Heart of Winter

by Diana Palmer

  “You can’t maintain your objectivity, is that it? Honey, I don’t mix politics and pleasure,” he said quietly, “and right now I don’t give a damn about your objectivity.”

  She felt the same way. Something strange and exciting was happening to her. Something she felt that he shared. It was almost frightening.

  “I…I was going to do a series of articles on city officials,” she said, seizing on a chance to do some quiet investigating about the information in her anonymous phone calls. “I could start with you…if you wouldn’t mind,” she added.

  He pulled a package of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered her one, lifting an eyebrow when she refused. He lit one and repocketed his lighter, smoking quietly while he studied her from his superior height.

  “How deep into my life do you want to delve?” he asked finally, and she knew he was thinking about the accident.

  “Into your political life,” she corrected. “I think privacy is a divine right as far as anyone’s personal life is concerned. I wouldn’t like mine in print.”

  “Oh?” His dark eyes sketched her oval face in the light from the street lamp overhead. “You aren’t old enough to have skeletons in your closet.”

  “I’m twenty-three,” she said.

  “I’m thirty-nine,” he replied. His eyes narrowed. “Sixteen years, little one.”

  “Fifteen,” she murmured breathlessly. “I’ll be twenty-four this month.”

  He caught her eyes and held them for a long time, with the sounds of the night and the city fading into oblivion around them. Her heart swelled, nearly bursting with new, exciting emotions.

  “I’ll let you do a story,” he said finally, “if I get to okay it before it goes into print.”

  “All right,” she replied softly.

  “We might as well start early. Are you free in the morning?”

  Things were moving so fast she hardly had time to catch her breath, but it was a chance she couldn’t pass up. So, ignoring the county commission meeting she was supposed to go to with Bill Peck, she nodded.

  “Be in my office at nine a.m. and we’ll get started.”

  “I’ll be there.” She unlocked her car and got in. “Thanks again for saving me.”

  “My pleasure,” he replied. “Good night.”

  “Good night.” She started the small car and put it in gear. Bryan Moreland was still standing on the sidewalk smoking his cigarette when she rounded the corner.

  Chapter Three

  The excitement was still with her the next morning, when she grabbed her thirty-five millimeter camera and her pad, quickly checking her desk calendar before she started out the door in her usual mad rush. She was neatly dressed in a tweed jacket with a burgundy plaid wool skirt and matching vest, and her small feet were encased in brown suede boots. Bill Peck took in her appearance with a critical eye, and grinned.

  “Who are you dressed up for?” he asked pleasantly.

  She blushed, hating the color that rushed into her cheeks. “I’m going to interview the mayor,” she confessed.

  “Oh?” He threw her a questioning glance.

  “Well, I do need to do some snooping on the tip I got,” she defended, “and I can’t help but turn up something if I comb through all the city departments.”

  “You’ll be an old woman by then,” he commented. “It’s a big city.”

  “There are only five commissioners over all those departments,” she reminded him, “plus a handful of lesser commission posts, like planning and—”

  “I know, I know,” he said with mock weariness, “don’t forget that I had to cover all those groups before you came along to save me.”

  “Am I saving you?” she asked.

  He only shook his head, perching himself on the corner of her desk while around him telephones were ringing off the hook. “I thought the mayor took several bites out of you last night,” he remarked.

  “Only a small one, thanks to you,” she said dryly.

  He shrugged. “I don’t like anyone else taking my lumps.”

  “Sure.” She smiled. “Anyway, he saved me from a pretty scary gang of toughs last night—two anyway,” she amended, shivering at the memory. “For a man his age, he packs a pretty hefty punch.”

  His eyes bulged. “The mayor popped a tough, and you didn’t get the story? My God, haven’t I taught you anything?”

  She glared at him. “That comes under the heading of my personal business,” she told him tightly, “not news.”

  “But, Carla…he’s the mayor, baby, anything he does is news! Think of it like this—Mayor saves reporter in distress!”

