What's Love Got To Do With It?: A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy! Read online

  WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT

  Anna Premoli

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.ariafiction.com

  About What’s Love Got To Do With It?

  Kayla David is a high-flying journalist in New York City, spending all her time drinking martinis and writing about fashion trends. She is perfectly happy with her life, and she certainly has no time for falling in love.

  That is, until, her boss decides to send her on a secret mission back to her hometown of Arkansas: she is tasked with exposing the truth about the fracking industry and to use her reputation as a lifestyle columnist as a disguise. She is horrified at the thought of returning to this boring country town, but up for the challenge.

  Yet, she didn’t plan on having to deal with Grayson Moir, the sexy but aloof mayor of Heber Spring. As Kayla settles into life there she soon realises that it might be a bit more difficult than she thought to keep her real mission a secret. And what’s more, she finds it increasingly difficult to keep her heart under control too…

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About What’s Love Got To Do With It?

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About Anna Premoli

  Also by Anna Premoli

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  To my grandma Ankica, one of the wittiest and most determined women I’ve ever met.

  Prologue

  Still half asleep, I stretch languidly while I reach out to take the coffee my boss is holding out to me. He’s obviously trying to bribe me…

  Unfortunately, the cup is so hot that I almost drop it as soon as my fingers make contact. Despite its inviting aroma, I decide to put it on the desk and avoid burning my stomach with it for the moment – I do desperately need a caffeine shot, but I do not need third-degree burns.

  I’ve never understood the reason why office vending machines produce beverages at temperatures hot enough to trigger nuclear fusion. Could it be that it’s a way of quietly bumping off incautious employees and saving the bosses a bit of money?

  “So, did you have an interesting night?” asks my boss with a chuckle.

  The dark circles under my puffy eyes show just how committed I am to my job. I am a journalist, and I am responsible for writing about the night life of New York City. And needless to say, I am as meticulous about my job as is humanly possible.

  “Well, you know what they say,” I reply with a wink. “Friday night is the new Saturday night.”

  He raises an eyebrow and shakes his head. “What a load of bull! When I was young, Friday night was just a night like all the others. Those were the days! We didn’t need Fridays to always be epic. But I guess that only goes to show that I’m old,” he mutters quietly. “‘I’m not really up to date with the new trends in night life…”

  “It was getting married that did for you,” I tease him, “I know you used to be the king of New York’s night life back when you were a young buck.”

  “Yeah, right… And which marriage are you referring to, exactly?” he says, playing along. “The first or the second?”

  It takes a hell of a lot of self-confidence to be able to joke about your own life that way. Not many people would be willing to give that much about themselves away, and that’s why I respect Roger so much more than I ever actually tell him. At the end of the day he’s still my boss, though, so it’s wise not to pay him too many compliments.

  “The second, of course,” I say with conviction. “It made you too happy, and happy people are really annoying.”

  “What a dumb thing to say,” he scolds me with a chuckle.

  “Ok, maybe I meant more boring than annoying… Really boring!” I insist in the tone of someone who knows what they’re talking about. “Come on, don’t you try and deny it!”

  Roger looks at me with a benevolent smile. “Aren’t you a little too cynical for a thirty-two year old woman who’s never been married? I mean, you need to get a good two or three divorces under your belt before you’re eligible to join the holy matrimony haters club, you know.”

  “Hah, ‘holy’! That’s a good one, boss.”

  “What can I say, I’m a funny guy,” he agrees. “What I said before is still true, though: you’re too cynical, and it’s not even lunch time yet! Hell, Kayla, what am I supposed to do with you?”

  I shrug and don’t bother replying. It’s half past eight in the morning and I wasn’t even supposed to be working this Saturday, so I’m not really in the ideal mood to try and engage in this kind of existential conversation. I feel like I’ve already been nice enough just showing up in the damn newsroom after I got his message.

  The truth is that I like Roger, even though everything is always terribly urgent for him – and he likes me too, even if I, unlike him, have never met something that was so urgent it couldn’t wait. We are absolutely chalk and cheese, but luckily we work well together.

  “Ah, forget about it,” he says, giving up. “Let’s get down to the important stuff instead. Are you still determined not to write anything about the new district attorney?” He has the resigned expression of someone who is obliged to ask the same old question yet again but has no expectation of receiving a different answer. And rightly so.

  “I sure am. You know that Amalia’s my best friend, I could never write articles about her and her partner.”

  He gives a resigned sigh. “Okay, sure, I get it, but it would have been a great opportunity for you to start writing about new things and moving your career forward. Pretty soon, you’re going to be too old to party all night and write about where to get the best cocktails in Manhattan,” he points out, trying to put it as gently as possible.

  “Hey, whatever you might think, I can assure you that my readers are way more interested in drinks and parties than they are in Middle Eastern affairs,” I reply. And unfortunately, we both know I’m right.

