I thought today I would reshare the first chapter of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing for Fiction Friday since I don’t have anything new to share right now.

You can find the full book in paperback on Barnes and Noble and Amazon and in ebook on Amazon. It is also in Kindle Unlimited.

Chapter 1

“Hey, new girl. Grab a notebook and let’s go. We’ve got a one vehicle MVA on Darby Hill.”

Gladwynn Grant heard the voice but when she looked over her shoulder, her new boss had already disappeared back into the hallway.

MVA?

Wait. What did MVA stand for again?

Gladwynn racked her brain, trying to remember the meaning of the acronym.

She fumbled through her top desk drawer for a reporter’s notebook and pen, wincing when the edge of a paper sliced into the skin of her index finger.

The M wasn’t murder, was it?

Mayhem? No, that wasn’t it.

“New girl, come on.”

She looked up, but, once again, he had disappeared.

“Be right there.”

Messy? No. That wasn’t it.

She stood, slammed her knee off the metal drawer of the desk and bit her lower lip to keep from crying out. Outside the window to her right snow flurries swirled against a dark gray sky.

M was for motor.

The rest came to her as she reached for her winter coat on the back of her chair.

MVA. Motor Vehicle Accident. That was it.

“Chop. Chop.” The editor was standing in the hallway. “This will be good training for you.”

Right. Good training for the job she hadn’t even wanted but needed.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” her mother always said, a line she hated hearing growing up and detested even more as an adult.

Training for her new job in the middle of a snowstorm wasn’t exactly what she’d expected when she’d accepted the job as a reporter at the Brookstone Beacon. She thought she’d be shown the ropes slowly, over time – maybe handed a few lightweight stories to write first. Instead, it was clear she was to be thrown into the deep end right off the bat.

She quickly yanked on her red, 1940s-style coat, flipped up the hood, and shoved the pen and notebook in her large inside pocket. Snatching a pair of red leather gloves off the top of the bare desk, she rushed to follow editor Liam Finley down the dimly lit hallway toward the back door. A gust of frigid wind smacked her in the face as it opened.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she stepped out into the cold.

It took two of her steps to keep up with one of the steps of the man in front of her.

He looked over his shoulder as snow whipped around them. “We’ll take my car. Did you grab a camera?”

“Oh. No. I’ll —”

“Go back and grab one. I’ll meet you up front.”

Darting back through the snow she pulled the hood tight in front of her face, icy flakes still managing to bite at her skin. She was out of breath when she rushed back into the office, weaving through cubicles to retrieve the camera she’d been given the day before. She didn’t make eye contact with her new co-workers as she rushed back out the back door.

“Good luck, newbie,” a man’s voice called after her.

She was even more out of breath by the time she reached the parking lot, the camera clutched against her chest. Snow fell in sheets around her. Opening the passenger door of the tan BMW, she flopped into the front seat, breathing hard as melting snow dripped from her hair into her eyes. The windshield was a blur of white.

Liam shifted the car into gear and yanked it out onto the empty street. “I hope it’s a fatal. We need a centerpiece.”

Wiping snow from her face she looked at her new boss with wide eyes. His unshaven appearance made him look older than he probably was. Dark hair hung long across his forehead, just above dark brown eyes framed by dark, and remarkably long, eyelashes. Small lines creased the skin next to his eyes.

He glanced at her and lifted his shoulder. “What? We don’t have any art for page one.”

“Art?”

He shifted the car into a lower gear as snow piled up on the road. “A photo or graphic for the centerpiece.”

“Centerpiece?”

He sighed. “The main story on the front page. What are they teaching in colleges these days? I thought you’d have learned this stuff at the college newspaper.”

He seemed to have forgotten the part of her interview where she had admitted she hadn’t worked at a college newspaper for almost seven years.

Liam was driving at what she felt was an unsafe speed considering, one, the conditions, and two, the fact they were on their way to an accident caused by those same conditions. He reached over and tapped a couple buttons on the dashboard as the town whipped past them in a blur. Warmth rushed up under her and she let out a small gasp, then realized the seats were heated.

“You okay over there?”

Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Yep. Totally fine.”

Liam flicked the high beams on. Even though the sun hadn’t set yet, the snow was making it seem darker out. “When we get there, you take the photos and I’ll do the talking. Watch what I do so you’ll know what to do next time.”

She nodded.

Next time.

On her own.

That should be interesting.

She didn’t know what she’d been thinking of taking this job. It was nothing like she’d expected.

She’d applied for it after the college had laid her off from her job as a research librarian at the library. She’d needed the money to pay off her college loans, which she was still paying off at the age of 27.

Well, the loans and the cute red convertible she’d bought when she thought the library job was going to be long term.

The ad on the job site had caught her eye, not really because of the job itself, but because of where it was located.

Brookstone, Pennsylvania – where her grandmother lived alone in a massive Victorian house. Two hundred miles away from where she’d grown up with her parents and, more importantly, 200 miles away from Bennett Steele.

“You’re a quiet one, Grant.” Liam’s voice broke through her thoughts. “What’d you do before you came here again?”

Clearly, he had not read her resume at all. She had a feeling all he’d wanted was a warm body to fill the vacancy.

She rubbed her gloved hands together and blew into them. “Library assistant for Brock College. They laid me off a couple of months ago.”

“From librarian to a reporter. This must be cultural shock to you.”

She glanced at him then back at the steadily growing whiter road in front of them. “Yeah, a little. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”

She doubted her own words.

