Just This Night

by Mari Madison

thirty-four

  BETH

  There she is, the girl on fire!”

  I looked up to see Richard walk into the hospital room the next afternoon, dressed in a pair of slouchy jeans and a plain blue T-shirt. It was funny; I’d never seen him outside the newsroom setting before, without a suit and tie. He was actually kind of handsome in casual clothes.

  “Sorry,” he said, sitting down at my bedside. “Bad joke.”

  I snorted. “It’s okay. I’m in need of jokes—bad or otherwise. This place is boring as hell. And if I eat one more tub of Jell-O I’m going to start wobbling myself.”

  “When are they springing you?”

  “Probably tomorrow morning, if all checks out. Why, you miss me?”

  “Desperately,” he assured me with a grin. Then his face sobered. “But we’ll live. You take as much time as you need. I’ve pulled Stephanie back into the rotation until you’re ready to come back. And, shockingly, she’s actually been doing a decent job. Maybe she’s learned her lesson.”

  “Oh yeah,” I muttered. “She’s learned all right.”

  Richard’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I bit my lower lip, glancing over at him. I didn’t want to tell him, but Mac insisted that if I didn’t, he would. She’d gone too far this time. And she needed to be made accountable. If not by the police—I still wasn’t ready to go there—at least on the job.

  “Look, Richard,” I started. “About Stephanie . . .”

  And so I told him. About her kicking me out of the apartment, about her sabotages at work, about the blue hairspray and the ants. He listened without interruption and when I had finished, he gave a long sigh, raking a hand through his hair.

  “Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked. “I mean from the beginning?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t want to cause waves. I didn’t want you to doubt your decision to put me on dayside. I figured I could deal with it.”

  “Yeah, well, next time remember that’s my job. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” He snorted. “Well, that’s why they should anyway. In any case, this is not acceptable and I’m sorry you had to go through it. I promise you I will take this to the board immediately after I leave here and we will take action.” He gave me a brisk nod. “It ends here, Beth. I promise.”

  I nodded, feeling tears spring to my eyes as an overwhelming relief washed over me. I’d been so scared to come clean for so long and now it felt so good to have everything out in the open. To know it was over at last.

  “Thank you,” I said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t come to you sooner.”

  “My door is always open,” Richard assured me. “You have any more problems with anyone else here, you come to me first and I will take care of it.” He gave me a sympathetic smile. “You’re an important part of the News 9 team,” he told me. “And I’m not going to lose you.”

  “Does this mean . . .” I drew in a breath. “That the dayside position is mine?” I asked. “I mean, permanently?”

  To my surprise, Richard burst out laughing. “Sorry,” he added, after catching my look. “I just . . . were you waiting for me to tell you that all this time? I decided that after your first day on the job—when you discovered that gas leak. There was no question in my mind you would be able to do the job. Sorry, I should have mentioned it earlier.”

  Relief washed over me in waves. I had the job. The job was mine. No one could take it away. And the sabotages would be over forever. It was like a dream come true.

  Or it would be, once I reshot the Alvarez interview. But Richard didn’t need to know about that until it was signed, sealed, and delivered.

  “Now, how are things working out with Jake?” Richard asked. “His trial run is about over, too. Do you want to keep working with him? Or should I put you with someone else?”

  I drew in a breath. “Actually,” I said, “I think Mac’s working out just fine.”

  * * *

  Ring!

  The shrill sound of my cell phone broke me from a deep slumber early that Sunday morning and I groaned as I realized I’d left the device on the kitchen counter and would have to get out of my comfy bed to answer it. At first I considered just letting it go to voice mail, but on the rare chance that it could be Dante Alvarez, finally returning my calls, I forced myself out of bed.

  It had been four days since the interview that had ended with the fire ant attack and the erased tape and I’d been in bed for most of them. Richard had given me the week off to recover, saying I could come back whenever I was ready, that there was no rush at all. I appreciated his gesture, but I had a sense of urgency that he didn’t. One way or another, I needed to get that interview rescheduled.

