Love. Local. Latebreaking.: Book 1 in the newsroom romance series

by H. Laurence Lareau

  Jake and his mother’s expansive definition of family looked to be an understatement. Not only were all the people Karli had seen in the house pouring into the tent area from about three different doors, the tent already had several groups milling about some of the tables, apparently choosing seats.

  There were at least a dozen round tables all set with white tablecloths, artfully folded napkins, heavy silverware, and at least three glasses at each place setting. At one end of the tent—which had to cover every inch of an entire, huge back yard—Karli saw a long line of tables supporting silver swivel-top serving dishes, two carving stations staffed by knife-wielding women in chef’s whites and hats, and more kitchen staff in black cook’s uniforms and hats carrying huge trays of food to the buffet line.

  “Gabe,” she said as they walked through the surprisingly well heated tent to their table, “this is no family get-together. This is nicer than most wedding receptions.”

  “It’s no big secret, Karli, but it’s easy to forget that Jane and Jake are comfortable, to say the least,” Gabe replied. “Here in Des Moines, being that wealthy is not very socially acceptable. So they only let it show once in while, and then only with the people who matter most to them. Like on Thanksgiving, when they host this little family get-together.” As if by way of concluding, Gabe pulled out a chair for Karli and gestured her grandly into it.

  She settled into her seat—a real chair, not one of the uncomfortable folding chairs she expected to find under a big outdoor tent—spotted the ornately hand-lettered place card bearing her name, and looked up to smile at Gabe while he pulled his own chair out and sat.

  Before she could comment or even unfold her napkin, a server had snuck silently up on the side away from Gabe. “I see your glass is empty Miss Lewis,” he said. “May I get you something you haven’t tried yet? There are several interesting wines on offer tonight, all Gibson family favorites.” The server darted a glance at a note in his hand and continued. “Perhaps one of the Marlborough varieties, from New Zealand? We have an excellent pinot noir and a very refreshing Sauvignon blanc.”

  After Karli took the server’s advice and went with the Marlborough Sauvignon blanc—by special suggestion of Mr. Gibson—she leaned over to Gabe, who already felt like an old friend in this noisy throng. “There’s too much going on here. Who are all of these people—they can’t all be relatives, can they? And why am I at the table with the pretty name cards?”

  Gabe’s gentle smile was a reassuring comfort. “The people are Jane and Jake’s extended family, plus the folks they consider to be like family. Friends that Jane worked with at the Register and at Meredith publishing are here. That’s why I’m here—we worked together at both houses before she retired to her foundation and I went into my teaching career. And of course there are the people from her foundation and the organizations they fund, so that adds up.

  “Some of the folks from Jake’s studio are here, too.” He paused and gave Karli a twinkling sideways glance. “And as for why you’re at the table with the pretty place cards, that’s an answer that you would know better than me. I do know that Jake’s never had a woman at this table before. Females, yes, but never a woman his own age.”

  Karli’s face flushed as she hid a grimace behind a sip of wine. After a slight pause, she met Gabe’s calm, questioning gaze with a firm look of her own. “It seems to me that he runs through women pretty quickly.”

  Gabe’s eyebrows raised with a question, but he did not have time to ask it. Jane was speaking into a microphone that amplified her voice enough to quell conversations. “Now that everyone looks to have found a seat, I wanted to formally welcome you all to Thanksgiving dinner. Jake and I are so pleased each of you could be here. We have so very much to be thankful for, and you all top our lists. Before we start in on the food, let’s be thankful that Father Pellegrini can be with us again this year and ask for God’s blessing.”

  Jane passed the microphone to a whip-thin bespectacled priest who was dressed all in black with a Roman collar, and had a head of thinning, graying red hair. His face lit up as he looked around the tent and from table to table.

