Falling Star (14 page)

The director cut to a single shot of the
other anchor.

"Good evening," she said, "I'm Kelly Devlin,
substituting tonight for Ken Oro. It is now official—"

Geoff s eyes narrowed. This was not good.
This Kelly woman was even more striking at the anchor desk than she
was reporting from the field, in a back-of-the-motorcycle, groupie
kind of way. Big dark eyes, full lips, heavy makeup. And young.
"The death toll from yesterday's refinery fire in Torrance is up to
three," she read. "And local authorities now admit—"

"Who's that?" Janet padded into the theater,
barefoot and in a thick white fleecy robe. She sat next to Geoff
and nuzzled his neck. She had a sweet smell from the bath and her
blond hair was heaped prettily on her head. "I thought that woman
was a reporter."

"She is." He patted Janet's knee, his eyes
riveted on the screen.

"Is she a client?"

He shook his head.

"Why is she anchoring and not reporting?"

"Janet, please." He sounded exasperated, he
knew. "I'm trying to watch."

"Fine. I'll go make tea."

Now he felt bad. He grabbed her hand to halt
her as she rose. "I'm sorry, sweetie, but I'd just like to see
this."

"No problem," she conceded and tiptoed
out.

Relieved, he returned his attention to the
screen, where a male reporter was finishing the refinery fire live
shot. Next appeared Natalie, reading the lead-in to the Pentagon
piece. He smiled and hiked the volume. He loved that voice. Great
for TV.

"Another seven thousand troops, some from
Camp Pendleton just north of San Diego, will head—"

Janet came padding back in and returned to
the seat next to him. She was silent for a time. Then she asked
quietly, "Geoff, do you remember that my mom's fundraiser for the
Huntington Museum is tomorrow night? Black tie." She paused.
"Geoff?"

The director was back to a two-shot. He
should talk to Scoppio about tweaking the lighting, if he could
ever get him on the phone. It was a tad harsh on Natalie's side of
the anchor desk.

"Geoff?"

Although, had Natalie gone to soft focus? Not
a bad idea, truth be told. If it was good enough for Dan Rather, it
was …

The screen went black. He reeled around,
startled. Janet was standing at the rear of the theater.

'That's it." She locked his gaze. "No more
news."

At first he felt a snap of irritation. But
then as she moved closer, he began to reconsider. One step away she
untied her sash and her robe fell open, offering a tantalizing
glimpse of smooth white skin. She bent to kiss his mouth.

"Let's go upstairs," she whispered.

He reached up to push the robe off Janet's
shoulders. God, she smelled sweet. "Here," he muttered, licking her
throat.

"Upstairs."

Momentarily he halted, frustrated, but then
in one fleet motion rose to his feet and swung her into his arms
Rhett Butler style, striding out of the theater and up the
staircase. She giggled until he'd kicked the master suite door shut
behind them.

Fifty minutes later, Geoff extricated himself
from a dozing Janet and returned downstairs. He switched the
television back on just in time to hear Natalie doing a voice-over
to video of Monegasques scurrying to ready the palace for the
upcoming royal wedding.

"—next month, when an expected one billion
viewers worldwide will witness the nuptials live on
television."

He listened to the smile in Natalie's voice
as the video switched to B-roll of the groom-to-be at some
miscellaneous banquet, slapping backs and shaking hands. Geoff
hated this celebrity crapon newscasts and knew Natalie did, too,
but she was doing a good job of appearing deeply interested.

"The usually very visible Prince Albert is
spending his last weeks as the world's most eligible bachelor in
seclusion," she went on, "while the actress Hope Dalmont wraps up
her affairs here in Los Angeles. The incredible interest in the
pair has heightened with every day that both bride and groom
decline requests for interviews."

Natalie made a half turn toward Kelly,
inviting the anchor chitchat that invariably wrapped the
newscast.

"I sure hope Hope Dalmont doesn't end up the
same way Grace Kelly did," Kelly said, "dead in a car wreck."

Geoff reeled back in his seat. He watched
shock flash across Natalie's face.

"That was certainly tragic," she said
swiftly. "Hope Dalmont has said how much she'll miss her own mother
on her wedding day. Apparently she died when Hope was just a child.
It's very sad that neither mother lived to see her child
marry."

