“Maybe Penny’s mother could tell us how to find this place.”
Jill shook her head sadly. “She died when Penny was in college. Penny dropped out of school to come back home and finish raising her younger sister. That’s when she met her husband. He’s a naturalist in Yosemite. I think he specializes in native plants.”
“You don’t approve of him.”
Her expressive eyes blinked wide. “Why do you say that? He’s not my type, but he’s great with the kids and loves Penny to pieces.”
“What is your type?”
Her rueful grin seemed a guise; Ben glimpsed pain and hurt in her eyes. “Well, if you go by my track record, somebody who thinks he’s God’s gift to women and has to prove it with every female he meets.”
“How long were you married?”
“Six years. Two good, two iffy, two hell.”
“Why’d you marry him?”
She shook her head in a lighthearted manner that made her ponytail bounce. Ben didn’t expect her answer to be honest. “Good question. One I should be hearing from my mother any day now. She never liked him. Mattie’s Rule Number Seven—Never marry a pretty man, he’ll spend all his time in front of a mirror.”
She chuckled, but it didn’t hold any of her usual warmth. “I hate it when my mother’s right. Penny says I make life a lot harder than it needs to be by trying to prove my mother wrong.”
Ben reflected on something that Joely had said to him during her usual Saturday-morning call. “Dad’s old, Ben. Old and sick. How long do you intend to go on proving to the world that you’re nothing like him?”
As if pinpointing the source of his inner disquiet, Jill asked, “So, tell me about your family. Your sister’s a teacher and your brother-in-law drives truck. Are your parents still alive?”
“How do you know that? It wasn’t on my bio.”
“I’m a nosy reporter-type person, remember? I ask questions.”
Ben had almost forgotten. “My family life is private.”
“You asked me about mine.”
“Yes, and all you said is your father’s a retired miner and your mother’s a travel agent. They’re separated and neither of them lives around here.”
She suddenly grinned, and something tight inside him loosened up.
“Boy,” she said, lightly poking his shoulder with her fingertip, “we’d drown like rats in the dating pool, wouldn’t we? No wonder Penny despairs of my love life.” She blushed, apparently realizing her gaffe. “I mean—”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, heck, I may as well admit it. All you have to do is ask somebody and they’ll tell you Jill Martin hasn’t been on a date since the Fourth of July dance.”
“Why not? Are you still hung up on your ex?”
She shook her head emphatically. “Hardly. Our divorce was final six months ago, but our marriage was over long before that. We didn’t end things on the best of terms. It’s hard to be civil when you find out your hubby’s shagging your best friend.”
“Penny?”
Jill hooted. “Lord no. Penny and I picked up the pieces of our friendship after Peter moved out. Those two openly hated each other. I meant Clarice. We used to work together at the paper.”
Her expression was sad, as if she still felt her friend’s betrayal. Ben fought down the urge to reach out and comfort her.
“Clarice is…” She paused as if groping for the right word. “Electric. A perfect size three. White-blond hair, flawless skin, little tiny geisha feet.” She looked despairingly at her dust-coated running shoes.
“She comes across as genteel, but believe me, she’s a ruthless businesswoman. She was director of Human Resources at the paper when I was hired. After she married Peter, she went to work for Land Barons. You’ll meet them tomorrow night.” Her smile wavered. “You’re still going with me, aren’t you?”
He nodded, glancing at his watch. “That reminds me. I have an appointment this afternoon to pick up a tux.”
She made a face. “You really didn’t have to do that.”
“I needed to pick up a few other things in Merced anyway. Maybe we should postpone this hunt. I’ll check with Jimmy Fowler tonight. He knows every road, rock and tree in this county. I’ll ask him to draw me a map.”
When she didn’t answer, he stared at her until she made eye contact. Her eyes were a funny shade of celery today, almost the color of her faded L.L. Bean sweatshirt. “You won’t try this on your own, right?”
