by Nora Roberts
fellow might have a second chance.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted Aubrey to see where her mother works.” Nestling the baby, she looked longingly around the set. “I’ve missed this place.”
“Fran, you’ve just had a baby.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. You know, Dee, you should think about a follow-up show. People love the sentimental stuff. If any of those three couples get together, you could do a kind of anniversary thing.”
“I’ve already thought of that.” Deanna stepped back, hands on hips. “Well,” she said after a minute. “You look good. Really.”
“I feel good. Really. But as much as I love being a mom, I hate being a homebody. I need work or I’m liable to do something drastic. Like take up needlepoint.”
“We couldn’t let that happen. Let’s go up and talk about it.”
“I want to say hi to the crew first.”
“I’ll be up in the office when you’re finished.” Smiling smugly, Deanna headed to the elevator. She’d won her fifty-dollar bet with Richard. He’d been positive she’d last two full months. On the ride up to the sixteenth floor, she glanced at her watch and calculated time. “Cassie,” she began, the minute she stepped into the outer office. “See if you can reschedule my lunch meeting for one-thirty.”
“No problem. Great show, by the way. Word is the phones were going crazy.”
“We aim to please.” With her schedule in mind, she dropped down behind her desk to study the mail Cassie had stacked for her. “Fran stopped by downstairs. She’ll be up in a few minutes—with the baby.”
“She brought the baby? Oh, I can’t wait to see her.” She stopped, disturbed by the expression on Deanna’s face. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong?” Baffled, Deanna shook her head. “I don’t know. Cassie, do you know how this got here?” She held up a plain white envelope that carried only her name.
“It was already on your desk when I brought the other mail in. Why?”
“It’s just weird. I’ve been getting these notes on and off since last spring.” She turned the paper around so Cassie could read it.
“ ‘Deanna, you’re so beautiful. Your eyes look into my soul. I’ll love you forever.’ ” Cassie pursed her lips. “I guess it’s flattering. And pretty tame compared to some of the letters you get. Are you worried about it?”
“Not worried. Maybe a little uneasy. It doesn’t seem quite healthy for someone to keep this up for so long.”
“Are you sure they’ve all been from the same person?”
“Same type of envelope, same type of message in the same type of red print.” Distress curled loosely in her stomach. “Maybe it’s someone who works in the building.”
Someone she saw every day. Spoke with. Worked with.
“Anyone been asking you out, or coming on to you?”
“What? No.” With an effort, Deanna shook off the eerie mood, then shrugged. “It’s stupid. Harmless,” she said, as if to convince herself, then deliberately tore the page in two and tossed it in the trash. “Let’s see what business we can clear up before noon, Cassie.”
“Okay. Did you happen to catch Angela’s special last night?”
“Of course.” Deanna grinned. “You didn’t think I’d miss my toughest competition’s first prime-time program, did you? She did a nice job.”
“Not all the reviewers thought so.” Cassie tapped the clippings on Deanna’s desk. “The one from the Times was a killer.”
Automatically Deanna reached into the stack and read the first clipped review.
“ ‘Pompous and shallow.’ ” She winced. “ ‘By turns simpering and sniping.’ ”
“The ratings weren’t what they expected, either,” Cassie told her. “They weren’t embarrassing, but they were hardly stellar. The Post called her self-aggrandizing.”
“That’s just her style.”
“It was a little much, doing that tour of her penthouse for the camera and cooing about New York. And there were more shots of her than her guests.” Cassie shrugged, grinned. “I counted.”
“I imagine this will be tough for her to take.” Deanna set the reviews aside again. “But she’ll bounce back.” She shot Cassie a warning look. “I’ve had my problems with her, but I don’t wish hatchet reviews on anyone.”
“I wouldn’t either. I just don’t want you to be hurt by her.”
“Bullets bounce off me,” Deanna said dryly. “Now let’s forget about Angela. I’m sure I’m the last thing on her mind this morning.”
Angela’s initial tantrum over the reviews had resulted in a snowstorm of shredded newspaper. It littered the floor of her office. She ground newsprint into the pink pile as she paced.
“Those bastards aren’t getting away with taking a slice at me.”
Dan Gardner, the new executive producer of Angela’s, wisely waited until the worst of the storm had passed. He was thirty, built like a middleweight with a compact, muscular body. His conservatively styled brown hair suited his boyish face, accented by dark blue eyes and subtly clefted chin.
He had a shrewd mind and a simple goal: to ride to the top on whatever vehicle could get him there the fastest.
“Angela, everyone knows reviews are crap.” He poured her a soothing cup of tea. It was a pity, he thought, that their strategy of allowing no previews of the first show had failed. “Those jerks always take cheap shots at whoever’s on top. And that’s just where you are.” He handed her the delicate china cup. “On top.”
“Damn right I am.” Tea slopped over into the saucer as she whirled away. Fury was better than tears, she knew. No one, absolutely no one would have the satisfaction of seeing how hurt she was. She’d been so proud, showing off her new home, sharing her life with her audience.
