Falling Star (19 page)

Finally it was just too much. The tears broke
over the dam of her resolve, spilling over her cheeks in a great
unchecked rush. It was too humiliating, but there it was: every
last shred of dignity she had was now officially gone. No doubt
Geoff would want to cut bait soon and then she'd really be
marooned. But instead she felt him reach out to massage her shaking
shoulder.

"You just have to keep pushing, Nats," he
whispered. A few houses down, an SUV pulled into a driveway. Out
spilled its cargo, a harried mom and two little leaguers, loud and
boisterous and without a care in the world. "Besides," Geoff went
on, "you Yanks love underdogs. That'll work to your advantage."

"But the one thing I could always fall back
on is my reputation. Now that's shot. By
me
!" She jabbed at
her chest, her cheeks wet. "
I'm
the one who killed it! I
mean, I'm forty goddamned years old. I can't compete on the basis
of looks anymore, if I ever could. And if you don't have looks in
this business, and you don't have reputation, what the hell do you
have? Nothing! Not a damn thing."

Geoff kept his hand on her shoulder. "Nats,"
he said finally, "you are a beautiful woman. You are also one of
the few people in this lunatic business who competes on the basis
of experience and skill. Any news director who doesn't see that has
got a screw loose."

She shook her head helplessly. That was sweet
but what did it mean at the end of the day? Probably he just didn't
know what to say. Maybe a woman's tears undid Geoff Marner just
like they undid every other man.

A car whizzed past, rap music blaring. After
it passed, silence again descended. The closed Jag began to heat up
from the relentless July sun but still Geoff sat there patiently
and still she was reluctant to get out. "I'm just so frightened."
She dabbed at her face with the mangled tissue. "I've only got
three months till my contract runs out and I can't—I can't—lose
this job."
If I do I might end up like Evie, living by myself
and scrabbling away at some fourth-rate newspaper for a
pittance
. "It's all I've got."

"That's not true." He shook his head
vigorously. "You are not defined by one hour of nightly
airtime."

"Like hell I'm not!" She shrieked the
words.

As if he didn't know what else to do, Geoff
suddenly reached across the gearshift and bundled her into his
arms. She let herself crumple onto the broad expanse of his chest,
let her wet face drop onto his starchy pinstriped collar. He felt
so solid and smelled so good, of soap and aftershave and maleness.
She pulled back and stared at him. He gazed back, wonderful,
hazel-eyed, pillar-of-strength Geoff, who even at this moment had a
smile in his eyes. Crazy, manic Geoff, but Geoff whom she could
always, always count on.

She was surprised to watch those smiling eyes
grow somber, then fall to her lips. Completely without warning, to
her utter surprise, he bent his head and kissed her.

Geoff
. She felt as though real life
had ceased, and been replaced by some bizarre yet entrancing
reality. His lips were slow and undemanding, totally unlike Miles,
totally unlike what she might have expected of Geoff had she ever
had any wild imaginings of kissing him. It was like being nestled
in soft sand, enveloping and delicious. She didn't want to move.
She didn't want him to move. His skin, slightly rough from
late-afternoon stubble, gently grazed her cheek as then he bent his
head to kiss her throat.

Delicious sensations overcame her, so sweet
as almost to be painful.
Oh, my God
, she heard herself
murmur. She was so surprised.
Geoff?
Her hands rose to pull
him closer. It so rarely felt right, but with this man it did.
Somewhere deep in her mind's recesses she realized she hadn't
kissed any man but Miles for a dozen years. But even that fleeting
bit of rationality, that might in a more lucid moment have drawn
her back to the real world, fell by the wayside as Geoff's kisses
grew more urgent. "Inside," she heard herself whisper, her eyes
closed, her head thrown back, her throat fully exposed to Geoff's
caresses.

His head reared up. He looked startled.
"Inside?"

"The house."

Understanding dawned and he moved quickly, as
did she, getting out of the Jag, grabbing her purse, foraging for
keys. Once inside, she turned off the security alarm and again,
wordlessly, they reached for each other.

