by Wendy Wax
While she contemplated the possibility of taping his mouth shut in the guise of first aid, he wolfed down a whole sleeve of her chocolate chip cookies and started on a second bottle of beer.
She had just taken a first bite of her own long-cold sandwich when Matt held up the makeshift ice pack and waved it in her direction.
“If you’re not too busy?” He handed her the plastic bag that she’d tucked inside a dishtowel. “My ice seems to be melting.”
“Funny what a blast of hot air can do.” Olivia snatched the baggie out of Matt’s hand and went to the freezer to refill it.
“Oh, and while you’re up, I was thinking that—”
“No.” She slammed the freezer shut. “No more thinking. No more food and drink. No more requests.”
“Why, Olivia, what happened to your bedside manner? I’m going to have to call the nurse’s union about your attitude.”
Olivia stalked back to the couch. “I’ll bring you the phone if you’d like to call an ambulance or a cab, but I will not bring you one more ridiculous thing.”
Standing over him, she lifted the bag full of ice, positioned it precisely, and when she had his complete attention, dropped it directly into his crotch.
“This is Guy Talk. You’re on the air.”
“What’s going on in that apartment, Matt? How could you let the doctor get the drop on you like that?”
“Ding, ding, ding, ding. You are the one thousandth person to call and ask that very same question. In a moment, our announcer will tell you what you’ve won. In the meantime, I have a question of my own: What were you doing watching us on the Internet in the middle of the afternoon? Does your boss know you’re visiting non-work-related websites during business hours?”
“I hate to disappoint you, Ransom, but I caught it on Atlanta Alive. They ran it in slo-mo about twelve times just before the six o’clock report.”
Matt raised the ice pack to his jaw. “Great. So all of Atlanta has seen it, huh?”
“And then some. Your own station’s promoting the hell out of it. They’re talking about offering a poster of Dr. O’s foot hitting your jaw as part of a giveaway. Do you have any idea how I could get one?”
“Not in this lifetime.” Matt dropped the call and punched up the next.
“This is Guy Talk. You’re on the air.”
“Matt, you’re not looking so good at the moment, buddy.”
“I’m okay.”
“Maybe, but you’re giving us guys a bad name. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you hit the floor. I’m donating a carton of Wheaties in your name. And half a dozen cans of spinach.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. And if you’d like a little free advice, you ought to dismantle the punching bag while she’s asleep. The boxing gloves definitely belong in the dumpster.”
“Yeah. Great plan. And maybe I can glue her feet to the floor to give myself an extra advantage, huh?” Matt dropped the call just as Olivia wandered out of her bedroom and headed for the kitchen. “Wimps, all of you,” he finished. “Sometimes you just have to take it on the chin . . . or jaw, like a man.”
Without a word, Olivia picked up her headphones, plugged them into the board, and walked into the kitchen to put a kettle on to boil. He’d just opened his mouth to comment when he noticed the new message scrolling across his monitor. Instead of the usual caller name and opinion, his producer had simply typed “va-va-vavoom.” Matt put the mystery caller on the air.
“You’re on Guy Talk. But if you’re calling to harass me about kissing the carpet, I’m not interested.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that.” The voice was female and sultry, not his usual brand of caller at all. “I’m actually calling to offer my sympathies.”
Matt sat up straighter in his seat. “Sympathy? Now that’s been in short supply tonight.”
“I sure do hope your jaw is feeling better, Matt. And I’ll tell you something else. If I were locked up with a big, strong hunk of man like you, I wouldn’t be wasting my energy on a punching bag.”
He cut his gaze toward the kitchen and caught a glimpse of Olivia standing stock-still, her hand outstretched toward the kettle.
“Now that’s exactly what I was telling the good doctor before she laid me low.” He leaned in closer to the microphone and let his tone grow as intimate as his caller’s. “You’d never knock a guy out, would you?”
“Oh, no. I prefer to tire my men out.”
