He went stone still and his eyes narrowed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said quietly.
Shut up, Tressie. Shut up now. “Oh, of course you do. I was here back then, too, remember? You were so in love with Pamela Mayes that you couldn’t see straight. Always trailing behind her and her boyfriend, hoping she would throw you a scrap of attention whenever she happened to look around and notice you there. But she never did, did she? What was his name? The boy she chose over you? Oh, that’s right. Chad Greene. Your best friend. Some friend you are.”
“Watch yourself, Tressie.”
“It was a sordid little story for a while there, and isn’t it a shame that I didn’t get to tell it.”
“You didn’t need to tell it. It was none of your business.”
“Whatever,” Tressie snapped, flapping a dismissive hand at him. “Like I said, it was five years ago. I kept up my end of the deal, so what do you want with me now?” The deal. Just thinking about it put a sour taste in her mouth.
When he had shown up at her office at the Inquisitor, some obviously delusional part of her mind had actually thought that he was there to invite her out to lunch or, even better, dinner. True, they didn’t exactly run in the same journalistic circles, but they had just run into each other in Mercy, when she had gone home for Ma’Dear’s funeral, and the vibe between them had been good. At least she’d thought so. Apparently her radar for gauging a man’s interest was seriously out of order, because not only couldn’t he have been less interested in taking her out to dinner, but he’d been on the verge of shaking her silly.
Accusations had been hurled and the shouting had been almost unbearable, and that was just on his part. For her part, she’d barely been able to get a word in. By the time he had calmed down long enough to issue a parting ultimatum, she’d been in tears. Drop the story, he’d said, or get ready for the world to know who she really was. It would’ve been a career-ending move, and no matter how badly she wanted to write columns that would bring the public to its knees, she couldn’t risk it.
And he’d known that.
Bastard.
“I want you not to make me take you to the mat again,” Nate said ominously. “Because you know I will.”
“For what?” Disbelief had her rearing back and staring up at him as if he was crazy, which very likely could’ve been the case. Studies had shown that some of the most attractive men in history had been quietly, secretly insane, and Nate Woodberry was way beyond attractive. He was tall and wrapped from head to toe in the kind of muscle that couldn’t be earned in a gym, and his smile, whenever he was moved to reveal it, which wasn’t very often it seemed, was just lopsided enough, just devilish enough to conjure up images of all kinds of X-rated deeds. His hair, when it wasn’t secured at the nape of his neck in a roguish ponytail, was an inky black curtain that draped his shoulders and hung down his back in silky waves. And when they weren’t narrowed to slits, his hazel eyes were sleepy-looking, as if he had just rolled out of bed. Any woman with a pulse would be tempted to roll him right back into bed upon first sight of him. Love didn’t immediately come to mind when you set eyes on him, but pure and simple lust damn sure did.
Quite frankly, he was a spectacular-looking man, which meant that the odds of his being completely off his rocker were greater than most. And here she was, naked except for a wash-worn towel and all alone with him in a nearly soundproof house. The way things were going, he could snap any second now, and what could she do? Beat him off with a towel that was probably just as old as she was?
“You know what?” Tressie said, mentally switching gears and frantically shooing him out of her way. “Forget I asked. I can’t deal with you right now, so I think it’s time for you to go.” She was surprised when he actually stepped aside, but she wasn’t about to waste a second of precious time thanking him. As soon as the way was clear, she made a beeline for the open door and the hallway on the other side of it. The bedroom she was using was directly across from the bathroom. Gripping her towel and walking fast, she headed toward it, praying every step of the way.
Walking just as fast behind her, Nate cuffed her arm and brought her skipping back to him two steps shy of her goal. “Just a second, sugar. I want to make sure we’re clear on something before you go back into hiding.” He dipped his head and put his face in her face. “Are you listening?”
Momentarily thrown off balance by the sheer impact of him, Tressie couldn’t find her voice. Good lord, the man was even more gorgeous up close. Some other part of her brain, some irrational, hypersexual part, wondered what he would do if she closed the inch separating his lips from hers and sucked his bottom lip into her mouth. Just curious, she’d say when he asked her what the hell she thought she was doing. Did he taste as good as he looked? Inquiring, sexually deprived minds suddenly wanted to know.
Pamela Mayes would know, she thought as her stricken gaze made its way down to the lips in question. Nate had been romantically linked to hundreds of high-profile women over the years, and somehow none of them had ever managed to drag him down the aisle. Whenever the topic of his lingering bachelorhood had come up in any of the personal interviews that he sometimes came out of seclusion and granted, he’d always rattled off some nonsense about not having found the right woman yet. But Tressie knew better. He had found the right woman years ago and let her slip through his fingers. All the other women that he’d romanced had just been extremely well-endowed, picture-perfect substitutes.
That information alone would’ve guaranteed sales in the hundreds of thousands if she’d been allowed to write even a fraction of the story.
Pamela Mayes was a country girl turned megasuperstar. She had turned her humble beginnings as an orphan here in Mercy, Georgia, into platinum records and multiple Grammy awards, stints on reality TV shows and, just this past year, a series of designer fragrances and a new makeup line. She was a household name, having been compared to legendary songbirds such as Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey when it came to vocal style and ability, and hottie newcomer celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian when it came to the scandal factor. As a result, the public loved her and the media dogged her every move.
Nate wasn’t an entertainer in the common sense of the word, but he was just as much a celebrity as Pamela Mayes was. As a reporter at a well-respected news station, he had established what would’ve ended up being a respectable, if not mundane, career for himself. But as a freelance investigative journalist, he had found a way not only to entertain people, but also to make them think. If his stories were informative, sometimes hard to swallow and often gut-wrenching, the photos that he took, the magic that he created from behind the lens, were absolutely awe-inspiring and even more so. He took the pictures that others turned away from and made you look at them. It hadn’t taken the powers that be long to notice that special something that he possessed, and along with notoriety had come wealth and a different kind of fame. On top of that, he was mouthwateringly sexy.
Linking him with Pamela Mayes and being able to substantiate the link with the kind of factual evidence that Tressie could’ve provided would have ignited her career. And then writing a no-holds-barred follow-up exposé about the life and times of the infamous Pamela Mayes, about everything that happened before and after her relationship with Nate Woodberry, would’ve shot Tressie’s career straight into orbit.
But she had missed the boat and now it was too late.
The trauma of burying her twin sister, the only biological family that Pam ever had, had already been written about in a biography that had sold millions of copies while Tressie had been too afraid to defy Nate’s order of silence. Pam had been involved in other scandals since then, and now that she was happily married and fairly domesticated, she was busy trying to build a legacy that she could be proud of. These days she was working hard to downplay her penchant for negative media attention and bring her philanthropic efforts to the forefront.
So Tressie would never get to write about what had to have been an intense connection