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

by H. Laurence Lareau

  “Mary Rose, I think you’ve made yourself kind of a big deal with that bit of uproar,” Jake said, his admiration clear in tone and expression.

  “Thanks,” Mary Rose replied. “I’m worried it de-escalated too quickly, though.”

  “You’re leading into the blooper reel, Mary Rose,” Karli said. “How can it possibly deliver on any kind of build-up at all?”

  “It can’t,” Mary Rose shrugged. “But if everyone gets another drink in the next seven minutes, everyone will be too drunk to remember anything in particular about the bloopers.”

  Sophia Refai strode up to the group with her date trailing vaguely behind her. “That was a crass little stunt,” she said as soon as she’d reached Mary Rose’s side. “Are we actual journalists here, or is Three NewsFirst some kind of a sports team?” She looked pointedly around the room, and then back at Mary Rose. “I don’t see any cheerleaders. Please tell me the rumors that you’ve arranged for them to perform are baseless.”

  Mary Rose looked right back into Sophia’s sneering face with a casual smirk. “I heard you were going to be doing the splits and calling out names later,” she said, glancing at the date-from-the-competition, who was aiming a gap-toothed leer at Sophia. “Your flexibility gets thumbs-up reviews, you know.” Mary Rose’s voice trailed off suggestively.

  Apparently noticing Donald Harris’s near-panting as he appeared to envision Sophia calling his name from a full-split position, Sophia snapped her head toward him. “Don’t be an oaf, Donald. Let’s find a seat before the video starts.” And with that, she stormed off, leaving a strong scent of perfume in her trail.

  “Are you really bringing in cheerleaders?” Margie asked in the hopeful tones of a child who has heard someone mention candy but can’t actually see any.

  “Margie, I don’t think we could convince the dudes in sales to keep their clothes on if any genuine cheerleaders showed up,” Jake said. “Reindeer Punch is the kryptonite that exposes all their weaknesses. Heck, it’s a good thing there’s only the overhead lights—if there were lampshades, we’d have naked guys walking around in them already!”

  “What exactly do you think the cheerleaders have that isn’t already here?” Karli asked, turning her face toward Jake’s. “This dress isn’t exactly floor-length, after all,” she continued, running her hands along her chest and down to the not-very-low hemline.

  Jake took his arms from around Karli’s and Margie’s shoulders and stepped through to get space for a full view of Karli’s outfit. She immediately saw the appreciation shining in his wide-open eyes. He scanned her slowly up and down and then up again before bringing his eyes up to gaze steadily into hers. She felt his eyes moving over her almost as though they were his hands—and the feeling was electric. She tucked her chin slightly and, looking up through her lashes, asked in an intentionally throaty voice, “What’s your kryptonite, Mr. Superman?”

  Karli saw Jake swallow hard as he looked all up and down her again, and she felt a deep attentive silence fall within their little group. She wasn’t accustomed to feeling, well, sexy was really the only word, but Jake’s obvious and obviously sexual fascination with her appearance elicited a quivering, sexual response from her. She could feel her skin sliding underneath the smooth sheath of her dress and the slightly itchy edges of her lacy bra and thong needled her in a way that felt like anticipation of the slightly rough edges of Jake’s hands and knuckles, of the slightly prickly rasp of his five o’clock shadow, of the slippery smoothness of his lips and tongue. The silence continued a beat too long, and the corners of Karli’s eyes caught the others looking right at her.

  Mary Rose broke the suddenly uncomfortable silence, stepping into the circle and saying, “Looks to me like that dress is made out of kryptonite.” She turned to the entranced Jake and grabbed his elbow. As she tucked the elbow into her chest, bent his arm and then grabbed his hand with both of hers to bend his wrist and palm down toward the elbow, she continued, “Hey, he’s so weak from that kryptonite dress, I can make Sensei Jake tap out!”