In the last week, every idea she’d had of what a reporter actually did had been shattered beyond recognition. Sure, she knew she’d be expected to attend municipal meetings and community gatherings and write a story about them. Now, though, she knew they also expected her to take the photographs, proofread her co-workers’ stories, and sometimes answer the phones at the front desk. Small town newspapers were nothing like the larger ones portrayed in movies and books.

She hadn’t interacted much with Liam yet, other than her brief interview and a brief staff meeting a couple of days ago. She’d already pegged him as someone who lived mainly for his job and wasn’t afraid to push the envelope when it came to succeeding at it, though.

Flashing red and blue lights cut through the fog and snow up ahead. Emergency vehicles were parked in the middle of the road and off to the side, near the guardrails.

Liam smoothly pulled his car behind a black truck with a blue flashing light on top. Through a space between a fire truck and an ambulance, she could see a maroon SUV on its roof and, behind it, a blue sedan dented in the front and partway off the road.

A state police trooper turned as they approached the scene, hands at his waist. “You need to stay back.”

His voice was deep and made Gladwynn, who had never considered herself timid, want to say “Yes, sir” and dash back to Liam’s car.

Liam, however, didn’t seem bothered. He tipped his head in a curt nod. “Of course. My reporter here just needs some photos. She can stand back here to get them. I heard entrapment on the scanner. Can you confirm that?”

The trooper merely held up his hand. “You’ll need to step back, sir. Only emergency responders past this point.”

Liam ignored the trooper and raised his hand to greet one of the firemen walking toward them. “Justin! Hey! How you doing? Bad night out here, huh?”

The firefighter nodded solemnly, and Gladwynn noticed the word “chief” emblazoned on the yellow helmet he was wearing. “It is. I can’t talk now, but call me later and I can give you some details. One injury so far.”

“And I’m sure I can call the barracks later for a report.” Liam smiled at the trooper as he walked around him toward the ambulance. “Right?”

The trooper’s eyes narrowed, jaw tightening, but he didn’t move to stop Liam. “Sure.”

Liam raised an imaginary camera to his eye, making a motion with his finger as if clicking a shutter. Gladwynn took the hint and began taking photographs, glad she’d kept up her photography hobby over the years. When her foot slipped after a few shots, she thought she was going down, but a hand under her elbow steadied her. She looked up at a firefighter with practically translucent blue eyes and a broad, friendly smile.

He let go of her elbow and looked at her feet. “Not the best shoes for this weather.”

His accent was thick. Clearly Irish. What was an Irishman doing in Brookstone?

She glanced at her high-heeled boots. Her grandmother had also commented on their impracticality this morning. “Yeah, I need to start carrying winter boots with me.”

The firefighter winked as he turned to walk away. “It’d be a good idea.”

Liam stood next to the ambulance talking to the fire chief. Radio chatter and the purr of engines served as background noise to the voices of the responders and eventually a call for a backboard. Gladwynn stepped back, lifting the camera to snap a few shots as the firemen kneeled next to the car.

A dark green glove blocked her view. “No photos of victims.”

A different, less friendly, and less attractive, firefighter stood before her with a scowl.

She swallowed hard. “Yeah. Sure. No problem.”

He turned his back toward her, standing more squarely in front of her as if to get his point across. Lowering the camera, she stepped to her right and looked over the man’s burly right shoulder in time to see Liam walking toward her, hands shoved in his coat pockets.

He nodded his head toward his car and walked past her. She assumed that meant he wanted her to follow him. At this point, she’d rather be at home curled up under a blanket with a book and a cup of blueberry tea sweetened with a healthy helping of honey.

“No fatality, but still good art with that SUV on its hood,” he said as she fell in step with him. “Did you get some good shots?”

“Um, yeah, I think so.”

“Bart tried to stop you, didn’t he?”

“Well, yes, but I —”

“Big buffoon thinks he can tell us how to do our jobs. Those state police don’t help matters either. They cover all the little towns and townships without a police force. That’s most of the county these days. They act like they are the gatekeepers of all information at any emergency scene we show up to.”

He slid into the driver’s side and slammed the door closed.

She pulled the passenger side door closed gently and blew into her hands again. The gloves were stylish, but definitely not warm. “Does Brookstone still have a police department?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore, no. It was disbanded maybe six years ago, from what I understand. I’ve only been here for four.” He tapped the heater button again. This time Gladwynn was ready. “First lesson, Grant — we work for our readers. It’s our job to get the story, even if you have to push a little to do it. If we have to go through a couple of arrogant volunteer firefighters or cops to do our jobs, then so be it.” He looked at her. “Got it?”

She nodded slowly, wishing she felt the confidence he obviously had.

He took the camera from her and flipped through the photos on the screen. “Not bad. We’ve got at least four good shots.”

Handing the camera back, he backed the car up until he could turn it around and head back toward the office. He held his phone to his ear as he drove, but didn’t slow down, despite the fact even more snow had fallen since they’d arrived on the scene.

“Tom, hey. We’ve got a centerpiece shot for the front. Horizontal, four columns.”

He slid his finger over the end button and tossed the phone into the center console. “We should be able to craft a story together when we get back. I’ll have you contact the state police in about half an hour and see if they have some information for us. You can send me what you find out and I’ll add it to the story.”

He moved the car into the opposite lane, shifted the car into a lower gear, and passed a car moving slowly along the snow-covered highway. Gladwynn gripped the door handle, closed her eyes, and pressed herself back into the seat.

In that moment, wondering if she’d be the next person being pulled from an upside-down vehicle, she desperately missed her previous job where she’d spent most days inside a building, searching the online catalog for books for college students.