Page 231 of The Doctors Will See You Now

“Clear it, Pam,” he demanded. Her face paled, but with no other choice, she nodded her acceptance and walked toward her desk.

He gestured me toward his office and shut the door behind us. “Take a seat,” he directed, shrugging out of his suit jacket before sitting down in the big leather chair behind his mahogany monstrosity of a desk.

“What can I help you with, LoLo?”

I fought the urge to cringe and focused on the task at hand. “It’s Dr. Shepard,” I started. “Someone wrote a column under my name, and it was posted this morning. Everything in it is false.”

Brent stared back at me without anything but neutral, curious eyes. “If you didn’t write it, how’d it get posted under your name?”

“I don’t have proof yet,” I answered honestly. “But I know someone hacked my email and sent the fake column to my editor.”

He quirked one perfectly shaped—and I strongly suspect, waxed—brow. “How bad is it?”

“You haven’t read it yet?”

He shook his head.

“It’s bad,” I said through the growing thickness in my throat. Jesus, just thinking about what that goddamn column had done made me feel like sobbing and vomiting simultaneously. “Career-ending kind of bad,” I added, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hide the desperation in my voice.

Because, fuck. I was desperate. I felt completely helpless, and the most important person in my life had been destroyed by terrible words that were presented as mine.

“That doesn’t sound good.” He steepled his hands together on his desk. “Is there an IT team investigating it?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, it sounds like you’re on the right track then,” he responded and stroked his jaw with two perfectly manicured fingers. “I’m not sure what else I can do to help you right now, though. I mean, situations like these need to be investigated, and evidence needs to back up the contrary before any major strides can be achieved. You know how it is, Harlow.”

“You’re the fucking mayor, Brent,” I retorted. “I do know how it is, and I know that you can pull some strings to get this process streamlined and made high priority.”

“I don’t think that’s going to change anything related to Scott, though,” he responded in a clear yet infuriatingly calm tone. “But I doubt the police will be able to keep him in custody right now without the right evidence to back up the accusations. They’ll just interrogate him for a bit and then release him.”

Wait…what? I didn’t tell him Scott is with the police…

My brow furrowed on its own accord. “How did you know that he was already in custody?”

“I’m the mayor, LoLo.” He chuckled, but there was something off about it and had the hairs on the back of my neck rising. “I know these kinds of things, especially when important members of the community are under investigation.”

“But you just acted like you didn’t know anything about the situation?”

“I said I hadn’t read the article,” he corrected. “But I did know that your boyfriend was in custody. Why do you think I cleared my next meeting? I had an idea of the situation. I knew it was urgent. I just wish there was more I could do to help you and Scott. You know that once the police start their investigation, my hands are tied.”

I stared at him for a long moment, taking in the relaxed posture of his shoulders, the neutral yet friendly expression etched on his face, and my gut instinct told me that there was more to this story than what he was letting on.

I had no idea what, but there was something. I mean, he’d acted like he knew nothing about it when I stepped into his office, but once he’d admitted knowing Scott was in custody, he backtracked, and all of sudden, he did know the situation.

The facts weren’t adding up. Nor did the kooky behavior his assistant Pam had shown when I requested to see him. She’d been overzealously defensive, and I hadn’t even told her why I was there.

“What’s going on, Brent?” I questioned.

“What do you mean?” he asked, and the soft and neutral tone of his voice, and far too relaxed language of his body, urged flashbacks of our past and our relationship to fill my mind.

I’d seen this version of him before. To anyone else, he looked calm and composed. But I’d witnessed him look exactly like this when his then best friend and campaign manager had been investigated, and eventually convicted, for money laundering.

The worst part of the story, Brent had been the mastermind of it, and it was all in the name of greed and power. He hadn’t realized I’d overheard his phone conversations when the shit hit the fan, and I’d walked away from our relationship after that with some bullshit excuse of not wanting to be in the public limelight anymore. It had nothing to do with the limelight and everything to do with the fact that I’d realized he was a horrible human being. I got out to save myself.

And even though right now I wanted to say all of the nasty things that rested on the tip of my tongue, I held back. Tempting as it was, I knew taking that route wasn’t in my or, especially, Scott’s best interest. Brent was a man of power, and he had no moral compass to guide his use of that power in the direction of straight and narrow. If I showed any suspicion that I thought he was involved, I honestly had no idea what lengths he would go to to prove the opposite.

“I—I just don’t know how this happened,” I muttered and faked a sad sigh. “I don’t know how this happened, Brent.”