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

by H. Laurence Lareau

  Stunned, Karli took in the photo. It was no snapshot. It captured the tournament atmosphere in the out-of-focus background; the sharp-edged focus on the boy pulled him out of the background along with his proud achievement. Fresh sweat beaded the boy’s forehead and threatened to drip from an eyebrow and into his eye. Light poured from an out-of-frame source and onto the boy’s shoulders and back, while a different light dropped shadows onto his cheek and jaw from the highlighted cheek bones and nose.

  “So you were his karate teacher? That’s how you knew Darrin?” It was obvious, but Karli needed to hear it out loud so she could jiggle this new information into place. Jake Gibson was a puzzle she hadn’t been able to piece together yet, and here was a whole new part of the picture atop the box.

  And he hadn’t slept with Sophia after all.

  Karli glanced silently at Jake’s face, then moved on around the remaining walls, taking in the pictures—one wall held a group showing Jane one-on-one with children of different ages, laughing, reading, playing, working with pencil and paper. The photos were composed and shot to show the intensity she brought to each child in each situation. She was completely present for each of those kids, going with them into whatever adventure they were having.

  Karli’s breath caught suddenly as she turned a corner to find two facing display walls covered with photos of herself. There she was, listening to a middle-aged man in one of the State Fair pavilions, gazing at an unseen speaker with her hand on her chin, looking earnestly at her reporter’s notebook amid the smoking remains of an office block that burned to the ground, smiling with a group of farmers alongside a harvested corn field. She saw in each picture a different part of her own personality, illuminated in ways nobody had ever shown her before, from the compassionate listener to the driven and focused career reporter. At first she looked at the pictures with the deliberate detachment she had learned to use when watching recordings of her reports. She was careful to evaluate how she held herself and whether or not she exhibited the earnestness and attention that she truly tried to bring to each of her stories.

  And then she turned and saw the photo collage of her at the covered bridge, smiling back over her shoulder with the soft-focus bridge in the background, angled away from the daylit opening of the bridge and toward the great interior support timbers, close-up and just cold enough for the color to show in her cheeks, even in a subtly black-and-white image. Just seeing the images brought her suddenly back to the bridge, to the moment when she raised herself on tiptoe, toward Jake’s solemn face, to their kiss. Her knees felt suddenly soft, her legs tingly, and she caught her breath again.

  That moment had not, after all, been a lie. That passion, that intimacy, that breathtaking surge of passion had all been real. Karli closed her eyes to recapture the soft, firm wetness of the kiss, the tender bite on Jake’s lip eliciting a soft inhalation from him, the pounding pulse that filled her head and chest and tender regions. She closed her eyes and the contemplative silence they’d both fallen into during the car ride back to Des Moines swept back over her, subsuming her awareness of her surroundings into a calm savoring of the sensations and exploration of the connection.

  The warmth of Jake’s gently open hand pressing between her shoulder blades began to swing her back to the present, through a muzzy blur of arousal and alcohol. She turned her face toward his and saw something in his warm brown eyes that sparked a connection, an intimacy. And she recognized it as the understanding that he brought to the video he shot for her stories, the pictures he had taken of her, and to their conversations. Jake tried always to understand her, and these pictures showed that he understood many aspects of her at least as well as she understood herself. How does he see me so clearly? she wondered.

  As Jake opened his mouth to begin saying . . . something . . . Karli reached up and placed her index finger on his full lips, shushing him with a faint sh. Touching the warm firmness of his lips made her quiver with quick arousal, and the tingling shudder that ran down and back up her legs urged her on. She rose on tiptoe, her hand sliding along Jake’s chiseled jawline and around the back of his neck so she could pull those full lips down to hers. She pressed the length of her body along his, feeling his hard stomach and legs and hips against her own. She felt his breath as he bent to her mouth, then their lips met with an insistent gentleness and parted together as their tongues met and moved together with rhythmic wetness. Her eyes fluttered shut as she was swept away on waves of intoxicating sensation.

