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so slick she had to concentrate to keep her balance. Mercy, it was cold this morning! She saw no sign of life at the Lark office, so she bent and carefully laid the Wednesday edition of her Sentinel against Cole Sanders’s door.
    Back in her own office, she turned her backside to the potbellied stove in the corner and rubbed her frozen hands together.
    â€œCold out, huh, Jess?”
    â€œYou know it is, Eli. The temperature outside is below freezing.”
    â€œGonna be a lot hotter when Sanders wakes up and reads yer editorial.”
    She ducked her head to hide her smile. “Cole Sanders is a grown man, Eli. Sticks and stones and so on.”
    â€œYep, reckon so. Names ain’t never hurt you, huh?”
    Jess sobered instantly. Names had hurt her. When she was young and just starting out to help her papa and Miles on the newspaper, her schoolmates had teased her mercilessly about her ambition to be a journalist. “What d’ya wanna do that for? Too ugly to get a husband? Boys don’t like brainy girls, smarty-pants!”
    And it was names in an editorial her brother had printed that had cost him his life; that had hurt even worse. After Papa died, she and her older brother had moved out West and Miles had taken her under his wing.
    She had been just a young girl, but he had begun teaching her about operating a newspaper, things her father had never let her do such as cleaning the ink off the rollers and setting type. Miles had also let her try her hand at writing stories, and he instructed her in the basics of journalism—being accurate and objective.
    Then Miles had been killed, and now she was struggling to carry on the newspaper he had established in Smoke River.
    Jess didn’t really think Cole Sanders would shoot her for writing an inflammatory editorial. But she would wager he might want to. She bit the inside of her cheek. This morning she couldn’t help wondering what the no-nonsense editor of the Lake County Lark would do about the editorial she’d published.
    She kept one eye on the front windows of the Lark office across the street and set about planning her Saturday issue. She’d write a feature story about the new choir Ellie Johnson would be directing, and another article on the children’s rhythm band the music school director, Winifred Dougherty, was starting, together with the director’s plea for a violin teacher. Maybe she’d add an interview with the sheriff’s wife, Maddie Silver; what it was like being the mother of twin boys while also a Pinkerton agent?
    Across the street the front door of the Lark office banged open and Jess caught her breath. Then just as suddenly it slammed shut. Cole had picked up her newspaper and retreated inside. She waited, her heart pounding.
    Eli held up the flask of “medicinal” whiskey he kept under the counter. “Want a snort?”
    â€œCertainly not.” She tried not to watch the front door of the Lark office, and then suddenly it flew open again. She gasped and held her hand out to Eli. “Well, maybe just a sip.”
    Cole Sanders started across the street toward her, his head down, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, and a copy of her newspaper stuffed under his arm. Jess uncorked Eli’s whiskey bottle and glugged down a double swallow.
    Cole marched straight for her office, his face stern, his boots pounding the muddy street. Jess bit her lip, stiffened her spine and laid her hand on the doorknob. She would do her best to smile and graciously welcome him inside.
    But she glimpsed his brown sheepskin jacket moving past her front window and on down the boardwalk.
    The air in her lungs whooshed out. What on earth? Didn’t he want to yell at her about her editorial? She’d used the word insidious more than once, and nasty at least twice. And her new favorite word, larcenous ; she’d used that one three times. She really relished larcenous. She’d even