by Cathie Linz
Jason checked his watch as WMAX’s dedicated elevator whisked him directly to the seventh floor and the radio station’s operations. His timing was good—Heather’s show wouldn’t be starting for another ninety minutes yet.
When he gave his name and asked to see Heather, the receptionist took one look at the balloons and flashed him a knowing grin before waving him on by, her directions unintelligible due to the gum she was chomping.
As he followed what looked to be a main hallway, Jason took note of the poster-size PR photos of the various radio personalities that hung along the walls. Jason thought Heather was much better looking in person than her PR photo, which was a shadowy version of herself.
“Excuse me.” He stopped a heavy-set man wearing a yellow jacket and pea green tie. For some reason he looked vaguely familiar, but Jason couldn’t place him. “Can you tell me where I can find Heather Grayson?”
The stubby man waved a cigar at him. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Jason Knight”
“WE HAVE TO FIND JASON before Bud says something to him!” Heather yanked open the door leading from the break room out to the hallway. The moment Nita had come to tell her that Jason had been spotted in the hallway, blind panic had taken hold, hence the cherry yogurt stain on her favorite purple sweater. Heather’s matching floral skirt swirled around her legs as she came to an abrupt stop. “Where did Linda say she saw him when she called you?”
“At the reception desk.”
Frantically looking both ways, she saw no sign of Jason. “You go that way,” she told Nita, pointing ahead of them toward the reception area. “I’ll keep looking back here.”
Running to the intersection of two corridors, she immediately noticed a huge bunch of shiny Mylar balloons at one end. She thought a deliveryman was holding them, but then she caught sight of the well-cut dark suit. That was no deliveryman, that was Jason. He was almost completely blocked from her view by…Bud.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. She was hyperventilating. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. Maybe it would be all right. Maybe Bud wouldn’t say anything about the bet. Maybe he hadn’t had time to.
Maybe, maybe, please, please.
She joined them as quickly as she could without running.
“Ah, there you are, Heather.” Bud’s malicious smile made her stomach drop. “I was just telling Jason here how I was responsible for the two of you meeting in the first place.”
Heather had to get rid of Bud pronto. She knew of only one way to do that. “Bud, there’s an urgent phone call for you. It’s…Michael Jordan—you know, M.J.—and he wants to talk to you immediately. Some kind of exclusive interview thing. You’d better go.”
Bud looked at her as if he couldn’t be sure if she was lying or not. She knew that the chance of an exclusive one-on-one with Chicago’s biggest sports figure was too tempting to resist.
“You don’t want to keep M.J. waiting, Bud.”
“Right. Well, Jason, good luck. Not that you’ll need it Not with Heather here.”
She cut him off. “Balloons?” Her nervous words were directed to Jason. “For me? That’s great. Why don’t we get out of this hallway and go somewhere more private.” It wasn’t a question, it was a plea. She was desperate to get away from Bud.
As she tried to drag Jason away. Bud got in his final salvo.
“Yeah, Heather, you snagged him all right,” he said. “Just like you said you would.”
10
HEATHER FROZE. Snagged! He’d said snagged. In front of Jason.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone to talk,” Bud cheerfully declared, clearly satisfied now that he’d done his dirty deed for the day.
Maybe Jason hadn’t heard. Maybe he hadn’t understood the reference.
He had. One look at his face told her that much. But the look in his eyes told her he wasn’t surprised.
“You knew,” she whispered in disbelief. “You already knew.”
“About the bet? Yes, I knew.”
How could he sound so calm? “How did you find out? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Bud’s smirking face had rekindled Jason’s anger about being the butt of their prank. As a result, his voice was hard and curt. “Because I wanted to teach you a lesson.”
“When did you find out?”
“A while ago. I overheard you and Nita talking.” Jason went on to name the restaurant.
Heather scrambled to put the pieces together as she reconstructed the past few days in her head. She and Nita had eaten there after she’d told Jason she didn’t want to see him anymore. Which meant that he’d known about the bet when he started chasing her.