  The pressure on his wrist suddenly became great enough that Jake snapped his attention to Mary Rose’s devilish grin, then used his free hand to snake through her arms and pull his elbow free. Mary Rose was surprised to find that she was trying to bend a wrist that no longer resisted. She was even more surprised when she found that Jake had kept a grip on one of her wrists, slid his other forearm against her upper arm, and grabbed his own wrist to place a sudden twisting pressure on her shoulder—enough pressure that Mary Rose urgently patted her hand against the nearest bit of Jake she could find. “Hey! What the hell was that?” she cried.

  Jake relaxed his grip instantly when Mary Rose tapped him. In response to her question, he chuckled and said, “I’m not sure. Something between a half-Nelson and standing Kimura.

  You put that wrist-lock on me just enough to make the kryptonite vanish.”

  A little chuckle at this caught his attention. Margie leaned over to Vince and—in her extremely loud whisper, loud enough for the whole little group to hear—said, “I think he means that the dress covered Karli back up after he imagined it had vanished. Karli in her unmentionables is the real kryptonite!”

  Karli appreciated Vince’s effort not to laugh out loud—even though it failed—but she felt suddenly very self-conscious, as though she really had been partially undressed in front of everyone. She felt the color rise in her cheeks and she looked from face to face, searching for some hint that she hadn’t acted foolishly.

  The clamor of several shouting voices broke her concentration. “ONE MINUTE TO THE BLOOPERS!” she heard an entire table of drunken station employees scream, followed by a “Woo-hoo!” that rang with the unique shrill that only an excess of drink can impart.

  Karli and pretty much everyone else in the room looked up to see that Mary Rose’s ingenious countdown had transformed into a series of animated Santas, reindeers, and elves, all indicating the decreasing time with numerals pulled from gift boxes, sleighs, hats, trees, and other Christmasy containers.

  “We’d better find a seat, then,” Jake said, lacing Karli’s arm though his own. “If, that is, you want to stay and watch the drunks and the bloopers.” He indicated with a nod of his head toward the Reindeer Punch table, where a studio camera operator was laughing uncontrollably at the puddle of red that spread over the table from his overturned cup. Karli felt Jake’s breath on her neck as he leaned closer. “Mary Rose already showed me the bloopers,” he whispered into her ear, his breath causing a tingle to spread along the side of her neck and on down between her shoulder blades.

  Karli quirked a questioning eyebrow at Jake, posing an unspoken question. “No, there isn’t much,” he answered, and she couldn’t tell if he was answering the wrong question on purpose. “The only two really good things are John’s live shot where he said he was in Adel County, and then Brinkman had to tell him that he was in Dallas County, and then they cut back to John just in time to see him hit himself on the forehead with his mic. ‘Aack--Adel is the county seat!’ That was really funny.” As he finished this bit, Karli noticed that Jake had been leading them both toward the lobby. She looked over her shoulder toward the little cluster of Mary Rose, Vince, and Margie. Mary Rose saw her looking, cracked a huge grin, and gave her a double thumbs-up.

  Karli smiled and then realized Jake was still talking. “So there’s that, and then there’s the time you fell all the way down when you were doing that walking interview with the farmer.” Karli slapped Jake’s arm as soon as she saw the grin tugging at his lips. “Hey!” he said, “At least that wasn’t live, so it was never broadcast.” Jake paused, the grin pulling hard now at his mouth. “Well, it wasn’t broadcast until everyone sees it here tonight.” The twinkle in Jake’s eyes as he said this faded quickly to something much more intense. Karli felt her dress coming off in his imagination again and then caught her breath as it came off in her own imagination—with Jake handling the zipper. She felt her own eyes matching every bit
of the intense smolder she saw in his.

  She pulled Jake down and rose up the tiny bit her heels left to whisper in his ear. “Should we get a room?”

  Chapter Twenty

  West Des Moines

  Friday, December 20

  Jake pulled back to look at her and he felt his pulse race and his eyes widen in surprise. “That escalated quickly,” he muttered.

  Just as he took a breath to give a more serious response, he noticed that at least some of the electric buzzing he felt came from Karli’s phone. He felt her reluctantly pull it out. Her eyes still locked with his, she raised it to her ear and dragged her thumb across the screen. “Karli Lewis,” she said. She held his eyes with her own, and he felt an ever-deepening arousal intensify. The room sounded like an urgently good idea.

