Other books by Jenny Holiday
New Wave Newsroom
The Fixer (Jenny’s book)
The Pacifist (Tony’s book)
* * *
The 49th Floor Series
Saving the CEO
Sleeping With Her Enemy
The Engagement Game
His Heart’s Revenge
* * *
Regency Reformers
The Miss Mirren Mission
The Likelihood of Lucy
Viscountess of Vice
An excerpt from The Pacifist
New Wave Newsroom #3
Chapter One
August 1984
Tony
I wasn’t supposed to be taking photographs this semester, but the picture practically composed itself.
It was the tail end of summer, and the courtyard was overripe, teeming with life. Large willow trees poured their lush green waterfalls down toward the lawn, which was studded with purple flowers.
The girl had her back to me, but I knew she was beautiful. There was something about her, her posture maybe, or just her aura, though I normally didn’t go in for that kind of hippie shit. She wore a loose, slouchy, mustard-yellow dress belted at the waist with a wide black leather belt, and black ankle boots. She was tall, and her hair added another couple of inches of height, so she blocked my view of the guy she was with.
Still, it was obvious what they were doing. They were locked in a close embrace, and the guy had his arms around her, holding her tight. I shifted from foot to foot, my pants made tight by my voyeurism.
Even the animals were transfixed. Well, one of them, anyway. A single squirrel stood a few feet from the amorous couple, head cocked, staring at them, which wasn’t necessarily saying much, because the squirrels on this campus were domesticated, fat, and demanding, stalking students who dared to eat outside in Allenhurst College’s various quads and courtyards.
There was no doubt in my mind that Beth would run this shot, even though I technically wasn’t on the newspaper staff anymore. She might even do it in color, despite the expense. Sometimes the Allenhurst Examiner’s first issue of the year—the welcome-back edition—ran a color front page. Getting a shot on the front of the first issue of the year would be a nice way to start what was, depressingly, year five of my degree. It turns out that when you spend more of your time at the newspaper office and partying than you do in class, it catches up with you. Which was why this semester was going to be about classes and nothing else. If I put my head down and worked hard, I could graduate in December. That meant no photography. No parties. No girls. But the idea of one more photo in the paper as a bookend of sorts, a coda to my career as the Examiner’s photographer? It had undeniable appeal.
Especially this particular photo.
Another squirrel sauntered over and joined the first, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. This shot was gonna be so perfect, people were going to think I’d staged it.
It almost felt too easy, inserting myself into this crystalline moment and making it mine. They were standing in the perfect location inside my viewfinder, about two-thirds of the way over from the edge of the ivy-covered building I was planning to use as a framing device. I wouldn’t even have to get them to sign release forms, because neither of their faces showed—which was good, because although I wasn’t above a little mischief in pursuit of the perfect shot, I didn’t relish the idea of interrupting that heated kiss.
I lifted my camera and adjusted the focus. It was going to be an amazing shot, and though I would take the credit for it, it wouldn’t be because of me. I was merely lucky enough to stumble onto a perfect scene that had already composed itself.
Click.
Chapter Two
* * *
Tony
“Tony, there’s someone here to see you.”
It was Beth calling through the door of the darkroom, though I had already recognized her knock. Beth was the editor of the Examiner and though she was a relentless newshound, she had a surprisingly tentative knock, at least compared to Jenny, her predecessor. Funny that I’d spent so much time in this darkroom over the years that I could distinguish between the knocks of my editors.
I wasn’t supposed to be here, working on the second issue of the year. I should have been in my apartment, getting a jump on my reading for the four classes I was taking this semester. I’d never successfully passed four classes in a semester before. If Jenny was still in charge around here, she would have kicked me out. Beth, who knew all about my self-imposed Semester of No Fun, had not. So, like a junkie in search of a fix, here I was, hunched over in the red-tinged darkness.
Beth’s knock was joined by another, more insistent one. More of a pounding, really. Definitely someone else.
