Rocky And The Senator's Daughter. Dixie Browning

Sullivan in the first place. The guy was smooth. He had the kind of face the cameras loved, but Rocky had once heard him on a radio talk show when a caller had asked if he was worried about the Chi-coms controlling both ends of the Panama Canal.

      Judging by his response, the poor jerk had never heard of the Panama Canal, much less any possible political ramifications. He had stumbled around in search of a response and ended up parroting the day’s talking points about campaign finance reform. By the end of the program he’d been batting 0 for 4.

      Still, the guy must have had something on the ball. Sarah Mariah had married him. And just as she had stood by her father during the Senate hearings, she had stood stoically beside her husband as, one after another, all his tawdry little secrets had been exposed. With a face that revealed none of her emotions, she had quietly shamed all but the hardcore paparazzi before it was over into granting her grudging respect.

      But by that time Rocky had stopped watching. Enough was enough.

      Enough was too damned much.

      The congressman’s sleazy affairs had been too commonplace to sustain a media barrage for long, once it was determined that national security was not at stake. The mess had sprung up again briefly a few months later when Sullivan had taken dead aim at a bridge abutment and totaled both himself and his car. Shortly after that, Sarah Mariah dropped out of sight.

      That must have been about the same time that Rocky himself had dropped out. One way of putting it. He had watched Julie’s final decline. He had cried. He had read until he couldn’t face another book. He’d watched an entire season of baseball, his own brand of opiate. When he’d realized he was drinking too much, he had quit cold turkey. All things considered, it hadn’t exactly been a banner year.

      A few nights after Dan Sturdivant’s retirement party, Rocky was watching the news and toying with the idea of doing a series of columns when he caught a thirty-second teaser for a daytime talk show featuring Binky Cudahy, author of the upcoming bestseller, The Senator’s Daughter’s Husband’s Other Women.

      That’s when it hit him. Wherever she’d gone, whatever kind of a life she had managed to salvage for herself, the congressman’s widow was probably going to come in for some unwelcome attention once the book hit the stands. Did she even know about it? Did she watch daytime TV?

      For all he knew she might be lying on the sand soaking up sun on some tropical island by now. God knows, she deserved a break.

      But she also deserved to know what was headed her way, in case she needed to duck. Rocky knew he could find her. He’d put in too many years as a reporter not to have sources. Although why he should feel this proprietary interest in a woman he’d met only one time, and that more than twenty years ago, he couldn’t have said. Maybe because there was a big, gaping hole where his life used to be.

      Well, hell…the least he could do was give her fair warning that the buzzards would soon be circling again.

      Two

      Sarah Mariah flexed her sore hands and examined the newest crop of injuries. The mashed thumb had been yesterday. The sprained little finger several days before that. Today’s scratches were only a minor irritation, but honestly, she was going to have to do better. Good thing she’d had her tetanus booster.

      All she’d been trying to do was untangle the wild grapevines from the shrubs that had been allowed to grow unchecked for decades. It wasn’t as if she’d been tackling a jungle with her bare hands. The shrubs were threatening to lift the eaves, but she couldn’t even prune the blamed things until she could get rid of the blasted vines.

      Still, if stiff hands and a few scratches were the worst she had to show for today’s work, she’d consider herself lucky. She was still scratching chiggers, and last week she’d had to go after a tick in an inaccessible place with a mirror and a pair of tweezers. Living alone had its drawbacks, but the upside definitely outweighed the downside.

      She poured herself a glass of milk and made a salsa and mozzarella sandwich on whole grain bread, feeling righteous because she would rather have had a bacon-cheeseburger with fries. Taking her tray into the parlor, she kicked off her shoes and sprawled out in a recliner that was half a century newer than the rest of her great-aunt’s furniture. It was one of the few really comfortable pieces in the house.

      There was a TV on a spool-legged table. It had died a natural death several years ago and had never been replaced. Sarah had no intention of having it repaired, although she might decide to free up the table for a potted plant. She had a weather radio and a subscription to the Daily Advance. Those, plus weekly trips to the grocery store and sporadic trips to the post office filled her needs for contact with the outside world. If World War III or a tornado threatened, she trusted one of the neighbors to warn her.

      It had come as no great surprise that her late great-aunt’s lifestyle suited her far better than life in suburban D.C. Sarah had hated Washington, hated the whole political scene. But then, she hadn’t chosen it, she’d been born into it. And then she’d had the poor judgment to marry into the same circles. She would like to think she had played her role competently, if with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, right to the end.

      During her father’s ordeal, Stan had been worse than useless. He’d practically fallen apart. On the few nights when he stayed in, he was drunk by the time she served dinner. She hadn’t understood at the time why he’d seemed almost panicked. He couldn’t possibly have been involved, she’d reasoned, because if he’d been a part of anything illegal they would have quickly discovered it. He’d had flawless manners and the face of a sexy choirboy. That guileless grin alone had brought in the women’s votes. He’d seemed so open, so honest—such a refreshing change from all the others. She remembered once trying to reassure him by telling him not to feel guilty, that none of her father’s crimes was his fault. His only sin was being married to the senator’s daughter.

      She’d said it with a smile—or as much of a smile as she could manage—but he hadn’t said a word, either in his own defense or hers. Not that she’d expected him to defend her father. What the senator had done was indefensible. But he might at least have absolved her of the guilt of being J. Abernathy’s daughter.

      He hadn’t. A year or so after the Senate hearings, when her husband had started behaving oddly, she had tried to be understanding. After all, it had been an ordeal for him, too. She remembered thinking that once his term ended she would try to talk Stan into selling the house they’d just purchased and not running for office again. They could go somewhere—anywhere—and start over.

      Then the dam had burst and it had happened all over again. The same nightmare, only this time it was even uglier. For the first few days she had been in denial. When she’d been forced to confront the truth—when her husband, in a rare sober moment, had confessed to everything—she’d been devastated. Addie, the old housekeeper who was the nearest thing to a mother she’d had since Mariah Jones had died, had been ready to retire to South Carolina with her granddaughter when the senator’s troubles had begun. She had stayed on for Sarah’s sake and then returned when Stan’s scandal had broken, knowing how desperately Sarah would need her.

      While every dirty little secret in her husband’s life—every secret but one, thank God—had been exposed, the senator had chosen to hole up in a beach house in North Carolina belonging to his friend, lawyer-lobbyist Clive Meadows. There’d been no reason to expect him to stand by her—he’d never been there for her at any other time in her life, but she could have done with a bit of moral support.

      Looking back, Sarah knew he’d made the right choice. His presence would only have stirred up the past. One scandal at a time was all she could deal with.

      Thank God for Great-Aunt Emma’s legacy. Sarah had visited her maternal grandmother’s sister several times as a small child and fallen in love with the stark old farmhouse. The tiny community of Snowden, North Carolina was only a short distance off the highway they always took driving down from Washington to Duck, on the Outer Banks, where her father had the use of Clive’s palatial beach house.

      When her mother