by Meg Maguire
“How’s your carrion coming along, Ty?” Kate’s recorded voice asked when the scene changed again, and she remembered that night in Alaska like it was yesterday. No food except for a questionable half of a fish they’d found abandoned by an eagle or hawk, which the shot showed Ty cooking over a fire. Looking like a ragged mess, he glanced up, aiming a dryly cocked eyebrow past the lens, and then leaned forward to swivel the camera on its tripod. He aimed it the opposite way, at the stump where Kate was seated in clean and cozy state-of-the-art hiking attire, eating puffy marshmallows out of a plastic bag. She waved. He wasn’t always the brat.
Uncertain if she was mortified or delighted by all of this, Kate simply watched, her jaw hanging open. She could sue him. She’d never signed any release saying it was okay to broadcast footage of her performing Public Enemy songs. Certainly not in a shitty motel room, wearing pajama pants and a camisole while Ty held the camera and shouted “Bleep!” over all the swears they’d memorized when that tape had kept them entertained on the long, hot, un-air-conditioned drive from Arizona to Washington State the previous summer.
Off-screen Kate couldn’t seem to find it in herself to be angry—she came off extremely well in this, brattiness notwithstanding. She laughed at the next scene, remembering the time they’d filmed on a tiny island off Costa Rica. The clip showed Ty close up, the camera held by his own hand, and he was a wreck—sunburned, thirsty, half-starved, sleep-deprived, ant-bitten…not to mention surrounded by open ocean on all sides.
“In the past two days, I have eaten three tiny, raw, disgusting crabs, and drunk a cup of my own distilled piss. I just want you editors to see what’s on the other side of this equation.” He panned the shot around to where Kate was perched on a folding chair she’d brought, looking tanned and content in a striped bikini, drinking water out of a plastic liter bottle. She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and smiled. In real life she smiled, too. She could wring his neck for this.…
The buzz of her doorbell made Kate jump about six inches off her mattress and slop wine across her knees and the carpet.
“Crap.” She glanced around and the buzzer sounded again. She gave up, abandoning the glass on the nightstand and jogging to the front door.
She left the chain on, glaring into the hall. “I knew it would be you.”
Ty grinned through the three-inch gap. “Anything good on the telly, Kate? Or are you too angry to watch the series finale?”
“I don’t even know what to say to you right now…. For starters, you promised we’d never do a clip-show.”
“I can’t help but feel I’ve been disappointing you ever since we left Canada, so I came right over. Oh, and I brought Chinese.” He held up a grease-stained bag to show her. “Crab rangoons. Your favorite.”
“I could sue you, you know.”
“I know. Feel free. But now you know why I needed all that footage, Kate. Anyhow, it’s all yours now.” He held up another paper bag, shook it so Kate could hear the rattle of plastic.
She buried her forehead in her palm.
“Come on, Kate.” He tugged on the chain with his free pinky.
“Give me my job back, Dom Tyler, and I’ll let you in.”
“No can do. The show’s kaput. I’ve killed it. But I’ve come with another offer. From the network.”
Kate squinted at him, curious. “What do you mean? What sort of offer?”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”
With a roll of her eyes she disengaged the chain and let him pass.
“’Bout bloody time.”
“I’m still in shock, I’ll have you know. How long have you been planning all of this?” she demanded, shutting the door behind him.
Ty took a seat on the arm of her couch. “Ever since we made it back to civilization. Our crack editors helped me pull the clips together, in place of the final episode. The network wasn’t impressed by the last-minute change, but I got my way in the end.”
She chewed her lip. “Why’d you do it?”
“Because you deserve to have everyone see how hard you work,” he said. “You deserve more credit. And frankly, you deserve the embarrassment.”
“They shouldn’t have let you show that film on TV without my permission.”
“Don’t worry,” he said with a dismissive wave. “I’m very good at forging your signature.”
“Excuse me?”
“Like I said, feel free to sue me.”