The door shook. I moved quickly to shove the photo paper into its black plastic bag, lest my more aggressive visitor knock the door off the hinges and flood the room with light.
“Give me a sec!” Who could want to see me so urgently? My twin sister, Tanya, had graduated, as had Jenny and Dawn and most of my close friends who would know to find me here. That was part of the point. No friends left on campus meant no social temptation and should have made it easier to put my head down and plow through Introduction to Geology. (Yes, I had failed Rocks for Jocks the first time around.)
The pounding continued. “Hang on!” I double-checked that my paper was secure in its bag before closing the bag in its box. Then I swung open the door, blinking against the sudden brightness.
Blinking against the sudden beauty.
Because it was her. The girl from the picture. And, all warm medium-brown skin, flashing brown eyes, and scarlet-painted lips, she was gorgeous.
She was also not pleased.
“What the hell is this?” she yelled, waving a copy of Tuesday’s paper, which featured her courtyard kiss on the cover. The paper had an Overheard/Overseen on Campus section, and we sometimes ran a photo in it. Beth had, as I’d predicted, moved the feature to the front page and run my shot in color.
“Hey,” I said, flashing my trademark grin that was so popular with the ladies. Even though I wasn’t supposed to be deploying that grin this year, it might mitigate some of the tension rolling off this girl. “It’s nice to properly meet you. I’m Tony.”
I held out my hand for her to shake, but she looked at it like I was offering her a handful of shit. So I did a lame stretching/fixing-my-hair thing to cover the fact that my overture had been rebuffed, which was stupid, because as pretty as she was, what did I care what this girl thought of me? It was the Semester of No Fun, right?
“Well, Tony,” she said, her voice having gone quiet, which was jarring after the yelling. It did something to me, hearing my name on her lips like that, all breathy and intimate. It made me comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time, which made no sense, but there it was. “How about we start with the fact that you have ruined my life.”
Okay then. Though she’d turned down the volume, the anger was clearly still there, judging by the way she over-enunciated each syllable and glared at me with her hands on her hips.
“I’m sorry,” Beth said. I swung my gaze to my editor. I’d forgotten she was there. “Did he not get you to sign a photo release?”
“I didn’t need one,” I told her. “No one’s face was showing. The subjects can’t be identified.”
The angry girl let the newspaper flutter to the ground at my feet, dropping it like it was no longer worth the minimal effort required to keep holding onto it. “The subjects can’t be identified?” she echoed, her eyebrows moving up, creating lines in her otherwise smooth forehead. “How many black girls with Afros are there on this campus, do you think?”
Aww, shit. I hadn’t thought of it that way. “I don’t know,” I said, my mind spinning with the effort of trying to come up with an example of another Afro-sporting girl. But even if I could, her point was valid. Allenhurst was a pretty white place. Still, I wasn’t sure what she was s
o worked up about. It was a great shot. One of my best ever. It would be given a place of pride in my portfolio, assuming I ever got my act together enough to graduate and need a portfolio. So, really, why did this girl have her undies in such a bunch? “You looked amazing in the shot, though,” I said, deploying some flattery to bolster my case. “That dress was totally rad, and there was something about the way you were holding yourself, your posture, that was really compelling.”
“My posture,” she said, her nose wrinkling like she’d smelled something gross. “My posture was compelling. That’s all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say? You can’t retract a photo.”
“I want you to say, ‘I’m sorry I ruined your life.’ I want you to understand that you can’t just walk around invading people’s private moments without creating consequences for them.”
Whoa. I held up my hands like she was robbing me. Melodramatic much?
She rolled her eyes, but really quickly and really subtly, so much so that I almost missed it. Most people would have, but I had trained myself to see things other people didn’t. And for some reason, that low-key eye roll made me angrier than a more overt one would have. It was like I was so incredibly far beneath her that it wasn’t even worth her time for her to properly communicate that sentiment to me.
Then she turned and started walking away.
So this girl nearly broke down my darkroom door and now she was dismissing me?
