She had a right to be. Unless someone else was pushing all the buttons for her, and Rick somehow doubted it, she had a wonderful feel for production. She even worked in a few sound effects, without going overboard, a common pitfall for beginners. And the way she read the scripts was something no one could fake for her. She sounded natural, confident and vibrant, far more seasoned than her brief training should have allowed. Her voice was in the soprano range, but not too high. It would make a nice contrast to the lower, huskier voice of his midday disc jockey, Yvonne. Their commercials could go back-to-back without sounding anything alike.
He'd told Christie a half-truth. They did try to get commercials recorded during business hours, for client approval, but "try" was the operative word. A lot of production did get done after hours for approval the next day, often after the spots had already started airing.
When Christie's commercial demos ended, the sound of blank tape hiss filled the room. Well? it seemed to prod him.
Sitting back in his chair, Rick picked up the glossy color photo he'd teased her about. The young woman in the picture looked back at him, her chin resting on her hands, eyes sparkling with a pixie's smile. Trouble, his mind flashed. What was it about her? He'd worked around pretty women before, and he'd always had enough sense to keep it professional. He'd never gone out with any coworker, let alone one who worked under him. At this station, it wasn't just a bad idea. It was an ironclad company policy: no dating between supervisors and employees.
Since his divorce, it had become a reflex for him to keep his feelings in check, both in and out of the office. So why worry about Christie?
No reason, he decided. It just bothered him to see someone like her, with a decent career already under way, charging headlong into a business that had cost him so much. A business that had cost him his marriage. A business he'd tried to walk away from once, and failed. Because once it got into your blood, that was it.
Do you know what you're getting into? he asked her silently.
Her smile sparkled back at him, unfazed. Rick was sure he would have gotten much the same reaction if he'd asked her the question in person.
And then he remembered he had a song about to fade, if it hadn't already. He bolted for the studio. Dead air, as he told all his employees, was the eighth deadly sin.
He made it back just before the music ran out.
An old movie. A cup of hot tea. A bowl of popcorn and M&Ms. Comfort foods.
Christie lined them all up as she settled into her apartment that night to lick her wounds. She curled up on the couch under the pink and gray afghan her aunt had crocheted for her when she was in high school. Tomorrow was another day at the loan office, another day of being professional and civilized, surrounded by men in suits fifteen years older than she was. The suits, probably, as well as the men. Tonight she'd be a kid again, and shut out the mental replay of the disastrous interview-all the things she'd said wrong, all the things she hadn't said but should have. She was a kid who wanted her mother, but she hadn't called her yet. Talking about it right now would just be another way of reliving her failure.
Alex Peretti had been nice enough to recommend her and she'd blown it. Her one chance to work at the only radio station within a workable driving distance. Now it was time to search for a job on her own, the way she should have in the first place. Start sending out tapes to stations in other areas. Not Los Angeles; she didn't kid herself that she was ready for a market that size. Which meant, if she was going to find a radio job, she'd have to face the prospect of relocating. She'd known that when she enrolled in broadcasting school. Expecting to end up at the one station right in her own back yard-well, she'd been dreaming.
If it weren't for the stupid hill between the station's transmitter and Orangewood, where she lived and worked, at least she would have known Rick Fox was there. Then she would have been prepared for the pos sibility of meeting the voice from her college days. But even that wouldn't have prepared her for the way he looked. If he'd been just as unreceptive, but twenty years older, would she have been so rattled?
She picked up the remote control and started the movie. The point of this night was to forget all that for a while. She'd start on plan "B" tomorrow, a little older and wiser.
Bette Davis had barely killed her sister when the phone rang.
Christie sighed. She'd forgotten to bring the cordless phone in with her. She paused the movie and padded to the kitchen in her worn fleece slippers.
"Hello?"
"May I speak to Christie Becker, please." No telemarketer sounded like that. The voice on the other end was bigger than life. Christie recognized it immediately, but she couldn't believe it.
