Read Online With Family In Mind (Saddle Falls Book 1) by Sharon de Vita - Free Book Online Page A

herself. She was pretty well known and well respected in Reno, where she’d built a solid reputation and professional life based on the integrity of her work.
    “Jake, I know you and your family haven’t had an easy time.” Rebecca deliberately avoided mentioninghis brother Jesse. “I understand you’ve had some bad experiences with the press in the past, and that’s unfortunate. I’m sorry for it—I truly am. I’m not saying all reporters are ethical or even care about the truth. They don’t. But like every profession, there are some good people and some not so good.” She shrugged. “No matter what you think of reporters, no matter what your own personal experiences have been, I can assure you that I take what I do very seriously. Honesty is my stock-in-trade, something I pride myself on, as well as the fact that what I do for the most part helps people, sometimes people who’ve given up hope of ever being helped.” Rebecca was thoughtful for a moment. “When I was a senior in college, I did an internship at the Reno Sun. I—”
    “Is that where you’re from? Reno?”
    “Yes,” she said with an absent nod, her mind on the story she was telling. Confiding in someone, sharing a part of herself with them, was uncomfortable for Rebecca. Now that she’d started, she wanted to continue. “Anyway, as an intern, I was assigned to do a short human interest piece about this little girl who was basically a medical oddity. It was supposed to be one of those feel-good Sunday inspirational pieces about this plucky kid from a single-parent home who’d survived terrific odds and yet still kept going because of her indomitable spirit.”
    “Okay, so what’s the catch?”
    “No catch, Jake. But it brought up a lot more than either me or my editor bargained for. At eight, this little girl had been hospitalized for most of her life, with all kinds of different ailments. She’d had numerous surgeries, emergencies, illnesses—you name it, this poor kid had had it. I did my homework on this, Jake, as I have with every story since, and I learned that this poor kid had suffered a great deal in her young life, and yet the doctors could never find any tangible reason why this little girl kept getting all these very strange and serious illnesses.”
    “That’s weird,” he said with a frown, interested now in spite of himself.
    “It gets weirder,” she admitted with a slow smile, feeling more relaxed now that they weren’t sniping at each other. “Her mother was a widow who’d lost her husband three years before, and the little girl was all she had left. It was clear she loved her daughter very much.”
    “But?” He heard the note of reserve in her voice and glanced at her, one brow lifted in question. Absently, he reached out and tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, causing Rebecca to shiver at his unexpected touch.
    Taking a deep breath, she tried to ignore the fact that he’d just touched her again and set off another riot in her pulse. “I just had a feeling, call it a gut instinct if you will, that something wasn’t right between this mother and child.”
    Jake pulled into the parking lot of the Saddle Falls Hotel and turned off the engine, then turned to look at her with a frown. “What on earth would make you think that?”
    She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know, Jake. I think it’s what the media call a ‘reporter’s nose.’ People think that’s just an expression, but it’s not.”Her voice calmed as she explained. “It’s when you know something isn’t quite right, but you just can’t put your finger on exactly what’s wrong.”
    “So you dig and dig until you find the truth?” he asked, not certain if she was telling this to him to calm his fears or arouse them.
    “Yeah, something like that.” She watched as he adjusted his long legs more comfortably in the confined space. “Well, my editor wasn’t particularly interested in some college kid’s theories. All he