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

by H. Laurence Lareau

  “Actually, it’s a Mr. Fusion churning up banana peels and beer,” Jake said. He’d surprised himself trying to be funny, though it was a weak effort. So, “Yeah, batteries. Pretty strong ones.”

  As he pulled out of the station’s lot, Karli again remarked on how silent the car was. Then she seemed to have exhausted her conversation. Not wanting to put any pressure on her when she seemed already so brittle, Jake steered silently through the snow-blown streets. He was silent. His profile showed only his focus on the road. Strong, stable, and confident after the emotional upheaval of the fire. As his carriage house swelled up in the headlights, the old-fashioned doors to the garage swung open. He pulled in with the swift assurance of a driver who knows exactly where his vehicle fits, then pressed the button to close the doors behind them.

  He flicked on lights and quickly plugged a thick electric cable into the car as he walked to open Karli’s door. Her legs swung out of the car and her eyes swung up to Jake’s. “I thought we were going out for a drink?”

  “Do you really want to go somewhere and have to listen to accountants talking about how people squander their bonuses or cell phone sales folks bitch about their sales numbers?” he asked. “I’ve got whatever you want to drink, and the lighting is way better than just about any bar, I promise.”

  Karli nodded, stood out of the car, and took her coat off in the heated garage. Jake held his hand out for it, and hung it on a hook at the foot of the stairs leading up to the living space. As they topped the stairs, Jake hit switches that turned on the lighting he’d designed. Although she’d seen it before, Karli was again taken by how elegantly the huge space was divided into smaller spaces simply by lighting effects. She sank gratefully into the couch and pulled the heels from her still-frozen feet. The stress had left her exhausted. Spent.

  Jake moved to the bar area and lifted a bottle of white wine inquiringly toward Karli. In response to her nod, he grabbed two glasses and brought them to a couch by the fireplace. He set the bottle and glasses on a low table, grabbed a remote control and pressed a button to light the gas fireplace. After pouring, he handed Karli a glass and sat next to her on the sofa.

  She raised her glass to him saying, “For tomorrow we may die.” They clinked glasses somberly, thinking about the sudden catastrophes that afflict so many people who assume, like everyone else, that they’re safe.

  “Yep,” Jake replied after they had both tasted the wine. “Let us drink and be merry.”

  “This tastes awful. I thought you were good at picking this stuff out,” Karli said.

  “It’s the smoke. We stink something terrible, and the smell messes with the flavor of the wine.”

  “Half an evening, and I have to dry clean this dress already,” Karli pouted.

  Jake again looked appreciatively at the dress and the figure it limned so bewitchingly. “Black is a good color for remembering that little dog, at least.”

  “Stop it, Jake. I can’t bear to think about that lady and her poor dead dog. This job makes me sickest when the story is just awful and sad and nothing else.” Jake could see tears puddling up on Karli’s lower lids, even though they didn’t fall.

  “All the profs in J-school talk about how it’s okay because we’re telling cautionary tales and encouraging people to modify their behavior. But that’s bullshit. It’s obvious rationalization. We cover these stories because they’re horrible and voyeuristic and viewers can’t look away any more than they can look away from an accident on the highway.” She paused to drink deeply from her wine glass. She made a face at the taste of house-fire-scented wine.

  “And it’s so sad to see that poor woman’s misery turned into a story like it really is news or something. It just isn’t. It’s not news that I want to report, anyway. It’s just intrusive and heartbreaking, that’s all.”

  The tears that had been brimming in Karli’s eyes grew ever so slightly and spilled out onto her cheeks. She looked down at the glass she held in her lap, her shoulders shaking silently. After a pause, she looked back up at Jake. “Why do we have to do the shitty stories?” she whispered.

  Jake reached his hands toward her face, cupping her cheeks. Silently, he wiped the tears away with his thumbs and looked into her questioning eyes. A sudden smile, wet with wine and humid emotion broke moistly open across her face. “Thanks,” she quietly chuckled, “but your hands really stink like a fire scene.”

