Against Her Odds: when dedication meets desire Read Online Free

appreciate how good she made that dress look.
    “Does anything look good to you?” Val asked
innocently.
    “Couple of things,” Cason admitted.
    The waiter brought their drinks and Val
ordered the chicken fettuccini alfredo. Cason ordered the Tour of Italy and
placed a breadstick on Val’s plate before taking one of his own.
    “Any big news lately?” he asked before
breaking the bread in half and taking a bite.
    “That’s not the kind of news I handle,” Val
said dryly.
    “You mean my sheep weren’t important to
you?” Cason asked, pretending to be hurt. “And here I thought that we had a
special moment that day.”
    “It’s not likely to get me nominated for
anything,” she said, even though she had to smile at his phrasing and fake
wounded look. “But that’s okay. I’ve only been at the station for a year and a
half.”
    “Where were you before this?” he asked,
interested.
    “Nebraska,” she said, taking a sip of her
water. “I worked for their station for two years. I was in Oregon before that.”
    “Did you move around a lot as a kid?” Cason
was always a little envious of people who’d traveled a lot. He didn’t really
want to travel now, but he wished he’d done more of it when he was freer of
responsibilities.
    “No,” Val said. “My dad did though.” When
he looked sympathetic, she realized that she’d phrased that badly. “My parents
weren’t divorced,” she hurried to explain. “My father was a newscaster. You may
have heard of him. Aaron Turner?”
    “I probably have. I hate to admit it, but I
don’t watch much of the news.”
    Val put her water glass down with a thump.
“Really? Don’t you want to know what’s going on in the world?”
    “I get the big details from the paper,” he
said, a little defensive in the face of her shock. “And Mitch watches like
crazy, so he tells me enough to keep me up to date.”
    She held up her hands quickly, realizing
she had sounded more than a little pushy. “Sorry. I get wrapped up in it, but I
know it’s not as important to everyone as it was to my dad.”
    “It’s okay,” Cason said, wondering a little
why she hadn’t said it was important to her too. After all, she was the one
doing it.  He was smart enough to know that those weren’t questions for a
first date though, so he pushed the thought aside. “So, you followed in your
father’s footsteps too, huh?”
    “I wish I had!” Val leaned back to allow
the waiter to put her plate down in front of her. “He was a national
newscaster, a foreign correspondent. He…” she trailed off, comparing her career
to her father’s for the thousandth time.
    “Didn’t ask people questions about sheep?”
Cason filled in with a grin.
    “Not usually,” Val agreed. “His work took
him all over the world. You wouldn’t believe the stories that he covered! He
taught me everything I know about being in news today. I used to sit and watch
tapes of his stories until I could repeat them word for word.”
    As she spoke enthusiastically about her
father, Cason couldn’t help but smile. She looked like a little girl talking
about her favorite superhero. He’d looked up to his dad like that too. Hell, he
still felt like the man could do anything, even from the nursing home. Suddenly
her face turned serious. She cleared her throat and pressed her napkin to her
lips, straightening her back. “Speaking of work…I feel like you should know
that my career is...well, it’s my top priority right now. I don’t really have a
lot of time for a serious relationship at this point and I don’t want you to
get your hopes up. I know that sounds really conceited.” She took a deep breath
and screwed up her courage once more. “But it’s true. We can date casually, if
that’s what you want, but I’m not looking for anything more serious than that.”
    She took a sip of her water and waited for
his reaction. She’d given this speech on every first date that she’d had since
she’d left