If Winter Comes (3 page)

“Nosey,” she countered,
and he chuckled deeply.

“Well, good night,” she
said, reaching again for the doorknob.

“Do you have a way
home?” he asked unexpectedly.

All of a sudden, she
wished with all her heart that she didn’t. She somehow felt warm and soft
inside, and she wanted to know more about the big man.

“Yes,” she replied
reluctantly.

“Good night, then.” He
turned and left her at the door with her sudden, nagging disappointment.

She got down to the
street where her car was parked just in time to be confronted with two tall,
menacing boys. There were streetlights around the senator’s palatial home, but
it was a little-traveled street, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. Carla
started toward her car with sheer bravado, mentally cursing herself for coming
out here alone.

“Ain’t she pretty,” one
of the boys called with a long whistle, his voice slurred as if he’d been
drinking.

“A looker, all right,”
the other commented, and they moved quickly toward her.

She fumbled in her
purse for her car key, frantically digging through makeup and pens and pads
with fingers that trembled.

“Nice,” the older of
the boys said, smiling at her from an unshaven face. “Where you going, baby? Me
and John feel like a little company.”

She straightened
jerkily, fighting to remember her brief class in karate, the right moves at the
right time.

“I don’t want company,”
she said quietly. “And if you don’t go away and leave me alone, I’m going to
scream, very loud, so that those people in the house come out here.”

“I’m scared,” the one
called John laughed drunkenly. “God, I’m scared! You think the old senator’s
going to come down here and save you?”

“He might not,” Bryan
Moreland said from the shadows, “but I’ll be glad to oblige.”

“I ain’t scared of you,
either,” the older boy said, moving forward to throw a midriff punch toward the
big man.

Moreland hardly seemed
to move, but the next minute, the boy was crumpled on the pavement. The big man
looked at the one called John. “You’ve got two choices. One is pick up this
litter from the street and carry it home. You don’t want to know what the
second one is.”

John stared at him for
a moment, as if measuring his youth and slenderness against the older man’s
experience and pure athletic strength. He bent and helped his winded companion
to his feet and they moved on down the sidewalk as quickly as they could.

Carla slumped against
the small Beetle, her eyes closed as her heart shook her with its wild
pounding. “That was close,” she murmured breathlessly, opening her eyes to find
Moreland very close. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. Are you
all right?”

She nodded. “Sheer
stupidity. I forgot how deserted it is out here.”

“You’ll remember next
time, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said
with a smile. “You’re very good with your fists. I didn’t even see you move.”

“I boxed for a while
when I was younger,” he said.

“I didn’t know boxing
was around on theArk ,” she commented seriously.

He chuckled. “That’s a
hell of a way to say thank you.”

“You’re the one harping
on your ancientness, not me,” she told him. “I just do my job and catch hell
from bad-tempered public officials.”

“I’m not always
bad-tempered.”

“Really?” she said
unconvincingly.

“Have dinner with me
tomorrow, and I’ll prove it.”

She stared at him as if
she’d just been hit between the eyes with a block of ice. “What?”

“Have dinner with me.
I’ll take you disco dancing.”

“You’re the mayor!” she
burst out.

“Well, my God, it
didn’t de-sex me,” he replied.

She blushed. “I didn’t
mean it that way. It’s just…”

“You can’t maintain
your objectivity, is that it? Honey, I don’t mix politics and pleasure,” he
said quietly, “and right now I don’t give a damn about your objectivity.”

She felt the same way.
Something strange and exciting was happening to her. Something she felt that he
shared. It was almost frightening.

“I…I was going to do a
series of articles on city officials,” she said, seizing on a chance to do some
quiet investigating about the information in her anonymous phone calls. “I
could start with you…if you wouldn’t mind,” she added.

He pulled a package of
cigarettes out of his pocket and offered her one, lifting an eyebrow when she
refused. He lit one and repocketed his lighter, smoking quietly while he
studied her from his superior height.

“How deep into my life
do you want to delve?” he asked finally, and she knew he was thinking about the
accident.

“Into your
political
life,” she corrected. “I think privacy is a divine right as far as anyone’s
personal life is concerned. I wouldn’t like mine in print.”

“Oh?” His dark eyes
sketched her oval face in the light from the street lamp overhead. “You aren’t
old enough to have skeletons in your closet.”

“I’m twenty-three,” she
said.

“I’m thirty-nine,” he
replied. His eyes narrowed. “Sixteen years, little one.”