Deep breath. Bring your voice up from your diaphragm. "This is she," she said, putting a note of question into her voice. As if she didn't know which big-voiced male might be calling her apartment atshe glanced at the clock above the stove-seven-thirty at night? Of course. He would have just gotten off the air.
"This is Rick Fox from KYOR. We were short on time this afternoon, and I'd like to go over a few more things with you. Can you come back in?"
And so it was that the next day, Christie found herself back where she'd never expected to be again: sitting across the desk from Rick Fox.
She'd traded in yesterday's rose dress for a navy blazer and slacks, hoping to erase any impression of a ditzy girl. Maybe it helped, because this time, as she sat down, he offered her coffee.
"No, thanks. Coffee makes me bounce off the walls."
"Okay. But if you take this shift, you may find yourself wanting to bounce off the walls by six in the morning."
A joke, and a reference to possible employment, right off the bat? Must not be the same man.
Rick sipped his own coffee from an impressivesized black mug with a huge handle. As he looked across the desk at her, his eyes were quietly assessing, but definitely more approachable than yesterday. Christie shifted her gaze back to the giant coffee cup, determined this time not to be distracted by a simple case of good looks. Focusing on the cup, she noticed two things: Rick Fox was left-handed, and he didn't wear a wedding ring.
"You're here on your lunch break?" he asked. Christie nodded. "Okay. I'll try to keep it short. I wanted to go over a few things with you again, so if I repeat myself, please bear with me."
He sat back, coffee cup in hand. It was a much more relaxed posture than she'd seen yesterday, although it did put him at more of a distance. He'd cleaned the top of his desk, or at least condensed it into one large stack of papers in the far right-hand corner. A lone manila folder sat at the center of the desktop in front of him. She assumed her resume was inside, but he didn't glance at it.
"Your tape surprised me," he said. "Your reads are excellent. And whoever helped you out on the effects did you proud."
"No one helped me," she said, trying not to sound indignant.
"I didn't think so." He surprised her with a grin. "Sorry. Trick question." He sipped his coffee. "First off, I want you to think again about the hours. I mean, really think about it. You'd be driving to work in the dark; part of the year it would still be dark by the time you went home. In between, you've got six hours alone in the building. It's a strange schedule."
"I have thought about it. I wouldn't want to do it for a million years, but to be honest, I don't plan on doing overnights for a million years." Too outspoken?
He didn't show any reaction either way. "How do you feel about the drive? Remember, it's two trips a night, and you have to drive it with your eyes open both ways. Do you live far from the station?"
"About fifteen minutes," she hedged. It was more like twenty-five.
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Excuse me?" She felt her cheeks warm. He was way out of bounds with that one.
As if he'd read her mind, Rick held up a hand. "Don't sic the labor relations board on me just yet. What I mean is, the hours of this job can put a real strain on personal relationships. The questions I'm asking you right n
ow, I want you to ask yourself. You don't have to answer out loud if you don't want to. Do you have a boyfriend, husband, fiance? Highmaintenance cat? Anyone who'd be affected by your hours?"
"No." It wasn't any big secret, she reasoned. And, dicey questions or not, she wanted this job.
"This gig also cuts down your chances of starting up a new relationship, at least for those first million years when you're doing overnights. Any problem with that?"
"No."
He studied her for a long time, and a silence stretched out. Christie found that having Rick's full attention was no less nerve-racking than his preoccupied attitude the day before. He could look very serious when he wasn't smiling, and very intent. She wanted to shift her eyes to his coffee cup again, but didn't dare. It seemed important not to look away. In stead, she lowered her glance toward his full, firm mouth, and found that didn't help at all.
Just when the moment began to feel like a long freeze-frame, he took one more sip from his mug. "Last question," he said.
Already?
"It's a biggy." Rick sat forward, setting his coffee aside and resting his arms on his desk. "Here's where I turn into the bad guy. But I have to. I've got to take one last shot at being the voice of reason here."
