Exclusive by Sandra Brown

Heart pounding thriller, sabotage, blackmail, but in the end you still didn’t know what really happened.  At the end there is a conclusion but who is really guilty the lines get blurred with who really killed the baby.  Exclusive is intense and fantastic to read.

A second-string with first class talent, Barrie Travis is stuck at a low-budget independent television station struggling to survive among the giant networks.  Then, suddenly, she recieves an invitation from First Lady Vanessa Merritt for an off-the-record conversation.  Barrie’s reporter’s instincts are instantly aroused.

During a furtive, emotionally charged meeting, Barrie sees that the President’s beautiful wife is stunned by grief after the crib death of their infant son.  Vanessa’s motive for meeting Barrie seems to be to share her headache with another woman.  What Barrie overlooks in her excitment at hearing the confidences of the First Lady are the questions she should be asking: Why would Vanessa Merritt call her?  And why would the President’s wife hint to an unknown reporter that her child may have been murdered?

Blind to everything but getting her exclusive, Barrie is determined to investigate the death of teh President’s child.  But she soon realizes that getting the story will test her ethics and her patriotism.  Would she expose information that could topple the presidency?  She confronts this problem when she tracks down Gray Bondurant, a former presidential aide and war hero who shunned the poltics of Washington in favor of life on a remote Wyoming ranch.  And when they both begin to follow a trail of lies and intrigue right to the White House door, Barrie’s exclusive puts at least three people on the firing line: First Lady, Gray, and herself-as crimes and ambitions combine to endanger their lives and the future of the nation.

Finishing reading you are in awe and still confused in a way.  Excluive was an intense thriller and a joy to read about.  I liked that this concentrated on the first family with a reporter who gets a hunch and runs with it.

Reporters usually come out on the bottom and dead somewhere with these types of novels but with help Barrie is able to survive, barely.

I love the sexual tension between Gray and Barrie, it is intense just like everything else about them.  But it is not easy for them.

The secret of who is the babies father for the first lady will shock you.  It drove me crazy and you wanted to know the truth but only at the end do you find out.

Sandra Brown delivers a suspenseful and heated novel with the sensual tension and adventure.  A novel worth reading.