Chapter One
THREE YEARS LATER
Oh, this couldn’t be good.
Being yanked from a deadline story and summoned to her boss’s office was never pleasant for Jessica Curtis, but when the other guest chair was occupied by Mercedes Black, it pretty much ensured the day was headed south in a hurry.
Before entering, Jessie slowed her step and peered over the stack of papers on Mac Thomas’s desk to see if his shiny dome could be spotted on the other side of the mountain of mess. Of course not. Mac was getting coffee, because it was like him to demand his staff drop everything and then not be there while he took care of his needs.
And now Jessie would be stuck hearing about Mercedes’s latest interview with some movie star that would surely be the lead story on the Inside the A List website, or how exhausting it was planning her wedding for three hundred, and whether she should start picking furniture for her new office because she heard someone would be moving out of the ITAL cubicles soon and she had a good feeling about it.
Jessie did not have time for this today with a story due and at least three more in the pipeline.
“That you, Mac?” Mercedes asked without looking up from her phone, flipping a red-soled shoe at the end of one of her long, lean, crossed legs. “’Cause I have a meeting with my florist at two, and I can’t be late.”
“It’s me.” Jessie came into the office and sat down in the other chair.
“Oh, hello, Jessie.” She sat up a little, pouty lips already lifting in a smile that managed to be pitying, condescending, and vaguely familiar. “I didn’t expect you in this meeting.”
“I didn’t, either, but I just got summoned. Any idea what it’s about?”
Mercedes shrugged with badly feigned nonchalance. “A little bird told me it might have to do with the broadcast side of the house. I assumed my story about that Formula One driver who quit racing to become a preacher was being considered for an ITAL On Air slot. Didn’t you love the headline? From the Pit to the Pulpit.”
A headline their boss came up with. “Why would Mac have anything to do with that?”
Mac Thomas rolled into the office preceded by the scent of Aqua Velva and coffee. “Because I am the editorial director and actually have something to do with everything that happens in an online publishing company.” He handed one of two cups to Mercedes. “Sorry, Jess. You didn’t want anything, did you?”
Time to meet her deadlines? A better job? Or how about Mercedes’s luck, shoes, or hair? “No. I’m fine. What’s up, Mac? I’m really busy today.”
“You’re about to get busier,” he announced, kicking the door closed and rounding his desk to drop into the chair. Wordlessly, he shifted some piles and files, making room for his coffee and a little paper valley so he could peer at both of them. “There are changes afoot at Inside the A List,” he announced. “And it’s very possible one of you will be the happy recipient of a new job, new title, and an all-new wardrobe, since it will mean you will be on camera.”
The shoe dropped off Mercedes’s toes and hit the floor with the same thud that Jessie’s heart made in her chest.
They both wanted broadcast. Bad. Writing personality profiles for the online version of a hugely popular website was a decent job for any journalist, but the sex appeal was ITAL On Air, the broadcast version of the show and the real career gold. The show had started as a website spinoff, moved from YouTube to HBO, and now enjoyed incredible ratings and trending tweets every Wednesday night. That was when someone rich and famous—or broke and infamous—was profiled in depth by one of three anchor journalists.
And word at the ITAL water cooler was that they were looking for a fourth.
“You are both incredibly talented professionals with very different skill sets,” Mac said.
They sure were, Jessie thought. She could string a noun and verb together to make a killer sentence, and Mercedes could drink five vodka gimlets and still walk a straight line. In four-hundred-dollar shoes.
“You”—he pointed at Mercedes—“are a ball-breaker.”
“Thank you, Mac.”
Oh, baby. That wasn’t a compliment. “And you”—his finger shifted to Jessie—“are a wall-breaker.”
Mercedes hooted. “That is so good, Mac!”
A wall-breaker? “What does that even mean?” Jessie asked, having a hard time fighting exasperation and an eruption of impatience.
“You have a gift for going deep,” Mac said to her.
Mercedes snorted, and Jessie slid her a do you mind? side-eye.
“Sorry, Jessie, but you have to admit that’s funny.”
To his credit, Mac ignored her. “I’ve never met an interviewer who was better at mining emotion from a subject than you, Jessie. You get to the heart of the matter and know exactly how to make someone break down and spill. The kind of stuff that ITAL has built a reputation for delivering and that they really want on every episode of ITAL On Air. You know how to rip out the secrets and tears.”
When he put it that way, it didn’t sound like much of a gift. “I like to understand the motivations in the people I interview,” she said.
“And you.” His gaze shifted to Mercedes like it was a tennis match. “Your style is a little more bulldozer-ish, but you can get a decent story when you elbow your way through every obstacle. And you look…” His voice drifted off. “Well, you know.”