  As she listened, though, her eyes dropped from Jake’s, then her arm came free from his, and her eyes took on the unfocused look of someone listening closely. “No, Jake’s right here, so we’ve got it,” she said. Then, after another pause, “Right. Text me the address.”

  No sooner had he seen her touch the screen to end the call than he felt her grab his hand and drag him toward the coat check. She was moving fast, and he fairly stumbled to keep up. “That was the newsroom,” she said, her words coming all in a single breath and all connected. “There’s a house fire in West Des Moines and it’s bad and we have to go cover it and nobody else can do it because we’re on a skeleton crew tonight for the party.”

  Karli had been waving to the coat check attendant as they walked up; she’d apparently made an impression when she and Vince had come in, as her coat was waiting for her without any need for the claim check.

  “I have my Canon in the car, with enough other equipment that we won’t have to go back to the station first,” Jake said, taking her bulky coat and holding it for her to put her arms in. “Looks like this will come in handy.” He watched with some regret as she shrugged its contour-disguising mass over the delicate dress. More clothing was not what he had been hoping for.

  He followed as she now turned to the main entrance and the chill of the winter night air. “We’ll take my car,” he said, leading her to a low-slung black sedan. “My gear is already in the back.” Jake held the passenger door, and watched appreciatively as she turned her back to the seat, lowered herself into the car, and swung her legs elegantly in. Jake hurried to his side as she buckled her belt. Dashboard lights gently rose, and Jake heard Karli’s appreciative low whistle. “This is not at all like your truck.”

  Jake pulled the car out of its spot and out of the parking lot. Silently. “And I’ve never been in a car this quiet,” she said. “I didn’t even hear it start.”

  “I’m just trying to do my part for the environment with this one,” Jake said, coming to a stop where the parking lot led onto the street. “Do you have the address yet?” Karli nodded and held her iPhone out for him to see. “Got it,” he said, then pulled out onto the road. “I’m guessing the cops will mostly be at the fire to handle traffic control, so we should be okay to shorten the trip a bit.” As he said this, he pressed firmly on the accelerator, and heard Karli’s quick breath as the car jumped up to highway speeds and pressed them back into their seats. All without any appreciable sound other than the wind.

  “What is this thing?” Karli asked breathlessly.

  “Some kind of ninja car?”

  Jake smiled over at her face, awash in the gentle light from the dash. She looked somehow off-guard and open, sweetly lovely and in the wide-eyed moment. Turning his attention back to the road, he pushed the car even faster and said, “Something like a ninja car, yeah.” He had only had the Tesla a few months, and he still thrilled to the pressure of its intense acceleration. Added as it was now to the interrupted but lingering sexual tension, the thrill was even greater, and Jake hoped Karli felt every bit as much of it.

  In a time so short it surprised even Jake—who had kept an eye on the speedometer’s hugely unlawful readings—they rolled quickly and silently up to a block filled with countless flashing lights. Police cars stood at the ends of the block, and fire trucks clustered around the house, their spotlights pouring light onto the leaping flames as hoses poured water at their bases. Jake grabbed his camera and sound equipment as Karli pulled out her iPhone and opened the Notes app. She walked quickly toward the paramedics’ ambulance, where people stood shivering in blankets at the open back door.

  Jake snapped connectors together, the process so habitual that he had to give it only a small part of his attention. He was mentally framing the first series of shots: establishing, medium and then close on the fire itself, then the reactions of firefighters and the fire’s victims. He’d have to shoot out of order, as the victims were likely to be whisked away by the paramedics any second. Plotting the series of images took just seconds. As the last connector snapped into place and the camera powered on, he raised it to his eye and rolled on the wide, establishing shot for a silent count of seven seconds.

