How Much Will She Risk For Love?
Fired from her prestigious job, journalist Allison Wakefield is now working for a tabloid newspaper, and sheâs desperate to find a way to get her career back on track. Her new assignment, an explosive story involving mysterious bestselling author Jacob Covington, could be the answer. When Allison first encounters the author while visiting her auntâs home on Idlewild Lake in Michigan, she realizes that Jacob is one subject she wouldnât mind getting to know more intimately.â¦
But as they work side by side during Jacobâs book tour, Allison finds herself falling in loveâand in a dilemma about what to do. The exposé is her ticket to success, but revealing the truth about Jacobâs past as a State Department undercover operative could jeopardize his careerâand destroy a summer romance that holds the promise of a lifetime of happiness.
Chapter 1
âI want you to bring me a day in the life of Jacob Covington. Heâs hot copy and I want your story to sizzle.â It was an order, and Allison Wakefield knew that Bill Jenkins, editor of The Journal and her boss, meant what he said. The Journal was known for its titillating accounts of the lives of celebrities.
âYou said you wanted a story on a typical day in his life. Are you telling me to dig into the manâs privacy, to snoop? Iâm a reporter, Bill, not a private eye, and Iâm not interested in digging up anybodyâs skeletons.â Sheâd heard that careers were destroyed hourly in Washington, D.C., and after her own experience, she didnât doubt it. She brushed her long brown fingers back and forth beneath her chin and straightened her shoulders.
âI canât stoop to that, Bill. I wonât.â
He lifted his shoulders in what appeared to be a careless shrug. âYou said you didnât want any more assignments on the wives of visiting dignitaries; you wanted hard news. Well, this is your chance. Youâre after a story, and whatever you find had better go in it.â He paused, allowing a grin to slide over his face. âBut if youâre chicken...â He let the thought dangle, but she understood what he didnât say.
âRefusing to muckrake is not the same as being cowardly.â She knew she should hold her tongue, because she didnât want to leave The Journal until she had another job.
Oblivious to the implied insult, his gaze swept over her. âA reporter has to be tough, Allison. So get used to it. If you donât, the jobâs not for you. Bring me the story.â
Allison turned away from her editor without thanking him for the chance of a lifetime. She collected her briefcase and pocketbook from her office several doors away and walked out of the building. Pausing in front of the eight-story structure at Fourteenth and H Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C., she breathed deeply of the warm, late June air. She hadnât regained her status as a top reporter, but she still had her soul. Maybe she should have shown some gratitude, but why thank him for the double-edged gift when she knew it could be her undoing?
Jacob Covington had an impeccable reputation, or at least that was the opinion of other reporters who had interviewed him since heâd become a bestselling author. Cut him to pieces? She knew her uneasiness was well founded; Bill Jenkins kept The Journal afloat with scandal, searing his subjects, and if she let him, heâd treat this story no differently; he wanted the dirt. Muckraking was what he expected, and sheâd need all of her wits to circumvent him. Top-of-the-line editors didnât hire reporters who built their reputations on sleazy copy, and she wanted another chance at working for one of the best newspapers. But she couldnât do that until she erased that blot from her record. She meant to show her detractors that she could reestablish herself as a journalist, and she wouldnât trash Jacob Covingtonâs reputation to do it.
* * *
Warren Jacob âJakeâ Covington paused in front of his town house near the Ellington School of the Arts in Georgetown and took a deep breath of warm, dry, early morning air, appreciating the unusually low humidity for the nationâs capital. Returning from the steaming tropics, the type of climate he least liked, he walked into his house and dropped his luggage at the closet door in his bedroom. After hanging up his jacket and kicking off his shoes, he stretched out on his bed and gloried in the feel of his own hard mattress under his back.
He had just completed his first trip for the department in four years, and the experience increased his appreciation for his current job as the departmentâs chief policy analyst. He wondered how he ever thought of his former job as an undercover agent as exciting and fascinating. He wanted no more of it.