Читать книгу When He Was Bad... - Jane Sullivan - Страница 11

TWO HOURS LATER, Nick swung his car out of the KZAP parking lot onto the snow-crusted road to head home. Sixteen inches of snow had hit the city already, and more was falling. His windshield wipers were working overtime to sweep enough away that he could see to drive.

He pulled up to a stoplight, then turned to look at Sara Davenport’s book lying in the passenger seat beside him. Why he was bringing it home with him, he really didn’t know. It had sat on the table beside him during the rest of his show this afternoon, distracting him to the point that he’d actually lost his train of thought a time or two. Finally, he’d stuck it under his desk, thinking out of sight, out of mind, only to see Sara’s face in his mind instead.

And now the book was staring up at him in that same accusing way it had in the studio. For an inanimate object, it was doing a pretty good job of generating a whole lot of guilt.

He sighed. Face it, Chandler. You screwed up.

The minute he’d seen those lines light up during his show, he’d responded as he always did, like some kind of Pavlovian dog with his tail wagging wildly and his mouth watering. As he pictured every one of those incoming lines jammed with callers, his heart had raced and his nerves had come to life, driving him to fan those flames until they burned as hot as they possibly could.

But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he’d fueled that bonfire at Sara Davenport’s expense.

Technically, he’d done things right. He’d entertained his listeners, stirred up a little attention-getting controversy, and plugged her book. Unfortunately, she hadn’t exactly gotten into the spirit of his show. And he was still stinging from her turning down his dinner invitation, too, because that meant she was holding a grudge, and he hated that. He’d been a lot of things to a lot of women in his life, but enemy had never been one of them.

He hadn’t been lying. She was a beautiful woman, which made her turning down his dinner invitation doubly painful. He glanced at her book again and let out a heavy sigh. He was going to have to do something to rectify the situation, but he just wasn’t sure what.

A few minutes later, he pulled into his parking space next to his apartment and killed the engine, thankful that he’d moved to a new apartment only five minutes from the station. It was bigger than his last one, and the covered parking was a real plus in a city with an average annual snowfall of almost ninety inches. His recent salary increase had afforded him all kinds of luxuries: more space, more comfort, more convenience. All very good things.

Nick grabbed Sara’s book, got out of the car and trudged through the snow to his apartment door. Glancing through the window into his living room, he saw a familiar head sticking up above the back of the sofa. He checked his watch. No wonder. He was late getting home tonight, and the game started in ten minutes.

Nick unlocked the door, stomped the snow off his boots and walked inside to find that Ted, as usual, had let himself in and parked himself in front of Nick’s big-screen TV, which he said beat the hell out of the piddly twenty-six incher in his own apartment.

“Hey, man!” Ted said. “About time you got home. The game’s about to start.”

Nick closed the door and tossed Sara’s book down on the coffee table. “Let me grab a beer. Need another one?”

“Has the answer to that question ever been no?”

Nick pulled two bottles from the fridge and they sat down on the sofa. Ted looked as he always did, which wasn’t surprising since his wardrobe consisted of three pair of jeans and sixty-two concert and radio station T-shirts. And Nick knew that sixteen inches of snow was the only thing on the planet that could make Ted swap his flip-flops for the boots he was wearing now.

He and Ted had met for the first time when Nick had been an intern at KPAT in Colorado Springs. Ted had been their morning man along with another DJ, a guy who was a genius behind the microphone but had a reliability problem stemming from his close personal relationship with the whiskey bottle. When that guy got canned, Ted had lobbied for Nick to fill the spot, telling the station manager that he needed a pretty face to balance his own butt-ugly one because wearing a ski mask during remotes seemed a little too serial killer. It had been an unheard-of opportunity for someone who’d done as little dues-paying as Nick had, and he vowed he’d never forget it.

They’d been a great team on a show with great ratings, but eventually they’d been fired. Nick figured that the hoax they’d pulled on the mayor probably had something to do with it. They’d split up, Ted heading to Monroe, Louisiana, and Nick to Dallas, then Chicago, before finally landing in Boulder. Nick had learned his lesson. He kept the practical jokes to a minimum, stayed put and built a reputation, finally working his way up to his own show. Ted hopped from job to job, eventually ending up at a low-watt hole-in-the-wall FM station in Tupelo.

