she tugged the scarf off her face and subtly gestured to a spot beneath a lone oak tree, indicating with an angry gaze that he should meet her there.
Well, he thought. Looks like she’s still a bit put out by yesterday’s impromptu interview.
A thrust of desire heated Ian’s belly as he followed in the wake of her jasmine perfume. She had his libido’s number, with that smooth, light brown complexion, those long eyebrows winging over dark, liquid eyes, those high cheekbones and lush mouth. Even though she had the delicate features of an exotic pixie, he could sense a woman’s blood—hot and alive—pulsing under her skin.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He glanced around, as if flummoxed. “I heard there’s a trial going on.”
“A closed trial.”
Ian’s journalistic ambition kicked awake. “Not according to the president of the college board of directors. Alex Broadstreet invited the press.”
She merely stared at him for a moment. Her eyes resembled open wounds that bled dark frustration.
His first instinct was to touch her, to let her know that she’d get through this all right. But Ian checked his guts, reminding himself that he’d only be asking for trouble.
“Broadstreet can’t do that,” she finally said. “He can’t bring a private hearing to the public.”
Ian made a mental note to get hold of the campus’s conduct-hearing guidelines. But since Broadstreet was the Grand Poo-Bah in charge, Ian suspected he could mold the rules to his own advantage pretty easily.
When Ian glanced at her again, the pain hadn’t gone away. It was too much to stand.
“Rachel.” He battled with himself, then reached out to casually tug on the lapel of her coat, thinking it wasn’t much of a come-on and, therefore, nothing to worry about. “Broadstreet is doing it, whether you like it or not.”
“Damn him.” She huffed out an exasperated breath, then absently caressed the patch of worn wool he’d touched. “He’s bound and determined to do anything to disgrace Gilbert. This isn’t right.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. She was still holding the tips of her fingers against the material, her head tilted, eyes wide with so many questions he couldn’t answer. It was as if, among other things, he’d bewildered her with his halfway playful gesture.
Strangely embarrassed for some reason, Ian took a step back.
Out of self-preservation, he once again assumed the role of unbiased reporter, even though there was a niggling poke of ethics in his gut that was agreeing with Rachel.
In an effort to fully distance himself, he said, “Can I quote you on your disgust regarding the hearing’s parameters?”
He couldn’t have chosen a colder thing to say.
She shot him a look—the kind every man feels sorry about receiving—then started walking back to her friends. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t grown used to this sort of reaction. In his line of work, he didn’t exactly endear himself to people.
So why did this particular brush-off sting?
He watched as she situated herself in back of Jane Jackson, Gilbert’s secretary. Next to Jane stood her fiancé, Smith Parker, a campus maintenance worker. Ian suspected that the two, along with Rachel and Sandra Westport, had investigated Gilbert’s situation themselves on the quiet.
As Rachel whispered into the redheaded Jane’s ear, Ian was interrupted by the arrival of Joe his photographer.
“Ready to do some damage?” asked the short, squat shutterbug.
Ian tried not to flinch, especially with Rachel standing only yards away. Somehow, she made him too conscious of what his editor had instructed him to do: sell more papers with salacious details.
“If damage involves the truth,” he said through a clenched jaw, “then I want it.”
Joe chuffed and shifted his cargo. “You’re talking like we’re back in the golden days of journalism, Beck. Remember, the Sun don’t report actual news much now. We’re in to…what does the boss call it? Titillation. Red ink. Dirt.”
Once again, the term tabloid stabbed at Ian, even though his newspaper had ridden the coattails of a more prestigious reputation for the last few years. But that’s all it was—a reputation that was slowly crumbling with the addition of what the new editor called “selling points.”
Ian gestured toward the growing throng of students who were waiting outside the hall. “Joe, let’s start off by taking the temperature over there, then we’ll set up inside.”
“Will do.”
And, as Ian Beck went about his work, he tried to avoid Rachel’s gaze, which had settled on him like an invisible hand that was guiding him away from the demands of his job and toward something that resembled ethics.
A hand that a fly-by-night reporter like him had been spending way too much energy trying to dodge lately.
“Earth to Rachel?”
She whipped her attention away from the retreating Ian Beck and focused on Jane Jackson, whose pale green eyes were narrowed in speculation.
With an innocent smile, Rachel controlled the thrum of her heartbeat, then focused on a man who was speaking decisively into a cell phone. Nate Williams, her boss and fellow Saunders alumni.
An attorney who was on fire with the news Rachel had just given him.
“I need access to the Saunders board’s hearing guidelines,” he was saying. “I’ll be back in the office after Katie’s testimony, so have everything ready for me to tear Broadstreet a new… Yeah, you’ve got it. Thank you.”
Rachel knew that he was having one of the paralegals do the grunt work. Normally, Nate depended on her to be his right hand, but since they were both involved in the hearing and she had rearranged her days off to be here, that was impossible.
As he ended the call, he grumbled, “It’s not bad enough that Broadstreet scheduled this on a Friday, knowing the hearing would go for more than one day and Gilbert would have to stew over the weekend. Now he has to invite the world. Bastard.”
His girlfriend, Kathryn Price, a former model whose incandescence wasn’t at all marred by scarring from an awful accident, laid a comforting hand on Nate’s arm. The powerful lawyer, so revered in the courtroom, practically melted under her gentle touch.
Rachel had to glance away, deeply affected by the sight. Once upon a time, she’d had love, too, and she knew how easily it could disappear, stranding you.
“Rachel?” Jane repeated her name. “Kind of distracted today, huh? But…what am I saying? You’ve been a walking zombie lately.”
Pulling her coat tighter around her body, Rachel anticipated Jane’s next question, which would no doubt contain the words what and is and wrong.
“I just wish Gilbert would get here,” she said,
