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The Big Scoop
Sandra Kelly
Dear Reader,
I am thrilled to present The Big Scoop, my second book for Harlequin, and my first for the Flipside line.
The inspiration for this story came from my own experience as a freelance journalist. Like Jack Gold, I, too, got a little jaded in my approach to researching and writing stories, especially profiles of real people. Bored silly by the truth, I once wrote a fictionalized, outrageously tongue-in-cheek account of a real person’s life (her parents were missionaries gifted with ESP; she was born in the jungle with a third eye in the middle of her forehead, etc.), then sat at my computer station, cackling hysterically while at the same time fretting over my diminishing sanity. In the end, I submitted the real story for publication. But I kept the bogus version on my hard drive as a personal reminder to get a new life.
Change, as it turns out, comes in surprising, delightful packages. For me it was a switch from nonfiction to romance fiction. It’s impossible to get jaded when you’re having this much fun. For Jack Gold it was a “delicious, devious, demented little dairy princess” by the name of Sally Darville.
Jack and Sally change one another forever—and definitely for the best! If you enjoyed reading their story as much as I enjoyed writing it, get in touch with me at sandrackelly@shaw.ca (mailto:sandrackelly@shaw.ca).
Sandra Kelly
“Jack Gold, you’re a poor excuse for a Gobey winner.”
A monstrous grin lit up his whole face at Sally’s comment. “You know about that?”
What an ego! “Of course I know about it. I did my homework. I know where you were born and where you went to school. I know that you’ve been twice nominated—”
“Three times, actually.”
“Whatever. The point is…”
“I get the point.” He dropped his chin and looked at her thoughtfully. “Normally, I do background research on a story. I didn’t in this case because, well, because I usually don’t get assignments like this one. I usually get, you know, bigger, ah, I mean weightier assignments. See, after I won the Gobey, I got a little big for my britches.” He chuckled as if that weren’t really true, but for the sake of argument Sally should accept it as truth. “My editor decided to bring me down a notch.”
What? Had he just said what she thought he’d said? “Do you mean to tell me that I’m your punishment ? For acting like a jerk?”
The Big Scoop
Sandra Kelly
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sandra Kelly has been putting words on paper since she was old enough to lift a pen. Before becoming a Flipside author, she published more than a million words of nonfiction in magazines and corporate publications across Canada. For seven years she taught in the Professional Writing Program at Mount Royal College in Calgary, helping hopeful young writers to realize their own dreams of becoming published. Sandra lives in Calgary with her husband Bob, and two ungrateful cats.
Books by Sandra Kelly
HARLEQUIN DUETS
76—SUITEHEART OF A DEAL
For Jean Molloy 1931–2003 Thanks for the humor, Mom
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u73d65852-96b5-5691-865d-5a8ef679ff0c)
Chapter 2 (#u9d5f03b4-28a0-529c-8b47-25cbecb94e3d)
Chapter 3 (#ud413f868-6937-534a-8944-7eba4d754e43)
Chapter 4 (#u36b95796-2276-517a-b3da-8033cd502899)
Chapter 5 (#u0f3abc1f-ef1f-5994-a128-2a70faa18825)
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)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
1
July 10: On the front page of the Peachtown Post
Can Peach Paradise Save Our Town?
Sally Darville, marketing manager for Darville Dairy, is a woman with a mission.
Darville, the twenty-seven-year-old daughter of Dean and Sarah Darville—the fourth generation of Darvilles to own and operate the local dairy—believes that Peach Paradise, their delicious new ice cream, can save Peachtown from ruin.
After three consecutive years of drought, Peachtown’s usually thriving tourism industry is hurting. With daily temperatures soaring into the high nineties and fire bans in effect at all campgrounds, people are staying away in droves. Darville believes that Peach Paradise will bring them back.
“We can’t make rain, but we can make the world’s best ice cream,” she said.
