by Nora Roberts
“All right, Liv,” he agreed. “Your turn at bat.”
She set down her glass. “I want you to stop roadblocking me.”
“Be specific.”
“WWBW is an affiliate of CNC. There’s supposed to be a certain amount of cooperation. The local broadcast is just as important as the national.”
“And?”
At times he was maddeningly closemouthed. She pushed her wine aside and leaned forward on the table. “I’m not asking for your help. I don’t want it. But I’m tired of the sabotage.”
“Sabotage?” He picked up his drink and swirled it. She was becoming animated again, forgetting her vow to remain distant and untouchable. He liked the hint of pink under her ivory-toned skin.
“You knew I was working on the Dell story. You knew every step I took. Don’t try that innocent, boyish look on me, Thorpe. I know you have contacts in the woodwork at WBW. You wanted me to make an ass of myself.”
He laughed, amused at the phrase coming from her. “Sure, I knew what you were doing,” he admitted with an easy shrug. “But that’s your problem, not mine. I gave you my copy; that’s standard procedure. The local always gets feed from upstairs.”
“I wouldn’t have needed your copy if you hadn’t held a knife to my throat.” She wasn’t interested in standard procedure or the generosity of upstairs. “With the right information, I could have changed the tone of my interview with Anna Monroe and still have used it. It was a good piece of work, and it’s wasted.”
“Tunnel vision,” he stated simply, and finished off his scotch. “A hazard in reporting. If,” he continued as he lit another cigarette, “you had considered a few more possibilities, you would have asked Anna different questions, led her by the nose a bit more. Then, after I’d broken the story, the interview could have been reedited. You’d still have been able to use it. I saw the tape,” he added. “It was a good piece of work; you just didn’t press enough of the right buttons.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job.”
“Then don’t tell me how to do mine.” Now, he too leaned forward. “I’ve had the political beat for five years. I’m not handing you Capitol Hill on a platter, Carmichael. If you’ve got a problem with the way I work, take it up with Morrison.” He tossed out the name of the head of CNC’s Washington bureau.
“You’re so smug.” Liv had a sudden desire to choke him. “So sure of your sanctified position as keeper of the Holy Grail.”
“There’s nothing sanctified about the political beat in this town, Carmichael,” Thorpe countered. “I’m here because I know how to play the games. Maybe you need a few lessons.”
“Not from you.”
“You could do worse.” He paused a moment, and calculated. “Look, for the sake of professional courtesy, I’ll give you this much. It takes more than a year to spread roots here. The people in this town are insecure; their jobs are always on the line. Politics is an ugly word—uglier since Watergate, Abscam. Exposing them is our job; they can’t ignore us, so they try to use us the same way we use them.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed. “But you have an advantage you’re not cultivating. Your looks and your class.”
“I don’t see what—”
“Don’t be an idiot.” He cut her off with a quick, annoyed gesture. “A reporter has to use everything he can beg, borrow or steal. Your face doesn’t have anything to do with your brain, but it does have something to do with the way people perceive you. Human nature.” He let his words sink in.
She was digesting what he said, annoyed because she knew he was right. Charm worked for some reporters, abrasiveness for others. And class, as he put it, could work for her.
“There’s an embassy party Saturday night. I’ll take you.”
Her attention came full circle back to him. Astonished, she stared. “You’ll—”
“You want to get in the door, take the one that’s most accessible.” The incredulity in her eyes amused him. “A lot of interesting gossip goes on in the ladies’ room after a few glasses of champagne.”
“You’d know all about that, of course,” Liv said dryly.
“You’d be surprised.”
She was cautious, uneasy, tempted. “Why would you do this?”
He pushed her wine glass back in front of her. “There’s a saying about gift horses, Liv.”
“There’s one about Trojan horses, too.”
He laughed and sat back. “A good reporter would have opened the gates and had a scoop.”
