The Paris Affair (16 page)

She smiled. “We have tried hard to keep the project under wraps, but there are always leaks. Tomorrow at the live demonstration, you will be able to shoot your own footage, Mr.—”

“The photos aren’t of the helicopter. They’re of you and Helmut Forrester, taken on a Paris street corner this morning. How ‘proper’ does it ‘appear’ to have one of your former employees running his hands up your skirt?”

Helmut clicked off the TV and pulled out his buzzing cell phone. Another text message. The fourteenth in less than five minutes. At this rate, he might actually rival his baby sister’s texting records. He rubbed his shoulder and neck, wondering if it was whiplash or stress that made his muscle burn.

Someone had shot a dozen bad photos of him kissing Claire after the car wreck this afternoon. Close-up shots, but not great resolution. If he ever met the inventor of the camera phone, he’d throttle the son of a bitch. His phone had been buzzing constantly since they hit the presses half an hour ago.

This message was from Betty, asking him to call her. He wondered if she had seen the photos and was calling to yell at him. Or if she had a lead on Claire’s threatening emails.

All of the news networks were flashing close-ups of his hand on Claire’s ass and repeating snippets of the damned press release from last week’s story. His affair with Juliana and the contract scandal had been a tiny blurb buried six pages deep in the business section. With this afternoon’s photos, he’d just landed on the front page.

He had to talk to Claire. See how she was dealing with the photos.

Had his world really turned upside down in thirty minutes?

He’d had no trouble finding footage of the press conference on the web. The tiny video wasn’t much better than the photos, and the shadows from the projector had made it hard to read Claire’s facial expression. But he knew that set of her shoulders. And the clipped tones she’d used to abruptly end the questions and leave the room.

Helmut hit redial on his phone.

“What’s up, Betty?” He held his breath, ready for the verbal lashing.

“I found your HAF,” she said. No word about the photos. He wondered if Betty would follow him to Italy. He wondered if Italy would still be a possibility after this afternoon’s disaster.

“Her name is Harriet Freeman, and she’s an expert in thermodynamics. She works—worked—in one of the test labs. Her work record is spotless. And her report on the most recent set of structural tests was frightening.”

Helmut sat down as Betty read excerpts from it.

“Catastrophic failure” and “Highly explosive nature.” and “Structural Faults.”

“Betty, what do you know about this woman? Is this for real?”

She hesitated. “I’m not an engineer, Helmut. But this is what worries me. She forwarded me emails that she sent to Ben over the past few weeks, warning him about her lab findings. She has his responses, too—he told her to test it again. And when she got similar results a second time, he assigned someone else to the project. She holds a PhD in this area, and her replacement was a lab tech with an associates degree from a technical college.”

Helmut sat quietly as the words sank in.

“Helmut, I know Ben is a friend of yours. But is it possible that he has made a bad judgment here?”

Helmut closed his eyes and images flashed across his eyelids. Squealing tires. A sickening crunch of metal. Smoke. Too much smoke. Flashing lights and sirens. A black sheet covering an ambulance stretcher. He opened them and forced himself to look around. This was a hotel room, not a dark stretch of highway. He couldn’t take a chance with another life. Not Claire’s.

“Betty, can you get the woman to Paris by morning?” he asked. “I don’t care what it costs. Do you still have my credit card number? And tell her to bring a copy of every email and lab report she’s got.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Helmut,” she said. “I’ll let you know when I get her on a flight.”

Helmut clicked off the phone and clicked on the TV. One of the satellite channels was airing the major network news. There on the screen stood James Sheffield, surrounded by microphones with his wife, Diana, tugging on one sleeve. The reporters fired questions from all sides at once, all variations of a theme.

“What do you think of Claire’s relations with Helmut Forrester?”

“Are you aware that the Air Force is now investigating the legalities of your Shadow Fly contract?”

“Why did you really appoint your daughter as CEO? Do you still run Sheffield and Fox?”

“How do you feel about your daughter having a relationship with a known philanderer like Forrester?”

