Page 123 of Marriage (Red, White &) Blues

Then I went on, “My friend, Miss Virgie, she’s from the South. She moved up to Michigan when she was younger to be closer to family. I don’t know if she’s ever eaten lemon ice box pie, but she needs to try yours. Every bite is like floating off to lemon heaven.”

“Then no more pie for you,” Blake said and I glared at him. “What? I’m selfish. I want you here, not in lemon heaven.”

I rolled my eyes at him, trying to suppress the defiant smile trying to weasel its way onto my lips. “Once again, you’re an idiot.”

“Uh—who’s more of an idiot? You agreed to marry me.”

“Still you,” Murielle said and I threw my head back hooting with laughter, raising my hand for a high-five. She slapped it, hooting right along with me.

“Touché,” Blake replied. “I’ll wear it with pride.”

“Always.” I stood up to stretch, and kissed my husband. He rubbed my belly in the midst of thisalmost-romance novel kiss.

“Why are people so afraid to show affection?” Murielle asked. “You two—you’re not afraid. If more people showed their feelings, I think we’d have fewer divorces in this country.”

“I love my wife,” he stated openly. “If people don’t like it, then sucks to be them.”

“It does. But now, sugar, I found what you needed and it’s unpleasant.”

“How unpleasant?” I asked, bracing.

Murielle’s face fell. “I hate this part—I surely do. If I thought Raymond Hill was bad, well, this is just unconscionable.”

“What… isunconscionable?” my husband asked cautiously.

She let loose a low, slow breath that sounded like “Fuck, here we go” to my brain. “Raymond Hill’s people didn’t hire that Lorelei bitch who set you up.”

“We wondered,” I said while trying to wrap my mind around it all.

“It wasn’t Raymond Hill. Heisresponsible for creating the fake memo and taking the blame. He was paid handsomely for it. She reached into the massive purse that sat on the floor leaning against the leg of her chair to pull out another manila envelope. She handed it to me as I was closer. I opened it, pulling out a thin stack of papers, reading the first page.

“What is this?” I asked.

Murielle reached over to point at a box on the paper. “I had to check out where some of the money from the campaign was being used. And that’s when I found this file. I know I wasn’t supposed to see it. It was buried deep at the bottom of one of the files I’d been searching, so I had to look inside,didn’t I?”

“Absolutely,” Blake replied. “I’d have looked.”

“I know,” she said, smiling big. “Anyway,that’sthe payout.”

I looked down at the amount of money. A half a million dollars. That was a lot of cake. “Then who?”

“Look on page three,” she directed, and I flipped through to the third page. Murielle tapped the bottom of the page and my mouth dropped open.

“What?” Blake asked. “Let me see.” He jumped up from his chair, moving around the table to stand behind me, leaning over my shoulder to read. “Candice Reed,” he read. CandiceFreakingReed. “Fucking Candice,” my husband spat.

“Could she afford a 500K payout? How much did a press secretary make?”

“Not that much, sweetheart. That’s what you live on, not give away.”

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” I started crumpling the papers in my grasp.

Murielle started laughing. “That Shakespeare was a smart man,” she said.

Now we had to figure out what was in it for Candice Reed. Who’d hired her as Brock’s press secretary? Brock? Emily?Robert. God, I’d bet money on Robert Parker.

Red filled my vision. Steam shot out my ears like in those cartoons. A cloud of anger exploded from the top of my head. I felt ready to kill. Well, until Blake placed his hand onto my shoulder and kissed my cheek.

“The baby,” he whispered in my ear, wrapping me in his warm, snuggly blanket of love. That was all he had to say. Getting so worked up wasn’t good for the baby. “We’ll figure this out, sweetheart.”

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