Cheri on Top Read Free Page A

richer.”
    J.J. took his gaze away from Wim and looked at Turner thoughtfully. “Haven’t you ever found it ironic?” he asked his friend.
    Turner shrugged. “You mean how Tanyalee’s engaged to Wim?”
    J.J. laughed. “Hell, no! That’s not irony, man—that’s a godsend! I’m talking about the fact that Wim comes in here and drains Paw Paw Lake to build a luxury waterfront retirement community. I know what he told the planning commission about his man-made jetties and maximizing lakefront homesites and all that crap, but I still don’t get it. Is our society so removed from nature that we have to re-engineer a mountain lake to make it beautiful?”
    Turner wasn’t listening. His eyes had gone huge and now focused directly over J.J.’s right shoulder.
    Though he wanted to turn around, something told J.J. to wait. A tingling began way down in his core. It warned him to stay sharp.
    “Are the Feds here?” he whispered to Turner, not wanting to turn around and gawk.
    Turner shook his head slowly. “It’s worse than the FBI, man. It’s CNN.”
    J.J. was about to spin around in disbelief when he realized what Turner was saying. For them, CNN wasn’t just a moniker for a news network. It was their shorthand for Cherise Nancy Newberry, in all her glory.
    She was two days late.
    J.J. heard a car door slam behind him. He smiled, sliding his notebook into his rear pocket. “She coming this way?”
    Turner nodded. “Ooh, yeah.”
    “How’s she look?”
    Turner shrugged. “Like she’s been living off bib lettuce and Evian water, but other than that, everything seems to be in working order.”
    J.J. took a moment to center himself. He pasted a scowl on his face. Their first encounter had to be convincing if this was going to work. It was unfortunate Cheri had shown up in the middle of the biggest news story to hit Bigler in forty-seven years but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about that now.
    “Stay cool, Halliday,” J.J. said through gritted teeth.
    “Scout’s honor.”
    J.J. turned. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees at the impact. He hadn’t laid eyes on her in over five years. He had to make sure she wouldn’t see the relief in him, the hunger. He checked her out from tip to toe at lightning speed. Her dark, lustrous red hair was cut in some kind of trendy layered style and it skimmed above her shoulders. She wore a skirt that was real short, which was real thoughtful of her. Right then, J.J. decided that he may have been a lot of places and met a lot of women since he’d graduated from high school twelve years before, but it still held true: Cheri Newberry had the best set of female legs on the planet.
    Unfortunately, her sexy four-inch heels were turning out to be a spectacularly bad choice for a visit to a drained lakebed, and J.J. watched her wobble and cuss under her breath as she stepped over deep ruts in the earth.
    Except for the methodic click-click of the winch, everything had gone silent. The recovery crew had stopped talking and yelling. Every set of male eyes was on Cheri. And why not? Cheri Newberry stood out like a Thoroughbred in a field of pack mules.
    Focus, he told himself. Don’t smile. Don’t laugh. And for God’s sake, don’t stare at her legs.
    Cheri wobbled over to the two men. She used an index finger to nudge the big, dark sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. “Hello,” she said, her hands nervously smoothing out the contours of her skirt. “I just drove into town. I decided to pull off the road when I saw all the commotion. What’s going on?”
    J.J. said nothing. He simply scowled at her. It struck him as amusing that she’d chosen that getup for her big entrance. It was still about image management for her, he supposed. His guess was that she’d driven most of the way in shorts and flip-flops, then hit the Tip-Top truck stop to change her outfit and freshen her lipstick before she rolled into town.
    He had to give the girl an A for