CHAPTER TWO
Scarlett Edwards-Stewart needed a shower. No, check that. What she really needed was a steamy, two-hour bubble bath followed by an equally long massage and enough sleep to make people wonder whether she was still breathing. She might love her job the way most people loved spouses or sports teams or anything else that could be invested in with a sheer ton of energy, sweat, and devotion, but even she had physical limits. Spending her day trekking through three different international airports and twice as many time zones with thirty pounds of photo gear slung over each shoulder after three weeks of nonstop of work?
Apparently her ticket to finding them. At least temporarily.
She lowered the duffel bag she’d been living out of for the better part of the month to the threshold of her Upper East Side apartment, following it with the gear case holding her lenses, rechargeable batteries, and portable tripods. Keeping the well-padded, bright-red bag holding her primary camera (aka Baby) on her hip, Scarlett moved through her living room, her five-inch platform wedges clack-clacking against the hardwood floors as she tugged open the blinds to reveal the gorgeous New York City skyline.
“There. That’s better.” She grinned. Three weeks in Europe—first to shoot a photo documentary in Spain, then to cover the last two legs of the Tour de France before finishing up with a weeklong independent film festival in which an A-list Hollywood star was making his producing debut—had made her miss the city. Of course, as soon as Scarlett spent a week, maybe two, in the Big Apple, she’d be antsy to get up and go someplace else. That was the best thing about being a photographer, really.
There were great images all over the world just waiting for her to frame them up and capture them forever. Bright, brilliant colors. Nuances of black and white. Snapshots hidden in plain sight, some existing for milliseconds, some outlasting time itself, each one waiting to be seen.
All she had to do was hit the ends of the earth to uncover them.
Scarlett placed her camera bag gently on one end of the walnut dining table that doubled as her desk space whenever she was in New York. Even though this was the only apartment she kept on a permanent basis, calling it “home” never felt quite right since she was gone more often than not. Yes, her adoptive dads still lived in New York, and they’d raised her happily in their Brooklyn brownstone, less than ten miles from the spot where she currently stood. But as far as Scarlett was concerned, the concept of a place to settle down in and call home was more like a unicorn than anything else.
It might be magical for some people, but for her? It was just a great, big, sparkly myth.
Her cell phone sounded off in a buzz-and-chime combo that sent her heartbeat into the ozone layer and her awareness on a straight shot back to reality. Reaching into the back pocket of her vintage 501s, she slid her iPhone into her palm, a fast and easy smile lifting the edges of her mouth at the sight of the name on the caller ID.
“Mal!” Of course, her best friend’s built-in sonar would be pinging like mad now that Scarlett was back on New York soil.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be on the ground yet,” Mallory said, her voice oddly muffled.
A thread of guilt stabbed through Scarlett’s belly. Dammit, she should’ve known Mallory would be worried about her flying. Not even twenty-one years could erase the fact that her best friend’s parents had been killed in a plane crash. God, Scarlett could still remember how sad and scared Mallory had been that first night in foster care.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t text you when my flight landed. Customs took forever, and they went over every last piece of my gear.” Thankfully, Scarlett had the whole hand-check-the-bags, these-are-my-credentials thing down to an art form. “But yes, I landed safe and sound about ninety minutes ago, and you have great timing because I literally just walked into to my apartment. So what’s up? Did I miss anything juicy in the last three weeks of city life?”
Mallory paused. “Oh, you know. Not too much.”
Nope. Sadly for Mallory, Scarlett had a titanium-reinforced bullshit meter, and right now, the thing was going apeshit. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, really.”
“What is this, Opposite Day? We’re not nine anymore. Spill it, Parsons.”
“Fine. I . . . I’m just having a little trouble at work,” Mallory started. But she didn’t elaborate, and jeez, what was that sound in her voice?
“Trouble at work,” Scarlett repeated gently. Mallory ran an online food magazine that, while relatively small, was the product of her heart and soul and more than half a decade’s worth of sleeves-rolled-up effort. “Okay. So on a scale of ice cream to chick flick movie marathon, how bad is it?”
Mallory’s exhale wobbled over the phone line. “Tequila.” Pause. “Top-shelf. Bottomless glass.”
“Holy shit.” Scarlett’s pulse tripped in her veins, and she pulled a chair from beneath her dining table-slash-desk, planting herself over the bright-turquoise-and-gold cushion. “Talk to me, Mal.”
Thankfully, the prompt was all her best friend needed. “Things have been kind of bumpy at FoodE for the last four or five months.”
“Four or five months?” Scarlett pressed her teeth into her bottom lip, too late. But subtlety had never been one of her strong suits, so screw it. She added, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“At first, I thought it was just a normal slowdown in the market. You know how publishing is,” Mallory said.
Although Scarlett was on a different side of things as a freelance photographer, she definitely did. The publishing world had more ups and downs than a carnival roller coaster on crack. “Being a smaller publication in a sea of online magazines is tough,” she admitted. “But FoodE has such a great vibe with the whole farm-to-table focus.”
“Yeah, but unfortunately it’s not entirely unique,” Mallory sighed. “A lot of the big-name publications have caught on to the fact that people don’t just want a meal, they want a food experience. There’s a ton of competition. With all these other magazines upping their emphasis on digital distribution and online subscriptions lately, we’ve really been struggling for visibility.”
Realization trickled into Scarlett’s brain, her shoulders growing heavy against the back of her dining room chair. “And lower visibility means less advertising dollars.” Dammit. Those dollars were a huge part of how Mallory’s business stayed afloat, from covering her costs to paying salaries—including her own.
