his fingers together and peered harder at her. She didn’t squirm, not one whit. Was he losing his touch? He’d wipe that calm off her face.
“Yes,” he said, hitting her with it immediately. “I’m going to give you the assignment of your life.”
Her fair skin went paler. Her blue eyes got wider.
“This story won’t just change your career. It will make your career.”
She seemed speechless. Good. Inwardly he smirked.
“This is big stuff, Mitchell,” Heywood Cronin told her. “It’s got everything—money, mystery, power struggles. Sex. Revenge. But most of all, human interest. Your specialty.”
He sat back with satisfaction and watched his words sink in.
DELIGHT FLOODED KITT. Suddenly Heywood Cronin, elderly, grizzled, balding and bent, looked as radiant as a spirit guide to her.
Then he squinted through his thick glasses and smiled his thin smile. “Go home and pack. Monday you leave. For Crystal Creek, Texas.”
Crystal Creek? Kitt felt as if the office ceiling had crashed down on her. Dismay swept away her delight. Crystal Creek was the last place in the universe she wanted to go. Heywood Cronin no longer seemed luminously benevolent. He seemed like a capricious troll playing games with her life.
“Well?” he demanded, leaning toward her over his vast desk.
Say something! Kitt commanded herself. She cleared her throat. “Well, Mr. Cronin, you see…I—I’m from Crystal Creek. It could cause a conflict. It would be hard for me to write objectively about it.”
Cronin hunched lower, as if crouching for attack. “I want objectivity—up to a point. I also want feeling. Passion. A town ripped in twain, blah, blah, and so on.”
“But—but, you see—there could be a problem—”
“No,” Cronin said, shaking a bony forefinger. “You see. What you call a problem, I call opportunity. You can write about this place because you’re of this place. You tap into its deepest psyche. It’s your old hometown. The site of your fondest childhood memories. And so forth.”
Kitt blinked hard. “You mean you knew I grew up there?”
He laughed the laugh that was famous at Exclusive magazine. It was described as the gurgle of ice water pouring over a grave. “Of course. That’s why I picked you.”
“Oh,” Kitt said tonelessly. She’d hoped he’d chosen her for her ability.
“That,” he said with a dismissive wave, “and the fact you can write. I assume you’ve lots of connections in this one-horse town? Relatives? Old friends and neighbors? People who’ll pour out their hearts to you?”
Kitt drew a deep breath, mind whirling. She didn’t think of Crystal Creek as her hometown; she tried not to think of it at all. When she’d left, she’d meant to leave forever. People opening their hearts to her? Hardly.
But—there was Nora.
Ah, yes, thank God there was Nora. A lifeline back then. And possibly a lifeline now. “I know people, yes,” Kitt said vaguely.
“Then you know what this story’s about? Eh? Do you?”
Kitt’s mind spun more swiftly. “It has to be about Brian Fabian,” she guessed. “About his buying land there. To build some megahousing development.”
Cronin sank back into his chair and folded his hands over his vest. “Ha. You do have sources. Yes, Brian Fabian. He’s always news. He sells magazines, by God.”
So that was Cronin’s angle, Kitt thought. If Brian Fabian was interested in Crystal Creek, so was Exclusive magazine. Cronin knew what fascinated the public, and he played that fascination like a magic flute.
Cronin’s eyes stayed fixed on her, gauging her. “Tell me what you know about Fabian.”
Kitt told him what she knew, what everybody knew—next to nothing. Fabian was a billionaire and almost total recluse. No known photo existed of him. Information about his private life usually proved to be false or misleading or both.
Facts about his business ventures were just as elusive. They were hidden in a maze of mergers, partnerships, shell corporations and deals of dizzying complexity.
“I’d guess he’s the mystery in the story,” Kitt mused. “And the money and power.” Then she added, “And probably the sex.”
One thing certain about Brian Fabian was his appetite for beautiful women. But none of these women ever talked about him. Never a one said so much as a word. His affairs remained as secret as everything else.
Cronin gave her a crooked, tight-lipped smile. “The sex? Not Fabian—this time. Sex came into the story with the lawyer he sent there to buy land. Nick Belyle. He fell for some local Venus and did the unthinkable. He violated Fabian’s confidence. He told about the plans for the development.”
Kitt said, “I heard.”
Nora had sent a long, excited letter about it. At the time, Kitt had given it little thought. So Fabian wanted a few thousand acres in Texas for some harebrained housing development—so what? For him such a project would be no more important than a mere whim, an expensive toy.
“That lawyer,” Cronin said, tapping his mahogany desktop, “let the cat out of the bag. And it was a rabid wild cat. Fabian wants to start a ‘planned’ community. The folks in your old neighborhood want to stop it.”
It’s not my old neighborhood, she wanted to retort. But she said, “I heard that, too.”
“A clan named McKinney’s leading the battle. Know ’em?”
Kitt’s body stiffened. J. T. McKinney owned the biggest ranch near Crystal Creek, and the McKinneys were the most important family in the county. Kitt knew more about them than she cared to remember, more than she dared to remember.
But she let her face betray nothing. “Yes. I know—most of them.”
“They’re stubborn, and they’re full of fight,” Cronin said, watching her expression closely. “They’ve got money and power. One of them’s out of the country—Cal—but the rumor is he’s coming back for this. Of course, next to Fabian, they’re small potatoes. Nothing, really.”
Cal’s name hit her like a physical blow, but Kitt didn’t flinch. She was too proud. The McKinneys were part of her distant past, thank God. Especially Cal. But to go back to Crystal Creek and write about them? About him? Her nerves jangled in protest.
She shook her head. “If you want a story on the McKinneys—”
Cronin waved his hand negatively. “No, no. They’re only one part. It’s the whole town—the whole county. It’s split. Some want the development. Some don’t. A house divided against itself. That’s the drama.”
Kitt allowed herself a skeptical smile. “But to fight Brian Fabian—”
“Yes,”