They had called it “simpering.”
“And the ratings would have proved it,” she snapped back, “if it hadn’t been for this damn war. The goddamn viewers just can’t get enough of the fucking thing. Day and night, night and day, we’re bombarded. Why don’t we just blow the damn country off the map and be done with it?”
Tears were close, perilously close. She battled them back and sipped the tea like medicine.
She wanted a drink.
“It’s not hurting us. Your lead-in to the six o’clock news has come up in five markets. And the viewers loved your remote at Andrews Air Force Base last week.”
“Well, I’m sick of it.” She hurled the teacup at the wall, sending shards flying and drops splattering over the silk wallpaper. “And I’m sick of that little bitch in Chicago trying to undermine my ratings.”
“She’s a flash in the pan.” He hadn’t even jolted at the explosion. He’d been expecting it. Now that it was done, he knew she could begin to calm. And when she’d calmed, she’d be needy.
He’d been seeing to Angela’s needs for several months.
“In a year she’ll be old news, and you’ll still be number one.”
She sat behind her desk, leaning back, eyes shut. She was slipping. Nothing seemed to be going the way she’d planned when she’d formed her production company. She was in charge, yes, but there was so much to do. So many demands, so many, many ways to fail.
But she couldn’t fail, could never face that. She calmed herself by taking long, slow breaths, just as she did during bouts of stage fright. It was much more productive, she reminded herself, to focus on someone else’s failure.
“You’re right. Once Deanna bottoms out, she’ll be lucky-to get a gig on public access.” And she had something that might hurry that fine day along.
As the smile curved Angela’s lips, Dan walked behind the chair to massage the tension from her shoulders. “You just relax. Let me do all the worrying.”
She liked the feel of his hands on her—gentle, competent, sure. They made her feel protected, safe. She so desperately needed that now.
“They love me, don’t they, Dan?”
“Of course they do.” His han
ds trailed up to her neck, then brushed down over her breasts. They were soft and heavy and never failed to arouse him. His voice thickened as he felt her nipples harden between the light pinch of his thumb and forefinger. “Everybody loves Angela.”
“And they’ll keep watching.” She sighed, relaxing as his hands molded her.
“Every day. Coast to coast.”
“Every day,” she murmured, and her smile widened. “Go lock the door, Dan. Tell Lorraine to hold my calls.”
“I’d love to.”
Chapter Fourteen
During the frigid nights in the desert, it was hard to remember the blazing heat of day. Just as after the first bombs exploded it was difficult to remember the deadly tedium of the long weeks of Desert Shield.
Finn had been through other wars, though he’d never been so hamstrung by military regulations. There were ways, however, for the enterprising reporter to stretch them. He would never have denied that certain sensitive intelligence data couldn’t be broadcast without endangering troops. But he wasn’t a fool, nor was he blindly ambitious. He saw his job, and his duty, as finding out what was happening, not just what the official reports claimed was happening.
Twice he and Curt climbed into his rented truck with a portable satellite dish bracketed in the bed, and headed out. Over the poorly marked roads and the shifting sand, they managed to link up with U.S. troops. Finn listened to complaints and to hopes, and returned to base to report both.
He watched Scuds fly and Patriots intercept them. He slept in snatches and lived with the possibility of a chemical assault.
When the ground war began, he was ready, eager, to follow it into Kuwait City.
It would be called the Mother of Battles, the hundred hours of fierce fighting to liberate Kuwait. While allied troops took up positions along the Euphrates River, along the highways linking Kuwait to other cities, Iraqis fled. Hustling, as one trooper told Finn, “to get out of Dodge.”
There were massive traffic jams, trapped tanks, abandoned possessions. From a dusty truck heading toward the city, Finn observed the wreckage. Mile after mile of shattered vehicles lined the road. Cars, stripped for parts, tilted on crates. Personal possessions littered the roadway, mattresses, blankets, frying pans and ammo clips. Incredibly, a chandelier, its crystals gleaming in the sun, lay on the sand like scattered jewels. And worse, much worse, was the occasional corpse.
“Let’s get some tape of this.” Finn stepped out of the truck, his boots crunching down on one of the cassette tapes that were blowing across the highway.
“Looks like the garage sale from hell,” Curt commented. “Crazy bastards must have been looting on their way out.”
“It always comes down to getting your own, doesn’t it?” Finn pointed toward a swatch of hot pink flapping from beneath an overturned truck. The evening gown shimmered with sequins. “Where the hell did she expect to wear that?”
Finn prepared for a stand-up as Curt set up his equipment. He hadn’t thought anything else could surprise him. Not after seeing the pathetically gaunt Iraqi soldiers wearily surrendering to allied troops. Seeing the fear and fatigue, and the relief, on their faces as they emerged from their foxholes in the desert. He hadn’t thought anything else about war could affect him, not the torn bodies, the atrocities of scavengers or the stink of death cooking under the merciless sun.
