Heart in the Field

by Dagg, Jillian

  “Friendship is fine with me.”

  “Good.” A friend he would be, but she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

  His meal arrived. He was starving hungry. He doctored his fish with vinegar and lemon, and shook ketchup on to the plate to one side of his chips. He offered the chips to Serena. “Help yourself.”

  She snagged a chip from the side of his plate. He watched her perfect white teeth nibble the French fry. The action was sexy.

  “Have some more.”

  He turned his plate so that the chips were on her side, and while Serena ate one or two and finished her salad, he polished off the fish. When the plate was empty he pushed it aside. The familiarity of eating together from the same plate seemed to have diluted the combative atmosphere between them. Feeling calmer inside now he’d eaten, he said, “I suppose we should schedule that meeting for tomorrow?”

  Serena nodded. “Fine. We can meet in my office at eleven, if you like.”

  “Great.” He finished his beer and summoned the waitress for his check. He added a tip, signed his credit slip, and slipped his card back into his wallet. He wouldn’t put this meal in for expenses. He felt that the time they’d spent here in the pub had been significant on a personal level rather than on a business level. This shouldn’t be. He wasn’t about to make a move on her and give her something else that may turn her against him.

  Chapter Three

  Serena strolled along the sidewalk beside Nick, her jacket resting over her arm creating a barrier between them.

  Nick slung his own jacket over his shoulder. “Sorry I can’t offer you a lift anywhere, but my car’s still in storage.”

  Serena couldn’t even imagine the heightened intimacy of sitting beside him in a car, especially on a hot, sultry night such as this one. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. I have my own car parked in the Steel lot.”

  “Then I’ll walk with you. I have to go home that way.”

  As it was obvious she wasn’t going to get rid of him, she decided that finding out everything about him until he became ordinary might be the antidote for her tension. “Where do you live? Or are you in a hotel for the time being?”

  He turned to look at her and she was forced to meet his gaze. “No hotel. I own an apartment I rented out while I was away. Luckily the renter bought a house a few months ago, so it’s free for me to move back into. What about you? Where do you live?”

  Serena hadn’t intended to discuss herself. Although, he would probably find out soon enough where she lived. “I live in West Vale. It’s about forty miles north of the city.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been there.”

  He made his statement sound as if he wanted to go there one day. And he would this weekend. Don lived out that way as well. “It’s a very small place. Barely on the map.”

  “Don’t you find it awkward living out of the city?”

  “It was a bit tight with the daily afternoon news. Some days if the weather wasn’t good, I’d stay in the city. But it should be easier with a once-a-week evening slot.” Serena bounced the conversational ball back to him. “How long were you away?”

  “Ten years.”

  “That’s a long time. I bet your family are pleased you’re home for a while.”

  Serena noticed a defined hesitation before Nick shrugged his shoulders. “Possibly.”

  Now she was curious. “You don’t know?”

  “I only arrived home today. I haven’t seen them yet. It’s a small family. Most of the aunts and uncles don’t live in this part of Canada, so it comes down to mother and father. They live here in Toronto.”

  “No brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  “I have a brother.”

  Nick stopped walking. “You have a brother?”

  She laughed. “Is there a problem with that? He has a recent music degree and a band that’s doing quite well. They’ve just put together an album and are having success with a single download.”

  “Good for him.”

  They’d reached the Steel parking lot behind the building and Serena headed for her car. At the car, Nick’s lean fingers caressed the smooth surface of the black Porsche in the same way Serena sensed he might caress a woman’s skin and wondered what it would be like to be touched by him.

  “Very nice. Leased or owned?”

  “Owned.” She opened her door, tossed her purse and jacket on the passenger seat and slid behind the steering wheel. She inserted the key, strapped on the seatbelt, started the engine and wished she didn’t have to roll down the window to talk to him again. She wanted to take off in a spray of gravel and leave him standing there. But she had pledged friendship for the next six months. So she did roll down the window.

