Like Never Before

by Melissa Tagg

  Perhaps. With a dad who’d fought in Vietnam and gone on to work as an ambassador and diplomat and a mom who’d helped start an international foundation, maybe being a Walker came part and parcel with lofty career goals. And maybe he would’ve ended up where he was now with or without Freddie’s influence. But he certainly wouldn’t have made it through Mom’s sickness and eventual death without Freddie’s intervention. Not that Logan hadn’t had his family, but they’d all been grieving, too. Even Emma had seemed somehow . . . too close.

  Freddie had stepped in right when Logan had needed him most. Given him an internship and later a job, a distraction.

  And now he’d given him his legacy.

  “As you should know from the papers I sent, Freddie was looking at selling the News. The flood last fall put him in a pretty bad financial hole. His insurance policy was a joke.”

  Logan forced himself to pay attention. He shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night with his siblings. Definitely shouldn’t have let Charlie stay up so late.

  But even when he’d finally dropped into bed—in the bedroom in the house he’d grown up in—he hadn’t been able to drift off to sleep. Not with so many racing thoughts about Charlie, the spontaneity of this trip, the newspaper, Roberta S. Hadley . . .

  And that editor, Amelia, with the freckles and the tease in her voice. Somehow he needed to find a way to let her know he was now the owner of the paper she loved so much . . . and probably not for long.

  “Freddie actually had a buyer lined up?”

  “Cranford Communications. Tri-state media company.”

  “I’m familiar with them. They own the Communicator. Thing I don’t get is why they were interested in buying the News if it’s in such bad shape financially.”

  Hugh shrugged. “Because a bigger regional reach is a good long-term investment. The Communicator already covers three other towns in our county. Why not Maple Valley, too? They’d get our advertising, our subscribers, and our news without any of the overhead costs. They can sell off the building and the equipment.”

  Oh. Now Amelia’s worry made sense. She wasn’t just out to save the paper—she was out to save jobs.

  “I’ve had a ridiculous number of calls from the Cranford people, by the way, since Freddie passed. They’re still interested in moving forward with the sale. In fact, I’ve got a whole packet of paperwork I can give to you. Should’ve brought it in with me.” Hugh rose. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Logan stood, too, turning a circle in the office as he waited for Hugh to return. The room wasn’t so much an office as a library—one with shelves that reached all the way to a ceiling supported by cedar planks and embellished with dark crown molding, its blunt angles matching the room’s masculine feel—all browns and blacks and tans. A fringed rug with swirls of burgundy and blue provided the only splash of brightness.

  Quite the contrast from his sparse office back in LA. Or Freddie’s closet of an office at the News building.

  “You were destined to live a big life.”

  Who knew what that even meant? But it couldn’t mean holding on to a newspaper that was bleeding money. The sooner Logan got this whole thing off his plate, the sooner he could focus on earning that spot on Hadley’s campaign.

  He just hated the thought of hurting Amelia in the process. She seemed . . . well, nice. And she liked his speeches.

  “I heard you were here.”

  He spun at the sound of the voice behind him. Not Hugh.

  Jenessa? Of all the people to run in to in his first twenty-four hours home . . .

  She stood in the doorway with her posture as rigid as a cement statue, lips pressed together.

  “Uh, hi.”

  “Really? ‘Uh, hi’? I thought you were a speechwriter.” She pushed a sheet of coal-black hair over her shoulder and stepped into the room. “If that’s the best you can do, I’m going to petition Maple Valley High to rescind that valedictorian title they gave you.”

  “If I remember correctly, you already tried that. Sixteen years ago, week or two before graduation. Didn’t go over so well.”

  She brushed past him, tight black sweater emphasizing curves every guy in high school had noticed—Logan included. Until Emma had come along.

  “You missed half the first semester of our senior year.” She leaned against the desk that dominated the room’s floor space.

