Tall, Dark & Reckless

by Heather MacAllister

  Piper found the side entrance, helpfully labeled Lecture Platform, and cracked the door. It opened directly into the room. No hall or foyer. No way to sneak in. She stepped inside and several heads turned her way, including Mark’s. Without stopping his lecture, he beckoned to her.

  Piper climbed the steps to the platform. As she made her way toward him, Mark twisted off the cap of the water bottle. “Here’s a bonus tip—getting shot hurts. Getting stabbed hurts.”

  Piper handed him the pill bottle.

  “Trust me, the ratings are not worth it.” As the students laughed lightly, he shook out a pill and swallowed it. “Thanks,” he said and gave her a quick smile.

  Up close, he didn’t look so hot. Oh, sure, he had journalist-chic nailed, but the strain showed on his face and the dark hollows of his eyes.

  “The label says to take two,” Piper suggested when he started to set the pill container on the table.

  He glanced at her and touched his lapel mike to turn it off. “One or two as needed.”

  “You need it.”

  His expression grew impatient. “I’ll take another if I have to.”

  Piper stayed put even though the room had gone quiet. “I’m sure you’ve been told that you’ve got to stay ahead of the pain. Right now, I’ll bet it’s way ahead of you.”

  They stared at each other. Hollowed eyes or not, Mark’s stare packed a wallop.

  What was it to her whether he hurt or not? His leg had been bothering him before their run-in this morning and it would continue to bother him. He wasn’t her responsibility and it was presumptuous to challenge him in front of his students. And yet here she was, staring him down.

  “You’re going to stand here until I take another pill, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Looking at his face, Piper felt an overwhelming urge to mother him. Not the emotion she’d expect to have for a man who embodied the male ideal and was breathtakingly handsome besides. But definitely safer.

  Piper heard a few whispers among the class.

  “It wouldn’t bother me if you did stay here,” Mark told her.

  “Yes, it would.” Piper gave him a slow smile. “I’d make sure of it.”

  Surprise registered in the depths of those blue eyes. They went a little smoky as his gaze flicked over her face and lingered on her mouth. “Tempting.”

  And didn’t that one word define the two of them so far? It would be tempting to find out if the pleasure now would be worth the pain later and she wasn’t talking about here on the lecture platform.

  Now, that was her more immediate concern, because she’d just recklessly issued an ultimatum to a man who didn’t respond to ultimatums.

  Turning his lapel mike back on, he spoke to the restless students. “We’ll be discussing the photograph on page one-hundred-seven of the big print book I made you lug to class today. If one of you will kill the lights, I’ll put the first version up on the screen.” He pressed the remote and a photograph appeared behind him.

  Oops. She was going to look pretty dumb standing here for the next half hour. Or she could wimp out and slink away.

  But during the rustling as students flipped through their oversize text book, Mark gazed straight at her and took the second pill.

  Or maybe he’d palmed it. She wasn’t going to ask. She was off the hook. He’d done it her way so she could hit the highway. Piper gave him a thumbs-up, smiled a goodbye and turned to leave.

  “Hey.”

  She felt his fingers on her bare forearm. Awareness radiated from the point of contact.

  He blinked as though he felt it, too, and brought his hand to his mike. “I appreciate this.” A beat went by. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  For a moment there, she’d sensed he’d been going to say something more.

  But he hadn’t.

  Piper nodded and by the time she climbed off the platform, Mark was already lecturing again.

  So that was that. It was for the best. Really. Absolutely. She’d take the win and get out.

  Except, when Piper reached the exit door, she couldn’t make herself go through it. Sometimes the best option was boring and wasn’t she tired of being bored?

  Hidden by the dim light, she made her way along the side aisle to the back of the hall. There wasn’t a single empty seat that she could see, so she stood by the double doors in the back.

  What am I doing? She needed to call Dancie and she’d missed lunch, but here she was, standing in the back of a lecture hall to listen to a man she’d never see again. At least not in person. Unless…

  Oh, this was an inconvenient attraction. He was a triple threat. He attracted her physically, was turning out to be surprisingly likeable, and intrigued her professionally. Throw in those few moments of connection and there was a very good chance that if Piper didn’t walk away and forget about him, she’d end up doing something stupid.

  She’d walk away later. The forgetting part might take a few days.

  Mark was showing how the photograph of a man giving a speech had appeared in three different publications. Each publication had cropped it in a way that illustrated opposing points of view.

  “If this version was all you saw, you’d think the speaker had a huge audience.” Mark advanced to the next frame and the students murmured.

  Piper saw that what had been cropped out was the ticket booth where the people were waiting in line to get into a street festival. They weren’t part of the speaker’s audience at all.

  The next frame showed the picture cropped heavily to the left, showing the speaker surrounded by the press. The frame after that revealed that behind the press was open space, not an audience. In fact, it appeared that the whole thing was a staged speech for an advertisement and not a news event at all.

  The next frame showed the speaker surrounded by an applauding, sign-carrying audience who clearly liked what they were hearing.

  “You can see how an editor’s agenda can alter perception.” Mark changed the screen. “And this is the actual photograph in its entirety.”