  “No. Period,” she added tightly when he pursued it.

  He sighed angrily. “You’ll never make a reporter unless you harden up a little.”

  “If I have to harden up that much, maybe I’ll hire on as a hit person for the mob,” she said coldly, picking up her camera as she turned to go.

  “Wait, Carla,” he said quietly and rose to tower over her. “Don’t be like that. I was only kidding.”

  “It didn’t sound like it,” she replied, casting an accusing glance up at him.

  He shrugged, his pale hair catching the light to gleam gold. “I’ve been at this a long time. I forget sometimes how it is when you’re a beginner. Okay, I’ll buy that you’re trying to get in with His Nibs, and this wouldn’t help you break the ice. But,” he added darkly, “that’s the only reason I’m not doing anything about it. It’s news. And news comes before personal privilege. Don’t forget it again.”

  She started to fire back at him, but his face was like stone, and she knew it wouldn’t do the slightest bit of good. She turned and walked out without another word.

  She stuck her head in the city editor’s office, grinning as he looked up from the pile of paper on his desk over the rim of his glasses.

  “I’m going to interview the mayor and stop by the financial section to do a little checking, okay?”

  “On what we talked about earlier?” Jim Edwards asked with a nod. “Okay. Don’t forget that interview with the new city clerk—and get a pix. And see if you can get anything out of Moreland about negotiations on the sanitation strike.”

  “I ought to ask Green for that,” she said with a wry smile.

  “When he doesn’t even take office until the first?” he laughed.

  “He’s officially Public Works Commissioner right now,” she reminded him, “regardless of when the next commission meeting is.”

  “Touché. He’s not a bad man, you know,” he added quietly. “Just dedicated.”

  “I know. Anything else you want me to check on while I’m there?”

  He consulted his sheet. “Not that I know of. If anything comes up, I’ll track you down.”

  She knew that already. Edwards had a knack for tracking down his reporters that was nothing short of legendary.

  “I’ll check back in before I go home,” she said.

  He nodded, already buried in his copy again.

  She only had to wait ten minutes before Bryan Moreland’s middle-aged secretary motioned her into his office. He was sitting behind a massive oak desk, his dark eyes stormy, his jaw clenched, when she walked in and sat down, eyeing him cautiously. His big hand was still on the telephone receiver, as if he’d only just finished a telephone call that didn’t agree with him.

  “Would you rather I come back later?” she asked gently. “Say, in two or three years?”

  He took a deep breath, leaned back in the leather-padded executive chair with his hands behind his leonine head, and studied her down his straight nose. “I don’t like reporters,” he said without preamble.

  She grinned. “Neither do I. See, already we’ve got something in common!”

  His hard face relaxed a little. “That was Graham—Dan Graham of the Sun, on my neck again for the federal grant for the landfill experiment.” He sighed angrily. “If only I could plead justifiable mayhem….”

  “Graham thrives on bruises and con
tusions,” she laughed.

  “So I hear.”

  She pulled out her pad and pen, and he watched her curiously.

  “I thought modern reporters used tape recorders,” he taunted.

  “I don’t have a lot of luck with machinery,” she admitted, peeking up at him. “My car stays in the shop, my hair dryer blows fuses, and I think the garbage disposal ate my cat.”

  His massive chest shook with deep, soft laughter as he studied her flushed young face with a curious intensity. “What kind of cat was it?” he asked.

  “A duke’s mixture.”

  His chiseled mouth curved faintly. “No doubt, if the garbage disposal got him.”

  “Speaking of garbage,” she said quickly, latching onto the subject, “I’d like to know about that new trash-into-power concept.”

  “It’s all still in the planning stages right now,” he told her, “but the idea is to take raw garbage and use it to produce power. We’re running out of land. And it takes one hell of a lot of land to accommodate the refuse from a population the size of this city’s. People don’t want to live near sanitary landfills, and they’re organized. Obviously, the only answer for the future is recycling.”