  Nick squatted to her level and placed his fingers over the top of her door.

  “How are you getting home?” she asked.

  “I’ll walk or take a cab.”

  “Do you want a lift?” She inquired to be polite, not because she wanted him slouched in the low seat beside her.

  Nick straightened. “No. It’s fine.” He patted the top of the window. “Drive with care.”

  “I always do,” she said. “Good night. Thanks for the salad and the coffee.” She waved and drove to the gate.

  •

  Nick watched the taillights flicker and disappear. He would prefer to be beside her in the car. For a crazy moment he’d wanted to invite her to his place and kiss her until they found themselves naked on his bed. Because he hadn’t been with a woman for a long time, or because she really did attract him? A bit of both, he supposed.

  It didn’t take Nick long to walk back to his apartment. As soon as he was indoors, he tossed his jacket aside and hunted his bookshelves. The book was still there on his shelf, and Nick slipped it out from between the others. He turned it over in his hands and Stuart Redding Brown looked at him.

  The cover photo had been taken when the man was young. Brown had wavy hair with sideburns, and wore a beige safari jacket over a black Rolling Stones T-shirt. He’d been a good-looking guy and it was obvious from where Serena had inherited her distinct cheekbones and stubborn chin. She also had the same intense, but sometimes vulnerable mouth. It was the eyes that were different. Redding Brown’s were a flat gray, not conveying much emotion. Serena’s midnight-blue eyes were like flames that flashed and danced to her moods.

  Nick sat down in an armchair with the book and leafed his way through to the photo album section. The only photo of Serena was when she was a baby held in her smiling mother’s arms. Mother and Child was written underneath it, probably in Redding Brown’s own handwriting. There was no mention of a boy. So was the brother Redding Brown’s, or had her mother re-married? Don had told her the name of Serena’s mother, but he couldn’t remember what it was.

  Nick flipped the pages, looking for the section where Brown had mentioned his family and the toll that his career had taken on his personal life. The section was well thumbed, and Nick didn’t have any difficulty locating the paragraphs. It was almost as if the book fell open at that point. When Nick read the words he felt the same jerk of emotion as he had so long ago, except now he was picturing Serena. Redding Brown didn’t mention his wife and daughter’s names, but he’d obviously missed them both, to the point of hitting the bottle and smoking pot, and had, at one time, in what Brown called a ‘Mary Jane haze of unbearable pain’, considered calling it quits. And he hadn’t meant his career and going home. Nick wondered if at the time he was killed the journalist hadn’t been quite so dedicated to the conflict he was reporting. He might even have been thinking about his wife and daughter, hadn’t watched his back quite so diligently and had made a mistake.

  Or he could have been blotto from substance over-indulgence. Or his death wish might have been so strong that he’d found an easy, heroic way for suicide. Whatever Brown’s reason, Nick wouldn’t mind investigating the death to discover what the exact circumstances had been. Of course Serena might even know.
He could merely ask her, and she would supply the information.

  Dream on, he told himself, closing the book and putting it aside on the table for further reading. If she hadn’t bragged about her father’s identity tonight, then she certainly wouldn’t be forthcoming about his demise. But he’d love to know more. Not only about the death circumstances, but about Brown’s entire life.

  Still not feeling tired, even though he should be after traveling most of the day, Nick walked into the bedroom, where he’d dumped his luggage earlier. He got out his laptop computer and set it up in the living room on the desk. Beside the computer he put his tattered notebook. Then, after unbuttoning his shirt and making a cup of instant coffee, which was all he had for the time being, until he was able to grocery shop, he sat down and opened a new folder on his computer. He called the folder SRBROWN. Then he opened a new document. The first words he keyed on to the page were: Daughter—Serena.

  •

  Serena turned right at the West Vale corner store, and into a side road. She drove up the narrow, tree-lined lane. Feeling relieved to be home, she parked the Porsche in the driveway of her house in front of the garage.