  The kiss intensified Karli’s world, making the exploratory meeting of their mouths its center. Its outermost boundaries were the melding contours of their bodies, the blood pounding through her heavily breathing breast and everywhere she pressed herself against Jake’s tall, masculine hardness. His mouth tasted of the amazing wine he’d given her, and his breath’s sweet alcohol fumes mingled with his skin’s spicy scent to flavor the air that swirled around their impassioned breathing. Gravity found dizzying new directions, pulling her legs and hips closer against Jake while tilting her head and neck back into almost a dance-couple’s dip.

  The sensitive nerves in Karli’s neck lit up with electric chill as Jake’s hand slid along her throat, his thumb and fingers covering the pulsing arteries on each side. The gentleness did no more than graze and then caress her skin. Electricity coursed between her tensing breasts, the growing wetness between her legs, her lips and tongue and neck and breath and pulse, criss-crossing and connecting each sensation.

  As she and Jake gradually pulled apart from one another, Karli felt slightly off-balance, made dizzy not only by the surges of sensation and hormones and also by the substantial amount of wine she had consumed in the last hour. Jake’s strong arms steadied her as each of them opened and connected startled eyes.

  “Shit,” Karli said. “I’m lost. That was amazing.”

  “You know,” Jake said, “you’re really good at that. Really good.”

  “I didn’t expect anything like that . . . like that intensity,” Karli said, reaching tentatively toward Jake, as though the moment, the passion, were fragile and could be broken by the wrong touch.

  Jake took her hand and raised it back to his lips, delicately kissing her fingertips, then moving his eyes back to hers as his mouth formed a rascal’s grin. She felt his breath on her fingers as, with a deep rasp to his whisper, he asked, “Do you still wish you hadn’t come to my party?”

  He moved her hand away from his mouth and moved gently toward her face again. This kiss was gentler, and felt for just a moment as though it could be nearly chaste. Their slight mutual hesitation ended all at once, and they were thrust back into the formless world of their passion.

  After another breathless parting, Karli was swept away by the look of irresistible hunger in Jake’s eyes. It ended when he shook his head and took a deep, quivering breath. “Karli, I hate to say this more than you can imagine, but I have to get back to the guests.”

  Karli saw him begin to fidget, picking up their wine glasses and looking toward the hidden part of his ‘apartment’ with a deep sigh, then tilting his head toward the stairs going back down to the ground floor.

  “Do we have to go right now?” Karli asked, reluctantly accepting her wine glass back from Jake. “I mean, you live here, don’t you? This is your place, right?”

  Karli twitched in surprise as Jake leaned suddenly to her ear, where she felt his breath carry an almost inaudible whisper. “I want you,” he said. “Now.” And there was a pause as both he and Karli felt that statement’s effect on their pulses. “But you are one of the big reasons I invited many of tonight’s guests. I want to run you by the Board and get everyone on my side.” Karli realized that he’d been ushering her toward the stairs as he said this, so he was unable to see the questioning eyebrow she lifted in response to his last statement.

  She meant to follow up with questions about the Board, but as soon as they left the warmth of the carriage house and went out into the crisp winter coldness, a tuxedo-clad man
walking toward them from the huge tent spotted them and called out. “Mr. Gibson, would you have a moment to provide some direction about the wine service? We’re having more requests for the Pouilly-Fuissé than we’d anticipated, and we need to know if we should open more or if we should suggest alternatives.”

  “Do we have enough to serve everyone who’s asking?” Jake asked.

  “Your supply is ample, Mr. Gibson.”

  “Then please open as much as is necessary to keep it going as long as people are asking for it,” Jake said easily. Then he turned to Karli. “Ms. Lewis, shall we return to the guests? I hear there’s plenty of wine to keep the party going.” Karli smiled back at his boyish grin and laced her arm through the one he extended for her.

