Hart 2 Heart

By Valissa Enever

When donut loving journalist Crystal Hart gets a whiff of a stalker in her home town she is compelled to follow her nose.

Getting a good story is hard to come by in a small town, but her job is made even harder due to a short-tempered, volatile boss who is insistent on making her working day her worst nightmare.

Trying to get the inside scoop on a stalker seems a piece of cake compared to her love life, where she cannot seem to commit to anything deep with her long suffering, on- again, off -again boyfriend.

Has she bitten off more than she can chew once again by committing to him? Her loyalty is tested when the new owner of Star Newspaper suddenly appears and just happens to be rich, handsome and interested in her.

Her desire to get the scoop has landed herself and one of her girlfriends in more trouble than Crystal can cope with.

Can she keep her emotions in check? Can she remain loyal? Does she get her story? Or does she compromise her own life and her friend’s life for the story?......

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valissa Enever
• Release date: Dec 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9780987247506

Valissa Enever

When I was little, I was a brownie, as in girl guides and I wrote a script making a few of my fellow members act it out, then there was the time I wrote a book on my mother's old typewriter stapled it together and put it in my bookshelf stating that I was an author. In grade five I wrote three stories and asked my teacher to put a cover on it so that it looked real. I had a gift of the gab telling stories, I told everyone that the stories were true, isn't the art in making it seem real, and of course 98 percent of the story was expanded upon the truth. My teacher once told my mother that I had a VERY GOOD imagination. Thank you. I still tell stories, only now I put them to paper for you to read. In the year 2000 I married my husband who is a great source of strength for me he doesn't realise how much his support means, but he is there for me to bounce ideas off of, drive me places and allows me to drive him nuts, sometimes. Together we have two beautiful boys Daniel and Mychal. The family doesn't stop at two boys we also house three dogs, one blue tongue lizard (bluey) and a frog (kermit).. When I'm not writing or doing the mum thing I love to read, cook and garden, when time and weather permit I love to travel and go camping. In the future I would like to concentrate on photography a bit more as I love taking photos and love to try and capture the moment. But in the meantime I sit and write and create.

Book preview

Hart 2 Heart

A Dare Publishing ebook

Smashwords edition December 2011

First published as a paperback in Australia in 2007

Copyright © 2011 Valissa Enever

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Artastic Images

http://www.valissaenever.com.au

*************

CHAPTER 1

My name is Crystal Hart. I’m 29 years old and I’m single. These facts are kind of hard to forget since my Mum keeps reminding me.

Crystal you’re not getting any younger you know. The eligible men out there are dwindling by the minute, they won’t wait for you.

Thanks for the reminder Mum.

I work as a journalist for the local newspaper. I keep on leaving but for some bizarre reason I keep coming back.

My boss Steve is an arrogant arsehole and everyone who works at Star Newspaper despises him. He’s loud, rude, chauvinistic, nasty and smelly. To put it simply. I don’t like him.

I try to stay out of his way as much as possible, mostly because he is always yelling at me and telling me what a lousy journalist I am.

Thanks for the morale boost.

I have four best friends and every Friday night the girls and I get together for a girls night in. Since I have my own place and am for the most part single, it is usually at my place.

Usually we drink a lot of alcohol and feast on chocolate, cheese and takeaway while we talk girly talk, pluck our eyebrows, paint our nails or watch chic flics. We don’t do anything special really, just the girls getting together.

While I am currently single I have for the past twelve years been seeing the same guy on and off. Of course we are presently in the off position. His name is Mike Green and anytime it gets anywhere near being serious I up and leave.

I pack a whole lot of things in my soft-top jeep and drive; I never know where I am going I just drive. I just can’t seem to stick to my relationship with Mike.

Then when I think I have Mike out of my system and I get homesick I head on back to Numurkah, my hometown, resume my position at the local newspaper and carry on as if nothing ever happened. This drives everyone around me bananas. Especially Mike.

Well, I can’t lie here in bed forever, its eight in the morning and its Monday.

Urghh!! Monday’s.

All week I dread Mondays! I have to go into the office and face Mr Steve arsehole Biggsly; plus we have our weekly meeting on Mondays just so he can tell me what a crappy journalist I am.

I’m supposed to email my articles to him Sunday evening, but I don’t and won’t. My only reason – it irritates the hell out of him. I take them in on Monday and have fun watching him rant and rave. For the most part I get caught up in his ranting and raving and start ranting and raving back at him.