They stood clasped in the foyer, kissing. She
felt the long, hard length of him pressed against her. He was so
different from Miles, tall and lean where Miles was pudgy and
almost formless. Geoff's tongue darted tantalizingly across her
lips, then softly into her mouth.

Somewhere in the recesses of her brain a
worry niggled.
What are you doing? This is Geoff! Your
agent!
But the pull was so powerful. And Geoff she could trust,
she could talk to. Why had she never thought of him like this
before?

He pulled back and grasped her by the
shoulders. "Upstairs?"

"Here." The word came instantly and without
thought. No time for upstairs. No need. She led him by the hand
into the living room and he followed without complaint. Somehow her
customary caution had abandoned her. Maybe she was without caution
that day. Or had lost it somewhere in the Millennium Club.

She was almost giddy with need of him. At the
sofa she turned and they faced each other. He stood a few feet
away, motionless, as though if he moved at all this craziness that
had taken possession of them both might suddenly wear off.

She kicked off her shoes and her hand reached
for the jumpsuit's zipper. Slowly she pulled it down, watching
Geoff's eyes trail down her body with the movement. It was silly,
of course, doing a striptease in a jailhouse jumpsuit, but there it
was. She didn't care. It didn't matter.

The zipper ended below her navel. After a
moment's hesitation she pulled the rough orange fabric off her
shoulders, then bent from the waist to push it down her legs. She
rose and stepped out of it, kicking it aside. She was naked, her
clothes in a plastic jailhouse bag in Geoff's car.

He came toward her and ran his hands down her
body. She reached for the buttons on his starchy pinstriped shirt,
complaining, "So many," plucking cuff links off his wrists and
tossing them carelessly aside so that they skipped along the tiled
floor. She pushed his shirt off as he bent to step out of his
trousers. Warm skin, strong muscles, thick light brown hair . . .
She caught her breath as again he raised himself to his full height
and pulled her against him, his body hard and lean and, now,
demanding. Without another thought, without letting him go, she
backed against the sofa's plump white cushions and pulled him atop
her.

"God," he muttered, then bent his head to
take a breast into his mouth.

I can't believe I'm doing this
,
Natalie thought vaguely, but hadn't the least desire to stop. She
arched her back, looking sightlessly at the rough-hewn beams that
crisscrossed the ceiling, rubbing her body against his. She felt
delirious. It was the easiest, the most natural thing in the world
to then take him inside her, as though he had been before and would
be again.
Geoff
.

The wave that swept them both was sweet and
yet relentless. When finally they each gave in, afternoon light
pouring through the paned windows, Natalie couldn't find within
herself the least regret, the least guilt, the least worry. It was
Geoff, and that made it right.

*

They must have fallen asleep, she realized
later, because the light was much softer when somewhere, vaguely,
she became conscious of the phone ringing, the answering machine
picking up. And a male voice speaking. "Yeah, this is Scoppio.
You're not gonna anchor tonight. You're suspended. I'm gonna put it
in writing—"

Her eyes opened. The room around her snapped
into focus. Reality hit like a thunderclap.
What?
She
scrambled from beneath Geoff and seized the jumpsuit, holding it in
front of her. She whirled to face Geoff.

He lay still, rubbing his eyes and looking
bewildered. "What's wrong?"

"Tony called. I heard him on the answering
machine."

Geoff rolled his eyes and held out his arms,
beckoning her. "Come back here, Nats. We'll deal with him
later."

"No." How could she possibly wait? "I really
need to hear Tony's message now. I think he said he's suspending
me."

Geoff seemed to consider that. Then a moment
later he abruptly rose from the sofa with an irritated expression
on his face. "Right. The anchor desk comes first. I'll get out of
your hair." He grabbed his trousers, abandoned on the floor.

"It's not that. It's . . . I don't know. I'm
sorry," she repeated lamely, though by now he didn't seem to be
listening to her and she no longer knew what she wanted to say.

Geoff reattached his belt. "We should listen
to the message."

Back to business, apparently. She was oddly
disappointed. But wasn't it she who'd insisted on listening to the
message?

"Where's the machine?" he asked.

"In the kitchen."

Dutifully they both tromped in that
direction, though Natalie felt like a fool walking around nude with
a jailhouse jumpsuit clutched in front of her.