It was beginning to make sense. And it was beginning to make Heather furious. “You said you wanted to teach me a lesson. What kind of lesson? That you’re as bad as I am?”
“Hey, I’m the injured party here!” Jason retorted, irritation flashing in his dark eyes. “You’re the one who started this with your little bet between you and your co-workers.”
“That was before I knew you. What’s your excuse?”
“I don’t like being lied to or made a fool of.”
“I never tried to make a fool out of you,” Heather said in a rush. “The whole thing started out…it was just a bet.”
“Just a bet?” he roared.
She wasn’t saying any of this right. “I did what I did because Bud challenged my professional credentials regarding relationships. He held up that magazine with you on the cover and made this outrageous wager. I didn’t really take him seriously, but the next thing I knew everyone in the office started placing their bets—”
Anger was now foremost in his gaze as he cut her off. “So that’s why the receptionist gave me that strange grin. She’d placed her bet on you. And when I showed up with a bunch of balloons and flowers like a lovesick puppy, she knew she’d won.”
“I didn’t ask you to bring me balloons or flowers. That was your idea. Part of your master plan. You’ve heard my reasons for doing what I did, how about yours?”
“I told you, I don’t like being made a fool of. Do you know that my mother has tossed my father out and he’s living with me thanks to you?”
Heather blinked at this non sequitur. “What are you talking about?”
“Thanks to your stupid talk show my father is sleeping in my guest room, losing my TV’s remote and playing his damn Dean Martin record over and over again until I think I’m going to go crazy.”
“You are crazy.”
“If I am, you made me that way,” he shot back angrily. “Starting with that damn bet of yours.”
“At least I called it off before you and I…before we…”
“Had sex?” Jason curtly interjected.
His words shot a hole in her heart.
“Exactly. The same can’t be said for you. What was your little plan? To get your revenge by seducing me and making me think you cared about me? By making me care about you?”
He didn’t bother denying it. “Did you care?”
Heather wasn’t about to humiliate herself any further by confessing her feelings for him. She didn’t dare open her mouth, afraid of the words that might spill out, so she shook her head.
Jason’s face darkened. “It wasn’t me you were interested in. It was Chicago’s Sexiest Bachelor. It didn’t matter who the poor sap was. Your job was to snag him.” Anger compressed his lips into a grim line as he growled, “I don’t need that kind of dishonesty in my life. I’m out of here.” He shoved the balloons at her. “You might as well keep these, they’re as full of hot air as you are!”
Tears clogged her throat as she helplessly watched him storm off.
Damn. Damn. Damn! She wished more than ever that she’d never agreed to the stupid bet. She may have nearly won the wager, but she had definitely lost Jason.
“REALLY, BETTY, I can’t believe how badly you’ve botched this assignment.” Hattie anxiously fiddled with the sunflowers in her straw hat as she pe
rched atop a picture frame in the radio station hallway.
“Like you could do any better, Miss Smarty-pants,” Betty retorted from her perch on the next frame down the hall.
“I can. And I will when we deal with Anastasia. I’m so glad I got the girl baby.” Hattie added with a satisfied pat to her silvery curls.
“She’s not a baby anymore, and she’s not going to be any easier than Jason,” Muriel said, tugging a bag of granola out of one of her many vest pockets. “Now Ryan is another story. There’s a man I can easily deal with. Finding his soul mate is next on our assignment roster.”
“We’re getting way ahead of ourselves here, girls. First we’ve got to close the case on Jason,” Betty reminded her sisters.
“And it’s not looking good at the moment,” Hattie said.
“That’s an understatement.” Exasperated, Betty shoved her bangs off her forehead.
“What happens if Jason and his soul mate don’t get together?” Hattie’s voice was uncertain.
Betty shuddered. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
Hattie sighed. “I hate to see them both so upset.”
