by Lori Foster
When he spoke at last, his words were a stiff staccato, not the usual velvety voice that was one of his greatest assets. When he wielded it like a weapon, it could bite deep and dark; if he wanted something, it glided along nerve endings like a cascade of warm honey. “I’ve already apologised to Grimes.”
That must have been an uncomfortable conversation. Grimes was rabidly conscious of his public image. Sabrina suspected he put a lot of money in influential pockets to control his media profile, since even the press he didn’t own tended to near canonise him in print.
“It was unprofessional to speak like that on the clock, in this building.” Nick made a faint, derisive noise in the back of his throat and again shifted his weight. With jerky movements, he pushed up his shirtsleeves. A painful-looking scar on his right forearm wound across smooth brown skin and compact muscle in a jagged line. “And I will admit that not closing the door when the hallway was crawling with interns was...ill-judged.”
If that was how he’d phrased his official grovel, she was surprised his job had survived this long.
Hania arched strong black brows at him. “Just a touch unfortunate.” She suddenly smacked her pen down. “Within twenty minutes of that video going live, he was on the phone to legal, requesting a copy of your contract.”
Several of the management team in the room moved abruptly, with a rustle of clothing and the squeak of leather cushions. Nick didn’t flinch, and Sabrina had to reluctantly admire his calm as he said, evenly, “Which expires very shortly anyway.”
Her contract was also up for renewal. She’d been hoping it would be replaced with a thicker one, for the new show, but that was looking increasingly doubtful. She’d thought it would be a tight race to the headline contract, until Nick had pulled a stunt a few months ago that still made her want to pick up the stapler on Hania’s desk and go to town on his treacherous bastard face. However, Grimes didn’t like bad press for his staff any more than he accepted it for himself, and her reputation had taken a battering.
If Grimes weren’t such a dickhead, they could cofound a support group for all the people roasted online because of Loose Lips over there.
Once more, Nick’s eyes briefly met hers, but she couldn’t read his expression. “I assume that the Friday episode of The Davenport Report will be the last.”
Sabrina was conscious of a surprisingly mixed emotion in her gut. A ribbon of anger wound tighter around her insides every time she thought about him. If he ended up on the front of the Media Times, advertising the new show, she suspected that her temper—which tended to be explosive when it came to the boil—would just about send her fizzing around the room like a rogue Roman candle. But within that, buried very, very deep, and very, very weak, was a tinge of empathy.
She couldn’t stand Nick Davenport. They’d been trading barbs for a long time; as far as she could remember, the inciting incident had been Nick’s arrogant behaviour at her first TV Awards. The jabs and jibes at each other on their current respective shows had started off relatively lighthearted, encouraged by both their teams, since the public had been immediately on board with the rivalry. They were the subject of dozens of memes on social media, and people tweeted her with Nick’s subtle insults on an almost daily basis. She assumed they did the same to him. As time had gone on, however, things between them had taken on a sharper edge, and what had begun as contemptuous amusement had soured into actual antipathy, coming to a head with his vile actions last summer.
If someone gave her a voodoo doll of Nick, she would happily insert a very large pin into a very sensitive place.
But.
She had worked like a busy little demon to get where she was. It had taken years to earn a lead presenter contract. Television was a brutal, competitive industry, with a lot of people jostling for a small number of places. Nick, for all his smarm and insincerity and back-stabbing, would have put in hard yards and overcome a lot of obstacles to have secured his own show in his thirties.
They’d devoted hundreds of evenings to their work, sacrificed a certain amount of social life, and invested heavily in many of the guests they interviewed and the stories they told.
The fact that all of that could be taken away in seconds, on the decision of one person, bloody sucked.
Hell.
She was having a moment of one-sided, near mateyness with Nick.
Fortunately, Hania’s next words sent any budding charitable feelings veering back into the more familiar territory of “Eh, just fire the prick.”
“Lionel has made it clear that he doesn’t want two evening shows splitting the ratings and would rather focus on launching one strong competitor for the market. With a senior presenter who can pull in a majority audience share. In every research poll until recently, the two of you topped the popularity vote.” Hania’s tone turned desert-dry as she eyed each of them in turn. “Commonly used descriptors included sexy, charming, likeable. Honest. Trustworthy.”
A dark flush started to heat Sabrina’s cheeks. No prizes guessing where this was going. She turned away from Nick, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her expression.
Everyone else had been sitting in such a funereal silence that she was getting a very ominous feeling about the outcome of this meeting, but Hania’s second-in-command offered up a wry “I don’t think anybody can accuse Nick of lacking honesty, at least.”
But as for the trustworthy label—
As her younger sister, Freddy, had once put it: “Fit as fuck, but slipperier than a wet bar of soap.”
“No,” she said now, and was surprised that her own voice was so level. “It’s my forehead that’s received the big red Liar stamp.”
And Freddy’s. The sudden memory of her sister’s face on that summer night, as they’d stood together holding an iPad, watching their family scandals being splashed across blog after blog, tightened Sabrina’s hands into fists.