“God…whatever. So what’s this about an offer?”
Ty wandered to the kitchen counter and opened the take-out bag, rummaging. “Damn, they forgot the duck sauce.”
Kate gave him an exasperated shove on the shoulder. “What’s the offer?!”
He looked at her again, face aglow with triumph. “Well, they were upset that I’m pulling out of the show.”
“Of course they are. It’s a terrible idea.”
“But I have to tell you, it’s different now,” he said. “You’ve made it different.”
“So give me my job back.”
“No, Kate, not like that.” He finally abandoned the food and steered her to the living room couch. He sat beside her and took her hands in his own. “It’s different, because for the first time in my life, I can’t see any good reason to keep risking my neck.”
“Or mine,” she shot back, but the words came out soft, shy in the face of his pointed sincerity.
“No, not yours, especially. But they’ve agreed to option eight episodes of a new show.”
“How nice for you,” she mumbled.
His thumbs rubbed her knuckles. “Nice for both of us, if you want it. They won’t do it without you on board.”
She blinked. “Me? Specifically?”
“Yeah. When they saw the final cut of the episode that aired tonight, they said, ‘Why on earth hasn’t she been on camera all along?’”
“I don’t—”
“You have no idea how bloody cute you are, do you?” Ty asked, smiling, clearly relishing how uncomfortable the praise was making her. “They loved it, Kate. They’re willing to let us shoot another program. Sort of an environmental-travelogue-type of show. Conservation’s hot right now. The show won’t be dangerous, and there’ll be less snow, I promise.”
Kate frowned. “That doesn’t sound very exciting.”
“You’re a sharp one, I’ll give you that. Okay, there’s a bit of a catch. I think they’re sort of seeing it like our show, crossed with The Newlyweds or something. They kept saying, ‘that chemistry—that’s what this network needs! Where have you been hiding this girl?’”
“Oh God.”
“What do you say, Kate?”
“I dunno,” she said. “This is all really sudden. And it’s a weird idea. It’s like…Mulder and Scully on Gilligan’s Island.”
“That sounds pretty good, actually.”
“Ty.”
He ran his palms over her shoulders. “It’s simple. It’s what we’ve been doing all along, except with less danger, and two jerks on camera instead of just the one. I mean, are there any PAs in this town who don’t secretly wish they were the ones who were famous? And you actually deserve it. Think it over, Kate. You’d look great accepting an Emmy. You can wear some of your pointy death-shoes. Free designer crap, goody-bags… All that gaudy celebrity stuff you get so moist over.”
She shook her head. “Why’d you let me think you were a complete a-hole for a month while you were hatching this ridiculous plan?”
He smiled, a bit shy if she wasn’t mistaken. “Well, for one thing, you’d have never given me permission to produce that episode.”
“No, definitely not.”
“Plus I needed time to pitch the idea, and for that I needed you out of the picture, otherwise you’d have rushed in and bollocks’d it all up by telling them you weren’t interested. And for another thing…well, I love pissing you off. And I knew you’d forgive me.”
She cocked a brow at him. “Did you then?”
Ty nod
ded. “You do, right? Forgive me?”
Kate sighed. “Probably…but I don’t have an answer yet, about this proposal.”
“Fine. You hungry? Let’s eat, for goodness’ sake.” They walked to the kitchen and Ty opened her fridge, pulling out a bottle. “You still keep my favorite beer stocked, eh? Been missing me much?”
“That six-pack’s been in there since before we left for Canada.”
He scowled playfully, and they gathered their food. They adjourned to Kate’s bedroom in time to catch the last fifteen minutes of the hour-long show.
“So what do you think?” Ty demanded.
“Honestly…? I never knew I had such great shoulders,” Kate replied, studying the woman on the screen.
“I told you you’re hot.”
“This is so embarrassing,” she said, unable to hide a dopey smile. She watched an entire montage of herself giving Ty the finger for various—and unfailingly welldeserved—reasons, caught either by his camera or appearing as a blurry, disembodied digit floating up to obscure her own lens.