I suppose my life in the office would be a little easier if I did what Steve wanted, but it really is quite fun to watch him get all worked up. It’s kind of like watching a cherry tomato about to burst; you’re not quite sure when it’s going to explode.

************************************************

I turned the corner and approached the building of Star Newspaper that had been rendered and painted grey with black trimming when Alex Harvey bought the newspaper six months ago.

Pulling up in front of the building I looked up to the second story and tried to remember how it used to look and remembered how excited we all were to hear that we had a new owner. We thought big changes were going to happen, we were hoping that the investor would sack Biggsly but the only changes that happened were cosmetic. There was a new façade for the building, new reception area, new desks, chairs, computers and a swanky new boardroom table that seats 12. It’s huge.

So here we are, still stuck with Steve.

No-one knows a lot about this Harvey guy, only that he is an investor from Melbourne and bought the newspaper for investment purposes.

That’s it! That’s all we have been told, that, and the fact that our jobs are safe, at least for the time being.

Well I don’t think this investor dude looked at the finer details on our newspaper, because if he did it would have occurred to him that the newspaper was not doing too good, in fact the last two years we have been operating at a loss. I don’t think we’ve even come close to breaking even, so, in my opinion, this Alex dude has made one bad investment.

Dad says that sometimes investors do that sort of thing; they will buy a business that’s not going so good just so that they can have a negative investment for their portfolio for some taxation purpose. Sounds fruit loopy to me.

So the future of Star Leader Newspaper remains on shaky ground.

*************

I walked through the front door and looked at the reception desk where Jenny our receptionist was sitting.

Jenny’s fresh out of school, she’s only just turned 18 and on her 18th birthday, the girls and I took her on a pub crawl.

She doesn’t handle her drink very well and she doesn’t remember a lot.

Maybe it’s a good thing that she doesn’t remember dancing on the bar - Coyote Ugly style.

Hey girlfriend how ya doin? Did you have a good weekend? I enquired.

Great! I have a new boyfriend, his name is Adrian and he’s a plumber just like your Dad. He says he knows you?

Adrian Curtis?

Yeah, he’s so dreamy.

I winced, hoping she didn’t notice. Sure I know him I said playing it down. And so do most of the other girls in Numurkah I thought, but I was not about to spoil her day, she’d soon find out what a dipshit he is. I didn’t want to pull her off that cloud she’s floating on.

I was looking at the stairs, dreading what was at the top. Any messages? I asked.

Jenny rolled her eyes. I always have messages as I only come in once a week; I handle all the letters to the editor and the suggestion box drop-offs and of course any phone messages I may have.

The offices are on the second floor above the printers, which are located just behind the reception area where Jenny greets all who come in. The main clientele that walk through are people who want to place a classified or require general printing to be done.

I took the stairs two at a time, eager to get all this shit over and done with and hopefully be out of there before lunchtime. Fingers crossed.

I got to the top of the landing and looked around to see if Biggsly had seen me arrive. Maybe I can get a coffee before he starts yelling at me. Straight ahead are partitioned little glass cubicles for everyone to work in.

To the right are three closed offices, one which houses Steve Biggsly. Then there was Alex Harvey’s office. His office was originally filled with a heap of broken computers which had to have been at least ten years old, old printer cartridges, cardboard boxes that almost reached the roof, filing cabinets filled with old files, and boxes of old stationery stuff that no-one wanted.

. We all thought that the new owner would be visiting his newly acquired asset, but in the six months that Alex Harvey has been the owner, he hadn’t stepped one foot into the office. Come to think of it he has probably never even visited the town.

The other office is currently housing filing cabinets and all the old chairs and desks that we had immediately discarded after we got the new ones. Who wouldn’t?

We tried to get the company who delivered the new ones to take them back with them. They took one look at what we were offering, looked at us and laughed.

Then of course there is the boardroom, which is immediately to the right of the top of the stair case. It has a huge boardroom table in it, which seems a bit over the top here, but it arrived anyway.

It was a circus the day the delivery guys brought it in. That was when we definitely knew that Alex Harvey had not stepped one foot in here, because he would have gotten one of those self-assembly ones from Ikea or Officeworks, not some huge monstrosity that took five hours for six guys to get in and hike it up a flight of stairs. I was here for that, and it was funnier than an Abbott and Costello movie.

CRYSTAL! Steve boomed Get your ass in here now!

