Lost Melody Read Online Free PDF Page B

I
don’t have any other plans.”
    “You’ve got a good crop this year if
that’s what you’re worried about,” Chris was quick to assure
him.
    “No,” Hank said. “I’m sure you have it
under control, as always. I don’t know what I would do without you
to run the farm for me. If it wasn’t for you, the place would be
grown up in sunflowers and crab grass.”
    Chris had “done his time”, as he
referred to it, at Texas A&M and had come back home as soon as
he could to manage his family’s farm. Hank had turned his own
acreage over to his friend and hadn’t regretted it for a
moment.
    “So, why did you get us out here
tonight? Do you need legal advice? The catching up could have
waited until the weekend.”
    Leave it to Randy voice the question
they’d been dancing around from the start. Hank shook his head.
“No. I don’t need my lawyer, I need information.” He slouched in
his chair. “There’s a new reporter at the Gazette. What do you know
about her?”
    Chris whistled low. “She’s a looker, I
know that.”
    Hank scowled. “You’re a married man.
Should you be noticing other women?”
    “Hell, Hank, I’m married, not
dead.”
    Randy laughed. “He’s right. She’s
beautiful. Classy sort, big city girl, I think. Uncle Ralph hired
her away from some magazine in Los Angeles. Or maybe it was San
Francisco.” He ran his fingers through his perpetually disheveled
hair. “I don’t know for sure, but she’s from out there somewhere.
He did say she went to college in Virginia. I can’t remember the
name of it right off hand. I could ask him for you.”
    “No. Don’t bother. She’s from L.A.?
Are you sure?”
    “I’m sure she’s from California,
beyond that, I couldn’t say for sure. The word around town is she
paid cash for her bungalow over on Sycamore Street. You know, the
one old lady Williams used to live in?”
    “Yeah, I know the one. I used to mow
Mrs. Williams yard.”
    “Yeah, I remember that,” Randy
said.
    Chris set his coffee cup down. “Why do
you want to know about her?”
    Hank sighed, running his fingers
through his newly cropped hair. “Dad made a donation to the high
school band, and she’s doing a story about it for the paper. He
invited her out here for dinner tonight. She didn’t act as if she
knew anything about me. If she’s from California, it could be a
cover. Some reporters will go to any extreme to get a
story.”
    Randy and Chris looked at each other
then at Hank.
    “Do you really think she could be up
to something?” Randy popped another Oreo.
    “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but
after what Karen did, I can’t be too careful. It’s taken years to
clean up my image and people still call me by that ridiculous
name.”
    “At least you found out what she was
up to before you married her,” Chris said.
    “True. It was a narrow escape though.
I learned a valuable lesson from the fiasco.”
    Chris frowned and tapped his finger on
the table. “You think Mel Harper took the job here just to get to
you? That’s a little extreme. No offense, Hank, but it’s pretty
farfetched. You might be getting a little too full of
yourself.”
    He knew the lengths a reporter would
go to in order to get a story. Been there, done that—lesson
learned. Only someone who lived in the public eye could really know
what the media spotlight was like, and he’d given up trying to
explain the experience to his friends long ago. They’d never get
it, no matter how many times he tried to make them to understand.
To them, getting their name or picture in the local paper was
exciting. They couldn’t comprehend what it was like to see your
photo in the gossip rags every day along with a story fabricated
from the flimsiest bit of truth, or more often, no truth at all.
Anything to fill column inches.
    He ignored Chris’s question, seizing
on the reprimand for the good-natured set down it was. “I’m full of
it huh? Just exactly how do you propose to remedy