  “Well, that ought to tell you something about the world we’re living in…” he replies, sounding disheartened.

  “A journalist isn’t supposed to judge. A journalist’s duty is to simply tell the truth and allow the readers to make up their own minds. It was you who taught me that,” I remind him.

  He shakes his head again. “You really are a piece of work…”

  I hope that he means it in an affectionate way, but I’m not 100 per cent sure he does…

  “So anyway, since you can’t write about the city’s politicians, what would you say to going on an assignment?” he asks.

  My ears perk up and I start listening with more attention. Roger has never sent me anywhere before, even though I’ve asked him often enough. The furthest I’ve been was a theatre out in Queens, the Westchester, and I don’t really think that qualifies as an assignment.

  “I would certainly say that it’s a possibility…” I reply in a cautious voice. My expression, though, must reveal all my enthusiasm, even if I am doing
my damnedest to hide it. Now he knows that he’s got me where he wants me.

  “Great – so you’re leaving—”

  “Hold on a minute: you haven’t told me anything about the job yet. I’m not saying yes until I’m sure that you’re not just trying to get rid of me by sending me thousands of miles away to investigate the slave trade or something. So please tell me what this is about first.” I’m very proud of myself for actually managing to fake a bit of reluctance.

  He stares at me. “The slave trade? Where the hell do you get these weird ideas? Even if I was planning to commission something about stuff like that, do you think I’d assign the job to someone who’s only ever reviewed bars and clubs?” he says, then laughs out loud for a very long time.

  I glare at him.

  “Hey, don’t put me down! Not many other journalists have the experience I’ve accumulated in my years in the field,” I reply proudly.

  “Okay, but don’t you want to start accumulating some experience in other fields? Maybe get some bigger thrills than just hitting on guys in bars?”

  He’s making fun of me, the asshole. I give him an offended look.

  “Of course I want to change – but I don’t want to give up men. I like that part of my life.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear: the job is yours!” he exclaims cheerfully. I can’t believe I’ve fallen into another of his traps… I stare at him with a discouraged expression.

  “So where are you sending me, then?”

  “To Arkansas,” he says, as if it was perfectly normal.

  I open my eyes wide in panic. “No! Not to Arkansas, please!” I’m all set to get down on my knees and beg.

  My sadist of a boss is actually looking amused by my desperate reaction. “What the hell are you getting so worked up about going to Arkansas for? It’s hardly the Far West! And isn’t it where you were born anyway?” he asks as he scratches his chin.

  “That’s the point: I know the place well enough and I hate the countryside! Can you imagine me living out in the boondocks? I need to see the crowds in the street and smell the awful stink of the underground: it’s reassuring!” I say. Hey, as far as I’m concerned, everybody is entitled to their own weirdness.

  “Girl, you are out of your mind. Well I think that spending a few months in the countryside can only be good for your health…”

  “Months? Did you say ‘months’?”

  My voice is starting to get a little loud, but Roger doesn’t seem to have noticed.

  “I have a fantastic project in mind, and you’re going to love it too,” he explains. “But to avoid raising suspicion, I need someone local to take care of it.”

  “I am not ‘local’! My mother and I got the hell away from there when I was only five!” I say imploringly, trying to get him to change his mind.

  “Don’t you have an aunt who still lives there?” he asks innocently.

  Never, and I really do mean never, ever speak to your boss about your family. Sooner or later, they will use all the information they’ve managed to gather against you.

  “She’s not really my aunt,” I reply in a quiet voice, “she’s my late grandmother’s sister.”

  “Look, Kayla, let me be blunt: I don’t care if she is or isn’t your aunt… She’s still a damn good excuse for you to spend a bit of time there. Where exactly does she live?” he asks, peering at me the way a predator looks at its prey.

  “In Heber Springs…” I mumble, hoping that he won’t be able to hear me. But my hopes are vain, because he seems to be able to hear me perfectly well. Scores at the moment: exceptional Hearing 1 – Kayla 0.

  “That’s perfect!” His face is so ecstatic that for a moment I’m scared he’s about to kiss me. I still don’t understand what the hell he’s so happy about, though.

  “I really don’t get why you’re suddenly so interested in a small town that nobody has ever heard of before,” I say with a disgusted expression.

  “Have you ever heard about shale gas and shale oil?” he asks me cryptically.

  The question takes me by surprise. I hadn’t really been expecting him to come out with something like that. “Err, kind of, I guess. Like everyone else… I mean, I know what it is, in theory. Let’s say I have a very superficial knowledge of the matter. I guess it’s when you drill a hole in the ground and put various substances in there until you provoke a hydraulic fracture that liberates some gas or oil or something? That’s all I know. I’ve never had the chance to study the subject in depth, as I’m sure you can imagine.” And who cares about it anyway?