But that flap of pink silk, rustling seductively in the desert wind, turned his stomach.
It was worse inside the city. The raw nerves, the anger, the devastation, all coated in a layer of oily soot from the fires that depleted Kuwait’s lifeblood of oil.
When the wind blew toward the city, the sky would darken with smoke. Midday would become midnight. The seaside was dotted with mines, and explosions rocked the city several times a day. Gunfire continued, not only in celebratory bursts, but in savage drive-by attacks on Kuwaiti soldiers. Survivors searched the cemetery for the remains of loved ones, many of whom had suffered torture and worse.
Through all he observed, through all he reported, Finn continued to think of a sequined evening gown billowing out of the sand.
Like the rest of the world, Deanna watched the end of the war on television. She listened to the reports on the liberation of Kuwait, the official cease-fire, the statistics of victory. It became a habit to drop into the newsroom before she left the CBC Building, hoping for a few scraps of information that hadn’t yet been aired.
But the reality of day-to-day responsibilities kept her grounded. Whenever she had a free night, she watched the late news, then slipped in a tape of that morning’s show. In the privacy of her apartment, she could watch herself critically, searching for ways to improve her on-air skills or to tighten the overall format.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, comfortable in sweatshirt and jeans, a notepad open across her knees. The earrings were wrong, she noted. Every time she moved her head they swung—a distraction for the viewer, she thought, and wrote: No more dangling earrings.
And the hand gestures were too broad. If she didn’t watch it, she’d end up being parodied on Saturday Night Live. She should be so lucky, she thought with a grin, and scribbled on her pad.
Did she touch people too much? Nibbling her lips, Deanna watched. She always seemed to be laying a hand on a guest’s arm or circling an audience member’s shoulder. Maybe she should—
The knock on the door had her swearing. Her schedule didn’t allow for unexpected visitors after ten. Grudgingly, she switched off the VCR. She glimpsed through the peephole. Then she was tugging at locks, dragging at the chain.
“Finn! I didn’t know you were back!”
She didn’t know who moved first. In a heartbeat, they were wrapped together, his mouth hard on hers, her hands fisted in his hair. The explosion of need rattled them both, the swell of heat, the blast of power. The bomb detonated inside her, leaving emotions shattered, needs raw. Then he was kicking the door closed as they tumbled to the floor.
She didn’t think. Couldn’t think. Not with his mouth burning on hers and his hands already urgently possessing. Like tussling children, they rolled over the rug, the only sounds incoherent murmurs and strained breathing.
It wasn’t dreamlike, but stark reality. The only reality that mattered. His hands were rough, streaking under the fleece of her shirt to take, digging into her hips to press her fiercely against him.
She seemed to be erupting beneath him, with short, static bursts of energy. Her skin was hot, smooth, unbearably soft. He wanted to taste it, to devour it, to consume the flavor of her flesh and blood and bone. Her mouth wasn’t enough—her throat, her shoulder, where he dragged the shirt down. He felt like an animal, rabid and starving, and wanted to glory in it. Yet he knew he could hurt her, would hurt her, if he didn’t harness the worst of the need.
“Deanna.” He wished he could find some spark of tenderness within the furnace that roared inside him. “Let me . . .” He lifted his head, struggling to clear his vision. He’d barely looked at her, he realized. The moment she’d opened the door and said his name, his control had snapped.
Now she was vibrating like a plucked string beneath him, her eyes huge and dark, her mouth swollen. And her skin . . . He brought his fingertips to her cheek, stroking over the flushed, damp flesh.
Tears. He’d always considered them a woman’s greatest weapon. Shaken, he brushed them away and cleared his throat. “Did I knock you down?”
“I don’t know.” She felt like a jumble of nerve ends and sparks. “I don’t care.” Slowly, beautifully, her smile bloomed. She framed his face in her hands. “Welcome home.” She let their slow, quiet kiss soothe them both.
“I’ve been told I have considerable finesse with women.” Taking her hand, he closed it into a loose fist and pressed it to his lips. “Though it might be hard for you to believe at the moment.”
“I’d rather not ask for corroboration.”
His grin flashed. “Look, why don’t we . . .” He trailed off as he stroked a han
d over her hair. Confused, he pulled back, eyes narrowed, and studied her. “What in the hell did you do to your hair?”
In automatic defense, she combed her fingers through it. “I cut it. New Year’s Eve.” Her smile wavered. “The viewers like it—three to one. We did a poll.”
“It’s shorter than mine.” With a half laugh, he moved back to squat on his haunches. “Come here, let me get a good look.” Without waiting for assent, he hauled her to a sitting position.
She sat, pouting a little, her eyes daring him, and the lamplight glowing over the glistening cap. “I was tired of dealing with it,” she muttered when he only continued his silent study. “This saves me hours a week, and it suits the shape of my face. It