“If it’s not to your liking there’s something else we can watch,” Ty said, wiping his fingers on a napkin. He nodded mischievously to the memory cards he’d brought, the bag containing them visible through the kitchen doorway.
“Oh I know you didn’t come here thinking you actually stood a chance of getting laid, did you?” Kate asked, faking incredulity. Then she froze. “None of the editors saw, did they? They don’t know?”
“Christ Almighty, woman, how evil do you think I am? I studied filmmaking. I know how to splice dirty bits out of footage. Of course they don’t know.” He paused. “I bet everyone assumes we’re like that, though.”
“Probably,” she admitted. “Especially now.” She glanced at the screen. For all intents and purposes, these clips from the past three seasons looked like the private, candid home movies of an extremely well-suited couple.
“Don’t think I didn’t keep copies of the good stuff for myself,” Ty said.
Kate rolled her eyes at him.
“Damn, you’re badass,” he said, pointing at Kate-on-TV with his beer bottle. “I can’t wait to see the bonus features,” he added, wiggling his eyebrows and glancing from her to the bag and back again.
“Like you haven’t watched that a hundred times in the past three weeks.”
“I haven’t,” he said, wide-eyed and innocent.
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really, I haven’t. Don’t get me wrong—I bloody wanted to. But like I said before, this is about us.” He nudged her with his elbow. “Nothing’s any good without you. You have no idea how damn hard it’s been for me these last few weeks, not being able to see you. And needless to say, I’ve slept like crap…. Probably deserved it, too, putting you through this.”
Kate paused, taking in his familiar smell, letting her energy shift and mingle with his. “Well, I wouldn’t have waited for you if I’d had the outtakes,” she said eventually.
“Oh no?”
She shook her head. “No chance in hell.”
“Well, I guess it’s clear which of us is the gentleman. So what do you reckon? Feel like a private screening? It might give you ideas.”
“What sorts of ideas might you be referring to, Mr. Tyler?” she asked pointedly.
“Be my lover, Kate. Please. Be my partner again.”
She sipped her wine, avoiding his eyes. “You make it sound so easy.”
“We’ll ask the oracle, then.” He rummaged in the greasy bag on the floor for the fortune cookies, stripping off the squeaky cellophane wrappers and holding them out for Kate to pick one. Ty cracked his open first. “‘Your longtime work colleague and erstwhile dynamite sex partner will find your charms irresistible. Lucky numbers six, twelve, nine and thirty-three.’”
“You cheat. What does it really say?”
After he finished chewing Ty read out, “‘Industriousness is the golden key to your prosperity. And Kate Somersby is dying for a good—’” Kate punched him on the arm. “Ow. So what’s yours say?”
“It says,” Kate began, unfolding the slip. “‘Industriousness is the golden key to your prosperity.’ Oh man, a repeat.”
“Boo, cheap. Those things don’t mean anything anyway…unless it says something else. Anything that’ll make you admit you secretly love me.”
Kate sat up straight, taken aback. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“If it was true…sure.” Ty’s face did a decent impression of blasé flirtation, but his held breath and tight smile gave away just how much he had riding on her answer, emotionally.
“If it was true,” she repeated. “You don’t think it is?”
He shrugged. “That’s what you told me, more or less, before we got back to civilization. That it was just physical. I know there’s more to us, at least a little more, but I took you at your word, Kate. I’ve always trusted you.”
She let her gaze fall to the carpet, wishing she could say the same. Wishing she’d listened to her heart before they’d parted so disastrously at LAX. Every fiber of her being had known inherently that this man was on her side, that he always had been. But she’d ignored all that and swallowed the lies her anger had fed her, all those incriminations that belonged to the people who’d hurt her so long ago.
