If Winter Comes by Diana Palmer Page B

crook. But if it wasn’t revenge…
     
    When she handed over
the photostats to Edwards, he and the legal staff were convinced that they had
a blockbuster of a story.
     
    “You’ve done a damned
good job, Carla,” Edwards told her with a rare smile. “I knew you’d pull it
off.”
     
    “Brown won’t testify,
you know,” she said. “And I can’t reveal my source by telling where and how I
came by those photostats.”
     
    “We’ll work that out,”
he assured her.
     
    “What if…” she cleared
her throat. “What if it’s a frame?”
     
    He studied her closely.
“You know better than to get involved with a news source.”
     
    She nodded, and smiled
bitterly. “You can’t imagine how well I’ve learned that lesson.”
     
    “Go eat something,” he
said with a paternal pat on her shoulder. “It will all come right.”
     
    Bill Peck stopped her
just as she started out the news-room door. “Want to have lunch with me and
talk about it?” he asked with uncharacteristic kindness.
     
    She shook her head.
“Thanks. But there’s something I’ve got to do first.”
     
    His eyes narrowed.
“Don’t go. He’ll rip you into small pieces.”
     
    Her thin shoulders
lifted fatalistically. “There’s very little left to be ripped up,” she said in
an anguished tone. “See you.”
     
     
     
    She walked into the
waiting room of Moreland’s office with a heart that felt as if it had been
pounded with a sledge hammer. Her face was pale, without its usual animation,
and her body felt as taut as rawhide.
     
    “Go right in, Miss
Maxwell,” his secretary said with a smile.
     
    “Thank you,” Carla said
gently. She opened the door to his office with just a slight hesitation.
     
    He was sitting behind
the big desk, his dark eyes riveted to her trim figure dressed in a gray suit
and black boots. A smile relaxed the hard lines in his face and made him seem
younger, less intense.
     
    “Sexy as hell,” he
remarked with gentle amusement.
     
    She swallowed, and not
to save her life could she return his smile. “Hello,Bryan ,” she said in a loud
whisper.
     
    The smile faded.
“What’s wrong?” he asked gently. “Did you stop by to tell me you couldn’t make
it for lunch?”
     
    Her shoulders lifted
slightly, as she gathered her courage. “I don’t think you’re going to want to
take me out when you hear what I’ve come to say.”
     
    His heavy black brows
collided. “Sit down.”
     
    She shook her head. “If
it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stand,” she said miserably. She fumbled
in her purse for the photostats she’d made of Brown’s material. “I think this
will explain it all,” she said, handing them to him. She waited while he
studied the documents, his eyes narrowing, his face becoming as hard, as formidable
as she remembered it from their first conflict.
     
    His dark eyes flashed
up to her face, blazing. “Well?” he growled. “What about it?”
     
    She curbed an impulse
to turn and run. “Do I really have to tell you that?” she asked in as calm a
voice as she could manage. “We’re going to publish this information. We can’t
afford not to.”
     
    His jaw tautened. “You
think this check is a kickback?” he asked in a strange, deep tone.
     
    “We know it is,” she
agreed tightly. “It’s painfully obvious that you don’t pay five times fair
market value for a piece of land unless somebody benefits. We’ve already
checked with the man who owns the land. All he got out of the deal was two
hundred fifty thousand dollars. That leaves the other half unaccounted for,
except for your cut. Either White alone or with another conspirator pocketed
the rest, and we can prove it. I’m sorry, but…”
     
    “You believe I’d take a
kickback?” he asked with barely controlled rage. “You really believe I’m
capable of that kind of vice?”
     
    “You accepted a check
from James White for one hundred thousand dollars,” she said in a voice