Chapter 14

MARIAH

“River, what are you doing here?” Mariah asked as River stood at the door of the conference room.

They had enlisted the help of a few college kids that were around the office and had the entire conference room table covered in research they had printed up. Mariah wasn’t going to give up on figuring out who it was that had threatened to leak the story about River.

Mariah wasn’t just working on finding out who had leaked the story, though, she had also hired a private investigator to look into the governor’s past, and they were also getting ready to address any rumors if they started to pop up.

“I couldn’t just sit in my office; I need to be put to work. Give me something to do,” River said as he grabbed the last remained chair in the conference room.

“Well, we need someone to go through this stack of bills that the governor worked on and see if any of them seem to have a huge backlash of people who would like it. Or even one specific group that could have taken issue with his views.”

“Sure,” River said as he started to look through the papers.

Mariah knew that it wasn’t likely they would find anything useful in the governor’s political work, but they couldn’t ignore any piece of data. They had to look at everything and be prepared for when the news broke.

Deep down, Mariah still hoped that the news would never break, and the person who had called River was bluffing. Maybe they just guessed about something they thought would get River worked up? Mariah still held out a tiny bit of hope that the whole thing had been a hoax of some sort.

“Mariah, what do you want me to do with these?” an intern said as he came in with a stack full of yearbooks.

“What are those?”

“Your high school and college yearbooks,” Mariah said as she quickly went back to working on the project in front of her.

She could see the surprise in River’s eyes, but she didn’t feel like responding to it. Mariah wasn’t about to let any stone go unturned. She was going to investigate every possible connection to River and Kimberly.

“Did you hire a private investigator?” River asked.

“Yes, he’s trying to trace the calls to your phone.”

“Have any of you heard from Kimberly?” Elizabeth asked as she got off a call. “I’ve tried to reach her since yesterday, and she’s not returning my calls or texts.”

River and Mariah both looked up and stopped what they were doing when they heard that. It was a pretty damn important day for Kimberly to be deciding that she didn’t want to answer her calls.

“Is it normal for her not to answer?” Mariah asked River.

“Yeah, sometimes she doesn’t text me back for several days. I think she keeps her phone in her purse most of the time and then just gets busy.”

“Too busy to help us fend off the ruining of her entire life?” Elizabeth said as she got up from the table annoyed at Kimberly not returning her calls.

“Actually, yes. I don’t think she pays all that much attention to her cell phone at all.”

Mariah thought it was odd that Kimberly had been responding to their calls and texts just fine up until they knew the press conference was coming. It seemed a little fishy that Kimberly had gone silent on them, but Mariah didn’t really have the time or energy to deal with her at the moment. For the time being, Mariah had more than enough other things to keep her busy.

“We need someone to check with their contacts at the tabloids. I don’t want to feed them any information on River, though. Make sure you’re just asking about the governor and any news they have on him.”

“I’ll do it,” Elizabeth said as she grabbed a list from Mariah and left the conference room so she could make her calls in private.

Mariah had never been in charge of such a major operation, and she liked that River was there and got to see her hard at work. She wished her father was around to watch her as well, but he was visiting with a client on the east coast for the next few days.

River was pretending to be busy, but Mariah kept seeing him look up and over at her. He couldn’t stop looking at her, and that made her pulse quicken as she tried to figure out what he was thinking about.

Certainly, he had to have been thinking about their night together. As much as she wanted to pretend like she wasn’t thinking about the exact same thing, Mariah couldn’t get her mind off of how hot the sex had been between her and River. Everything about their time together had totally blown out all her expectations. It was impossibly hard to just forget about that night and then try to treat River as a client of her firm.

It had become abundantly clear why people said not to have a personal relationship with a client. Even in the midst of their huge public relations dilemma, Mariah still found herself looking over at River and wishing he would pick her up in his arms and carry her off to his bedroom like he had done the night before.

Her face flushed with the naughty thoughts that were running through her brain, and Mariah had to look down at her work and avoid looking over at River. But for a brief moment, she glanced up at him, and he winked at her.

His wink sent her already flushed face into full blown redness as the heat of her desire for him filled her chest and cheeks. She couldn’t help it; the more she tried not to think about River, the more she actually thought about him.

