For His Son's Sake

“Let’s enjoy tonight, okay? For Angus’s sake?”

She didn’t like the feeling that was coming over her. A thank-goodness-she-was-sitting-down-because-her-knees-were-givingout sort of giddiness that had absolutely nothing to do with the way he was looking at her or with the feel of his big, warm hand on her skin. Nothing at all.

She struggled to say something that would put her back on even footing. Before she fell completely. “For Angus’s sake, gladly. Just make sure you keep that in mind yourself, Counselor.”

He leaned back, breaking the contact between them. “That sounds like a reprimand.”

“In a way, it is,” she admitted reluctantly.

He leaned back even farther, striving to look casual although he was feeling anything but. Asking her to stay out of their lives after tonight had been much harder than he’d thought, though for the life of him he didn’t know why. “So you have some criticism to offer concerning my behavior toward Angus?”

“Toward Angus, no. Toward me.”

“You?”

“If you want this to be a pleasant evening, you’re going to have to stop behaving so disapprovingly of me.”

“Disapproving!” Ross sounded genuinely startled. Had he been trying too hard to build a fence between Kenzie and Angus—and himself—tonight? But how could that be? His tactfulness was well-known in the courtroom and it shouldn’t have failed him here.

“Oh, you’ve been nice enough, I’ll admit. But I have this feeling that deep down you didn’t want me to come. That I’m here tonight only because Angus insisted on inviting me.”

He sucked in his breath at the stab of guilty pain he felt. “Ouch. You’re very direct, Ms. Daniels, you know that? What a shame you never studied law.”

“Did I get all the red off?” Angus had appeared at Kenzie’s side, holding out a scrubbed sleeve for her inspection.

“It looks fine.” She dabbed it dry with her napkin, then stood up.

He regarded her curiously. “Where are you going?”

“The ladies’ room,” she said as she left the table.

Once there, she took deep, calming breaths as she leaned against the sink. Thank goodness Ross hadn’t noticed her reaction to his casual words. Although Ross had been teasing her, the things he’d said had totally unraveled her composure.

“You plead your case very well, MacKenzie. Too bad you never studied law.”

Similar words had been spoken by her father, but in a tone Ross Calder hadn’t used with her—a tone which she’d never heard anyone use with her until that final, hateful confrontation outside the stately double doors leading to Burton Daniels III’s law office in downtown Washington, D.C.

It was the last thing he had ever said to his daughter, after the reporters and news cameras had gone. Although he had been the leading candidate for his party’s run for the presidency, he had just announced his withdrawal from the Republican race, citing his wife’s recent hospitalization as the major cause.

But thanks to Kenzie, everyone in America knew the real reason behind his decision: those questionable campaign funds he’d received from a European businessman whose bank on Grand Cayman Island had consequently become the target of an international investigation. No one in the States had been aware of any connection between the millionaire Belgian banker and the powerful D.C. attorney—until an unassuming political cartoon in the tiny Maryland publication Eastern Shore Weekly had raised the question.

The repercussions were only just beginning when Burton Daniels III announced his withdrawal from the Republican race, and no one doubted there’d be more to come.

As indeed there had been. A subpoena to appear before Congress, a Justice Department investigation, a hefty fine and six months’ jail time for Daniels’s campaign manager.

But what had whetted the nation’s interest more than the sullying of Burton Daniels’s once prestigious name had been the fact that Daniels’s own daughter had drawn the cartoon that had proved his downfall—her first ever published work. Strange, the wags had whispered among themselves, how Mrs. Burton Daniels’s hospitalization for chest pains had coincided with the publication of her daughter’s revealing cartoon and her husband’s subsequent withdrawal from the Republican race.

Still, much had changed since then. Surgery to install a pacemaker had set Kenzie’s mother to rights, and relocation to the isolated Outer Banks had helped Kenzie escape the unending media frenzy. Luckily she had found steady cartooning work at the Norfolk Messenger, because she’d not have been fit for any other career after fleeing Washington and giving up her nearly completed doctorate in early childhood education.

On the other hand, she and her father had never reconciled. He hadn’t spoken to her or acknowledged her existence in more than a year. And he had seen to it that none of her brothers, their wives or their children had said anything to her, either.

And of course Brent Ellis had called off their engagement the moment the scandal broke. Kenzie had clearly heard her father’s words echoing behind the pathetic little speech he had made, and she could well imagine the things her father had said when informing Brent that marrying his daughter meant no chance of keeping his partnership in the Daniels family law firm—which, in true Beltway fashion, had barely been tarnished by the sorry chain of events.

Career or love? Brent hadn’t hesitated in making his choice.

“C’mon, girl, get a grip,” Kenzie told her pale reflection in the mirror. True, Ross’s not-unkindly-meant words had unwittingly awakened memories she preferred to keep buried, but that didn’t mean she was going to ruin Angus’s birthday by hiding out in the ladies’ room. While she had no idea what had triggered her emotional meltdown, she wasn’t about to let either Ross or Angus suspect. So when she returned to the table she made sure that her head was held high and that her smile was warm and carefree.