Sunny Says

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 CONTENT
S

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 closer, 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.