  Unfortunately that was proving easier said than done. Every morning I would try to reach the reclusive hacker, but every call had gone to voice mail and he hadn’t returned a single one. One morning I’d even driven down to the warehouse where I had last met with him, hoping he might still be shacking up there. But he was long gone—no sign he’d ever been there at all.

  And when I called him again yesterday, his cell phone had been disconnected, severing my last possible hope.

  But there will be other stories, I told myself. Other opportunities to prove yourself. And at least now the saboteur has been dealt with.

  Immediately after leaving my hospital room Richard had gone to the powers that be and, as promised, launched an investigation on Stephanie. A few hours later he called me back to inform me that my former roommate had been escorted from the building and was no longer an employee of News 9. It seemed that while she had denied the charges, a cursory search of her locker turned up an empty jar of honey and a bottle of blue hair dye—all the evidence Richard needed to get her out the door.

  Mac still thought I should call the police as well. But after much soul searching, I decided against it. The last thing I needed was for this kind of Real House Reporters of San Diego drama to go viral—my serious journalistic career reduced to nothing more than tabloid fodder for the masses. After all, someday I might want a new job. Maybe with a network or a national news show. And I didn’t want them to Google my name and find a real mess attached to it.

  Instead, I would take the high road. I would move forward. And just be glad that it was over at last.

  The phone rang again. “Okay, okay, I’m up!” I muttered, running to the kitchen. “Hello?” I asked into the receiver after pressing accept.

  Please be Dante Alvarez. Please, please be Dante Alvarez.

  “Hi, Beth!” The voice on the other end was young, excited. Definitely not that of the infamous hacker. It was also somewhat familiar, though in my half-awake state I couldn’t quite place it.

  “Hi . . . Who’s this?” I asked groggily.

  “It’s Ashley!” the voice chirped. “Me and Daddy are going to see the snow! And we wanted you to come with us! Do you want to come with us, Beth? Do you want to? ’Cause I really want you to. And Daddy says he does, too! Daddy says—”

  Her chatter broke off mid-sentence and I heard a shuffling on the other end of the line. A moment later, Mac’s rich baritone voice broke through.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, sounding just as sexy over the phone as he did in real life. “I told her to wait until at least eight to call you. But she found my phone while I was in the shower. Sorry if she woke you.”

  My mind involuntarily treated me to a vision of Mac all soapy and naked, with warm water sluicing down his skin. I stifled a groan. “It’s cool,” I assured him. “I’m definitely up.”

  I could almost hear his smile on the other end of the phone. “Great,” he said. “Anyway, Ashley has not stopped talking about going to find snow in California since you brought it up. So I thought maybe it was time to make that happen. If you’re feeling up to it, that is,” he added quickly. “And you don’t have any other plans . . .”

  I grinned goofily. Other plans? Hell, if I had had royal tea scheduled at Buckingham palace that afterno
on, I would have canceled with the queen.

  “I’m feeling much better,” I assured him. “And no, I don’t have anything big going on today.”

  “Awesome. Sadie and her kids are going to meet us up there, but I can pick you up. Can you be ready in an hour?”

  I glanced at the mirror—at my bed head hair and pajamas. “Can you give me an hour and a half?”

  “You can have as much time as you need, sweetheart.”

  My stomach flip-flopped. “Actually an hour should be fine,” I corrected, not wanting to have to wait a minute longer than necessary to see his handsome face. “Just beep when you’re outside and I’ll come right out.”

  I rattled off the directions to my new apartment, then hung up the phone, my heart beating so rapidly in my chest it was hard to breathe. All my earlier sleepiness had vanished and I was about ready to do cartwheels across the living room floor. I thought back to the last time I’d seen him, after waking up in the hospital. All the things he’d said, all the promises he’d made. The butterflies in my stomach flitted madly.

  “Everything okay?”

