Eve had become something of a hermit since her husband’s crime and disappearance. Unfortunately, that option hadn’t been available to Joshua.
“Good. I don’t even want to imagine what this would do to her. Probably send her spiraling into a depression,” Oliver said, and while Joshua and his brothers might not agree on much, this one thing they did—their mother’s emotional health and protecting her. “I’ll go by and see her this evening just to check in.”
“That sounds good. Thanks,” Joshua replied.
A snort echoed in Joshua’s ear. “She’s my mother, too. No need to thank me. Talk to you later.”
The connection ended, and for a long second, Joshua continued to hold the phone to his ear before lowering it and picking up the newspaper again. He zeroed in on one line that had caught his attention before.
But is Joshua Lowell that different from his father? Appearances, as we know, are often deceiving. Who knows the secrets the Lowell family could still be hiding?
The sentences—no, not so thinly veiled accusations—leaped out at him. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Every skeleton in their closets had been bleached and hung out for everyone to view and tear apart. They didn’t have secrets.
And where had she uncovered the photos included in the article? He scrutinized the black-and-white images. A few of his art pieces. His father as he remembered him with his mother on his arm. God, he hadn’t seen her smile like that in years. Fifteen of them, to be exact. Him and Jake on their college graduation day, hugging Oliver between them. A family portrait taken at their annual Christmas party. The ones of him and Jake on campus. The snapshots of him painting in art class. The concentration and...joy darkening and lightening his face. He analyzed that image longer, hardly recognizing the young, hopeful man in the photo.
Well, Sophie had done her grave-robbing expedition well. He’d accused her of using her shovel to dig up old news. To acquire these photographs, she must’ve found a fucking backhoe.
Where had she gotten her information? She shouldn’t have had access to those pictures, so who’d provided them to her?
There was only one way to find out.
Joshua tossed the paper to the passenger seat and pressed the ignition button to start the car.
He would go directly to the source.
“Great article, Sophie,” Rob Jensen, the entertainment columnist, congratulated with a short rap on the wall of her cubicle.
“Thanks, Rob,” she said, smiling. “I appreciate it.”
“You did do an excellent job,” Marie Coswell added when Rob strode away. She rolled in her desk chair to the edge of her cubicle, directly across from Sophie’s. “But wow, woman,” she tsk-tsked, shaking her head and sending the blunt edges of her red bob swinging against her jaw. “You didn’t hold anything back. Aren’t you even the least bit concerned the Lowells will retaliate? I mean, yes, their names were persona non grata around here for a while, but that was a long time ago. They have serious pull and power. Makes me real thankful that I’m over in fashion. No way in hell would I want to tangle with a Lowell, especially Joshua Lowell. Well, hold on. I take that back.” She grinned, comically wriggling her perfectly arched eyebrows. “I’d love to tangle with that man—but nekkid.”
Sophie laughed at her friend’s outrageousness even as heat streamed up her chest and throat and poured into her face. Times like these, she cursed her father’s Irish roots. Even her Italian heritage, inherited from her mother, couldn’t combat the fair skin that emblazoned every emotion on her face. Good God. She was twenty-eight and blushing like a hormonal teenager.
“Holy shit. Are you blushing, Sophie? At what? The thought of Mr. Tall-Insanely-Rich-and-Hot-as-Hell?” Marie gave an exaggerated gasp. “Oh, you so are. All right, give. What happened when you stormed over to his office like it was the Alamo? Did you rip something else besides a strip off his hide? Like his clothes? What aren’t you telling me?”
Sophie groaned, closing her eyes at her friend’s exuberance and the volume of it. She loved the other woman, but she really should’ve been the gossip editor with her sheer adoration for it.
“Nothing happened. Clothes remained intact. The only thing stripped away was my pride.” She winced, just remembering her ill-conceived decision to charge into Joshua Lowell’s office and the ensuing confrontation.
That definitely hadn’t been one of her finer moments. Thank goodness the front desk receptionist at the main level had been away from her desk. Otherwise security would’ve probably been called on her. Wouldn’t Althea Granger, the editor in chief, have loved to receive that call about one of her investigative reporters needing to be bailed out for trespassing?
Why Joshua hadn’t had her escorted out still nagged at her. Just as memories of the CEO did.
She shook her head, as if she could dislodge the question and the man from her mind with the gesture. As if it were that simple.
“Sophie.” Althea Granger appeared next to her cubicle, as if her thoughts had conjured the older woman. With thick dark hair, smooth, unlined brown skin and beautiful features, she could’ve easily been mistaken for a retired model rather than the editor in chief of the exclusive bedroom community of Falling Brook’s newspaper. But after stints in major papers across the country, she’d run the Chronicle with a steel hand, judicious eye and the political acumen of a seasoned senator for years. And she was Sophie’s mentor and idol. “Could you join me in the conference room, please?”
“Absolutely.” Sophie rose from her desk chair, ignoring Marie’s concerned glance. Too bad she couldn’t do the same for the kernel of trepidation that lodged between her ribs. Usually, if Althea wanted to speak with her, it was in her office. Not the more formal conference room.
Could this be about her article? No, it couldn’t be. She instantly rejected the thought. Althea had personally read and approved the story before it’d run in this
