by K. N. Casper
Renn didn’t miss the subtle expression of satisfaction on Faye’s face. The problem was that Sal seemed to be swayed by it, especially the part about higher revenues.
“Why have we never heard of this before?” Renn asked.
“As a matter of fact, I discussed the concept with Clark just before he died. He was very excited about it.”
That was news to Renn, a piece of information he frankly doubted. Clark was no fool. He would have seen through this in a heartbeat.
“He never mentioned it to me,” Renn observed.
“As I said, it was right before he died. I guess he didn’t have a chance to discuss it with anyone else.”
And there was no way of verifying it, which worked to Taggart’s advantage.
“Syndication would be a management decision,” Renn pointed out.
“And a big step,” Taggart agreed. “One I think we need to seriously consider if we want to grow.”
“There’s no money in the budget for the enormous start-up costs this scheme would incur,” Renn pointed out to Sal. “We’d have to hire management consultants, another big expense.” He could see, though, that the GM was intrigued by the concept.
Renn quizzed Taggart about personnel changes.
“We have a very experienced workforce here,” he responded, undaunted. “Not only do I think they’re up to the challenge, I suspect they’ll enjoy it.”
Not likely, Renn mused. Most people hated having change imposed on them. “What role would Marlee play in this?”
Taggart gave him a casual shrug. “I would hope she’ll want to be part of the team. She’s a good sports reporter with a faithful following. This will benefit her as well as the station.”
An uncharacteristically generous comment, Renn noted. It was also gratuitous. The chances of Marlee hanging around to work for him were zip.
So this was the trap Faye had hatched, a grandiose plan Taggart didn’t have a chance of pulling off but that sounded like a magic bullet to success.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MARLEE WAS as hyper after her interview as she had been before, but this anxiety was different. She’d done well. Renn had given her one of his little smiles that said he was pleased, and she’d seen Sal nod approvingly several times during her presentation. Faye, of course, had refused to show any emotion, but that was true to form. Marlee didn’t delude herself into imagining the VP had actually been persuaded by her arguments. She did like to think, however, that she’d at least rebutted the most damaging arguments against her.
All they had to do now was make the decision. How long would that take? A simple vote. Three people. No chance of a tie. She flopped into her seat. The next hour would tell whether she stayed at KNCS or left, whether she received the promotion she’d been vying for or she marched out the door. If she ended up a free agent, she’d have another decision to make, one that was potentially life altering. Did she want to remain in this business or pursue some other career? She wasn’t a quitter. Sportscasting had been her dream for more than ten years. Give it up? What would she do? Where would she go?
She could probably find another job as a reporter, but the idea of not being near Renn brought an ache to her belly. She’d suffered loneliness before, missed people she liked and respected, friends whose company she enjoyed. But Renn was different. What she felt for him was more than friendship. It was—
She refused to consider the word. No, she didn’t love him. She was infatuated with him, and, after this past weekend, definitely turned on by him. But lust wasn’t the same as love, she reminded herself, no matter how good the sex was.
“Marlee.”
Her head shot up. He was standing before her, tall and straight. Her heart began to race, until she saw his face. Then it sank. The news wasn’t good. She hadn’t gotten the job. Her hands began to tremble.
“I wasn’t selected, was I?” Her voice quavered.
He took a step inside just as Quint Randolph passed by, his eyes raking the scene.
“There’s no privacy here,” Renn said. “Come on down to my office and we’ll talk about it.”
“What’s there to talk about?”
“Please, Marlee. You don’t really want to have this conversation here.”
He was right. Praise in public, reprimand in private…or give bad news. She exited the tiny cubicle and followed him.
“Sit down.” He closed the door behind her.
She wanted to defy him, but her legs were rubbery. She sat.
“First of all, you need to know that Taggart has not been selected. Not yet, at least.”
She stared up at him. “But—”
“I voted for you. Faye voted for Tag.”
No surprise there. “What about Sal?”
“I thought he was going to be the tiebreaker,” Renn said. “Turns out he isn’t voting.”
“I don’t understand.” Her head felt light.
“He wants Faye and me to agree on our choice, to reach a consensus. Otherwise, he maintains, we’re doomed to failure. He’s probably right.”
“So what happens now?”
He sat on the corner of the desk. His knee was close enough for her to touch. “For the time being, nothing. He’s given us another day to work things out between us. If we can’t, he wants us to recruit from outside.”
She heard his words, but her mind was too slow to absorb them. “So nothing has changed,” she finally mumbled, as if to herself. “Three months have gone by since Clark died, and nothing has changed.”
“I’m sorry.”
She vaulted out of her seat and began pacing between the desk and the door. Her mind felt swamped, saturated, overflowing with thoughts, memories and feelings. The terrible pain of losing Clark. The guilty grasping at hope that she might get his job. The greedy clinging to Renn’s encouragement. Making love to him.
