Dirty Little Secrets by Kierney Scott Page B

know anyone else who spends time there? Anyone with a remote cabin along the lake? A place where two men could go away for quiet weekends?”
    Megan’s hand pushed into the thick grass until her knuckles turned white. “This is irrelevant. I don’t know where you’re going with this but again it’s none of your business who he has sex with. Will adding that small detail to your story be enough to run it again? How much embarrassment are you hoping for? Is there a quota I should know about?”
    James ignored the question. “Chad wasn’t there to see you. He wasn’t there to see Louise, which leaves one person: your husband. The husband you were so eager to tell when you cheated on him. I will admit that threw me. But what really threw me was why you are not on birth control. If you were my wife, I would be fucking you on a daily basis, hell, probably more than once a day. And no man wants to use condoms with his wife. You’re not sleeping with the Senator because he is gay. You know it and you are his cover. I still don’t know who you were before you became Megan McCoy, but trust me, I’ll find out. It’s only a matter of time.”
    “Why?” Megan demanded. “Why did you come here and make accusations about me and my husband? It’s no one’s fucking business who anyone sleeps with. I wish you and every stupid closed-minded person in America would get it through their thick skulls. It’s none of your business. How dare you, you stupid, arrogant, judgemental man.”
    Megan jumped up and grabbed her bag, throwing it behind her shoulder.
    Finally there was emotion. “Deny it,” James said. “Deny it. Prove me wrong.”
    “I have nothing to prove to you or anyone else.” She began walking back to the treatment facility, her pace just short of a run.
    “Megan, I’m going to run the story. I just wanted to give you the heads up. If you want to get out of Dodge, now is the time to go. I
am
here as a friend. I want to give you time to get things together. You might want to leave town for a while.”
    She stopped and spun on her heel. “And go where, asshole? Ben is all I have.”
    There was look of such utter sorrow in her eyes, it caused him to stop. She looked like an animal being sent to the slaughter: scared, defenceless, and confused. He didn’t want to intentionally inflict pain on her. He wasn’t cruel, but he was not going to compromise his ethics because she looked like a deer in the headlights. The truth was the truth and he was going to report it. If she thought the media coverage now was invasive, wait until she had the full glare of the spotlight beating down on her. Megan’s life was about to get really shitty. She needed to have people around her to look out for her.
    “Listen, I’m telling you, if you aren’t going to leave town, you are going to at least want to have your family around, circle the wagons. You’ll need their support.”
    Megan shook her head. “Ben is my family. He is all I have. There is nowhere for me to go, no one to run to. I have Ben, that’s all. There is no one else, no place else. So remember that when you’re running your story and destroying our lives.”
    She was shaking now.
    James ran his hand through his hair and let out a stream of air. He wouldn’t kill the story. He couldn’t, not for her, not for him, not for anyone. He had made lots of mistakes in his life, but he was always honest. He couldn’t stop the story but he could let Megan know the magnitude of shit that was about to come raining in on her. “If I don’t run it, some one else will. I’m not the first one to figure it out, and I won’t be the last. Ben fucked up, not just this time. There was another reporter onto him. That is why I scheduled the interview on Friday night.” He stopped and reflected on the intelligence of telling her the rest. If she was involved he would be tipping her off, giving her time to destroy evidence and create an alibi. But if she wasn’t involved she