He was right, of course, but she didn’t like it. She knew that if it had been anyone else but Thorpe, she wouldn’t have hesitated. That gives him too much importance, she told herself, and gathered up her purse. “All right. What embassy?”
“Canadian.” It had amused him to watch her work out the decision.
“What time should I meet you?”
“I’ll pick you up.”
She had started to rise, but now stopped. “No.”
“My party, my terms. Take it or leave it.”
She didn’t like it. To have met him would have kept the evening professional and relatively safe. Though she doubted that a woman was ever really safe with Thorpe. He was boxing her into a corner. If she refused now, she’d look, and feel, like a fool. “All right.” Liv reached for her notebook. “I’ll give you my address.”
“I know your address.” He watched her eyes fly back to his, wary and suspicious. Thorpe smiled. “I’m a reporter, Liv; I deal in information.” He slid from the booth. “I’ll walk you out.”
Taking her arm, he led her to the door. Liv kept silent. She wasn’t certain if she had won a point or taken two steps backward. In any case, she thought it better than standing still.
“You don’t have to come out,” she began, as he steered her toward the parking lot. “You haven’t got your coat.”
“Worried about me?”
“Not in the least.” Annoyed, she reached for her keys.
“Have we finished conducting business for the evening?” he asked her as she stuck the key in the door lock.
“Yes.”
“Completely?”
“Completely.”
“Good.”
He turned her to face him, kept his hands firmly on her shoulders, and took her mouth with his. Liv was too stunned to protest. She hadn’t been prepared for that kind of move from Thorpe. She hadn’t expected that hard, uncompromising mouth to be soft and gentle. He drew her closer, and she was pressed against him.
His body was hard, firm and arousing. Her blood began to heat. Liv lifted her hands, not certain whether she would draw him closer or push him away. She ended by curling her fingers into the material of his shirt.
Thorpe made no attempt to deepen the kiss or seek quick intimacy. He could sense her struggle against responding, and knew he would simply wait her out. He blocked out his own needs and concentrated on hers.
Slowly, her lips softened, yielded. She could feel the world slip out of focus, as if a new lens had been placed on a camera and hadn’t yet been adjusted. “No,” she murmured against his mouth, and uncurled her hands to push him away. “No.”
When he released her, Liv leaned back against the car. Feelings she had thought completely dead had begun to flicker into life. She didn’t want them, didn’t want Thorpe to be the man to revitalize them. She stared at him while he watched the emotion, the vulnerability, run over her face. He felt something more complex than desire move through him.
“That—” Liv swallowed and tried to speak again. “That was—”
“Very enjoyable, Olivia, for both of us.” He kept his voice light for himself as well as for her. “Though it would appear that you’re a bit out of practice.”
Her eyes flared and the cloudiness vanished. “You’re insufferable.”
“Be ready at eight on Saturday, Liv,” he told her, and walked back into O’Riley’s.
3
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sp; She chose a plain black dress. It fit her closely from neck to hem, with no glitter, no flounces to spoil the line. Against the unrelieved black, her skin glowed like marble. Liv hesitated over jewelry, then decided on the pearl studs she had received on her twenty-first birthday.
For a moment, she only held the earrings in her hand. They brought memories, bittersweet. Twenty-one. She had thought nothing could mar her life, her happiness. Hardly more than a year later, her world had started to crumble. At twenty-three, she hadn’t been able to remember what it had been like to feel happy.
She tried to recall what Doug had said when he had given her the pearls. Liv shut her eyes a moment. It had been something about their being like her skin, pale and smooth. Doug, she mused. My husband. She looked down at her ringless hands. Ex-husband. We loved each other then, I think. For the four years we were together; for at least part of them. Before . . .
Feeling the pain well up, she shut her eyes again. She couldn’t think of what she had lost. It was too enormous, too irreplaceable.
Seven years had passed since he had given her the earrings. She had been a different woman then, in a different life. It was time for this woman to wear them again, in the life she had now.