  They walked back into the big white tent and resumed their place-carded seats. As she sat down, Gabe leaned over to her with a grin. “It’s good to have you back and looking a bit more cheerful. And it’s probably the cold outside that put all that color in your cheeks, right?” Karli felt her cheeks flushing hot, but Gabe said no more. He just gave her a kind wink and suggested by gesture that they should take their plates to the buffet line. As she rose to walk with him, she noticed that Jake’s distinctive smell lingered just below her nose.

  As the evening progressed, Karli found herself sitting with a series of one or two people at a time, from Gabe and the priest to perfect strangers to three young siblings—the oldest might have been 7 years old—who earnestly shared their opinions about which kind of pie Karli should have more of. Being accustomed to meeting strangers and jumping right into conversations with them, Karli was perfectly comfortable making so many new friends in a single evening. And she often caught Jake’s eye as he talked his way through a series of similar encounters. Each time, she felt a flutter as though they had just kissed a moment ago, even though they were separated by the crowd that heaved through the room, re-focusing from turkey to dessert and from one table to the next.

  Finally, nearly everyone was gone from the party, though it looked like at least two families were staying the night. Jake broke free from exchanging good-byes with a departing couple and wound his way through the clean-up crew toward Karli, who was hugging Gabe good-bye as though they’d known each other for years.

  “I’m afraid I have to go make up the guest beds in my place now, Karli,” Jake said. “Jane has a houseful, and I’m catching the overflow.” Again, he extended his arm, and again she laced her arm through his. “May I walk you to your car?”

  Karli nodded as they walked through the house to retrieve her coat, a bit disappointed that she and Jake wouldn’t be taking up where they had left off. Jake grabbed an old barn coat for himself, and they went together out into the cold darkness of Thanksgiving night. The quiet blocks to Karli’s Saab seemed to her much longer in the darkness than they had when she was coming to the party. And I am not mad any more, either, Karli thought to herself in mild surprise. Jake didn’t sleep with Sophia after kissing me. And he takes pictures of me that are more revealing than if I had my clothes off. And he makes me want to take my clothes off. Despite the cold, Karli felt her cheeks flare hot again. Kissing him is not like kissing other guys has ever been. I’ve never been kissed like that before. What is happening?

  She looked up at Jake’s face, walking tall beside her, and wondered what he was thinking. “Is this your car?” he suddenly asked. “It’s a Saab, right?” Karli swept her eyes away from his face and toward the car he indicated.

  “Um, yeah, that’s mine,” she said, stammering as she came out of her thoughts and into the moment. She began patting her pockets to find where she’d put her keys, then felt herself turned and pressed back against the still-closed door of her car.

  Jake’s body pressed against her and his kiss came suddenly and without preamble. Her hands found his coat and pulled Jake against her more closely. She could feel the hardness pressing between her hip bones. The kissing lasted longer and longer and did not grow old. They finally paused, and, breathing hard, Karli whispered, “I want you.”

  “And I want you,” Jake whispered through heavy breath as he bent to lightly run his teeth along her neck. “But not tonight. I have to go back and take care of people.” Karli saw him pull away from her as though it took real effort. He said, “This is absolutely the best—certainly the most intense—Thanksgiving Day ever.”

  “So I should go now?” Karli asked reluctantly, her weight coming off the car and swaying toward Jake.

  “Well, yeah, I think that’s what has to happen,” Jake said, bending to catch her by the shoulders and brush his lips ever so lightly across hers.

  Karli opened her eyes yet again to find Jake’s locked on hers. “I don’t want you to go,” he breathed.

  “Making out in my car would be pretty juvenile, though, wouldn’t it?” Karli asked in a moment of regretful lucidity.

  Jake quirked a grin in response. “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “What kind of guy plies a woman with fancy wine and great food, brings the hot kissing, and then doesn’t close the deal?” Karli was surprised that she’d come right out and said what was on her mind. She smiled, and she felt the glittering of the street lights in her eyes.

