Nora Roberts - Private scandals

He was already tugging her earpiece free. "Hey."

"Who's producing?"

"Benny. And I—"

"Benny?" He snagged her mike. "Yeah, it's me. So, you got my call." He chuckled. "My pleasure. Anything I can do for the news department." He listened a moment, nodded. "No problem. We're going live in ten," he told Joe. "Keep an eye on that for me," he asked Deanna, and set his case down at her feet. He dragged the hair out of his face and looked into the camera.

"This is Finn Riley, reporting live from O'Hare. At six thirty-two this evening, flight 1129 from London was struck by lightning."

Deanna wondered why the rain running off her clothes didn't sizzle as she watched Finn make his report. Her report, she corrected. Two minutes after hitting the ground and the sneaky bastard had usurped her, stolen her piece and delegated her to gofer.

So he was good, Deanna fumed as she watched him leading the viewers on the odyssey of flight 1129 from London. That was no surprise. She'd seen his reports before — from London, yes, and from Haiti, Central America, the Middle East.

She'd even intro'd a few of them. But that wasn't the point.

The point was that he'd snatched her piece away from her. Well, Deanna decided, he might have upstaged her, but he was going to discover that stealing her newspiece wasn't a snap.

Interviews were her strong point, she reminded herself. That was her job, she told herself, struggling to cool off. And that's what she would do. Brilliantly.

Turning her back on Finn, she hunched her shoulders against the downpour and went to look for passengers.

Moments later, there was a tap on her back. She turned, lifted a brow. "Did you need something?"

"Brandy and a roaring fire." Finn wiped rain from his face. He was in gear, fueled by the chaos and the immediacy of the report. And the simple fact that he wasn't a dead man. "Meantime, I figured we'd round out the piece with some interviews. Some passengers, a few of the emergency crew — some of the flight crew, if we're lucky. We should be able to get it in for a special report before the late news."

"I've already lined up a couple of passengers who are willing to talk to me on air."

"Good. Take Joe and do it, while I see if I can finagle an interview with the pilot."

She snagged his arm before he could pivot away. "I need my mike."

"Oh. Sure." He handed it over, then offered the earpiece. She looked like a wet dog, he mused. Not a mongrel, no indeed. One of those classy Afghan hounds that manage to maintain dignity and style under the worst of circumstances. His pleasure at being alive went up another notch. It was a pure delight to watch her glaring at him. "I know you, don't I? Aren't you on the Sunrise News?"

"Not for the past several months. I'm on Midday."

"Congratulations." He focused on her more intently, the misty blue of his eyes turning sharp and clear. "Diana — no, Deanna. Right?"

"You have a good memory. I don't believe we've spoken before."

"No, but I've caught your work. Pretty good." But he was already looking beyond her. "There were some kids on the flight. If you can't get them on mike, at least get them on camera. The competition's here now." He gestured to where other newsmen were milling among the passengers. "Let's work fast."

"I know my job," she said, but he was already moving away.

"He doesn't seem to have a problem with self-esteem."

Beside her, Joe snorted. "He's got an ego the size of the Sears Tower. And it isn't fragile. The thing is, when you do a piece with him, you know he's going to do it right. And he doesn't treat his crew like mentally deficient slaves."

"Too bad he doesn't treat other reporters with the same courtesy." She spun on her heel. "Let's get pictures."

It was after nine when they returned to CBC, where Finn was greeted with a hero's welcome. Someone handed him a bottle of Jameson, seal intact. Shivering, Deanna headed straight for her desk, turned on her machine and started writing copy.

This, she knew, would go national. It was a chance she didn't intend to miss.

She tuned out the shouting and laughing and back-slapping and wrote furiously, referring now and then to the sketchy notes she'd scribbled in the back of the van.

"Here." She looked down and saw a hand, wide-palmed, long-fingered, scarred at the base of the thumb, set down a glass on her desk. The glass held about an inch of deep amber liquid.

"I don't drink on the job." She hoped she sounded cool, not prim.

"I don't think a swallow of whiskey's going to impair your judgment. And," he said, drifting easily into a rich Pat O'Brien brogue, "it'll put some heat in your belly. You don't plan on operating heavy machinery, do you?" Finn skirted her chair and sat on the edge of her desk. "You're cold." He handed her a towel. "Knock it back. Dry your hair. We've got work to do."

"That's what I'm doing." But she took the towel. And after a moment's hesitation, the whiskey. It might have been only a swallow, but he was right, it put a nice cozy fire in her stomach.

"We've got thirty minutes for copy. Benny's already editing the tape." Finn craned his head around to scan her screen. "That's good stuff," he commented.

"It'll be better if you'd get out of my way."

He was used to hostility, but he liked to know its source. "You're ticked because I kissed you? No offense, Deanna, but it wasn't personal. It was more like primal instinct."

"I'm not ticked because you kissed me." She spoke between her teeth and began to type again. "I'm ticked because you stole my story."

Hooking his hands around his knee, Finn thought about it and decided she had a small, if not particularly salient point. "Let me ask you a question. Which makes better film? You doing a stand-up, or me giving a play-by-play of the flight minutes after evacuation?"

She spared him one heated glance, and said nothing. "Okay, while you're thinking it over, we'll print out my copy and see how it reads with yours."

She stopped. "What do you mean, your copy?" "I wrote it on the plane. Got a quick interview with my seatmate, too." The reckless amusement was back in his eyes. "Should be good for human interest."

Despite her annoyance, she nearly laughed. "You wrote copy while your plane was going down?"

"Those portable computers will work anywhere. You've got about five minutes before Benny comes along and starts tearing his hair out."

Deanna stared after him when Finn walked off to commandeer a desk.

The man was obviously a lunatic.

And a damned talented one, she decided thirty minutes later.

The edited tape was completed, the graphics set less than three minutes before airtime. The copy, reworked, rewritten and timed, was plugged into the TelePrompTer. And Finn Riley, still in his sweater and jeans, was seated behind the anchor desk, going national with his report.

"Good evening. This is a special report on flight 1129. I'm Finn Riley."

Deanna knew he was reading the news, since she had written the first thirty seconds herself. Yet it felt as though he were telling a story. He knew exactly which word to punch, when to pause. He knew exactly how to go through the camera and into the home.

It wasn't an intimacy, she mused, worrying her earring. He wasn't settling in for a cozy chat. He was… bringing tidings, she decided. Carrying the message. And somehow staying aloof from it.

Neat trick, she thought, since he had been on the very plane he was describing.

Even when he read his own words, words he had written while plunging through the sky in a crippled plane with its port engine smoking, he was removed. The storyteller, not the story.

Admiration snuck past her defenses. She turned to the monitor when they switched to film, and saw herself. Hair dripping, eyes huge, face pale as the water that rained over her. Her voice was steady. Yes, she had that, Deanna thought. But she wasn't detached. The fear and terror were there, transmitted as clearly as her words.