Liv put the earrings on and went to find her shoes. It was nearly eight o’clock.
She was nervous, and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t. She hadn’t been on a date in years. It’s not a date, she reminded herself. It’s business. A professional courtesy. And why was Thorpe suddenly showing her courtesy of any kind?
Liv sat with one shoe on and the other in her hand. He wasn’t a man she should trust, personally or professionally. On the job, he was ruthless and proprietary. She’d known that from the outset. And now . . .
The way he had kissed her. Just like that. Just as if he had the right to. She chewed on her bottom lip and stared into space. He hadn’t led up to it. She would have thrown up the barricades if he had. She knew the signs to look for: the smiles, the soft, promising words. Thorpe hadn’t spared any of those. It was an impulse, she decided, and shrugged it off. There hadn’t been anything desperate or even particularly loverlike in the kiss. He hadn’t been rough; he hadn’t tried a seduction. She was making too much of it. She had wanted to kiss him. She had wanted to go on kissing him. To be held close, to be needed, desired. Why? He meant nothing to her, she told herself firmly.
“What do you want?” she whispered to herself. “And why don’t you know?”
To be the best, she thought. To win. To be Olivia Carmichael without having to lose pieces of myself along the way. I want to be whole again.
The doorbell rang. Business, she reminded herself. I’m going to be the best reporter in Washington. If I have to socialize with T.C. Thorpe to do it, then I’ll socialize with T.C. Thorpe.
She glanced at the perfume on her dresser, then turned away from it. There was no point in giving him any ideas. She felt sure he had enough of his own. She moved through the apartment without hurry. It gave her a small touch of satisfaction to keep him waiting. But when Liv opened the door, Thorpe didn’t appear annoyed. There was approval and simple male appreciation for a woman in his eyes.
“You look lovely.” Thorpe handed her a single rosebud, long-stemmed and white. “It suits you,” he said, as she accepted it without a word. “Red’s too obvious; pink’s too sweet.”
Liv stared down at the flower and forgot everything she had just told herself. She hadn’t counted on being moved by him again so quickly. She lifted serious eyes to his. “Thank you.”
Thorpe smiled, but his tone was as serious as hers. “You’re welcome. Are you going to let me in?”
I’d be smarter not to, she thought abruptly, but stepped back. “I’ll go put this in water.”
Thorpe scanned the living room as she walked away. It was neat, tastefully furnished. No decorator, he thought. She had taken her time here, choosing precisely what she wanted. He noted that there were no photographs, no mementos. Liv wasn’t putting any parts of herself on display. Very careful, very private. The vague hint of secrecy had aroused his reporter’s instincts.
It might be time, he considered, for a bit of gentle probing. He walked into the kitchen and leaned on the door as Liv added water to a crystal bud vase.
“Nice place,” he said conversationally. “You have a good view of the city.”
“Yes.”
“Washington’s a far cry from Connecticut. What part are you from?”
Liv raised her eyes. They were cool again, cautious. “Westport.”
Westport—Carmichael. Thorpe had no trouble with the connection. “Tyler Carmichael’s your father?”
Liv lifted the vase from the sink and turned to him. “Yes.”
Tyler Carmichael—real estate, staunch conservative, roots straight back to the Mayflower. There had been two daughters, Thorpe remembered suddenly. He’d forgotten because one had simply slipped from notice a decade before, while the other had struck out on the debutante circuit. Five-thousand-dollar dresses and a pink Rolls. Her daddy’s darling. When she had graduated from Radcliffe and snapped up her first husband, a playwright, Carmichael had given her a fifteen-acre estate as a wedding present. Melinda Carmichael Howard LeClare was now on husband number two. She was a nervous, spoiled woman with a desperate sort of beauty and a taste for the expensive.
“I’ve met your sister,” Thorpe commented, studying Liv’s face. “You’re nothing like her.”
