Yours in Scandal Read online

  PRAISE FOR LAUREN LAYNE

  “Exemplary contemporary romance.”

  —Library Journal

  “Flawless contemporary romance—witty, sexy, heartfelt, and hugely entertaining.”

  —USA TODAY

  OTHER TITLES BY LAUREN LAYNE

  21 Wall Street

  Hot Asset

  Hard Sell

  Huge Deal

  Central Park Pact

  Passion on Park Avenue

  Love on Lexington Avenue

  Marriage on Madison Avenue

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Blurred Lines

  Good Girl

  Love Story

  Walk of Shame

  An Ex for Christmas

  The Prenup

  I Do, I Don’t

  Ready to Run

  Runaway Groom

  Stiletto and Oxford

  After the Kiss

  Love the One You’re With

  Just One Night

  The Trouble with Love

  Irresistibly Yours

  I Wish You Were Mine

  Someone Like You

  I Knew You Were Trouble

  I Think I Love You

  The Wedding Belles

  From This Day Forward (novella)

  To Have and to Hold

  For Better or Worse

  To Love and to Cherish

  New York’s Finest

  Frisk Me

  Steal Me

  Cuff Me

  Redemption

  Isn’t She Lovely

  Broken

  Crushed

  The Best Mistake

  Only with You

  Made for You

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Lauren Layne

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542018807

  ISBN-10: 1542018803

  Cover design by Letitia Hasser

  Cover photography by Wander Aguiar Photography

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter One

  Monday, September 28

  “So. How does it feel to be listed in the same company as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Hugh Jackman?”

  Robert Davenport didn’t bother to look up from the police commissioner’s report he was reviewing as he answered. “Utterly absurd. Actually, no. Make that painfully ridiculous.”

  “Come on. You’re not flattered? Your Hollywood good looks are finally getting the attention they deserve,” the other man said, dropping into the chair opposite Robert’s desk.

  Robert very slowly, very subtly let out an exhale of irritation and, after taking his time putting the report away, gave his campaign manager his full attention. “Why would that be flattering? Unlike the aforementioned, I’m not Hollywood. I spend my days trying to make the country’s largest city a better, safer place, not shooting a fake gun in front of a green screen.”

  “Well, lucky for us, all your do-gooder integrity has made you the hottest thing on the newsstand these days,” Martin said, tossing the magazine onto Robert’s desk and leaning back, hands behind his head.

  Robert picked up the magazine and dropped it in the trash without a single glance at the cover. The image of his face on the front of Citizen alongside the aggrandized Man of the Year! headline had been shoved at him by every person he knew since its publication last week.

  Undeterred by Robert’s indifference, Martin tipped forward again, letting the wooden legs of the fussy chair thud heavily against the rug. “Come on, Robbie. It’s gold. Pure fucking gold.”

  “It’s shit,” Robert countered. “Pure shit. Also, did we have an appointment?”

  The question was rhetorical. Martin was most definitely not on his calendar, and in a career that lent itself to very little downtime, Robert hated unnecessary interruptions. Something his longtime campaign manager knew full well.

  “Your face is in every grocery store and Walmart in America,” Martin pointed out. “If I didn’t stop by to tell you to take advantage of the moment, you should fire my ass.”

  The last statement was uttered in the arrogant tone of a man completely confident in his job security, and Robert tried not to chafe at his campaign manager’s assumptions. Martin had been in the political arena since Robert was a boy—specifically, Martin had been in the Davenport political arena. He’d worked for Robert’s father before the man’s untimely death, which, according to Martin, made him “practically family.”

  “You got my strategy emails on how to capitalize on the magazine cover?” Martin asked.

  “Got them. Deleted them,” Robert said.

  Martin’s impatience was plain. “This is free publicity, Robbie. The type of publicity that makes you a household name. And you know where being a household name gets you? The White House.”

  Robert leaned back in his chair and gave in to the urge to crack his knuckles. It was a habit he’d mostly kicked in college, but the compulsion still came back to him when he was feeling particularly frustrated or pissed off. Today, he was feeling both.

  Robert nodded in the direction of the magazine in the trash can. “Did you read it?”

  “Of course I’ve read it. I had the team grab the best pull quotes to start brainstorming how to work them into TV spots.” Martin paused. “Have you read it?”

  “I read the cover. The headline pretty much says it all,” Robert grumbled.

  “Hell yes it does,” Martin said enthusiastically. He leaned down and lifted his old-school briefcase onto the desk and opened it.

  Martin pulled out another copy of the magazine, and as tempted as Robert was to trash that one as well, he knew it was futile. Martin would keep them coming until he’d said his piece.

  The campaign manager pointed at the cover, his finger tapping on each damning word as he read the headline aloud. “Man of the Year: Robert Davenport. Powerful. Charming. Single?”

