couldn’t believe how sensual it felt.
“You can start by taking this assignment seriously.”
He nodded. “Done.”
“That includes doing all the things I planned for us.”
He wasn’t so fast off the mark this time. “Ah, okay, done.”
“Starting with dinner tonight.”
“Dinner? Okay, sure. What time?”
Sally hesitated. Her parents were away until tomorrow afternoon. She had planned to take Jack up to the main house for a light supper with Tilly and Andy. But if the warm human being she’d just glimpsed inside him was real, it might be fun to bring the food down to the cottage and spend some time alone with him. “Seven o’clock. Here. At my place. I mean, um, here.”
From his expression, she gathered Jack was calculating the time it would take to eat, wrap up the assignment and get back on the road. It would be well after midnight before he reached Vancouver. “You could stay overnight,” she quickly suggested. “The Chelsea Country Inn is just down the road.”
He meditated on that for a moment, and she could tell that he’d rather have hot coals poked in his eyes. But that was just too bad. By coming here he’d given her hope, then tried to snatch it back. If she was his punishment for being a tool, he deserved her.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to stay over one night,” he conceded. “I could use a shower and a good meal.”
“Good! I’ll see you at seven, then.”
The moment he was gone, Sally did a little victory dance on the patio, then called Trish and told her what had just happened.
“Well, good for you, Sal. It looks like you’ll be getting your story.”
“And then some! Oh, and Trish? One more thing.”
“Go ahead. Rub it in.”
Sally laughed. “I told you so!”
3
WHEN HAD IT HAPPENED?
As he cruised along county road nineteen, scanning right and left for the Chelsea Country Inn, Jack wondered what Sally had meant by “just down the road.” He should have asked, of course. To the folks around here, everything was just down some road, or around some corner, when in fact it was a zillion miles away and cleverly hidden to boot.
More importantly, he wondered when, precisely, he had stopped being a caring, conscientious storyteller and become a jaded journalist. Everything they were saying about him at the Satellite was true. He was a snob. An egomaniac. A jerk.
As a novice reporter he’d treated every one of his assignments as a learning experience. Every story had given him valuable insight into people—the way they thought, the emotions they felt, the rationales they concocted for the sometimes inexplicable choices they made. Obviously, somewhere along the way he’d stopped learning and had started to assign values to his stories. This one a four, that one a seven. This one an important stepping stone in his career, that one just a waste of his precious time.
All seasoned reporters did the same. Jack knew that. But had he become so jaded that he’d actually forgotten how important a story was to the people involved in it?
Sally Darville was right. It wouldn’t have hurt him one bit to do some basic research for this assignment. He also should have done a few quick interviews with the folks in line at the dairy bar this afternoon. He should have gotten a head start on things. Dammit, he should have taken ownership of the assignment.
Sally didn’t think her story was a four. She thought it was a ten, and she was entitled to think that.
Man, she’d straightened him out in a hurry! A month of relentless ribbing from his colleagues hadn’t so much as dented his obviously gargantuan ego. But she’d put him smartly back in his place in less than ten minutes.
She wanted to save her town. How noble. How…decent.
She was a ten. If, Jack supposed, you went for that fresh-faced, blond-haired, milkmaid kind of look. Which he did, apparently. Even so, she was nothing like the women he dated in Vancouver. Any one of them, especially Liz Montaine, would eat her for breakfast.
He chuckled to himself. Then again, maybe not.
Crazily, he wondered how Sally would taste first thing in the morning. Sweet, like ice cream. Sweet Sally. Yeah.
Whoa there, buddy, he warned himself as the Mustang cleared a blind corner and the inn came into view. Don’t be thinking sweet Sally. Don’t be thinking Sally anything. Do your job, do it right, and get the hell out of here.
The Chelsea Country Inn turned out to be a tall yellow Victorian nestled in a grove of Ponderosa pines. Gingerbread trim and baskets of parched flowers adorned its wide wraparound porch, and the sun glinted off the stained glass transoms above its many narrow windows.
Jack parked in the otherwise empty gravel lot and let himself in through the open front door. Immediately to the right of the foyer was a small room that must have been a receiving parlor at one time. It had an old potbellied stove, a couple of fussy, overstuffed chairs and an ornate table that obviously served as the registration desk. What it didn’t have was a registration clerk.
“Anybody here?” he called out. When silence answered, he ventured a few steps down the hall and peered into a huge country kitchen. Someone had to be home. There was an array of chopped fruit on top of the room’s long worktable, along with an open carton of cream. He called out again. Still no response. As he was turning to leave, a big, brassy redhead burst through a door to his right. Seeing Jack, she let out a scream.
“Gracious living, boy!” Eyes bulging, she covered her heart with one plump, bejeweled hand and gulped for air. “You scared the daylights outta poor old Martha!”
Jack apologized for snooping. “I’m looking for a room for the night.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to see about that.”
While he wondered what exactly there was to see about—this was an inn, wasn’t it?—she twisted her generous mouth into a grimace and ruminated.
“It’s just for one night,” he assured her.
“Percy!” she hollered in the general direction of the backyard. “Get your butt in here. We got a guest, maybe.”
A tall, stooped man in cut-off denim shorts and work boots but no shirt came in through the back door. He paused at the sink to wipe the sweat from his brow, then loped across the big room. Giving Jack a friendly once-over, his eyes lit up like a jukebox. “Well, whaddaya know? Look, Martha, it’s Goldy!”
“Goldy” forced a smile. Obviously news traveled fast around here. “If you don’t mind, I prefer Jack.”
“You’re that hotshot reporter from Vancouver,” Martha said.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m Jack Gold from the Satellite.”
“Didn’t
