She was glad she had as she avoided the back entrance she normally used, veering through the coffee shop and then out onto the street. To say there was a barrage of reporters would have been overstating the matter, but there were four of them, talking to each other, cameras around their necks. Looking for the insignia of one of the major news sources, she was glad to see none.

Things weren’t as bad as they’d all feared coming home the night before. Liam was not being targeted.

Feeling Marie’s, her staff’s and Elliott Tanner’s gazes on her back from just inside the store, she approached the loiterers.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” She addressed the reporters. “I’m Gabrielle Miller, counsel for Liam Connelly. Mr. Connelly would like everyone to know that while he is deeply saddened to hear about his father’s arrest, they are not currently in contact, nor is he employed by or associated with Connelly Investments in any way.”

“Yeah, right up until he pockets his inheritance,” one young man grumbled. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt—could use a shave and a haircut, too. His attitude matched his appearance.

“Doesn’t Liam Connelly stand to inherit whatever might be left of his father’s significant holdings after investors are paid back and Walter Connelly is in jail?” another man asked before Gabrielle had a chance to acknowledge the under-the-breath comment. The second guy bore a badge that said he represented Detector Online, a fairly well-known internet news source.

There was someone there from their local community news as well.

“No, he does not.” Gabrielle’s smile was genuine. She realized that Walter Connelly, while autocratic, unbending and sometimes cruel, had actually done his son a favor in disowning him. “Liam is not in his father’s will.”

“So why does he have counsel?” the jeans-clad attitude asked.

“To deal with people like you.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them.

“People like me?” Attitude asked. His camera had been whirring since she’d first addressed them.

“People who look for dirt where there is none,” she said. This punk thought he was going to make Liam’s life miserable just because he could? Without caring at all about the innocent people he was affecting? “If you did your homework, like a good reporter should, you’d see that Liam has never appeared directly with his father in any of the society pages. Even when they traveled in the same circles, they didn’t travel together. If you think being the owner’s son gave him any power, you’re wrong. Unless you think making social appearances and overseeing small accounts does that. Liam, by the way, is a freelance reporter. Maybe you could read the article he did on last week’s Douglas case and get some pointers about covering real news rather than looking for some to make...”

Three reporters were staring at her with open mouths.

The fourth, the target of her inappropriate diatribe, shut his.

No one was going to care that this was her first press conference. That she was a public lawyer who represented people who’d never make it on the news unless they were dead. Or committed a heinous crime against someone like Liam.

All they were going to care about was that she’d just allowed herself to be cajoled into screwing up.

Bad.

* * *

LIAM HAD WRITTEN his article, submitted it and left town. He’d been greeted at the airport late Friday night by the sister he’d never known and not given more than a fleeting thought to the professional project. The night before, after leaving Gabrielle and Marie’s and making it up to his own apartment without incident, he’d purposely avoided the internet. He didn’t want to see what might be waiting there.

But Monday morning, after a hard workout on the equipment he’d had installed in the bedroom ne

xt to his own—and a very late breakfast—he went online to see how bad his father’s press was getting.

How much of it there was.

To determine his own plan of action.

As a reporter and as a son.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. All of the major news sources mentioned another billionaire businessman allegedly being the next in line to take a fall. A basic overview followed: development land was sold to investors who later found they’d invested in swampland when the land they were supposed to have invested in was reported as a holding of a senator who was taking a political hit for illegal campaign managing.

And Connelly Investments had continued to take investment dollars for Grayson Communities when Connelly no longer held that commodity.

He just couldn’t believe his father had been that stupid. Nor could he get bogged down by that stupidity.

When he’d avoided it as long as he could, he typed in the web address for the news source carrying his own article, hoping that it would have an impressive amount of hits. And worried that it wouldn’t. For himself.

And because he’d had a thought. Maybe he could convince his father to let him write a series of articles about him. His climb up from nothing. The years of integrity in the community and success that had followed. He was going to offer to help preserve his father’s good reputation in any way he could. To write articles that were fact based, instead of sensation based, to counteract the bevy of press that had arisen in the past twenty-four hours.

He wanted to do it for Tamara. For himself. And, if what Gabi and Tamara believed was true—that his father really hadn’t committed fraud—he wanted to do it for the old man, too.

Tags: Tara Taylor Quinn Romance
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