wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression stopped him cold.

She rose slowly from her chair, musing, “I did the math, and I just couldn’t buy the coincidence. I mean, you’re dang near the same age as the others.”

The hair rose on the back of Alex’s neck. “What are you talking about, Madeline?”

She came closer, her incredible eyes searching his face. “You didn’t know, did you? Oh, my—” She put a hand over her mouth, as if something in his expression confirmed her suspicion.

He did his damnedest to shutter all the hurt. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”