It had been Nick’s choice—his deliberate, personal choice—to break the news on his show, in the most damaging way possible, that her famous playwright grandmother had actually been one of the most blatant plagiarisers of the past century. Sabrina’s family had profited for decades on Henrietta Carlton’s massive literary fraud, entirely unknowingly by Freddy and herself, wilfully in the case of their father.
Nick had jumped on the opportunity to whack her out of the running for the plum job, like a scheming mouse strutting around with a choice bit of cheese. He’d thrown all of them to the tabloid wolves, and many people, hungry to believe the worst, had vocally turned against them. Deceit and shame were always more interesting than simple ignorance.
Bad enough, the blow to her own career, but when it came to Freddy getting shit in the press—Sabrina had no desire for an actual baby at any time ever, but she was prepared to go full-on Mama Bear where her sister was concerned.
Nick had gone taut about the mouth now, his usual expression when the plagiarism fiasco raised its ugly head.
“The situation with your grandmother is also unfortunate.” Hania was the queen of understatement today. She pushed back from the desk a little and steepled her fingers in front of her chest. She was a full-figured and strikingly beautiful black woman in her fifties, with very snazzy taste in suits and long-lashed eyes that missed nothing. “There’s nothing quite like misbegotten wealth to rile up the British public.”
Sabrina’s father had controlled the finances from Henrietta’s estate since her death, and Sabrina hadn’t taken a single pound from him since she’d turned eighteen.
When it came to PR, mud spattered easily and stuck indelibly, but it was still a bloody joke that her own career was taking the hit for a piss-poor decision her grandma had made decades ago.
“Our polls indicate a statistically significant decline in your popularity with the public,” another member of the team chipped in, sounding apologetic. “You’ve lost some viewers in the past m
onths.”
Judging by the tone of comments on her Instagram, Sabrina suspected “some” was putting it kindly.
“Nor did it help matters when you decided to punch an A-list actor in the face in front of the press,” Hania said more severely, although there was definite empathy as well as censure in her expression. “Whatever the provocation.”
Sabrina winced.
To add another understatement to the pile, that had not been a good night. The discovery about her grandmother, closely followed by the revelation on a live TV broadcast that Joe Ferren—her long-time, on-and-off, film-star boyfriend—had graduated from charmingly unreliable to unfaithful dicksack.
However, despite his despicable behaviour—”I apologised, sincerely, to Ferren, and issued a public statement.” The flush was rising in her cheeks again. “I shouldn’t have hit him. I’ve always spoken out against violence on the show, and I stand by that. It’s never okay, and I strongly regret it.”
She was lucky he hadn’t pressed charges, and suspected he’d exercised his influence to make sure the matter went no further.
She was relieved.
She still never wanted to see him again.
Fortunately, he’d at last stopped with the guilt flowers. Swallowing hard, Sabrina gritted her teeth for a moment to keep her expression cool.
“To sum up, then,” Nick said, and the timbre of his voice still sounded...wrong. Mister Smooth a bit off his game. “Grimes wants a crowd-puller in the hot seat but is probably emailing my headshot to an assassin, and a number of sad sacks with TV licences think Sabrina is the most corrupt personality to grace their screens since Palpatine.” Had she just been compared in a work conversation to the Star Wars Dark Lord? “Job prospects at the network aren’t looking too flash for either of us.”
He was still unnaturally calm, but if they were both out on their backsides here, there was no way he’d take it that easily. She’d already had a front-row seat to the lengths Nick would go for his career prospects.
And while she might not sacrifice all fair play and human decency to score a contract, she wasn’t prepared to just sit back and let her work be yanked away from her, either, and she’d come to this meeting prepared to fight.
Almost unconsciously, she folded her arms, and Hania looked thoughtfully between their faces. There was a curious speculative quality in that look. Sabrina would go so far as to call it calculating.
“You’re both on shaky ground.” Like Nick, Hania’s composed response seemed to resonate with meaningful undercurrents. “But fortunately, the key word is ‘crowd-puller.’ The bottom line is the ratings, and where there’s bad publicity, there are also people tuning in.”
“Hoping for an even bigger crash and burn,” Sabrina muttered.
Hania looked over her shoulder and nodded, and a staffer by the door went out quietly.
As Sabrina watched him go, suspiciously, her gaze collided with Nick’s again, and again she pointedly turned away.
“Well?” A shade of exasperation was creeping into Nick’s demeanour as Hania dragged out the suspense.
Their boss started turning her pen in circles again. “You are correct in that you’ve both knocked yourselves out of contention for the evening show. That position will be offered elsewhere.”
Sabrina released a long breath, and Nick closed his eyes momentarily.
“So that’s it?” she said, with a slight feeling of unreality. Despite the setbacks since the summer, apparently she hadn’t really expected this to happen. “We’re both out?”
“Of the evening programming, yes. Your nights are going to be considerably more open.” Hania looked past Sabrina again, as the office door opened. “But if you agree to my suggestion, you’re also going to have to start getting up a lot earlier.”
