Marta Perry - Heart Of The Matter

“You put yourself in danger tonight for a story,” he said. “You will never do that again, or I will fire you. Understand?”

She nodded, and her lips trembled, and he felt something inside him soften toward her. He wanted to…kiss her.

Back off, he commanded himself. It would be a mistake. Even if he weren’t pursuing a story that might lead directly to her father, he couldn’t get involved with someone who worked for him.

Amanda, despite her veneer of sophistication, was really a small-town girl at heart. She was the sort of person who believed in love and fidelity and happily-ever-after. All the things he dismissed as fiction.

She looked up at him from beneath her lashes, the glance tentative, questioning, as if she wondered what he was thinking.

He couldn’t let her know.

has written everything from Sunday School curricula to travel articles to magazine stories in more than twenty years of writing, but she feels she’s found her writing home in the stories she writes for the Love Inspired lines.

Marta lives in rural Pennsylvania, but she and her husband spend part of each year at their second home in South Carolina. When she’s not writing, she’s probably visiting her children and her six beautiful grandchildren, traveling, gardening or relaxing with a good book.

Marta loves hearing from readers, and she’ll write back with a signed bookmark and/or her brochure of Pennsylvania Dutch recipes. Write to her c/o Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, e-mail her at marta@martaperry.com, or visit her on the Web at www.martaperry.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

—Matthew 6:33

This story is dedicated to Pat and Ed Drotos,

my dear sister and brother-in-law.

And, as always, to Brian, with much love.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Questions for Discussion

Amanda Bodine raced around the corner into the newsroom, sure she was late for the staff meeting. She skidded to a halt at the sight of her usually neat, work-manlike desk that now bloomed with a small garden of flowers. Above it floated a balloon bouquet with a streamer that fairly shouted its message. Happy Birthday. Her heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach.

She glanced at her watch. Two minutes until the editorial meeting. If she could just get everything out of sight…

“Ms. Bodine.” The baritone voice dripped with sarcasm, and she didn’t have to turn around to identify the speaker—Ross Lockhart, managing editor of the Charleston Bugle. “It seems your personal life is intruding into the office. Again.”

“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t her fault the her large family seemed to take it for granted that they were welcome in her workplace. One noisy visit from two of her cousins had occurred when Lockhart was addressing the staff. He was not amused.

She forced herself to turn and face the man. Drat it, she never had trouble standing up for herself in any other circumstances. Why did her grit turn to jelly in the presence of Ross Lockhart?

Because if you get in his way, he’ll mow you down like a blade of grass, her mind promptly responded.

“Get rid of it. Please.” The addition of the word didn’t do a thing to mitigate the fact that it was an order. “Editorial meeting, people.” He raised his voice. “Conference room, now.”

A rustle of something that might have been annoyance swept through the newsroom, but no one actually spoke up. No one would. They were all too aware that hotshot journalist Ross Lockhart had been brought in by the Bugle’s irascible owner and publisher, Cyrus Mayhew, to ginger things up, as he put it. Lockhart seemed to consider firing people the best way to accomplish that.

Lockhart stalked away in the direction of the conference room before Amanda needed to say another word to him, thank goodness. She should have made sure she’d regained her professional demeanor before coming back to the office from the birthday lunch with her twin sister. Lockhart already seemed to consider her a lightweight in the news business, despite her seven years’ experience, and she didn’t want to reinforce that impression.

She moved two baskets of roses and daisies to the floor behind her desk and grabbed a notebook to join the exodus from the newsroom.

“Happy birthday, sugar.” Jim Redfern, the grizzled city desk editor, threw an arm around her shoulders in a comradely hug. “Too bad you have to spend it in another meeting.” His voice lowered. “Sittin’ around a table doesn’t get a paper out. You’d think the man would realize that.”

“He realizes Cyrus expects him to turn us into number one, that’s what.”

Jim snorted. “Not going to happen in my lifetime.”

Nor in hers, probably. Everyone knew that the venerable Post and Courier, the oldest newspaper in the South, was Charleston’s premier paper. The best the Bugle could hope for was to break a surprise story once in a blue moon.

And keep ’em honest, as Cyrus was prone to say. Everyone who worked at the paper had been treated to his lecture on the importance of competition in the news.

He’d probably like to believe his staff shared that passion.

Entering the high-ceilinged, wood-paneled conference room, Amanda glanced around the table, assessing her colleagues. Cyrus’s hope seemed unlikely to be fulfilled. His staffers were either just starting out, hoping this experience would lead to a more important job down the road, or they were old-timers like Jim, put out to pasture by other, more prestigious papers.

She was the only reporter who fit somewhere in the middle, with a year’s experience at the Columbia paper, where she’d interned during college, and three years at the Tampa Tribune before the lure of the city she loved and the family she loved even more drew her home.

Except for Ross Lockhart, the exception to the rule—smart as a whip, newspaper savvy and ambitious. Above all, ambitious.

Lockhart took his place at the head of the long rectangular table, frowning as usual when he looked at them. He probably found them a pretty unprepossessing bunch compared to the company he’d kept at the Washington, D.C., daily where he’d worked before a public scandal had nearly ruined his career.

She sat up a bit straighter. Maybe they weren’t the brightest tools in the tool chest, as her daddy might say, but at least they hadn’t fabricated a front-page story, as Lockhart had been accused of doing. And it must have been true, since the paper had made a public apology to the congressman concerned and promptly fired Ross Lockhart.

Lockhart’s piercing gray gaze met hers almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, and her throat went dry. Juliet Morrow, the society editor, romantically claimed he had a lean and hungry look, like some crusader of old. The contrast between the steel-gray of his eyes and the true blue-black of his hair, the angular lines of his face, the slash of a mouth—well, maybe she could see what Juliet meant.

But the look he’d turned on her was more that of the wolf eyeing Little Red Riding Hood. She was already sitting near the end of the table. It was impossible to get any farther away from him. Only the obituary writer was lower on the totem pole than she was. She held her breath until his gaze moved on.