by Nora Roberts
Something cold skittered up her spine. “All right.”
“About six months ago I went in for a routine exam. I was worn out, but then I’d been working pretty much around the clock for more than a year, doing the film, overseeing the editing, gearing up for promotion. I’d been a pretty regular customer of the medical profession during my drinking days, and my doctor is very discreet. Discretion aside, Angela managed to get wind of the test results.” He took one last drag on the cigarette, crushed it out. “I’m HIV-positive.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Instantly she reached out and gripped his hand hard in hers. “I’m so sorry.”
“I always figured the booze would get me. Never figured it would be sex.”
He lifted the glass. The ice rattled musically when his hand shook. “Then again, I spent enough time drunk that I didn’t know how many women there were, much less who they were.”
“We’re finding out more every day—” She cut herself off. It was so trite, she thought, so pathetically useless. “You’re entitled to your privacy, Rob.”
“An odd statement from an ex-reporter.”
“Even if Angela leaks this, you don’t have to confirm.”
He sat back again, looking amused. “Now you’re pissed.”
“Of course I am. She used me to get to you. It’s just television, for God’s sake. It’s television. We’re talking about ratings points here, not world-altering events. What kind of business is this that someone would use your tragedy to shake down the competition?”
In a lighter mood, he sipped at his drink. “It’s show business, babe. Nothing’s closer to life and death than life and death.” He smiled wryly. “I ought to know.”
“I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes and fought for control. “A temper tantrum isn’t going to help you. What can I do?”
“Got any friends who are voting members of the Academy?”
She smiled back. “Maybe a couple.”
“You might give them a call, use that sexy, persuasive voice to influence their vote. And after that, you can go back in front of the camera and beat the pants off Angela’s.”
Her eyes kindled. “You’re damn right I will.”
She called a staff meeting that afternoon in her own office and sat behind her desk to project the image of authority. The anger was still with her, simmering deep. As a result, her voice was clipped, cool and formal.
“We have a problem, a serious one, that just recently came to my attention.” She scanned the room as she spoke, noting the puzzled faces. Staff meetings were often tiresome, sometimes heated, but always informal and essentially good-natured.
“Margaret,” she continued. “You contacted Kate Lowell’s people, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.” Unnerved by the chill in the air, Margaret nibbled on the earpiece of her reading glasses. “They were very interested in having her come on. We had the hook that she’d lived in Chicago for a few years when she was a teenager. Then they switched off. Scheduling conflicts.”
“How many other times has that happened in the last six months?”
Margaret blinked. “It’s hard to say right off. A lot of the topic ideas don’t pan out.”
“I mean specifically celebrity-oriented shows.”
“Oh, well.” Margaret shifted in her seat. “We don’t do a lot of those because the format generally runs to civilian guests, the everyday people you do so well. But I’d guess that five or six times in the last six months we’ve had somebody wiggle off the hook.”
“And how do we handle the projected guest list. Simon?”
He flushed. “Same as always, Dee. We toss around ideas, brainstorm. When we come up with some workable topics and guests, we do the research and make some calls.”
“And the guest list is confidential until it’s confirmed?”
“Sure it is.” He nervously slicked a hand over his hair. “Standard operating procedure. We don’t want any of the competitors to horn in on our work.”
Deanna picked up a pencil from the glass surface of her counter, tapped it idly. “I learned today that Angela Perkins knew we were interested in booking Rob Winters within hours of our contacting his agent.” There was a general murmuring among the staff. “And I suspect,” Deanna continued, “from what I learned, that she was also aware of several others. Kate Lowell appeared on Angela’s two weeks after her people claimed a scheduling conflict. She wasn’t the only one. I have a list here of people we tried to book who guested on Angela’s within two weeks of our initial contact.”
“We’ve got a leak.” The muscles in Fran’s jaw twitched. “Son of a bitch.”