Uh-oh.
"Miss Becker, you're about twenty-three years old-"
"You're not supposed to ask me that. It's illegal."
"I'm not asking you. I'm telling you."
"Twenty-six."
A smile flickered in his eyes. "Okay, you're roughly twenty-six years old, and-I can't stress this enoughyou have a viable career. In a stable business. Broadcasting is not stable. We happen to be a privatelyowned station with a pretty low turnover, but that's not the norm. Radio stations are bought and sold. Music formats change. All of which can put you out of a job. And since, as you mentioned, you're interested in advancement, there's a good chance it won't be here. Remember-low turnover. So eventually you'd probably want to move on, which means relocating, which means more instability." He paused. "And the hours-nights, personal appearances on weekends-can turn your personal life upside down. Are you prepared-"
"You said that last one already."
"Right." He smiled ruefully. "I'm not getting through to you, am I?"
It was the strangest interview she'd ever had, but it was still better than the one yesterday. Today, at least, he was really talking to her. Maybe that was what gave her the nerve to ask, "I don't mean to be rude, but do you always try to talk your applicants out of the job?"
"No. Most of them already know better. It's just too late." He shook his head. "You see, Miss Becker, besides everything else I just mentioned, radio's an addictive job. If you don't crack in three months, you may not want to go back to anything else. It's kind of like the priesthood: if you can be happy doing anything else, you probably should."
"What about you?"
He paused a moment before he answered. "One divorce," he said quietly. "Other than that, it's been a piece of cake."
Oops. She hadn't been going for anything that personal. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault."
"You're still here," she noted.
"Still here. But I'm an addict, remember?" If he was any the worse for wear, Christie could see it only in the faint lines around his eyes when he smiled. All the lines really did was make him look a bit more complex than a man in his twenties. And much more interesting. She bit her lower lip.
"Would you do it again?" she asked. "Radio, I mean. Not the divorce."
"Hold on. I'm supposed to be asking the questions."
"You asked me to think about it. I'm just trying to make an informed decision."
He grinned. "Okay." He shifted his glance just beyond her, drumming the fingers of his bare left hand on the desktop as his smile faded. "Would I do it again?"
Christie suspected she'd stumbled onto something. She'd asked the handsome program director a question he'd never asked himself. Whether that was good or bad, she'd soon find out.
She didn't have long to wait. When Rick's eyes returned to hers, they were decisive. "Yes," he said. "I'd do it again."
In return for that honest answer, she tried for a few seconds to consider everything he'd warned her about. She couldn't. She wanted the job too badly. She went out on one more limb. "Well," she said, "how about if we make a bet on whether or not I crack in three months?"
Rick didn't miss a beat. "That just happens to be your probationary period." He picked up the manila file folder in front of him and flipped it across the desk in front of her. "You'll need to fill these forms out for our personnel office before you start. And forget it. I'm not betting against you."
Rick walked Christie through the station to give her a brief tour before she went back to give her two weeks' notice at the loan office.
He'd tried, he thought. No one could say he hadn't tried. But he'd already known that trying to reason with Christie was a losing battle. He knew that single minded, feverish look, because he'd worn it himself over ten years ago when he'd quit college for his first full-time radio gig. If her work ethic matched her obvious passion, he'd made a sound business decision.
But in the hall, Rick found himself fighting the urge to guide her by touching her arm or her shoulder. To anyone else, the gesture might not have looked out of place, but he knew himself better. Her delicate build invited him to touch, and it was bringing out a lot of useless impulses-some of them protective, some of them not.
Oh, well. She was working nights. He'd hardly ever see her.
When he showed her the production room where the commercials were recorded, Christie was like a kid on Christmas morning. Most disc jockeys had to be shoved in that direction, but she was admiring everything from the computer recording console to the voice processor. Rick stayed back, leaning against the door jamb as he watched her move from one discovery to the next. "Better than the toys at broadcasting school?" he said.