  He produced an iPad from the folds of his clothing, pronouncing it jokingly to be the Holy iPad, and referred to it as he proceeded through a long prayer giving thanks for all the works of most of the people present and requesting intercession for the people they helped and many others. Karli tuned out most of the prayer, which was mostly about a bunch of people she’d never heard of.

  The wine’s edge-softening warmth spread to her thoughts as she tried to process the intense quarter hour she’d been at the party. Jake had been utterly oblivious to the fact that he’d betrayed her immediately after luring her into thinking that he was passionate, caring, giving, and worth-tolerating-Des-Moines-for. And he’d been oblivious to the fact that he should acknowledge her fury. She was furious with him. And he hadn’t even had the decency to feel her fury, the jerk.

  Instead, he’d swept right up to her and cut off her chance to bust loose with the fury. Karli tried grinding her teeth to emphasize the fury she wanted to feel and realized that she’d just passed her teenage definition of intoxication: her teeth were starting to feel dentist-office numb.

  She quickly reviewed the facts so far—a reporter’s habit—while the priest droned on. Jake had greeted me like I was the whole reason for the party. He’d left a guest to sweep me up in that huge and wonderfully scented and apparently sincere hug. He gave me a special wine selection and a mini-lesson in wine tasting. He instructed the servers especially about me. He made sure I had a special escort to the head table—and not just an escort, a fellow journalist who is familiar with my work. One who’d told me I was the first woman

  Jake’s age who’d ever sat at the head table.

  Karli realized Gabe found that last fact to be more significant than she was comfortable acknowledging. But there it was. He was going out of his way to make her feel welcome. Nearly a hundred guests, and she was the one he was working hard to please.

  As she was pondering the situation, she looked over to the carts bearing the fried turkeys and carving boards to the buffet line. Then just as she was about to start complaining to herself that he had ditched her yet again, she felt a gentle touch on her shoulder and heard Jake’s voice whisper in her ear, “Sorry that took so long. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to move those things around. They’re hot. And heavy, too.”

  His smile was audible, and when she turned to see it, his face was still very close. His eyes were searching hers. If his eyes weren’t so intense, I wouldn’t be thinking about the flowers coming in handy again, she thought. Yet she found the insistent pressure of his penetrating gaze irresistible. The brown warmth of his eyes drew her attention away from the bustling tent, the priest’s ongoing ramble, Gabe’s avuncular presence. Her world shrank into the space spanning her eyes and his, while it expanded into the energy that charged the span with a tension that was intimate and sexual, yes, yet somehow more than simply lusty.

  In spite of herself, she returned the grin that crinkled his eyes with pleasure. Apparently taking her smile as the permission he’d been waiting for, Jake pulled out the chair next to Karli’s, whispered a thank you across her to Gabe, gestured to one of the wine servers for a glass of something, and composed himself to listen to the proceedings.

  The air set aswirl by his movements smelled like a mix of his usual spicy, masculine scent mixed with the heady whiff of wine on his breath.

  Karli watched his composed profile and tuned her attention in to listen to the priest, who seemed to be wrapping up.

  “Of course we are here to give thanks for and to celebrate all of the many good works and the people who have given us so many great acts of goodness and kindness to celebrate,” Father Pellegrini said with a gentle smile that encompassed the entire gathering. “Des Moines and Iowa and the United States and many places across the wide world are all better places for people to live because of them. Many more
children have been provided with enough food and clean water, the ability to worship freely and safely, greater educational opportunity, and access to health care.”

  As Karli joined in the applause, she saw the sincere and deeply felt emotion in the priest’s misty eyes. And seeing it, she felt a kindred warmth spread through her—not from the wine this time, though perhaps the wine had eased the way. The priest had described kindness and generosity that had the power to shape the future. And it was genuinely moving to think that children near and far were healthier and more safe—all because of the people gathered under this tent in the middle of flyover country. She felt glad to be among them.

  Father Pellegrini continued as the applause began to fade: “Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount that the person giving alms should not let the left hand know what the right is doing. It’s easy to think that sounds kind of silly—how can a person not know what both hands are doing?”

