A slim brunette, wearing soft, flowing, white linen pants walked into the foyer with a professional smile on her full lips. “I’m Piper Sunday. How may I help you?” she asked pleasantly.
“You can help me by not slandering me and my company. You have balls of steel, woman.” He nearly amended the woman part when he noticed the white bow tied neatly in her hair. When she had little to no reaction, he introduced himself. “I’m the evil bastard you seem to enjoy vilifying in the press.”
“Perhaps you could be more specific…”
“Owen Garrett, owner of—”
“Big Trees Logging,” she finished with a slow smile. “And the man who has an aversion to answering phone calls.”
“You mean, an aversion to having my words twisted,” he countered. “The one interview I gave you turned into a mess in print.”
“That’s your opinion.”
“No, it’s fact. And I’m about to sue this newspaper for slander if I don’t get a retraction.”
“First, if it’s anything, it would be libel, which it’s not. Second, you’d have to have a court order to get us to do a retraction. Out of curiosity, which part of the article did you take exception to?” she asked.
“All of it.”
“That would be a very long correction, if I were of a mind to offer it,” she said, crossing her arms. “And I’m not. Everything I wrote is true.”
“I say it’s not.”
“Well, we’re at an impasse. However, I would be happy to sit down with you for an exclusive interview for your rebuttal. I’m sure our readership would love to read your side of things.”
Owen clenched his teeth. “I’m not kidding around here.”
She held her ground. “Neither am I.”
He caught the round-eyed stare of the receptionist as she enjoyed a front-row seat of their little drama and remembered himself. He was playing right into Ms. Sunday’s game by appearing every inch the bullying blowhard she practically accused him of being in her articles. He dialed back his temper but it tasted like bile going down. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” he said quietly, not trusting himself to continue.
There was the tiniest frown that betrayed her surprise when he called her bluff but she didn’t try to placate him in order to make him change his mind. When she gave him a shrug as if to say “go for it,” he swallowed a snarl and stalked from the office.
He didn’t even care if he slammed the door. And in fact, he took perverse pleasure in the hope that the sound rattled the windows and echoed throughout the small building.
OH, BOY, WAS HE MAD. PIPER stifled a nervous giggle. “He has a temper, doesn’t he?” she remarked to Nancy.
“Yes, he does. And you’ve riled him pretty good. You sure you want to do that? He just might sue us, and you know how that will upset Mr. Cook.”
At the mention of the publisher, Piper shrugged but the kernel of nervousness remained. She couldn’t lose her job. She had big plans. Besides, Owen Garrett could holler all he wanted. It wasn’t going to change the fact that she’d done her due diligence on all of her articles on Big Trees Logging. She studied her fingernail and frowned at the hangnail she saw. She nibbled at the offending skin. “It’s not my fault that I write the stories that put people on the defensive,” she said to Nancy, though the receptionist had already returned to her work, which meant she wasn’t paying much attention to her. Piper exhaled and walked to her office where she’d been doing her research on the aging computer. A spinning rainbow greeted her on the monitor as the computer wheezed through her request without much success. “Damn archaic piece of junk,” she muttered, wondering whether if she gave it a whack like they do in the movies it would miraculously start working. Instead of bitch-slapping her hard drive like she wanted to, she sighed and shut it down so it could reboot.
“Who wants your head this time?” a voice asked behind her. “It must suck to write the stories people love to hate.”
She rolled her eyes before turning to face the owner of the annoyingly snarky tone. “Yes, and it must be tiring to have to be the one to write the stories nobody reads.”
Charlie Yertz, the bane of Piper’s existence, pulled a nasty face but didn’t disappear as she’d hoped. Instead, he tilted his head and regarded her shrewdly, saying, “I think you have an agenda with that Big Trees guy.”
She affected a bored expression. “An agenda? Pray tell.”
“I don’t know yet but I’ll figure it out.”
“You’ve been reading too many conspiracy-theory blogs,” she said, dismissing him and turning her attention to her slowly booting computer. But it was hard to seem absorbed with nothing showing on the screen, so she busied herself with tidying her space. When Charlie remained, she glared. “Can I help you?”
“You’re ambitious,” he stated as if that were a revelation, which it wasn’t. Everyone knew Piper had big dreams of landing a Pulitzer someday.
“Charlie, who knew you had such hard-core investigative skills. Now, go on, shoo. I have work to do.”
“So smug. You didn’t let me finish. You’ve been going after Owen Garrett like a dog with a bone. I can understand one story on the logging hunk. But three? Care to share?”
Charlie thought she had the hots for Owen. If it weren’t so ludicrous, she’d be offended. He was not her type. She preferred her men cultivated, civilized and sophisticated, not rough, big and completely disinterested in protecting the environment. Oh, lord, if she were ever to bring home someone like Owen Garrett, much less the brawny man himself, her parents would wilt. Oh! Speaking of… She made a buzzer sound for Charlie’s benefit. “Wrong. However, two points for trying to think outside the box. Oops, actually you didn’t. Not really. It’s not a huge jump to try and draw a line between two single adults with some kind of cockamamie romance theory. Rest your little brain, Chuck. I’m starting to see smoke.”
Charlie’s face reddened and she bit back open laughter. It was just too easy with this guy.
“If I find out you’re moonlighting behind the paper’s back, I’ll take great pleasure in ratting you out.”
She kept her face implacable as she said, “I’m sure your uncle appreciates your loyalty.”
“I am loyal,” he agreed, his gaze hardening. “Unlike some.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and instead, checked her watch. “Oh, look at the time. Gotta go. If you’ll excuse me, I have a lunch date scheduled.”
She moved past Charlie, who was no doubt plotting her death. The irony was that if he managed to pull off the perfect murder, her obituary would end up on his desk and she wasn’t sure she felt comfortable with the idea of Charlie being in charge of her last words printed in the paper.
The funny thing was, for once Charlie had hit the nail on the head, though he was far afield with that romance idea. She was on to something with Owen Garrett and, really, it had nothing to do with his logging operation. She was digging into a bigger, better, far juicer story than the environmental angle her parents were pushing her to pursue.
And Owen Garrett was at the epicenter.
Of course, he was oblivious to the part he was going to play in her master plan—the plan where she busted open a decades-old case involving Owen’s late father and, in the process, earned herself a spot among the greats in journalistic history. Now that she had him good and riled, when she pulled the bait and switch on him, he wouldn’t know what hit him.