"I'll say." Christie was studying the CDs of background music and sound effects, mounted on their large wall rack. She fingered the spines of the CDs with a look that bordered on avarice. Dreaming of commercials to come? Unusual, especially in a female jock. But as she stood there, that soft-looking auburn page boy framing her face, there was no denying how female she was.
If she could get that worked up over a CD library, maybe she did belong here. But Rick had something better in store for her than production discs. Already anticipating her reaction, he cleared his throat.
She looked up, startled, and he held back a smile. "You'd probably like a look at the on-air studio?"
The light in her eyes was even brighter than he'd expected.
Christie wasn't sure her feet were touching the ground as she walked down the hall to the last door on the left. The studio. Her holy grail. Rick opened the door and stood back for her to go in ahead of him; he was polite about things like that, she noticed. Christie scrupulously checked the "ON AIR" light above the doorway, but of course it was off. She stepped inside and nearly walked into the black Formica countertop that took up most of the room, surrounding the disc jockey on three sides.
The woman on the other side of the counter was about thirty, Hispanic-looking and very pretty, with long, chocolate brown hair that stopped one shade shy of black. As Christie and Rick entered, she smiled, pulling off her headphones. "Hi, Rick. What's up?"
"Yvonne, this is Christie Becker, our new overnight jock. Christie, this is Yvonne Reyes, our midday personality."
"A girl!" Yvonne's smile widened, and she offered her hand over the large console that stood on the counter between them. Christie scanned the enthusiasm for cattiness and found none. "About time, Rick," Yvonne said. "Now I won't have to be on every one of the nail salon spots."
"Hi." Christie shook Yvonne's hand and peered over the console, trying to get a better look at the sliding controls on the other side. Soon enough, she told herself.
"Yvonne's also our music director, and my right arm. Yvonne, I'll need yo
u to train Christie for a couple of days before her first air shift."
"Great. She can learn from my mistakes. Nice to meet you, hon."
"Yvonne Reyes," Christie said when they were outside again. "That's a pretty name." She caught herself watching Rick for his response, wondering just how attached to his right arm he might be. The woman was certainly an eyeful.
No reaction that Christie could see. "Her last name's really Reynaldo. She just tweaked it a little bit. Come to think of it, we need an air name for you, don't we?"
"Christie Becker is it," she said. "It's my mother's maiden name."
"You applied for work under an assumed name? Good thing I didn't call your references." He blinked; obviously he hadn't meant to say that. "But I will now," he amended.
"It's okay. Everybody knows about the radio thing, even at the loan office. I couldn't go to broadcasting school for a year and a half and keep my mouth shut."
"Christie Becker." He said her name slowly, as though he were tasting it. "Works for me." Christie found herself watching his lips, and reminded herself to cut it out. "What's your real last name?" he asked.
"Swensen."
"Becker, Swensen...German and Swedish?" She nodded. "So where'd the red hair come from?"
"The mailman was Scottish."
He threw his head back and laughed-that wonderful, rich laugh she'd heard from out in the hallway yesterday. And once again, something inside her responded to the sound. At times he seemed so cool and reserved, but not when he laughed.
"So, what's your real name?" she asked.
"Foxborough." It sounded Scottish. It seemed best not to mention that.
"Good," she said instead. "I was having a hard time calling you Mr. Fox. It sounds like something out of Peter Rabbit."
He chuckled again. "So that's why no one here calls me `Mister.' " He shook his head, still smiling. "It's Rick. First names around here."
He was leading her back out the way she'd come in. By now the maze of hallways was starting to make sense. The layout was basically a horseshoe, with the programming offices on one side, including Rick's office, the production room, and the on-air studio. In the center was a small break room, and now they were passing by the sales and administrative offices on the side where she'd first come in. Rick pointed them out, but didn't spend a great deal of time talking about them. It was obvious his main concern was at the other end of the building.
Love on the Air Page 2