Page 12 of The Senator's Secret

I let out a frustrated sigh before brushing back a blonde curl that has fallen out of place across my forehead. I look at him again, sitting across the table from me. He’s looking back at me like he thinks I’m adorable like a little kitten. But this kitten will kill you in your sleep if you’re not careful. So he better watch out. I won’t pull any punches with him.

“Grace?” he asks when I still don’t answer.

I push out another uneasy breath and force myself to respond to his early question. “Yeah, Senator. I have a problem.”

“Well, it can’t be that bad,” he hedges. It’s as if he can’t even fathom the idea I could be in as much trouble as I currently am.

“It is.”

“And it involves me?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Care to explain?”

I really don’t want to answer him. God, if only I could go to bed and when I wake up in the morning it would all be a bad dream. But this is a dream I can’t wake up from. This nightmare is my real life.

“I wish I didn’t have to,” I say cryptically. I roll my bottom lip into my mouth and bite down hard.

“Go on.”

“Just…” I toss a manila envelope on the table in front of him. “Here.”

He stares at the package in front of him before reaching for it. Chancellor flips back the flap and peers inside. He couldn’t possibly know what’s in there. That his career and mine are about to take a major hit. And then he reaches in and pulls out a stack of pictures. He flips through them and thoroughly investigates each picture of me and himself in a pretty sexy clinch. Each image is hotter than the next. I barely resist the urge to squirm in my seat just thinking of how we look together like that.

“Well.” He forces out the words before clearing his throat and shifting a little in his seat. I know how he feels. The pictures are…moving, to say the least. “Those are some pictures.”

“And the note,” I add.

Chancellor looks back in the envelope and pulls out a single piece of computer paper with a handwritten note on it. He looks up at me with questions in his eyes, and believe me, I have them too. But I don’t have any answers for either of us. How I wish I had answers.

“That’s all?” he asks. “They didn’t make any demands?”

“Not yet,” I tell him. “I think they’re going to use this to ruin me.”

“Ruin you?” he asks. “How?”

“My reputation is flawless,” I explain. I’m not wrong, and we both know it.

“It is.”

“My reputation is how I sway juries and fix the problems of powerful people,” I tell him. “If that reputation is ruined, I have nothing.” And I will never let that happen. I would burn everything to the ground before I let some nameless asshole take everything I have worked so hard for from me. It depends on how things unfold from here on out.

“And you think this… person wants to ruin you?” he asks again. “For what goal?”

“I have some pretty big cases coming up.”

“Like what?”

I shoot him an incredulous look. He should know better than to ask me such a stupid question. Of course I can’t tell him. And especially not in such a public setting.

“You know I can’t answer that.”

“True, I figured it never hurts to try,” he says with a shrug. “And how do you think these pictures could… ruin you?” Just hearing the words is like a punch to the gut.

“Those pictures don’t paint a pretty picture,” I say by way of an explanation. I don’t want him to know how real the look on my face is in those pictures.

“They’re sexy as hell, I’ll give you that,” he tells me the truth as I look at them again. I kind of want to keep one for my own personal viewing, but that feels a little dirty. For him, I know I could be dirty. “But how could it ruin you?”