Mercifully Kelly had no pithy rejoinder to
that so both anchors turned back to camera on a two-shot as Natalie
delivered the good-byes.

Geoff's mind raced. This Kelly Devlin woman
had to be one of the loosest cannons he'd ever seen on live air.
But she was edgy in a way that lots of news directors liked. Geoff
watched the credits scroll past, unnerved and unseeing. Was Tony
Scoppio one of them?

*

Natalie seethed as she watched Kelly dump her
script in the trash bin behind the anchor desk. "What was
that?"

"What?" Kelly looked genuinely taken
aback.

"That Grace Kelly remark?" Natalie yanked her
earpiece cord from the console beneath the anchor desk. "What were
you thinking?"

"I only said what everybody watching was
thinking." Kelly spoke mildly. "What's wrong with that?"

Natalie shook her head, disgusted both with
Kelly and herself. How could she ever in a million years have
thought this woman was worth mentoring? How could she ever have
expended so much time and energy teaching her the ropes, even
opening her home to her?

Natalie grabbed her script, legal pad, and
earpiece and hurried down the few carpeted steps from the set to
the concrete studio floor. It amazed her that years ago they'd
actually been close. At the time, Kelly's desire to learn, and hers
to teach, had been well matched.

Natalie had felt a strong compulsion to
mentor another woman just starting out. Basically it sprang from
her desire to pay back, somehow, for how much Evie had helped her.
When she was a student at UCLA and KXLA reporter Evie Parker had
taught one of her classes. For the next ten years, the veteran
reporter had taught Natalie the TV-news ropes, even helping her get
her first on-air job in Sacramento, and later a shot at KXLA.

Natalie had met Kelly much the same way, when
Natalie had delivered a speech at Cal State Northridge, where Kelly
was enrolled. Kelly had raced up to her after her talk and finagled
an appointment. Before long Natalie was helping Kelly get an
internship at KXLA, then even letting her move in temporarily with
her and Miles while Kelly was between apartments.

But after a few months of shepherding Kelly
through the ins and outs of KXLA, Natalie had had enough. She'd
started to feel like Kelly was sucking her dry. And she wanted no
more of having another woman in the house with her and Miles. A
couple needed privacy.

So she pulled some strings to line up a TV
reporter job for Kelly in Palm Springs, a tiny entry-level market.
She hoped that would be the last she'd see of her. It was just her
luck that a few years later Kelly sweet-talked her way back into
KXLA, this time in a reporter slot. Talk about a fast-moving
career: from the market ranked one hundred sixty to the market
ranked two, in just two years.

Natalie had just made it past the massive
studio doors when Kelly raced up beside her. "Natalie, I've been
thinking about it and I apologize if that Grace Kelly comment
bothered you. You've been at this so long, I really value your
opinion."

Natalie stayed mum and kept walking.
You've been at this so long.
Had she taken a page from
Scoppio's book? How snide was that?

They reached the newsroom's security door and
Kelly launched ahead of her to punch the code into the keypad. "I'm
glad I've got you alone," she murmured over her shoulder. "I've
been wanting to talk to you."

Natalie couldn't avoid it. Kelly buttonholed
her inside the newsroom, forcing Natalie back against the wall next
to Tony's darkened office. Across the nearly empty after-hours
newsroom a knot of producers sat chatting with Howard, and on the
Assignment Desk the lone graveyard shifter was taking up his
post.

Kelly leaned in close, as though she and
Natalie were the most intimate of confidantes. Her face twisted
into an expression of deep concern. "Natalie, I just want you to
know that you can talk to me. You know, if you need someone to talk
to."

"What?"

"I'm sorry. This is so awkward for me. I have
such deep respect for you." Kelly leaned in even closer. Natalie
got a whiff of breath mint and musky perfume. "You've been so
helpful to me, I was just thinking that with you going through—what
should I call it?" Kelly's big dark eyes gazed up at the newsroom
ceiling, as though she expected to find the right word strung there
among the fluorescent lights. "Your . . . troubles? I thought I
might be able to help you out somehow." She paused. "You know, be a
friend."

