Betrayed by Love. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ juvenile,” Harvey murmured, and went into his office and closed the door.

      “Tell Mr. Winthrop that Harvey goosed you behind the copy machine,” Bud Schuman suggested on his way to the water fountain, his head as bald as Harvey’s, his posture slightly stooped, his glasses taped at one ear.

      Dorie glared at him. “Bud, they took out the Linotype machine ten years ago. And our managing editor doesn’t listen to sob stories. He’s too busy trying to make sure the paper shows a profit.”

      “Did they take out the copy machine?” he asked vaguely. “No wonder I don’t have anyplace to leave my files…”

      “Honest to God, one day he’ll lose his car just by not noticing where he parked it.” The older woman shook her red head.

      “He’s still the best police reporter we have,” Kate reminded her. “Twenty-five years at it. Why, he took me to lunch one day and told me about a white-slavery racket that the police broke up here. They were actually selling girls—”

      “I should be lucky enough to be sold to Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Dorie sighed, smiling dreamily.

      “With your luck, they’d sell you to a restaurant, where you’d spend your twilight years washing plates that had contained barbecued ribs,” Bud murmured as he walked back past them.

      “Sadist!” Dorie wailed.

      “I’ve got three committee meetings, and then I have a news conference downtown.” Kate shook her head, searching for her camera. “Alderman James is at it again.” She grinned. “He’s just finished his week in the combat zone and is going to tell us all how to solve the problem. With any luck, I’ll get the story and have it phoned in to rewrite in time to eat supper at a respectable hour.”

      “Do you think he’s really got answers, or is he just doing some politicking under the watchful eye of the press?” Dorie asked.

      Kate pursed her lips. “I think he cares. He dragged me out of a meeting at city hall and enlisted me to help a black family in that ward when their checks ran out. You remember, I did a story on them—it was a simple computer error, but they were in desperate straits and sick…”

      “I remember, all right.” Dorie smiled at her. “You’re the only person I know who could walk down back alleys at night in that neighborhood without being bothered. The residents would kill anybody who touched you.”

      “That’s why I love reporting,” Kate said quietly. “We can do a lot of harm, or we can do a lot of good.” She winked. “I’d rather help feed the hungry than grandstand for a reputation. See you.” She slung the shoulder strap of the camera over her shoulder, hitched up her little laptop computer in its plastic carrying case, and started off. She could use the computer for the committee meetings and even the alderman’s breaking story. She had a modem at home, so when she fed the notes into it, she could just patch them into the newspaper from the comfort of her living room. It certainly did beat having to find a phone and pant bare facts to someone on the rewrite desk.

      Unfortunately for Kate, the little computer broke down at the last committee meeting, just before she was to cover the alderman’s speech. She cursed modern science until she ran out of breath as she crawled through rush-hour traffic toward city hall. There was no time to go by the paper and get a spare computer; she’d just have to take notes by hand. Great, she muttered, remembering that she didn’t have a spare scrap of paper in her purse or one stubby pencil!

      She found some old bank envelopes under the car seat while she was stuck in traffic and folded them, stuffing them into the jacket of her safari pantsuit. It was chic but comfortable, and set off her nice tan. With it, she was wearing sneakers that helped her move quickly on crowded streets. She’d learned a long time ago that reporting was easier on the feet when they had a little cushioning underneath.

      As she drove her small Volkswagen down back streets to city hall, she wondered if Jacob had been in town and had tried to get her but failed, since she’d been working late. She’d been so excited about that remark he’d made that she’d been crazy enough to invest in a telephone answering machine, but she knew many people would hang up rather than leave a message. She spent her free time sitting next to the telephone, staring out the window at the street below. And when she wasn’t doing that, she haunted her mailbox for letters with a South Dakota postmark.

      It was insane, she kept telling herself. He’d only been teasing. He hadn’t really meant it. That reasoning might have convinced her except that Jacob never teased.

      He had to mean it. And all her brother’s well-intentioned arguments and warnings would go right out the window if Jacob ever knocked on her door. She’d follow him into burning coals if he asked her to, walk over a carpet of snakes… anything, because the hunger for him had grown to such monumental proportions over the long, empty years. She loved him. Anything he wanted, he could have.

      She was curious about his feelings. Tom had said that Jacob didn’t know what he felt for Kate. But Jacob wanted her, all right. Her innocence didn’t keep her from seeing the desire in his dark eyes. It was what would happen if she made love with him that puzzled her. Would he be flattered when he knew she was a virgin? Would he even know it? They said only doctors could really tell. But he was a very experienced man—would he know?

      She parked in the municipal parking lot, glancing ruefully at all the dents on the fenders of her small orange VW Beetle. They were visible in the light from the street lamps.

      “Poor little thing,” she said sympathetically, glaring at the big cars that surrounded it. “Don’t worry, someday I’ll save up enough to get your fenders smoothed out.”

      Someday. Maybe when she was ninety… Reporting, while an exciting job, was hardly the best-paid profession in the world. It exerted maximum wear and tear on nerves, emotions and body, and salary never compensated for the inevitable overtime. It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job, and nowhere near as glamorous as television seemed to make it.

      What was glamorous, she wondered as she made her way up to the alderman’s offices, about covering a story on an addition to the city’s sewer system? One of the meetings she’d just come from had dealt with that fascinating subject.

      Alderman Barkley H. James was talking to people as reporters crowded in. People from print and broadcast media had begun setting up, most of them wearing the bland, faintly bored look that seemed to hallmark the profession. It wasn’t really boredom, it was repetition. Most of these reporters were veterans, and they’d seen and heard it all. They were hard, because they had to be. That didn’t mean they were devoid of emotion—just that they’d learned to pretend they didn’t have it.

      She slid into a seat beside Roger Dean, a reporter on a local weekly. Roger was nearer forty than thirty, a daily reporter who’d “retired” to a weekly. “Here we are again,” she murmured as she checked the lighting in the office and made corrections to the settings on her 35-mm camera. “I saw you yesterday at the solid-waste-management meeting, didn’t I?”

      “It was a foul job, but somebody had to do it,” Roger said with theatrical fervor. He glanced at her from his superior height. “Why do they always send you to those meetings?”

      “When it comes to issues like sanitary-disposal sites, everybody else hides in the bathroom until Harvey picks a victim.”

      He shuddered. “I once covered a sanitary-landfill-site public meeting. People had guns. Knives. They yelled.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