Sunny Says Read online

  SUNNY SAYS

  BY

  JAN HUDSON

  First published by Loveswept at Bantam Books, November 1992

  Revised and updated ebook edition by Jan Hudson copyright, 2012

  Published by Janece O. Hudson

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used, transmitted, or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the author except for brief excerpts used in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is purely a work of fiction and the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity between characters, names, or incidents and real people or incidents is coincidental. Certain historical facts or locales have been used fictitiously.

  * * *

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  HOT STREAK Chapter One

  Chapter One

  Hulon Eubanks was threatening to jump again. For the third time in the past two weeks, Sunny Larkin kicked off her high heels and climbed out onto the window ledge.

  “Hang on, Hulon,” she yelled to the anchorman who sat hunched against the concrete embrasure a few feet away. “I’m coming out.”

  “It’s no use, Sunny. Nobody will listen to me.” He hung his head. An August breeze from Corpus Christi Bay ruffled the strands of his salt-and-pepper hairpiece, which sat slightly askew. “Nobody cares that I’m miserable in this job. Nobody cares that I toss my cookies at five-forty-five every Monday through Friday.”

  “Oh, Hulon, that’s not true.” Crawling on her hands and knees and trying not to look down at the parking lot four floors below, Sunny swallowed back her anxiety and inched her way toward the middle-aged man in the green polka-dot tie. The breeze billowed her skirt, and the rough surface of the concrete molding abraded her knee-caps. She felt a run on her panty hose pop and slither along her leg.

  Behind her in the KRIP-TV newsroom, phones rang, teletypes clacked, printers spit out stories, prebroadcast conversation hummed, and business went on as usual. No one gave the pair on the ledge more than a cursory glance.

  Hulon narrowed his eyes. “Then where’s Foster? Did you call him?”

  “Of course I called him. He’s . . . uh . . . tied up at the moment.” She crossed her fingers and gave him one of her perkiest, most reassuring smiles. “But he . . . he promised that he’d be up to talk to you at the first opportunity.” The general manager of the station hadn’t used exactly those words. His had been considerably more colorful and a tad obscene.

  Hulon Eubanks—whose distinguished visage and sonorous voice were recognized by most Corpus Christi, Texas, residents as those of the evening anchor of Channel 13, The Good News Station—rolled his eyes and gave a bitter, disbelieving snort. “Then I’ll stay here until that opportunity arises. Or until I decide to jump.” He plucked one of the makeup tissues tucked protectively around his shirt collar, held it out, then released it and watched the scrap of white flutter downward.

  As if the tissue were a hypnotist’s pendulum, its slow, drifting descent captured Sunny’s gaze, and her eyes followed it down, down, down until it landed on the hard, black asphalt. She grew dizzy. Beads of perspiration popped out across her upper lip. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath.

  “Hulon, please, please, come back inside. You can’t stay out here. It’s going to start raining any minute, and you’ll get soaked.”

  “Rain?” From their perch on the front of the Parrish Building, she watched as he frowned and scanned the area, past the gently swaying palm trees along Shoreline Drive and across to the downtown harbor, where gleaming yachts and tall-masted sailboats rested quietly in their slips. He craned his neck, looking upward to where only a few scattered puffs of cumulus clouds sat placidly in an otherwise clear sky. “I know you’re always right, but— Oh, you’re joshing me. No, I’m staying until Foster comes. But you go back inside, my dear.”

  “I’m not leaving you out here alone, and you know how I hate heights. I’ve already ruined a new pair of panty hose, and the way my stomach’s feeling, I’ll never last until five-forty-five to join you in upchucking.”

  After a moment’s hesitation that seemed like eons to her, he sighed. “Very well. But only for you Sunny, my girl. Only for you.”

  She sagged with relief. Carefully, she eased backward toward the open window. A sudden gust of wind tossed her skirt over her head, and she tried to bat it down. Her knee slid off the ledge, and she screamed, scrambling for a hold. Her life passed before her eyes as she hooked her toes around the window frame and grabbed the mini-blind cord with both hands. Her foot slipped, the blinds zipped to the top, and she dangled over four stories of nothing.

