Yield to Me by Tory Richards Page B

raw burn that settled in his gut. At least it gave him something else to
think about other than the little witch in his bedroom.
    “Have you found out what’s going on
between your daughter and Lord, if anything?” he asked, setting his glass
aside.
    Shaking his head negatively, the
senator’s mouth became tight and grim beneath his neatly trimmed mustache. “Not
a damn thing so far. Jonathan is a sneaky bastard. He appears to have a lot of
people in his pocket and all of them spineless cowards. Not a one willing to
spill the beans on anything we can use, if they know anything. It’s frustrating
as hell and my team isn’t getting anywhere.”
    Buying off your enemies was just one
of the perks of being a millionaire. “Senator, if you don’t mind my asking,
what makes you think Sophie doesn’t want to marry him?” He knew money was a
powerful incentive. “Has she given you any reason to believe… ”
    “No!” Senator Adams snapped, leaning
forward with a fierce expression on his square-boned face. “I know there’s
something going on here, Brent. Every time I look at her when she doesn’t know
I’m watching I see the way she cringes away from him when he gets too close. I
see the relief in her eyes when he finally walks away. A woman in love doesn’t
act like that.”
    He took a deep breath, reaching for
his glass and swallowing the contents in an angry gesture. It surprised Brent
to see his hand actually shaking. He’d never known the senator to show weakness
of any kind.
    “The one time I questioned her about
it she brushed it aside saying I was imagining things. Said
there was nothing that would keep her from getting married.” He snorted
scornfully, reaching for a decanter and refilling his glass, some of the liquid
splashing over onto his desk. “I should have asked her point blank if she loved
the bastard.”
    Brent had seen Sophie react to Lord
the same way so he knew the senator wasn’t being paranoid or just an overprotective
father. Leaning back in his chair, he quietly observed his old friend. His
reaction was normal for a father who loved his daughter, and had qualms about
her reasons for marrying a man most of the public feared and disliked. He
couldn’t help wondering if it went a lot deeper than that, though. Maybe the
senator disliked Lord for other reasons. He sounded like he had a personal
vendetta against his daughter’s fiancé.
    “Go ahead and say it,” the senator
quipped, obviously reading his mind.
    Brent shrugged. “It sounds like you
have more reasons for breaking up their relationship. Maybe your suspicions
aren’t grounded. It wouldn’t be the first time someone married for money.”
    “My daughter isn’t like that,
Brent,” he said, shaking his head vehemently, his brows drawn together. “Sophie
has more money than she’ll ever spend in her lifetime. Yet you guessed right
when you said I have reasons for wanting to stop this. I know Jonathan, too.
He’s a ruthless, blackmailing bastard who doesn’t do anything without it benefiting
him in some way. I’ve heard stories about him for years.”
    Brent wondered what kind of dirt
Lord had dug up on Sophie, or the senator. He searched his memory for anything
he could recall hearing during the ten years they’d known each other; some tiny
bit of gossip that usually had a way of surfacing when someone ran for office,
whether it ended up in the news or not. However, nothing came to mind that
would ruin the senator’s career.
    “Then maybe you’d better focus on
what that something could be,” Brent remarked dryly, running his hands through
his dark hair. “Because if Lord’s blackmailing her, it must
be pretty big. And when you find out what it is you’d better be prepared
to make a decision.”
    He knew the senator was smart enough
to figure out what he meant. When the time came, his decision would probably be
based on whether he wanted to continue with his political career or not. Could
he sacrifice Sophie if