  Shc scribbled furiously. “And the grant?”

  “The planning commissioner knows more about it than I do,” he admitted, “but we lined up a matching federal grant and some regional funds to go with it. Give Ed a call; he’ll fill you in.”

  She raised her eyes from her pad. “Mr. King isn’t my greatest fan,” she told him. “I called him last week to ask about the land the planning commission was purchasing for the new airport, and I couldn’t even get any figures out of him.”

  He shrugged. “Ed’s like me; he doesn’t trust newsmen. We’ve learned to be wary,” he explained.

  She nodded, but her mind was still on King. “Do you, by any chance, have the figures on the cost of the land?”

  His dark eyes narrowed with amusement. “Don’t try to pump me. If you want information on figures, you ask Ed. That’s his business at the moment.”

  She sighed. “Fair enough. Anyway, back to the landfill. Doesn’t the incinerator tie in to that energy production idea?”

  “Honey, you’ll need to talk to Tom Green,” he told her, “as soon as he’s comfortably in office. I’m not that familiar with specific technical aspects of the project. This is one hell of a big city. I’m more concerned with administration and budget than I am with various ongoing projects—outside of my downtown revitalization proposals—and right now I’ve got all I can do to cope with striking Street Department workers. And the damned horse club wants to hold a parade!”

  She smothered a grin. “You could make the horses wear diapers.”

  “Care to apply for the job?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t realize how sweeping your responsibilities were. Of course, we do have a strong-mayor system here, but I’m a long way from home, and I tend to forget the size of this city. I suppose that tells you more about my background than a resume.”

  “It tells me that you’re used to a town of under five thousand, where the mayor can tell you everything that’s going on. Right?” he asked.

  “Right. My father owns a weekly newspaper in the southern section of Georgia.”

  “Well, this city has almost two million people,” he elaborated, “and no city manager. I handle all the administration, greet crown princes, cope with strikes and riots, hire and fire department heads, give the Public Safety commissioner hell twice a day and grant interviews I don’t have time for.”

  She felt vaguely uncomfortable. “Sorry. I’ll hurry. Can you tell me…”

  The intercom buzzed. “Excuse me,” Moreland said politely, and leaned to answer it. “Yes?”

  “Bill Harrison on line one,” came the reply.

  He picked up the receiver. “Hello, Bill, what can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly.

  He looked thoughtful, his darkly tanned fingers toying with a fountain pen while he listened to whoever was on the other end—apparently a friend, she surmised. Decision flashed in his dark eyes and he laid the pen down abruptly.

  “Tell Carl I’ll meet with him and his boys in my office tonight at seven. And try not to leak it to the press, okay?” He cast a speaking glance in Carla’s general direction and winked at her lazily. “Thanks, Bill. Talk to you later.”

  She remembered his invitation to dinner suddenly, and felt a vague prick of disappointment when she realized that the meeting would put an end to that. Although why it should bother her…

  “A meeting with the labor leaders?” she probed with a smile.

  “Tell your friend Peck he’s got a personal invitation. It’s going to get a little rough for you, kitten.”

  “You mean,” she said, prickling, “there are actually words I haven’t heard?”

  His arrogant head lifted. “Woman’s libber?” he challenged.

  She lifted her own head. “Reporter,” she replied. “Sex doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

  A slow, sensuous smile curved his mouth, and his eyes studied her with a bold thoroughness that made her look away in embarrassment. “Doesn’t it?” he asked.

  She cleared her throat. “Uh, where were we?” she hedged.

  The intercom buzzed again. “Phone, Mr. Moreland,” his secretary said apologetically. “It’s the governor’s office calling about that appropriations request you plan to make for inner-city revitalization.”