  Jake dropped his head and chuckled into his coat. Karli watched closely as he raised his eyes back to hers, the erotic hunger flashing deeply within them. “The kind who’s looking for an even better deal, I guess.” He raised his eyebrows and gave her a naughty, twinkling look. “Or maybe just the kind who doesn’t plan sleeping arrangements very well.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Savery Hotel, downtown Des Moines

  Late Monday, December 2

  “Complacency is what kills top-rated newsrooms, Karli, and even though you’re relatively new here, you’re showing some of the signs.” Karli furrowed her eyebrows and frowned her lips in her best impression of news consultant John Bielfeldt, then relaxed to an expression of appalled indignation. “Really, he totally had the balls to tell me that I’m complacent here.” She drank from her third amaretto stone sour, made her own frown at the fact that it was empty except for ice, then looked around to catch the bartender’s eye.

  Wynton Marsalis blew his horn through the bar’s speakers, laying down a calm, clear music bed for the gripe session.

  “So what about your day showed complacency—the fact that you and Max hustled all the way out to BFE and back with stops along the way and managed to put together a huge story on how dangerous frozen ponds are? Not just with community reaction about those poor boys, but with ag experts AND an emergency room doctor?” Bailey was equally indignant. She had worked the phones for parts of the story and had seen the whole package come together on the air earlier that evening.

  “He never mentioned anything about that story,” Karli replied. “He picked on the little stand-up-and-sound-bite story I did on that car crash in Norwalk on the way back.” Here Karli returned to her impression of the consultant: “This stand-up illustrates the problem. You’re not doing anything to draw the viewer’s eye to the visual story, you’re not engaged with anything. It’s just you saying that police aren’t releasing names until families are notified.”

  “I didn’t want to sound defensive,” Karli said in her own voice. “But this was a car crash story. The mess had been cleaned up by the time we got there, we only had a few minutes to get anything at all on video and get back to the station so we could get it on the air. So I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yes,” Bailey said. “We all know that active stand-ups are better. They want us more involved in the story. But is the last-minute non-fatal crash story that you don’t even think will air worth all that effort?”

  “I don’t know,” Karli said. “The guy wants to be a college journalism professor or something. He doesn’t seem to understand that we work in the real world and with real time pressures.”

  Mary Rose leaned in with a raised finger and an unfocused look in her eyes. After barely camouflaging a belch, she looked direc
tly at Karli and spoke: “He isn’t paid to tell us we’re doing a fine job. Really, ladies, if he can’t tell us to get all impossible, he goes broke. And you don’t have to look at his cufflinks very long to understand that he does NOT want to go broke.”

  “I can totally see that about the frustrated professor,” Bailey said. “We’re all his little protégés, and he’s going to teach us about reporting inspirational stories.” Here she raised her wine glass and tried ineffectually to make her thin red eyebrows look gray and bushy like the consultant’s.

  “Think about the stories that had the biggest effect on you,” she said in her best impression of a masculine baritone. “Each one of them was inspirational. There are three characteristics of every inspirational message. The message has to be Understandable, Memorable, and Emotional.”

  Karli and Mary Rose cheered Bailey’s impression with delighted laughter. They could hear the capital letters in her pacing and emphasis. Encouraged by the warm reception, Bailey continued, á la Bielfeldt, “You’re highly trained and already good at making your stories understandable, at taking language and ideas down to their simplest.” And here Bailey took a deep drink from her wine, stood up from her barstool and began pacing back and forth to emphasize her pompous impression’s points to Karli and Mary Rose, who swiveled in their chairs to take it all in.

  “But journalism school’s greatest weakness may be teaching people to disregard the emotional aspects of stories, and that’s too bad. J-school talks about measuring a story’s importance by assessing its impact or how many people are affected by it. That’s all good, but most of the stories we care most deeply about are stories that affect us emotionally. To disregard emotional effect is to ignore a lot of the importance stories actually have.”