Falling Again (2 page)

When Amanda said Fiona was on his turf, he decided he’d track her down if he had to call every hotel near Capitol Hill and stalk every restaurant hangout for legislative staffers. It turned out he didn’t have to search anyplace. He ran into her as if it were meant to be.

He had her phone number. His sister was nowhere in sight. He’d have Fiona all to himself for a week. A week to play around with someone hot and sexy until he got back to his real life—the one occasionally featuring mud and armed rebels. Sometimes the planets aligned just right.

• • •

On her way out the door of the Hyatt on Capitol Hill next morning, Fiona’s phone rang. Sure it was either a confirmation of an appointment or a cancellation; she hurriedly dug through her purse and pulled it out. The voice at the other end of the call was a surprise.

“Morning, Fee. It’s Nick. It’s not too early to call, is it?”

“No, your timing’s good. I’m just on my way to the Hill.”

“Are you free for dinner tonight?”

“Tonight? Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve got a reception to attend.”

“Those things never have enough food to qualify as dinner. How about meeting after the reception?”

What the hell was going on? Why was he suddenly so anxious to see her? He hadn’t bothered to contact her after they met in Portland. Why was he pushing to spend the evening with her in D.C.? There had to be some reason other than the need to eat dinner.

“This one always does. And you don’t have to…”

“I told you—I want to. Please?”

As much as she hated to admit it, even through the phone the husky timbre of his voice sent shivers up her spine. “How about you join me at the reception? It’s open to guests. Put on by a group from the Northwest. They invite press people from all over the Northwest every year along with the entire delegation. They put on a good show I hear; lots of regional wine and smoked salmon, among other things. I’ve always wanted to attend and this year not only am I in town but I have an excuse. Some of my contacts will be there.”

“Good smoked salmon? I’m there. Where and what time?”

“It’s in 902 in the Hart building. I’ll be there about six-thirty.”

“Hart building—on the Senate side?”

“Yeah, the ever popular Hart SOB—Senate Office Building.”

“Meet you there and then we can have dinner after.”

“It might be late getting out.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been allowed to stay up past nine for the past year or so. See you tonight.”

She closed her phone, threw it in her purse, and walked toward the Hill, her step as snappy as the sound the flags on the Capitol made as they rippled in the spring breeze. It had taken way too long to get past the debacle of her last relationship. Maybe the attention of a sweet young thing might be exactly what she needed for a warm-up before she threw herself into the dating game again. Even if said sweet young thing was a bit arrogant and way too sure of himself.

Now, if only her appointments worked out as well.

Thank God for the dinner invitation from Nick
, Fiona thought as she schlepped back to her hotel. It was the only thing saving the day from being a complete waste of time. She’d talked to at least a half dozen staffers in the offices of Oregon’s delegation on Capitol Hill, but her failure to get something useful on the stories she was chasing continued unabated.

Everyone gave her the press release version of the first story she was researching, a piece about a bill Congressman Dick Anderbock, the most conservative member of the delegation, had recently introduced. The legislation would encourage coal and natural gas development by loosening environmental regulations as long as the coal was mined with equipment manufactured in the United States, used domestically or, if exported, shipped out of U.S. ports using ships registered in the United States. The last requirement was currently hanging up a committee vote on the bill while staffers scrambled to find out if there were any bulk carriers flying the U.S. flag to carry the coal.

Supported by some loud voices in the Portland business community and several members of the City Council, it was—not surprisingly—opposed by most of Oregon’s environmental organizations. Fiona had talked to their lobbyists before she got to Washington. What she was trying to ferret out was an intelligent opinion—okay,
anyone’s
opinion—on the bill’s chances in the Senate, as passage in the House was a given.

Fiona had pushed and prodded at her contacts on the Hill, bringing up the governor’s recent initiative on green businesses, his move to reduce the carbon footprint of businesses in the state, trying to get them to comment on how his goals fit with the Anderbock bill. Either because they didn’t want to get their bosses caught crosswise with another politician or because they didn’t know the answer, the staffers she talked to fudged.