“Fifteen,” she murmured
breathlessly. “I’ll be twenty-four this month.”

He caught her eyes and
held them for a long time, with the sounds of the night and the city fading
into oblivion around them. Her heart swelled, nearly bursting with new,
exciting emotions.

“I’ll let you do a
story,” he said finally, “if I get to okay it before it goes into print.”

“All right,” she
replied softly.

“We might as well start
early. Are you free in the morning?”

Things were moving so
fast she hardly had time to catch her breath, but it was a chance she couldn’t
pass up. So, ignoring the county commission meeting she was supposed to go to
with Bill Peck, she nodded.

“Be in my office atnine
a.m. and we’ll get started.”

“I’ll be there.” She
unlocked her car and got in. “Thanks again for saving me.”

“My pleasure,” he
replied. “Good night.”

“Good night.” She
started the small car and put it in gear. Bryan Moreland was still standing on
the sidewalk smoking his cigarette when she rounded the corner.

Three

T he excitement was
still with her the next morning, when she grabbed her thirty-five millimeter
camera and her pad, quickly checking her desk calendar before she started out
the door in her usual mad rush. She was neatly dressed in a tweed jacket with a
burgundy plaid wool skirt and matching vest, and her small feet were encased in
brown suede boots. Bill Peck took in her appearance with a critical eye, and
grinned.

“Who are you dressed up
for?” he asked pleasantly.

She blushed, hating the
color that rushed into her cheeks. “I’m going to interview the mayor,” she
confessed.

“Oh?” He threw her a
questioning glance.

“Well, I do need to do
some snooping on the tip I got,” she defended, “and I can’t help but turn up
something if I comb through all the city departments.”

“You’ll be an old woman
by then,” he commented. “It’s a big city.”

“There are only five
commissioners over all those departments,” she reminded him, “plus a handful of
lesser commission posts, like planning and—”

“I know, I know,” he
said with mock weariness, “don’t forget that I had to cover all those groups
before you came along to save me.”

“Am I saving you?” she
asked.

He only shook his head,
perching himself on the corner of her desk while around him telephones were
ringing off the hook. “I thought the mayor took several bites out of you last
night,” he remarked.

“Only a small one,
thanks to you,” she said dryly.

He shrugged. “I don’t
like anyone else taking my lumps.”

“Sure.” She smiled.
“Anyway, he saved me from a pretty scary gang of toughs last night—two anyway,”
she amended, shivering at the memory. “For a man his age, he packs a pretty
hefty punch.”

His eyes bulged. “The
mayor popped a tough, and you didn’t get the story? My God, haven’t I taught
you anything?”

She glared at him.
“That comes under the heading of my personal business,” she told him tightly,
“not news.”

“But, Carla…he’s the
mayor, baby, anything he does is news! Think of it like this—Mayor saves
reporter in distress!”

“No. Period,” she added
tightly when he pursued it.

He sighed angrily.
“You’ll never make a reporter unless you harden up a little.”

“If I have to harden up
that much, maybe I’ll hire on as a hit person for the mob,” she said coldly,
picking up her camera as she turned to go.

“Wait, Carla,” he said
quietly and rose to tower over her. “Don’t be like that. I was only kidding.”

“It didn’t sound like
it,” she replied, casting an accusing glance up at him.

He shrugged, his pale
hair catching the light to gleam gold. “I’ve been at this a long time. I forget
sometimes how it is when you’re a beginner. Okay, I’ll buy that you’re trying
to get in with His Nibs, and this wouldn’t help you break the ice. But,” he
added darkly, “that’s the only reason I’m not doing anything about it. It’s
news. And news comes before personal privilege. Don’t forget it again.”

She started to fire
back at him, but his face was like stone, and she knew it wouldn’t do the
slightest bit of good. She turned and walked out without another word.

She stuck her head in
the city editor’s office, grinning as he looked up from the pile of paper on
his desk over the rim of his glasses.

“I’m going to interview
the mayor and stop by the financial section to do a little checking, okay?”

“On what we talked
about earlier?” Jim Edwards asked with a nod. “Okay. Don’t forget that
interview with thenew city clerk—and get a pix. And see if you can get anything
out of Moreland about negotiations on the sanitation strike.”

“I ought to ask Green
for that,” she said with a wry smile.

“When he doesn’t even
take office until the first?” he laughed.

“He’s officially Public
Works Commissioner right now,” she reminded him, “regardless of when the next
commission meeting is.”