The Thrill of Victory

The Thrill of Victory

by Sandra Brown
The Thrill of Victory

The Thrill of Victory

by Sandra Brown

eBook

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Overview

“‘Forget everything you’ve ever heard about technique. Kiss me the way you think a bad girl would and we’ll both have a much better time.’”

Sportswriter Judd Mackie has earned fame with his scathing columns. Women’s tennis pro Stevie Corbett is a favorite target of his sarcastic prose. In his view, she’s too focused on being a cute, crowd-pleaser to be taken seriously as an athlete on the court.

What Stevie’s nemesis doesn’t know is that she’s suffering a medical condition that’s all too serious and potentially ruinous to her career.

When Judd uncovers the sensational story, he recognizes it as one that comes along only once in a lifetime...but telling it would cost him the woman he now doesn’t want to live without.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781944654184
Publisher: Class Ebook Editions Ltd.
Publication date: 03/06/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Sales rank: 65,700
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

About The Author

Sandra Brown is the author of sixty-eight New York Times bestsellers, including Sting, Friction, Mean Streak, Deadline, Low Pressure, Lethal, Rainwater, Tough Customer, Smash Cut, Smoke Screen, and Play Dirty.

Writing professionally since 1981, Brown has published over seventy novels and has upwards of eighty million copies of her books in print worldwide. Her work has been translated into thirty-four languages.

Her episode on truTV’s “Murder by the Book” premiered the series in 2008. She appeared in 2010 on Investigation Discovery’s series, “Hardcover Mysteries.” Television movies have been made of her novels French Silk, Smoke Screen, Ricochet, and White Hot.

Brown holds an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Texas Christian University, where she and her husband, Michael Brown, have instituted the ELF, a scholarship awarded annually. She has served as president of Mystery Writers of America, and in 2008 she was named Thriller Master, the top award given by the International Thriller Writer’s Association. Other honors include the Texas Medal of Arts Award for Literature and the Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2011 she went on a USO tour to Afghanistan.

Hometown:

Arlington, TX

Date of Birth:

March 12, 1948

Place of Birth:

Waco, Texas

Education:

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Texas Christian University, 2008

Read an Excerpt

Prologue

"Ramsey is out for your butt, Mackie."

The gopher, who had met the star sports-writer of the Dallas Tribune at the elevator, fell into step behind him as he walked toward the city room of Dallas' largest newspaper. Judd Mackie was unfazed by the threat of being out of favor with the Tribune's managing editor. He made a beeline for the coffee machine. Its brew was so vicious, so black, he'd often joked that they used the leftovers to fill in the cracks on North Central Expressway.

 

"Mackie, did you hear me?"

"I heard you, I heard you, Addison. Got a quarter?" The pockets of his slacks — expensive, but hopelessly wrinkled — hadn't produced the correct amount of change for the vending machine. He was notorious for never carrying money. It was ludicrous that he was bumming from a guy whose age and income were a fraction of his.

 

"Ramsey's fit to be tied," the gopher said in an ominous undertone as he passed his idol a handful of coins. 

"He usually is." Mackie watched a Styrofoam cup fill with coffee whom only virtue was that it was scalding and as darkly opaque as the sunglasses he still had on, though he'd been inside the building a full five minutes.

 

As he sipped barely diluted caffeine from the disposable cup, the lenses of his glasses fogged over, reminding him they were there. He took them off and dropped them into the breast pocket of his jacket, which wasn't any more dapper than his slacks. His eyelids were puffy; the whites of his eyes were rivered with red.

 

"He told me to catch you at the elevator and personally escort you to his office."

 

"He must really be steamed. What'd I do this time?" Judd asked with disinterest. Michael Ramsey was perpetually steamed at him. From one day to the next the extent of his wrath was only a matter of degree.

 

"I'll let him tell you. You coming peaceably?" the gopher asked worriedly.

 

Judd took pity on him. "Lead on."

Addison Somethingorother was an intern who worked part-time between his journalism classes at Southern Methodist University. During the boy's first day on the job, Judd had passed him a rumpled handkerchief he'd fished from an even more rumpled pocket and jokingly suggested that the eager student use it to dry behind his ears. But when Addison had looked wounded, Judd had slapped him on the back, said he'd meant no offense, and offered the best advice he could give someone who aspired to a journalistic career, which was to reconsider.

"The hours are long, the pay lousy, the working conditions abysmal and the best you can hope for is that whatever you've written gets read before the dog chews it up or the bird craps on it or the housewife wraps chicken guts in it."

Addison was still around, so apparently he hadn't taken the jaded sports reporter's words to heart. Judd would have continued to rebuke Addison's idealism if he hadn't remembered a time when he himself had had stars in his eyes about a career.

 

The stars had gone out long ago, but on occasion, usually when he was deep into his cups, he remembered what it felt like to have a burning ambition for greatness. So he let the cub go on dreaming his dreams. He'd find out for himself that life played dirty tricks.

 

It was midmorning and the city room was a beehive of activity. Reporters at word-processing terminals clicked away on their keyboards. Some had telephone receivers tucked beneath their chins. Messengers hustled among the desks, which were already stacked with packages and mail as yet unopened.

 

Then there were those individuals simply hanging out, smoking, sipping canned drinks or coffee, waiting for something newsworthy to happen or, short of that, divine inspiration.

 

". . . the Arabs. But then Israel — hi, Judd — wouldn't do . . ."  "So I said to her, 'Look I want my keys back.' Hi, Judd. To which she said . . ."

 

". . . me a quote. Hi, Judd. Somebody's got to stick his neck out and go on the record about this thing."

 

Popular with his cohorts, he nodded greetings as he followed Addison through the maze of desks, then down a carpeted hallway toward the managing editor's office. 

"There you are," his secretary said in exasperation. "Since we don't have a militia, he was about to send me in search of you. Thanks, Addison. You can get back to whatever you were doing before Mr. Ramsey summoned you."

 

The gopher seemed reluctant to leave just when the fireworks were about to start. But Ramsey's secretary was almost as indomitable as the boss himself. He ambled away.

 

"Hi, doll. What's up?" Judd tossed his empty cup into the nearest wastepaper basket. "Pour me a cup of the real stuff, will you?"

 

Propping her fists on her hips, the secretary asked, "Do I look like a waitress?" 

Judd winked and gave her the leisurely, miss-nothing once-over that rarely failed to make points toward a big score. "You look like a million bucks." He sauntered through the connecting door before she could retaliate against either his blatant sexism or ingratiating compliment.

 

Inside the door, Judd was greeted by the noxious fumes left by the first two of the four packs of cigarettes Michael Ramsey would smoke that day. He had one cigarette smoldering in an ashtray and another in his mouth when Judd strolled in.

 

"It's about time." His face was florid with rage.

 

Judd flopped into a leather chair and crossed his ankles in front of him. "For what?"

 

"Don't get cute with me, Mackie. You've really blown it this time." 

Ramsey's secretary came in bearing the requested cup of coffee, brewed in her personal coffee, maker. Judd thanked her with a smile and another suggestive glance that she knew, and regretted, was meaningless.

 

Copyright © 2003 Sandra Brown

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