Read the book: «Beneath Southern Skies»

Prologue

The longer Tressie Valentine held the stack of official-looking papers and read, the more the hand holding them trembled. They were the answer to all her prayers, or at least they could be if what she was reading was really true.

Suddenly finding herself unemployed and penniless was a predicament that Tressie had never envisioned for herself, and she’d been on the verge of pulling her hair out by the roots ever since that predicament had become her reality.

But now, if there was a God in heaven and she hadn’t managed to completely alienate Him, it looked as though the streak of bad luck that she’d been riding hard and fast for the past two months was about to take a sharp turn for the better. God knew she needed some good luck right about now.

In a matter of weeks, what little savings she’d managed to accumulate over the past five years had quickly dwindled down to little more than enough to keep a roof over her head for the next couple of months. She didn’t even want to think about all the other unpaid bills that were steadily pouring in. When had she applied for so many credit cards? Amassed so many lines of private store credit? Gotten so out of control with her spending? Of course, it hadn’t seemed as if her spending was out of control while she was safely ensconced in the luxury of a six-figure salary and living the high life. But the blinders were off, and she knew that she was in serious trouble.

This summons, or whatever it was, that had landed in her mailbox this morning could be just what she needed to help her get her life back on track.

Snuggled deep in the luxurious recesses of a thick cashmere robe, papers in hand, Tressie plopped down on the leather sofa in the great room of her twentieth-floor loft apartment and reached for the cordless phone on a nearby end table. Her toes curled into the thick pile of the specially ordered Oriental rug underneath her bare feet as she punched in the telephone number listed at the top of the document. Praying that the estimated quote on the page in front of her wasn’t a typo, she listened to the phone ring on the other end and then smiled when a woman’s cheerful voice finally greeted her. Just this morning she had been seriously considering pitching a tent out on the sidewalk, clearing out her designer label–filled walk-in closet and hosting a yard sale to stave off the wolves at her door. But now...now things were looking up and not a moment too soon.

“Could I please speak with Norman Harper?” Tressie asked after the woman had finished rattling off the string of names listed on the company’s letterhead. “Please tell him that Tressie Valentine is calling.”

“Just a moment while I transfer you,” the woman said. Seconds later, Tressie was listening to classical music and humming along as her thoughts wandered.

Soon enough, Saul Worthington and the rest of the schmucks at the New York Inquisitor would realize that they had made a big mistake by cutting her loose. By now, Tressie Valentine, better known as Vanessa Valentino to her loyal and discriminating readers, was a household name. Knowing that, Saul, as the Inquisitor’s editor-in-chief, hadn’t even bothered to print a formal announcement that she had severed ties with the paper. Instead, he had chosen to simply omit her weekly column and replace it with a lackluster new weekly feature on education reform. It was a show, she knew, of blatant disrespect and one that she would never forget. And it was the worst mistake he could’ve ever made. No, scratch that—it was the second-worst mistake he could’ve ever made.

Firing her had definitely been the worst.

The whole scene had been unbelievable, like something out of badly scripted sitcom rerun. Even now as she thought back on it, she felt the humiliation and ridiculousness of it all over again, as if it were happening right now. It was true that hindsight was your best sight, but even in hindsight she couldn’t quite figure out where she’d gone wrong. One minute she’d had the upper hand and the next, everything had spiraled out of her control. One minute she was gainfully employed and the next she was spending her days catching up on all the soap operas that she’d missed over the years and worrying about what her future held. How, she wondered for the millionth time, had she lost the upper hand?

“Fired? I’m fired?” Tressie had been in a state of shock, looking around the handsomely appointed executive office of the New York Inquisitor as if she’d never seen it before, except, of course, she had, many times. It’d only been a month ago that everyone had been crowded into the office, pouring champagne and toasting her Delilah Award nomination. Ultimately, she hadn’t actually won the coveted journalism award, but just the fact that she’d been counted among the handful of female journalists who were worthy of recognition had been a feather in Saul’s cap. Now she was fired?

“Saul?” Tressie had prompted when Saul had only stared at her. Uncharacteristically silent, his forehead was crinkled into a million deep-set worry lines, and his bright red power tie was crooked, as if he had been yanking on it nonstop. Under her steady gaze, his face reddened guiltily. “Please tell me I heard you incorrectly, because I think you just said that I was fired. But that can’t possibly be right. I’m the best damn columnist you have around here and if it weren’t for me—”

“Tressie...” Saul sighed, his eyes looking everywhere but at her. “I received a call from Gary Price’s people this afternoon.”

