Unforgettable (The Dalton Gang #3) by Alison Kent Read Free Book Online Page A

her boss would never go for it. He liked the illusion of power that having a door gave him, when all he did behind it when closed was nap. “I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it in this morning, Grant.”
    Everly had been wondering the same thing. She leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, felt the pull of long-unused muscles and skin scraped raw by Boone Mitchell’s beard. “Late night with the fund-raiser. But I’ve got my notes and I’ll have the story on your desk before lunch.”
    “You got a final tally on the cabbage raised?”
    Cabbage. Lordy.
“No, but I’ve got checking with Kendall on my schedule. She’ll have an estimate at least.”
    Whitey gave her a nod. “Once you’re done with that, I’ve got a new assignment for you.”
    Good. She needed something to get her mind off the fact that Boone Mitchell had washed his own dishes before he’d come back to her bedroom and taken off his clothes. That he’d put away the syrup. Put away the butter. Rinsed out the coffeepot and dumped the grounds. What man did all of that?
    Or had she just always known the wrong men? “What’s up?”
    “A human interest piece. I’m thinking three issues at least. Big spread. Lots of photos.”
    What in Crow Hill could be worth that many column inches? “What’s the topic?”
    “The Dalton Gang.”
    Gulp.
This couldn’t be good for her newfound sex life. “The Dalton Gang? Why?”
    Whitey propped a hip on the corner of her desk. That forced him to turn at an awkward angle to see her. “Everyone’s been talking about their return to Crow Hill, but it’s been what? Four months now? Five? And there’s been nary a hint of scandal from the past popping up the way folks figured would happen.”
    Intrigued in spite of her apprehension, she asked, “And you think something should have popped up by now?”
    But Whitey was off in his own world. “Dax Campbell shacks up with Arwen Poole and finds out he has a half brother—”
    “That’s hardly scandalous—”
    “Casper Jayne owns a piece of Crow Hill history free and clear, and is adopting a teenage kid—”
    “That’s not scandalous either—”
    “And Boone Mitchell’s coming up clean as a whistle when everyone knows he got in more trouble than the others back in the day.”
    She hadn’t known that.
She
hadn’t known that at all. She knew what it felt like to hold him in her mouth, to straddle him, to ride him to an orgasm she would never forget. She knew she was in trouble because of that.
So
much trouble because of that.
    But she hadn’t known he’d left trouble of another sort in his wake. Looked like she needed to go digging in the
Reporter
’s archives. “You’re talking about their personal lives. Those things aren’t anyone else’s business.”
    “They’re everyone’s business. That’s what news is.”
    He was right, but still she heard herself arguing. “That’s gossip. That’s speculation. That’s—”
    “It’s what people want of their celebrities. Look at TMZ.”
    So the Dalton Gang were celebrities? And Whitey wanted them exposed? “They’re ranchers—”
    “They’re rancher celebrities then. However you slice it, Crow Hill wants to know all about where the three have been, what they’ve been doing, what it’s been like to come back to a town that sent them running. And”—Whitey held up a finger— “what they were running from.”
    That wasn’t exactly the story Everly had heard from parties close to the three about their departure. But if that’s what everyone in town was thinking, and saying, such a feature might not be a bad idea. She could dispel the rumors and tell the truth, though she doubted that’s what Whitey had in mind.
    Problem was, how impartial a story could she write with the things she now knew about Boone?—not that any of those particular facts would make it into a profile, but her bias was there, and might show, and she didn’t want anyone knowing what she’d done. If