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The Truth About Harry
Tracy Kelleher
Lauren Jeffries needed a scoop, something that would get her her first serious newspaper story and away from writing obits. When she sort-of faked Harry Nord's obit, she never dreamed it'd get published, let alone that a hot guy would show up asking a lot of uncomfortable questions and making her feel…well, hot.On the hunt for snatched objets d'art, stolen-art investigator Sebastian Alberti has logged a ton of frequent flyer miles circling the globe. When a death notice in the Philadelphia Sentinel about his chief suspect catches his eye, his legs take him right to Lauren's door–and then into her bedroom….
Speaking of bodies, Lauren was evidently enjoying a very nice eyeful of Sebastian’s
This time, he realized, she wasn’t searching for something neutral to focus on when she spoke to him. “You know, there’s something I should do before I forget.” She scooted next to him and placed a hand on his thigh.
“You need to check that police source for your story?” He observed her hand.
“Yeah, I need to do that, but that wasn’t what I had in mind at the moment.” She made a slow circle on his skin with her index finger.
“You need to call room service for something to eat? I realize we missed dinner.” Sometimes his gallantry astounded him.
“No, I’m fine.”
Sebastian tweaked a smile. “You’re absolutely right, darlin’—in fact, you’re a lot more than fine,” he whispered as Lauren undid her terry-cloth robe and let it slip from her shoulders.
Dear Reader,
The life of a reporter is often filled with uninspiring daily assignments. But what if, under unusual circumstances, a reporter actually got to exercise a self-indulgent flight of fancy regarding one of the least-coveted of duties—writing an obituary?
What if, indeed?
Lauren Jeffries finds out the repercussions when an obituary that she has liberally embellished inadvertently gets published. Not only is her journalistic integrity compromised, but she also finds herself enmeshed in an international art theft. And even more dangerously, she tangles with Sebastian Alberti, the investigator on the case.
Never has a case of “misapplied” identity led to so many twists and turns and sexy interludes. Yes, those sexy interludes.
And here I said a reporter’s life was dull!
All the best,
Tracy Kelleher
Books by Tracy Kelleher
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
908—EVERYBODY’S HERO
949—IT’S ALL ABOUT EVE…
The Truth About Harry
Tracy Kelleher
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my gracious editor, Kathryn Lye. You made it happen.
Contents
Prologue (#u138762f1-5940-5fc1-8fef-c4c8cbc0a93a)
Chapter 1 (#u5f1972bf-b55f-5673-9e08-9c510e7aa757)
Chapter 2 (#ud3d1b051-4475-5b3f-a692-3367e98cc2c2)
Chapter 3 (#uf800a4ce-db9d-5e8e-8260-97ecf47f1684)
Chapter 4 (#u45233244-96b2-5048-9b24-a3202e3972f6)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Harry Nord, 83, Manufacturer And Philanthropist, Dies
Harry Nord, a decorated World War II pilot, self-made millionaire and generous local philanthropist, died in his sleep yesterday at the Philadelphia Veteran’s Administration Hospital. He was 83 years old and had been ill for some time.
A true Horatio Alger story, Mr. Nord, born in Camden, New Jersey, came from a humble background, having been orphaned at the age of twelve when his parents died in the infamous B&O train crash of December 1934. An investigation of the incident revealed that the conductor had reported to work inebriated after celebrating at the company Christmas party. Charges were leveled, though later dropped, against the railroad’s management. Mr. Nord liked to tell employees of Nord Notions and Trimmings Company, of which he was founder and president, that it was his constant lack of proper winter clothing growing up in greater Philadelphia that led him to the garment industry.
Before making his mark in the industry, Mr. Nord had a distinguished military career in World War II, rising to the rank of captain. A pilot, his plane was shot down on a mission over northern Italy. Although dazed and injured, Mr. Nord dragged his wounded navigator from the burning plane. Local villagers of San—
LAUREN JEFFRIES tapped on the space bar and rubbed her lips. “San what?” she asked out loud to no one in particular. The rest of the Metro Desk at the Philadelphia Sentinel, eastern Pennsylvania’s second-largest newspaper—a claim that never failed to generate a snide “Hah!” from Lauren—had long since filed their stories for the night’s deadline and were drinking cheap beer and complaining about their piddly salaries at Gino’s, the bar around the corner from the office.
She glanced at her notes, knowing already that they wouldn’t offer any assistance. A conspiratorial smile formed on her lips, and she hunched over her terminal and tapped furiously.
Local villagers from San Margherita discovered the two men and hid the crew until they were well enough to travel. Then, with the aid of a shepherd, they hiked to safety across the Alps to Switzerland. Mr. Nord was later awarded a Bronze Star for heroism.