  Momentarily confused by the unexpected comment, Jake was stunned by the fear that he was again being rejected on the brink of intimacy. He snatched his hands away with a look of embarrassment.

  “Let me do something about that. Will you be okay here for about seven minutes?” As she nodded, he walked quickly around one of the dividing panels. He picked up speed, tugging his necktie loose and unbuttoning his shirt on the way through his bedroom to the bathroom. Once there, he turned on the shower and started stripping out of his clothes and piling them under the marble counter. That done, he stepped into the already steaming shower and quickly lathered himself up.

  “Hey, Jake?” The call came to him faintly through the drumming of the shower’s spray.

  He took his head out from under the water and called loudly in response, “Yes?”

  “Do you have any of those karate pajamas in my size?”

  He pushed his face into the spray for a moment, feeling the warm water sluice over his skin and trying to remember what had come in his latest order from the martial arts supply wholesaler. “I think so,” he near-shouted, “but you might be between sizes. How tall are you again?”

  He thought he heard a tense laugh through the shower’s splattering. “Five feet, one inch, Sensei Gibson,” Karli said in a flat tone.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I just bought a couple of size 2 uniforms,” he called out through the steam that billowed over the shower door. He paused to lather his specially scented shampoo into his hair. “Gimme a sec and I’ll dig out a white one and a black one so you can choose.”

  It occurred to him that Karli had never said anything about being interested in karate. Oh well, he thought. When the student is ready, the teacher appears, right? And he stuck his head back under the spray.

  A slight breeze swept the shower room, causing Jake to think again that the level-entry design could be improved by a door that went all the way to the floor. He was rinsing, face down toward the floor, with the water carrying dense suds down from his hair. Karli’s small feet appeared on the floor next to him, in the edge of his squinting vision.

  “Oh my gosh,” he cried. “Don’t ruin that dress in here!”

  Karli’s tense, quiet laughter resonated in the small space. Jake pulled his hair to one side and tilted his squint up Karli’s legs to where the hemline of her dress was absent. He kept sliding his gaze upward until he reached the smoothly groomed space between the tops of her legs. He caught his breath with a sharp intake of surprise, which drew a spray of shower mist into his lungs and made him cough explosively. And the coughing made him panic that he had again said or done the wrong thing and that Karli would turn suddenly away from him.

  Karli laughed again, and he heaved a sigh of relief that was immediately interrupted by the feeling of his stomach sinking. What’s next? he wondered. He put a hand out to the shower wall, leaned back into the corner, and reached up to re-aim the shower head. “W-w-would you like to have the water?” he stammered, concentrating on looking directly into Karli’s eyes and not at the gut-clenchingly amazing view of her naked figure.

  She nodded, reaching for the body wash. “I heard the water and figured that I stink like a fire scene, too,” she said, twitching a corner of her mouth up as her eyes returned to Jake’s.

  “And I want to be able to enjoy my wine.”

  He noted that she, too, was being careful about not letting her eyes wander. And he felt all the evening’s intensity—the intense flirtation at the Christmas party, the thrill of racing to the fire scene, the vicarious horror of the woman’s grief at losing her
dog, the frustration and helplessness of having to report holiday misery stories, and the lingering stench of sodden ashes. The emotions washed over him in a fleeting moment, one that held their eyes locked in a mutual gaze.

  And now, here he was in a steaming shower with a gloriously naked Karli turned away from him and making a bashful beginning at washing away the fire’s smell. Turning away did nothing to make his view less arousing, he thought, taking in the gloriously rounded curves of her backside. He felt his blood begin to rush through his whole body, and he felt himself begin to indiscreetly stiffen. Embarrassed at his body’s involuntary display, he reached for the shampoo bottle again and stammered quietly, “M-m-may I wash your hair for you?”

  Karli turned to grin at him with a mixture of shyness and frankness that disarmed Jake utterly. He saw at once the confident strength that she always projected, along with a girlish caution that was wholly new. Her shoulders sagged with the stress and tearful fatigue of the dead dog’s family. Jake saw her vulnerability and felt it call to his chivalry, his decency, his manhood.