  The priest flopped his hands around, making faces at each in turn and looking worried about his iPad.

  He settled to a sudden and serious stillness. “Almsgiving has often been done for show, though. Like the company that makes the bits that drill holes for fracking oil loose from the ground. Although fracking involves known carcinogens and probably creates a multitude of health risks, the company made a donation to breast cancer research and then painted its drill bits pink.” He looked up from his notes on the iPad, his eyes sweeping the room with sternly furrowed brows. “There the left hand is doing something bad, and the right hand is trying to make a show of almsgiving to distract from and maybe compensate for the bad.

  “Even though Jane and Jake Gibson have both spent a lot of time writing and publishing the headlines, they’re never in them,” the priest continued, turning his smile to beam upon the two of them. “And they’ve even given me specific direction not to mention them tonight.” Here, the priest gave a winking, we’re-in-this-secret-together look to the gathering. “It’s a good thing I only have to take orders from the bishop.” Several chuckles bubbled up from various tables, and the priest continued, looking again at Jane and Jake. “Their left hands—their workaday lives, spent teaching at Drake and elsewhere, writing, making pictures for the news, teaching in the dojo—never hint that their foundation supports each of the efforts we celebrate here today.”

  Every table erupted in applause as Father Pellegrini gestured to the table where Karli sat alongside Jake and across from Jane. Jane smiled but raised her hands as though to shush the warm outpouring of gratitude.

  Seeing that it had no effect, Jake took his glass in his hand and walked to the microphone the priest had left. “Everyone, I’d like you to please raise your glasses.” The applause faded and the busy sounds of people turning to pick up glasses and shuffle chairs to more comfortable positions.

  “I’d like to thank Father Pellegrini for coming tonight and asking for the blessing.” Here he looked sternly at the priest and continued, “Of course, he won’t be back next year, as he seems incapable of even saying grace without following some pretty simple directions.” Laughter again bubbled through the room.

  “Most of all, I’d like to raise my own glass to each of you. Each one of you is here for a particular and very special reason, and each of you deserves the gratitude of everyone here. You do amazing things, and my mother and I are proud and thrilled to know you. So let us please drink to each other.” Jake raised his glass as the voices all called back, “To each other!”

  Once the speech was over, one of the catering staff directed the four farthest tables to the buffet, while the wine servers again circulated through the room. Jake remained standing, shaking hands with people on their way to the buffet, smiling and patting backs.

  Looking for something to occupy her hands while she waited her turn, Karli reached for her wine glass and found it full again. Gabe’s droopingly sympathetic face again smiled her way. “You look like you might be feeling a bit lost tonight,” he said, his face inviting Karli to unburden herself.

  “I didn’t want to be here at all,” Karli began, feeling the bubble of fury that had been contained within her begin to break out.

  She asked quickly to be excused, then stood and headed for the door back to the house.

  “Why didn’t you want to be here?” Jake’s voice whispered in her ear as he intercepted her hand and slipped it into his arm. He guided her away from the entrances to the house and toward a gap Karli hadn’t noticed before in the rearmost part of the tent. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.” They passed out of the tent and walked quickly down a curving path to a two-story carriage house that had obviously been built to match the main house. There were at least four double-width carriage doors along the building’s red-brick front. They entered a door that led into a heated garage where Karli saw the familiar Ford pickup parked near her and a sedan parked in its shadow.

  Jake led her up an open staircase at the side of the garage area to a huge room that spanned the full front-to-back space of the carriage house. Karli took in the room at a glance: the ceiling towered above ten foot-tall freestanding museum-style display walls that were scattered across the floor. Discreet cables of small, directional halogen lights criss-crossed fifteen or so feet above the floor, casting small pools of light onto specific parts of the walls. Plainly framed color and black-and-white photographic prints—landscapes and portraits, some in close groups, some alone—perched in the circles of light. So this is the studio Gabe was talking about when he said Jake’s studio-people came to the dinner.