When he’d called three months ago to tell Nick that he’d been fired one more time, Nick hadn’t been surprised. There was always some stunt Ted wanted to pull, music he declined to play, or ass he refused to kiss. But this time Nick had heard a touch of desperation in his friend’s voice that had never been there before, so he pulled a few strings and got him an interview for a producer’s job at KZAP. At first, Ted had flipped out: I’ve been playing rock and roll across this great country of ours for the past twenty years, and you want me to produce a gardening show? But then he’d gotten real and gotten down to business, taking the job when it was offered and staying with Nick until he could get back on his feet again.

“Caught your show today,” Ted said. “Great stuff. Loved Amber, the pole dancing champion.” He drooped his lids and assumed a Madonna-like voice. “‘It’s, like, you have to become one with the pole. Feel the pole. Love the pole.’”

“Hey, everybody’s got their thing. I respect that.” Nick gave him a sly grin. “Her thing just happens to be slithering naked up and down a pole in front of a roomful of drunk men.”

And after her spot on the show, Amber had offered to show Nick the practice pole in her bedroom, complete with a private performance. When he’d declined, she’d given him an open invitation for the future. In light of Amber’s considerable physical assets, he’d surprised himself by feeling more turned off by her than turned on.

Then Sara Davenport had shown up.

He’d looked around to see her standing at the door of the studio, uptight and buttoned-down, but still considerably sexier than any psychologist he’d ever imagined. The nervousness she’d tried to hide had only made him wonder what other chinks there might be in the armor of rigid professionalism she wore. Only seconds passed before he was already thinking about pulling those glasses off her real slow, tossing them aside, then taking her in his arms and…

“But your best bit was that psychologist,” Ted said. “She really let you have it, didn’t she? God, that was great. The kind of guest you kill for.”

“Yeah, I know. Unfortunately, the lady didn’t think it was all that entertaining. She thought I humiliated her.”

“You kidding? She got her shots in, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, but she still didn’t think much of me by the time the interview was over. I tried to ask her out to dinner as a peace offering, but that didn’t fly, either.”

“Are you telling me a woman turned you down?”

“It’s hardly the first time.”

“Yeah, but it’s the first time since you were twelve years old.” He reached to the coffee table. “Is this her book?”

“Yeah.”

Ted thumbed through it. “Wow. Check out her bio. Education out the wazoo.” He turned to Nick. “Since when do you have a thing for the intellectual type?”

He didn’t. At least, he didn’t think he did.

Did he?

“I just didn’t want her to go away mad,” Nick said. “That’s bad for business.”

“So which was she? A six or a ten?”

Nick winced. He’d taken that bit a little too far. Sara wasn’t a mud wrestler or a Penthouse pet or the owner of a nudist resort. Those women were used to his kind of banter. They thrived on his kind of banter.

Sara didn’t.

“That’s just a stupid bit I do,” Nick said. “I’m thinking of trashing it.”

“No way. It’s that kind of bit that got you where you are. That show’s a cash cow, kid. Milk it for all it’s worth. If you don’t, one of these days you’ll be old and decrepit like me, and you won’t be good for much of anything.” He took a swig of beer. “Well, anything except producing a gardening show.”

“For God’s sake, Ted. You’re only forty-one.”

“In radio, I might as well be a hundred and forty-one.” He pointed his finger at Nick. “Take this as a warning, kid. This business chews you up and spits you out.” Then he waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, hell, why am I warning you? You’re riding the wave. If they’re talking syndication for your show, you’re gonna be on easy street.”

“They’re talking. But I’m not holding my breath.”

“Nope. You’ve got what it takes. I knew it from the second I met you. Syndication will put you on top, so you do anything—and I mean anything—to get there. You hear me? Otherwise you’re gonna end up like me in ten years. Look how I was wallowing around at the bottom of the barrel when I called you a few months ago.”

“You were out of a job. Like that’s something new to radio guys?”

To Nick’s surprise, Ted’s expression turned solemn, and he stared down at his beer. “You know, when I got fired, I was at the end of my rope. I wasn’t quite sure where I was gonna go. I just hung around Tupelo for a few days, staring at the wall. Then I talked to you.” He turned his gaze up to meet Nick’s. “Thanks, kid. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

Nick’s heart twisted a little. “Hey, it was purely selfish on my part, believe me.”

