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“Oh, sure.” Nic watched as the man carefully stopped the swing and helped his son off. “You want to go on that slide over there?” he asked, pointing to the largest one on the playscape.
“No. I want to do the big one. Over there.” The kid pointed to a huge, curved slide obviously meant for older kids.
“Of course you do.” The dad rolled his eyes, but he held out a hand for the kid and the boy took it. “Let’s go.” He glanced back at Nic as they started to walk away. “Hey, good luck with the baby.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“You’ll need it. It’s the craziest thing you’ll ever do. But also the best.”
And then he scooped his kid up onto his shoulders and took off running across the park while the little boy shrieked in delight.
Nic stood where he was for long seconds, staring after them until they reached the other playscape. Then as the kid climbed up the slide and his dad climbed up right behind him, Nic felt himself calm down. Everything was going to be fine. He might not know anything about parenting yet, but he had five months to learn the basics. And a lifetime to learn the rest of it.
Desi had better get on board. He was willing to take a backseat, willing to do things her way. As long as her way didn’t involve cutting him out completely. Because she was carrying his kid—his son—and while he was willing to compromise, the one thing he wasn’t willing to do was walk away. The sooner she accepted that, the better off they would all be.
How had she screwed up this badly? Desi stared at the evidence on the desk in front of her, sorted through it for what had to be the fiftieth time as she wrapped her mind around the fact that she had made a terrible mistake.
Nic had brought all kinds of documentation with him, including page after page of chemical analysis of the diamonds sold by Bijoux. Diamonds whose environmental coating and chemical thumbprint matched exactly those being dug up in Canadian diamond mines. Not African mines. Canadian. All of which were conflict-free and responsibly sourced.
That wasn’t all the evidence Nic had brought, though it was certainly damning enough considering it was signed by one of the top conflict-diamond experts in the world. But he’d also brought affidavits from the foremen at each of the mines, explaining the amount of diamonds each mine yielded and how many pounds of diamonds had gone to Bijoux in the preceding three years. Amounts that matched Bijoux’s certified goods received records.
He had done all his homework, had provided the paper with everything he could possibly need to debunk her story. And maybe she still wouldn’t believe it no matter what he said—documents could be forged after all—except Malcolm had spent the past few days running her source to ground. After Darlene had spoken with Nic last week about the article and he had been so adamant about filing a libel claim if they published the information, Malcolm had wanted to triple-check her source.
Which she’d done herself after he’d given his information to Desi. But she must have missed something because early this morning Malcolm had talked with him. And had somehow managed to get from the man what she couldn’t. An admission that he had forged the documents he’d given her—from Bijoux and from the two diamond mines in Africa—in order to make it look as if Marc and Nic Durand were dirty.
All of it, forged. All of it, lies. Pages an
d pages of forgeries that she had bought hook, line and sinker. Because she’d wanted the story to be real—had needed the story to be real so she could write the article and move her career away from dresses and into real news. And to hell with whether or not she wrecked the lives of two innocent men. To hell if she brought down an entire business—and an entire newspaper—with her mistakes. She’d needed to get the scoop.
How could she have been so stupid? So gullible? So anxious to get the information that she’d overlooked her source’s tells. And now that she looked back on it, there had been many. She’d just been so caught up in getting the story and not disappointing Malcolm, in getting the truth—ha, wasn’t that a joke—that she’d looked past them. She’d made excuses for them in her own mind.
The source was nervous.
The source was a little confused but once he calmed down, he sorted it out.
The source was doing a brave thing coming forward and blowing the whistle, but he was just an amateur. Of course he hadn’t known exactly what she’d need for the story.
God, she was such a fool. And the worst kind of fool—the arrogant kind who refused to see, let alone admit, when she was wrong. Just thinking about what she’d said to Nic when he’d tried to hand her the documents… She’d had in her hands the proof that he was none of those things but she’d been too stubborn to look at it. Too stubborn to admit that maybe, just maybe, she’d been wrong.
And now, the story she’d worked so hard on was dead. Malcolm told her it wasn’t her fault, told her Candace—the more experienced reporter he’d put on the case to work with her—had missed the same things she had. Which was true. Candace had.
But Candace hadn’t spent the time on this story that Desi had.
Candace didn’t know it the way she did.
Candace hadn’t been trained at an early age by Alan Maddox, one of the best investigative journalists who had ever lived.
If Candace had made a mistake, it was in trusting Desi, who had assured her over and over again that the information they had was legit.
Which it wasn’t. Not at all. Not even a little bit.
So now, here she was, back in the society pages—for a little while anyway. Malcolm assured her that her job wasn’t in jeopardy, but with a screwup of this magnitude, how could it not be? If that story had run—if Malcolm and Darlene had been just a little less conscientious—the paper would be in really hot water right now. And Bijoux would be under siege from everyone from the press to human rights organizations to consumer groups to lawyers bringing civil suits on behalf of clients who’d purchased Bijoux diamonds…the horrors would have gone on and on.
And it would have been all her fault.
Yet Nic had still wanted to talk to her, had still wanted to listen to her. And in her utter and complete arrogance, she’d driven him away. Worse, she’d backed him into a corner where he thought that the only choice he had was to fight her—for his company and for their baby.
Nice job, Desi. Somehow she’d managed to mess her life up so royally, so completely, that she could not even begin to imagine how to fix it. She didn’t even know if fixing it was possible.
