But then he’d found out who had suggested she get the charm. That had ruined the pleasure for him.

She laughed and covered herself. “Poor George. So upset over Jay’s demise he can’t even make love to his wife.”

“Not when she still reeks of Drake.”

“Oh, please. Don’t take a self-righteous posture with me. You’re in the throes of a ridiculous affair with the teenybopper who hustles drinks at the country club.”

“She’s twenty-six. She only looks eighteen.”

If anything could hurt Miranda-and he had a powerful need to hurt her just now-it was a reminder that she wasn’t getting any younger. Thirty had come and gone. Forty loomed. It was still a long way off, but she was terrified of it.

In her youth, she’d been Miss Charleston County, Miss South Carolina, Miss This and Miss That. She had more tiaras and trophies than the housekeeper could keep polished. Other girls were winning those titles now. Girls with firmer thighs and perkier tits. Girls who didn’t get Botox injections as regularly as pedicures.

Idly, painfully, he wondered if the current Miss Charleston County would have an abortion just to keep her tummy tight.

Miranda’s rich laughter interrupted that dark thought. “Does your tacky little affair explain why you’re popping Viagra these days?” He gave her a sharp look. “Oh, yes. I found it in the medicine cabinet.”

“I’m amazed you could locate it among all the pills you keep in there.” He set his empty glass on the portable bar and considered pouring another shot of vodka but talked himself out of it. He’d kept a buzz going for the last thirty-six hours. Miranda was right; it didn’t look good.

“If you need a pill in order to keep it up for your new, young girlfriend, you’re more pathetic than I thought.”

She was trying her best to rile him, to start something or, rather, continue it. Usually he’d get right into it with her and keep it going until she won. Miranda always won.

But today, he didn’t want to play their game. He had other things on his mind, life-and-death issues that were weightier than their ongoing contest to see who could inflict the most painful wound.

“We’re both pathetic, Miranda.”

He went to the window and moved aside the drape, which had been pulled closed, no doubt to create a more romantic ambience for her and Drake. From this second-story vantage point, George could see down onto the back lawn of the estate, where a crew of men were mowing, weeding, clipping. Separated from the formal lawn by a stone-wall border, the irrigated acreage spread out like a green apron. A white wood fence enclosed a pasture where their racehorses grazed.

He could see the roof of the multicar garage that housed his father-in-law’s collection of classic cars as well as his own fleet of automobiles, kept buffed and polished and gassed up, ready to roll at his whim.

George McGowan had come from the working class. Money, actually the lack of it, had been a constant worry to his folks. In order to provide for his family of seven, his daddy had worked overtime at Conway Concrete and Construction Company. It was hot and dusty work that killed him well before his time. He’d dropped dead one August afternoon while working an extra shift. The doctor said he hadn’t felt a thing.

Who would ever have guessed that his oldest son, George, would wind up marrying Miranda Conway, only child of the owner of the enterprise, the most desired girl around, because she was not only the most beautiful but also the richest. She was a debutante, a beauty queen, and an heiress. She could have had any man she wanted. She had wanted George McGowan.

“I can’t go back and undo it,” he said quietly as he watched the Thoroughbreds graze, taking their life of privilege as their due. As Miranda did. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. God help me, I couldn’t give all this up.” He let the drape fall back into place and turned toward her. “I couldn’t give you up.”

She tossed back her hair and looked at him with exasperation. “Stop being such a crybaby, George. For crissake. Jay Burgess died in bed with a naked lady beside him. Don’t you think he’d rather go that way than die of cancer?”

“Knowing Jay like I did, yeah, he probably would.”

She gave him her smile, the one that would make a man sell his soul to have her. “That’s my boy. That’s my hero. That’s my strong, handsome George.” She stood up and started walking toward him with a feline gait, slowly untying the belt of her robe and letting it slide off her.

When she reached him, she pressed her lush body against him and boldly began massaging him through his trousers. “Are you sad, baby? Worried? I know how to make you feel better. You’ve never needed Viagra with me, have you?”

She caressed him with a know-how that could only be achieved with practice. Lots of practice. He gritted his teeth and tried to reverse the rush of blood funneling toward her stroking fist, but resisting her was a lost cause. He cursed her to hell and back, but she only laughed and unzipped his trousers.

“Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie. Kissed the girls and made them…” Coming up on tiptoe, wrapping one long leg around him, she bit the lobe of his ear, then whispered, “Make me cry.”

His soul was lost already, too far gone to ever hope for redemption. So, what the hell did it matter?

Roughly, he thrust himself into her.

“Mr. Fordyce, they’re replaying it now.”

“Thank you.”

Attorney General Cobb Fordyce’s personal assistant withdrew, leaving him alone in his office. He’d asked her to alert him if Britt Shelley’s press conference was aired a second time.

He swiveled his chair around to face the walnut cabinetry behind his desk and used a remote to switch on the television set, to watch what had been broadcast live during the lunch hour, which he’d missed because of a meeting.

Cobb didn’t know Britt Shelley personally, only professionally. She’d been a fledgling reporter during the election that put him in this office, and she’d advanced just as he had. Often she covered the state capitol for the Charleston station, and he’d seen her on-air work there.

She was a tough but fair interviewer, far superior to the station’s other reporters, better than the station’s news operation altogether, and he’d often wondered why she hadn’t been snatched up by a larger TV market.

He’d also wondered if she purposefully downplayed her attractiveness so it wouldn’t be a distraction to the story or a drawback to her credibility. When a hurricane had been threatening Charleston last year, she’d covered it live, dressed in a jacket with the hood drawstring tied tightly beneath her chin, her face washed clean of makeup by the torrential rain. Hardly glamorous.

She was no prima donna and no pushover. She certainly didn’t look like one as she faced an audience of her colleagues and stated she didn’t remember anything beyond going into Jay Burgess’s town house. Then she alleged that she’d been given a date rape drug.

She was articulate, earnest, believable. But if her urinalysis came back negative, her attorney would have a hell of a hard time proving that she’d ingested a drug that would cause total memory loss.

The lawyer seemed to realize that. He looked uneasy and uncertain about his client’s claim. He looked constipated. He appeared to be the kind of timid defender who actually helped prosecutors get convictions.

She, on the other hand, was confidence personified. Of course, she was adroit at playing to a camera. Cobb had experience with that himself. She knew how to evoke a self-serving emotion from her audience. He could relate to that, too.

The press conference ended with her saying that she wanted to learn the cause of Jay Burgess’s death. She said it with enough conviction that, despite his skeptical nature, Cobb Fordyce believed her.