Matt kept his gaze trained on Olivia, who was still doing her statue imitation despite the now-howling teakettle.
“It’s good to hear there are women out there who still know how to be women.”
He bit back a grin as Olivia’s jaw clenched.
“Why, thank you. I do pride myself on knowing how to treat a man.” The caller’s voice was close to a purr. If he wasn’t mistaken, Olivia looked ready to roar.
“I bet you wouldn’t have to be forced into cooking a meal or pampering a fellow a bit, either.”
“You’re right about that. I think men deserve all kinds of attention. And if you make it out of that apartment in one piece, I’d like to give you some. Um, attention, that is.”
Olivia snatched the kettle off the stove and the whistling stopped abruptly.
Matt kept a watchful eye on Olivia—and the boiling water—as he ended the call with, “Now there’s an offer no man in his right mind would refuse. You check in with me anytime you feel like it.”
He could read the anger in Olivia’s eyes as he rose from his chair at the audio console and leaned down toward the microphone. “This is Guy Talk, where a guy can be a guy. Call me.”
Matt flipped his microphone off and stepped around the console. “You look ready to deck someone . . . again. I hope you’re not expecting me to turn the other cheek?”
“I can’t bear to hear women talk as if their entire mission in life is to make some man happy. And you, of course, lapped it up as if it were your due.”
“It was a harmless flirtation, Livvy. Men and women have been talking to each other that way since Eve tempted Adam. I don’t think she meant any more by it than I did. It was just a little wordplay.”
“Hmmph. Foreplay is more like it.”
He moved closer, intentionally invading her space. “Jealous, Livvy? I have plenty of wordplay to go around. Hell, we could kill a little time looking up new definitions in the dictionary.”
“Are you ever serious?”
“Are you always?”
They stared at each other for a long moment, neither budging. Olivia’s eyes still sparked with anger; they’d deepened to a verdant green that made him think of primeval forests.
“You need to lighten up, Olivia. I happen to know firsthand that life is way too short to waste it sweating the small stuff. And in the end, it’s all small stuff.”
“Now there’s a convenient philosophy for a man who refuses to grow up. I assume you’ll forgive me if I don’t consider my show or my career small stuff.”
She folded her arms in front of her chest and tilted her chin up another notch. “If this is all so insignificant to you, why don’t you just concede right now, Matt? Call a halt to this whole charade and move your show someplace else. You were pretty hot in Chicago, as I recall.”
“I’m not conceding a damn thing. But I’m sorely tempted to teach you how to enjoy yourself. Without the ability to relax and enjoy, all the success in the world isn’t going to do a thing for you.”
“Thank you so much, Professor Ransom, for that introduction to Fun and Frolic 101. I’m sure you’re qualified to teach at the graduate level.”
Matt looked down into Olivia’s face. Her eyes glittered in challenge, and her tone dripped scorn. He kept his own tone light because he knew just how much it would piss her off. “I’ve never met anyone who needed tutoring in the subject as much as you do, Olivia.” He let a small smile play around the corners of his mouth and gave her an impudent wink for good measure. “I’m thinking I may have to design s
ome sort of crash course.”
11
Olivia didn’t see Matt again until the next afternoon. She was staring out the French doors at the tiny park across the apartment parking lot when she heard a noise behind her.
His jaw looked slightly puffy, but otherwise he seemed none the worse for his encounter with her foot. He tipped a Coke can at her in greeting. “Morning.”
“It’s way past morning.”
“So it is.” Matt seemed unconcerned with the distinction.
“How’s your jaw?”
He ran a hand down the smoothly shaven side of his face, pausing momentarily over the point of impact. “I’ll survive as long as you keep your feet to yourself.”
Matt’s gaze strayed to the jar of peanut butter sitting on the counter. “I see you’ve dined.”
“Do you have something against peanut butter and jelly?”
“No. I just hate to see you go through life undernourished.” He yawned and scratched at his midsection. “Mind if I turn on the TV?”