  He ran his fingers through her hair to wet it and then to lather up the shampoo. He bent to her dainty ear and whispered, “Are you ready?” As he whispered, he could feel his pulse thundering through his neck.

  Karli turned toward Jake and the running water pushed fragrant suds from her hair.

  Jake found her eyes and felt a surge run through him as she nodded her smiling agreement. She extended her arm around his neck and pulled his face down toward hers. Jake felt the kiss overcome his senses. The scent of the soap and shampoo, the spray of the water against his skin, the swelling humidity of the steam, and the sound of the water spraying then pouring off their skin and onto the shower floor all faded as he felt the sweet softness of their kiss. And the world of the kiss lasted for what felt like a thousand thudding heartbeats.

  They parted ever so slightly and Jake’s senses came rushing back altogether. He paused to savor the faintly soapy flavor of the kiss, opened his eyes, and saw Karli’s eyelids parting. He took a breath preparatory to speaking, but Karli put a shushing finger to his lips. “Just shut up, okay?”

  Another kiss, this time slightly less an experience of drowning in a shared sensation. Jake stayed enough within himself to reach his arms around Karli, to slide them down her water-slicked back to the round twin globes of her bottom. He had resolved to be gentle, to respect the fragility of her emotions. Yet she showed no interest in gentleness, pulling his neck into their kiss and coiling her arm around his waist to press his manhood ever more tightly to her. Still kissing her, now with urgent heat, he pulled her toward him, squeezing the strong firmness of his erection up between them, clenching her cheeks ever more strongly.

  The kiss slowed and then paused. Breathing deeply, Jake opened his eyes to see Karli’s water-drenched eyelashes, looking glamorously spiked and ready for a photo he couldn’t take. He slid his hands up from her cheeks to the hard slenderness of her waist and then continuing up below her shoulder blades, where he spread them and prepared to pull her into the next kiss.

  Her own arms had moved, though, and she leaned back into his hands to run her own lightly across the hard bulges of his pecs. He sought her eyes, but they were busy following her hands.

  “This is what karate does for a physique, then?” she muttered, continuing to spread her hands along his flanks and then his backside. She leaned back and smiled up at him.

  Jake twitched with need as he saw tightened, swollen nipples projecting from the smoothly rounded breasts.

  “You smell pretty nice now,” Jake replied. “But I think you may have missed a couple spots.” Saying this, he ran soapy hands gently around her chest and then back and forth over her taut nipples.

  In spite of their fiery kisses and the tight clinch that had impressed Jake’s obvious enthusiasm into both of them, Jake sensed that Karli remained a little sweetly self-conscious.

  Rinsed off and moving into the bathroom, Jake was as discreet as he could be in catching views of Karli’s athletic body: Her back curving over to dry her legs or stretching to swing the towel around. The round strength of her butt. The smoothly hairless front. He was completely smitten with every feature, every curving contour and each perfectly placed mole. And he wanted to possess all of her, to stroke her to a thrumming, blissful fervor—to sweep the grief of the evening’s story clean from her mind.

  With their towels wrapped around them, they walked through the bathroom door to the bedroom.

  Jake made a show of turning down a corner of the king-size bedspread and made a welcoming gesture to Karli. As she began moving toward the bed in response to his invitation, he bent and simply plucked her up into his arms and plopped her down onto the bed.

  Wordlessly, he reached for Karli’s damp head and pulled her to him for another timeless, pounding kiss. She rose to his touch with an intensity that stripped him of caution and summoned the masculine impulses instilled in his DNA from ancient times. His hands slid over the warmth of her soft, bare skin with urgent need, traveling across her back, down her side, and again grasping her bottom with a pressure he feared was close to bruising.

  Karli’s breathing became loud in response to his touch, and he chased the paths of his caresses with his mouth, this time stopping to swirl, then suck, then nibble on the nipples that had so captivated him in the shower. She rose to his mouth, arching her back and pressing the firm softness of her breasts against him.

