Scandal Never Sleeps Read Online Free PDF

needed. “Oh, if you want to feel like one of the guys, we can do that for you. In fact, we’ll be happy to remind you of the days you were a dumbass kid, Scooter.”
    Zack groaned, but at least something besides desolation lit his eyes. “Don’t call me that, either. It’s bad enough that my Secret Service callsign is The Professor. I don’t need to be reminded about that damn scooter incident.”
    But the scooter incident had been so much fun. “I promise nothing.”
    •   •   •
    E verly Parker looked around the swanky bar and felt out of place. This wasn’t her crowd, even though she worked with some of these people. She wasn’t a big bar hopper. She didn’t watch the clock and wait for five p.m. so she could hit her favorite watering hole. No, she was a work-long-hours-and-go-home-to-a-good-book-and-hot-bath kind of girl. But tonight she wanted to be someone else—anyone who hadn’t buried her mentor and friend an hour ago and wasn’t now staring down the possibility of losing both her job and the roof over her head.
    “Hey, are you going to nurse that drink all night long?” Scott Wilcox leaned over and winked. He was on his third margarita. “Because I think you should down a few glasses of wine and be my wingwoman. Harry from accounting is here and I swear I’m going to die if I don’t go out with that hunk of man soon. He’s the only truly beautiful boy at work. He should be mine.”
    Everly smiled. After she’d started at Crawford last year, she’d met Scott during her orientation. Initially, she’d mistaken his playful nature for a come-on. But he’d finagled her into having coffee with him shortly thereafter and apologized for giving her the wrong impression. He’d admitted that he hadn’t been himself because he’d recently been through a rough breakup with his boyfriend. Scott sometimes used his happy-go-lucky face to mask his somber moods. To finally see him let go of his lost love and dip his toe in the dating pool with a hot guy thrilled her.
    Honestly, Everly wasn’t sure she believed in true love. Attraction and affection, yes, but love? Her father had been burned by the concept. He’d taken the shock and sorrow of his wife’s abandonment tohis grave. Her mother had always seemed so distant, as though she’d spent her life up until the moment she’d walked out on them longing for something else.
    She shook her head. “Scott, I don’t even know what a wingwoman would do.”
    He sat back and thought about it for a moment. “Well, first you should go over there and talk me up. Tell him how perfect I am, what a great guy I can be. If that doesn’t work, then slip him a roofie so I can have my wicked way with him.”
    She rolled her eyes. Sometimes Scott had a vivid imagination. “Sure. I’ll get right on that.”
    “I tried,” he said with a long sigh, his gaze trailing to the back of the room.
    Everly followed his stare. A waitress in a female version of a tuxedo carried what looked to be a cheese plate past a large black man wearing a nondescript suit and aviators. He guarded a door that led to what she could only imagine was a VIP section.
    “See that? I heard a rumor,” Scott whispered in her ear. “While you were in the bathroom, Marty from processing stopped by and told me the craziest story.”
    “You shouldn’t listen to him. He’s a horrible gossip.”
    “Do you want the scoop or not?”
    She was kind of afraid that the next big scoop after Scott’s would be “Wonder Girl Gets Fired After Kindly Employer Dies.” She’d shot through the ranks like a comet, and now she was going to hit the ground with a great big thud. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when the new boss came in and found out his or her head of information security was a too-young-for-her-position hacker who everyone except Maddox Crawford thought couldn’t handle the job. Maddox had been her champion, her mentor in this crazy corporate world. He’d also been a