“TV?” Olivia glanced down at her watch. “But there’s nothing on right now but the—”
“Soaps.” He checked his watch. “It’s too late for All My Children, but One Life to Live will be on in a few minutes. General Hospital comes on at three.”
Olivia could feel the disbelief etched all over her face, but there was no way Matt Ransom watched daytime television.
He flicked on the set.
“You watch soap operas?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Soap operas, as in ‘My mother slept with your father and you’re my second stepbrother twice removed so we shouldn’t be having this affair’ soap operas?”
“Well, I don’t remember that exact story line, but that’s the basic idea.”
“When did this happen?”
Matt laughed. “It’s not a disease, Olivia, or a sign of mental deficiency. I’ve been watching General Hospital since we . . . I was twelve. I discovered some of the other shows later in life. I work until two in the morning, go to sleep about four, and get up around noon.” He shrugged. “I watch soap operas in the afternoon.”
He moved over to the sofa, once again sitting right in the middle of the area she’d designated for herself, and picked up the remote. “ GH doesn’t start for another hour, but we can watch One Life to Live or As the World Turns.” He turned to her as if asking nothing more surprising than how she took her coffee. “Which would you prefer?”
Matt propped his feet up on the cocktail table and settled back into the couch, patting the space beside him. “Come sit down. If you leave the remote to me, we can watch both of them.”
Olivia eyed Matt suspiciously. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. Come on.”
She knew he was going to spring something on her or find a way to make her look bad, because this just couldn’t be true. “You’re telling me that Atlanta’s ‘Hundred-Time Bachelor of the Year, Mr. Macho Guy Talk,’ is a closet soapie?”
“There’s nothing closet about me, Olivia. I’m hooked. Have been since I watched my first episode back in ’78. That’s when Bobbie Spencer brought her big brother Luke to Port Charles to try to land Laura in reform school.”
Olivia took a seat, though not quite so close as the one Matt had indicated. “You started watching General Hospital when you were twelve.”
“Pretty much.”
“Because?”
“Because our older sister didn’t get home until fifteen minutes after the show started, and she paid me a dollar to watch the beginning and fill her in on what she missed.”
“You must have amassed a small fortune by now.”
Matt threw back his head and laughed, and Olivia caught herself wanting to join in. It was all so wonderfully absurd.
“So why are you still watching?”
“Well, when I was about fifteen, I discovered what a great pick-up tool it was. Just me and the girls discussing who was cheating on whom.” He looked incredibly pleased with himself.
“And you still need pick-up material?”
His smile was slow and sensual, the brown of his eyes turning as warm as a tumbler full of whiskey. Suddenly, it felt as if someone had sucked all the air out of the apartment. “Not usually. Now it’s just a great escape. After all those hours of talk, it feels good to be brain-dead for a while.”
“I wasn’t aware you used your brain all that much in your work.”
Matt didn’t bite or react to the barb, but leaned in closer until she could feel the warmth of his breath tickling her cheek. “Don’t you ever want to shut that overworked brain of yours down, Olivia? You know, just turn it off and enjoy yourself?”
It must have been the power of suggestion. Or maybe it was how close he was and how husky his voice had gone—as if it were completely weighted down with sex—but Olivia felt her normally nimble thoughts slow to a crawl. Then her vision blurred around the edges and the air turned hot and thick with something she did not want to identify.
“Don’t think, Olivia. Just feel.”
He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her—a soft, gentle joining that took her completely by surprise. The breath caught in her throat, and her pulse fluttered like butterfly wings beneath her skin.
Cradling the back of her head in the palm of his hand, he drew her closer and deepened the kiss, his gentleness giving way to something more urgent.
She wanted to do just as he’d instructed, wanted to lose herself in his touch, wanted to let him make love to her once more, wanted to forget about the silly competition between them.
Competition. Olivia’s body stilled, only this time it was due not to desire but to dismay. She was sitting on a couch in plain view of their audience, being kissed by Matt Ransom. In another second she’d be kissing him back. She had a very clear idea of the kind of reaction the focus group would have to that.