Finally, something that made sense. All this talk about firing her was just his way of decompressing after what had to have been a nerve-racking phone conversation. He was upset, probably a little out of sorts, too, but that was to be expected. Stories like the one she’d written tended to shake up the usual order of things, which as far as she was concerned was exactly as it should be. Saul didn’t always agree with her investigative methods, but they had always managed to see eye to eye where the bottom line was concerned. Her story, just like all the others before it, had dollar signs stamped all over it, and frantic phone calls from guilty parties was the confirmation that she’d hit the jackpot, yet again.

She perked up, scooting to the edge of her chair and slapping her hands down on her side of Saul’s desk. “Good. What did they have to say for their golden boy?”

His ocean-blue eyes narrowed until they were slits in his face. “They’re pissed.”

“Well, they should be,” Tressie decided, flopping back in her chair and rearranging her Calvin Klein suit jacket around her. “He’s been out of control for a while now. They should’ve known that I’d get around to calling him out sooner or later. It had to be done, Saul, and I hope you told them that.” A derisive laugh slipped past her lips before she could stop it. “His people. Please. Who has people anymore? No one is beyond my reach, people or no people.”

“I warned you about going after Gary Price, and if you had listened—”

“If I had listened, the world wouldn’t know that Gary Price tried to bribe his way into a vacant senatorial seat while he was carrying on an affair with the current governor’s wife, and right after he managed to weasel his way out of being charged with embezzling charitable funds from the state.” She threw up her hands and let them fall back to her lap wearily. “Who does that?”

Saul snatched off his glasses, dropped them on his desk and scrubbed at his eyelids with stiff fingers. He looked so distraught that she almost felt sorry for him. It was on the tip of her tongue to offer a halfhearted apology for her part in his misery, but the next words out of his mouth dashed any warm and fuzzy feelings that might’ve been brewing inside her.

“According to Gary Price’s attorney, he doesn’t. They’re suing the paper, Tressie, which brings me back to the reason I asked to meet with you.”

“So you could fire me for being a damn good columnist? Come on, Saul, that makes about as much sense as you bowing to nonexistent pressure from Gary Price’s mysterious people. Since when do you care about ruffling a few feathers? It’s the nature of the business. You used to know that.”

“We can’t afford a lawsuit right now,” Saul bit out in a shrill tone that Tressie had never heard before. A few more wrinkles appeared in his forehead and an accusing finger pointed in her direction. “You should know that. I don’t need to remind you about who was partly to blame for the paper having to file bankruptcy last year, do I?”

Already knowing where the conversation was going and not wanting to touch the subject with a ten-foot pole, she waved a dismissive hand to cut him off. “So promise him a retraction in tomorrow’s paper or a front-page apology. Just don’t make me write it, because I won’t. He won’t know the difference anyway, and we’ve done it plenty of times before.”

Confident that she had pushed all the right buttons, sufficiently made her point and put the conversation back on track, Tressie straightened her tailored black skirt around her thighs and crossed her legs. Her right foot swung back and forth in the air purposefully while her thoughts focused in on her latest target. Gary Price was quickly becoming a heavy hitter in the local political arena, that much was true, but he was no different from the hundreds, maybe even thousands, of other schmucks that she’d written about over the years. It’d taken her a decade to accomplish it, but by now everyone who was anyone knew who she was and what she did, even though she did it pretty much anonymously. She was the Vanessa Valentino, the gossip columnist who wasn’t afraid to go where even the infamous Rona Barrett had never gone, and she had pissed off much more important people than the likes of Gary Price—a washed-up politician who, for a laughably brief period, had tried his hand at acting and failed dismally.

Why was Saul so bent out of shape over this story? There was always an instant uproar when the Saturday edition of the Inquisitor hit the newsstands and her weekly column made its rounds, but it always died down in anticipation of her next column. It was a cycle, and Saul had never bothered to interfere with it before. So, why now?

Sure, he’d threatened to suspend her once or twice over the years, and she vaguely recalled narrowly avoiding being demoted not so long ago—but fired? It was inconceivable. He needed her too much. If ever there was a cash cow, she was it.

“A retraction is the least of my worries right now, Tressie.” Saul gestured to a stack of legal-looking papers on his desktop and blew out a strong breath. “We were served with notice of the lawsuit this morning, which means that we don’t have very much time to clean up this mess. Price is suing the Inquisitor for upward of ten million dollars, and we simply don’t have the firepower to strike back. To put it bluntly, we’re broke.” Her mouth dropped open as Saul went on. “The legal department is on it, but they’ve suggested that I make a few preemptive moves to pacify Price and his attorneys in the meantime.”

“Such as?”