Yeah, no, not so much.
I let the jet of anger that erupted in my chest propel me after her. “Wait!” I shouted, ignoring Beth’s attempts to call me back. The angry girl kept walking briskly. I followed her out of the warren that was the Examiner’s basement newsroom. “Hang on!” I said, as she mounted the stairs that would take her back to the ground floor of the building. She ignored me. It was like I wasn’t even there, and goddamn, that made me mad. “So you just came to shake your finger at me and now you’re not even going to speak to me?” I called as I finally caught up with her, trying not to pant.
That stopped her. She turned and paused, poised in the doorway, one foot inside the building, the other out. “What’s left to say, Tony? You were actually right: you can’t retract a photo.”
Two things about what she said pissed me off. The first was that she knew my name, and I still didn’t know hers. She had barged onto my turf. Why should she have the upper hand? The second was the way she said “can’t,” stressing it ever so slightly, like it was such a shock that someone as simple as I could be right about something. Her words were sharp little sticks poking at my gut.
“What’s your name?” I asked. The question came out sounding mean, which I hadn’t necessarily intended, but that was okay, because something about this girl had me spoiling for a fight.
“Why? So the next time you intrude on a private moment and plaster it all over the newspaper, you can add my name to the caption?” One side of her scarlet-painted upper lip curled, a little proto-sneer. Like with the eye roll, I was annoyed that I apparently wasn’t worthy of a full-blown sneer.
“I’m not sure how you can say that was a private moment,” I shot back. “If you wanted it to be private, maybe you shouldn’t have been doing it, oh, I don’t know, in public.”
She surprised me then by sighing. Those lips I’d been staring at so intently fell open to make room for the long, resigned exhalation. That sigh confused me, because it felt like a defeated sigh, but surely that couldn’t be right? I couldn’t have won that easily? It also immediately brought to mind other circumstances in which lips could part on a sigh like that, but I shoved that thought right back down where it came from. The semester had barely even started, and no way was I so hard up that I was going to let myself perv on this prickly, unreasonable chick, no matter how gorgeous she was.
Then her eyes slipped closed and her shoulders slumped, confirming my initial sense that the fight had left her. That something had shifted between us. When she opened her eyes, her gaze held mine for a long moment before she turned again to leave.
If she had surprised me with that sigh, with how easily she’d given up the fight just then, I downright shocked myself by reaching my hand out, just before she escaped, and resting it on her arm. I wasn’t exerting any pressure, but it was enough to stop her. “Tell me about these consequences,” I said. But even as I posed the question, I asked myself why? Why did I care? I didn’t owe this girl anything. All I had done was take a photo of her in a public place. Still, I needed to know. “Tell me about the consequences you mentioned.” I tried not to think about how I was touching her bare skin, about how incredibly soft it was.
As if she’d heard the very thoughts I was trying not to have, she dropped her gaze to my hand on her arm. My own gaze followed, and I noticed for the first time that she was wearing a Siouxsie and the Banshees T-shirt. I added that fact to pile of surprises that had accumulated over the past few minutes. I loved that band. I wanted to tell her, but it was the wrong thing to say.
And then the touch seemed wrong, too. It was just my hand on her arm, and she hadn’t objected or moved to escape it, but it was suddenly intrusive, too intimate—like the picture? Shit. Had she been right about that?
Maybe it was just that it was too much to adjust to, this moment of peace, of human contact, after our adversarial introduction. Too whiplash-inducing.
“I should not have been kissing that guy,” she said, still looking at my hand.
“He wasn’t identifiable.” I’m not sure if I intended to reassure her or to defend myself. Regardless, from my angle, she’d been completely obscuring her paramour in the shot. All you could see was his arms wrapped around her, and he hadn’t been wearing a watch or anything else that might have given him away. “You couldn’t tell who he was.”
“Yes,” she said, finally lifting her gaze and looking me in the eye. “But you could tell who he wasn’t.” Then she shook my hand off her arm and jogged down the steps that ran from the door to the sidewalk. I’d been dismissed. Again.