  I glanced over to see Piper, peeking out from her bedroom doorway, a curious expression on her face.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Sorry if I woke you. I left my phone out here last night by mistake.”

  “No problem. I needed to get up anyway.” Piper assured me. She paused, then added, “So was it him? Did he call?”

  She meant Dante Alvarez, of course. Since the fire ant incident, I’d told her everything that had gone down and she had been more than properly horrified on my behalf. Which was nice, actually. Nice to have someone supportive at home.

  “Unfortunately not,” I said. “I think that ship has sailed.” I looked her over, realizing she was fully dressed. “Are you working today?” I asked, a little surprised. I thought she’d been doing the Monday through Friday shift.

  “Sort of,” she said, looking a little sheepish. “Tommy, the weekend producer, told me I could come in and write mock scripts for the newscast as kind of an audition. You know, in case a writing position ever opened up.”

  I gave a low whistle. “You are seriously the most hardworking person at News 9. You know that, right?”

  Piper blushed. “Yeah, well, maybe if I’m lucky someone besides you will notice that someday.”

  “They will,” I assured her. “And if they don’t, I’ll tell them myself!”

  She grinned. “So if it wasn’t the reclusive hacker on the phone, was it at least the sexy photographer?”

  Now it was my turn to blush. The Dante Alvarez tale was not the only one I’d shared with her over drinks last night. “It was indeed,” I confessed. “He asked me to go to the mountains to find some snow.”

  “Nice!” Piper exclaimed. “A real date!”

  “I don’t know about that. I mean, his four-year-old will be there. Not to mention his sister.”

  “Which makes it even a bigger deal, right? I mean, a family outing? That’s so much more intense than just some dinner and a movie.”

  I smiled goofily, I couldn’t help it. “I hope you’re right,” I said. “’Cause I really like him, Piper. I didn’t want to admit it at first—even to myself. But I really do. And I really want this to happen.”

  “Then make it happen!” Piper declared. “I mean, hell. Surely if you can get the elusive Dante Alvarez to agree to be interviewed, you can get little old Jake MacDonald to fall in love with you.”

  I laughed. “Well, I promise you this, I’m going to give it my best shot!”

  thirty-five

  MAC

  Are you ready yet, Daddy?”

  I reluctantly pulled away from the mirror at the sound of my daughter’s voice, asking the same question she’d been asking for about ten minutes now. I needed to get ahold of myself—I’d changed outfits three times already—like I was a freaking chick or something. It was beginning to get ridiculous.

  It’s just a trip to the mountains, I scolded myself. Not some fancy opera.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if Beth hadn’t seen me in casual attire before. Hell, half the time I showed up to work in a plain old T-shirt and shorts. Still, the state of some of my clothes—especially the warm winter ones that I’d boxed up during the move to sunny California, was beyond pitiful. It seemed like every sweater I grabbed had at least one rip in it and the soles of every pair of boots seemed to be coming apart.

  In the end, I decided to go ultra casual: Boston Bruins sweatshirt and baggy jeans, with a pair of hiking boots and a black woolen hat to complete the ensemble. A look that probably said, I tried really hard to look like I wasn’t trying at all.

  “Yes, I’m ready, you impatient little munchkin,” I said, grabbing her and tickling her ribs. She squealed and struggled to get away.

  “I’m not a munchkin!” she declared. “I’m an ice queen!”

  And she looked like one, too, all decked out in her powder blue Frozen jacket and matching hat and mittens. It was clear who took priority in this house when it came to our clothing budget.

  “Let it go, Queen Elsa, let it go,” I teased.

  “No! Let me go!”

  “If you insist.” I released her. “Now . . . race you to the car!”

  Soon we were on our way, headed toward Beth’s new apartment. As we grew closer, a strange feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. But it wasn’t the uneasy feeling I had expected; rather more like butterflies. Which was beyond crazy; I saw this woman nearly every day of my life. Why was I suddenly so nervous?