The tasty treat, introduced last March, sold out of local stores within a week and has since attracted fans throughout the Okanagan Valley. Now Darville has enlisted the help of Vancouver Satellite reporter “Cracker” Jack Gold to spread the word about Peach Paradise across British Columbia’s densely populated lower mainland.
Gold, thirty-four, recently won the Gobey Award for uncovering a conspiracy by Vancouver-based Denton Corporation’s top executives to launder two million dollars siphoned from the company’s employee pension fund. Gold is the youngest reporter ever to win the prestigious international award.
Said Darville, “If Cracker Jack Gold can’t help us, no one can.”
“HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?”
Fingertips tapping out a steady beat on the chipped white countertop, Jack regarded the too-cheerful customer service clerk with the little patience he had left. “Yes, it is. I wonder if you’d mind taking another look at those records.”
The clerk, a lanky youth with a drunk-on-life smile and a giant zit in the middle of his forehead, struck a solemn tone. “I can if you like, sir, but I really don’t believe your car was towed. I believe it was moved.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Well, yes. You see, sir, there’s no record of anyone from this office having towed a candy-apple red 1968 Mustang convertible with the original leather seats plus inlaid mother-of-pearl console and the black-and-yellow foam dice once owned by Jerry Lee Lewis. No record at all, sir.”
“Then, do you have any thoughts on who might have…moved it?”
The boy shrugged. “I may have.”
Jack forced his fingers to be still as he drew a shallow breath. Five years of pounding the backroads for small-town newspapers across the lower mainland had taught him there was no point in losing it with guys like—he glanced at the boy’s name tag—Dudley here. The Dudleys of the world, he vaguely recalled from those long forgotten days, couldn’t be rushed under terrorist threat.
Back then, Jack had customized a smile for people he had nothing against but hoped never to see again. He flashed it now. “Care to share your thoughts, Dudley?”
The teenager nodded in the general direction of the window separating the tiny impoundment office from Peachtown’s main drag. “Well, see, we have these identical twins here in town—Terry and Tommy Trubble? Anyway, they’re sorta the town pranksters.” He rolled his eyes. “Well, okay, the county pranksters, if you wanna be, you know, real accurate.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he leaned closer to Jack. “You won’t believe this, but one time they…”
“My car, Dudley?”
“Oh, right. Well, the fact is, sir, they like to move cars.”
“Move cars,” Jack repeated dumbly. “You mean steal cars.”
Shock turned Dudley’s zit a singularly unattractive shade of red. “Oh no, sir! They don’t keep ’em. They just hot-wire ’em and then relocate ’em.” His vacant gaze suggested that no further explanation should be necessary.
“Uh-huh, and just for the record, Dudley, where exactly do they relocate them to?”
The boy cleared his throat. “Well now, that depends on a number of things.”
Grasping the counter’s edge with both hands, Jack arched his aching back and let his eyelids droop. It was bad enough that he was here. It was bad enough that he was here to cover a story about ice cream. It was bad enough that he was here to cover a story about ice cream because he’d acted like—how had his editor put it?— “a spoiled celebrity.” This headache he definitely didn’t need.
In addition to everything else, he was hot and tired and hungry. The inside of his mouth felt like sandpaper, and his legs were stiff and cramped after the four-hour drive east from Vancouver. The drive he had foolishly undertaken in his prized Mustang. The prized Mustang which was now missing.
Just thirty minutes ago, he’d parked it across the street from Cora’s Café and gone into the restaurant for directions. While he stood there nodding like a puppet, a woman he presumed to be Cora had passed a pleasant twenty minutes disagreeing with the restaurant’s lone patron about the fastest route to Darville Dairy. Jack had eventually tuned out the debate and inched toward the door.
They were arguing the merits of highway number seven versus county road nineteen when he slipped outside and saw that the Mustang was gone. For one hellish moment he had stood there gawking at the empty parking space, convinced it was an optical illusion created by the heat. It wasn’t.