She looked as though she’d like to argue but slumped back sulkily. “I’d have to rent a four-wheel drive to make it up this road. Besides,” she said with a pointed glance at the digital clock on the console. “I’m already behind schedule, and it never pays to taunt the Time God.”
With arms linked huffily, her bosom was framed for view. Even her bulky sweatshirt couldn’t hide the fact she was braless. Ben felt a stirring in his anatomy that hadn’t even flickered when Amee had bounced into sight.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said sternly. He honestly couldn’t say he expected either Jill or his libido to listen.
Czar poked his head back inside the cab. Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw Jill nuzzle her face against Czar’s neck. He didn’t understand the bond that had developed between the two, but he couldn’t fault Czar’s taste in women.
JILL WAVED her electronic security card across the brown box on the wall of the entry portal. When the tiny red light flashed to green, she pushed open the Sentinel’s heavy security door. She generally stopped by the office after swim class to pick up a paper and check on Monday’s obits. Thanks to a wild ride through the back roads of Bullion with an uptight, nosy cop whose physical presence made her body react in ways she hadn’t thought possible, she was two hours behind schedule. The Time God would punish her for this, even on a weekend.
She paused inside the threshold to savor the quiet. While the newsroom was separate from Advertising in spirit and ego, the two departments shared a common, acoustically challenged corridor that on weekdays was constantly abuzz with ringing phones and voices.
Jill walked to her desk. Since the Sentinel didn’t publish on Sunday, the Saturday edition carried the comics, a vital component of her Sunday-morning ritual—curling up on the couch with fresh-ground coffee, bagels and cream cheese, the paper and CNN.
“Hello, Jill,” a deep voice said, catching her unaware. She jumped skittishly, bumping into the sharp edge of a desk.
“Will,” she exclaimed, rubbing the tingling spot on her thigh through her sweatpants. “I didn’t see your Beamer in the parking lot. I thought you were headed to San Jose.”
“My car’s in the shop. I have a rental.”
Her heart rate was just about back to normal when he said, “I had to come in to straighten out a mistake.”
His tone filled her with dread. “What kind of mistake?”
“Two of the photos in today’s obits got switched.”
“Oh no,” Jill groaned, sinking into her chair. The wobbly chair made her neck jerk painfully to one side.
Chairs were an indication of one’s status at the paper. The lower down in the hierarchy, the worse the chair.
“Who? Not the thirty-year-old guy, I hope. His poor grandmother…” Mistakes didn’t happen often, but sometimes the typesetters were in a hurry. Like last week, they’d left out two obits completely.
“Margaret Kendell and Otis Johnson.”
Jill gaped. “What? That’s impossible. There’s no way I could have mixed up a man’s photo with a woman’s obit.”
Jill sprang to her feet and stalked across the desk-strewn space to Will’s desk. She whipped open the A-section and studied the page before her. Switched.
She threw the paper to the floor and looked at Will. “I double-checked everything before I left last night. Someone had to have changed them after they were on the page.”
Will rocked back in his fancy chair. “Who would do that, Jill?”
His question made her feel stupid. The same way she’
d felt on the other recent occasions when she’d complained that her stories were being cut midsentence, that photos and cutlines were being switched and that articles were mysteriously disappearing from her queue. “I don’t know,” she said. “You tell me. Maybe the same person who butchered my canine-cop story.”
Leaning to one side, he reached into his open file drawer and withdrew a Chinese lacquered humidor, which contained his stash of cellophane-wrapped toothpicks. “As I already explained, an unfortunate miscommunication resulted in your story getting edited twice. The new hire—I can’t remember his name—may have been a bit overzealous. I’ll talk to him next week.”
“But why me? Why that story? I still think somebody in this place is out to get me.” Jill raised her voice, wanting to vent her anger on any convenient receptacle. The lackadaisical toothpick wiggling in the corner of his mouth made a prime target.
“Aren’t you being a tad melodramatic? This is a newspaper not a soap opera. I suppose it’s possible you’ve made an enemy in the copy-edit team, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I can’t be here round the clock. Give it time. I’m sure it’ll blow over.”