They all knew. “She’s camera-ready,” Jessie supplied.
“Thank you.” Mercedes was a cross between Angelina Jolie and Wonder Woman with a dash of sex kitten thrown in for good measure. Cascades of hair that literally qualified as raven, luminescent brown eyes, and a mouth made for a lipstick ad. And dirtier things. “And you’re pretty, too,” Mercedes added quickly.
But not quite camera-ready. Jessie had too-wide green eyes, blunt-bobbed strawberry-blond hair, and her dusting of freckles might be cute, but they’d mean a lot more work for the makeup artist. But what was more important for the ITAL On Air job? A riveting interview or a gorgeous face?
“Can you get back to the broadcast part?” Jessie urged.
“I’m getting there,” he said, pausing for a noisy slurp of coffee. “ITAL On Air is opening up one anchor slot.” He looked from one to the other, drawing out the moment. “And the list of candidates is down to three. An outsider from a network and you two.”
Mercedes practically crawled over his desk. “Mac, you know how much I want that job.”
How much she wanted it? ITAL On Air was the reason Jessie turned down three other jobs to take this one. Anchoring a TV show was a lifelong dream, although it had faltered in her late twenties when the dog-eat-dog-and-then-pee-on-the-other-dog competition of television news almost broke her. But some dreams died hard. Real hard. The burn in her chest assured her that, at thirty-three, her career fantasy was at least still on life support.
Hadn’t she just told her sister at baby Brianna’s christening that she wasn’t going to sell out and give up until she reached that pinnacle in her career? Because her career was her life, Jessie had said, looking down wistfully at her brand-new niece.
And Stephanie had smiled…that very same condescending, pitying, I-know-you-wish-you-were-me smile that she’d just seen on Mercedes. No wonder it looked so familiar.
“Listen to me, ladies.” Mac yanked her thoughts back to the present. “The powers that be like both of you and have asked me to orchestrate a little friendly competition.”
“Now there’s an oxymoron,” Jessie muttered.
“The better get wins,” he said.
“The better get?” Mercedes asked. “Like, whoever gets the best interview?”
“That’s what a ‘get’ is,” Jessie reminded her without the eye-roll the question so richly deserved. “You want to explain how this is going to work, Mac?”
“You both have ten days to put together a profile piece to be considered for ITAL On Air. Ten days to submit a written piece that, if not selected, we can still use on the site. The one that is selected will be produced for an ITAL On Air episode, and assuming you don’t bomb, you get the gig.”
Jessie’s brain was already spinning through every possible subject she’d cultivated in and around New York, her “beat” for the last year. She’d been to dozens of functions, fundraisers, grand openings, and parties, and they’d resulted in a pretty impressive contact list. And some excellent profile pieces.
“You are both free to go beyond your usual geographic arenas. Anyone and everyone is fair game. And I want one of you to get the job, not some outsider.”
Of course, the promotion would be a feather in their boss’s cap.
“So I made a list I want you to consider and see if you have any connections to these people.” He pulled some paper from his stacks, giving a page to both of them, a list of six or seven names, some household familiar, but some…
Personally familiar.
“Garrett Kilcannon,” Jessie said on a hushed whisper.
“You know him?” Mac asked.
“Uh, yeah.” She fought a smile at the first memory that popped into her head. “He was the first guy to touch my boobs.”
Instantly, Mercedes whipped to look at her. “He touched your boobs? The guy who invented PetPic and sold it to for, like, a billion dollars?”
“Yes, but he wasn’t rich or famous yet. I was fifteen and friends with his sister.” She drifted back almost two decades. “We made out in a dog kennel.”
“It’s a start,” Mac said, sounding a little less impressed.
“Not with him,” Mercedes responded. “I tried to get him when I had the Seattle beat. Not a chance. No interviews, not one, not ever.”
“I seem to recall…” Mac was tapping his phone, squinting at the screen. “Yeah, here it is. A Forbes piece, three years ago. They creamed him.” He thumbed through the story. “Seems he sold his pet photo-sharing social media site to FriendGroup.”
“Who hasn’t?” Mercedes asked. “FriendGroup has gobbled up every possible competitor and turned it into a subsidiary.”
“Exactly,” Mac agreed, still reading. “And he was supposed to run the subsidiary when it sold, but a couple weeks after the deal closed, he bailed. Had his brother, a lawyer, do some wrangling to get him out of running it. He lost a ton of stock options, and his reputation took a beating, too. They threatened a suit…” He scanned some more. “Shit went down, and Garrett Kilcannon is persona non grata in the tech world. Apparently, he’s a real son of a bitch.”