River was the kind of guy that Mariah had dreamed about when she was young. Heck, he was the kind of guy she still dreamed about as an adult. But at the moment, she couldn’t stop working on the case; she had to figure out who was after River and how that person could be stopped.

“They are running a story in the morning paper,” Elizabeth said as she rushed into the conference room.

“Who is?” Mariah asked.

“The Seattle PI, but you won’t believe the story they have. It’s beyond anything we could have thought of.”

Everyone in the room paused as they waited for Elizabeth to tell them what the Seattle PI was going to say in their story. But as they waited for the rest of the story, Elizabeth whispered something in River’s ear and then went over to Mariah and told her the same thing.

“It’s not true!” River exclaimed, jumping up from his seat and leaving the room.

Mariah heard River as he pounded his fist against the wall and then threw a table over that was in the hallway. She knew that the story the PI was going to run with wasn’t true, and she hated that River was so upset by it. But Mariah certainly didn’t have time to deal with River; she had to prevent the biggest newspaper in the Northwest from publishing a story saying that River Anders had taken advantage of Kimberly Emerald at a charity event.

“Elizabeth, go talk with River, see if you can get him to calm down. Rudy, I need you on a plane and at the door of the Seattle PI. They are about to run a story saying that Jackson is the child of a sexual assault between River and Kimberly. We have to stop this.”

“Yes, I’ll go right now,” Rudy said as he took down some notes.

Mariah didn’t know how the newspaper had gotten such horrible information, but the fact that they were running with it scared her to death. Such a big newspaper surely would have tried to verify the facts before running a story about the Governor of Oregon. Who had they talked to? What information did they have? Mariah needed to know that information right away.

“Do you want me to force them not to use the story?” Rudy asked as he was leaving the conference room.

“Yes, if you can get them to squash the story, do it. We can’t have this getting out. It’s going to ruin everything that River has built.”

Mariah wanted to go to River and comfort him, but she couldn’t take a break at such a critical time. There was still a conference room full of people and a table full of information that had to be gone through. In addition, Mariah had to think about a statement they could make in regards to the Seattle story if it actually ran.

They couldn’t lie, and that was something River was firm about. It would be essential that whatever statement they made was vague but truthful. Every single word of River’s statement had to be designed to say exactly what they wanted the public to know.

The problem Mariah was having was the negative nature of the story. It wasn’t like they were just saying that Kimberly and River had had an affair. The newspaper was going with a story that made River look like a rapist. Mariah and Elizabeth hadn’t even considered the level of evil that could come out of a story like this one. It was totally false, and Mariah knew it, but how would they portray that to the public once the story was out?

Mariah sent a quick text to Rudy to make sure he tried to find out the source of the story as well. It had to be the same person who had been calling River, but why would they say something so vile about him.

It was possible the person who was trying to break the story didn’t know the truth at all and was just making it up to satisfy their need to hurt River. But whatever the reasoning behind the story, Mariah had to get it stopped.

She hadn’t thought there was anything that would be worse than someone coming out and saying that River and the governor’s wife had had an affair. But this story was certainly much worse. It would send the governor into a rage and probably ruin his chances at running for president. People would look at him as a monster if he didn’t drop out of the race to support his wife.

“Wait a minute!” Mariah exclaimed as she ran to the door.

She ran down the hall looking for Elizabeth and River but couldn’t find them. Mariah went into her own office, into Elizabeth’s office and even down to the kitchen area; they were nowhere to be found.

As she made her way back up toward the conference room, she happened to look out the window and saw Elizabeth and River sitting on the bench across the street.

“I’ll be right back,” Mariah yelled into the conference room and then took off across the street.

She jogged as quickly as she could across the street and caught both River and Elizabeth’s attention as she did.

“It had to have been Kimberly,” Mariah said as she got to the bench and tried to catch her breath.

“What do you mean? It couldn’t have been her. She wouldn’t do something like that,” River said defensively.

“I don’t think she did it on purpose, I don’t know. I have no proof. But why else would she have disappeared and stopped talking to us. Maybe her husband found out, and she had to protect herself from telling him she’d had an affair.”

Mariah didn’t like the look that River was giving her at all. He looked angry that she was putting the blame on Kimberly. It was the first time that Mariah had ever seen River angry, and she certainly didn’t like it one bit. His eyes looked intently at her, and she knew she had to back off of her idea that Kimberly had been involved. Mariah looked to Elizabeth to see if she could save her.

