Better for Us by Vanessa Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

take a piece of his heart as they walked out of his life. As a matter of fact, he now did the walking.
    Noel was in his office wearing his carpet out as he tried to come up with a strategy for dealing with Ryla. He adored Jaylen and would forever be thankful that she was his daughter. But when it came to dealing with Ryla—that was another matter altogether. The woman was driving him nuts with her demands and drama. If she wasn’t telling him who Jaylen couldn’t be around, she was dictating how long he could keep her out at night, even though Jaylen was on summer break and didn’t have anywhere in particular to be first thing in the morning.
    Ryla was driving him to drink, or at least to think about drinking more than he had in years past. Noel prayed that he could stay away from alcohol and all the things that came with it. But to do that he would need to get Ryla off his back.
    A knock on his door stopped Noel’s pacing. “Come in,” he said as he sat down on the leather couch in his office.
    Ian stormed in, waving a newspaper around and looking as if somebody had stolen something from him. “I don’t want to say I told you so. But for the record, I did tell you that bringing Jaylen on the campaign trail was a bad idea.”
    With his feet propped up on the coffee table, Noel let out a long-suffering sigh. “What’s the problem now?”
    Ian thrust the newspaper in Noel’s face. “This means trouble for us, my friend.”
    Noel took the paper. The headline read, Former Bad Boy NBA Player Noel Carter Has a Baby Mama. Noel almost laughed at the headline. Because he knew the reason Gary Morrison had bothered to write the fit-for-a-tabloid piece was that he was a wannabe pro baller, trapped in a sportswriter’s fat body. As he read further, he noted that the cruel reporter provided Jaylen and Ryla’s full names, ages and the actual town in which they lived. He did everything but offer up their address and phone number.
    Noel threw the newspaper against the wall as he stood and growled. “I want Gary fired for this one.”
    Shaking his head, Ian said, “Everything in that article is factual. You can’t get the man fired for printing the facts.”
    “Come on, man. Everybody knows that Gary loves to trash me in his column simply because he got cut from the team the same year I got picked up. Now, if that doesn’t show bias in reporting, I don’t know what does.”
    “He can have as much bias as he wants, he just can’t lie,” Ian explained. He picked up the paper off the floor and added, “And anyway, there’s worse news than this.”
    A storm cloud of hot anger brewed in Noel’s eyes as he asked, “Did something happen to Jaylen as a result of this article?”
    Ian waved the notion away. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that this article has been out less than twenty-four hours and your poll numbers have already dropped.”
    Noel sat back down. “Polls fluctuate. We can’t hang our hopes on one poll versus another. Last week you were cheesing because I was a point ahead of Dan Bridges.”
    “Noel, you have to understand. You are the underdog. Representative Samuel Dwight held that title for six consecutive terms before he died, and his party is not about to just lie down and give his seat to you.”
    “Yeah, but Bridges tried to align himself with the Tea Party, and the polls you love to talk about so much show that America is sick of tea. They’d rather have a job or at least an elected official who will actually do something to help the people.”
    Ian sat down across from Noel. “The odds are in your favor to win. But it will be an uphill battle, because many of the voters still remember you as a womanizing, gambling drunk, with more money to spend than sense. We need to convince them that you are a changed man. And I’ll be honest with you, Noel. This article about you having a baby mama doesn’t help us one bit.”
    “I don’t know what you want me to do about it, Ian. I can’t go back