“What?” Jessie thought about the boy she knew, and had last seen when she was sixteen. “Garrett Kilcannon was one of the nicest, funniest, warmest guys I ever knew.”
“Warm in the dog kennel,” Mercedes said.
“Speaking of dogs,” Mac continued. “He left Seattle and went back to North Carolina and opened some kind of dog-rescue facility at his family’s homestead. Jeez, talk about a fall from grace.” Mac looked at her. It was a wonder he didn’t drool on the phone, he was salivating so hard. “There’s a story buried there, Jessie. Deep as a dog buries a bone.” He beamed at her. “See what I did there?”
This time, she did look skyward.
“You’ll never get an interview with him,” Mercedes insisted.
“Bet there’s some real good dirt though,” Mac mused, totally not listening to Mercedes but staring at Jessie.
“He’s back at Waterford Farm,” she whispered, feeling something low in her gut and deep in her soul. “That place is heaven on earth.” Until it’s time to leave for hell.
“So, what, you grew up near this guy?” Mac asked.
“I practically lived at his house from the time I was nine until I was sixteen. His sister and I were besties.”
“You keep in touch with her?”
She shook her head.
“Could you call her?”
Mac was relentless sometimes. “I don’t know, Mac. It’s been, like, seventeen years.”
“This is the kind of interview they want, Jessie.” His upper lip glistened, a sure sign he smelled a scoop. “Someone no one else has. Someone with a decent story, some color, and dirt. That’s your specialty.”
“I have a better idea,” Mercedes said, wedging herself into the conversation. “Let’s skip this guy, and I’ll get the CEO of FriendGroup. That’s the real story. He’s one of the richest men in the world.”
Mac looked interested. “Could you get him?”
“Of course. I happen to know someone who used to work for a woman who slept with a guy who went to college with his wife.”
Mac started laughing. “See what I mean? Bulldozer.”
“You said ball-breaker,” Jessie reminded him.
But Mac’s attention had shifted from Jessie to her competition. “Try and get him, Mercedes. I think the PTB would like that. A lot. If not, use your Hollywood connections on some of these other names. I think that’s what they’re expecting from you.”
She grabbed the paper and folded it efficiently. “Done and done. Now, I’m going to the florist. Good luck with your dog guy, Jess.”
Jessie didn’t bother to respond to the subtle dig.
“Jessie, listen to me,” Mac said softly after Mercedes was gone. “In confidence, between us, they’re leaning toward you.”
She eased back in the chair, letting his words hit, processing them, deciding if he was playing her or trying to motivate her.
“I know you think Mercedes is…” Mac searched for a word.
Beautiful. Better. Blessed. “Formidable competition,” she said.
“Yeah. But you are a superior journalist,” he said. “I think her, you know, style counts for a lot, but you have the chops. You have to work your magic, and I think this Kilcannon guy is the perfect place to start.”
She felt her shoulders sink and looked down at the name, so mired in the past and so long ago. “The connection is…nonexistent.”
“Every connection is with you.”
She looked up at the accusation, a physical sting hitting her chest. “Excuse me?”
“I mean you like your distance from people.”
“You just said I rip secrets and tears from them.”
“Yes, that’s how you do it…in print. You stay unemotionally involved, and that has worked beautifully for you, like a therapist digging into people’s dark stuff. But on TV? Totally different. You have to have a connection with the camera and the subject. That’ll be your challenge.”
She stared at him, taking the advice, which she had to admit made sense.
“If you do that?” he continued. “With your journalistic instincts? The sky is the limit for you, Jessie. Isn’t that what you want?”
Was it? A limitless sky. Bet it was cold up there in space. “Of course.”
“That’s what I told them in the meeting. Your career is everything. Mercedes, well, she’s marrying that Wall Street dude. Who knows how long she’ll stick around?”
She eyed him, wondering if he was subtly suggesting Mercedes would have a baby and quit. Mac could be woefully unenlightened.
“This job is your life, Jessie, and they know it upstairs in broadcast, and I know it. I’ll help you. I can watch out for you and help move things along on this end.”
“I want to win fair and square.”
He snorted softly. “Then I’ll just be in your corner, but you have to give me the story of a lifetime.”
She gave in to a wry laugh. “No pressure or anything.”
“Come on.” He put his hands together in a prayer position, like he was begging her. “You know where this guy lives, Jessie. What’s stopping you?”
Going to Waterford Farm. That old feeling of being on the outside looking in, of longing to be part of something bigger, of aching to fit there but knowing she never could.
“Because if you don’t do this, Mercedes is going to win it, and honestly, it will pain me to see you come in second place.”
Second place. Wasn’t that the story of her life?
Unless…she changed it.