  There were sounds of surprise as the photograph revealed a man off to the side holding a large placard that said Applaud If You Want a Free Soft Drink!

  “But wait, there’s more,” he said teasingly. “Here’s video of the scene before and after that photograph was taken. It was shot by me from my hotel room balcony.”

  With the rest of the class, Piper watched as the speaker arrived and a crowd of a few dozen at most was packed together and directed when to applaud and fed questions to ask. Then, they were moved to a different side and handed signs so photographers could shoot from another angle. The video fast-forwarded through more stagings and then returned to normal speed to show campaign workers handing white cards to those in the crowd.

  “Watch what happens,” Mark instructed.

  The people got in line for their free soft drinks, and then exchanged their cards for entry to the street festival.

  “They were paid!” someone said.

  “Yes.” Mark paused. “Because they were participating in the filming of a campaign video.”

  There was a buzz of comments before someone asked, “So what’s wrong with that?”

  “Not a thing,” Mark said. “Unless a lazy reporter for a wire service uses the photo to illustrate an actual campaign stop. Which is what happened here. That picture was propagated as fact through the news media. Even worse, the photo was cropped to be flattering or unflattering, according to the views of various editors. Finally, somebody who bothered to dig noticed that the photo existed prior to the event it was supposed to illustrate. And that was the beginning of what became one of the ugliest media scandals of the last decade.”

  A student raised her hand. “What happened to the reporter who used the picture?”

  “Eventually, everyone at that bureau was fired or resigned,” Mark answered.

  “What about the reporter who uncovered the story?” another asked.

  “He became a foreign co
rrespondent.”

  He’s talking about himself. Piper wondered if the students would figure it out.

  There were other questions but Piper quit listening and just watched Mark. It was hard not to. He sat with a casual ease, one foot on the rung of the stool. No one would ever guess he was in pain. It was an impressive display of self-control.

  She wondered what drove him and what it would take for him to commit to a woman. One woman. Not a hook up, but a life mate.

  She wasn’t that woman. Tempting, he’d said. Oh, yeah. She’d like to spend quality time with Mark Banning although he was completely wrong for her. She wanted stability and commitment and he wanted to bounce around the world by himself. Where was a relationship between them likely to lead? To her waving goodbye as his plane took off, that’s where. Why was she tempted by something she knew would hurt her? Did she think she could change him?

  Maybe she was more like her mother than she thought. Except her mother always gave in to temptation and Piper would not.

  Men did not change.

  She stressed this over and over and over again to her dating clients. Fall in love with the man as he is, not who you want him to be.

  She checked her phone for the time. The class was almost over, which meant Dancie would probably be back from lunch with her mother. Piper had blocked out today to work with Dancie in anticipation of getting the go-ahead to launch the Piper Plan website, but that was toast. Dancie was probably a basket case. Clearly, the situation called for a bittersweet chocolate croissant with mocha cream spread or a pitcher of margaritas. Too bad it was too early for the margaritas. An argument might be made that it was never too early for margaritas, but Piper wasn’t going to make it. With a last glance at Mark, and a little sigh for what might have been, Piper slipped out the back of the lecture hall and headed for the Croissant Cafe.

  * * *

  MARK WAS AWARE OF the exact moment Piper left, just as he’d been aware of her presence during his lecture. Had she stayed because she’d been interested or because she wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to keel over?

  Feeling regret that he’d never know, Mark finished answering the students’ questions, dismissed the class and stayed for the obligatory ten minutes when he was surrounded by starry-eyed young women.

  It was always the female students who lingered, and Mark had learned that if he didn’t hang out with them until the professor for the next class arrived, they’d line up outside his office.

  He owed Piper Scott big-time. He would have been in major trouble without the meds. He was even willing to admit that she’d been right about taking two pills. As the pain became manageable, he felt other muscles he’d been tensing relax. He didn’t experience the spaciness or brain fog he’d dreaded, either. In fact, he’d been able to think more clearly without actively fighting the pain.

  Yeah, he probably should have taken a dose prior to this morning’s meeting. Maybe it would have even turned out differently. Maybe he could have convinced BT to give him a second chance instead of concentrating on hiding the fact that he hadn’t healed as quickly as he’d pretended.

  But he hadn’t; so now Mark was moving on.

  Thankfully, the other professor arrived a few minutes early. Mark nodded a goodbye to the girls, grabbed his laptop and water bottle, and walked gingerly, but without help, to his office.

  With relief, he closed the door and drew a deep breath. He could still smell Piper’s perfume. Her curves had fit against him in all the right places and she’d been exactly the right height when he’d gripped her shoulder to take the weight off his leg. As they’d walked, he’d shifted more of his weight. She hadn’t flinched and never mentioned it.

  He liked her. Maybe too much. Not many people would have stared him down in front of his students until he’d taken the second pill. He’d been tempted to call her bluff and make her stand next to him for the rest of the class, but he figured she was the type to make good on her threat to bother him.

  She already bothered him. Crossing to the desk, he lowered himself onto the chair and inhaled once more. He needed to stop thinking about Piper Scott and get on with finding another job. If this had been another time and another place…

  But it wasn’t.