  Jake gestured her to a sternly modern sofa in the center of the room and asked her to wait for a moment. His voice carried back over the display wall he walked behind, explaining that this was where he lived, separate from his mother’s house, yet still on the family property. “There’s room enough here for a whole family, really,” he said, returning from behind the wall with two full wine glasses. “It’s pretty much wasted on me.”

  Karli accepted her glass in silence, trying to push aside the spectacular tastes of the wines, the tempting smells of the food, the special-seating attention and . . . oh, everything else. All of that was simply distracting her from Jake’s betrayal. The bubble of Karli’s fury expanded suddenly to the bursting point, and it flashed forth from her eyes as she turned quickly toward Jake.

  “Why do I not want to be here?” she demanded. “How about you leading me on and making me think you were different from every other giant walking penis in the world and then turning out just like all the rest? That seems like enough to me.” She stood abruptly, setting her glass down on the low table and moving toward the door.

  “Karli, wait,” Jake called to her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  “The hell you don’t!” she spat back, turning to face him. “You slept with that bitch Sophia—right after that big romantic set-up to get me to kiss you.”

  “Karli,” Jake said with a calmness that irritated her even more, “I have never slept with Sophia. I have never kissed Sophia.”

  “Right.” Karli saw her own hands shaking with her rage. “That’s why she was all come-hither and talking about how you’d worked her out of her pajamas when you gave her the ride of shame to work last week. Don’t insult me with bullshit lies. I heard her myself.”

  “Pajamas?” Jake’s brow creased as he searched his memory. Then, “Oh! Holy fire, Karli—she was talking about a gi!

  I loaned her a gi, when she came to train at the karate studio. And I didn’t work her out of it. She worked out in it. She wanted to do some weapons-disarming training for the ride-alongs we have to do with cops on the heroin series, so I invited her to train with us. That’s all that was. She came to the studio for a workout.”

  “Gi? What the hell are you talking about?” Karli shrilled. “Sleeping with her in your studio doesn’t make it not sleeping with her!”

  “No, Karli, I didn’t sleep with her anywhere,” Jake said. “I have a karate studio. She wanted to learn karate,
so she came to the karate studio. I loaned her a gi—a karate uniform—which looks kind of like white pajamas.”

  “What do you mean you have a karate studio?” Karli asked, confused by this bizarre and unexpected explanation. “This is a studio, right here, with all the pictures on the walls. Studio, see?” she asked, gesturing to indicate the room’s many displayed photographs. “And why would she spend the night in a karate studio rather than here, anyway?”

  “She didn’t spend the night, Karli,” Jake explained. “Her car was acting up on the way to the dojo, so she had to take it in for service the next morning. I offered to meet her at the garage and give her a lift in to work.”

  “Why do you even have a karate thing?” Karli’s diminishing anger was now focused on the nonsense explanations he was offering. “Photogs have photography studios. Nobody has a karate studio.”

  Jake chuckled into his lap, shaking his head, then looked up at Karli with an inadequately suppressed grin. “I have a karate studio because I’ve learned enough karate to want to share it.

  It’s a way to make the world a more peaceful, safer, and healthier place. And it’s a path many people choose to learn about how they can serve others.” He rose from his seat and gestured Karli to come around one of the display walls.

  “Darrin trained in my karate studio for a few years,” he said gently, indicating a lone picture occupying the exact center of a display wall. A tinsel-smiling and sweaty Darrin beamed from the picture, holding a trophy topped by a little gold-colored karate man doing a kick. “He probably wasn’t aware of it, but he served everyone else in the dojo each training session. When he was there, everyone shared his joy, everyone laughed more, everyone trained harder, and everyone learned more. He was a really special kid.” Jake’s hand reached toward the picture as though to touch it, but he held it back short of the glass, leaving only his shadow over the photo.