I really didn’t like being dismissed by this girl, apparently. “Hey!” I called after her, loud enough for her to stop at the bottom of the steps and shoot me a skeptical look, like she was a mature-beyond-her-years person tolerating the whim of a child. “Tell me your name.”
“My name is…” She paused long enough that I suspected she was making something up, giving me a fake name. “My name is Laraline.”
An excerpt from Saving the CEO
49th Floor #1
Chapter One
“Ebenezer is here!”
Cassie’s head shot up from the bar, where she’d been methodically slicing lemons. “No way! It’s only Tuesday!”
Ebenezer ate dinner at Edward’s every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Not on Tuesdays. Never on Tuesdays.
“I know!” squealed Sara, one of the servers, the one who was nicest to Cassie. The wait staff knew Cassie hadn’t earned her job as the weeknight bartender—she was a friend of the owner—and some of them resented it. Unlike the rest of them, she did not engage in the bleaching and dieting and grooming required to earn tips at a high-end place like Edward’s, but the servers had to tip her out just the same. Cassie got it. In their shoes, she’d probably resent it too.
“And his table isn’t free!” Sara whispered, “Because it’s Tuesday!”
Cassie didn’t bother stifling a dreamy sigh as she watched Edward’s most reliable customer in discussion with Camille, the hostess—the one who was meanest to her. There was no need to hide her admiration because they all loved Ebenezer a little bit. Probably not least because he was the World’s Best Tipper. Fifty percent, every single time. Even Cassie, who as bartender was tipped out only a small percentage of what the servers took in, saw the difference on an Ebenezer night.
So, a good tipper, yes, but the girls also loved Ebenezer because he was beautiful. A beautiful enigma. A man of habit, obviously, given his regular Wednesday through Friday appearances stretching
back almost two years. But beyond that, no one knew anything about him, not really, other than that he was some sort of real estate tycoon. The servers reported that he was perfectly polite. But despite his impeccable manners, or perhaps because of them, he came across as cold. Never said anything more than was strictly required. He’d answer small-talkish sorts of questions, but in a way that made the asker feel she’d stepped out of line, never offering a real glimpse into his life. Sara had been conducting experiments on him, to see if anything she did—or didn’t do—would affect the seemingly inviolable fifty percent tip. So far, no. Whether they spoke only about his order—which, unlike most regulars, was never the same—or whether she shamelessly pried and he doggedly but politely shut her down, the end result was the same. A sky-high bill, thanks in no small part to the glass of ridiculously marked-up single malt scotch he started with, and a fifty percent tip.
“He’s entertaining enough on a normal night,” Cassie whispered with a grin. “On a Tuesday night when his table is taken?” She looked to the sky and made a silly “jazz hands” motion that earned her an answering grin from Sara.
But the truth was that Ebenezer wasn’t inherently that entertaining. Any given night produced a customer who provided more drama—a steak sent back three times, a bottle of 1985 Cabernet Sauvignon three-quarters drunk and then sent back for being corked.
Ebenezer never generated that kind of drama. They all just made it up to fill in the blanks in his mysterious persona. His name wasn’t even Ebenezer. Of course it wasn’t Ebenezer! He had a perfectly normal name they’d gleaned from his credit card—Cassie just couldn’t remember it.
Whatever it was, it was not as exciting as the story they’d made up that earned him his nickname. He always worked through dinner, spreading out papers, tapping through documents on his iPad. That, combined with his expensive, exquisitely tailored suits, and the fact that he was always alone, inspired Cassie to name him. Last December he’d strolled in alone, with his spreadsheets and his devices, and she thought, “He’s accumulating his chains.” But she didn’t say that. She’d just burst out the moniker Ebenezer Scrooge, and the rest of them, who had probably never read the book, embraced the alias. It stuck, even though Cassie protested that the actual Scrooge would never have left a fifty percent tip.
The Gossip: New Wave Newsroom Page 12