A Match Made Under the Mistletoe

by Diana Palmer

  “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 secreti
ve 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.”

  He stared at her through a soft cloud of gray smoke. “Honey, I hope you’re not doing anything for the next two weeks, because that’s how long it’s going to take me to answer those questions.”

  She smiled wryly, her pale green eyes catching his. “Couldn’t you manage to do a brief summary in an hour or so?” she teased.

  “Not and do it justice.” He leaned back in the chair, letting his forgotten cigarette fire curls of gray smoke up toward the ceiling while he took silent inventory of her facial features. “How old did you say you were?” he asked.

  “Twenty-three,” she muttered absently, fascinated by his dark, quiet eyes.

  “And fresh out of journalism school?” he probed.

  “I got a late start,” she explained, crossing her booted legs. “My mother was in poor health. She died.” Her eyes went sad at the admission. Two words to describe that long, painful process that ended in death. Words were inadequate.

  “A long illness?” he asked, reading her expression as if he could read her mind.

  She nodded. “An incurable disease of the central nervous system. There was nothing anyone could do. My father very nearly went under. He had a breakdown, and I had to run the paper until he got back on his feet.”

  “Quite an experience for you.”

  “Oh, yes, I learned a lot,” she recalled with a dry smile.

  “Like what?”

  She looked at him sheepishly. “Never misspell a name on the society page.”

  “What else?”

  “Read the copy before you write the headlines. Don’t leave out names in school honor rolls. Never put anything down, because you’ll never see it again. And especially never go to a County Commission meeting when they’re discussing a new site for the sanitary landfill.”

  Both eyebrows went up, and he smiled faintly. “Lynch mobs?”

  “Lynch mobs. I saw in one meeting where sixty people surrounded the sole county commissioner and threatened to shoot him if he put it in their community,” she recalled. “I don’t suppose you have that kind of problem?”

  “No,” he admitted, “just dull things like street employee strikes, garbage piling up on sidewalks and into the streets.”

  “Why not start a campaign to get everyone in the city to mail their garbage to relatives out of state?” she suggested.

  “Honey, you start it, and I’ll personally endorse it,” he promised. “Eat your roll before it gets cold.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied politely.

  He glared at her. “I’m not that old.”

  She peeked at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “Now I know why you brought me here.”

  He glowered at her. “Why?”

  “Real napkins,” she explained, “and real cups and saucers. No wasted paper products to fill your garbage trucks!”

  He shook his head. “How did you wind up in the city, little country mouse?”

  “Dad sold the newspaper and took off on a grand tour of the Orient,” she sighed. “I didn’t want to go with him, so I caught a plane and came up here to ask one of his former employees for a job.”

  “And got it, I suppose,” he replied, as he took a bite out of his buttered roll.

  “Actually, I didn’t,” she told him between bites of her own roll. “It was the editor of the Sun, and he didn’t have an opening. He sent me to the Phoenix-Herald, and I guess they just felt sorry for me. After I told them about my ten starving children and the lecherous landlord…”

  “Ten children?” he prompted.

  Remembering the tragic death of his daughter, she felt a strangling embarrassment lodge in her throat, and a wild flush stole into her cheeks.

  “Don’t walk on eggs with me, Carla,” he said, using her given name for the first time. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  She took a sip of her coffee. “Can you read my mind?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Look at me.”

  She raised her eyes to his and felt them captured, held for ransom by a gaze with the power to stop her heart in mid-beat.

  “You have a very expressive face, little one,” he said gently. “Readable. Vulnerable.”

  “I’m as tough as used boots,” she murmured.

  “Don’t bet on it.” He finished his coffee. “You realize that damned labor meeting’s polished off my dinner invitation?”

  “That’s all right,” she murmured courteously.

  “Is it, really?” he asked in a deep, slow voice that sent wild shivers down her straight spine.

  She met his searching gaze squarely. “No,” she managed shakily, “it isn’t.”

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  She nodded, and the rush of excitement that made wild lights dance in her eyes was something she hadn’t felt since her early teens, her first date.

  “I’ll call you, in case something comes up.” He frowned. “There isn’t a boyfriend?”

  Her heart went wild; her mouth parted, trembling slightly, drawing his intent gaze before it darted back up to catch the hint of fear in her pale eyes.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Something relaxed in his leonine face, and he smiled at her, an action that made his eyes soft and tender.

  “Come on, country mouse. We’ll talk on the way back, but I’ve got a budget meeting at eleven and a luncheon at twelve, followed by a visiting oil magnate at two. In other words,” he said as he rose, “I’ve got to go bridge my credibility gap.”

  “Thanks for the coffee,” she said, moving slowly beside him to the counter.

  He glanced down at her. “Your party piece?” he asked softly. “I’m not trying to wheedle any favorable
copy out of you, little one. But don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just a moment out of time. This is a beginning, Carla.”

  The way he said it, and the slow, sweet appraisal his eyes made of her emphasized the underlying comment. She started to speak when she felt his big, warm hand catch hers and press it warmly. And the music danced within her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She was busily working on the story about the city’s new clerk when Bill Peck ambled in and threw himself down in the chair behind his desk.

  “God, I’m tired,” he groaned. “A delegation of home owners came to the commission meeting to protest a proposed zoning ordinance. It was the hottest meeting I’ve covered in months.”

  “Did the ordinance pass?” Carla asked absently as she studied her notes.

  “No way. Mass protest does have its advantages,” he laughed. “How’re you coming on your great exposé?”

  She hated the mocking note in his voice and gave him a freezing stare. “I don’t make fun of your stories,” she said accusingly.

  He sighed. “Okay, I won’t make fun of it. But you’re going to have hell pinning anything on the city hall crowd.”

  “You know!” she burst out.

  “I know what you got the tip on, that’s all,” he replied. “Your mysterious caller got to me last night. But don’t make the mistake of taking that kind of tip for gospel. Fired employees tell tales, and I just happened to recognize that one’s voice. He’s Daniel Brown, a police sergeant who was fired recently for taking payoffs.”

  “Allegedly taking payoffs,” she corrected. “I think he’s innocent.”

  “God, what a babe in the woods you are,” he scoffed. “Little girl, don’t trust people too far. The city’s just full of wolves waiting to pounce on little lambs. I wouldn’t put much credibility in Brown’s story, either, if I were you.”

  She didn’t mention that she’d already taken her information to the paper’s editor and chief counsel and that she had approval from the top to check out that tip. Bill had been a tremendous help to her, boosting her low confidence, building her insight, teaching and encouraging. But he tended to be just the least bit lax in his efforts, and Carla was full of vim and enthusiasm for her job. So she only smiled and agreed with him.