Jennifer Rae - Sex, Lies and Her Impossible Boss

‘You’re wearing something black, hot and leather? Now who’s doing the harassing?’ She heard his laugh as he approached. His hair was short on the sides but a little longer on top—thick and dark and shining in the sun. And his long legs were striding towards her. The wind blew his white button-up shirt back, emphasising the muscles in his chest. He looked more casual today. His shirt was untucked. He looked suntanned and relaxed and ever so slightly sexy.

Faith pushed her bottom lip between her teeth. She didn’t want to think of him as sexy. Not when he was the man intent on destroying any dream she’d ever had. Not when he was her boss. Definitely not when she hadn’t had sex in too many years to remember and was so desperate she was almost considering jumping the homeless man that slept on the beach near her flat.

Sex was something Faith reported on, not something she practised regularly. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been intimate with anything that wasn’t metallic or attached to her own hand. Actually—she could. But she didn’t want to think about that right now.

Cash was smiling that annoyingly happy smile again. The one that made him look like an American college boy. All red-cheeked and arrogant and fresh from the football field...and the memories of just how long it had been kept knocking on her brain—like an insistent salesman.

‘That’s not leather,’ he scolded. ‘Or black.’ His eyes travelled from her head to her toes and her body heated from his look. Knock-knock.

‘I thought you sent that text to someone else.’

‘Why would I send a text meant for someone else to your phone number?’ He smiled and chuckled at her before opening the passenger-side door with a creak. ‘Get in, Harris. We have work to do.’

She slid into the driver’s seat, a little mortified that her joke had backfired. This wasn’t how the day was supposed to go. She had a plan. A plan to show him that what she did was important and why sex was about more than just sex. But in order to do that, she was planning on exuding utter professionalism.

‘You look nice.’ His eyes flicked to hers before he looked out of the window. His comment made her eyebrows raise. She gunned the engine of her ‘clunker’, as he’d called it. She’d purchased the red 1975 Kingswood a few weeks after she’d arrived. Everyone in Australia had a car. The general population seemed to all start driving around the age of eight and seemed so familiar with their vehicles they all named their cars. Matty Harbinger’s BMW was named Bruce. Although everyone called it Sebastian behind his back. Her red clunker was called Red. Obviously. She wasn’t great with coming up with witty nicknames.

‘What do you mean...nice?’

‘Nice. Pleasant. Lovely.’ She felt his eyes on her. ‘Do you need a dictionary?’

‘What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?’

Cash sighed. ‘Nothing. I said you looked nice. Why do you get so defensive with me, Harris? Why do you argue with everything I say?’

‘I don’t do that.’

‘You’re doing it now.’

Did she do that? She hadn’t noticed. It was just that everything he said was usually wrong.

‘When you said I looked nice I just thought you meant...something else.’

‘What else could I possibly mean?’

‘When you asked me what was I wearing you meant what was I driving.’

‘That was an autocorrect mistake on my phone. You’re just being difficult.’

She wasn’t being difficult; she was trying to be professional. She needed to calm down and start again.

‘I’m sorry, Cash. I just wasn’t expecting you to say something...nice.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you never say anything nice.’

Cash stilled and Faith swore under her breath. Offending him wasn’t professional either. If only she were better at being professional. Faith remembered a report she’d done the other week on getting what you want in the bedroom. Speak softly. Be frank. Look your partner in the eye and ask them their fantasies. If it worked for sex, maybe it would work in this situation. Faith cleared her throat.

‘Cash, I’d like to know what you want. How I can help you understand what it is I do.’

She felt his eyes on her and gripped the steering wheel. She remembered the way he often looked at her. Unblinking. Intent; as if he was reading her mind through her eyes. He had a way of throwing her off balance when he looked at her like that, but she was safe as long as she didn’t look at him. And at the way he cocked his eyebrow at her.

‘What I want?’

‘Yes. I want to know what I can do to change your impression that what I do has no value.’

‘No value?’ He paused and Faith felt a trickle of sweat slide from the back of her neck into her shirt. Red had no air conditioning and it was close to forty degrees outside. ‘I never said your show didn’t have value. Some of the things you report on are obviously stories that need to be told. Your problem is you get too close. You want everyone to believe what you do—that love is the answer.’

She turned to him then, her cheeks heating again and her palms slipping from the steering wheel in response to his annoyingly patronising tone.

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes, it is. You invest too much emotionally. Journalists have to put distance between themselves and the issues they’re reporting on. That’s what creates objectivity.’

Faith bristled. She didn’t need a lecture on objectivity. If only he knew how distant she was from the topics she reported on.

‘Sometimes you have to get close. That’s the only way you can get the truth.’

‘Advertisers don’t like close. They like light and fun.’

‘But that’s not what my viewers want. They want me to get close, to get involved. They want to know more.’

He paused, then let out a sigh. Not a huge sigh but a little exasperated puff. ‘People are not interested in love and relationships and everything else you report on.’

She stole a glance at him then. Of course people were interested in that—hadn’t he heard? Love made the world go round.

‘What about my report on online dating? That show got more hits on our website than any other. I talked to dozens of people who found love online and another dozen who found nothing but perverts and deviants. The public needs to know about this stuff. And what about the report I did on body image and the way women were perceived differently depending on their body shape?’

Cash breathed in through his nose, flaring his nostrils slightly. Faith watched him, then watched the road, then turned back to him, determined to get an answer from him.

‘Was that the one where you were naked?’

‘Where I...? What?’ Faith turned just in time to veer away from a woman crossing the street with her massive Alsatian. ‘Yes. But that wasn’t the point.’

She didn’t turn back to him. She could feel him grinning at her.

‘I got naked to show women they had nothing to be ashamed of about their bodies. And I wasn’t completely naked—my intimate parts were covered in leaves.’

‘Your “intimate parts”?’

‘Yes. My intimate parts. You know—the ones you don’t show people.’

‘I enjoy showing my intimate parts to people.’

Faith pushed the mental image of Cash’s ‘intimate parts’ out of her mind. Professional. Sparkling. Insightful. That was what she was supposed to be.

‘I’m sure you do, but I like to keep my intimate parts private. I only show them to a selected few.’

‘Really?’ Faith still wasn’t watching Cash, but had her eyes intent on the twisting turns of the narrow Sydney streets. But she could feel him prop his elbow up on the console and move a little closer. He smelled of the beach and of something she somehow knew was just him. ‘How many “selected few” have been privy to a viewing of your “intimate parts”, Faith?’