What the fuck now! Every time I come in here he hollers at me like I’m some imbecile. Ok, so I was supposed to email my articles Sunday night but there was no need to have kittens over it.

I walked though his door and the aroma of alcohol hit me like a heat wave hitting you when you step out of a nice air-conditioned shopping centre. Obviously he’d had a few last night.

I put my bag down Can I get a coffee first? I asked and braced myself for the expected no.

NO! Sit down. Steve bellowed, pointing to the chair.

Fuck this! I turned and walked off, shouting over my shoulder that I wouldn’t be yelled at without first having a cup of coffee. He was up and off traipsing after me like the Giant in Jack and the beanstalk.

FEE FI FO FUM that’s what he reminded me of, big and ugly, smelly and loud. Actually, I don’t know if the Giant was smelly but I would assume he would be.

Crystal if you want to keep your job, I suggest you get your ass back into my office this very instant. Steve yelled as he waddled after me.

I looked over my shoulder at him. He looked like he was about to pop, his face was all red, even the top of his head where he was bald was red; shit I haven’t been able to do that to him in a really long time.

Actually, when was the last time I got him so irate?

Yeah! That’s right! It was when I went to fill his car up with petrol for his golfing trip interstate and the heel of my three inch stiletto got caught in the rubber mat under the accelerator. I ploughed straight through the service station just missing the attendant. I shit bricks that day, I thought he was going to haul my ass off to jail or shoot me. I was actually hoping he’d fire me. The girls and I still laugh about that to this very day.

I grabbed my cup from the hook above the sink that had my name scrawled on it in black texta. And a very good morning to you to Steve, I see you need to pop a blood pressure pill. I said very cool.

If I didn’t have to deal with you as an idiot journalist I wouldn’t need a blood pressure pill. He seethed Urghh! Get your fucken coffee and get into my office NOW! and he stormed off.

I gave him the Hitler salute followed by the one finger salute. I tried to make the coffee as slow as possible, two reasons for that, - one was to irritate the hell out of Steve and the other was to irritate him even more.

After at least five minutes of reading the magazine in the kitchen and making another coffee, I finally ambled into Steve’s office with coffee in hand. Hmmm a donut would be really good with this coffee.

Got any Donuts here? I asked, looking around

Steve glared at me, he was drumming his podgy fingers on the desk, and two of them were stained yellow from where he smoked his cigar.

Today he was wearing the usual powder blue slacks that looked like they come from the seventies, and a white shirt that was stained under the arms and around the collar. He already had wet circles under his arm and it wasn’t even hot, - here we were in autumn and he’s sweating like a pig, maybe because he is a pig.

I wonder if he grunts when he’s eating, or having sex.

Eeww!!!

I don’t want to think about it. No! No! No Visual.

Too late.

I got a visual. Fuck it! That’s just great! Now I’m going to have that rolling around in my thoughts throughout the rest of the day. I think I’m going to be sick.

I grabbed my folder and camera out of my shoulder bag and put them on his desk.

I love my shoulder bag; it’s about eight years old now and is a cross between a briefcase, handbag and nappy bag. I bought it at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne when I was doing a stint of journalism at the Herald Sun.

In the middle of the bag it has a zipped sturdy section where you can store documents without them being squished or crumpled. On one half of the bag is an empty space where I dump tissues, loose change, digital camera, my purse, keys, shopping dockets, feminine products (you know what I mean, you don’t want to get caught out), condoms (same reason) lions mints, juicy fruit, dog biscuits and a Swiss army knife. The other side is the nappy bag side, it has more compartments than, well, a nappy bag.

This is where I try to be organized and have a place for everything, so it is there without me scratching around like a chook; money, chocolate, more condoms (just in case), business cards, mobile phone, tape recorder, spare tape, address book, pens, notepads, and a calculator. I’m not quite sure why I have a calculator, as I’ve never used it.

I really love my bag, it’s like a portable office and goes every where I go. A laptop to go with that would be really cool. I wonder if I should ask Steve for one this morning.

I looked at Steve with his bloodshot eyes, and his round melon head still glowing red.

Hmm! Probably not.

Taking a sip of my coffee I leaned back in the chair trying to act all cool

So what’s with Mr Shitty this morning. I asked.

Don’t push it you good for nothing sack of monkey shit

Steve hooked up my camera to the computer and downloaded my pictures.

Aren’t we in a good mood today? Did you happen to forget your happy pill? I laughed.

