Family Secrets

“Not at all. I appreciate the offer...but I just don’t know what I could do for you that others couldn’t do better.” Suddenly he wondered what he would say if she asked him to return to WDIX. His belly clenched at that possibility.

“You’re the only one who can do this.” She drew a deep breath and spoke in a rush. “Devin, I want you to go to Colorado and convince my granddaughter to come back home before it’s too late. Her grandfather’s health is failing and I want...” Her eyes flashed and she changed course. “No, I demand that all the Lyons rally round him while there’s still time.”

Dev stared at her, taken aback. This was the last thing he’d expected.

She fixed him with her piercing gaze. “Please do this for me. It’s very important.”

For a moment he forgot to breathe. He’d had no idea the old gentleman was in anything but the best of health for someone in his eighties. At the fiftieth anniversary celebration, Paul Lyon had looked fine and appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself. WDIX without the Voice of Dixie was unthinkable.

But so was waltzing off to Colorado on a wildgoose chase, and if there was ever a wild goose it was Charlotte Lyon—once his Sharlee but no more. She hadn’t even spoken to him when she’d been home in July, which had pissed him off considerably.

“Tante Margaret, I was... close to Charlotte once, but that was a long time ago.”

In fact, Dev and Sharlee had once shared a brief but fiery infatuation, when she was sixteen and he nineteen. He wasn’t very proud of himself for taking her virginity, but he simply hadn’t been strong enough or mature enough to turn his back on what she offered.

Her alarmed family, including Tante Margaret, had done everything humanly possible to drive the young lovers apart before they got “too involved.” Only Dev’s stepfather, had taken the opposite tack.

To this day Sharlee and Dev had never talked about what had happened, which left Dev’s guilt intact.

“We’re strangers,” he said. The harshness in his voice surprised him. “What makes you think I—”

“Desperation,” she cut him off. “It’s for Charlotte’s own good, Devin. You’re my last hope. Everyone in the family has tried to reach her and failed. If you can’t do this...”

Margaret’s chin trembled ever so slightly. He hated to see her like this because he was genuinely devoted to her. But still...

His smile felt strained. “You asked me once before to do something I didn’t want to do for Charlotte’s own good,” he reminded her.

“And to your credit, you did it.” She didn’t flinch; she’d have been a good poker player. “My motives were pure, then as now.”

“Sharlee—Charlotte’s never forgiven me. She won’t even talk to me.”

“How do you know what’s in her heart?”

“How does any man know what’s in any woman’s heart?”

“Exactly. Devin, you must do this for me.”

“Tante Margaret—”

“Please, Devin.”

“I’ll think about it.” The words were dragged out of him. “But don’t get your hopes up, okay? There’s not much chance I can do anything even if I agree to try.”

Her silver-blue eyes were suddenly awash with tears, and she reached out to squeeze his hand in a surprisingly firm grip. “I knew you wouldn’t turn me down,” she said. “Family must always stick together. Your last name may be Oliver, but you’ve got the heart of a Lyon.”

Did he? Dear God! Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

AFTER SHE’D GONE, Dev filled his partner in on what had transpired, concluding, “But there’s no way I can do what she asks. Not only would Sharlee slam her door in my face, we’ve got too much to do around here for me to just take off like that.”

Felix grunted. Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, he hauled out a handful of paper, which he slapped onto the counter.

Bills. Nothing but bills.

“Do what the lady wants,” he advised. “Get your ass up to Colorado, or this café may never open.”

“Sorry, Felix, but we’re not taking a penny of Margaret’s money.” Dev gathered up the bills but resisted counting them. “I’ve still got some savings and a couple of stocks I can part with. If we make it until I get the money from my mother’s house, we’ll be okay. We’re going to sink or swim on our own.”

“And if we sink—” Felix laughed ruefully “—guess I can always get a job at MacDonald’s, but I don’t know what the hell you’re gonna do.”

Neither did Dev. That was what he should be thinking about instead of the way Sharlee Lyon had looked right through him last month at the party, as if she’d never seen him before.

If she’d talked to him it would have been one thing, but she hadn’t and in fact never had, not in all this time. Damn, he was tempted to give it a shot just to get that monkey off his back.

SHARLEE HOLLANDER stood in front of the managing editor of the Calhoun Courier, trying to control her excitement.

At last! Bruce was about to give her the chance she’d longed for. a hard-news beat. No more lifestyle features, no more fashion or cooking stories, but hard news!

She’d spent three years at two newspapers trying to get out of lifestyles, which she was, unfortunately, good at. She’d realized after the fact that she should never have taken such a post as her first job out of college, but at the time, she hadn’t realized how typecast she’d be.

Bruce leaned back in his chair. “So I’ve decided to give you a chance, Sharlee,” he said. “Heather will move up to lifestyles editor and you’ll take over the city beat. You’ve been bugging me for this chance ever since you got here. Now go out there and cover City Hall like a blanket!”

“You won’t regret it, Bruce, I swear.”

“I’d better not.”

She floated out of his office on a happy cloud, closing the door gently behind her. Since graduating from the University of Colorado three years before, she’d been buried in light features, but that was finally going to change.

Eric Burns, a reporter she’d dated a time or two, looked up from his computer terminal. “Congratulations. I know how much you wanted a news beat. Glad you got it.” His phone rang and he picked up the handset, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

“Thanks.” She couldn’t stop grinning. “I know I can do this.”

“Good attitude,” he said approvingly.

“I’ve got nothing if not a good attitude,” she agreed, rushing across the newsroom to her desk. Damn, she loved journalism. Even when she didn’t have the assignment she wanted, she loved the excitement and vitality of the newsroom. Now she was about to get her chance to show everybody that she could—

“Hey!”

Eric’s shout dragged her back to the present, however reluctantly. He stood beside his desk, telephone receiver in hand. “Anyone know a Charlotte Lyon? There’s some guy out front insisting she works here.”

Sharlee’s stomach dropped at least to her knees. No one here knew her by that name. Should she deny everything? Continue to look at her coworkers with as much innocent bewilderment as they looked at her and one another?

For a moment she really thought she could do that and then her natural curiosity surged to the fore. She just had to know who was asking for her. She rose.

Everybody in the shabby newsroom stared at her.

“I’ll go see who it is,” she said airily. “Then I’m going over to City Hall, just to let them know I’m on the job.”

She felt the weight of their attention as she crossed the room, but she ignored it. Her thoughts were on the mysterious person who knew Charlotte Lyon.