  “Sunny! Take my hand,” Hulon shouted as fat raindrops began pelting them.

  “Stay back, Hulon, or we’ll both go. Get some help!”

  Her heart rampaging like a Panhandle tornado, she whimpered as her puny lifeline cut into her hands. Dear Lord, she couldn’t die in such an ignominious way. Twenty-six was too young to end up as a mere splat on the pavement. She had dreams to fulfill, things to do, places to go, people to see. Echoes of local newscasters announcing her bizarre demise reverberated in her head. But at the same time another, stronger voice said, Don’t be such a panty waist. You can’t give up.

  A mottled gray-and-white sea gull swooped from the sky and settled on the ledge above her. He looked down at her, cocking his head back and forth and taunting her with beady eyes.

  “Shoo! Shoo!”

  Undaunted, he only waddled around in a awkward half circle and presented his backside. When he ruffled his tail feathers, Sunny glared up at him. “Don’t . . . you . . . dare, you nasty bird!”

  Still hanging on for dear life, she clenched her teeth and looped the cord around her fist. After a deep breath, she felt for the bricks with her toes. With raindrops battering her back, she began walking up the side of the building, pulling with her hands and looping the cord as she went.

  The sea gull took off with a startling flap. Sunny’s foot slipped, and she screamed as she swung away, legs pumping, suspended again in midair. She heard an ominous splintering sound overhead and felt the cord give.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Don’t look down. Don’t look down, she repeated over and over like a mantra. Where was her guardian angel when she needed him?

  Strong fingers clamped around her wrists. “I’ve got you,” a deep voice said. “Let go.”

  “Are you crazy?” she shrieked.

  “Trust me,” the calm, resonant voice said.

  She opened one eye, then the other, and glanced up into the tanned, rough-planed features of a man who somehow seemed familiar. Familiar, yet she couldn’t put a name to this somber rescuer whose stubbled face said he’d seen it all, battled the world’s vagaries and survived. His hazel eyes bored into hers with a palpable intensity that permeated every petrified cell in her body. A peculiar, soothing energy flowed from his callused hands to her wrists and washed over her.

  “Trust me,” he repeated slowly. “Let go.”

  Instinctively, she obeyed his directive. She would follow this man anywhere.

  With a deft yank, he pulled her inside.

  When her feet touched the floor, she fell against her lifesaver and flung her arms around him. Her face pressing against his chest, her fingers clutching handfuls of fabric at his back, she clung to him like a child terrorized by a nightmare.

  He held her close, not speaking but exuding a raw strength and sense of security that was rock solid and infinitely reassuring. She burrowed cl
oser, luxuriating in the safe port of his arms until she gradually gained control of her wobbly knees and racing heart.

  When she was calm enough to think, it dawned on her that she was standing in the newsroom, the focus of a score of curious eyes, and clinging to a stranger like a frightened monkey. She looked up at him. Though it was a mere flash, an unspoken communication, both potent and elemental, passed between them. It jolted her like forked lightning. Her solar plexus swirled in that peculiar way which, if she hadn’t known better, forewarned of an impending hurricane. Yet this time the feeling was vaguely different, more . . . poignant, more sensual. Shaken, she laughed nervously and stepped away from him.

  “Whew! That was a close call,” she said, running her hand over her damp blond hair. She gave her savior the biggest, most dazzling smile she could muster and stuck her hand out. “Thanks. I thought I was a goner.”

  Feet planted apart and fists rammed against the hips of his rumpled bush jacket, he glared at her. “What in the hell were you doing out there?”

  Her smile faded, and her hand dropped. His scowl deepened the sun- and life-lined creases at the corners of his eyes and across his forehead. From her five-foot-three vantage point, his six feet of sinew seemed suddenly menacing. “I—I—”

  He bent over and stuck his face in hers. “Don’t you know you could have broken your damned neck?”

