Burning Bright

by Anne Stuart; Maggie Shayne; Judith Arnold

  “Do you understand libel law?”

  Barrett was pulling out the big guns now. Alana squared her shoulders beneath her bulky sweater. “Yes, I understand libel law. For one thing, Mr. Barrett, Robert Willis is a public official, which raises the legal threshold for libel way high. For another, I wrote nothing libelous in that article. And I’ll tell you this,” she added angrily. “If Robert Willis is paying you Boston-lawyer rates and you’re telling him he’s got a libel case against me, you’re giving him lousy legal advice.”

  “Alana,” Chet interceded.

  “Well, he is,” she said, rotating to face her boss.

  “I’m not looking to sue anyone,” Barrett said.

  Alana refused to turn back to him, and she stifled the urge to argue. Chet clearly believed she was close to losing control. So she pressed her lips together and stared at the fax of the article from Wednesday’s paper, which Barrett had set back down on Chet’s desk.

  “You could certainly write,” Barrett continued, “that Robert Willis hasn’t been accused of anything or implicated in any investigation. You could clear his name, so he can walk around the streets of this town without having to wear a paper bag over his head.”

  Alana could, but why should she? Robert Willis hadn’t been cleared. The investigation was continuing. And whether he’d personally pocketed the missing seventy-five grand or simply been asleep at the wheel when the money had disappeared, he had to accept responsibility for the shortfall.

  “Look,” she said, eyeing Chet to make sure he’d back her up. “I’m going to continue to report on this story. If your client wants to talk to me, great. I’d love for us to print his explanation for how the money disappeared. But if he doesn’t want to talk to me, I’ll report the story without his statement.

  If the police discover someone stole the money, I’ll report it. If an audit locates the missing funds, I’ll report that. I’m not going to base my articles on some big-city attorney’s veiled threats.”

  “I haven’t threatened—”

  “If that’s all, Chet,” she went on with what she considered consummate poise, “I’ve got to finish that piece on the lake-front zoning.”

  “Mr. Barrett wants to go through our archives to see what other articles we’ve published on Bob Willis,” Chet told her. “I said we’d have no problem with that.”

  Alana suspected Barrett wanted to go through the newspaper’s archives to read other articles by her, no doubt searching for examples of what he considered bad reporting. Well, that hope would be dashed. Let him spend the whole weekend reviewing every article Alana had written since she’d joined the Chronicle staff last June—and every article she’d written for the Bridgeport News before then. He wouldn’t find anything but solid writing and unimpeachable ethics. And he could send Robert Willis an exorbitant bill for his wasted time.

  “Be my guest,” she said coolly, shooting Barrett a final glower as she shoved open the door.

  For some reason, he was smiling as he nodded a farewell.

  THREE HOURS LATER, Jeff was seeing double. Trying to read all that tiny print crammed onto a low-grade computer screen in the basement of the Chronicle building was enough to give a stronger man a migraine. And all he’d learned from his efforts was that Alana Ross was a tenacious reporter with a solid grasp of grammar.

  He didn’t have a migraine, but he pulled two ibuprofen tablets from the travel bottle in his pocket and downed them dry. Then he clicked off the machine. Aunt Marge, he thought, I’m doing this for you. You sure as hell better appreciate it.

  Of course, he was doing it for Uncle Bob, too—but Aunt Marge had been the one who’d phoned Jeff and begged him to come up to Crescent Cove. Uncle Bob had blown off the article in the Chronicle, insisting it was much ado about nothing. “Just a bored reporter with dreams of winning a Pulitzer,” he’d said, dismissing the piece.

  But Aunt Marge had seen it as an attack on her husband, and she’d asked Jeff to come to Crescent Cove. The class-action age-discrimination case Jeff had been working on for the past six months had unexpectedly reached a settlement yesterday, so he’d taken the day off and driven up to the picturesque Vermont town on the shore of Lake Champlain. He wasn’t sure what he could do to salvage Uncle Bob’s reputation—Alana Ross and her editor were right in claiming no libel had occurred—but if he could throw his weight around a little and give everyone a good scare, they might keep Uncle Bob’s name out of subsequent reports on the school’s budget problems.