“But what about my missing copy, Will? Did you ever find my original? It went missing from my queue. Doesn’t that mean someone has my code and is intentionally sabotaging my work?”
He rocked back, slowly shaking his head. Jill had the urge to use her foot to help him complete the arc. “You truly tend toward the theatrical, Jill. It’s more likely that someone was using your computer and forgot to sign out. Your story might have gotten stored in their files then accidentally erased. Get over it, Jill.” He sighed. “You worry too much. The Sentinel’s just a lousy rag with fifteen-grand circulation. We’re not talking Pulitzer potential here.”
Jill had never understood his lack of professional pride, but she knew why he’d been hired. His editorials carried the message the owner wanted this town to hear, loud and clear. “I care about my job, Will. And it hurts to know that I’ve added to the burden of those two grieving families.”
He shrugged. His toothpick made the same motion. “Look on the bright side. At least it wasn’t one of the paid obits.”
Jill bit down on her frustration. She’d already learned the hard way how fruitless it was to alienate the editor. “I’ll call the families, but first I have to make sure the corrections are on the copy desk for tomorrow night,” Jill said, marching to her desk. “I won’t be in town, so I can’t come by and check on it.”
Will sat up, rolling his shoulders like a cat stretching in the sun. “Ah, yes, the Excelsior thing. Still planning to represent the paper?”
“Why not? Free food and drinks. Peter always stocks the best booze. Gotta be some perks for working in a place like this.”
His laugh was friendly, but for some reason Jill wasn’t anxious to share the fact that she was taking Ben Jacobs as her date. She hurried to her desk before Will could say anything else.
It took two agonizing phone conversations and two telefloral arrangements charged to her Visa before Jill was ready to leave for home. She didn’t see any sign of Will as she tugged the heavy door closed behind her.
Drained and saddened, Jill trudged to her car. As she neared it, she heard her name being called.
“Damn,” she cursed under her breath, hastily unlocking her door.
She reached for the handle, but before she could open it, Bobby Goetz materialized at her side.
“Hey, Jill, didn’t you hear me?”
“Hello, Bobby,” she said. “I’m in a bit of a rush.”
“I been callin’ for days. Don’t they ever give you your messages?” His tone reminded Jill of a little boy who didn’t understand why he couldn’t have his own way all the time.
He was dressed in the only clothes she’d ever known him to wear: baggy denims, gray T-shirt and unkempt army coat with the name patch ripped away. When she’d first met him, she’d felt sympathy for him. Now she could barely stifle her impatience.
“I told you we’d get a hold of you when we needed you again, Bobby.” Her first story had garnered him so many freebies, he’d obviously decided fame was a pretty easy meal ticket and Jill was his host.
He’d been so insistent in his demands and constant calls, the receptionist had dubbed him Jill’s “stalker.”
“But I thought of a new angle,” Bobby insisted, a plaintive tone adding a certain thickness to his slight southern drawl. “That’s what you call it, don’t you? I figure you could do a follow-up. Show people how I’m doin’ four months down the road.”
And they thought you were dumb, she silently acknowledged.
“That’s the editor’s decision, Bobby. Call Will Ogden on Monday,” she said, relishing the image.
She started to open the car door, but Bobby leaned his backside against it, pushing it shut. “He’s even harder to reach than you.”
Although Bobby was taller than Jill by several inches, with broad, albeit bony, shoulders and a certain whipcord look that implied he could hold his own in a knife fight, she’d never felt intimidated by him, even when they were trekking through the deserted streets of Bullion at midnight. Jamal had tagged along for photographs, but Jill was never worried about her safety. Bobby was too lazy to be more than a nuisance.
She tried pulling on the door again. “If anything comes up, I’ll call.”
His hand clamped down on her forearm, not painfully, but firmly enough to startle her. “Bobby—”
He stepped closer. Too close. She could smell ripe body odor and stale cigarettes. “It ain’t fair, Jill. You can’t just use ’n then drop me.”