  Robert winced but stayed silent.

  “The question mark is good,” Martin continued. “Single. Question mark.”

  “How is that good? If they’d done their homework, they’d have known it was Single, Period.”

  “Be glad they didn’t.”

  Robert gave Martin a wary glance. “Do I even want to know?”

  Martin leaned back, fold
ing his hands over the bulge of his stomach. When Martin had joined Robert’s father’s campaign team nearly thirty years ago, he’d been a wiry, ambitious twentysomething eager to claim his place in history as part of the Davenport legacy. He’d done exactly that, though with Robert Jr. instead of Sr., as he’d originally planned. Martin had been Robert’s campaign manager since the very beginning. He was no longer twentysomething. His lanky frame had thickened into middle-aged paunch. His ambition, however, had remained.

  No, his ambition had increased.

  Robert felt disloyal for thinking it, but he’d worried for some time now that Martin’s ambition had been replaced by something a bit more sordid. He wouldn’t go so far as to say his campaign manager played dirty. But there was a cynicism and derision to the way Martin talked about the very people they were trying to serve, and Robert had the nagging sense that Martin cared about winning more than he did their reasons for winning. More and more frequently Robert concluded his meetings with Martin with a sense of unease in his stomach. But Martin was one of the last remaining links he had to his father, and for that, he could tolerate quite a lot.

  “Look, Robbie . . .”

  Robert stifled a sigh. Here we go.

  “Charm is what got you elected as New York City’s youngest mayor. It’s also what’s made you almost nauseatingly popular over the past eight years. But you’re not a novelty anymore.”

  “Is this supposed to be a pep talk?” Robert asked.

  “That’s Kenny’s job,” Martin said with a wave of his hand, then frowned. “Where is that boy, anyway? Why’s he not lurking in the corner like usual?”

  Referring to thirty-seven-year-old Kenny Lamb as a boy was one of Martin’s favorite ways of undermining Robert’s chief of staff.

  “Honeymoon,” Robert said, with no small amount of regret. Kenny was a master of getting Robert out of conversations like this one, but he’d had to make do without his right-hand man the past couple of weeks, and he was starting to feel the strain. Kenny wouldn’t have been able to stop the whole Man of the Year debacle, but he’d at least have been able to run interference and ensure the damn magazine wasn’t shoved in Robert’s face ten times a day.

  “Oh, right. What was I saying?” Martin asked.

  “That I’m a washed-up has-been,” Robert prompted wryly.

  To Martin’s point, elected at age twenty-seven, Robert had indeed been the youngest mayor in New York City’s history, and come January when his successor took over, he would be one of the youngest ex-mayors in New York City history at thirty-five.

  But despite Martin’s dire tone, Robert was plenty young by politician standards. Still, that didn’t make it any easier to say goodbye to what he had come to think of as the best damn job in the world. He’d been born and raised in this city, and serving as its mayor for two terms had been an honor.

  He’d like to think the city would agree with him. Robert had every reason to believe that he would be elected for a third term, if it weren’t for the two-term limit. But one didn’t survive in a place like New York City, much less the world of politics, by living in the past. In order to thrive, it wasn’t about the present—it was all about the future. What was next.

  As grating as Martin could be when he stopped by without a heads-up, Robert knew his campaign manager understood this fact better than anyone. In fact, Martin’s entire job was to focus on the future of Robert’s career, and it was a job he was good at. Robert might consider himself a damn good mayor, just as he’d been a stellar city councilman before that, but it had taken someone with know-how to get an early-twenties kid in the door, and to Martin’s credit, he’d done exactly that.

  “I didn’t say you were washed up,” Martin said, giving the magazine another flick. “Quite the opposite. You know what I see when I look at this face? The face of a governor. That’s who.”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

  “Which is exactly what you pay me to do,” Martin pointed out. “I understand you’ve wanted to limit campaign efforts while you’re still in the mayor’s seat, but in a few months, someone else will be sitting in that very chair, and we’ll be on a dangerously short timeline to make a bid for gov.”

  Robert nodded. “I’m aware. But I’ve been clear on this. I don’t believe in multitasking, not in my line of work. I’ll start being an aspiring governor when the next mayor is sworn in in January. Not a day before.”

  Martin leaned forward. “I’m not asking you to jump with both feet into the governor’s race, just . . . dip a toe in. Don’t let this”—he nudged the magazine—“go to waste.”

  It was on the tip of Robert’s tongue to protest. He knew campaigning was a part of the job—sometimes it felt like it was the job. But he’d always stood his ground about his priority being the job he had, not the one he hoped to have a year from now.

