Secrets Of The Night: A Case of Kiss and Tell. Katherine Garbera
for that. Also to my kids for just making me laugh when I was stuck on the plot and couldn’t figure out where to go. And last, to my editor, Charles Griemsman, for being a great sounding board for ideas and of course for his deft editing.
Conner Macafee was used to reporters snooping around his family. His great-uncle had been a confidant of John F. Kennedy, and Conner’s own family were considered American royalty in politics and business. Of course, they had more than their share of scandals as well, which had always kept the press interested in them.
But Nichole Reynolds, the society reporter for the national newspaper America Today, was going about it in an entirely new way. She’d crashed his family’s Fourth of July party in Bridgehampton and was doing her best to fit in, but so far she’d done little but stick out. She’d tried to blend by faking an ennui with the dignitaries and A-list celebs who were in attendance. But Conner couldn’t help but notice her gushing more than once to the model and polo star Palmer Cassini.
Conner had gone to school with Palmer and knew him to be a fun-loving partier. He was an intense athlete, but also a hell of a fun guy, and Conner counted Palmer as one of his closest friends. But Palmer didn’t hold his interest the way the redheaded reporter did.
He knew why Nichole was here. He’d turned down numerous interview requests from her and her bosses. He understood that she was a friend of Willow Stead, the producer of Sexy & Single, the reality television show that featured his company, Matchmakers, Inc. With the TV show under way, Nichole intended to write a series of articles on the matchmaking service his grandmother had founded. But he didn’t trust reporters and never talked to them. That’s why he had a marketing manager, Zak Levy, who was handling all the promotion and press releases. Conner had been very careful to keep out of the spotlight.
“Who is she, Conner?” his mother, Ruthann Macafee, asked, coming up next to him.
“Who, Mother?” he asked, pulling his gaze away from Nichole. He assured himself that keeping an eye on the reporter was the only thing that interested him. Not her lush red hair, which flowed in waves past her shoulders, or the stunning white sheath dress she wore. But he knew that he was lying to himself. He wanted her and if he’d had any idea how potent the attraction would be, he would have granted her an interview at his office weeks ago.
“The woman you keep staring at? I don’t recognize her so I suspect she doesn’t run in our circles,” she said. His mother was sixty-five but looked at least fifteen years younger, thanks to her active lifestyle. She played in a tennis league and ran a charity. She’d never been the type of woman to sit at home, and Conner admired her for it. Even when a plane crash had taken his father’s life and revealed a scandal that would have broken many women, she’d carried on in that quiet strong way of hers.
“Nichole Reynolds—reporter,” Conner said.
“Oh, dear. I wonder why she’s here.” He heard a hint of fear in his mother’s voice. She didn’t like reporters, and with good reason. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders in a quick hug.
“That reality TV show I’m doing … she wants to interview me.”
“Truly? Are you going to do it? It’s so gauche to talk about your private life.” Conner bit back a smile at his mother’s attitude. To say she was old school was a major understatement.
“I’m well aware of that,” he said, leaning down to kiss his mother on the forehead. “I think I’d better get rid of her before she makes any problems for us.”
“Good idea. Do you want me to ask Darren to escort her out? How did she even get in here?”
“The head of security doesn’t need to be bothered with this,” Conner said. He’d been handling women like Nichole since he’d turned fourteen. “She probably came as a plus one.”
“Next year I’m going to make sure that the invitations are better vetted,” his mother said. “I don’t want her kind getting in here.”
“Whose kind?” his sister, Jane, asked, joining them.
Jane was a posh and trendy woman who had her own cooking and lifestyle show on TV. She didn’t shy away from the media the way Conner and his mother did, but then Jane had been sheltered from most of the fallout from their father’s infidelity.
“A reporter.”
“Scourge of the earth,” Jane said, winking at him. “Where is she? I’ll go take care of her.”
His sister was a troublemaker, and Conner knew the only way to deal with her and their mother was to end this conversation. “I’m handling it.”
“Which one is she?” Janey asked.
“The redhead,” his mom said.
“Oh, I see why you want to ‘handle’ her. Go for it, big bro,” Jane said.
“Mom, I think you should have disciplined Janey a lot more when we were younger. She’s a complete brat.”
“She’s perfect,” their mom said as Jane stuck her tongue out at Conner.
He shook his head and walked away from both women. He worked his way through the well-heeled party crowd, picking up a firecracker mojito—Janey’s creation—from a uniformed waiter on his way to Nichole and Palmer.
She glanced up as he approached, and Conner saw the guilty look in her eyes a moment before she masked it with a brazen smile.
“Conner Macafee,” she said, with a little too much enthusiasm. “Just the man I’ve been wanting to see.”
“Nichole Reynolds,” he said, matching her energy. “Just the woman I don’t remember inviting.”
“With women there is always some sort of intrigue,” Palmer said.
“Indeed,” Conner agreed. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I always do,” Palmer said.
Nichole looped her arm through Conner’s and led him away from Palmer. “If I waited for an invitation from you, I’d never have the chance to talk to you in person.”
“That’s because I don’t do interviews.” Conner’s father had been very involved in politics. Even after he’d left office, he’d been in a high-profile business that had demanded lots of press and reporters having access to his life. As a teenager Conner had been photographed and interviewed by every society magazine. He’d hated living in a fishbowl and had vowed never to allow it to happen again once he was an adult. Something he’d been very successful at, even though he lived a jet-set life and had a reputation as something of a player, he didn’t give interviews and was seldom, if ever, caught by the paparazzi.
“I think you’re reacting negatively to someone in the past,” she said, dropping her arm from his once they were far from the crowd. “I promise it will be painless.”
“Maybe I like pain,” he said, primarily to bait her but also because there were times when pain was the only reminder he had that he was alive.
She narrowed her gaze as she stared at him; he knew she was trying to guess if he was telling the truth. “So how about answering a few questions?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’ll do anything to get this interview, Conner.”
The hint of determination in her tone intrigued him. It had been a long time since anyone had been so dogged to get something from him.
“Anything?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m known as the girl-who-gets-her-story and you’re making me look bad at work.”
“We can’t have that now, can we?” he asked, stepping closer into her personal space