  “Yeah, because my mom was sick and—” He cut himself off. It was an old, pointless argument, and it wasn’t what bothered Jenessa anyway. He knew that much. “Jenessa, about your dad—”

  “Don’t. There’s not a thing you can say that could in any way make up for what you did.” Her fingers tapped against the gilded antique globe propped on a stand next to the desk.

  He dropped back into his chair, eyes on the globe spinning underneath Jenessa’s red fingernails. “Why are you here anyway?”

  “The firm’s called Banner & Associates. I’m one of the associates.”

  “But I thought . . . didn’t you and . . . ?” He sorted through high school faces, searching for the name.

  “Gage Fellows.”

  Right. Baseball star in high school. Played in the minor leagues now. “Doesn’t he play for some team out East?”

  The tiniest chink marred her stern bearing as she slapped her palm over the globe. “We’re still together. But during spring training and the rest of the season, he’s barely around. He lives here during the off-season, much to my parents’ chagrin. They’ve never been big fans of Gage. Not like with . . .”

  You. She didn’t have to finish it. He and Jenessa hadn’t dated more than five months their junior year of high school, but he’d never shaken the feeling that he’d let down her parents as much as Jenessa when he’d broken things off. And that’d been just the beginning of his tumultuous relationship with the family.

  “It’s not only your shoddy reporting that lost you points around here, Walker.”

  He swallowed, sour memories stinging him. The article he’d never wanted to write.

  “He could’ve been governor. He’ll never get those years back, Logan.”

  He should stand. Look her in the eyes. Counter the attack. But how did a person argue when the opponent was the one with truth on her side?

  “You ruined his career all for a stupid headline.”

  “That’s not why—”

  “And what really makes me sick is you’re still the town golden boy while my dad’s in and out of the hospital, forced into a retirement that’s killing him as much as his disease you couldn’t wait to publicize in a splashy front-page article.”

  No, that’s where she was wrong. He’d cared. He’d hated writing that story. Didn’t matter that it was the truth, that Freddie had backed him, that voters deserved honesty. “He had a serious, congenital disease, Jen. A degenerative disease, and he purposely misled voters. He lied about hospital stays.”

  Why was he even trying to defend himself? Jen and her whole family had made it plenty clear years ago there wouldn’t be any reconciliation. He’d written the story exposing her father’s illness. Basically ruined the man’s campaign . . . his entire career.

  Interestingly, as much as he’d hated the experience, it’d shaped his future in ways he couldn’t have imagined at the time. While covering that campaign, he’d gotten his first real taste of the political world. Had found himself reading press releases and listening to speeches and mentally rewriting them in his head.

  And when his story about Jenessa’s dad made national news, he ended up with connections that led to covering the Iowa caucuses for a couple national media outlets. By the end of that summer, he’d reconnected with Theo, an old friend from college—a California kid who’d never seemed to fit his poli-sci major.

  But apparently he’d taken his studies seriously enough.

  “Just stay away from my dad, okay?” Jenessa’s voice jutted in. “Don’t visit him while you’re here. His health is getting worse, and the last thing he needs is
to see you.”

  “Jenessa.” This time it was Hugh’s voice behind him, censure in his tone and pace swift as he entered the room. He strode past Jenessa and rounded his desk.

  “Sorry, Hugh.” Jenessa straightened the globe atop its stand, refusing to look at Logan as she marched toward the door, heels clicking as the rug gave way to hard flooring.

  Logan rose to his feet. “Jen?”

  Her footsteps paused.

  “I’m only here a couple weeks.”

  She didn’t face him.

  “Last thing I’d want is to make anything worse with your dad. I’ll . . . keep away.”

  No acknowledgement. Only the latch of the door.

  Maybe—probably—she was a hundred kinds of crazy. But tonight crazy felt good.

  Especially with the whole News staff gathered around the oblong table, their laughter mingling with the live music and buzzing chatter filling The Red Door, Maple Valley’s newest and nicest restaurant. Outside its gaping front windows, another round of spring snow glistened under the light of lampposts that wrapped like a line of sentries around the town square.