  She patted the car on the way to the front door, and murmured, “Nick Fraser was impressed with you.” But she didn’t think he was very impressed with her. She hadn’t acted friendly, even though she’d agreed friendship was what they needed to work well together.

  Feeling guilty, and exposed, for this lapse in her personality, she pushed her key into the lock. The people who had built the split-level house on a ravine lot had been transferred to California on business and needed to sell it fast. Serena had fallen in love with the rose-covered trellises, the wooden deck walk-out from a sunroom, and the garden full of perennials. Inside the house there were three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a finished basement with more comfortable rooms and plenty of storage space. The kitchen, dining room and living room were spacious enough for entertaining.

  Serena’s next-door neighbor, Ginny Friedrich, had been a great help as Serena settled in. Ginny’s husband traveled with a communications company and she was alone a great deal, which was why she had six cats. One of the cats had just had a litter when Serena arrived, and Serena had been forced, by a set of gold eyes and reaching silver-gray paws, to choose a kitten for herself.

  Pascal greeted her now by trying to sidle his furry body by her legs as she pushed her way in through the door. She turned on a light and he pattered behind her down the hallway and the two steps to the apple-green and pine kitchen. Serena dumped her purse down on the table, hung her jacket over the back of a chair and squatted down to take him into her arms. He was her baby and she cuddled him to her, thinking Pascal helped her through all sorts of bad times these days. And today had been bad.

  When he wriggled away, she fed him, all the time talking to him.

  “A terrible thing happened today, Pascal. John Duncan got sick and I’ve been stuck with a new co-host. His name’s Nick Fraser. Oh, Pascal, I’m not sure about this move to nighttime TV. Especially with Nick. You’d like him Pasc, I’m sure. He’s good-looking, like you. Very sleek. He sort of stays with a person. Know what I mean? But he’s not John. He won’t be easy.”

  Pascal began the serious task of eating his dinner.

  “And I felt this intense attraction to him. And I can’t have that. It’ll wreck my job. So I wasn’t exactly pleasant to him. But he’s like my father. His heart is in the field. This is just some temporary respite, for whatever reason. He’s not for me. Not that he’d want me. So why am I getting all up in the air about him?”

  Pascal showed disinterest. Serena smiled and let him be. She would like nothing more than to take a shower and slip into bed, but she knew she couldn’t do that yet. She had the meeting with Nick to prepare for in the morning.

  Serena poured iced tea and carried the tall glass rattling with ice cubes, to the corner of the sunroom where her computer was set up on a desk. The deck and the lush garden outside the curved windows were in darkness, and therefore weren’t a lure, so she turned her attention to the monitor as she opened up her word processing program.

  While she waited for the file containing Neon Nights notes and script to appear, she remembered when she’d first gone into journalism and how idealistic she’d been then. She had her career planned. She would always report the stories with the happy endings, not the sad ones. She certainly wouldn’t go into the field and expose herself to war or horror the way her father had. Although at times she thought she should have gone into the field and seen with her own eyes what had drawn her father there, discovered what drew guys like Nick Fraser there.

  Her college professors laughed at her expectations. Happy endings weren’t news. Therefore, she’d had no choice but to go with the flow. After a stint at freelancing, Serena landed her first job on a local TV station that wanted the sensational, the fires, the murders, the muggings, the fatal highway crashes. She rode a news van for the station, wearing jeans and toting a video camera. Sometimes she experienced the excitement of the story, the thrill carried her along. But she longed to be in the studio, where she could report the news from a distance.

  When Serena saw no chance for advancement in her first position, and when Steel opened its doors from radio to TV, she was accepted into the Steel fold. Steel TV was a news and information station, with an intelligent worldwide slant. Serena had found her slot. Presenting mostly international news didn’t give her happy endings, but the events weren’t happening in her city, they were happening across the other side of the world, thus there was even more of a distance. Sometimes she even interviewed a visiting dignitary or an entertainment figure to add more human highlights to her programs. She’d become quite a local personality, even though she felt this might be due to her mother’s political prominence in the community, and felt her career had gone well.