  “That’s because you spend all your time drinking Cosmopolitans instead of getting informed about the real problems of the country,” he scolds me in a teasing voice. I feel like a lazy student being criticised in front of the whole class, and it’s working – I’m actually starting to feel guilty. But luckily, I’m only capable of feeling guilt for a couple of seconds at a time.

  “Look, I don’t know anything about nuclear fusion or fission either and I don’t think that’s a problem for anyone, to be honest. What am I anyway, an environmental engineer? I don’t think so. My job is to take care of our newspaper’s New York social life column,” I remind us both.

  “And on paper that’s what you’ll continue to do, except that you’ll be doing it from Heber Springs. You current assignment will be your cover.”

  I’m trying very hard to follow him, but I still don’t know where he’s going with all this. “There is no social life in Heber Springs, and so there’ll be nothing for me to talk about. The place is just straight up dead! There’s nothing there, except for the few hundred people who haven’t run away from it yet.”

  “Few thousand, to be precise,” Roger corrects me while checking the town on the Internet.

  “That’s only if you count the whole county. In any case, it doesn’t change the fact that more people live in my block than in miles and miles of that deserted wilderness of Arkansas.” I hope he’s getting the message: I need to be surrounded by people at all times. I love crowds!

  Roger’s face, though, tells me that he’s not actually inclined to sympathise with my personal necessities. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  “It’s going to be a great column: A City Girl in the Country. Our female readers will love it,” he says, completely ignoring me.

  “But I am going to hate it!” I reply stubbornly. “Don’t you think it’s important for me to like my assignments?”

  He doesn’t even bother to answer.

  “And when you’re not busy with your cover column, you’ll be investigating the shale gas thing.”

  “In Arkansas?” I ask doubtfully. The last time I was there – which was a fair few years ago – the local economy was mainly based on agriculture, farming and not much else. I know that there were some bauxite caves or something like that, but I never really looked into it. I just wasn’t interested, and I bet nobody else would be either.

  “You need to catch up, Kayla. In Fayetteville, Arkansas, there is one of the biggest shale gas sites in the whole United States. And as soon as you start to look into it, you’ll realise how important shale gas is for the energy independence that the US is hoping to achieve. All our future energy plans are based on this new method of methane extraction, and it’s all on the basis of assumptions which have yet to be completely proven, in my opinion,” he says cautiously.

  His last words pique my curiosity. “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Let’s just say that some States, like Arkansas, are embracing fracking without hesitation while in other states the authorities are doing the exact opposite: they are banning it completely.”

  “Are they? Where?” I’ll admit that I’m no expert on all this fracking stuff, but if different states have adopted such radically different approaches, the journalist in me wants to know why. Luckily my curiosity didn’t completely die when I heard that I had to move to Arkansas.

  “For example in Los Angeles, in some parts of New Mexico and in a lot
of cities in Colorado. Local authorities are not convinced that injecting a mysterious mixture of water and chemicals into the ground is a good idea. And what’s more, the web is full of studies into the connection between the horizontal perforations, which are necessary for obtaining shale gas and oil, and earthquakes. Nobody is really talking much about all this in the US, but people are studying and debating it abroad. It’s a delicate subject: they promised us we would become energy independent, but they didn’t explain to us at what cost. One of the most immediate consequences, for example, is that a ton of aquifers across the country have been polluted.”

  I look at him in disbelief. “So how come the local residents aren’t raising hell, then?”

  “Easy: they get huge paydays for letting their land be used.”

  Okay, I get it. The same old story. It’s amazing how some things never change.

  “Ok, but if that means that they risk having an earthquake and having their water polluted…” I say. If I were in their place, it wouldn’t be easy to convince me to let them do that to my land. I mean, I don’t actually own any land, but still. My only precious possessions are my shoes. Which are quite precious; I certainly wouldn’t put them at risk for the sake of some dumb shale gas.

  “The thing is that they only usually find out about these problems after the operations have been concluded. As I said, the press hasn’t spoken much about all this because in 2000, shale gas amounted to barely 2 per cent of national natural gas production in the United States. Whereas now, it constitutes over 40 per cent. The industry has been growing exponentially while the press has been too busy with more urgent matters: 9/11, al-Qaeda, Syria… you name it. Whatever the reasons for the lack of interest, though, American industries can now benefit from a substantial competitive advantage, which is that on average they pay three times less for their gas than their competitors in the rest of the world, thanks to this sudden abundance. It’s a very efficient way to have the upper hand when you’re negotiating with Arab countries, Latin American countries and even with Russia, which hasn’t exactly been friendly over the last few years… When you produce as much gas as we do, whether oil is involved in the process or not, you’re in the position of deciding its price at an international level, and that way, you can also control the exchange rates and trade balances of countries which still rely on traditional production methods.”