“Come on, Fran.” Jeff cast worried glances around the room. He shoved at his glasses. “Most of us have been here from the first day. We’re like family.” He tugged at the collar of his T-shirt, cutting his eyes back to Deanna. “Man, Dee, you can’t believe any of us would do anything to hurt you or the show.”
“No, I can’t.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “So I need ideas, suggestions.”
“Jesus. Jesus Christ,” Simon mumbled under his breath as he pressed his fingers to his eyes. “It’s my fault.” Dropping his hands, he gave Deanna a shattered look. “Lew McNeil. We’ve kept in touch all along. Hell, we’ve been friends for ten years. I never thought . . . I’m sick,” he said. “I swear to God it makes me sick.”
“What are you talking about?” Deanna asked quietly, but she thought she knew.
“We talk once, twice a month.” He shoved back from the table, crossing the room to pour a glass of water. “Usual stuff—shop talk.” Taking out a bottle, he shook two pills into his hand. “He’d bitch about Angela. He knew he could to me, that it wouldn’t go any further. He’d tell me some of the wilder ideas her team had come up with for segments. Maybe he’d ask who we were lining up. And I’d tell him.” He swallowed the pills audibly. “I’d tell him, because we were just two old friends talking shop. I never put it together until this minute, Dee. I swear to Christ.”
“All right, Simon. So we know how, we know why. What are we going to do about it?”
“Hire somebody to go to New York and break all of Lew McNeil’s fingers,” Fran suggested as she rose to go stand beside the clearly distressed Simon.
“I’ll give that some thought. In the meantime, the new policy is not to discuss any guests, any topic ideas or any of the developmental stages of the show outside of the office. Agreed?”
There was a general murmuring. No one made eye contact.
“And we have a new goal. One we’re all going to concentrate on.” She paused, waiting until she could skim her gaze over each face. “We’re going to knock Angela’s out of the number-one spot within a year.” She held up a hand to stop the spontaneous applause. “I want everyone to start thinking about ideas for remotes. We need to start taking this show on the road. I want sexy locations, funny locations. I want the exotic, and I want Main Street, USA.”
“Disney World,” Fran suggested.
“New Orleans, for Mardi Gras,” Cassie put in, and lifted her shoulders. “I always wanted to go.”
“Check it out,” Deanna ordered. “I want six doable locations. I want all the topic ideas we have cooking on my desk by the end of the day. Cassie, make a list of all the personal appearance requests I’ve got and accept them.”
“How many?”
“All of them. Fit them into my schedule. And put in a call to Loren Bach.” She sat back and rested her palms on the surface of the desk. “Let’s get to work.”
“Deanna.” Simon stepped forward as the others filed out. “Can I have a minute?”
“Just,” she said, and smiled. “I want to get started on this campaign.”
He stood stiffly in front of her desk. “I know it might take you a little time to replace me, and that you’d like a smooth transition. I’ll hand in my resignation whenever you want.”
Deanna was already drawing a list on a legal pad in front of her. “I don’t want your resignation, Simon. I wan
t you to use that wily brain of yours to put me on top.”
“I screwed up, Dee. Big time.”
“You trusted a friend.”
“A competitor,” he corrected. “God knows how many shows I sabotaged by opening my big mouth. Shit, Dee, I was bragging, playing ‘My job’s bigger than your job.’ I wanted to needle him because it was the only way I could stick it to Angela.”
“I’m giving you another way.” She leaned forward, eyes keen. She felt the power in her now, and she would use it, she knew, to finish what Angela had begun. “Help me knock her out of the top slot, Simon. You can’t do that if you resign.”
“I can’t figure why you’d trust me.”
“I had a pretty good idea where the leak had come from. Simon, I spent enough time around here to know you and Lew were tight.” She spread her fingers. “If you hadn’t told me, you wouldn’t have had to offer to resign. I’d have fired you.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “So I admit to being a jerk and I keep my job.”
“That about sums it up. And I expect, because you’re feeling like one, you’ll work even harder to put me on top.”
