With Family In Mind (Saddle Falls Book 1)
their grief, their disbelief in such a public way, when it was such a private pain, only exacerbated their loss.
    He’d quickly grown to hate the press, and his feelings hadn’t dulled over the years.
    “Lady, how the hell do you live with yourself?” he roared, eyes flashing. “You spend your life digging into the personal and private lives of other people, using their misfortune, their pain and their misery for your own greedy ends, publishing information for the entire nosy world to cluck and chuckle over. How the hell can you stand to even look at yourself in a mirror?”
    She gasped at his accusation. “How dare you make assumptions about me, something you’ve been doing—incorrectly, I might add—from the moment you opened this door?” Rebecca clenched her hands into fists, fearing she might whack him if she didn’t. “For your information, I’m here with the permission of Tommy Ryan, your grandfather.” It was partially the truth, she reminded herself. Tommy had granted permission for her to do a series of interviews with him and his family.
    That Tommy Ryan didn’t know who she really was, or what she was going to try to discover for her own personal benefit, was a minor sticking point as far as she was concerned. And ethically, her motives were not a problem, since publication of the information she gathered wasn’t the goal; learning the truth for her own personal reasons were. She had no intention ofpublicly exploiting the Ryans in any way, shape or form.
    They’d suffered more than enough.
    But that didn’t mean she had to continue to suffer.
    Rebecca’s fists clenched tighter at her sides. She would not let this man make her feel guilty for taking care of a personal family matter that had shadowed her life like an ominous thundercloud for as long as she could remember.
    “Lady,” Jake growled. His deep voice seemed to skate along her nerve endings, making her shiver. “What the hell are you talking about?” If his grandfather had invited a reporter to the house, he sure as hell would have told someone.
    “Stop calling me lady,” Rebecca snapped. “I have a name.” Blowing out a breath in an effort to garner some control, she forced herself to stay calm. “As I’m sure you know, if you’ve bothered to come out of the cave you obviously live in, the town of Saddle Falls is about to celebrate its golden jubilee anniversary at the end of the month.”
    “So I’ll bake a cake.”
    She ignored his sarcasm, tried to gather her dignity, then continued. “Edmund Barker, the editor in chief of the Saddle Falls News, wants to do a series of feature articles for the jubilee celebration chronicling the history of Saddle Falls, its growth, as well as the Ryan family’s part in the founding of the town.”
    Jake narrowed his gaze on her again. “And you expect me to believe my grandfather agreed to participate in this…nonsense?” He almost laughed. Pigs would fly before Tommy Ryan ever invited a reporterinto their home or opened their lives, their family or their pasts for public consumption. It was simply inconceivable.
    “I really don’t give a darn what you believe,” she snapped, angling her chin defiantly. Her hands were trembling, her heart pounding. Of all the things she’d anticipated today, getting into a shouting match with Jake Ryan had not been one of them. “I’m here because your grandfather agreed to grant me exclusive rights to the Ryan family story.”
    Looking at her, feeling the impact of her words, sent a shudder racing through Jake, setting off shock waves. “I don’t believe you.”
    Her eyes darkened dangerously and her fists clenched tighter. The urge to punch this man in his arrogant, insufferable nose was nearly overwhelming. “Are you calling me a liar?”
    Under that icy exterior was heat, the kind of heat that a man longed to lose himself in, Jake realized in surprise. Too bad she was the enemy, he thought with the smallest hint of regret. “Hey, if the
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