“What about us?” Muriel retorted. “They’ve certainly upped my stress level. And I hate to think what my blood pressure must be.”
“I thought one of the advantages of being a fairy godmother was not having to worry about things like blood pressure.” Hattie’s nervous fingers had reduced the sunflowers on her hat to little pieces.
“I’ve just about had it with those two lunkheads,” Betty muttered. “I’m ready to do something drastic…”
“Wait!” Hattie zoomed over to grab Betty’s hand before she tugged her left ear and initiated whatever drastic measure she’d been about to take. The picture frame Hattie had been perched on swung drunkenly on the wall as a result of her abrupt departure. “Jason and Heather saw the light on their own once before. Maybe they’ll do it again.”
“That’s a real big maybe,” Muriel inserted. “You do realize that if we mess up, we won’t be getting any more chances.”
Muriel and Hattie both looked worried. For once, Betty’s expression matched theirs.
“WHAT EXACTLY DO WE need men for? That’s the topic this afternoon on Love on the Rocks.” Heather tugged up the long sleeves on her purple sweater before readjusting her headphones and moving closer to the mike. “Give us a call with your views. Go ahead Bonnie from Buffalo Grove, you’re on the air.”
“How about rodent control?”
“What about it? When you say rodent, are you referring to mice or men?”
“I meant that men can be good for rodent control. You know, catching mice and stuff.”
“My cat is better at it than most men are. I should show you the e-mail I got from my friend Judy in New York City. Suffice it to say that when she needed a mouse catcher, the only male of any use was an eight-year-old bed wetter, and he demanded to be paid for his work.” Heather added the gong sound effect before saying, “Thanks for calling, Bonnie. Next we have Fran from Franklin Park.”
“Hi, Heather, I listen to your show all the time and I’m a big fan. Anyway, I was wondering why men have such trouble having a normal conversation with a woman. Especially on the weekends. My husband turns on the cable sports channel and that’s it. There’s no communicating with him. The weekend is the only time for fixing up our house, or doing errands and stuff. My daughter’s room needs painting and he promised he’d do it. That was back before Christmas. It’s nearly the end of May now. When I ask him, he just mumbles, ‘Yeah, I’ll get to it.’”
“Sounds like M.A.S. to me. Male answering syndrome. Indicated by grunts of agreement, or disagreement, regardless of what you’re saying.”
“Is there a cure?”
“The recovery rate isn’t real good but it does improve drastically when the TV is off.”
“He wouldn’t let me do that. When we go out to a store he even brings a little TV that hangs around his neck.”
“Have you ever thought of just leaving him in the store and going home without him? Or maybe pick up a new model while you’re out shopping. Good luck, Fran. Next we have Al from Arlington Heights.”
“Hey, I think you’re being a little hard on men today. You make us sound much worse than we are.”
“Pretty difficult to do.”
“Yeah, well, my wife and I have been married twenty-five years. We just had a huge fight. I got a letter from the IRS because my wife didn’t fill out the forms correctly. I didn’t want her to do the taxes herself, but she insisted, and I gave in to her demands and this is what happens. Everything is a mess and it was all her fault.”
His words hit Heather the wrong way as she took up the cause of yet another woman accused by a thick-skulled man. Her fury abruptly boiled over. “I see. So just because she made one little mistake on your income tax, you’re going to toss years of marriage out the window. That’s just great, Al!” She ignored the frantic cut-it-out motions Nita was making on the other side of the booth window. Heather was just getting going. She wasn’t about to calm down now. “You know what should go out the window? Sanctimonious guys like you!” She disconnected the call.
Are you nuts? Nita typed on Heather’s screen. He just wanted to know whether to bring her flowers or candy after their fight.
“And to answer Al’s unspoken question about whether to bring his poor wife flowers or candy, he should bring himself home first. Flowers and candy are optional. All she needs is him begging her forgiveness, him back in her arms again. Now let’s hear a word from Rosie’s Florist.”