  She hoped everything would continue to go well. This new show was, in Don’s words when he first asked her to do it, ‘a coup. She had to remember that. Even if Nick Fraser did mess with her head.

  Meeting Nick had scrambled her brain so much that she didn’t fall asleep right away, and she was awake for the storm that began after midnight. She watched lightning flash on her wall, then cringed while waiting for the crash of thunder. When it was still again she heard other noises that weren’t in this house.

  Slamming doors. Raised voices. Giggling laughter. Lusty moans. Her mother crying, “Don’t go this time, Stu.” The weeping that never stopped.

  Some images stood out from childhood. And that was one of them. Those times when her father was home. Nick reminded her so much of her father that she couldn’t stop thinking about either one of them.

  When the rage of the storm ended, all that was left was the gentle patter of the rain on her wooden deck, but she couldn’t go to sleep again. She was out of bed early, feeding Pascal and slipping into jeans and a white Steel T-shirt. As she braided her hair she knew she was keeping herself busy to stop herself from thinking about the list of things she didn’t care to think about. That list now had an addition: Nick Fraser.

  By nine-thirty Serena had stuffed her briefcase into the car and was on her way to Toronto. She pulled up in the Steel Tower parking lot at ten thirty-seven, hopefully at least thirty minutes before Nick. She wanted to see Don before she met Nick again.

  She took the elevator straight to the tenth floor. Don’s red-haired assistant, Patty-Jane Barker, sat in the middle of a huge foyer and she called through to Don to let him know Serena wanted to see him.

  Serena tapped on the door and entered the office. Even Don could appear small in the luxurious gold and burgundy surroundings.

  He gave her a huge grin. “Hi. How’s it going?”

  Serena pushed her hands deep into her rain jacket pockets. “Thanks to you, I have a co-host I don’t particularly want.”

  “Ah, but he’s good, Serena. You have to see his merit. Come here, with me.” Don beckoned her over to his computer. He tapp
ed a few keys. “Look at this. I got the rights to the film clip to show it in the commercials.”

  Nick’s face appeared on the screen and he was relaying a news report. “Pro-government troops.” there was a slight lurch of the picture, but Nick continued with his story. Blood dribbled from a wound on his face.

  Serena remembered the scar that made Nick appear heroic. She also remembered seeing her father reporting similar stories, with conflict raging around him.

  Don paused the video. “Battle scars. Nick won’t cave in.”

  Serena clenched her fists inside her pockets. “You’re comparing him to John?”

  “No.” Don looked sheepish. “But he has got an advantage.”

  “It’s not John’s fault that he’s ill.”

  “I know that. But he is, so we have to do what we can to replace him, and Nick’s an excellent replacement.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m always right.”

  Serena laughed and went down to her own office to meet Nick. He was outside her door, hands jammed into the leather jacket pockets, faded jeans hugging his long legs. A large paper cup of coffee stood on the carpeted floor.

  He leaned down to pick up the coffee. “You’re almost late.”

  “I went to see Don.”

  “To yell at him about me, I suppose.”

  “No. He showed me a video.”

  Nick chuckled. “Sounds like fun.”

  She held her key ready to open her office door. “It starred you.”

  “Yeah?”

  She glanced at his scar. “It was a How-to video. Keeping a story going with a bullet wound. Don’s got the rights.”

  He touched the scar. “The main thing was we got the story and the world saw it.”

  “What about you? Afterward?”

  He sipped from the big cup. “I passed out. My team panicked when they saw all the blood, and their clumsy efforts were enough to revive me. But after getting patched up I spent the night re-living the what-might-have-beens. And I have to admit I’ve relived them quite often.”