Upon conclusion of the war, Mr. Nord returned to Philadelphia, where he secured various entry-level jobs in the garment industry. While working as a buttonholer at a shirt factory, he realized that the finishing process would proceed much more quickly if there were a single machine that could sew and slit the buttonholes at the same time. He developed an automatic buttonhole device, which he patented. The Nordomatic, as the device came to be known, revolutionized shirtmaking. Later inventions, including the zigzag zipper-foot, further established Mr. Nord as an innovative leader in the industry, and laid the groundwork for Nord Notions and Trimming Company, a manufacturing business whose headquarters were once located next to Thirtieth Street Station. In 1991, the Singer Corporation bought out Nord Notions; operations were subsequently moved to Mexico.
Mr. Nord was a generous benefactor, as well as an industrial leader. Locally, he established the “Winter Coat Drive” to aid the Salvation Army. Perhaps his most generous act of charity—
Lauren backspaced and deleted the last word.
—of largesse was the rebuilding of the tiny town of San Margherita. Grateful for the protection the villagers had offered despite the risk to their own safety, Mr. Nord donated funds to build a new school, retirement home and library, restore the community’s small but noteworthy Romanesque church and establish a scholarship program to send promising students to universities in Italy and abroad. A plaque in his honor, affixed to the north wall of the town hall, proclaims in Italian, “Here he came to earth in a blaze of fire, and with God’s help, raised San Margherita from the ashes.”
Lauren leaned back. The quote was outrageous, and she could just see Dan Jankowski, the copy editor on duty that night, chuckling to himself before he hit the delete button and sent her a terse e-mail: “Try to keep your flights of fancy to under three inches. This is Metro, not Page One.”
It was bad to fabricate the story, even an obit. Really bad. Lauren, who wore professional integrity on her sleeve the way a lot of professional athletes had endorsement patches, knew it more than most. But she couldn’t help it. And it wasn’t like this one was ever going to see the light of day. Call it a revenge piece. A catharsis. A way to vent her reporter’s spleen. She’d just found out that her managing editor, Ray Kirkel, the douche bag, had passed her over for the State House reporter job in favor of Huey Neumeyer. Huey! An editorial assistant who couldn’t even photocopy straight. Maybe the fact that he was Ray’s wife’s cousin had something to do with the appointment.
“Everything to do with it!” Lauren snorted. One did not grow up in South Philly without acquiring a certain sense of cynicism. It was like cheesesteaks, the local culinary specialty—it went with the territory.
After three years pounding the Metro beat, generating more than the usual school board and two-alarm fire stories—and garnering an award from the Pennsylvania Press Association for her piece on teenage runaways—what did she get? A fax tossed on her desk and an order from Ray: “Two inches by deadline. An ad was pulled from the obit page, and I need to fill the space.”
Lauren had looked down at the bare-bones release from the mortuary. Harry Nord, the real Harry Nord, wouldn’t guarantee more than half a column inch, and that was with a free plug for the funeral parlor.
“So, this is my reward for all my hard work and effort?” Lauren wailed silently after Ray had waddled off in the direction of the men’s room. “The man wouldn’t know a crack reporter, let alone a crack story, if he fell over one,” she muttered under her breath. And to prove her point, she’d taken Harry Nord’s death notice and embellished it beyond recognition, turning it into the human interest story of the year, knowing full well it wouldn’t run, but getting a genuine sense of satisfaction nonetheless.
Tomorrow, she’d do the real obit on the real Harry Nord, and it would appear in a late edition. Ray would never know. As far as she could tell, he hardly ever looked at the paper except to scan the six-column photos of buxom, bikini-clad babes.
Without a second thought, Lauren hit Send and forwarded the text to the Copy Desk. End of story.
Yeah, right.
1
“I AM SO SCREWED,” Lauren mumbled into the shoulder of her fuzzy sweater. She slowly rubbed her forehead as if willing her headache to escape via the horizontal tracks she was tunneling in her cranium.
“What’s that?” Phoebe Russell-Warren arched her swanlike neck and thrust her shoulders back to get a better view of the television news conference at the front of the office lobby. At six foot one with impeccable posture—the effects of years of field hockey, she had once assured Lauren—Phoebe cut an impressive figure. The major bits of gold hanging off her earlobes and dangling from her slender wrists added to the Amazonian effect. “You don’t recognize the man standing next to Ray, do you?” she asked, peering elegantly ahead. “I know all the local broadcasters, at least those worth knowing, and he doesn’t look familiar.”
Phoebe wasn’t exaggerating her people skills. As Lifestyle editor, she knew everyone on Society Hill and the Main Line with a trust fund and a Porsche Boxster.
Lauren went up on tiptoe and frowned. “I can’t see anything clearly except Baby Huey’s dandruff on his navy blue blazer.” Unlike Phoebe, Lauren barely grazed the five-foot-three mark, even wearing clogs. Clogs, a turtleneck sweater and khaki pants—ah, yes, the wardrobe of the penurious and fashion-challenged reporter.
Phoebe turned her attention away from the news conference and stared down at Lauren. “What was it you said? Baby Huey?”