There was something so very false about this
woman. "I'm fine," Natalie responded curtly. She tried to get
around Kelly but the younger woman made a quick move and blocked
her path.

"Really, Natalie?" Kelly's features contorted
into a mask of even greater concern. "Are you really all right? I
mean, anybody would understand if you weren't."

"What does that mean?"

Kelly's eyes opened wide, all innocence. "I'm
sorry. I didn't mean to be too personal. I just meant . . . with
Miles leaving."

Natalie could feel the heat rise on her face.
"This conversation is over." This time she succeeded in escaping
Kelly by shouldering roughly past her. Natalie stalked across the
newsroom to the computer she'd been using before the newscast and
jabbed a few keys to log off. By the time she looked up, Kelly was
gone.

Natalie remained at the terminal, deeply
disturbed.

What was it about that woman?
She was
everything Natalie hated about most TV news: slick and false and
self-promoting.

But it was also true that Kelly was moving
up. In leaps and bounds. Into the territory Natalie considered her
own, the anchor desk. Natalie realized, with stunning clarity, that
Kelly was the competition. It was a major miscalculation still to
think of her as an intern, so inexperienced she didn't know a
voice-over from a sound-on-tape.

Kelly Devlin knew exactly what she was
doing.

*

"Where are you going with that?"

Kelly heard Howard's voice echo across the
open space between the studio and the loading-dock exit doors. It
was 11:20 PM and no one else was around. She spun on her heels to
see him striding toward her.
Shit
.

She hoisted her satchel strap higher on her
shoulder and turned again toward the exit. Maybe he hadn't actually
seen her stuff the dub inside her bag. She kept her voice casual
when he caught up. "What're you doing here so late?"

"Never mind." He grabbed her by the elbow and
pointed accusingly at her satchel. "What did you just put in
there?"

"What?" She opened her arms and glanced down
at her body, as if she didn't even know what "in there" referred
to.

"In your bag." He tried to grab the satchel
strap off her shoulder but she wrestled away from him.

"Hey!" She moved a few steps back. "What's
your problem?"

"I saw you walk out of Archives and shove a
tape in your bag." He glared at her. "You know nothing from
Archives can leave the lot."

"Oh, so you're the Archives police now?"

He jabbed a thumb at his button-down chest.
"I am the managing editor of this station."

"Ooh!" She licked her finger and made a
sizzling sound as she touched his arm. "You're hot shit!"

But that was a mistake, because Howard used
that opening to grab Kelly's satchel off her shoulder and throw it
to the ground, where he went at it like a shark on a seal carcass.
He pulled out the dub with a triumphant expression on his Ivy
League face.

"Aha!" He turned it sideways to read Kelly's
girlish script on the label and his face sank from victory to
defeat. "What the fuck?"

She tried to yank the dub out of his hand but
he held it too far away. "Don't ask," she warned.

"What are you doing with a dub of the
car-accident video?"

He was such a moron. She couldn't believe
she'd fucked him for so long. Then again it had made for some good
assignments.

He bent back down to rummage in her bag again
and this time she kicked him. But still he came up with the FedEx
packaging. And read that label, too. He looked like he'd been
struck dumb. "You're sending the tape to
Hard Line
?"

This time Kelly was able to snatch the dub
from his hand. "I said don't ask."

"Kelly." He shook his head, with this amazed
look on his face. It seemed like he could barely string two words
together. "You narrowly avoided a lawsuit, for chrissake! What's
wrong with you?"

That pissed her off. There was nothing wrong
with
her
. There was something wrong with
him
, and
with everybody else who didn't grab opportunities however and
whenever they showed up. She jabbed a finger in his direction. "You
don't say one word to anybody. You got me, loverboy? Not one word."
She wrested the FedEx envelope from him. It had taken her all week
to get this dub. She'd had to call
Hard Line
twice to
explain.

But Howard was shaking his big, fat, stubborn
head. "I can't let you do this, Kelly. This could easily risk a
lawsuit for the station. I cannot be party to this kind of—"

"Yes, you can, and you will," she hissed.
She'd had enough of Howard Bjorkman. He'd been as useful as he was
going to be. "Unless you want me calling Tony at home over the
weekend to tell him how you forced me to sleep with you to get
assignments."