“How’s that?”

“At the rate I’m going, I’m never going to have a wife, but what do I need one of those for when I have you waiting for me when I get home? If I could just get you to have dinner ready and bring me my slippers, I’d be all set.”

Ted scowled. “Hey, you know the number of the pizza place as well as I do. And your big stinky feet can freeze for all I care. Now, just watch the game, will you?”

Nick grinned and picked up the remote, when all at once the phone rang. He tossed the remote aside and grabbed it.

“This is Nick.”

“Hi, Nick. This is Sara Davenport.”

His heart skipped. Hers was the last voice he’d expected to hear on the other end of the line, and for a moment he was actually speechless.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” he said, sitting up straight. “Not at all. I’m just…well, I guess I’m a little surprised. I didn’t expect to hear from you again.”

“I phoned the station and your producer gave me your home number. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.” Nick’s mind was spinning, wondering why she was calling. “I just hope this means you’ve reconsidered my dinner invitation.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not calling about dinner. But there is something I’d like to discuss with you. A business proposition.”

Business? He could think of all kinds of business he’d like to get down to with her. Unfortunately, she sounded as if she meant, well…business.

“Can you meet me at my office tomorrow at ten o’clock?”

Nick ran through his mental to-do list for tomorrow and saw nothing on his schedule for that hour. And between now and then, if he remembered something, he’d cancel it.

“Sure, Sara. I can meet you at ten.”

“Good. My office address is 8442 Cavanaugh Court, Suite 214.”

Nick grabbed a pencil and scribbled the address on the cover of his TV Guide. “Care to tell me what we’re gonna be talking about?”

“I’d rather go into it tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure. That’s fine.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.”

Nick heard a click. He held out the phone and stared at it for a moment, then turned to Ted. “That’s weird.”

“What?”

He returned the phone to its cradle. “That was Sara Davenport.”

“The shrink on the show today?”

“Yeah. She wants me to meet her at her office tomorrow morning.”

Ted raised his eyebrows. “Her office, huh? Why there?”

“I don’t know. She’s says it’s business.”

Ted grinned. “Business? Right. Don’t psychologists have couches in their offices?”

“They do on TV.”

“Well, there you go, kid.”

“What?”

“I’d say she’s looking for a little afternoon delight. This way, you don’t even have to buy her dinner.”

“Will you give me a break? It’s nothing like that. Trust me. When she left the station, she was cold as ice. And I don’t sense that a whole lot of thawing has taken place since then.”

“Oh, yeah? Bet you can lock her office door, draw the blinds and get her naked in under two minutes.”

Nick gave him a deadpan stare. “Ted?”

“Yeah?”

“You really need to get a love life of your own.”

“Nah. What woman in her right mind is gonna want a washed-up bum like me? Just hand me a beer and let me live vicariously.”

As Ted picked up the remote and found the station the game was on, Nick glanced at the phone again, still wondering why Sara wanted to see him.

And why he wanted to see her.

It was crazy, after all. Sara wasn’t anything like the kind of women he usually dated. She’d probably never done a Jell-O shot in her life. Or picked up a pool cue. Or flashed her boobs during Mardi Gras, worn a thong or woken up in Cancun with a hangover and wondered how she’d gotten there. Instead, she’d been busy getting all those letters after her name and writing books, not to mention straightening out people’s minds and collecting a hefty paycheck for her services. Just being seen with a sharp, conservative, intellectual woman like Sara would make his bar-hopping, speed-dating, sports-crazy listeners wonder when he’d gone over to the dark side.

So why did he feel a hot little rush at the very thought of seeing her again?

He had no idea. He only knew that it had been a very long time since he’d met a woman who was any kind of challenge at all. Most of the women he encountered were either waiting in the lobby of the station to slip their phone numbers into his pocket, calling his show with various sexual propositions or tossing their panties into the booth whenever he did remotes. He tried to imagine Sara doing any of those things, and he almost laughed out loud.

He settled back with Ted to watch the game, but he had a hard time concentrating. Business? He had no idea if Sara ever mixed that with pleasure, but he sure intended to find out.