  Jeff pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes, waiting for the pills to kick in. Alana Ross’s image floated across the blank screen of his mind and he let out a long breath. He’d expected the author of the article to be strong-willed and verbally nimble, but he hadn’t expected her to have such soulful brown eyes, or long, rippling hair the color of maple syrup. Her chin was too pointy, her cheeks too angular, her face too narrow, but put them all together and add a pair of snug-fitting black jeans, and a man noticed.

  She’d noticed him, too, if not exactly the way he’d noticed her. He’d scored pretty damn high on her enemies list. It wasn’t as if he was trying to deprive her of her First Amendment rights, for God’s sake. She hadn’t had to regard him as if he were scum.

  But he was a lawyer. He was used to people regarding him that way.

  His headache faded. He opened his eyes, stretched and smoothed out the tie he’d loosened as soon as the newspaper’s archivist, a skinny young man with geeky eyeglasses and a hole in the elbow of his crew-neck sweater, had led him to this basement computer and booted up the newspaper’s archives for the past six months. The archivist was banging away at a much newer computer with a nineteen-inch flat-screen monitor—no eye strain for him—and Jeff called a quick thanks as he shoved himself to his feet and donned his coat. He climbed the stairs and peered through the glass doors at the far side of the vestibule. Night had fallen—and plenty of snow had fallen, too, in the hours he’d been perusing the archives in the basement.

  The snow didn’t concern him. He hadn’t been planning to drive back to Boston tonight anyway. Aunt Marge had already made up the spare room for him.

  A glance at the well-lit newsroom revealed a few people at their desks, tapping away at their computers. Alana Ross had already left. Chasing down a hot lead? he wondered. Hell, the missing school-budget money was probably the hottest story this cute little town had ever seen.

  He buttoned his coat, turned up the collar and exited the building. The icy air sent a shiver through his body. As chilly as Boston could get in December, Crescent Cove was much colder.

  Hunching against the biting wind, he strode around the building to the adjacent parking lot. He dug his hand into his coat pocket and pressed the button on his key. The headlights flashed on his BMW.

  Three steps from his car, he heard the ghastly, familiar whine of tires spinning on ice. Scanning the lot, he saw the glowing red taillights of the car in trouble: a nondescript compact sedan parked right next to a mountainous pile of snow at the far end of the lot. The tires whined again as the driver pressed the gas and went nowhere. The car’s headlights glared against the wall of the building.

  Jeff crossed the lot, doing his best to avoid the patches of ice. He’d worn a pair of dress loafers, not the best shoes for a night like this.

  The stuck car revved again, backed up an inch, then forward, then back again. No progress. He reached the car and tapped on the driver’s side window.

  Alana Ross gazed at him. All bundled up in a hat, a scarf and a parka, she looked warm—and exasperated. She rolled down the window. “I take it you don’t have four-wheel drive,” he said.

  Her scowl intensified. She was cute when she frowned, but he didn’t think she’d appreciate his saying so. “This is the first time I’ve ever gotten stuck. I knew this parking space would mean trouble, but it was the only one available when I returned from lunch.”

  Because he’d taken the only other open spot, just a few minutes before she�
��d arrived. He didn’t think she’d appreciate hearing that, either. “Do you have anything to stuff under the tires?”

  “Like what?”

  “A copy of last Friday’s Chronicle would work.”

  She permitted herself a reluctant smile. “Your tie might work just as well,” she said.

  He smiled back. “I’ll give you a push,” he offered, “but only if you promise not to roll forward and pin me to the wall.”

  “I won’t.”

  “All right.” He moved around to the front of the car, braced one foot against the wall, gripped the front bumper with his hands and signaled her with a nod. She touched the gas pedal—very gently, he noted with some relief. He pushed. She gave the engine a little more gas. The tires spit slush at his shins. The soles of his shoes slipped against the ice. He pushed some more.

  The car fought him, but he won. Slowly, shimmying and spraying snow in all directions, the vehicle eased out of the spot.

