Reluctant Heiress

Ben Garrett did his best work under pressure. He thrived on challenges, deadlines and delivering the impossible. Obstacles were nothing more than hurdles to be jumped, shifted or removed as he saw fit. But the part of the game he loved best was developing strategies to alter or influence the public's perception, and he always played the game to win. His clients paid him handsomely to see that he did. The hard muscles of his athletic frame shifted beneath his tailored threepiece suit as he moved from the unanswered front door to the side gate of the modest beige duplex in the workingclass suburb Hayden, Pennsylvania. The toylike, earthgreen Volkswagen he recognized as Jillian Hadley's sat parked under the carport that belonged to her unit. It was a good bet that she was around there somewhere. Ben's specialty was media relations for The Garrett Group's highprofile clients; Washington, D.C."s movers and shakers, and the rich and famousor infamouswho wanted their images enhanced, subdued or altered completely. In the fifteen years since he'd earned his MBA from Yale, he'd also earned a reputation in those rarefied circles astheexpert at damage control. That ability was why his father, the senior partner in their prestigious public relations firm, and William Kendrick, his father's close friend and a longtime client, had both insisted that he handle Miss Hadley himself. The good news was that he would get to her before the press descended on her like vultures on carrion. The bad news was that the information he'd been given about William's newly disclosed daughter left him little to work with. All he knew about Jillian Hadley was that she taught grade school, that her sole meeting with William had not gone well and that no one had been able to reach her to warn her about yesterday's press conference. What concerned him most, though, what concerned them all for that matter, was that she was a potential powder keg in the scandal that had broken twentyfour hours ago. There hadn't been a newspaper, television station or radio talk show in the country that hadn't jumped on the stories about William's youngest daughter, Tess, being blackmailed by her exhusband, and about William's newly revealed affair and offspring. The gossip had gone international at the speed of light. TheLondon Daily Starhad announced the Crisis in Camelot in bold type on its front page. Headlines in Paris, Rome and on the Internet had leaned toward the theme of Tess paying for the sins of her father and speculation about whether his unnamed daughter had been paid for her silence. Since no one had any idea what Jillian might say, it was Ben's job to keep the powder keg she represented from blowing. Part of his job, anyway. William had also been adamant that she be protected from the media for her own sake as much as to protect him and his family from any potentially damaging comments she might make. He reached a small side gate in the white picket fence surrounding the backyard. Letting himself through, he strode past the neat, profusely blooming flowerbed at the side of the house. He had allotted himself twentyfour hours to accomplish his goal with Miss Hadley. As he absently checked the date and time on his Rolex, he hoped fervently that this aspect of the "affair situation," as it was being referred to in the office, would go as smoothly as the press conference he'd arranged and scripted yesterday. He was in the middle of a little family crisis of his own. He rounded the corner of the tidy little yard that looked much like the small yards on either side of it. Fruit trees and flower beds took up most of the space both sides of the duplex apparently shared. The bulk of his attention, though, settled on the slender brunette standing barefoot in the grass by a redwood picnic table. He recognized her delicate cameo&Flynn, Christine is the author of 'Reluctant Heiress ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373248353 and ISBN 0373248350.