Weak and trembling, she leaned against the back of the door. “I’ve been a fool. The interview this afternoon was nothing but a sham. You knew from the beginning Faye wasn’t going to change her mind. You’ve been stringing me along.” She closed her eyes, as if she could shut out what now seemed so obvious. “You don’t really care if I get the job,” she said, opening them, seeing him clearly before her. “You just want to make sure Taggart doesn’t. You used me.”
He’d gotten to his feet and now approached her. She recoiled, but there was nowhere to go, no escape from all the mistakes she’d made.
“Marlee, you know that isn’t true.” He reached out to touch her, to hold her in his arms.
“Isn’t it?”
He winced at a sharp stab of guilt and stepped back. The truth was he had strung her along at first, not completely for the reasons she alleged, but close enough. He’d endorsed her by default, because she was the only alternative to a guy he couldn’t abide. If Taggart hadn’t been championed by Faye, Renn wouldn’t seriously have considered Marlee a viable candidate, except perhaps as a fill-in until a better one came along.
“My initial justification for backing you is beside the point,” he said, unwilling to deny her charge. If their relationship was going to continue and succeed, it had to be based on honesty, and that meant owning up to mistakes. His prejudice against women sports reporters had been one of them. Not anymore.
“What’s important is that I do want you to be the sports director and anchor.”
“No, you don’t want Taggart. Those are your only choices. Or were. Now you can get someone else.”
“I don’t want anyone else.” But he could see by the quiver of her lips that she was hurting too much to understand.
“It seems to me,” he continued, “you’re the one with two choices now. Continue to fight for the job you want and take the chance that you won’t get it, or throw in the towel and start looking for employment elsewhere.”
He gazed at her, confident of what her answer would be. She’d already proven she was a scrapper. That feistiness was one of her most endearing qualities. This time he’d suppor
t her decision without any reservations. “So what is it going to be?”
She studied him without responding. That frightened him. He’d expected her to be instantly defiant.
She left his office without answering his question. Even worse, he didn’t know at this point how she felt about him. They’d spent a glorious weekend together, one he would never forget, one he wanted to repeat endlessly.
A stunned minute elapsed before he followed her to her work space and stuck his head around the partition. She was sitting at her computer, one hand on the mouse, her attention riveted to the screen.
“Come out to the house tonight after your late broadcast, and we’ll explore the options,” he said. “I’ll pick up a bottle of Chianti and that smoked cheese you like and some fresh fruit. We’ll sit under the stars—”
She shook her head without looking away from the screen. “I have things to catch up on here, and then I need to get some sleep.”
He wanted to tell her they could catch up on their sleep together, but he wasn’t going to beg. If she didn’t want to spend the night with him, that was her prerogative. Maybe under the circumstances maintaining a little distance was a good idea. But that was being logical. What he was feeling now was a burning need to hold her, to bury himself in her.
He watched her exit the World Wide Web. She gathered up scattered notes and shoved them into a folder, her movements jerky, clumsy. Some of the papers fell to the floor. He bent to retrieve them at the same time she did. They nearly butted heads. He glanced over, about to make a joking remark, when he noticed her eyes were moist.
“Marlee—” He started to reach for her. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”
She froze at the term of endearment, then bounced up stiffly. “I’m fine.” She skittered to the door. “I’m on the air in a few minutes. See you tomorrow.”
MARLEE MANAGED somehow to pull off her sportscast without anyone being aware of the turmoil she was in—except Renn. He stood behind the cameraman, watching, supposedly to make sure everything went without a hitch, but she could feel his eyes on her the whole time. Afterward, he complimented her on the story she did about the local kid who’d lost an arm to bone cancer but was still playing tennis. He didn’t invite her to his house a second time, though the plea was written in his eyes. She thanked him and moved on to her office, hoping he would trail behind her, hyper at the thought of him reaching out and grasping her arm the way he had that first time she’d shown up at his house, confused, despondent, aching for someone—for him—to console her. This time she wouldn’t beg.
He didn’t follow, and he didn’t hang around for the ten o’clock telecast. She went home alone to an empty house.
She still wasn’t sure she believed his protestation that he really thought she had a chance at the anchor job from the beginning. She did remember his advice, though: be aggressive. She’d done just that and had nearly gotten herself fired. Had that been his intent, to prod her into doing something stupid, so he would have a valid reason to drop her from consideration for the promotion? Except…when he could have fired her after the locker room incident, he hadn’t. If what he said was true—and rumors bore this out—he’d actually defied Faye by not giving her a written reprimand.
Her problem, she concluded unhappily, was depending too much on other people, guiding her life by their expectations, their standards. She’d spent her early years trying to please her father. In the end, he’d abandoned her. She’d placed her hope and trust in her husband. He’d betrayed her. Clark had been her rock, but he was gone, too.
