âHow do you know how I feel, Rose?â
âI donât know, Xander. Iâm just not sure where this is going.â
âWe donât have to know right away. Iâve regretted losing you all these years. When I saw you at the diner, I couldnât help myself. I wanted to see if the magic was still there.â
âIs it?â
âOh, yeah.â
He craved Roseâs touch. The more he had of her, the more he wanted. But if things went wrong they wouldnât have the luxury of walking away from one another again. They had a son to consider.
âJoeyâs important, but these past weeks havenât just been about our son. Theyâve been about us, too. I want to see where this can go, Rose.â
âSo do I. But I donât want to be your dirty little secret â¦â
***
Heir to Scandal is a Secrets of Eden story: Keeping their past buried isnât so easy when love is on the line.
One
Strawberries. The leading story on the news was about strawberries. No murders, no robberies, no political scandals. âXander,â he said to himself with a wry chuckle, âyouâre not in D.C. anymore.â
Xander Langston had been glued to the local news tonight, as he had been for the past two nights, waiting for things to hit the fan. Heâd come home to Cornwall to handle the fallout, but so far the local broadcasts had focused on the unseasonably mild weather, the local youth baseball teamâs successes and the upcoming strawberry festival. He flipped off the old fuzzy television in the living room and tossed the remote onto the coffee table. He was ordering a flat-screen television for the bunkhouse and the main house the next time he got on his laptop. He wouldnât have time to drive into Canton and buy them in person.
If the biggest buzz around town was the Strawberry Days Festival, life was good. No news was good newsâespecially with his first book hitting shelves next week and an election year coming up. His critics liked to point out that heâd been elected the first time only because his predecessor and mentor, beloved longtime congressman Walt Kimball, had hand-selected him to follow in his footsteps. Whatever the reason, Xander had succeeded in a landslide victory over his opponent. At the time, he was one of the youngest congressmen ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, just making the age requirement of twenty-five.
This fall he would be kicking off yet another reelection campaign and Xander would prefer to remain gainfully employed. That meant a solid voting record, no sound bites that could be taken out of context and absolutely no scandals of any kind. Typically, it was easy for Xander to avoid scandals. He wasnât married, so he couldnât have affairs. He didnât have an interest in prostitutes. Heâd never been offered any bribes, and even if he had, he would have turned them down.
But everyone had a skeleton in their closet, so to speak. And that was why he was back in Connecticut at the Garden of Eden Christmas Tree Farm watching this crappy television instead of burning the midnight oil in his Capitol Hill office.
With a sigh, Xander got up from the couch and walked over to the window. The sun had already disappeared behind the rolling green hills, but it was still light enough to illuminate the farm. For as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but balsam and Fraser fir trees.
It was a startling view after being away for so long. Looking out the window of his office in the Longworth House Building earned him an excellent view of the Capitol Building and the sea of tourists and buses traveling up and down Independence Avenue. Those people traveled thousands of miles for the sights he ignored on a daily basis. He was too busy to appreciate the classic architecture and historic significance surrounding him. Most of the time, he took the underground tunnels to the Capitol Building and missed it entirely.
He might have a plush, professionally decorated town house a few blocks from the office in the Capitol Hill district, but this placeâwith its old, worn furniture and acres of treesâwas home. This was where heâd grown up. Being back here, surrounded by the calming influences of nature and fresh air, Xander felt more at ease than he had since he left home for Georgetown and a fast-track career in politics. There was no traffic gridlock here, no honking cabs, no frantic running through the metro stations. He could finally breathe.