More than a little dazed, he shook his head. “You picked up a few things from Angela after all.”
“I got what I needed,” she said shortly. She snatched up her phone when it buzzed. “Yes, Cassie?”
“Loren Bach on one, Deanna.”
“Thanks.” She let her finger hover over the button as she glanced back at Simon. “Are we straight on this?”
“As an arrow.”
She waited until the door shut behind Simon, then drew in a deep breath. “Loren,” she said when she made the connection. “I’m ready to go to war.”
In the cold, gloomy hours of a February morning, Lew kissed his wife goodbye. She stirred sleepily, and gave his cheek a pat before snuggling under the down quilt for another thirty-minute nap.
“Chicken stew tonight,” she mumbled. “I’ll be home by three to put it on.”
Since their children had grown, each had fallen into a comfortable morning routine. Lew left his wife sleeping and went downstairs alone to eat breakfast with the early news. He winced over the weather report, though a glance out the window had already told him it wasn’t promising. The drive from Brooklyn Heights to the studio in Manhattan was going to be a study in frustration. He bundled into a coat, pulled on gloves, put on the Russian-style fur hat his youngest son had given him for Christmas.
The wind was up, tossing the nasty wet snow into his face, letting it sneak under the collar of his coat. It was still shy of seven, dreary enough that the streetlights still glowed. The snow muffled sound and seemed to smother the air.
He saw no one out in the tidy neighborhood but an unhappy cat scratching pitifully on his owner’s front door.
Too used to Chicago winters to complain about a February storm, Lew trudged to his car and began to clean the windshield.
He paid no attention to the fairy-tale world forming behind him. The low evergreens with their frosting of white, the pristine carpet that coated winter grass and pavement, the dancing flakes that swirled in the dull glow of the streetlamps.
He thought only of the drudgery of scraping his windshield clean, of the discomfort of snow on his collar, of the nip of the wind at his ears. Of the traffic he had yet to face.
He heard his name called, softly, and turned to peer through the driving snow.
For a moment he saw nothing but white and the snow-smothered beam of light from the streetlamp.
And then he saw. For just an instant, he saw.
The shotgun blast struck him full in the face, cartwheeling his body over the hood of his car. From down the block a dog began to bark in high, excited yips. The cat streaked away to hide in a snow-coated juniper.
The echo of the shot died quickly, almost as quickly as Lew McNeil.
“That was for Deanna,” the killer whispered, and drove slowly away.
When Deanna heard the news a few hours later, the shock of it overshadowed the envelope she’d found on her desk. It said simply:
Deanna, I’ll always be there for you.
Chapter Nineteen
Deanna lounged in Finn’s big tub with steaming water whirling and pulsing around her, her eyes half closed and a frothy mimosa in her hand. It was the middle of a Saturday morning, and she had more than an hour before Tim O’Malley, her driver, would be by to pick her up for an appearance in Merrillville, Indiana.
She felt as lazy and smug as a cat curled in a sunbeam.
“What are we celebrating?”
“You’re in town; I’m in town. And not counting your afternoon across the state line today, it looks like it could stay that way for a week.”
From the opposite end of the tub, Finn watched her tension ease, degree by degree. She’d been wound tight as a spring for weeks. Longer, he thought, sipping the icy drink. Even before Lew McNeil’s random and senseless murder, she’d been a bundle of nerves. In the weeks following Lew’s death her feelings had shifted from remorse to anger to guilt to frustration over a man who had done his best to sabotage her show for his own ends.
Or Angela’s ends, Finn theorized.
But now she smiled, and her eyes were heavy with pleasure. “Things have been a little chaotic lately.”
“You flying off to Florida, me chasing presidential candidates from state to state. Both of us trying to put together a show with press and paparazzi dogging our heels.” He shrugged, rubbing his foot up and down her slick, slippery leg.