  So Mark opened his laptop and phone and started calling his contacts. The sooner he got affiliated with a news bureau, the sooner the clock on his non-compete clause would start ticking. Maybe if he kept writing columns for Travis, BT would waive the clause.

  Seven calls later, Mark plugged his phone into the charger and sat back in the chair to regroup.

  He’d hit all the big names and nobody had anything for him. Nothing. What had happened to all the “if you’re ever available, give us a call” offers? He was available. He was calling.

  Maybe instead of selling himself, he should sell the story. But why should he have to? He was Mark Banning, damn it. BT’s words echoed in his mind. How quickly they forget, eh, Mark?

  An uncomfortable feeling settled in his stomach. Nobody was going to forget him. Mark would pay his own expenses to travel to the Middle East, if he had to. But he needed press credentials. Good ones, not freelancer ones bought off the internet.

  So maybe he’d have to accept a position with a lower-tier news agency. He didn’t care. With Mark Banning on the roster, an agency wouldn’t remain lower tier for long.

  Mark studied his list of contacts, eliminating anyone who hadn’t tried to poach him from OMG.

  “Wally Shetland, I’m about to make your day.” He’d met Wally a couple of times at press junkets. Wally had never been affiliated with one of the majors, so he usually ended up in the back of the room. With Mark on board, Wally would have access to the front row.

  He brought up the regional news service’s website on his laptop, studied it for a few minutes and, using the landline, punched in the phone number.

  Wally, himself, answered the phone. The outfit must be smaller than Mark thought.

  “Hey, Mark,” Wally said after Mark identified himself. “University of Texas comes up on caller ID. What’s the problem? Afraid I wouldn’t take your call?”

  Weird comment. “I’m teaching a course here this semester,” Mark explained. “Why wouldn’t you want to take my call?”

  “You’ve been calling a lot of people this afternoon. I gotta tell you, I’m hurt I wasn’t farther up on your list.”

  Word had spread that Mark was job hunting. Bunch of gossips. Wally should be glad he was on Mark’s list at all. “So you already know OMG and I have parted ways.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  That wasn’t encouraging.

  Mark wondered what story was going around, but he wasn’t going to ask. “I’ve got a lead on a great piece.”

  “You always do,” Wally said. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  Mark continued, “I’m offering Phoenix Regional an exclusive.”

  Wally snorted. “Nobody else was interested. Why should I be?”

  This wasn’t the reaction Mark had expected, but he could understand why Wally would be suspicious of Mark Banning offering an exclusive to a small-time media outlet. “I haven’t offered anyone else this story.” Mark heard the muffled clicking of a computer keyboard. The guy wasn’t emailing while they were talking, was he? “You’re the first and only, Wally.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “True fact.” A little humor there. “I like the latitude smaller outfits give me. And this story will take time to develop.”

  Unbelievably, Wally hesitated. See, that was the problem too many people had. A Mark Banning exclusive would bump Wally up to the next level. Top tier. But this hesitation was why he hadn’t progressed further in their mutual field than he had.

  “You’d be attached to it, I assume.” Wally hadn’t asked anything about the story.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” The uneasy feeling Mark had dismissed as his stomach’s reaction to the medication strengthened. This was his gut telling him somet
hing was wrong.

  Another hesitation. “I’m going to level with you, Mark, because nobody else has the cojones. So here it is—nobody is going to touch you. You’ve got a reputation as a loose cannon. With all the shaky stuff going on politically, and the liability issues, and shrinking budgets, the networks and bureaus can’t take a chance that you’ll go rogue and end up costing them.”

  Fear was dictating news stories now? What had happened to his profession? “You’d think no reporter had ever been taken hostage before. Just FYI, it’s not an experience I intend to repeat.”

  He heard Wally exhale and then background noises became muffled before there was the sound of a door closing. “Mark, buddy.”

  Mark squashed the thought that he and Wally had never been buddies.

  “I want to help you out. I really do, but I’d lose my job.”

  Lose his job? For hiring Mark? The guy was telling the truth; Mark could hear it in his voice. He was persona non grata. Blacklisted. And everyone had known it except Mark.

  The realization felt just like when his captors had kicked him.

  BT had known it, too, which put him in a position to set the conditions for Mark’s next assignment. No wonder he’d let Mark walk. He’d enjoy making Mark grovel before taking him back, too.

  If he took him back.

  When Mark said nothing, Wally went on. “I’m going to give you a piece of advice. And I’m speaking as someone who has admired your career. Stay out of the spotlight for a while. Keep your gig at UT. Or write a book. Do both, even. Then ease back into it, maybe do a couple of documentaries.”

  “Documentaries?” Mark couldn’t believe he was hearing this.

  “They’re not that bad.”

  Mark closed his eyes.

  “You need to prove you’re not wild-man Banning anymore. Give it a few years and try getting back into the field then.”

  “When everyone has forgotten me?” His chest grew tight.

  Wally laughed. “You’ll remind them.”

  “Well, thanks for the advice,” Mark forced himself to say.

  “Hey—send me an autographed copy of the book when it comes out, okay?”