The Rancher's Wedding by Diana Palmer

Author:Diana Palmer [Palmer, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zebra Books
Published: 2020-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

JL scowled. She looked guilty, and he wondered why.

She thought for a minute. “I had a job as an assistant to a producer at a television station north of Atlanta,” she said finally. It wasn’t quite the truth. But it sounded better than confessing she’d been a top writer for one of the most successful network weekly shows in the country. She didn’t dare admit that, because he might have heard about the scandal that involved her family.

“Assistant producer?” he asked.

“It’s like being a research assistant,” she continued. “I had all sorts of assignments and I didn’t have to sit at a desk all day. Once I got to do a feature story all by myself with just a cameraman and a sound man with me in the van.”

One of her friends had such a job, and she was able to recall what the other woman had told her about the assignments she got. It was like being a reporter, but with television cameras instead of a pad and pen—or, more recently, a notebook computer.

“It sounds complicated.”

She laughed. “It’s not. I covered news stories occasionally, too, but it was mostly feature stuff.”

“We have a weekly paper here in Benton,” he said. “In fact, the editor used to work in New York City.”

Her heart stopped beating. She just sat and stared at JL, vaguely horrified. “Oh?” she asked. “Recently?”

“No,” he said, wondering at the sudden paleness of her face. “About ten years ago. Are you okay? You look wan.”

“I’m still weak,” she said. She smiled. Ten years ago was a relief. The weekly editor wouldn’t know about her father.

“I guess you are. I still feel bad that I let you get chilled like that.”

“You made up for it,” she told him. “It’s okay.”

He sipped more coffee. “What I was getting at, is that maybe you’d be happier working on the newspaper than waiting tables,” he said hesitantly.

“I couldn’t go back to it,” she replied. “The stress would be too much.”

“It’s just a weekly paper. Not a daily,” he teased.

“You don’t understand. The stress on a weekly is much worse than on a daily paper. On a weekly, you’re expected to do all sorts of things besides just report. On a daily, you just write your copy and turn it in to the city editor or the state news editor.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, I like being a waitress,” she said, grinning.

“Almost anybody can be a waitress, with the right training. But it takes more than just training to be a reporter.”

“Thanks,” she said softly, searching his dark eyes.

“You’re wasted, is what I meant.”

She sighed. “It’s not stressful, what I do now, and I love the people I work with,” she said. “Besides, I don’t have to sleep with a pistol under my pillow at night.”

“What?” he exclaimed.

“Back when I worked for the newspaper, we had this reporter, Barney. He did a story about corruption in the county commission and ticked off members of one commissioner’s family. He got death threats. He slept with a pistol under his pillow.

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