  He straightened up, wiped his gloves off against each other and circled around to her open window. “Oh, God,” she groaned, surveying him. “You’re all wet.”

  “It’s just snow.”

  “And slush and…oh, your shoes.”

  He glanced at his shoes. They were soaked, his socks damp, his toes beginning to go numb. He should shut himself inside his own warm car and crank up the heat, but Alana seemed so worried, her eyes swimming with guilt and gratitude. Her plaintive expression was worth sacrificing a toe or two to frostbite.

  “If you follow me back to my house, I’ll give you a towel. And a drink. It’s the least I owe you.”

  He could get a towel and a drink from Aunt Marge, too. But he’d much rather follow Alana home. “I’ll be right behind you,” he said, then headed back to his car, trying not to grin.

  Chapter Two

  Jeffrey Barrett offered to lug two bags of supplies from the trunk of Alana’s car into her house. She’d bought her brisket yesterday on her way home from work so she could put it right into the freezer—although on a snowy evening, the interior of her trunk was probably just as cold. Before she’d gone to Burning Bright that afternoon, she’d spent most of her lunch break combing the aisles of BK’s Grocery in search of other necessities for the Hanukkah open house. Barrett thoughtfully carried the bags containing the potatoes, the heaviest of the bunch—and this after having sacrificed his shoes to the effort of pushing her car off the ice in the parking lot. He deserved a few points.

  But he wanted her to tone down her reporting on Robert Willis and the missing school-budget money, so he lost all the points he might have earned with his good deeds.

  She hit the light switch with her elbow before leading him into the kitchen. Nellie let out a raucous bark and scampered across the floor, her paws skidding on the smooth linoleum. She swept right past Alana and zeroed in on Barrett, nearly tripping him in her eagerness to sniff him.

  “Whoa,” he said, setting the bags on the table and then hunkering down to scratch Nellie behind her floppy ears. Nellie was a slutty mutt—she fell in love with anyone who rubbed her in the right places—and Alana didn’t take her instant infatuation with Barrett as proof of his sterling character. The fact that he was acting friendly toward Nellie didn’t mean anything, either. Even despots and sadists liked dogs.

  Not that Barrett was a despot or a sadist. He was a lawyer trying to shut her up in the middle of a big story, that was all. A fat-cat attorney from Boston throwing his weight around.

  “Come on, Nellie,” she scolded after putting her grocery bags on the counter. “Outside.” She opened the door from the kitchen to the back porch and into the tiny fenced-in yard. As soon as Nellie heard the squeak of the door hinges, she abandoned Barrett and raced outside, eager to empty her bladder and romp around in the snow after a long day indoors.

  Barrett straightened up and removed his coat, which glistened with drops of water where snowflakes had landed and melted. “I hope she’s not supposed to be a guard dog,” he said.

  Alana laughed, and resented his sense of humor. “A robber could walk away with everything I own, as long as he scratched her behind her ears,” she admitted. Not that she had much worth stealing. The only valuable jewelry she owned was the stuff she wore every day: her watch, her gold hoop earrings, the opal birthstone ring adorning her right hand. Her laptop, printer, stereo and TV might tempt a robber, but they were insured and easily replaceable. Nellie was the only thing in her house she’d grieve losing.

  Barrett draped his coat over a chair. His hair glistened with melting snow, too. She recalled why she’d invited him back to her house—because he’d sacrificed his shoes to rescue her car from its slippery space. “Let me get some towels so you can dry off,” she said.

  Before he could respond, she headed down the hall to the linen closet. She grabbed an old towel for Nellie and two newer towels for Barrett. Back in to the kitchen, she found him rubbing a paper towel over his hair. “I don’t think I need those,” he said, eyeing the towels in her hand.

  “Of course you do.” She handed him the two nicer towels and hooked the old one over the knob of the back door. “While you’re at it, give me your shoes and socks.”

  What he gave her was a sharp, dubious look.

  “They’re soaked. You’ll make yourself sick if you keep them on.” She extended her hand expectantly.

  He continued to stare at her. “What are you going to do with them?”