Ty bumped her shoulder with his. “Don’t look so glum. I brought one more bargaining chip with me.” He left the bed to root through the paper bag on the counter. Expecting a digital sex tape, Kate wasn’t surprised when he extracted a CD. She watched as he strode back into the bedroom and headed for the stereo beside the television, opened the changer and put the disc in.
“That’s not a DVD player, pervert,” she said.
“I know.” Ty turned the TV off.
She frowned. “What are you up to?”
“I’m doing my damnedest to make you admit you love me.” He hit Play on the CD player and adjusted the volume. The soft bass of an all-too-familiar song began to drift from the speakers, warming the room. Like magic, Kate was back at that cocktail party, two years ago.
“Dance with me?” Ty asked, as casually flirtatious as he’d been that night, murmuring those same words.
Shy, she shook her head, but she didn’t resist when he pulled her to her feet and drew her into the steps, slow and lazy, meandering in circles, going nowhere. His hand was warm around hers, his other palm hot on her waist.
“I’m sorry I had to trick you,” he mumbled against her temple. “I wanted to make everything right, and I needed time to work out the details. And I wanted to give you time, you know, to be cautious…about us.”
He steered her back to the bed and manipulated their landing so she flopped onto his lap. “What do you say?”
“You said I could think it over.”
“Not the show. Us. What about us?” He held her jaw in his hands and stared her down with kind, smiling eyes.
“Maybe… But you scare me, Ty. You move from woman to woman so frequently…I’m afraid to just be another one in the line.”
He kissed her, slow and deliberate, softening her resistance. When he pulled away Kate felt as if she’d downed a very stiff drink.
“The women I dated… I kept moving on because none of them were you.”
He cupped her chin and angled her face so she’d meet his eyes. “Please, Katie. We’re so good together.”
Kate held her breath and her tongue, held his gaze but did not reply.
He sighed and lowered his chin to her shoulder, his mouth just below her ear. His words heated her skin. “You must know that I love you.”
She swallowed and her whisper came out thick and quavery. “Do you?”
“Yeah. And I don’t want you behind me anymore. I want you next to me, trudging through the woods or sleeping under the stars, or waking up in some hovel of a motel room.”
“Or the back of a latex-stinking van,” she muttered.
“Especially in the van,” Ty confirmed.
“Is the
re a waiver I have to sign?”
Ty put his mouth to her neck again, kissed her skin. “Brat.”
Kate grinned to herself. Ty kissed her again, his lips drifting down her throat to her collarbone and making her shiver. “What d’you say, Katie?”
Kate pushed him back by the shoulders and met his eyes. “I’m in.”
His brow popped up. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “Yeah…I’ve missed you, the past few weeks. As pissed as I was—which was a lot—I missed you more.” She cleared her throat, making the leap. “And I do love you.”
His lips twitched. “You reckon?”
“Yeah. For I don’t know how long.” For a couple of breaths she held his eyes, and when the moment became too intense she dropped her gaze to his mouth. His lips looked smooth, no longer roughened by the cold air and harsh conditions of their final shoot.
She leaned in to kiss him and Kate could have sworn they were back in the woods again—the cold breeze, the scent of a wood fire, their scorching, shared heat. After a few moments she tore herself away to stare again into those eyes she knew so well.
Ty’s mouth twitched into a grin so familiar it could have belonged to a childhood friend. And in a way, it did…the friend Kate had waited her whole life to find, someone who offered all the adventure and silliness she’d missed out on.
“So we’re partners again?” she asked.
“We always have been.”
She smiled. “It certainly feels that way.”
“Good. Now I vote for dessert and bonus features.”
Thinking of the film they had made together transported her in a breath, dragged her back three weeks and fifteen hundred miles to the shack, to the storm and the smell of wood smoke, Ty’s strong, bare body in the firelight.
She pressed her nose to his throat and breathed him in, finding the elemental scent of his skin behind the civility of shaving cream. Whether he was filthy or clean, exhausted or rested, teasing or dead-serious, she loved this man.
“Maybe…but you know, since you fired me, I’ve sort of been missing the cameras…”
