Private Scandals

certain sophistication. Except in one illuminating case.”
    He stiffened, drew back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Yes, you do.” Her voice remained pleasant, easy. But her eyes had sharpened like two blue blades. “You see, I know all about you, Marshall. I know about your foolish slip with one Annie Gilby, age sixteen. And all about your previous, I should say pre-Deanna, arrangement with a certain woman who lives on Lake Shore. In fact, I made it my business to know everything there is to know about you.”
    “You’ve had me followed?” He struggled for outrage, but panic had already outdistanced everything else. She could ruin him, with one careless announcement on her show. “What right do you have to pry into my personal life?”
    “None at all. That’s what makes it so exciting. And it is exciting.” She toyed with the top button of her jacket. When his eyes flicked down to the movement, she glanced at the antique clock behind him. Eleven-ten, she thought, coolheaded, cold-blooded. Perfect.
    “If you think you can use some sort of blackmail to ruin my relationship with Deanna, it isn’t going to happen.” His palms were wet, from fear, and from a terrible arousal. He would resist it. He had to resist it. “She’s not a child. She’ll understand.”
    “She may, or she may not. But I do.” With her eyes on his, Angela flicked open the first button on her jacket. “I understand. I sent my secretary away, Marshall.” Her voice lowered, thickened. “So I could be alone with you. Why do you think I went to all the trouble to find out about you?” She released the second button, toyed with the third and last.
    He wasn’t sure he could speak. When he forced the words out, they were like grains of sand in his throat. “What kind of game is this, Angela?”
    “Any kind you want.” She shot forward, quick as a snake, and caught his bottom lip between her teeth. “I want you,” she whispered. “I’ve wanted you for a long time.” Straddling him, she pressed his face against the breasts that strained against the hint of black lace. “You want me, don’t you?” She felt his mouth open, grope blindly for flesh. There was a flash, razor-edged and hot, that was power. She’d won. “Don’t you?” she demanded, gripping his head in both hands.
    “Yes.” He was already dragging her skirt up to her waist.
     
    Deanna waited impatiently for the elevator to climb to sixteen. She really didn’t have time to keep the appointment with Angela. But she was obligated by that invincible combination of manners and affection. She glanced at her watch again as people shuffled on and off on seven.
    Angela was going to be upset, she mused. And there was no preventing it. Deanna hoped the dozen roses she’dbrought along would soften the refusal.
    She owed Angela much more than a few flowers, she thought. So many people didn’t see what a generous and giving person Angela Perkins was, or how vulnerable. All they saw was the power, the ambition, the need for perfection. If Angela had been a man, those traits would have been celebrated. But because she was a woman, they were considered flaws.
    As she stepped off the elevator on sixteen, Deanna promised herself that she would follow Angela’s example, and the hell with the critics.
    “Hi, Simon.”
    “Dee.” He moved past her, double time, then stopped short and rushed back. “It’s not her birthday. Tell me it’s not her birthday.”
    “What? Oh.” Seeing the horror on his face as he stared at the armload of flowers, she laughed. “No. These are a thank-you gift.”
    He let out a sigh, pressing his fingers to his eyes. “Thank God. She’d have killed me if I’d forgotten. She was already chewing off heads this morning because her flight was delayed getting in last night.”
    Deanna’s friendly smile faded. “I’m sure she was just tired.”
    Simon rolled his eyes. “Right, right. And who wouldn’t be? I get jet-lagged on the el.” To show his complete sympathy with his boss’s mood swings, he sniffed deeply at the flowers. “Well, those should brighten her mood.”
    “I hope so.” Deanna continued down the corridor, wondering if Angela was taking Simon to New York. If she wasn’t taking Lew . . . just how much of her staff would be laid off? Simon, the perennial bachelor and fussbudget, might be a bit twitchy, but he was loyal.
    The twinge of guilt at knowing, when he didn’t, that his career was on the