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“I want to know who in the hell is responsible,” Trevor nearly shouted into the receiver and then waited impatiently for the person on the other end of the phone to respond. “Well it’s a hell of a way to run a campaign, if you ask me. . . . What? Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.” He looked pointedly at his watch. “See ya then.”
Ashley noticed the lines of strain in the rigid set of his jaw and she remembered his look just the night before when he had seemed so beaten. Her mouth went dry when she realized that he hadn’t been honest with her. There was still a secret gnawing at his insides and she knew instinctively that it had something to do with her. He looked as if he were a man possessed.
When he slammed the receiver down, his mouth was drawn into a thin, determined line. Rubbing the tension from the back of his neck and shoulders, he closed his eyes and stretched. “Damn!” he muttered, thinking he was alone.
“What happened?” Ashley asked. His eyes flew open and he turned his head in her direction.
“What hasn’t?” His fingers rubbed anxiously against the heel of his hands. “Looks like Claud beat me to the punch.”
“What do you mean?”
Trevor cocked his head in the direction of the front page of the newspaper, which was lying near the phone on his desk. “See for yourself,” he invited with a dark scowl.
Ashley crossed the room, reached for the paper and as her eyes scanned the headlines her stomach began to knot painfully. “Oh, my God,” she whispered when she found the article about Trevor. The by-line indicated that the story had been written by Elwin Douglass, the young reporter who had accosted her at Pioneer Square just the previous afternoon. Ashley felt her knees beginning to buckle and she had to lean against the bookcase for support.
The article was a scandalous piece of yellow journalism about Trevor and his affair with the daughter of Lazarus Stephens, who was currently president of Stephens Timber Corporation. Slanted in such a manner as to present the worst possible image of Trevor, the story, which had fragmented pieces of the truth woven into a blanket of lies, suggested that Ashley and Trevor had been lovers for the past eight years, even during her brief marriage to Richard Jennings.
Ashley swallowed against the nausea rising in her throat. There were enough facts within the text of the article to make the report appear well researched. It would be blindingly obvious to any reader that someone close to the story had been interviewed.
The premise of the article was that since Trevor was so close to his own family’s business, as well as entrapped in a relationship with Ashley Stephens Jennings, of Stephens Timber, he couldn’t possibly support a campaign of wilderness protection and environmentalism with any modicum of sincerity in his bid for the Senate.
The truth of the matter is, the article concluded, that our would-be senator spends more time with people closely associated with business and industry than with the environmentalists who support him. Trevor Daniels seems to be able to speak out of both sides of his mouth with great ease and little conscience.
Ashley’s face had drained of color and she was trembling by the time she finished reading the condemning article. “This is all a lie,” she said, shaking the crumpled paper in the air indignantly.
“You can thank dear cousin Claud for that,” Trevor replied, pacing the floor.
“Dear God, I’m so sorry,” Ashley whispered, lowering her head into her palm.
“For what? Being related to that bastard? You didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“No, you don’t understand. I don’t think Claud was behind this. Yesterday, at Pioneer Square—I had gone there to look for you, and when you didn’t show up, I approached Everet
t. . . .”
Trevor’s head snapped up to look in her direction and his dark gaze hardened. “Go on,” he suggested. A cold feeling of dread was beginning to steal over him. What was Ashley admitting?
She lifted her palms in a supplicating gesture before letting them fall to her sides in defeat. “When Everett left, I began to walk back to the office and this guy, Douglass, started walking with me and began asking questions. You know: Wasn’t I Ashley Jennings? Didn’t I know Trevor Daniels? Was it true that I was president of Stephens Timber? That sort of thing.”
“And you talked to him?” The gleam in Trevor’s eye was deadly.
“No! At least I tried not to. But he wouldn’t stop walking with me . . . kept requesting an interview.” She shook her head at her own folly. “I refused, of course, only answering his questions as briefly and politely as possible. I guess I didn’t want to look like a snob. Anyway, he kept asking about an interview and I told him to talk to the office and make an appointment.” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “It was stupid of me.”
Trevor squeezed his eyes shut tightly and rubbed his temples. “So how did this guy know you would be there?”
“He couldn’t have. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Not even Claud?”
“He was out of town, remember, in Seattle talking to you.”
“But he must have known. Somehow. Someone at the office must have told him.”
“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t have gone to the rally if I thought he would find out about it.”
“So you don’t trust him either?” Trevor cocked a questioning black brow in her direction. A guarded secret lurked in his dark gaze.
“Of course not, at least not since we found the evidence against him. And one day I walked into his office and overheard him telling someone that . . . well, I don’t know for sure if he meant you, he never said your name, but he said, ‘We can’t let that son of a bitch win. . . .’ When he saw me he pretended that the conversation was about an ad campaign, but—”
