face, it pulls on my heartstrings.
It's more than that. I want the chance to get to know her better. Something tells me that there's a lot more to her than I can see on the surface and I'm eager to find out.
“Okay,” I say slowly, still ruminating about exactly what I want to put forth. “What if I were to make the same proposal to you that I did earlier?”
“What are you talking about?” she asks, rising slowly to her feet.
“Come to the desert with me for a week. You can work there. I will work there. We can get to know each other better and in exchange you can write a story about me.”
She crosses her arms and raises one eyebrow higher than the other while tilting her head.
“You don't have to do anything you don't want to. I just have this need to get to know you more and I need to go home. I have a deadline that I have to meet.”
“You want me to spend a week with you at your house?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I don't want to offend you with this offer. There's nothing nefarious about this arrangement. I just need to be home so that I can work and if you're going to write a story about me, then I want it to be as accurate as possible.”
“You promise that you won't tell my boss that you didn’t go on the record with the first story?” she asks.
I nod.
Emma takes a moment. She bites her lower lip. She tosses her hair from side to side and then twirls one strand around her index finger.
I wait while she thinks about it.
I have no idea what her answer will be.
She turns around and says, “Okay, let's do this.”
There's a big smile across her face and I can't help but smile back.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Let's just see if you're sure about it.”
15
Emma
Liam takes off an hour or so later. I promise to come over later tonight. I want to take my own car, but I also want to run this past Corrin.
I know that she wants the story, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a whole week off.
“Hey, sorry to call you at home,” I say nervously into the phone.
“No problem,” she mumbles.
“I have something going with the D. B. Carter story. I talked to him again and he agreed to a follow-up.”
“He did?!”
“Yes, but he wants me to come out to the desert and stay with him. He wants this to be sort of a day in the life of or rather a week in the life of.”
“Really?” she asks.
I bite my lower lip. I don't know how else to explain it.
“Something going on between you two?” Corrin asks.
A moment later, before I can answer, my phone rings and when I look at the screen, I see that I have a FaceTime call coming in.
“Shit,” I mutter to myself and then plaster a smile on my face as I click the Accept button.
“You don't have to do anything you don't want to do,” she says with the tone of a concerned friend.
She's wearing a large floppy hat and sitting in front of a pool with big Jackie Kennedy Onassis sunglasses.
“No, nothing is going on. I guess we just developed a rapport. He went to school with Alex many years ago and I guess he trusts me as a journalist.”
“Okay,” she says, her face barely moving and therefore impossible to read. “I do want you to consider why he's being so open with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Coast Magazine isn't exactly a hard-hitting investigative magazine. We aren't really known for that. Until…” Her voice drops off.
I furrow my brow and wait for her to explain.
“Okay,” she says, taking off her sunglasses and letting me see her eyes with their perfectly winged eyeliner and expertly applied lashes. “If this goes well, then maybe we can talk about some other stories with a similar slant.”
“There are other reclusive authors out there?” I joke.
“No, not on authors,” she says, “but unusual disappearances. People going missing. That sort of thing.”
“Crime stories?” I ask.
“I think that it might be a good angle for bringing in new readers. I don't want to make Coast entirely focused on true crime, but one big feature in each issue might go far in helping us expand our readership.”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” I say, nodding.
Actually, I'm really interested in this idea. I like working on more serious investigative stories.
Of