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Brad Williams unlocked the door to Room 321, took a running start, and jumped onto the bed with his arms flung out. Then he rolled over, stretched out, folded his arms behind his head, and laughed.
His cell phone buzzed, and he reached for it.
“Hello, Brad,” Delores’ dry voice greeted him. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be calling me – remember? So how’s it going? Have you talked to the girl yet?”
“I talked to her today, for a long time,” he answered. “It wasn’t an interview, but I’m back in. I’m pretty sure she’ll tell me later if I ask.”
Delores’ voice sounded irritated. “Why didn’t you just get the interview, while you had her? After all the trouble you’ve had making contact –”
“Trust me, Delores, I have to finesse this thing. The last time I saw her, she all but cussed me out. I’m coming in cold, after a long absence, and after a lot of bad things have happened. If I hit her again with a big request too soon, she’ll bail, and we’re out of luck.”
There was a long, pregnant silence on the other end of the line. Brad could almost hear Delores’ brain turning his words over, sniffing them.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’s – what was the word you used – photogenic—would it, Brad?” Delores drawled. “Because if I get the idea that you’re stringing this assignment out to romance that girl, I’ll –”
“I promise you, Delores,” Brad replied smoothly, “I’m on the job. Just let me do things my own way.”
Delores grumbled on the other end of the line. “You’re taking a lot of chances, hot shot. You’d better be right.”
“I’ve been right so far, haven’t I?”
“You’ve been lucky. Meanwhile, Wellman at Channel 1 is running quotes from everyone in town who’s ever seen her, and we have nothing.”
Brad’s smile faded. “Wellman has stories because he makes up half of them,” he retorted. “I’m handicapped, Delores. I have to wait until people actually say things.”
To his surprise, she chuckled. “You’re wasted on us, hot shot. You should work in PR. But remember – my patience is running thin. The public is interested in this story, but that will only last until the end of her court case. You have until then. Don’t disappoint me.”
There was a click.
Brad tossed the phone onto the bed, rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, put his hands on his head, and exhaled. He told himself that he liked to talk to Delores, because the end of the conversation always gave him a near-death rush.
He reached for the TV remote and the television winked to life. The local station was on commercial break. A car salesman named “Honest John” had dressed up as an Amish farmer and was poking “high prices” with a pitchfork.
Then the commercial ended, and the local news came on. It was the five o‘ clock broadcast.
To Brad’s irritation, Wellman from Channel 1 was standing there with a mic to his face. Wellman was a tall, handsome specimen dressed in the reporter’s uniform: a sports coat, a tie, slacks—and a big gold ring. Brad noted that he had a more than usually bad case of reporter hair.
“And how do you know Jemima King?” he was asking. A teenaged girl was standing there, squinting into the camera.
“I saw her when she came to the hospital,” the girl replied, smiling nervously. “I work in the gift shop, and she walked right past me. I recognized her because of her clothes. And her red hair.”
“That was the day that she came to visit her friends, the Yoders,” Wellman clarified, smiling directly into the camera. “Would you have guessed that she was there to give away $200,000?”
The girl shook her head. “I just thought she was there to see a doctor or something,” she confessed.
Brad laughed out loud, and Wellman looked temporarily nonplussed. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” he pressed, and the girl shook her head obligingly.
Finally, to wrap up the segment, he had the girl hold up a cloth doll. It was a red-haired Amish girl with angel wings. “What’s this?” he asked, smiling into the camera.
“It’s our ‘Jemima’ doll,” the girl explained. “We can’t keep them on the shelves.”
“Well, she certainly does sound like an angel,” Wellman replied. “And Channel 1 will be here to cover the $1.6 million dollar lawsuit being brought against her next week. Back to you, Monica.”
Brad cursed under his breath and flicked a button on the remote. The TV went dead.
Brad closed his eyes and expelled all the breath in his body in one long, tired sigh. It was dinnertime, and he’d didn’t feel like going down to the restaurant, so he grabbed the menu off the nightstand and picked up his phone again.
“Is this room service? Good. This is Room 321. Yeah, I’d like the steak burger meal. Sure, thirty minutes will be fine.”
It was still early, but he was in for the evening. He was tired, mentally and physically, and he needed to recharge his brain if he hoped to get the scoop that Delores lusted after—and that would save his job.
He pulled his hands over his face. He probably owed his job to the fact that he’d been able to charm Delores into giving him chances that no one else got. He had already missed one deadline.
Why hadn’t he just gotten an interview from Jemima, when he had the chance? It was a fair question, and he didn’t have an answer that made any sense to him, much less one that would satisfy Delores.
He opened his fingers and stared out through them. The truth, of course, was that being close to the Duchess had scrambled his brain, and he‘d forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. He had forgotten why he was even there, and everything, in fact, except the urgent need to grab her and pick up where they’d left off.
It was a funny thing, too, because he wasn’t the caveman type, usually. He liked to use his wits with women.
Except that when he was with the Duchess, he couldn’t find them.
He shook his head. It was stupid, this whole thing: he was a moron, and he needed to get his head on straight, or he’d find himself in the unemployment line – as Delores had strongly hinted.
He put the phone back on the nightstand. The plain brown book was still lying there, where he left it. He picked it up idly and put it on his lap.
Jemima’s soft voice echoed in his mind as he remembered their conversation:
I want what every Amish girl wants. To get married, to build a family. To live quietly, to be useful, to worship God in peace.
That last part is important to you, isn’t it?
Of course.
He opened the plain brown book again. This time, it fell open more or less in the middle. He raised it just high enough to read: “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her...She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.”
Brad let the book fall down again. He remembered his Mom, strung out on meth, slumped against the living room wall with her eyes rolled up to the ceiling and her mouth hanging open. His mouth twisted to one side.
But he couldn’t get Jemima’s soft voice out of his head. He heard it again, even when he closed his eyes and pulled a hand over his face:
I want what every Amish girl wants. To get married, to build a family. To live quietly, to be useful, to worship God in peace.
That last part is important to you, isn’t it?
Of course.