  Amelia set her last folder in front of Owen and returned to her own chair, her puffy winter coat slung over the back.

  “Wait, you brought us all here to work?” Kat Chin, the ad manager, flipped open her folder. “I thought this was, like, staff party time. A morale boost or something.”

  Across the table, Owen fiddled with his straw wrapper, tearing the paper into tiny bits and letting them sprinkle to the tabletop. “You’re not the only one who got blindsided.”

  Poor Owen. He’d been the one to suggest dinner at The Red Door before calling it a day. Hadn’t known until everyone else showed up that Amelia had gone and invited the rest of the team—and decided to present her plan for saving the News.

  A plan that just might work. And she had Logan Walker to thank.

  His hypothetical answer to her not-at-all hypothetical question had crawled into her brain and stayed there, lulling her into her first good night’s sleep since C.J. Cranford’s visit. And this morning, she’d woken up with the idea in her head.

  She might not know who owned the paper. But she knew how she’d save it.

  Her gaze flitted around the table now. Kat and Mikaela and Abby from the ad department. Mae, who was whipping through the pages in her folder. Ledge, the quiet giant of a man who ran the press. Taylor, their subscription and delivery manager. And Owen, half scowling as he swept up the bits of his wrapper into a pile.

  “I don’t even want to know how much ink you used printing this.” Mae flipped to the last page. “You could have at least printed double-sided.”

  Maybe Amelia should have left her a second plate of cookies last night. She might seem huffy now, but Amelia had seen her munching on one of the treats this morning. “The printer jams whenever I try that.” Amelia propped her elbows on either side of her half-guzzled Diet Coke. “I promise, guys, this won’t take long. We’ll be done by the time the food arrives.”

  Like most nights since The Red Door had opened last summer, a local crowd filled the tables dotting the hardwood floor. The historic bank-building-turned-eatery boasted a perfect mix of trendy and downhome with its thick redwood beams overhead, dim lighting, and amber-colored walls. In the corner tonight, a fireplace crackled while Bear McKinley wooed patrons with his Martin and a voice smooth as velvet.

  To think, Seth Walker—cousin to the Walker siblings—had started this place with nothing more than half a vision and a love for a decrepit building. Well, that and the old cobblestone he’d salvaged when the city had decided to pave Main Avenue. He’d used it to create the restaurant’s counter in back. She’d written the front-page story herself, the one about how he’d stored the cobblestone for years in a shed on his uncle’s property, never quite sure why, until he’d finally decided to pour his savings into renovating the bank building and opening a restaurant.

  It must be a Walker thing—landing on a dream and making it happen. Look at Kate and all those movies she’d written. Logan and his success.

  She cupped her hands around her pop glass. “This summer is the 100th anniversary of the paper. Freddie wasn’t going to make a big deal of it because he wasn’t sure he’d even be around. If he’d lived, the News would’ve been sold by now.”

  “So we’re going to put out an anniversary issue?” Mikaela fingered through the pages in her folder.

  “Yep. In May—exactly one hundred years after the very first issue. It’s not our usual production day, but that’s okay because this won’t be our usual paper.” She stirred her straw through her Diet Coke, ice cubes clinking as her excitement built. “Kat, Kaela, Abby—you guys are going to sell ad space like never before. Ledge, we’re going to triple our usual print run. Everyone in town gets a copy, subscribers or not. Taylor, we’ll need to line up extra delivery guys that week. I know it’s almost three months away, but the lead time is good.

  “We’ll offer a special subscriber rate that week. Between the extra advertising and hopefully new subscribers, we’ll convince the new owner we’re worth hanging on to.”

  That is, unless the new owner swooped in and sold them off before they could get to the special issue. But whoever he was, he was taking his sweet time announcing himself. Maybe the lawyers hadn’t even located him yet. Maybe it was some long-lost relative of Freddie’s who lived off in Alaska or Hawaii or South America.

  She could hope.

