Cynthia Reese - Where Love Grows

“Because of one—”

“One verdict? Hell, no. It’s not the verdict that they’re mad about. It’s you.”

“Me?”

“Me?” he mimicked her. “Yes, you. You blew that case. You should have been on that farm, interviewing the workers, interviewing the neighbors. You damn sure should have had the right rainfall figures. That lawyer sliced you up like a deli ham.”

Becca gritted her teeth in an effort to hold her tongue. Not for the first time she asked herself why she wanted this job, why pleasing her dad was so important to her.

Uh, maybe because after the subject of a story you wrote sued you for libel, no other newspaper or magazine would hire you?

It hadn’t been libel. Becca had written the truth in that article, and the target of her investigation just couldn’t stomach it. She’d survived a humiliating lawsuit only to lose the fledging magazine she’d started up. In the countersuit she’d filed, the jury’s decision to award her damages had come too late, and still, Becca had yet to see any money.

She tried to calm down by reminding herself who she was: An award-winning investigative reporter. Her dad had been the one, after his heart attack, to ask her to join his firm. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Dad…you were sick, remember? You were in ICU with your heart attack. I couldn’t be in two places—”

“What I needed you to be doing was looking after the business. But I guess that’s too much to expect from you.”

“That’s not fair! I worked hard, gave you my best effort—”

“If that case was your best effort, then I am expecting too much from you. Honestly, I thought you’d season up. I thought you’d have gotten smarter after—”

Her father stopped in midsentence. He shook his head and turned to head down the empty courthouse corridor.

Becca’s anger bubbled up within her. She could not let her father’s dropped conversation go. “Say it, Dad. You might as well say it. I’m a failure. I’m a disappointment. You took me on only out of pity. Say it. Because that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Thinking? You really want to know?” He whirled around and stabbed a finger in her direction. “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking I’m a damn fool for ever thinking I could grow you into an investigator. I’m thinking I’m a damn fool for ever thinking you’d be grateful for me bailing your butt out.”

“If you’re referring to the libel suit…and the bankruptcy, why don’t you just spit it out, Dad?”

Her father shot a look around. “If I want a prayer’s chance of saving Ag-Sure as a client, they don’t need to hear even a whisper about you getting sued for libel. But yes, that was what I was talking about. You go into business, start up that—that magazine against my best advice, you get mired in a counter-lawsuit you had no business even filing…”

Becca swallowed. The way he said those things, she might even believe she was a complete flake.

“I won that lawsuit, Dad. And that magazine had a name—Atlanta Insider. Couldn’t you just once call it by its name and not hiss and spit? It was a going business until I had one bad break. It will be again. One day. Just because the judgment is being appealed doesn’t mean I won’t eventually get my money.”

Her father blew out a long breath and looked off into the distance. “Let’s focus on the problem, okay? Right now one of our biggest clients is going south. I just wanted you to do your job. You’re here. You earn a paycheck. You know what to do. I’ve trained you.” He ran a hand through his clipped cut. “You just…lose focus. Even with your own business, half the time you were cutting deals to nonprofits—”

“It was my business, Dad. I got to choose how I billed my time.”

“Right. Well, this is my business, and I say you’ve screwed up for the last time.”

Becca sucked in a breath. “Are you firing me?” The memory of her long series of fruitless job interviews with magazines and newspapers rushed back to her.

“It’d be the smart thing to do. I’d fire any other employee who screwed up like you did.”

“I did not screw—”

“Dammit, take responsibility for this!”

Some men in suits filed out of the courtroom, and Becca saw her father’s eyes track them. She lowered her voice and said, “Dad, you have to believe me…”

“Go home. I’m going to try to save this account. You just…” He gave her a withering look. “Just go home.”

She watched him go after the suits, then she gripped the fast-food bag a little tighter in her hand and bolted for the stairs.

“AW, HONEY, DON’T FRET. You win some, you lose some.”

Gert, the office manager who’d run her father’s life for so many years that she was like part of the family, patted Becca’s arm.

“But, Gert, Dad was right. I did screw up. Those farmers were guilty—all of them—and they got off. I should have seen that delayed-planting defense coming. I’ll bet that county-extension agent was in on it from the get-go. Had to be. I checked as soon as I got loose from that courtroom, and the rest of the reported rainfall in that area was nowhere near as much.”

“Which bothers you more? That they got off…or that your dad was mad at you?”

“You have to ask?” Becca sighed and gazed off into the distance.

“I thought so. Listen, I don’t have to tell you that your dad is a type A personality who doesn’t like to lose. He gets mad. He blows off steam. He gets over it. By tomorrow, he’ll be coming in here like nothing’s wrong.”

“Yeah, right. You forget one little thing, Gert.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You get to go home. I happen to live with the man.”

Not for the first time did Becca grieve over the loss of her own space. Just two years before she’d had her little house, her business, a future separate from her father’s. Then, bit by bit, she’d lost it all.

First came the libel suit, stemming from a puff-piece-turned exposé on a prominent Atlanta businessman’s not-so-squeaky-clean business practices. Then, just to come on with a strong offense, Becca had countersued with defamation charges. Later, when she’d won the libel suit and a half-million-dollar judgment from the countersuit, she’d counted on the money to help bail her out of bankruptcy.

Only, it hadn’t come. Neither had any job offers from the multitude of weekly and daily papers and magazines she’d applied to. Even if Becca had prevailed, just the fact that she’d been sued was enough to make an editor or publisher wary.

“Your father loves you.”

“Yeah, but that box isn’t on an employee performance review, and you know it.”

Gert didn’t contradict her, but then that was to be expected. They both knew Becca’s father only too well.

Becca slid from the corner of Gert’s desktop and made a beeline for her computer. The one thing that could make her feel better might await her in her in-box.

There it was: an e-mail from Rooster.

You nail that big presentation?

That was all, just that in the subject line. So like Rooster, straight to the point. She’d met him on an online farming community a few months before, and the two of them had hit it off.

“Uh-huh, I heard that sigh. It’s that online fella again, isn’t it?”

Gert’s all-knowing smirk couldn’t take away from Becca’s pleasure.

“If you must know, yes.”

“Sometimes I wonder. Why don’t you go out with a real flesh-and-blood guy?”

“Like I have time.”

“You would if you didn’t stay on the Internet all the time, wasting your life away mooning over some guy who could be a psychopath, for all you know. He could be right here in Atlanta, right across the street with a telescope, casing the joint.”