Helmut sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, resting his forehead on his hands. What would the man say about his treatment of Claire? What would Helmut do if Claire were his daughter? He pictured his sister sitting abandoned in that restaurant, no money, no cell phone, no transportation. Screwed over by some asshole of a boyfriend.

If he were James, Helmut would beat himself black and blue.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” James began, holding up one hand to silence the rapid-fire questions. Once he had the attention of the reporters who surrounded him, he looked straight into the camera. “I have a statement. But I am not speaking as the Chairman of the Board of S&F. An official spokesperson will issue a statement soon.”

A roar of complaints went up from the waiting press. James held up one hand again and the rumble of voices quieted again. “I have a statement as Claire Sheffield’s father. Claire is my youngest child, and my only daughter. As all fathers are, I suspect, I feel very protective toward her. She may not always believe that of me. Lord knows I’ve made enough mistakes of my own.

“And I have known Helmut Forrester for many years,” James continued. “Though Claire will always be my little girl, my daughter is a full grown woman who makes her own decisions. She could do far worse than to engage in a relationship with Forrester. For Helmut, he could not find anyone better. Now, butt out of my family’s private lives and return to covering legitimate news stories.”

Helmut stared at the TV as the news anchors began making polite speculation as to the company’s official reaction to the scandal would be.

James had just stuck up for him. It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, but the man could have lambasted Helmut for all the world to hear. It was something.

Claire shut herself into her hotel room, where it was quiet at last.

Her neck ached, and her knee, where it had banged against the divider wall in the cab. She stood up and walked to the bathroom, the salty tears making her contacts burn. She took ibuprofen and then had to practically chisel the lenses off her eyeballs. She slipped on her glasses—narrow, thick-framed, ones she thought made her look scholarly.

She had a message from Helmut. “Call me back. It’s urgent.”

With a sniff, she padded back to the bedroom. As she exchanged her ruined suit for a pair of yoga pants and a tank top, she tried to remember what her plans for the evening were supposed to be. Oh yeah, a casual interview over coffee with one of the reporters from
Business Week
. Not doing that now.

She contemplated her cell phone. Helmut was supposed to be a casual fling. A nice little indulgent interlude with a man used to casual flings and indulgent interludes. He was like a chocolate truffle. Delicious, but not something she could eat for dinner every night. So how had she let her body come to crave his touch, long for his arms to hold and comfort her? When did she begin to crave his smile, his wry sense of humor?

He was probably just down the hall. She shivered, remembering him pressing her up against the hotel door just that afternoon. How easily she had surrendered to that passion, without a single thought for what was in her best interest. Her career’s best interest. Her company’s best interest.

She needed to clear her head. She deleted the voice mail. She would talk to him tomorrow.

She found her cell phone and texted Steph, asking her to cancel the
Business Week
interview. Claire had the reporter’s cell phone number, but she didn’t trust her own voice.

“Way ahead of you,” came the text reply not two minutes later. “Pls call.”

Claire dialed.

Steph picked right up. “You can totally salvage this, Claire. Any press is good press, right? At least you’ve guaranteed that the stands will be filled for tomorrow’s demo flight. Nothing like a little sex scandal to get butts in the seats.”

“Is that all you’ve got? I’m such an idiot, Steph.” Claire sat down in the office chair at the small computer desk and spun lightly back and forth. “What is it with my taste in men?”

“Didn’t you tell me you were going into this one with your eyes wide open?”

Claire caught herself mid-spin. “Well, yes, but I thought...I don’t know what I thought.”

“He is a major improvement over Frank.”

Claire heard clicking noises coming from the background.

“Oh, shit, Claire.”

“What now?”

“Your father. He just made a statement.”

Suddenly the two lamps in the room were too much light. Claire squeezed her eyes shut against the drilling pain that shot through her skull. “Don’t tell me, Steph. I’m going to sleep.”

“It could be a lot worse, Claire. Do you even want to know what he said?”

Claire pictured her father’s stern face when she’d told him about Frank’s cheating earlier that day. “Not particularly. Talk to you in the morning.”