“Great,” Nita said as she joined Heather in the broadcast booth during the commercial break. “First you insult a caller, then you tell your listening audience that flowers are optional right before we air a florist’s ad. Nice going.”
“You told me to fight back.”
“I didn’t mean to fight our advertisers! Or our audience. Take it easy, okay? We’re back in fifteen seconds.”
But Heather wasn’t about to pull any punches now. She leaned into the mike, her voice confidential and rich with feminine outrage. “You know, you might have heard the saying that men want sex and women want romance. What women really want is a relationship. Men use romance to get sex. They serenade you beneath your bedroom window, then they dump you. If you’ve ever been dumped, give us a call.”
That certainly got listeners’ attention. The phone lines lit up like Michigan Avenue at Christmastime.
“Talk to me, Grace from Gurnee.”
“My boyfriend dumped me last year. He said that I talked too much. And then I just read in some book that men don’t want women to talk in complete sentence while having sex. Is that true?”
“There are men who don’t want women to talk in complete sentences at any time. Let me guess, that book was written by a man, right?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it. I say we shoot him.” Heather shot a look at Nita’s apoplectic face in the production booth. “Hey, I was just kidding.”
Nita sagged with relief.
“Burning at the stake might be better,” Heather decided. “We could gather around a big bonfire…hey, what’s going on?” she demanded as she heard the sudden sound of a cat litter jingle coming from the headphones covering her ears. “We weren’t supposed to go to a commercial yet.”
“You’ve gone off the deep end. I’m playing a tape of an earlier show. It was that or watch you self-destruct on the air.”
“I thought you were the one who liked telling it like it is.”
“I do, but you’re going overboard.” Nita sounded exasperated, a rare occurrence for her. “You’ve got to get hold of yourself! Go home. Get some rest. Get a new perspective on things. Everything will look better tomorrow. Provided we both still have jobs,” she tacked on darkly.
FOR A MAN WHO didn’t like surprises, Jason had sure been getting more than his fair share of them lately. The most recent came when he arrived home Monday night, switched on the
light and found his father sprawled across the leather couch with a giggling woman beneath him.
“All right, that does it, Dad!” Jason’s bellow startled the cozy-twosome. “I’ve been patient, but this is too much…”
His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the woman’s face. “Mom?”
Her salt-and-pepper hair was mussed as if she’d forgotten to brush it. And her cheeks were red…was that stubble burn? What had they been up to? On second thought, he didn’t want to know.
“What’s going on here? I mean, it looks like you two have kissed and made up.”
His mother’s pretty blush confirmed it. “Your father called me this afternoon. I came over and we talked in front of the fireplace. It was romantic, like being a guest in a resort or something. One thing led to another…”
“And then you walked in.” His dad didn’t look very pleased about that.
“So is every thing…settled?” Jason asked.
“If it is, it’s thanks to Heather.”
“Heather?” Jason repeated. “What are you talking about?”
“I listened to her show today,” his dad admitted. “Boy, you should have heard her going after men. Someone had certainly put a bee in her bonnet today.”
Jason shifted uncomfortably, knowing darn well that he was that someone.
“Anyway,” his dad continued, “She talked about this thing called M.A.S.”
“Male answering syndrome,” his mom interjected.
“And it got me thinking that maybe I had a touch of that M.A.S.”
“More than just a touch, dear.” His mom’s words were accompanied by a wry smile and a pat to his dad’s cheek.
“Anyway, your mom and I—” he hugged her “—got some important things settled. I’ll be heading back home tonight.”
Seeing them together—presenting a united front—made Jason feel good. Like things were right in the world again. Some of them, anyway. This was how he always thought of his parents, as being part of the same whole. His mom was much shorter than his dad, but she ruled the roost…when his dad let her. Many was the time when he was growing up that they’d danced across the kitchen while supper cooked, or organized a family camp out in the back-yard to count stars in the summer.