“No,” Liv agreed simply, and moved past him into the living room. She set the rose down on a small glass table. “I’ll get my coat.”
A good reporter, Thorpe mused, makes the worst interview subject. They know how to answer questions with a yes or no, and without inflection. Olivia Carmichael was a good reporter. So was he.
“You don’t get along with your family?”
“I didn’t say that.” Liv chose a hip-length fox fur from her closet.
“You didn’t have to.” Smoothly, Thorpe took the coat and held it out. Liv slipped her arms into the sleeves. She wore no scent, he noted, just the light lingering fragrance from her bath, and the clean faintly citrus scent from shampoo. The lack of artifice aroused him. He turned her so that she faced him. “Why don’t you get along with them?”
Liv let out an annoyed breath. “Look, Thorpe—”
“Aren’t you ever going to call me by my first name?”
She lifted a brow and waited a beat. “Terrance?”
He grinned. “Nobody calls me that and lives to tell about it.”
Liv laughed. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh and mean it. She leaned down to pick up her bag.
“You never answered my question,” Thorpe pointed out, and unexpectedly took her hand as she turned back to him.
“And I’m not going to. No personal questions, Thorpe, on or off the record.”
“I’m a stubborn man, Liv.”
“Don’t brag; it’s unattractive.”
He laced his fingers with hers, then lifted the joined hands and studied them thoughtfully. “They fit,” he decided, giving her an odd smile. “I thought they might.”
She wasn’t used to this. It wasn’t a seduction, though she was feeling stirrings of desire. It wasn’t a challenge, though she felt the need to fight. It wasn’t even an assumption she could dispute. He had simply stated a fact.
“Aren’t we going to be late?” Liv said a little desperately. She found it strange that though his eyes never left hers, she could feel their gaze through her coat, through her dress, on her skin. She would have sworn he knew precisely what she looked like right down to the small sickle-shaped birthmark under her left breast.
“Thorpe.” There was a quick sense of panic at what she was feeling. “Don’t.”
Hurt. He saw it. He sensed it. She had been hurt. He reminded himself of his decision to move slowly. Keeping her hand in his, he walked to the door.
Light. Music. Elegance. Liv wondered how many parties she had been to in her li
fe. What made this party different from hundreds of others? Politics.
It was a hard-edged, intimate little world. You were appointed or elected, but always an open target for the press, vulnerable because of their influence on the public. One group habitually accused the other of staging the news. Sometimes it was true. Whether at a social event or an official one, there were images to project. Liv understood images.
The senator nibbling pâté was a liberal; his hair was boyishly styled around an open, ingenuous face. Liv knew he was sharp as a tack and viciously ambitious. A veteran congressman told a slightly off-color story about marlin fishing. He was lobbying furiously against a pending tax proposal.
Liv spotted a reporter for an influential Washington paper drinking steadily. By her count, he had downed five bourbons without showing a flicker. But his fingers were curled around the glass as though it were a life preserver and he were drowning. She recognized the signs and felt a stir of pity. If he wasn’t already drinking his breakfast, he soon would be.
“Everybody handles pressure differently,” Thorpe commented, noting where Liv’s gaze had focused.
“I suppose. I had a friend on a newspaper in Austin,” she said, as she accepted the glass of wine Thorpe offered her, “who used to say newspapers gave information to the thinking public, while television put on a show.”
He lit a cigarette. “What did you say to her?”
“I pointed out that the ads scattered through the New York Times weren’t any different than commercials in a broadcast.” She smiled, remembering her earnest fellow reporter. “I would say that television was more immediate; she’d say newspapers were more reflective. I’d say television allowed the viewer to see; she’d say print allowed a reader to think.” Shrugging, she sipped the cool, dry wine. “We were both right, I suppose.”
“I did some print reporting when I was in college.” Thorpe watched Liv study the people, her surroundings. She was soaking it all up. Now, she looked back at him, curious.