“Exactly. I’ve cut every corner I can think of, but our site hits are at an all-time low, and our subscriptions are even worse. FoodE is hemorrhaging money. My reserves are as shot as my nerves.” Mallory grew quiet, to the point that Scarlett wondered whether the call had dropped. But then her friend whispered, “I lost my last big advertising client about an hour ago. Without a high-impact, high-velocity spread to start generating major buzz ASAP, I don’t think I’ll be able to stay in business.”
Scarlett’s heart pitched against her rib cage, but oh no. Hell no. No way was she going to sit by and let her best friend’s business go under. Not without one hell of a knock-down-drag-out.
“Well, I guess that leaves us with only one option,” she said. “We need to find you a blockbuster.”
Mallory’s laugh was all disbelief. “Are you kidding? No big-name locales are going to want to waste their time hosting a dying magazine for a layout article. In fact, the only nibble of interest I’ve had in weeks is from a farm in the foothills of the Virginia Shenandoah. I don’t even think the town has a mapdot. Truly”—Mallory broke off, her voice wavering in earnest now—“I have no idea how to fix this.”
An idea formed in Scarlett’s head, brash and bold and absolutely perfect. “Send me.”
“Send you where?” Mallory asked, taking a full three seconds to connect the dots before she gasped. “To the mapdot? Scarlett, that’s crazysauce!”
“Maybe,” Scarlett agreed. “But we’re still going to do it. This farm. What’s it called?”
“Cross Creek.”
“Right.” The idea snowballed in her head, gaining both speed and momentum. “They reached out to you for coverage, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. Their business manager, Emerson . . .” Mallory paused, the soft tap-tap-tap of laptop keys clicking on the other end of the phone. “Got it! Emerson Montgomery. She and one of the farm’s operators, Hunter Cross, sent me an e-mail about a week ago asking if I’d like to visit to write an article. I’d put off answering because I didn’t know if I could pay a freelancer to cover the story. Now I know I can’t.”
“But you checked the place out, right? And it’s a location you’d normally feature.” Although Scarlett hated to admit it, no matter how hard the two of them worked, if the farm didn’t mesh with FoodE’s theme, all the articles on the planet wouldn’t garner interest.
But Malory said, “Yeah. They’ve got seven hundred and fifty acres of combined agriculture, with both produce and livestock. It’s the biggest family-run farm in the area, and they’re transitioning to a lot of specialty produce and ecologically conscious farming. To be honest, between that and the agritourism market they’re trying to build on, there’s probably enough subject matter there for an entire series of articles.”
Eeeeeeeven better. “Email them back and tell them today is their lucky day. You’re not going to do an article. You’re going to do bunches of them.”
“Bunches of them.” Doubt and disbelief clung to Mallory’s answer, but Scarlett met both head-on.
“You just said there’s a ton there. Why not go big? I can go down to the farm and shoot a series of photos, do the hands-on fact gathering and interviews, and send it all to you. Then you can turn the information into articles, recipes—the sky’s the limit, really.” Scarlett popped to her feet, pacing out the excitement thrumming through her veins. “Ooooh! You said people want the whole experience, right? If this is a family-run place, why not play up the personal-interest angle along with the food? I could do an immersion-type thing with video clips if you want. You know, to give a real-life depiction of what true, hands-on, farm-to-table looks like, but with a reality TV–style twist. It’s freaking click fodder.”
“People do love video,” Mallory said slowly. “It gives a stronger sense of personal connection, and I bet our readers would love to see the people behind the process. But still, we’re talking about weeks to shoot something like this, and not one or two. I couldn’t possibly ask you to cover this story. I don’t even know how I’d pay you.”
Scarlett shook her head even though Mallory couldn’t see the gesture. “I don’t want you to pay me.”
“Um. Spoiler alert. You’re one of the most in-demand photographers on the East Coast. Possibly in the entire United States. Since when do you work pro bono?”
“Since now. Look, if it makes you feel any better, you can consider it an advance for when FoodE becomes a household name.”
Scarlett paced her way to the foyer, sending a glance from her duffel to the view of the city, where the sun was just beginning to set behind a backdrop of brick and glass. Okay, so the turnaround time was a little bit tight, but she wasn’t exactly a stranger to living out of her duffel. She didn’t have anything set in stone on her schedule for another six weeks—hello, Brazil—plus, she’d covered everything from end zones to war zones. Other than having to tough out not having a Starbucks on every corner and the fact that her hosts were likely to count overalls as a positive fashion statement, how hard could an extended shoot and some videos at a farm be, for God’s sake?
Mallory loved her online magazine, and Scarlett loved Mallory. Her best friend had always been there for her. Even when no one else had.
And now Scarlett was going to return the favor.
“Mal,” she said softly. “I haven’t taken more than a week off total in the last two years. I have the time and the ability to cover this story for you, and I really want to help. So what do you say?”
For a heartbeat, then another, then a dozen more, Mallory said nothing, and Scarlett’s gut filled with unease.
“Mallory—”
“Okay.” Mallory’s answer collided with Scarlett’s, and the single word was enough to send an ear-to-ear grin over Scarlett’s face. “I’ll send you to the farm,” Mallory said. “But only if you agree to let me pay you as soon as I’m able.”
“Done!” Scarlett could fight that battle when they got to it. “Just give me twelve hours to do some laundry and a little research. I can be on the road tomorrow.”
“You want to go so soon? Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
But Scarlett just laughed. “You need a blockbuster ASAP. There’s no time like the present to get you one.”