Looking Inside

It was all for the best, anyway. Harper was a little wary of men as good-looking as he’d been. She was way too prone to getting herself mixed up with self-involved narcissists. At age thirty-two, she’d finally learned the difficult lesson that what she wanted sexually—a powerful, confident male—was highly at odds with what she wanted emotionally—a smart, stimulating companion whom she respected, someone who really cared, a guy who occasionally thought enough of her to sacrifice his own needs in order to fulfill hers. Not all the time, of course. She wasn’t needy and cherished her independence. But damn . . . once in a while? Was that really too much for a woman to ask?

Apparently so.

At any rate, she’d resolved to break her dysfunctional pattern. Each and every one of her past lovers had shone brilliantly in the beginning, and then proved himself to be gold-painted crap by the time she broke things off.

Don’t kid yourself. None of your old boyfriends shone like he had just now.

Dangerous, a voice in her head insisted.

That was another habit Harper was trying to break: the fact that when it came to her heart, she found potentially risky, powerful men fascinating, and yet . . . she feared them, as well. It seemed her head and her sexual appetites did constant battle.

Not that it mattered, she discounted, inhaling the pristine air to cleanse herself of thoughts of the man and the strangely charged moment. She settled into a comfortable jog. She had way more important things to consider than men and sex. Like her new life here, for instance. Her new job. A whole new future.

And it’s not like he’d seemed remotely interested, anyway.

It was time for her to face up to the fact that she was alone in the world. Maybe she should consider getting a dog . . .

She imagined her parents’ incredulous expressions if she ever told them she had a dog. She resisted an urge to laugh, but then almost immediately, that familiar hole opened up in her chest

.

It’d never happen again, that she’d tell them about some new, exciting addition to her life.

As a teenager, Harper had suffered from debilitating anxiety. Her father had been a psychiatrist. Philip McFadden had spent a great deal of time and effort years ago to cure his daughter of several phobias and associated panic attacks. One of her phobias had been for dogs. Her mom and dad might have been stunned if they’d known she was considering a dog as a pet, but they would have been proud, too.

She’d come a long way from being that anxious, sad little girl. She’d never really thanked her parents for that.

—

Sheldon Sangar, the Gazette’s editor in chief, waved Harper in from across the newsroom. Or at least he beckoned her as best he could while clutching several bottles of water and a carton holding what looked like two strawberry smoothies from Lettie’s Place, the local coffeehouse a couple of blocks away. In Harper’s previous jobs, the typical fuel of the newsroom was adrenaline, caffeine, and junk food. At the Sierra Tahoe Gazette, the employees preferred salads, bottled water, and jogs on their lunch hour. Sheldon Sangar was no exception to this easygoing, health-conscious company attitude. It was strange to have an editor in chief who could have passed as a hippie if it weren’t for his neat, short gray hair and newsroom badge.

“Do you have something for me?” Harper asked Sangar eagerly as she approached.

“Do you want a smoothie? I got one for Denise, but she had to take off early to take her daughter to the doctor for an infected spider bite,” Sangar said, holding out the carton.

Harper briefly tried to picture her former bulldog-like editor-in-chief, Frazier Sorrenson, letting his assistant, Roberta, leave early because of a sick child. She failed in her imaginings. Roberta was lucky to get out of the newsroom every day by eight p.m. Harper doubted Frazier would let her go home early if her baby came down with typhoid.

“No, I mean . . . do you have a story for me? Things are pretty slow. I’ve already finished my edits and layouts.” By ten o’clock this morning.

Sangar gave her a knowing glance over the frame of his glasses. “Sorry, no page-burners at the moment. I told you things could be pretty slow at the end of August. A lot of vacationers have cleared out now that school is starting, crime is at a standstill, and we haven’t even got much to say about the Tahoe Shores football team yet. You did tell me you wanted an easy pace.”

“I know. I’m not complaining,” Harper assured.

And she wasn’t, really. It was just hard to adjust her brain and body to the snail-like pace of a small town. It’d take some practice.

Sangar blinked as if he’d just thought of something and glanced down at the bottles of waters he clutched. “I do have something for you. Almost forgot. Denise told me to give it to you when I walked in. Came special delivery.” He extended his thumb and forefinger, and Harper realized for the first time he held a white linen envelope. She took it, curious. Her name and the office address for the Gazette were written in elegant cursive on the front.

“Looks fancy. Like a wedding invitation or something,” Sangar said, readjusting the bottles of water against his body. He turned and loped in the direction of his office.

“Yeah, except I don’t know anybody around here who would ask me to . . .”

She trailed off when she realized Sangar was out of earshot. She started toward her office, tearing open the envelope. The stationery was a plain white linen card with the exception of some bold dark blue and gold lettering at the top: Jacob R. Latimer, 935-939 Lakeview Boulevard, Tahoe Shores, NV, 89717.

“Jacob Latimer?” she mumbled, her feet slowing. The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t pin down why exactly.

“What about Latimer?” a woman asked sharply.

Harper glanced up and saw that Ruth Dannen, their features, society, and entertainment editor, had halted in front of her. She was in her midfifties and had been pleasant enough to Harper since starting her new job, if a little gruff. Ruth was a polished, thin woman who gave off an air of hard-nosed sophistication and always being in the know about Tahoe people and events.