The passage of the Anderbock bill was the straightforward story she was following. The other one, about a white supremacist organization with the bizarre name of White Power Knights of the West, was murkier. Rumors were flying all over Portland about a group with a racist agenda about to go public and back candidates for local and state office. The rumor brought up uncomfortable reminders of Oregon’s history in the early twentieth century when the state elected an active member of the Ku Klux Klan as governor and passed both sundown laws barring African-Americans from being in public after dark and laws banning religious dress for teachers in an attempt to close Catholic schools.

At the intersection of the two stories was a list of three businessmen who supported the Anderbock bill and who some in Portland believed might be the money behind the organization about to open offices in town. Their businesses explained their interest in the Anderbock bill. What she wanted was more information on the three men to uncover which, if any of them, was behind the mysterious organization. All she got was what she already knew.

J. Henson “Hen” Ondsdorph was the head of New Power, Inc., a company with controlling interest in one of the region’s investor-owned utilities with extensive coal holdings. For years he’d worked on a variety of ways to exploit the resource, including plans to develop an Oregon port so he could ship coal to China.

Wallace Wellington, known as “Duke,” made his fortune buying up farmland and having it rezoned for development just before Oregon’s land use laws went into effect in the early seventies. Since then he had enjoyed using the profits to, as he liked to describe it, “steer the course of Oregon” in directions he favored. The local enterprises he backed included several manufacturers of power plant components.

The third man, Sherman Bischler, was from an Idaho family whose wealth went back to the silver mining days. His parents had moved to Oregon where his father started a company that manufactured mining equipment, which was exported all over the world from the company’s headquarters in a suburb of Portland.

All three men had bankrolled the campaign of both Anderbock and the recently defeated incumbent mayor of Portland. And all three were known as conservative in their politics. However, “conservative” in Oregon didn’t usually mean the holder of the opinions was rabid on race issues.

But something odd had happened today when she mentioned the rumors she’d heard about the white power organization to her contacts.

Silence. Nothing. No comments. No additional information. Not even acknowledgement they’d heard rumors, in some cases. Even dangling the names of the three business leaders who might be funding the group like treats in front of puppies didn’t get her anything. Her instincts told her at least some of them knew more than they were willing to say about the three men. Were they hiding their employers’ opinions? Were they protecting campaign contributors? Or were they up to their own skinny little necks in the new organization?

Not only had she gotten nothing, but she had run overtime not getting it. She only had enough time to dump her notebook, freshen her makeup, and decide whether to go strictly business in her choice of clothes or more social. She opted for the latter, replacing her jacket with a poet blouse, which had a portrait collar to frame her face and long, full sleeves with ruffles at the wrists to look flirty and feminine. She already had on silver hoop earrings and bangle bracelets. Wrapping it all up in a soft, woven stole in shades of blue-gray, black and white, she was headed back to the Hill in less than half an hour turnaround.

The reception was an annual event hosted by the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, a regional group of ports, utilities, agricultural interests, and shippers. The food and wine served was from the region and the entire delegation from the Northwest, as well as other senators, representatives, and staff members showed up to eat, drink, socialize—and lobby. Fiona had been invited to the event before but had never been in D.C. to attend. Tonight she hoped to have better luck at getting some of the answers she was seeking than she’d had in office visits because it was a social event with free wine involved.

So busy was she making the rounds of staffers from various offices, she didn’t notice Nick arrive. But when she saw a dozen or more young women looking across the room at something, or someone, she turned and saw him, just inside the entrance, scanning the room. For her.

He was dressed in gray pants, a white, open-collared shirt that fit his body like a glove, and a black, Ralph Lauren-looking jacket. The just-out-of-bed hair and the sleepy eyes were as impressive from across a crowded room as they were up close.

When he spotted her, he smiled and made his way through the crowd to her. “You’re not hard to find, are you?” He leaned in and kissed her cheek.

She certainly hadn’t expected that gesture. It made her fumble for a response. What came out was, “It’s the red hair. There aren’t many of us around. You were pretty easy to pick out yourself. All I had to do was look in the direction all the other women in the room were looking.”