“Olivia?”
“Why, you . . .” Appalled, she pulled back. Her brain, still struggling to get back up to speed, couldn’t come up with anything bad enough to call him.
Matt’s eyes lit with amusement. “I was just trying to help you relax.”
“If I want to relax, I’ll take up yoga.”
What she wanted to do was slap his smug, handsome face. Hard. In front of the world. So that no one would know just how much she’d wanted him to kiss her. Her hand itched to make contact, but she’d already perpetrated too much violence in the last twenty-four hours, and she didn’t intend to win her time slot by maiming her opponent—no matter how much he deserved it.
Olivia retreated to the other couch. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but it’s not going to work.”
“I’m not trying to do anything. You looked like you needed to be kissed, so I kissed you. Let’s not make a big deal out of it.”
“We’re not going to make anything out of it. And in the future, I’ll decide when I need to be kissed. And by whom.” Olivia crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at Matt.
From his seat on the opposite couch, he winked and offered her a mock salute. “All right, then. When you’re ready to be kissed, you just let me know. I’ve been waiting for more than twenty years for all the loose ends to get tied up on General Hospital. I think I can wait a day or two for you to beg for a kiss.”
Olivia picked up the phone and speed-dialed the station. Though she and Matt were allowed free access to their producers, up until now she’d only called Diane to discuss business. At the moment, however, thoughts of her show were running a distant second to the need for human contact with someone other than Matt Ransom. Someone in the real world. Someone she could trust.
“Hi, Di.”
“Oh. Hi, Olivia. Great show this morning.”
“Thanks.”
There was an expectant pause, during which Olivia wracked her brain for a topic of conversation.
“How’s the new diet going?”
Diane sighed. “I’ve lost roughly one tenth of one pound
, and if I eat another piece of raw fish I’m going to have to apply for a job at SeaWorld. In the tank.”
“You know, if you’d just give up on these crazy diets and let me help you explore why you’re using food to—”
“I know, boss, I know. I just keep thinking one of them will actually work.” Her laugh was rueful. “So what can I do for you?”
“A jailbreak would be nice.”
“Hey, I’ll be outside at dawn with an extra horse if that’s what you want.”
The idea of escaping was all too appealing. She drummed her fingers on the table, not ready to hang up, but unable to come up with a legitimate reason to stay on the line.
“So, um, is there something in particular you wanted to talk to me about?” Diane asked.
Olivia felt like a mountain climber dangling off the side of a cliff clutching her lifeline. If she hung up, would she go careening down the side of the mountain?
“You know, if you ever really need out of there, all you have to do is—”
“No. Don’t even go there, Di. Quitting is not an option.”
“Okay, then. What would you like to talk about? The show? The weather? Kissing Matt Ransom?”
Olivia groaned. “I was hoping no one had noticed.”
“I can think of a whole lot of adjectives that could be applied to that kiss, but unnoticeable isn’t one of them.”
Diane’s curiosity hummed across the phone line, and suddenly a free fall down the mountainside seemed safer than pursuing this particular line of conversation.
“Yes, well. I think I’m going to have to go now, Di.”
“You’re going to hang up without telling me how it felt?”
“Afraid so.” She lifted a hand and waggled it toward the Webcam.
“Not even a few descriptive words for those of us who’ve always wondered?”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t suppose you’d consider describing his veal marsala?”
Matt drizzled lemon butter over the pompano fillets and wrapped them in parchment. Yellow rice simmered on the stove, and a bottle of chardonnay sat open on the counter. An Anita Baker CD infused the room with an intimate warmth.
It was 7:00 P.M., three hours after the conclusion of General Hospital, which Olivia had watched, spellbound, and pretended not to enjoy. He’d prepped for his show, worked out on the bag a bit, and taken a cold shower—a blessed relief after spending most of the afternoon in an unexpected and unwelcome state of arousal.