Nick turned his head first, and his entire body went still.
She swung around and was greeted with her own smiling face on a full-length poster board. Her printed image had been placed back-to-back with Nick’s, and someone had done some excessive editing, because she’d never leaned on him in her life.
Her gaze travelled from their glossy heads to the sarcastic advertising copy scrawled across the cardboard: ’tis the season for peace and goodwill. And miracles. Wake Me Up London with Sabrina Carlton and Nick Davenport, weekdays at seven throughout December.
They broke the silence with an unusually united sentiment.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Sabrina physically retreated from the horrifying prospect.
“I hope that’s a bad joke.” Palpable outrage from Nick. His fingertips were digging hard enough into the arm of his chair that she could see his knuckles flexing. “I don’t mind the odd piece of human-interest filler—nobody wants doom and gloom 24/7 and there are people who deserve recognition—but the morning show has been egregious rubbish for years. If you seriously think I’m going to sit there and smile inanely while people with too much time on their hands argue about—what was one of their scintillating topics, the ethics of putting tutus on puppies?—you can think again. And why am I second billing on the poster?”
“Alphabetical and moral seniority,” Sabrina said breezily. He was so annoyed that she’d recovered a bit of composure in response. She inclined her head towards their chummy-looking cardboard selves. “And it pains me to state the obvious, but you’re literally the poster boy for inane smiles, Troy McClure. Bit late to change your brand now.”
Nick’s jaw had stopped twitching, but his eye picked up the slack.
From her seat close to the offending poster, a member of the social media team cleared her throat. “Er...is the plan to boost WMUL’s embarrassingly shit ratings by turning the set into a Hamlet-style bloodbath? Because it’ll be job well done in any scenario that puts them on the same couch.”
“I’ve worked for the network since I was twenty-one,” Nick said, slipping back into his shield of drawling amiability. It tended to net more wins. One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. “I’ve headlined alone for almost four years, and I’ve made a damn good job of it.”
“Yes, you have,” Hania agreed. “You’re excellent at your job. Witty, tenacious, attractive—the public accolades are spot-on.” Before Nick’s head could expand too far, she continued, “You also humiliated your boss in a public forum. If you wanted to keep your name on the evening billing, you should have exercised some discretion. You’re on such thin ice here that one false step is going to drop you right in it. I hope I’m making myself clear.”
She walked around her desk to sweep a glance up and down the poster board, before she leaned a companionable elbow on it. “Happily for us all, the public is fascinated with your obvious feud. You surmise correctly that Wake Me Up London is in a losing battle where the ratings are concerned. I have a feeling that the two of you could salvage that situation.”
Nick opened his mouth again, and Hania finished, “And you’ve got from the beginning of December until Christmas Eve to prove me right.”
Sabrina’s stomach did a sharp flip at the note in the other woman’s voice.
“On Christmas Eve, after a run of successful shows and a drastic reversal of WMUL’s ratings, you will appear to represent the show at Carols by Candlelight at the Royal St. Michael. After which, we will discuss the renewal of your contracts. However, if by then you prove my brilliant idea an abject failure, WMUL will be offered to Peter King.”
Nick made a slight, very speaking noise, and Sabrina just managed to keep her feelings from her face. King, a long-time presenter currently hosting The Arts Review, was an obnoxious prat.
There appeared to be no shortage of them around here.
“You can’t do that.” Her father’s stubborn gene came out and she couldn’t stop the last-ditch protest, but the implacability in Hania’s expression was clear.
“For all his other qualities,” Hania said, with a meaningf
ul look at Nick, “Lionel is a shrewd businessman, and he won’t slaughter a cash cow.” Charming. “But he’s also difficult to shift when he forms a judgment, and he’s currently not impressed with either of you. I’ve convinced him to give you one more chance. Do not let me down.” She relented a little as she studied their equally grim faces. “I have every faith that you can do this. You both have X-factor in spades, and a spark of professional genius, and I don’t use a commendation like that lightly.” Carefully flicking a piece of fluff from the jacket of her hot-pink suit, she added, “Who knows, you might even enjoy the challenge. Try not to actually kill each other in the process.”
Sabrina turned to look at Nick.
For long moments, they surveyed each other, Sabrina rapidly considering and discarding any alternative route here. A frown tugged at Nick’s brows as he, too, seemed to quick-fire debate the best course of action.
Then it was as if silent communication passed between them, so palpable that the words might have been carved into the frosty air.
“I’m not racking up my first all-encompassing professional failure because of you, you manipulative, selfish, back-stabbing dick.”
“I’ll walk any path necessary to get my career back on track, and I’ll drag you along kicking and screaming if I have to.”
Nick’s dark eyes glinted.
Sabrina sat up a little straighter.
Challenge accepted.
This wasn’t going to be pretty.
Don’t miss Headliners by Lucy Parker,
available wherever Carina Press books are sold.
www.CarinaPress.com
Copyright © 2019 by Laura Elliott
ISBN-13: 9781488085949
All Fired Up
Copyright © 2019 by Lori Foster
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