It hadn’t been easy for anyone on her staff, or his, to work with the continued and pesky attention the media had focused on their relationship. For reasons neither of them could fathom, they had become the couple of the year. Just that morning, Deanna had read about her wedding plans in a tabloid some helpful soul had tucked under the front doormat.
All in all it made her uneasy, unsure and far too distracted.
“Do you call that chaotic?” Finn asked, and drew her attention back.
“You’re right, just another day in the simple life.” Her sigh was long and sumptuous. “And at least we’re getting things done. I really liked your show on Chicago’s decaying infrastructure, even if it did make me start to worry that the streets are going to crumble under my car.”
“Everything was there—panic, comedy, half-crazed city officials. Still, it wasn’t as gripping as your interview with Mickey and Minnie Mouse.”
One eye opened. “Watch it, pal.”
“No, really.” His grin was wicked. “You’ve got America talking. What kind of relationship do they have, and what part does Goofy play in it? These burning questions need to be answered—and who knows, it might help take some of the heat off us?”
“We were dealing with American traditions,” she shot back. “On the need for entertainment and fantasy, and the enormous industry that fuels it. Which is every bit as relevant as watching politicians sling insults at each other. More,” she said, gesturing with her glass. “People need some mode of escape, particularly during a recession. You do your shows on global warming and the socioeconomic troubles in the former Soviet Union, Riley. I’ll stick with the everyday issues that affect the average person.”
He was still grinning at her. Deanna took a sip of her mimosa and scowled at him. “You’re riding me on purpose.”
“I like the way your eyes get dark and edgy.” He set his glass aside so that he could slide forward and lay his body over hers. Water sloshed lazily over the lip of the tub. “And you get this line right here”—he rubbed his thumb between her brows—“that I get to smooth away.”
His free hand was busy smoothing something else. “Some might say you’re a sneaky bastard, Finn.”
“Some have.” He nipped at her lips. “Others will. And speaking of Mickey and Minnie.” His hands cruised over her hot, soft skin.
“Were we?”
“I was wondering if we can compare our relationship to theirs. Undefined and long-term.�
�
While the jets of water frothed around them and between them, she stroked a hand through his damp hair. It felt so good to be here, to know that at any moment the comforting heat could erupt into explosive heat. “I can define it: We’re two people who love each other, who enjoy each other, who want to be with each other.”
“We could be with each other more if you’d move in with me.”
It was a subject they’d discussed before. And one they had been unable to resolve. Deanna pressed her lips to his shoulder. “It’s easier for me to have my own place when you’re away.”
“I’m here more than I’m gone these days.”
“I know.” Her lips slid up his throat as she tried to distract him. “Give me some time to work it out in my head.”
“Sometimes you’ve got to trust your impulses, Deanna, your instincts.” His mouth met hers, tasting of frustration and desire. He knew if he pushed, she’d agree, but his instinct warned him not to rush her. “I can wait. Just don’t make me wait too long.”
“We can give it a trial run.” Her blood was pulsing as frantically as the bubbling water. “I’ll move some things in, stay here through next week.”
“I’ll make it hard for you to leave again.”
“I bet you will.” She smiled, pushing his hair back, framing his face. “I’m so in love with you, Finn. You can believe that. And I swear, the rumors about me and Goofy are all lies. We’re just friends.”
He tipped her head back so that her body slipped farther into the water. “I don’t trust the long-eared son of a bitch.”
“I just used him to make you jealous—though he does have a certain guileless charm I find strangely appealing.”
“You want charm? Why don’t I—damn.” Finn tossed his wet hair back and reached for the tubside phone. “Hold that thought,” he told her. “Yeah, Riley.”
Deanna was considering several interesting ways to distract him when she saw the change in his face. The water shifted and slopped over as he climbed from the tub to reach for a towel.
“Get Curt,” he said, dripping as he slung the towel around his waist. “And contact Barlow James. I want a full crew, a mobile unit on the spot five minutes ago. I’ll be at the site in twenty minutes.” He swore, not so lightly, under his breath. “You can if I tell you that you can.”