  Even as he pressed the button to stop recording, he took off running as quickly as his dress clothes and the cold weather permitted to cover the hundred yards to the ambulance. He stopped just far enough away to catch a quick shot that included the entire ambulance and the people clustered around the back. Karli was still there, talking to one of the people wrapped in a blanket. Jake walked up, uncoiling a microphone cable and handing the microphone with its big Three NewsFirst flag toward Karli without interrupting her. He stepped back and began recording her conversation in a loosely framed over-the-shoulder shot. He pressed his earpiece in a bit more tightly to monitor the audio quality; the microphone did a surprisingly good job of filtering out the many rumbling diesel engines powering firetrucks and the ambulance.

  “...all our Christmas presents were right there under the tree where the flames were biggest,” the woman sobbed to Karli. “And we were so excited to have a Christmas this year. Ned just went back to work after his injury at the Firestone plant, and we didn’t expect to have much Christmas at all. And now...I guess we won’t anyway.”

  “Did everyone in your family get out safely?” Karli asked, as though trying to help the woman find a silver lining.

  The woman began to nod, then snapped her head up and looked toward the house searchingly. “I haven’t seen Dexter...” she muttered. Then projecting her voice loudly, “Kids, have you seen Dexter?”

  Jake had slid around as the woman spoke so he could capture part of the flaming house in the background. He pulled his eye quickly from the viewfinder to take in the full field of vision, and he saw a cluster of firefighters walking away from the house, hunched around something one of them was carrying.

  He touched Karli’s shoulder and leaned in to hiss, “With me!” into her ear, somehow managing to keep the shot steady. They walked quickly together to the group and found the firefighters holding an oxygen mask to the face of a little grey terrier. The men were silent as they set the dog on the ground and tried to massage it back to life.

  Jake moved his camera in close to the group, putting the dog at the center, framed by the firefighters. While the shot rolled, he became aware of the persistent smell of drenched smoke. He knew the odor from covering many fires over the years, yet it never smelled familiar. It was a cloying, ruthless stench that signaled destruction and loss. And it came with particular strength from the group of men who had just come from the house.

  As the seconds passed, the firefighters began to exchange looks that silently asked whether there were any point in continuing. First one, then another, shrugged in resignation. The one who held the oxygen mask to the dog’s nose, however, hadn’t looked up or noticed.

  “Dexter!” the woman’s voice shrilled from the ambulance, with audible tears. Jake slid back from the group to capture the woman throwing herself to the ground where the dog lay. He caught her stroking the dog’s stiff fur and the terrible sound of her imploring the firefighters to do something, anything, couldn’t they just do something? Her k
ids gathered awkwardly around her, crying quietly and trying to calm her. One of the firefighters picked up the blanket she had dropped and tucked it carefully around her, saying that they’d done everything they knew to do but sometimes that just wasn’t enough.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Des Moines

  Friday, December 20

  Jake and Karli left the edit suite somberly, having put together the story of Dexter’s family and their destroyed Christmas. The story would lead the late broadcast, and a good Samaritan had already established a fund to help the family recover something from the fire.

  “I hate this kind of story,” Karli muttered as she slid her heels back on to leave. Jake had secretly enjoyed watching her pad around the station in her stocking feet, but it had only been a flicker of brightness in a dark night. The evening’s earlier, sexy mood had evaporated with the smoky steam from the house fire, and he held no hope of re-kindling it. They both stank of smoke and they both were exhausted from the evening’s huge emotional swings.

  Jake lifted her bulky winter coat from her desk and held it for her. “I need a drink,” he said, the flat tone of his voice mirroring his mood.

  “Me, too,” Karli said as she shrugged into the coat. Her voice was similarly bleak.

  “C’mon,” Jake said, his head tipping toward the exit. “I have to give you a ride, anyway, since your car is still at the party.”

  “No way. We are not going back to that stupid party.”

  “No.” Jake said with a hint of a smirk. “That would be awful.”

  “Okay, then, Mr. Photographer. Get me a drink. A stiff one.”

  A stiff one, huh? Jake thought. That opportunity went out with the fire.

  The two went out to the parking lot, where Karli paid attention to the black sedan’s exterior markings. “A Tesla?” she asked. “This car is really just batteries? That’s insane.” She looked quizzically at Jake, as though asking him to deny that his car was electric.