  Their food arrived then—a still-sizzling burger and fries for her. Her stomach rumbled at the sight. Across the table, a waiter lowered some sort of fancy salad with a see-through dressing in front of Owen. He’d barely looked at her while they talked. Was he really that upset she’d invited everyone else along tonight?

  The next few minutes passed in a blur of clinking silverware and satisfied eating. Until Ledge looked up from his plate. “I think it’s a good idea, Amelia.”

  The burly older man, bald with ebony skin and kind eyes, rarely spoke up. The most noise he ever made was with the press. But his simple statement was enough to quiet the rest of the crew.

  “You do?”

  He nodded, then looked around the table and seemed to prompt everyone else into doing the same. Even Mae.

  Except Owen, who lowered his fork and finally looked at Amelia. “Yeah, but what’s going to actually fill this thing besides ads?”

  “Stories about the paper’s history. Old photos, maybe even some old articles.”

  “No actual news?” Skepticism clouded his tone.

  “Oh, there’s going to be news.” She leaned forward, fingers lacing around her glass. Her favorite part, this. “I’m finally going to solve the Kendall Wilkins mystery.”

  She’d expected a few oohs, maybe some ahhs. Not the blank expressions that stared back at her.

  “The town loner?” This from Abby. “Didn’t he die?”

  “He was more than a town loner. Half the buildings in town wouldn’t have been built without him. He lived to be 101. He saw more world history than most of us have read about in textbooks.”

  He was Maple Valley’s most famous citizen. Businessman, philanthropist, collector. He’d lived through the Great Depression, fought in World War II, and made millions after the war, which he then poured back into this community. In the seventies, he’d donated his mansion to the city. Now it housed the public library.

  And perhaps the most interesting of all his stories—he’d been in Paris in 1927, stood on Le Bourget field as Charles Lindbergh made his historic landing. Even had a black-and-white photo of himself standing next to the record-setting aviator and the Spirit of St. Louis.

  Logan had said to write a story she was passionate about. Well, she’d wanted to write Kendall Wilkins’s story for years.

  “He might’ve been an interesting guy, but no one ever knew him.” Kat forked her grilled asparagus. “Believe me, I grew up here. The man was a legend, but not necessarily a well-liked one. For all his philanthropy,
he never came to a single town event. Never got involved. And then he pranked the whole town when he died. I’m not sure putting his face on the cover of a special issue will do us any favors.”

  “But that’s just it. I don’t think he meant to prank anyone.”

  It was town lore these days, the story of Kendall Wilkins’s will. Five years ago when he’d died, he’d left the contents of a safe-deposit box to the city of Maple Valley. The town made a big deal of it, gathered a crowd to open the box . . . only to find it empty. Everyone assumed it was the elaborate hoax of a hermit.

  But they didn’t know the Kendal Wilkins she’d known. Oh, she’d never met him in person, but she had . . . well, she definitely had insider knowledge.

  “I think there was supposed to be something in that box. I’m going to figure out what it was and what happened to it. And that, my friends, will be our front-page story.”

  She could sense the skepticism threading through the group, but they were either too hungry or too nice to voice it.

  Except for Owen, who pushed back from the table—abrupt, annoyed—and stood. “I’m . . . not hungry.” He swiped his coat from the back of his chair and tromped away from the table.

  The rest of the group looked as confused as she felt. “Owen,” she called after him, the wallop of the closing door punctuating his exit.

  She followed him outside, shrugging into her jacket as she stepped into the snow-salted outdoors. Moonlight slanted in to highlight the scowl on Owen’s face as he stopped and turned under a flickering lamppost. She hurried toward him. “I know you’re from the big city, Berry, but you can’t dine and dash in a small town.”

  “I just needed some air.” He huffed the words, crossing his arms and refusing to look her in the eye.

  Her steps slowed as she reached him. “What’s wrong with you? Do you hate my idea?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Is it that I invited everyone else tonight?”

  He peered down at her. “Yes. All right? Yes. Finally, after a year and a half of working with you, I go for it. I ask you out. And you invite the entire staff on our date.”