“You mean, all the people saying ‘who the hell is the stranger who doesn’t belong here’?”

“Your modesty is admirable.”
If unbelievable
, she almost added before gesturing to follow her. “Let’s get you a glass of wine and I’ll introduce you to a few people.”

An hour later, after sampling all the goodies and chatting with a few staffers and another reporter, Fiona noticed signs the reception was winding down. “Ready to leave?” she asked Nick.

“When you are. If you’re still hungry, there’s a little Mexican restaurant close by where we can have dinner. Or I know a great place where we can get dessert.”

“I think dessert, and maybe an after dinner drink. I’m wound tight after a day of trying to pry information out of rocks.”

“I noticed you weren’t drinking wine on duty. The place I have in mind will be just right.”

A short cab ride took them to the restaurant, where they ordered Irish coffees and desserts. After the server left, they sat in silence for several moments.

“Why is it,” Fiona asked, “two people can have a great conversation when they just bump into each other, but they’re silent when it’s, you know, a date-like setting.” She waved her hand and felt her face begin to flush. “I didn’t mean to intimate this is a date but…”
Jesus, where was the filter on her tongue when she needed it? Two sips of Irish coffee shouldn’t make her that stupid.

“It’s not? I thought it was. How’d I get it wrong?” He frowned, as if thinking hard. “Let me see—man asks woman out. Man shows up in his best blazer but no tie so he doesn’t look like he is going to a funeral or a job interview. Woman has changed into non-business clothes and looks beautiful. Man has a selection of restaurants in mind to impress woman with his good taste and sophistication.” He shook his head. “No, I got it right. This is a date.”

She laughed. “I didn’t want to seem presumptuous by assuming because you were nice enough to ask a friend of your sister’s to have dinner that it’s a date.”

“I didn’t ask you to dinner because you know Amanda. I asked because I wanted to see you again. And now having established we are, in fact, on a date, maybe we can move on. I’m curious about what you said about your day. Or is asking about your day either too date-like or not date-like enough? I don’t want to make a mistake here.”

“I think it’s more like husband-and-wife-stuck-in-a-boring-rut.”

“We blew right past date to husband and wife? God, woman, you move fast.”

“Ignoring the insult…”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult. I like fast women.” He wiggled his eyebrows in a fake leer.

“Ignoring both insults and the eyebrow thing, my day was weird. Interesting, but weird. This story I’m trying to get a handle on keeps slipping through my fingers. It’s all blue smoke and mirrors; nothing solid, nothing traceable. It’s frustrating as hell.”

“And your contacts on the Hill couldn’t help?”

“Some swore they knew nothing. A few said they only heard rumors they weren’t willing to repeat. But beyond that no one can—or is willing to—give me anything. They all clam up as soon as I push the subject. I have no hard facts, no source who’ll go on record…”

“So, no story. You do have a problem.”

The server returned with their drinks. Nick picked up his glass and touched it to hers. “To clearing away the smoke.”

“I wish it was that easy. But then, I guess it would seem easy to someone who doesn’t have to get people to open up to him to get their pictures taken.”

“Interesting description of photojournalism. But you’re right. I don’t have to dig into their lives with my questions; I can get the images to tell the story. It’s not always easy but…”

“But when you’re as good at it as I hear you are I guess you don’t have to worry.”

The waiter arrived with their desserts. Nick looked across the table at hers. “I hear chocolate can be good for quelling the crazies caused by unresponsive sources. Let me know, will you?”

Fiona took a bite of her chocolate mousse cake and moaned. “This may be the answer to every problem I’ve ever had.”

He grinned and offered her a bite of his bread pudding.

Dessert finished, Nick announced they should end their evening with a walk around his favorite place in the city. He flagged down a cab and asked the cabbie to take them to the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Monument. It was one of her favorite places, too, which must be the reason she was letting this evening continue. She’d planned to thank him for the dessert and take a cab back to her hotel where her lovely—and empty—hotel room was waiting. Yet here she was, against her better judgment, hanging out with someone who might be spending the evening with her as a favor for his sister, was young enough to get her arrested for corrupting the morals of a minor, and who was hot as hell.