  And yet, he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that as obnoxious and embarrassing as it was to be titled Man of the Year, a moniker usually reserved for stars of the latest Hollywood blockbuster or Oscar bait, it was also every politician’s wet dream. You couldn’t buy this kind of national publicity, and he’d had it dropped in his lap.

  Martin was right—he’d be a fool to waste it.

  Powerful. Charming. Single?

  He didn’t mind the first two. Being perceived as powerful was a boon in politics. He’d spent most of his life carefully cultivating the charming part, and he’d like to think it came from a place of authenticity.

  The single delineation, though. That just straight up pissed him off.

  Robert gave Martin a cautious look. “Explain to me why my relationship status is relevant.”

  “A single, twentysomething mayor-elect is a bachelor. A single, midthirties ex-mayor is just sad.”

  Robert made an exaggerated grunting noise. “Ouch.”

  Martin continued, showing no mercy. “We’ve already run focus groups on people’s reception to the Citizen cover. Generally positive. You’re hot, no surprise there. But ask ’em how they’d feel about a single, thirtysomething guy as a governor? Or in Washington? They hesitate. And when pressed for comment, the overwhelming consensus is ‘it’s a little weird.’”

  Robert itched to crack his knuckles, but he bit the inside of his cheek instead.

  The commentary about his single status wasn’t new. And he knew Martin was right. When he’d been elected at twenty-seven, his youth and unmarried status had been a novelty. Charming.

  At thirty-five, without so much as a hint of a girlfriend on the horizon, the situation seemed to escalate with every interview. The public appearances were even worse. He couldn’t show his face at a fund-raiser or gala without an overt come-on from nearly every single woman in the place, from recent college graduates all the way up to silver-haired divorcées. Silver foxettes, Kenny called them.

  It had gotten so bad he could no longer tell which ones had First Lady aspirations, and which were simply looking for bragging rights of having flirted with him. He even got the sense some of the married ones hoped to lure him into impropriety.

  They could try all they wanted. Robert had been careful to avoid even a trace of misconduct his entire adult life, and he had no intention of letting any woman, of any age group, drag him into scandal now.

  Unfortunately, these days he was feeling like he was stuck in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Apparently, there was such a thing as too much avoidance of romantic entanglements. Still, he refused to believe that he lived in a world where he’d be denied a job he was qualified for—a job he was good at—simply because he hadn’t put a ring on a woman’s finger.

  Robert threw out his usual argument. “Plenty of mayors, New York and otherwise, have been unmarried at the time of their tenure. Hell, most of them had downright messy personal relations.”

  “But they did have personal relations,” Martin said. “Face it, man, puritan as voters can be, the tide is turning. Happily married is still the preferred status, but barrin
g that, they’ll take a playboy over a monk.”

  “I’m not a monk,” Robert snapped, even though the number of nights he’d gone to bed alone in the last eight years belied that. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy women. He just hadn’t met one he enjoyed half as much as he did his job. And as far as the physical matters went, finding a woman he was attracted to and whom he trusted to be discreet was no easy task.

  “No, you’re not,” Martin said, “which is a perfect segue to the reason I’m here . . .”

  Robert lifted his hand to his forehead and tried not to feel frustrated by the fact that Martin was forever working an angle. Realistically, he knew he needed someone like Martin in his camp. But if he was completely honest with himself, it was harder and harder to like the man. Harder still to get on board with Martin’s various schemes.

  “You’ve got two minutes,” Robert said tiredly.

  “All I need,” Martin said, already reaching into his open briefcase and pulling out two tablets.

  Robert lifted his eyebrows. “You carry two iPads?” The fiftysomething man was usually a little more analog.

  “Caroline told me to get with the times,” he said, referring to his college-age daughter. “Okay, here we go. We’re making the play for governor next year, and we’ve got a damn good shot. Your approval ratings are high, your celeb status is through the roof thanks to the magazine, but we’ve got two obstacles. Big ones. First . . .” He handed Robert one of the tablets, and Robert was unsurprised to see a photo of the current governor on the screen.

  Robert lowered the iPad and glared at Martin in exasperation. “Believe it or not, I don’t need to pay you to know that the popular two-time incumbent has already announced he’s going for a third term. And by the way, George Brennan’s bachelor status hasn’t seemed to hurt him.”

  “George Brennan is a widower, not a bachelor,” Martin said. “Crucial difference, and another excellent segue.”

  “To what?”

  Martin gave a slow, smug smile as he took the iPad back. “The rumors.”

  Robert didn’t need to ask which rumors. George Brennan was about as close to a stock character in a political melodrama as you could get. Good-looking for nearing sixty. Personable, well spoken, distinguished.

  Officially, the man hadn’t made a single misstep. Unofficially, rumors had been swirling for years, everything from recreational drug use to paid escort services to a vile temper. But come election time, the rumors stayed rumors, and the man remained untouchable.