  Each movement, each touch came to him as an echo and reflection of Karli’s rousing breath and grasp. He leaned away suddenly to fumble at the night stand for a condom, which he tore from its wrapper and put on as quickly as he could. After that clumsy eternity of preparation, he pulled her onto him, sheathed himself smoothly into her, and her gasp of pleasure tugged at his own inmost need.

  He was intent on her pleasure, her release from the stresses that coiled around her. Yet the fresh sweet smell of her, the strength that underlay her softness, the sound of her breath in his ear all enveloped him in ecstasy.

  They moved together and apart and together through long minutes of quiet, ecstatic exertion until Karli’s breath came out as a shuddering, “Yessss!” Jake felt her grow tense around him, felt her arms clasp him tightly, and then felt her movements slacken and her forehead press to his collarbone. “Oh my God, Jake.”

  The animalistic spirit that had been guiding him preened itself, luxuriously stretching at her satisfaction. He withdrew himself and simply held Karli as her breathing slowed and her eyes came up to his.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “I could feel all your tension release.” He moved close and leaned his forehead gently against hers, feeling anew the dampness of her hair, smelling the fresh glow of her skin.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Nice guys finish last, you know,” he chuckled. The he held her for a long, lingering minute.

  “I’ll be right back,” he whispered. On his way out of the room, he adjusted the dimmer panel so that two extremely dim pools of light shone onto the room’s farthest wall, leaving the rest in near-absolute darkness. He came back into the bedroom with a jingle of glasses, set them on a nightstand, and returned to the bed. He poured and passed a glass to Karli.

  “The wine tastes much better now,” she mumbled. “But you haven’t finished at all,” she whispered, the tone of her smile permeating her voice.

  Jake smacked his lips, surprised that he’d forgotten to taste the wine now that it wasn’t polluted by the smell of soaked burnt house. “It has a really nice finish, too, don’t you think?” he asked, looking at the glass and swirling the wine in it.

  He looked up suddenly to Karli. “And, by the way, you’re not finished finishing,” he said, raising his glass to her in a careful salute. “That was just the stress-relief. We should both be a little more relaxed now,” he said. “And last means after you’re all done. So you’d better have a drink to fortify yourself for the rest of the evening.”

>   Karli’s eyebrows shot up. Jake laid a quieting finger to her lips and said, “Just have a sip. We don’t have anywhere we have to go. And I want to show you just how deeply I feel about you.”

  She drank, and Jake noticed that his shyness had gone, for he took a long and languorous look at her body in the room’s dimly scattered light, possessing it with his eyes as he just had with his body. She is like her figure, he thought to himself. She seems petite and fragile, yet she has enough strength and depth and kindness to be my entire world.

  His eyes found Karli’s peering at him over the tilted rim of her wine glass. She emptied her drink and turned to put it down. Her eyes angled back at him as a naughty grin tugged at her lips. “What was that you were saying about finishing?”

  Jake felt the dizzying rush of arousal and quickly put his own glass on the table at his side of the bed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Salon Cut it Out!

  Ingersoll Avenue, Des Moines

  Tuesday evening, January 7

  “It’s great and everything,” Karli was saying to Trevor. “And it’s not just, you know...”

  “The scorching-hot sex?” Trevor asked with a conspiratorial chuckle, as he combed out a lock of her hair, stretched it between his fingers, and confidently snipped off an eighth of an inch.

  “Um,” Karli stalled, feeling her cheeks heat up with an intense blush. “Let’s keep this on deep background, okay? No telling.”

  “Of course it’s deep,” Trevor said with a wink at Karli’s reflection in the mirror. “If you want really good sex, he’s got to really dig you. And he is totally into you. You should’ve heard him when he was in here last week. It’s like he’s a street person who suddenly inherited a huge house. He just can’t think about anything else, and he can’t shut up about how he belongs there and how it feels so right.