“Bobby, there’s not much I can do. It’s your life and—”
He interrupted her with an expletive. “That is so much bullshit. Didn’t you learn nothin’ from being on the street? People say we’re there because we want to be, but that’s bullshit.”
Jill yanked her arm back. His grip tightened. She wasn’t frightened, but she was getting angry. “Listen, Bobby, I gave you a break. That does not make me responsible for you for the rest of your life.”
He stepped closer; Jill held her ground.
“You don’t get it, do you?” he snarled menacingly.
“No, you don’t get it,” an angry voice said from behind Jill. She turned to see Will Ogden, standing arms akimbo less than a foot from them. She hadn’t heard him approach.
“There isn’t going to be another story, Goetz, so you’ll just have to find some other way to use the system.” Will’s cultured sneer could have turned milk into yogurt. “Now let her go and get the hell out of here.”
Jill blinked in astonishment at the snarling threat in Will’s tone.
Bobby’s grip relaxed; Jill snatched her arm away.
Bobby backed up, his hands raised defensively. “I don’t want no trouble, man. I was just talkin’ to Jill. It’s a free country, ain’t it?”
“Maybe to vagrants like you who are only looking for the next handout, but not for those of us who work for a living. Now get the hell out of here. You’ve pestered her enough, you scumbag.”
Jill cringed. She could never bring herself to hurt a person’s feelings, even if they deserved it. “He’s not so bad, really,” she said, watching the young man shuffle away. “Just a lost soul looking for help.”
“He’s a hybrid—combination user and loser,” Will said shortly. “And he looked like he meant business with you. Whoever called him your stalker wasn’t kidding.”
Jill shivered despite the warmth soaking into her shoulders. She’d never liked that word and didn’t think it applied to Bobby, but she wasn’t going to argue with Will after he’d come to her rescue.
“Th-thanks for your help,” she said with a slight stutter.
“Not a problem. I was just pulling out when I saw him standing over there in the bushes. I decided to wait and see what he had in mind. I think you should report this to the police, Jill.”
Jill shook off her disquiet. All she wanted w
as to get home. “I’ll think about it. Might make good copy.”
She slid into the leather seat. She’d meant the last as a joke, but something in Will’s expression made her wonder if he’d taken her seriously. She let it go. “Thanks, again. See you Monday.”
Will was still standing in the parking lot as she drove out. She suppressed a shudder. Stalkers, gremlins at work, an ex-husband to face… How could life get any crazier? Even as the question crossed her mind, Jill pushed it away. The God of Mischief and Mayhem was always looking for an opportunity to show off.
CHAPTER FOUR
JILL SHIFTED carefully in her desk chair so as not to disturb Frank, who was sleeping peacefully in her lap. She closed her eyes and listened to the mechanical hum of her computer copying her files to a disk. She had to get ready for her big date, but even the thought of seeing Ben Jacobs again couldn’t override her apprehension at the thought of being in the same room with Peter and Clarice.
Peter’s call an hour earlier had unnerved her. The conversation had been short and to the point: he would stop by Monday to collect the last few boxes of his personal belongings.
“You didn’t forget about the pictures, did you?” he’d asked.
Jill had cringed. “Nope.”
As stipulated by their divorce, Peter was entitled to half the photographs taken during their marriage. Jill and Penny, armed with a liter of merlot, had carefully cut each photo in half and tossed them in a box.
Jill wasn’t dreading that meeting as much as she was the one tonight. Monday she’d be on her own turf—the woman wronged who was courageously putting her life back together. Tonight she’d be in Peter’s ballpark where he’d have home-field advantage.
Her computer made a soft beeping sound. She pushed the release button and removed the small gray square of plastic. Eyeing the bookcase at her left, she studied the titles a moment before selecting one. With a faint smile, she stuck the diskette between two pages, about midbook, and shoved the novel back in place.
She stared at the title a minute longer: Gone With the Wind. A perfect choice to describe what will happen to my career if this research pans out, she thought as she turned off the computer.
Wonders Never Cease (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 7
