The Fiance Thief Read Online Free PDF Page A

retrieved the Miranda Craig biography he had dropped. Placing it on his desk, she said, “You are about my age, aren’t you?”
    “A year older,” he conceded. “I think I remember it. Gene Hackman?”
    “Gene Wilder. The point is, everyone wants to go to this chocolate factory, but Charlie is one of the few people who has a magic ticket.”
    “And?”
    “I have what basically amounts to a magic ticket. You don’t. Now Charlie just wants the experience of going to the factory, even though he does wind up running it, eventually, because he’s pure of heart.”
    Claire had taken their fight much harder than he expected. She had fallen off the deep end. “You know,” he told her kindly, “I don’t remember the movie very well, but I wouldn’t draw too close a comparison between you and Charlie.”
    “What I’m trying to tell you,” she said, leaning across his desk, only inches away from him, “is that just like Charlie got what he wanted from his ticket, I’m going to get what I want from mine.”
    She was so close to him that he could smell her hair. A peculiarly seductive scent that resulted when the odor of a neighborhood greasy spoon mingled with the honeysuckle of shampoo. “What do you want?” Alec asked. He held his breath as he waited for the answer.
    She relinquished the folder she’d been clutching, and placed it on top of his desk. “I want my story about South Ridgeville in the paper….”
    “Claire…”
    “Plus a couple of more real news stories.”
    He gestured to the folder. “This is something about South Ridgeville?”
    “It’s a draft of my notes and some interview transcripts just to give you a feel for what I’m doing. Yes, you’ll find quotes from Harlan Edwards, a professional crank who hits the whiskey a little too hard sometimes, but you’ll also find other people. People who want the whole community to know that Carbine Industries is treating one of theircity’s neighborhoods as a wastebin for hazardous material.”
    It would never work. “Claire, you’re a good writer—”
    “Thank you,” she interrupted.
    “But,” he said, letting the conjunction hang in the air. “That’s not the same thing as being a good reporter.”
    She opened her mouth, then shut it again. He continued. “When you first start out, every story looks like a Pulitzer winner. In a big city, sometimes your hunch is true. But in a medium market like Ridgeville, you start realizing you aren’t going to get many big stories. Then you begin to notice that the same people, people like Harlan Edwards, are always trying to get you riled about something. It just becomes noise after a while.”
    “So you’d rather sit at your desk and rewrite the press releases the local bigwigs send you.”
    “Look.” His tone was sharp. “Even if I thought this was a good idea, Mick would think otherwise. You know he’s got final veto. I couldn’t get this past him.”
    “You have to,” she said simply. “If you want to go to the Craigs’ with me, then you have to convince Mick that this is a timely and important piece, and that you can’t wait for me to start work on it. Then you’ll have to repeat that process with several more stories of my choosing.”
    He thought for a second. “Two more,” he said. “That’s several.”
    “Four,” she said, “is closer to the true meaning of the word.”
    He opened his mouth to say he couldn’t be blackmailed in this way, but before he could speak, he was overcome, imagining Miranda down by the lake with him. She was confiding her most intimate thoughts and fears to him—for attribution.
    What did he have to lose in exchange? He could give Claire the go-ahead on her articles, but what was to stop him from scheming with the production manager to burythem all on the back page? And once Claire realized that all there was to her toxic dumping story was Harlan Edwards-making his usual big deal about nothing, she’d realize she didn’t have what it took to