  Because this was a step, I realized. A major step in our friendship—relationship—whatever you wanted to call it. I had invited her to go somewhere with me and my daughter. How was she going to take such an offer? Like it was no big deal? Or was she right now on that Internet site where you could design your own wedding rings?

  The butterflies flew away and in their place a hollow panic threatened to swallow me whole. Because suddenly I wasn’t sure which scenario I preferred. After all, I’d told her I wanted us to take a chance. But actually taking that chance was still beyond terrifying. What if it didn’t work out? What if I said something stupid, or panicked and pushed her away again? What if I ruined the fragile friendship we’d created together by pushing for something more? What would I tell Ashley if I screwed this all up, and ended up sending Beth fleeing from our lives forever?

  But then my mind flashed back to the scene in the ladies’ locker room at the station. Beth on the floor, struggling to breathe. The fear in my heart at the real possibility that I was about to lose her forever, without ever having told her how I felt. At that moment, when she’d opened up those big brown eyes of hers and stared up at me, like I was some kind of hero, I would have done anything in the world to keep her by my side.

  Beth was everything I wanted in a woman. Smart, kind, fun-loving. She knew when to be playful and when to get to work. She was fair, honest, sweet—and yet unstoppable when it came to going after what she wanted. Not the type of girl who would sit back and wait for it to come to her.

  No wonder my daughter thought she was some kind of rock star. Sometimes Ash was a lot smarter than her dear old dad. Or at least less pigheaded.

  A few minutes later we pulled up to her new apartment and I beeped the horn as she’d instructed me to do, even though half of me wanted to play the real gentleman and go up to the door and ring the bell. But before I could pop out of the car, she came rushing out, waving to us excitedly.

  I drew in a breath. In making my list of her good qualities earlier, I’d somehow forgotten to add hot beyond belief to the top of it, and I felt a stirring in my stomach just looking at her now. She was dressed casually—just a fuzzy gray sweater with flecks of glitter in the yarn over a pair of plain black sweatpants. On her feet, she wore sensible hiking boots and she held a pair of red woolen mittens in her hands. I groaned. I’d always had a thing for a girl in mittens. And I had to admit, the outfit as a whole was even more enticing than those leather pants an
d stiletto heels she’d had on earlier in the week. It was a good thing, I realized, that my daughter was in the car, forcing me to behave myself. Because otherwise I was pretty sure we’d never make it to the mountain.

  “A sled!” Ashley exclaimed suddenly, breaking through my fantasies. “Look, Daddy! Beth has a sled! That’s so cool!”

  I had to agree—and not just about the sled, either.

  “I think you just made my daughter’s life,” I teased as I popped out of driver’s side door to take the sled from her and load it into the back of the truck.

  Beth grinned shyly. “She can thank my new roommate,” she explained. “She evidently bought it last winter when she took some of the kids from her group home job up to Big Bear for the weekend. I figured it might come in handy today.”

  “What do you think, ice queen?” I asked my daughter as we got into the front of the SUV. “You think we might be able to put that sled to good use?”

  “I’m going to go find the biggest hill!” Ashley exclaimed. “And I’m going to go down it really, really, really fast!”

  I shot a grin at Beth, who, in turn smiled back at me. As my daughter chattered on and on in the backseat about what she was going to do with the sled in great detail, I pulled out from the apartment complex and headed for the freeway, going east to hit the mountains.

  It was still early and there were hardly any other cars on the road so we were able to make it to the foothills in good time. As we ascended the windy mountain road, Ashley shrieked in delight as a light dusting began to fall onto our windshield. I turned on the wipers, marveling at the idea that we could go from a beach paradise to a winter wonderland in only an hour. California was definitely unique in that regard. And, I had to admit, pretty cool.

  Finally, we reached our destination—a huge field, covered in snow, with several small hills to sled down. There were already a couple dozen cars pulled up to the side of the road, and from here I could see a mass of children running wild through the snow.

  “I guess this is the place,” I said, turning to Ashley. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to go to the beach?”