  Moreland picked up the phone. “Hello, Moreland here,” he said, leaning forward to study his calendar while he listened and nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Oh, roughly a couple of million. Hell, Ben, you know that’s a conservative estimate! Look, I convinced the Nelson companies to invest in cleaning up the fifteen-hundred block on a nonprofit basis. They deal in building products. When the slums are cleared out, we’ll have to have new housing, right? So the building companies that make this kind of investment ultimately profit from increased sales, do you see the light? All I have to do is convince a few other firms, and I’ll have practically all the local funding I need to match an urban redevelopment grant. If you’ll do your part, and help me get my paltry two million…”

  Carla hid a smile at the disgusted look on Moreland’s dark face. He didn’t like opposition—that was evident.

  “I know you’re having budget problems,” Moreland said with magnificent patience. “So am I. But look at it this way, Ben, slums eat up over half my city services. While they’re doing that, they pay only around one-twentieth of the real-estate taxes. We have a yearly deficit of twenty-five thousand dollars per acre of slums, Ben. That’s a hell of a figure, considering the concentration of them in the downtown area.”

  He picked up the pen again and twirled it while he nodded. “Yes, I know that. But have you considered how it affects the crime rate here? Slums account for half of all the arrests our policemen make, at least fifty-five percent of all juvenile delinquency. If we can clean up the areas and provide decent housing—give the kids something to do and get them off the streets—God only knows what we could accomplish.”

  Whatever he was hearing didn’t suit him. The pen snapped in his powerful fingers. “Oh, good God, you mean giving a pencil pusher a two percent increase is worth more than cleaning up my slums? Where the hell is your sense of priorities?”

  The answer must have been a good one, because he calmed down. Wearily, he tossed the two halves of the fountain pen onto the desk. “All right, Ben, I’ll see what else I can work out before the budget goes into committee. Yes. Thanks anyway.”

  He hung up and studied Carla’s young face. “Do you like fresh croissants with real butter?”

  “Oh, yes!” she said without thinking.

  “Let’s go.” He got up and opened the door for her, waiting while she fumbled to get her camera, purse and accessories together.

  “I’m out, if anyone else calls,” Moreland told his secretary.

  “Yes, Mr. Moreland,”
she said with a secretive smile.

  He led Carla to the elevator and put her in, pushing the first-floor button.

  “Where are we going?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Away from the telephone,” he replied, leaning back against the wall of the elevator to study her. “I feel obligated to answer it as long as I’m sitting at my desk. But I haven’t had my breakfast, and I feel like a decent cup of coffee and a roll. Even a mayor has to eat,” he added wryly, “although some of my supporters question my right to do that, and sleep, and go home.”

  “Why don’t you eat breakfast?” she asked suddenly.

  “Because I don’t usually have time to cook,” he replied matter-of-factly. “I have a daily woman who comes in to do the cleaning, but mostly I eat out. I don’t like women snooping around my kitchen trying to ingratiate themselves, so I don’t keep a full larder.”

  “Oh,” she said noncommittally and let it drop.

  He took her to an intimate little coffee house with white linen tablecloths and fresh roses in tiny bud vases and where waltz music danced around them. He sat her down at a small table in the corner and gave the waitress their order.

  As she darted away, he pulled a cigarette from his engraved gold case.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” she said.

  He lifted a heavy eyebrow. “I don’t gamble, drink to excess, or support organized crime. But I do have this one vice, and you’ll notice that the room is quite well ventilated. I don’t intend giving up a lifelong habit for the sake of one interview.”

  She had the grace to blush. Her eyes moved from the tablecloth to the street outside, where autumn leaves blazed in a tiny maple tree embedded in concrete, a small colorful reminder of the season. The wind was tumbling fallen leaves and she watched them with a sense of emptiness. She felt as though she’d been alone for a long time.

  “What else did you want to ask me?” he cut into her thoughts.

  “Oh!” She dug her pad and pen out of her purse, moving them aside briefly as the waitress brought china cups filled with freshly brewed imported coffee, fresh croissants and a saucer of creamy butter. “I wanted to ask about your administration. What was the city’s financial situation when you took office, what is it now, what improvements have you made, what goals do you have for the rest of your term in office—that sort of thing.”