“So,” he said to Dudley. “On what sort of things does it depend?”
Well, it being Saturday and all, Dudley explained, the twins probably had relocated the Mustang to the Darville Dairy Bar. Lots of folks would be there today, ’cause of Peach Paradise. The twins might have taken the car to the bakery just three blocks from here, which, Jack would want to know, gave out free pastries on Saturdays. Course apple turnovers were no competition for Sally Darville’s fabulous new ice cream, and being that you could spot a red Mustang that close—what the heck, you could spot one in a blizzard, couldn’t you?—most likely the bakery wasn’t the place. Yesterday they definitely would have taken it to Peach Pit Park….
Jack squeezed his eyes shut. “Where are they most likely to have taken it today, Dudley?”
“To the dairy bar, sir. That’s your best bet.”
After getting directions, Jack thanked the boy and made haste for the door.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Dudley called after him. “You’re that hotshot reporter from the Vancouver Satellite. Cracker Jack Gold, right?”
Pleasantly surprised, Jack turned around. Could his reputation have traveled this far? It seemed unlikely. Then again, it wasn’t every day that a thirty-four-year-old reporter won the Gobey Award. To his knowledge, until now no one under the age of fifty had ever won it. So, maybe…
He nodded as humbly as a man headed for stardom possibly could. “I am indeed. I take it you’re familiar with my work?”
“Nope, never heard of you. Sally said you were some kind of hotshot, was all.”
“Oh,” Jack muttered. So much for fame.
Opportunity sprang to life in Dudley’s big brown eyes. “So, you’re here to get the big scoop on Peach Paradise, right?” He slapped his thigh and cackled merrily.
Jack chuckled along with him. It was pointless to tell the boy he’d already heard that one a dozen times back at the Satellite— along with a dozen other stupid jokes involving peaches, cream, sugar, waffle cones and reporters whose heads get swelled by major awards and end up in small towns, writing about dairy fat.
“Well, Sally sure is excited,” Dudley gushed. “A feature story in the Satellite. Imagine!”
“Yes, imagine. Thanks again, Dudley.”
“You be sure to have a nice day, Mr. Gold.”
Stepping outside, Jack nearly collided with two apple-cheeked matrons in flouncy dresses. Each wore a straw hat laden with plastic grapes and carried a basket of freshly cut roses. Certain he was about to get nailed, Jack mumbled an apology and tried to sidestep the women. The tallest of the two seized him painfully by the arm. “Hello there. You must be that hotshot reporter from Vancouver. The one who got that—what did Sally call it?—a gopher trophy?”
“Actually ma’am, it was the Gobey Award. And if you don’t mind…”
“So it was. Aren’t you just the handsomest thing. Isn’t he handsome, Elsa?”
“Oh, he is, Elvira,” the much shorter woman agreed. She had the funniest little Betty Boop voice Jack had ever heard.
“Thank you, ladies, but…”
“What’s your name, sonny?” the one called Elvira asked. “Sally told me, but my memory’s not what it used to be.”
“Jack Gold. I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m awfully late…”
She drew a sharp breath. “Gold. What an interesting name. We’ve got a cousin, Goldfisher Elmont Jackson, but everyone calls him Goldy. That’s what’s we’ll call you. Won’t we, Elsa.”
“Oh yes, indeed. Goldy. Yes indeed.”
“Ah, actually, I prefer Jack. And I really do have to move along.”
“We’re the Jackson sisters,” Elvira said without missing a beat. “Our granddaddy, Elmont Jackson, founded this town. Didn’t he, Elsa?” Her grip on Jack’s arm tightened.
“Oh yes, he did, Elvira. He certainly did.”
“You’re here to get the big scoop, aren’t you?” Elvira looked at Elsa for confirmation of her comic genius, and together they cackled like two tipsy hens at a barnyard bash.
Jack’s arm went numb. “Yes ma’am, I am.”
