“But I don’t want them. I want Samantha. I’ve never met a woman with a mind like hers. She was like a man wrapped in a woman’s body.”
Guadalupe wasn’t sure exactly how to interpret that, but she continued to soothe him nonetheless. “What was so special about her?”
“She saved my life. And she was just… different. She knew a lot about medicine, for starters. And had talent as a writer.” He exhaled against her shoulder, remembering Sam’s mediocre poem in response to his much better one. “A little feminist for my tastes, but I could stifle that eventually.”
Knowledgeable about medicine? A writer? And a feminist? Certainly it couldn’t be… Guadalupe glanced at the latest Samantha Says column and suddenly realized it had to be her. The woman who had shown up on this same doorstep where she awkwardly held Dr. Cook.
Thomas stiffened and let go of Guadalupe. “But now she’s dead to me.”
If truth be told, their love had been doomed from the beginning. It was no surprise that when Thomas proposed the incredibly generous offer to be exclusive to Sam—as far as she would ever know—even he had his doubts. First, he wasn’t the exclusive type. Second, Samantha wasn’t even that pretty. What would people think when they saw them together in public? But third, and most important, Sam worked for the very magazine he already had plans to shut down.
Thomas Cook wasn’t just a pharmaceutical mogul. He also dabbled in publishing. And Cook Media had taken ownership of the dying rag with the intention of dismembering it and shifting gears to something more national—like a hunting or fishing magazine. Everyone liked hunting and fishing! And more than actually hunting and fishing, people liked reading about others hunting and fishing. Thomas believed he was tapping into a goldmine.
He had kept this secret to himself while he whittled away at Sam’s resolve not to date him. But now all bets were off. Not just because Sam stole his ledger, or because she went public with it, and definitely not because she betrayed his heart. Bottom line, she was a powerless woman who needed to be put in her place. He no longer loved Samantha Stanton. She was plain looking, overly opinionated, and worst of all had terrible taste in men.
What better way was there to control a woman than taking everything she loved? After he made sure Sam’s writing career ended in a train wreck, he’d next go after her reputation. But women like her didn’t mind a little public judgement. So the final attack would hit her where it hurt: siphon any lingering passion from her un-Thomas-loving heart.
He couldn’t wait to give her a taste of her own medicine.
Chapter 25
Miss Posey shivered from her front porch, arms folded against the October chill, hair in curlers, tut-tutting Sam’s every step.
“It’s only downhill from here,” she yelled across her yard at Sam, waving the latest Pittsburgh Post. “You’ve made the papers. Again.”
This wasn’t the first time someone had approached Sam about the latest media frenzy dragging her against her will into the limelight with her Big Pharma exposé. For the past couple months the tabloids had merely tainted Sam’s personal life as a “scorned ex-lover seeking vengeance,” but it was only a matter of time before Thomas Cook countered with something that would destroy her professionally.
When that day finally came, and it inevitably did, Sam’s mass destruction showed up on the cover of Newsbreak. They accused her of falsifying documents in a vendetta against Thomas Cook after he dumped her in order to push her “dangerous homeopathic quackery.”
Of course everyone took his word over hers. She was just a woman scorned, a tree-hugging fraud trying to sell empty promises. He was a reputable doctor, an honest businessman trying to save lives.
“You should be ashamed of yourself.” A woman in the produce section of the grocery store stopped sniffing a pomegranate to turn and stare at Sam, who was searching for an in-season fall fruit she could pass out for Halloween and that wouldn’t get her house egged.
“Excuse me?” Sam asked.
“I recognize you from the papers.”
Sam glanced at the fruit the woman had stopped scrutinizing in exchange for scrutinizing Sam instead.
“Based on the skin color, that pomegranate is overripe. It shouldn’t have dark spots,” Sam offered, hoping to distract the woman from piecing together Sam’s face with the photo on the front page. But the woman was relentless.
“You’re the girl trying to discredit poor Dr. Cook because he broke up with you.”
“Wouldn’t you be a little upset if a man proposed to you, got you pregnant, and then suddenly up and left?” Sam said innocently as she rubbed her belly gently.
It was the third time that week someone felt compelled to inform her of how horrible she was, and since she couldn’t put the rumors to rest, she figured she’d just create some more.
“You’re pregnant with his child? Out of wedlock?”
“It’s either that or I’ve got a bad case of gas.”
For a split second, the woman’s eyes widened in shock, then instantly narrowed. “No one likes a smart-aleck, missy,” she gruffed.
“And no one likes a rotten pomegranate,” Sam replied, then whispered to herself, “Or a rotten woman.”
An hour later a wiry-haired attendant shook his head at Sam as if she were a traitor to her country. “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” he commented as Sam pulled up to the gas pump. “You deserve jail for such slander.”
Ten minutes later Sam barely made it home as she cruised up her driveway on fumes. A blue Pontiac sat out front of her house, and leaning on the hood of the car was Raul. As she parked, he walked up to her car door and opened it, holding out a small paper bag.
“I brought chipped ham sandwiches for dinner.”
She glanced at his other hand, which held today’s newspaper.
“With a side dish of bad news?” Sam asked.