  Her eyebrow shot up, and her spine stiffened. She held her ground and glared at him, nose to nose. “Who stepped on your tail, Mr. Congeniality? I’m the one who was at the mercy of the mini-blinds.”

  Except for a slight upward twitch at the corner of his mouth, neither of them moved a muscle.

  Foster Dunn, KRIP’s well-manicured general manager, rushed over and threw an arm around each of them. “Now, now, we’ll sort this out later. The important thing is that Sunny’s safe. You are okay?” he asked her.

  Splaying a hand across the bodice of her damp sailor dress, she drew in a deep breath. “I’m fine.”

  “Good, good.” He patted her shoulder. “Back to work, everybody. The excitement is over. Sunny’s fine.”

  “I still want to know why in the hell she was hanging out the window,” her rescuer growled.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’m practicing to become a cat burglar.”

  “Now, now,” Foster repeated. “Let’s forget about it.” The general manager, who hated confrontations of any sort, straightened the vest of his pin-striped suit and tugged his cuffs into place. “Sunny, this is my cousin Kale Hoaglin, the new co-owner of KRIP. He’s just flown in from an assignment in Bangladesh. Sunny Larkin is our weathergirl. And a damned fine one she is,” he added affably. “Isn’t she just as cute as a bug?”

  “Weather reporter,” Sunny amended automatically. As the rest of Foster’s words sunk in, she felt the blood drain from her face, aghast that she’d been insulting the Kale Hoaglin, one of the world’s most famous foreign correspondents. She and the majority of the female population had drooled over him for years. Of course, he looked a bit scruffier in person than he did on the network news. He hadn’t shaved in several days. His thick shock of light brown hair was overlong, sun-streaked, and looked as if he’d run his fingers through it a thousand times. Plus he must have slept in his clothes.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I should’ve recognized you at once. It’s an honor to meet such a renowned newsman.” She offered her hand, and this time he took it. “Your aunt Ravinia talked about you all the time. Please accept my condolences. We all loved Ravinia and were devastated by her death. I’ll miss her.”

  “Although I didn’t see her much in the past few years, I’ll miss her too,” Kale said, a shadow further darkening his solemnity. “She was . . . unique.”

  “Unique” was a mild term for Ravinia Irene Parrish, Sunny thought. Not that she was one to throw stones. Sunny herself had been called worse. Perhaps that’s why the two women, despite the disparity in their ages, had formed an instant affinity. She truly would miss the eccentric owner of KRIP, but at least when Ravinia’s time came up she’d died with panache. Two weeks before, Ravinia’s plane had crashed in the Himalayas. The only remains were ashes, a few pieces of twisted metal, and, miraculously, the gold ankh she always wore. Sunny noticed that the Egyptian symbol of life now hung in the opening of Kale’s wrinkled pink shirt.

  A childless widow, Ravinia had left everything to her two nephews, Kale Hoaglin and Foster Dunn. The station had been abuzz with speculations about KRIP’s fate. Foster and Ravinia had rarely agreed about anything, especially local programming. His aunt had always dismissed his objections with a chuck of his cheek, a lilting laugh, an imperious flutter of fingers flashing with the oversized rings she favored. “Humor an old lady,” she’d said to those who challenged her unconventional ideas. “My way is more fun, and I can afford to indulge my foibles.” Then she’d be off, trailing a cloud of Shalimar, on her way to attend yoga class, to care for her bromeliads, or to jet to San Francisco for an AIDS benefit or Paris for the spring showings.

  Sunny doubted that the dour Kale Hoaglin would be content with Ravinia’s broadcasting philosophies either. She suspected that the veteran hard-line newsman would instigate some massive changes.

  Hulon Eubanks cleared his throat. Foster introduced him to Kale, clapping him on the back and saying, “Hulon here has been filling in as news director and anchorman since we lost our last one a couple of months ago.”

  “And I need to speak with you about my position, Foster. You, too, Mr. Hoaglin.”

