Beneath Southern Skies. Terra Little

months. She didn’t even want to think about all the other unpaid bills that were steadily pouring in. When had she applied for so many credit cards? Amassed so many lines of private store credit? Gotten so out of control with her spending? Of course, it hadn’t seemed as if her spending was out of control while she was safely ensconced in the luxury of a six-figure salary and living the high life. But the blinders were off, and she knew that she was in serious trouble.

      This summons, or whatever it was, that had landed in her mailbox this morning could be just what she needed to help her get her life back on track.

      Snuggled deep in the luxurious recesses of a thick cashmere robe, papers in hand, Tressie plopped down on the leather sofa in the great room of her twentieth-floor loft apartment and reached for the cordless phone on a nearby end table. Her toes curled into the thick pile of the specially ordered Oriental rug underneath her bare feet as she punched in the telephone number listed at the top of the document. Praying that the estimated quote on the page in front of her wasn’t a typo, she listened to the phone ring on the other end and then smiled when a woman’s cheerful voice finally greeted her. Just this morning she had been seriously considering pitching a tent out on the sidewalk, clearing out her designer label–filled walk-in closet and hosting a yard sale to stave off the wolves at her door. But now...now things were looking up and not a moment too soon.

      “Could I please speak with Norman Harper?” Tressie asked after the woman had finished rattling off the string of names listed on the company’s letterhead. “Please tell him that Tressie Valentine is calling.”

      “Just a moment while I transfer you,” the woman said. Seconds later, Tressie was listening to classical music and humming along as her thoughts wandered.

      Soon enough, Saul Worthington and the rest of the schmucks at the New York Inquisitor would realize that they had made a big mistake by cutting her loose. By now, Tressie Valentine, better known as Vanessa Valentino to her loyal and discriminating readers, was a household name. Knowing that, Saul, as the Inquisitor’s editor-in-chief, hadn’t even bothered to print a formal announcement that she had severed ties with the paper. Instead, he had chosen to simply omit her weekly column and replace it with a lackluster new weekly feature on education reform. It was a show, she knew, of blatant disrespect and one that she would never forget. And it was the worst mistake he could’ve ever made. No, scratch that—it was the second-worst mistake he could’ve ever made.

      Firing her had definitely been the worst.

      The whole scene had been unbelievable, like something out of badly scripted sitcom rerun. Even now as she thought back on it, she felt the humiliation and ridiculousness of it all over again, as if it were happening right now. It was true that hindsight was your best sight, but even in hindsight she couldn’t quite figure out where she’d gone wrong. One minute she’d had the upper hand and the next, everything had spiraled out of her control. One minute she was gainfully employed and the next she was spending her days catching up on all the soap operas that she’d missed over the years and worrying about what her future held. How, she wondered for the millionth time, had she lost the upper hand?

      “Fired? I’m fired?” Tressie had been in a state of shock, looking around the handsomely appointed executive office of the New York Inquisitor as if she’d never seen it before, except, of course, she had, many times. It’d only been a month ago that everyone had been crowded into the office, pouring champagne and toasting her Delilah Award nomination. Ultimately, she hadn’t actually won the coveted journalism award, but just the fact that she’d been counted among the handful of female journalists who were worthy of recognition had been a feather in Saul’s cap. Now she was fired?

      “Saul?” Tressie had prompted when Saul had only stared at her. Uncharacteristically silent, his forehead was crinkled into a million deep-set worry lines, and his bright red power tie was crooked, as if he had been yanking on it nonstop. Under her steady gaze, his face reddened guiltily. “Please tell me I heard you incorrectly, because I think you just said that I was fired. But that can’t possibly be right. I’m the best damn columnist you have around here and if it weren’t for me—”

      “Tressie...” Saul sighed, his eyes looking everywhere but at her. “I received a call from Gary Price’s people this afternoon.”

      Finally, something that made sense. All this talk about firing her was just his way of decompressing after what had to have been a nerve-racking phone conversation. He was upset, probably a little out of sorts, too, but that was to be expected. Stories like the one she’d written tended to shake up the usual order of things, which as far as she was concerned was exactly as it should be. Saul didn’t always agree with her investigative methods, but they had always managed to see eye to eye where the bottom line was concerned. Her story, just like all the others before it, had dollar signs stamped all over it, and frantic phone calls from guilty parties was the confirmation that she’d hit the jackpot, yet again.

      She perked up, scooting to the edge of her chair and slapping her hands down on her side of Saul’s desk. “Good. What did they have to say for their golden boy?”

      His ocean-blue eyes narrowed until they were slits in his face. “They’re pissed.”

      “Well, they should be,” Tressie decided, flopping back in her chair and rearranging her Calvin Klein suit jacket around her. “He’s been out of control for a while now. They should’ve known that I’d get around to calling him out sooner or later. It had to be done, Saul, and I hope you told them that.” A derisive laugh slipped past her lips before she could stop it. “His people. Please. Who has people anymore? No one is beyond my reach, people or no people.”

      “I warned you about going after Gary Price, and if you had listened—”

      “If I had listened, the world wouldn’t know that Gary Price tried to bribe his way into a vacant senatorial seat while he was carrying on an affair with the current governor’s wife, and right after he managed to weasel his way out of being charged with embezzling charitable funds from the state.” She threw up her hands and let them fall back to her lap wearily. “Who does that?”

      Saul snatched off his glasses, dropped them on his desk and scrubbed at his eyelids with stiff fingers. He looked so distraught that she almost felt sorry for him. It was on the tip of her tongue to offer a halfhearted apology for her part in his misery, but the next words out of his mouth dashed any warm and fuzzy feelings that might’ve been brewing inside her.

      “According to Gary Price’s attorney, he doesn’t. They’re suing the paper, Tressie, which brings me back to the reason I asked to meet with you.”

      “So you could fire me for being a damn good columnist? Come on, Saul, that makes about as much sense as you bowing to nonexistent pressure from Gary Price’s mysterious people. Since when do you care about ruffling a few feathers? It’s the nature of the business. You used to know that.”

      “We can’t afford a lawsuit right now,” Saul bit out in a shrill tone that Tressie had never heard before. A few more wrinkles appeared in his forehead and an accusing finger pointed in her direction. “You should know that. I don’t need to remind you about who was partly to blame for the paper having to file bankruptcy last year, do I?”

      Already knowing where the conversation was going and not wanting to touch the subject with a ten-foot pole, she waved a dismissive hand to cut him off. “So promise him a retraction in tomorrow’s paper or a front-page apology. Just don’t make me write it, because I won’t. He won’t know the difference anyway, and we’ve done it plenty of times before.”

      Confident that she had pushed all the right buttons, sufficiently made her point and put the conversation back on track, Tressie straightened her tailored black skirt around her thighs and crossed her legs. Her right foot swung back and forth in the air purposefully while her thoughts focused in on her latest target. Gary Price was quickly becoming a heavy hitter in the local political arena, that much was true, but he was no different from the hundreds, maybe even thousands, of other schmucks that she’d written about over the years. It’d taken her a decade to accomplish it, but by now everyone who was anyone knew who she was and what she did, even though