Geoff found the machine on the granite
counter and punched the blinking MAILBOX 1 button. "5:55 PM,"
recited an automated voice, followed by Tony's clipped tones.
"Yeah, this is Scoppio. You're not gonna anchor tonight. You're
suspended. I'm gonna put it in writing but take this as
notification that you're off the air without pay for a week."

"Can he
do
that?" Her voice sounded as
if it came from someone else, shrill and unnerved.

Geoff was frowning. "Contractually, I'm sure
he can. You've got a moral turpitude clause, like everybody else."
Somehow the phrase "moral turpitude" hung oddly in the silent
kitchen. He picked up the phone. "What's Scoppio's direct
line?"

"555-4837."

He punched in the numbers, facing away from
her. "Maxine, it's Geoff Marner. Will you put Tony on the line for
me?" Silence. "Do me a favor then and make sure he doesn't leave.
I'm coming by." Silence. "Thanks, Maxine." He hung up and without
meeting Natalie's eyes strode out of the kitchen. "Right. I'm off
then."

She padded after him helplessly. It was as
though a wall had gone up between them, right after they'd been
closer than they'd ever been before.
And I'm off the air.
Suspended
. Panic rose in her throat. In eighteen years of
television news that had never happened. Never come close to
happening. "What should I do?"

"Nothing." He met her eyes briefly before
letting himself out the front door. "I'd say we've both done enough
already."

*

"I'll say it again. Reinstate Natalie." Geoff
stood in front of Tony's desk, his demeanor belligerent, forcing
himself to keep his mind on business even though he felt like an
alien man had taken over his body. An alien man who seemed to think
he could bonk a client and then blame her for his own folly.

That had been one hell of an afternoon with
Natalie and even hours later he didn't know what to make of it. So
he pushed it into a corner of his brain, a rarely probed corner, a
corner where he could box it up and paper it over and pretend it
didn't exist. And deal with business instead, one thing he could
understand.

"Forget it," Scoppio was saying for the
umpteenth time. "She's off the air for a week, without pay, and
that's the end of it."

"That's completely unjustifiable. You should
be promoting her rather than suspending her. Her going after Hope
Dalmont is the kind of aggressive reporting that hikes the
numbers."

"Yeah, right." Tony sat behind his desk, his
reading glasses pushed far down his nose, rubbing his reddened
eyes. "And my Aunt Carmina doesn't have a mustache. Listen, Marner.
'Aggressive reporting,' like you wanna call it, doesn't end up in
stalking charges."

"No charges have been filed."

"Not yet, but that doesn't mean a damn
thing." Tony spread his hands wide, as though he were a mere slave
to events. "I'm not gonna just pretend this didn't happen. She
should be glad I'm only suspending her."

Geoff sat down and leaned forward. "Look, we
can both agree that Natalie edged over the line." Tony scoffed at
that. "But it was in a good-faith effort to get you what you want—a
hot story and bigger numbers. What sense does it make to punish her
for that?''

Tony shrugged, momentarily silenced. Geoff
had tangled with Tony plenty in the past, back when Tony was a news
director in Dallas. He'd concluded then that Tony Scoppio had
banished the human element from his calculations. He was all
pragmatism: all he wanted was to get the highest ratings for the
least money. If that meant sidelining veteran talent, so be it.

Geoff tried another tack. "The smart play is
to have Natalie on the air
more
than usual so you can sit
back and watch the ratings skyrocket from all this free
publicity."

"Nice try but no cigar. She'll be on the air
in a week and not before."

"And who will fill in for her during that
time?"

"Kelly Devlin."

"Kelly Devlin." Geoff shook his head as
though he were dealing with someone particularly thickheaded.
"Don't kid yourself, Tony. Yon can't trade in a racehorse for a
donkey's ass and hope nobody'll notice. The difference in
experience, in perspective, not to mention in sheer talent, is
enormous."

"Yeah, well, you and your hoity-toity friends
might notice a huge difference but I don't think most people who
watch the news will. And that's who
I
care about." Tony
jabbed a thumb at his chest. "
Most
people who watch the
news."