  “I’ll throw your socks in the dryer for ten minutes, and I’ll blast your shoes with a hair dryer.” She kept her hand out, waiting.

  He seemed to weigh his options before dropping into a chair. “I really don’t think this is necessary,” he muttered, although when he yanked off his shoes, splashes of water and slush scattered across the floor. Alana took his soggy shoes and socks and hurried back down the hall, first to the laundry alcove to stick his argyle socks into the clothes dryer and then to the bathroom, where she propped the nozzle of her old hair dryer into one of his shoes and turned the hairdryer on. Patsy recommended drying shoes in the microwave, but Alana had found that a hair dryer worked better. When she’d bought a new blow dryer last fall, she’d saved the old one for just this sort of situation.

  Back in the kitchen, she found Barrett still seated, one leg crossed over the other knee as he dried his feet with one of the cloth towels. Men’s feet were ugly, but Barrett’s were no worse than most—and of course the rest of him was so far above average that his knobby toes and bony insteps hardly mattered. He did appear oddly vulnerable, though, without his shoes on. She liked thinking of him as vulnerable.

  She walked past him to the bags she’d left on the counter and started emptying them. “Let me just put these groceries away, and then I’ll get you that drink I promised,” she said as she unpacked the onions and apricots.

  He slung the towel over the back of a chair and rose. Even without shoes on, he was much too tall. Maybe inviting him here had been a major mistake. Just because he was an allegedly reputable attorney who knew the right way to scratch a dog’s ears didn’t mean he was sane or safe.

  She’d been living in Crescent Cove too long, she realized. Back in Bridgeport—or in Philadelphia, where she’d grown up, or Manhattan, where she’d gone to college—she would never have brought a strange man into her house. Especially one as dangerously handsome as Barrett.

  She had her cell phone in her pocket. If he tried anything, she’d bolt and call the cops.

  Barrett lifted the second towel and ran it over his hair. In the amber light from the fixture above the table, she noticed the shadow of beard darkening his jaw. The collar button of his shirt was unfastened, the knot of his tie loosened. He looked somewhere between relaxed and exhausted, except for his alert silver-gray eyes. “Do you have roommates?” he asked.

  Her defenses shot up. Was he trying to find out whether they were alone? She lowered the bag of marshmallows she’d been about to stash on a shelf, tucked her hand into her pocket and brushed her thumb
against the buttons of her cell phone. “Why do you ask?”

  He gestured toward the bags he’d brought inside. “That’s a lot of potatoes for one person.”

  Panic subsiding, she released the cell phone and nodded. “It’s for a party,” she explained as she resumed unpacking her bags.

  “A potato party?”

  “They’re for latkes,” she told him. “It’s a traditional Hanukkah dish.”

  “Ah.” He gave up on his hair, leaving it sticking out from his scalp in damp tufts, and bent over to sop some of the moisture from the hems of his trousers. “A Hanukkah party?”

  She was amused that he would continue chatting from such an undignified position. Evidently, his ego was healthy enough that he didn’t care if he was presenting his butt to the world. A small, taut butt it was, too—and Alana was ashamed of herself for admiring it. “Hanukkah starts next Tuesday at sundown,” she said, her voice betraying nothing of her thoughts about his physique. “I’m hosting a party the fifth night of Hanukkah, on Saturday. My grandmother…”

  He straightened up, and the sheer beauty of his face caused her breath to catch in her throat. The hell with his physique. His eyes alone were enough to light a fire inside her. His eyes and his lips, and—

  “Your grandmother what?” he said, breaking into her thoughts as he dropped the second towel next to the first on the chair.

  She snapped out of her daze. “My grandmother hosted an open house on the weekend that fell during Hanukkah. There’s always a Saturday night—unless Hanukkah starts on a Saturday. Then there are two, because the holiday lasts eight days.”

  He nodded, the strained patience in his expression indicating that she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.

  “Anyway, my grandmother died last spring, and I thought I’d try hosting an open house like the ones she used to host. In her memory, I guess.” She spoke quickly, certain that he couldn’t possibly be interested in all this.