Renn had urged her to be enterprising. Now it was time to be independent. Maybe she’d been approaching this career choice all wrong, holding on to the wrong dream.
It was after midnight when she sat on her couch at home, booted up her laptop and combed through the listings on the internet of television stations with openings for sportscasters. There weren’t many, at least not in markets higher than KNCS. She’d moved down when she’d relocated from Austin. She wasn’t about to do that again, even if it meant getting an anchor position in some out-of-the-way place. She wouldn’t jump at the first offer that presented itself, either.
A sports reporter job was available in New York. She didn’t have a ghost of a chance of getting it, but sending in a tape wouldn’t hurt. Two openings existed at stations in the Midwest, one in the South, all of them at small stations. Then she saw the Philadelphia listing. An up market. Apparently, the position had been vacant for almost six months, unless they’d forgotten to remove it from the Web site. She clicked on the e-mail address and sent a short query, identifying herself and asking if the job was still available.
The following day she came to the office early and set about producing a résumé tape. She already had a collection of her best reports, including clips of her filling in as anchor for Clark. To edit and compile a thirty-minute demo and make a half-dozen copies required about three hours.
She was stacking the cassettes on her desk, getting ready to put them into mailers, when Renn appeared.
He took one look and stared openmouthed. “What are you doing?”
She continued addressing a label. “Sending out tapes.”
“Why?” He knew the answer of course. What she really heard wasn’t the question but the anger in it
“I’m taking your advice.” She didn’t want a confrontation with him, especially here, but they needed to have this conversation. Maybe she should have accepted his invitation last night to go to his place, except then they would have made love and she would have lost her resolve. It was better this way, she told herself.
He continued to gape at her. She resolved not to feel guilty for doing what she had to do. This career decision was one she had to make alone.
“You said yourself I had two options—stay and waste my energy fighting a losing battle, or move on to greener pastures. Well, I’m moving on.”
“You’re quitting, just like that?” He sounded outraged.
“Just like that?” she nearly shouted back, temper and frustration boiling to the surface. She lowered her voice. “Do I have to remind you this game has been going on for three months? Yesterday you told me point-blank I wasn’t going to get Clark’s job. What am I supposed to do, Renn—sit around and be grateful that my pay’s been cut and my benefits reduced? I’ve been played for a sucker, but even this dummy can catch on if you give her enough time and enough hints. I may be a slow learner, but I’ve finally gotten the message. I don’t believe in hanging around where I’m not wanted.”
She didn’t understand why her throat burned, why her words sounded strangled. After all, she was being bold and aggressive, enterprising and independent. Wasn’t that what he’d advised her? She waited for him to beg her not to go, to say he wanted her.
“The situation isn’t hopeless, Marlee,” he said, his tone firm, yet under it she thought she heard sympathy and imploring. “We lost the last skirmish, but not the battle, definitely not the war.”
“You didn’t lose, Renn. I did. This is my career we’re talking about, mine.”
“If you give up now, they win. Faye and Taggart. Is that what you want?”
“It’s not what you want.”
He pulled back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This hasn’t been about me, has it? It’s been about you. You don’t want to work with Taggart, so you use me as a foil to make sure Faye doesn’t get her way.”
Renn’s expression went blank. “Y-you really believe that?” he stammered.
“What else am I supposed to believe?” she asked, less sure of herself now than she’d been when she’d asked the question.
He bowed his head and breathed out through his nose. Silence lingered between them for an uncomfortable interval.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said softly.
She didn’t know what to say, how to react.
“I’m sorry you’ve misjudged me, sorry I failed you.” He raised his head and met her gaze. �
��I wish you the best, Marlee. I hope you find what you’re looking for. If there’s anything I can do to help you, a recommendation…anything…please let me know.”
He gave her a perplexed half smile, turned and left.
Thursday, May 8
RENN KEPT telling himself Marlee’s departure from KNCS-TV and Coyote Springs was the best thing for both of them. He’d broken his vow not to get emotionally involved with someone in the media. She needed to move on with her career—which, despite his promises, he hadn’t been able to advance. What they’d shared had been a pleasant but dangerous interlude that neither of them could afford to pursue. Eventually, he’d put her out of his mind and be able to sleep at night.
Maxine stopped by on her way to lunch. “Here are the latest survey results.”
Renn couldn’t remember the station vice president’s secretary ever delivering the report personally.
“Thanks.”
She handed him the papers. “Can I talk to you a minute? Privately.”
He wondered why she was so nervous. “Sure. Close the door, if you like.”
She did. “I’ll probably get fired if she finds out I’m here talking to you, but I don’t care. I’m sick of what’s going on.”
“You’re delivering the latest report on your way to lunch. Sit down, Maxine. What’s the problem?”
Still, she seemed momentarily uncertain. “You know Marlee’s been sending out tapes?”