“It’s my new name for Neumeyer, intrepid State House reporter and genuine turd,” Lauren said, gripping her take-out coffee cup a little harder than necessary.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ray Kirkel, their fearless leader, intoned by the bank of glass doors, “I’m very excited to welcome you all here today for this important announcement.”
There was a pause. Lauren figured Ray was beaming into the television cameras from the local affiliate of the network news.
“Not that we’re not used to excitement on a regular basis here at the Sentinel,” he started up again.
“I wish you could see the man at the front next to Ray. He is an absolute dish.” Phoebe nudged Lauren.
Only Phoebe could get away with phrases like “an absolute dish,” Lauren thought. Lauren breathed in slowly and reluctantly leaned toward her friend. “Forget Dishy Mystery Man for a moment.”
“Forget him? Are you crazy? He has that dangerous look of a young Sean Connery playing James Bond. Maybe he has a Scottish accent, too? Nothing like a Scottish accent in bed. Or in the shower. Or up against the wall.”
Lauren went back to rubbing her forehead. “Phoebe, listen, I have something important that I really need to tell you.” The need to bare her soul was an unfortunate attribute of Lauren’s, and one that at the age of twenty-seven she hoped she would have left behind—the same way she’d cleared up her teenage acne and shed the fifteen pounds of puppy fat that once surrounded her waist like a plastic float.
“We’re gathered here today because of the passing of a great man,” Ray bellowed.
Phoebe reluctantly shifted her gaze to Lauren. “You need to confess something? The woman who doesn’t sleep around, indulge in illegal substances and only drinks wine or beer—and then in moderation? You won’t even buy me cigarettes when I run out.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “It’s about the obit,” she whispered.
“The obit?” Phoebe’s delivery wasn’t quite so sotto voce.
“Shh!” Baby Huey turned around. “You two are interrupting a unique moment here.” He looked at them sternly before shifting back to take in the action.
“If you only knew how unique,” Lauren moaned softly.
“As usual, the Sentinel came through,” Ray continued before raising his arm magisterially and pointing to a screen that had been set up to his right. Instantly, there appeared a giant image—an obituary. Lauren’s obit. Well, not her actual obit, but the obit she’d written.
“It just shows that with the right editorial guidance, even a junior member of the staff can make an impact,” Ray announced.
Lauren groaned. “Maybe he won’t mention my name.”
“Of course he won’t mention your name. Ray is a total asshole,” Phoebe said sympathetically.
“Once more, I’m pleased to say our paper, despite our limited resources in comparison to television, scooped the other media.” Ray modestly held up his hand. “No slight to you folks,” he joked to the TV crews. Yeah, right.
“Maybe now I’ll find out who Mr. Tall, Dark And Handsome is.” Phoebe didn’t bother to be coy as she started to move forward through the crowd.
Lauren reached out and stopped her. “Phoebe, there’s something you need to know about the obit.” She gulped. “The guy’s story—I made the whole thing up.” She’d like to say she felt better for confessing, but the pit in her stomach was only getting larger.
“Wha-at?” Phoebe squawked. She swiveled around and grabbed Lauren by both forearms.
“Those Pilates classes have really improved your grip,” Lauren observed.
“Actually, it’s high-impact yoga.” Phoebe pulled her closer and bent her head down. “You mean you killed off somebody who wasn’t dead.”
Lauren shook her head. “No, trust me, Harry Nord is good and dead.” She cast a worried glance around to see if anyone was watching.
Who was she kidding? With two women locked in an embrace, of course somebody was watching. “Will you keep it down? All the guys in production will think we’re staging a little snuggle here just for their benefit.” Lauren grabbed Phoebe by the shoulders, hustled her down the hallway and pushed her through the first door they came to.
Phoebe looked around. “If you’re worried what people are going to think, squirreling me away into the janitor’s closet is not going to help.” Unfazed, she overturned a large mop bucket and lowered herself regally, crossing one leg over the other so that her taupe patent leather Chanel pump swung gracefully next to her slender calf.
Lauren scraped her loose bangs from her forehead. “You see, it’s like this. Ray, being the asshole he is—as you so rightly pointed out—not only appointed Baby Huey to the State House reporter’s job over me, but he didn’t even have the nerve to tell me to my face. I heard it from Donna.”
“You mean, Donna of the ill-fitting double-Ds? She won’t ever give me new erasers, even when I ask politely.” In addition to being president of the Engelbert Humperdinck Fan Club, Donna Drinkwater was head of the supply closet and ruled over it with the arbitrary élan of a born martinet.
“You’re kidding? I can always get erasers,” Lauren said, then waved her hand in the air. “The point is, Ray, the schmuck, when he finally did come face-to-face, merely assigned me an obit without so much as a by-your-leave. So I got mad, really mad. And really more out of spite than anything, I—”
Phoebe rose. “You don’t need to go on. You invented a great news story—about Harry Nord—didn’t you?”
Lauren nodded.