“Maybe the person who threatened you just gave the story to the press and made it up. Maybe they just told them that you had taken advantage of her to try and save Kimberly from looking bad. If it was someone who was just trying to hurt you, that’s what they would have done,” Elizabeth said to River.

He seemed to like what Elizabeth had to say much more than what Mariah had to say. But at that point, none of them really knew what was going on. All they knew was that there was a major news story about to come out, and everyone was going to be paying attention to it.

The three sat on the bench for a few minutes while they tried to think of other possible scenarios for why the secret had come out the way it had. But every option pointed to someone who was out to get River and wanted to protect Kimberly from the backlash of the news.

“Rudy is on his way up to the newspaper. He’ll call us when he has any more information. We should go inside and keep working until then,” Mariah said as she grabbed River’s hand to pull him up front the bench.

River pulled his hand out of Mariah’s quickly and walked alone over to the office building. As Mariah and Elizabeth looked at each other, they knew things were as bad as they could possibly be.

Over two hours passed before Rudy finally called Mariah’s cell phone. She answered it on the first ring and went out into the hallway so she could hear him.

“You won’t believe who they are saying sold them the story,” Rudy said as he tried to catch his breath.

“Were you running?” Mariah asked. “Who told them?”

“Yes, I ran from the car to the building and had to run around to find the editor. The good news is I have the name of the leaked person, the bad news is that I have no idea who the guy is.”

“So tell me already!” Mariah demanded, pacing up and down the hall, waiting for Rudy to give her the news.

River and Elizabeth joined Mariah in the hallway and waited patiently to see what information she had. Their only hope was that the person who had released the information wasn’t a reliable source, and they could convince the newspaper not to run the story.

“His name is William Smith. The editor said that someone pointed them to the man, and he admitted to seeing the governor’s wife and River together. This William guy said that the governor’s wife was drunk, and that River was taking advantage of her and took her back to his hotel room after a charity event.”

“Fuck,” Mariah said, looking up at River and Elizabeth. “This is bad.”

Mariah put the phone on speaker so River and Elizabeth could hear what was going on.

“It gets worse. They called the governor’s wife for a comment, and she refused to give one.”

“So basically, this guy saw River and Kimberly together the night of the charity event and thought that River brought her back to his hotel room when she was drunk. Why wouldn’t Kimberly have commented when she was asked? She could have denied that it happened like that. She could have said something about it not being true,” Mariah said as she looked at River and Elizabeth.

“It gets even worse than that,” Rudy said as he paused for an extended amount of time.

“What else could there possibly be?” River yelled out.

“The governor made a comment,” Rudy said.

Mariah and Elizabeth’s eyes both widened as they looked at each other in anticipation of what the governor could have said. If the governor was making a comment on the story, then he had to have had his suspicions about Jackson not being his son.

“What did he say,” Mariah asked quietly as she closed her eyes in anticipation.

“The governor said the story was true, and his wife had been raped by River Anders,” Rudy said calmly.

“Oh, shit,” River said as he sat down in the chair of the lobby.

“He said what? Oh, God,” Elizabeth added.

As Mariah hung up the phone, she couldn’t imagine a way that they were going to be able to get out of the situation they were in. Not only did the newspaper have an eyewitness source, but they also had a comment front the Governor of Oregon saying that the story was true.

“What about Jackson?” River said as he stood up. “This guy couldn’t have known about Jackson. If he were there that night, he wouldn’t have known about a child, and he wouldn’t have known that the child was mine. Does the story say anything about the child?”

“No, no!” Mariah said with excitement. “Rudy said the story was about the sex between you and Kimberly, no mention of a child.”

River sat down and smiled at the thought that at least Jackson was going to be spared the horror of being brought into the whole publicity of everything. At least, it was only River who was going to have to take the brunt of the negative press.

“Um, but didn’t the caller say they knew you had a son, and they were going to release that news?” Mariah said as she walked back toward the conference room.

“The Portland Times just released a story about the governor’s son not being his and that River Anders is the real father,” an intern busted out as she read the story online.

“Oh, shit,” River said as his head fell into his hands.