  “Later, Hulon, later,” Foster said, brushing him aside and steering Kale toward Estella Jones’s desk. “I’d like for you to meet our sportscaster.”

  When the beautiful coffee-skinned woman stood, Sunny stifled a giggle at Kale’s gaping expression. Estella was very tall, towering two inches over Kale with her heels on, and very, very pregnant.

  Before she laughed out loud, Sunny fled to the lounge to make the repairs needed for the evening telecast. She changed into a spare outfit she kept at the station, tended the damage to her hair, and was applying the heavier cosmetics needed on camera when Estella Jones strolled in.

  “Well, roomie,” Estella said, easing her cumbersome body into the next chair at the long makeup mirror, “what do you think of our new boss?”

  Sunny shrugged and continued applying her lipstick.

  The tall woman, who was Sunny’s best friend and housemate, laughed and reached for a powder puff. “For a moment there, I thought I was watching the reunion of soul mates.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you and Kale Hoaglin. I’m talking about enough sparks to kindle a bonfire. Honey, I’m talking about enough signals to alert the entire Pacific fleet.”

  “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. I think Ed’s been gone too long.” Lieutenant Edward Jones, Estella’s husband and a navy pilot, was on a six-month tour of duty on an aircraft carrier.

  Estella stroked her rounded belly. “It has been a long time, but I’ve seen that look in Ed’s eyes too many times not to recognize it.”

  “You’re imagining things. Why, the man was furious with me. That’s what you saw. I thought he was going to eat me alive.”

  A slow grin spread over Estella’s face. “Uh-huh.”

  * * *

  Kale sat in Foster’s plush office watching the six o’clock news with his cousin. As Hulon droned on about one of the seemingly endless pieces of fluff that was supposed to pass for local news, Kale rubbed his eyes and yawned. “I knew I was tired,” he said, “but this crap would put anybody to sleep.”

  Foster nodded. “Now you know why KRIP is in the cellar of local ratings. We can’t even sell advertising to the Boy Scouts. When Aunt Ravinia came up with this absurd idea, I tried to tell her that nobody wanted to hear only good news. It’s dull. The public likes blood and sensationalism, murder and mayhem, conflict and chaos. Perhaps it’s a sad indictment of human nature, but it’s true.”<
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  Kale rubbed his forehead, thinking that Foster’s ideas seemed to be as extreme as Ravinia’s. “At least people deserve to be informed. News can’t be a series of human-interest stories. And Eubanks can’t even make those sound interesting. The man looks as if he’s in pain.” He glanced back at the set where Estella was extolling the charitable deeds of a National League pitcher. Kale groaned. “Unbelievable. Where did Ravinia dig this one up? Big Bird would have more credibility. And why in the hell isn’t she reporting the baseball scores?”

  “I think Ravinia met Estella in yoga class. Actually her credentials aren’t bad, but when I complained about this segment, our dear auntie said that reporting sports scores condoned competition. ‘Imagine how the poor losers feel, darling,’ were her words, as I recall.”

  Kale groaned again.

  “Now do you understand why I pleaded with you to come? Half of KRIP is yours, and I can’t get this mess straightened out by myself,” Foster said.

  “The place is a zoo. The easiest thing to do would be to fire everybody and start from scratch.”

  “Can’t. What you see is what we’ve got to work with. Ravinia renegotiated everybody’s contract two months ago—with raises, I might add. Except for Sunny.” Foster nodded toward the screen.

  “Ah, our daring Little Miss Sunshine. Is she holding out for pitons and a grappling hook?”

  “Not exactly.” Foster squirmed in his chair.

  Kale watched as Sunny recounted the day’s weather, using the latest in colorful graphics. In her well-modulated voice, she reported the high and low temperatures. Given her perky, cheerleader looks, he’d been expecting a cutesy, saccharine performance, but he was surprised. She seemed knowledgeable and professional as she described upper-level troughs and low-pressure systems. In fact, she had a phenomenal TV presence.