His tone, when he spoke, was final. “Such as suspending you indefinitely.”

“You can’t do that. You need me,” Tressie said before she could think better of it.

“You’re impulsive,” he snapped. “You act without thinking. You go right for the throat, consequences be damned, and you never seem to think about how your actions affect everyone else.”

“But that’s what makes me a good columnist, Saul,” Tressie sputtered helplessly. She sensed that she was losing ground, and the feeling was as unsettling as the determined set of Saul’s mouth. “Before I became Vanessa Valentino, the Inquisitor was the laughingstock of New York. You were printing stories about snakes with two heads, secret underground cities in third-world countries, and sending out interns to track Bigfoot through Central Park. No respectable newspaper, here or anywhere else, would even take your calls. I’m the reason you have that impressive trophy case over there.” She threw out a hand and pointed at the case in question. It was a glass-and-chrome monstrosity that took up most of the wall to the right of his equally monstrous desk, and, currently, it was nearly overflowing with awards and plaques that Vanessa Valentino had received over the years. “I’m the reason there’s even anything in it. My impulsiveness put those awards there. My go-for-the-throat philosophy put this paper on the map, and you know it. You fire me and you’ll lose it all.”

“What I need,” Saul cut in tersely, “is a columnist who isn’t single-handedly the biggest threat to the very existence of this newspaper, Tressie. In the last five years alone you’ve managed to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, bribes, payoffs and hush money.” He blew out a long, strong breath and gritted his teeth. “Hell, the cost of keeping your true identity secret is expensive enough as it is. The nonstop threat of being sued penniless has had me wondering for a while now if you’re more trouble than you’re worth and—” he ruffled the papers in front of him so roughly that they spread out like a fan across the desktop “—now I guess I don’t have to wonder anymore. I can’t let you cause the paper any more problems, Tressie. The lawsuits and bad publicity stop right here. Right now. Enough is enough.”

It was impossible not to follow what he was saying. She understood him clearly and, as hurtful as his words were, she thought that he needed to understand something, too. “My readers are loyal. They’ll go where I go.”

That, Tressie decided on a long sigh, was where she’d gone wrong. She’d never actually seen the top of a man’s head blow off, but Saul had come very close to making that impossible feat a reality. He was already tall and stocky, but when he’d shot up out of his chair and towered over his desk, she could’ve sworn that rage had caused him to grow another six inches in height and expand at least another foot in width. The bravado that she’d been holding on to by a thread had quickly vanished, along with any hope that she’d had of holding on to her job. Saul’s parting shot—“I’ll call you if anything changes”—had rung in her ears as she was escorted out of the building like some common criminal.

Ten years, she couldn’t help thinking with every step she’d taken out the doors. Ten years of her life had gone up in smoke just like that. She’d scratched and scraped, begged and pleaded her way to the top of the Inquisitor’s food chain until she was comfortably settled in an office with a decent view, enjoying perks that she’d never dreamed of, and now she had nothing. Or next to nothing, anyway. Without a job, it wouldn’t be long before the life that she had carefully and painstakingly built for herself would come tumbling down. Along with Saul’s ominous voice, the sound of failure had rung so loudly in her ears that she’d almost broken down and cried like a baby.

Now, thank God, something else was ringing in her ears—the sound of a blazing comeback and the financial backing that she needed to make it happen. Then, as if on cue, Norman Harper’s voice was in her ear.

“Miss Valentine, I’ve been looking forward to your call....”

* * *

Hours later, Tressie’s mind was whirling, trying to mentally prioritize the thousand and one details she had to deal with. With an open and half-packed suitcase on her bed, a confirmed travel itinerary in her hand and a big smile on her face, she raced around her apartment, checking to make sure that she wasn’t forgetting anything important. By this time tomorrow she’d be a thousand miles away and, as far as she was concerned, in a whole other world. Nothing about where she was going was convenient or, for that matter, modern, so she wanted to make sure that she’d be able to exist with a modicum of comfort for the precious few days that she had to be there. She threw her makeup case into the suitcase and followed it up with as many pairs of Christian Louboutin pumps as it would take to see her through a week’s visit, her laptop, a compact portable printer and a global Wi-Fi modem the size of a lipstick tube.

The essentials out of the way, she went in search of clothing.

It’d been five years since she’d stepped foot in Mercy, Georgia, and just thinking about going back almost wiped the smile right off her face. Only the possibility of finally acquiring something worthwhile from the dreary little town that she’d come from kept her feet moving and her mind clicking. If she felt the least bit guilty about selling her grandmother’s house—the house that she had grown up in—well...she figured she’d get over it soon enough.

Hopefully.