I just love to irritate: You see the reason he won’t fire me is because my Dad is the president of the Golf club where Steve here is a member of. One word from me and Steve will no longer be welcome of that precious club he loves so much. You’ve just gotta love it!

On the flip side as much as I irritate him, he also makes my job here a living hell, giving me all the crappy jobs that no one else wants, yelling abuse at me constantly and I am always left out of the loop whenever it comes to a good story. He always gives the good stories to his Son-in Law Paul. Paul only got the job here because he’s married to Steve’s daughter, he certainly doesn’t possess a journalistic bone in his body. Around here, we all call him shoelaces; because that’s all you see of Paul hanging out of Steve’s arse.

What sort of crap have you written this week? It would want to be better than that story of the lady who bakes all of her own dog biscuits. Steve scowled at me

"The readers loved that story and you know it, that’s why they leave those stories in the suggestion box! Anyway, YOU won’t give me anything decent to write." I said leaning over his desk.

At this point I was starting to boil and he seemed to be calming down. Shit it! I needed to get out of there; I hated this smelly, vile, disgusting pig of a man.

Steve started scrolling though the pictures and then he was pouring over the articles. Hmmm he was quiet, no remarks about how crappy my writing is, how his granddaughter could write better articles or a blind man with one leg could take better pictures.

He’s in a shitty mood and he’s not saying anything about my articles. Hey! Look at that the vein on the side of his fat balding head looked like it was about to explode.

He slammed the folder shut. Fuck! This is crap, this is the crappiest shit you have ever given me; but it’ll have to fuckin do. I want more of your crappy stories by Thursday. Only try to make them fucking better this time. Why in hell I had to employ a skirt as a journalist is beyond me, fuckin anti discrimination laws. You. he said pointing his stubby podgy finger at me. Should be home with a husband, you should be cleaning the house, cooking and waiting for him to come home with open loving arms. Not that I could imagine anyone ever wanting to marry you. Urghh! With a grunt he grabbed his handkerchief from somewhere down below his belly, I was hoping it was his pocket, and he mopped his sweaty brow, I want you here, Thursday nine am, no earlier, no later and with better fuckin stories than this shit you have tried to pass off as Journalism. He threw the folder in my direction.

Why? You’ve never wanted me here on Thursday before and what’s with the stories on Thursday? What do you want me to cover? Do you want photos with that? Do you want me to write what I write on Monday for Thursday or do you want something completely different? Do you still want me to follow up stories for Monday? How big do you want the articles? Are we doing this on Thursday instead of Monday or are we meeting Monday and Thursday? I asked as I put the folder in my bag

What’s with the fucken twenty questions? Just write the fucken stories and be here. Now GET OUT!

I grabbed my camera, coffee cup and left.

Wow! Not as bad as I thought. I went over to my desk and stared at his door. Something was going on, hmm Thursday.

I wonder if I could fake something, a broken leg perhaps? Nah! I would actually have to break it and he would still want me to come in, stairs and all.

So, are you still employed? asked Rodney.

Rodney was in the cubicle next to mine, he handled all the classifieds and the advertisements. He was a churchy and I hung it on him with all his hallelujah voodoo shit, but that was kind of like water of a ducks back with Rodney. I still hung it on him anyway, even if it was all for my own fun and enjoyment.

Rodney and his wife Cindy went to Church on weekends and also went to all the church camps, concerts and seminars about how to improve your life, someone else’s or how to make the world a more loving place.

I don’t mind what they do at their seminars as long as they don’t try to change my life. I like my life just the way it is. My sex life could improve a little. Ok, ok, it could improve a lot.

Yep, unfortunately I sighed He wants me to come in on Thursday. What’s happening Thursday? Do you know anything? I mean what’s the deal with that?

I leaned back in my chair still watching Steve’s door.

Rodney sat there tapping his pencil on his desk I don’t know anything this is the first I’ve heard about it. Maybe you’ve been late with your articles one too many times?

Shit Rodney you know there’s plenty of time, we don’t go to the printers till eleven tonight.

I hung around the office for half an hour or so and asked around. No-one knew of anything happening on Thursday and no-one knew why Steve wanted me in.

I went downstairs to the printers, at this time of the day it can be eerily quiet but today we had a couple of printing jobs.

I asked Carl and Josh if they knew anything.They didn’t know anything either, worth a shot I thought! I went to the front desk to ask Jenny, she didn’t know anything either.

It was still early it had just gone ten and I wondered where to go to next. I jumped in my black soft top jeep and decided to go home and grab Buster.