Page 64 of Married to My Master

Emily tried to believe her, but she just couldn't bring herself to.

Nothing was going to be fine with Dane gone. Nothing would ever be fine again, and she knew it.

Chapter Thirty

Emily

One Year Later

Emily felt like she had about ten pounds of pancake makeup on, and the stage-lighting beat down on her like the Sahara sun. Her chair was uncomfortable, reminding her of the ones Dane had used so well for her time-outs, and forced her into the perfect posture Geraldine West had drilled into her from the time she could stand on her own two feet. She sat there, legs crossed, with her hands folded on her knee like a prim and proper lady.

Across from her sat Charlene Padilla, newly elevated to talk show personality on cable news. It wasn't one of the major shows, but it was still a step up from her job as a news reporter.

A long year had passed, one filled with trials, headlines, bankruptcies, recriminations, and tabloid press. Emily, though, had come out on top. Or, as much on top as one could be when it came to a media dogpile like the one after Dane took Edward Barker hostage. But Emily had escaped all the stigma of Hymalete when the gravy-train ended, and the FDA and the Justice Department had come in. Edward and the rest of the board had been left holding the bag, and had taken most of the heat. The board itself, of course, got off scot-free, with BioSphere only getting sued into the ground and fined into non-existence.

But, Edward. Well, Edward was on trial and looking at some pretty serious time, especially with all the files that had escaped the data purge by ending up in Emily's personal email account.

“Tell us,” Charlene said, her beautiful green eyes shining like emeralds in the light. “What's it like one year on, after everything? The scandal with Hymalete was one of the biggest scandals to rock the world of Big Pharma in the last two decades, and it's always overshadowed your own personal experiences with the hostage hoax Dane Bishop used to bring it all to light. You've rarely spoken about the hostage situation in public since that day, but everyone is still curious.”

“Well,” Emily said, “it's still difficult to put it all into words. To be honest, I'm still trying to process everything that happened in that week. It all seemed to happen so fast, but so slowly at the same time. But I suppose everyone is still curious about the man behind it all, Dane Bishop, and how he, or anyone, could come to the decision he did about how to make the news hit the headlines, getting law enforcement and the public to take notice about the grave crimes he and I had uncovered at BioSphere.”

Charlene nodded, encouragingly, and Emily smiled.

She didn't want to talk about the bittersweet loss she felt every time she thought about Dane, or the intense longing in the pit of her stomach when she heard his name. She didn't want to tell them about how she still needed his touch, or that she dreamed of him at night sometimes. “It's just a testament, I feel, to the power of family, and what one brother was willing to do. As you know, Benton Bishop had been on death row due to the drug Hymalete, and Dane saw the injustice in it all.”

“Injustice?” Charlene asked. “What do you mean?”

“Injustice that his brother had ended up where he was because he had trusted BioSphere, and his doctors, to help. But, of course, they didn't, and he suffered. It was really that intrinsic injustice in the system that no one else saw, that made Dane Bishop snap the way he did. People at the top weren't doing their jobs, and executives at BioSphere, unbeknownst to me, were operating from a sick and twisted idea of shareholder value, so they could enrich themselves at the expense of the men and women who serve this country every day. What would you do in that situation, where your entire adult life has been dedicated to protecting the ideals of a nation, but all you were protecting was some giant corporation's ability to get rich off your brother?”

Charlene signaled a commercial break as Emily began to wind down on her little speech. “We'll be back in just a moment, after this break, and, when we return, we'll have a special guest.”

Emily kept her perfect smile, but she felt a little twinge, despite her poise. Special guest? She hadn't been told about a special guest.

The reporter leaned in as the cameraman signaled that they were clear. “Sorry to spring this on you,” she said. “But the next guest may cause a bit of a shock.”

“Guess you want to keep it as a surprise, then?” Emily asked, slightly incredulous.

“It'll make for better TV,” Charlene replied, as she fiddled with her mic and adjusted it. She caught Emily's wary eyes and gave her a warm smile. “I promise.”

Soon, the cameraman and state director were signaling that they were coming back up in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...

“I'm Charlene Padilla, and we're back with my special guest, Emily West, former CEO of BioSphere, which some viewers may remember from the Hymalete scandal just over a year ago. Now, we have a special guest, one whom is very happy to see our current one.”

At that cue, a tall, ginger-haired man with brooding, dark brown eyes came onto the stage. From his powerful build and the way he stood ramrod straight and moved with purpose, the casual observer could instantly tell he was ex-military.

Dane Bishop.

Emily's mouth dropped open a little as she watched him cross the studio stage. Every bit of him was just as she remembered, except for how smoothly shaven he was. She rose as he came closer and hugged him tightly.

# # #

Dane

Dane watched Emily on the screen hugging the man who might as well have been a stranger to her. He grinned, despite the fact that he wasn't the one there holding her. It was good to see Benton moving around and not wearing an orange jump suit.

He could tell from the way she embraced Benton on screen that she instantly knew something was wrong. It was the way he held her, Dane knew. Not like a lover. Not like the man that was meant to be with her for the rest of her life.

“Emily,” Benton said.

---