Falling Star (23 page)

"I'll just bet it is." She knew full well how
beneficial her commission checks were to Dewey, Climer. In her
heart of hearts, buried deep, she also knew what a fine agent Geoff
had been to her, time and again, and that not for a heartbeat did
he view her as a commission check. Still. She grabbed her briefcase
and strode for the door. "Fine. See you on television." She banged
his door shut behind her, tears pricking her eyelids. In the
adjoining office two sets of curious male eyes rose from a mound of
paperwork to regard her. She stomped past, averting her face.

When the humiliation came, seconds later, it
was with a vengeance.
Again! Always too old, always not
right.

Even with Geoff.

Friday, July 19, 7:11 AM

"That's right. Natalie Daniels has wrapped
the Hope Dalmont interview," Tony informed CNN's senior
foreign-news producer, one of the half dozen national news types
who'd succeeded in getting him on the phone so far that morning.
Tony wasn't bothering with the locals: Howard could deal with them.
"The first dubs should be available in two hours."

Tony chatted a while longer, then hung up and
consulted his watch. He didn't really need to because he knew the
timing by heart. If it was 7:15 AM in LA, it was 4:15 PM in Monaco.
Princess and Hope Dalmont should be just finishing their girly-girl
chat. Fine. All he had to do was sit back and let the congrats roll
in.

His intercom buzzed. "Mr. Pemberley on line
three," Marine rasped.

Tony first frowned, then chuckled. Ah, yes.
The chairman of Sunshine Broadcasting, KXLA's esteemed parent
company, no doubt calling to offer his kudos.

He picked up the receiver, prepared to be
jovial. It was a real effort for him to do this corporate
slap-on-the-back shit. "Rhett," he bellowed, "how are you?"

"Never better," Pemberley replied. Tony
detected a trace of Southern twang in Pemberley's speech, which not
even decades in the executive suite could erase. "And how is the
most enviable news director in Sunshine's illustrious corporate
crown?"

Tony forced himself to laugh. Ha ha ha. He
could just see Pemberley holding court in the corner office of
Sunshine's Phoenix headquarters, the mental wheels turning
underneath that mane of silver hair, the tailored dress shirt crisp
and blindingly white.

"I'd have to say everything here is going
well," Tony said.

Pemberley laughed. "Modesty does not suit
you, my friend. But I daresay you're pleased. These developments in
Monaco certainly have you inching closer to 'the grand prize,'
shall we say?"

Tony bristled. Inching? He was goddamn
leapfrogging. But he kept his voice matter-of-fact. "The ratings
are up. We're beating KYYR now. We're the number one newscast at
ten." He pulled the overnight Nielsens closer. Who knew how long it
would last? But right now it was true. With Natalie reporting from
Monaco and Kelly at the anchor desk,
The KXLA Primetime News
was over a 5.0 rating every night and beating KYYR routinely.

"I'm sure you're dreaming of numbers every
night." Pemberley laughed again and Tony's jaw tightened. "More
power to you. I admire a man who wants to win."

"I don't want to win. I do win." Instantly
Tony regretted the remark. But Pemberley ticked him off. Who was he
to be so snide about Tony's incentive deal? He'd agreed to it.

"Scoppio, you're a hard-ass but I like
you."

Oh, peachy
.

"But don't forget the second half of the
equation," Pemberley went on. "Not just coming in first at ten but
getting the news department out of the red."

Tony forced himself to respond with some
"confident he'd do exactly that" bullshit, then hung up.

He rose and paced his office. He hardly
needed Rhett Pemberley to remind him of the terms of his deal. He
knew them as well as his own name. But there was only one surefire
way to get out of the red and that was to cut the talent payroll.
Of which Natalie Daniels's salary was by far the biggest chunk.

He lumbered back to his desk and stared down
at the Nielsens. They were over a 5.0 rating every night but who
had gotten them there? Kelly. She was on the anchor desk.

Still, he had to admit, now that Princess was
doing such a bang-up job reporting, and getting him such good
publicity, he was less eager to get rid of her. But she cost him a
goddamn fortune.

He rubbed his forehead. What to do.

Then it hit him.

Of course.

Tony laughed and slapped the side of his
head. Sometimes he was so goddamn clever he surprised even
himself.

*

Natalie shut the bedroom door of her suite in
Monaco's Hotel de Paris and leaned her exhausted body back against
it. In the main room behind her, she could hear Ruth puttering
about, channel-surfing to find CNN and calling room service to
order in dinner.

Natalie kicked off her pumps. They landed
with soft thuds on the plush white carpet. Pure white, like the fur
on a Persian cat. That was true luxury everywhere else in the
world, but in the Hotel de Paris's penthouse suite, white with gold
accents was
de rigueur
.

She perched on the canopied bed, turned down
for the night with a single peach rose centered on the pillows, and
rubbed her sore feet. They throbbed from twelve plus hours pinched
into the pointy-toed pumps she'd bought for Hope Dalmont's
interview. She grimaced. After all these years in TV news she
should have known enough to wear either low-heel runaround shoes or
seriously broken-in high heels. There was no in-between when it
came to female reporter footgear.

But the interview had gone well and that was
all that mattered. Afterward, when they were saying their goodbyes,
Hope had even given Natalie her private phone number and asked her
to keep in touch. It was amazing. Natalie was the only reporter to
interview Hope. The only reporter lodged in a Hotel de Paris suite,
six magnificent rooms restocked daily with flowers and chocolates
and champagne. The only reporter whose bills were sent directly to
the Palais Princier. She was a journalistic luminary of the highest
order.
Take that, Tony Scoppio!

She smiled with satisfaction, then hoisted
herself to her feet to shed her ivory suit and hose. They'd
finished their shooting for the day so she could relax at last. In
the main room beyond, half of which she and Ruth had converted into
a makeshift edit bay, Ruth was talking back to the TV, castigating
CNN for some journalistic transgression real or imagined. Natalie
donned the hotel's thick white fleece robe and threw open the
double doors to her narrow balcony, walking out to lean over the
railing. Late afternoon was softening into twilight. Far below, the
port was awash with the lights of countless enormous yachts, people
lingering on deck as though reluctant to bid adieu to the day's
magic. She could vaguely make out their laughter. The breeze was
thick with humidity and scented by the verbena that grew in
profusion on her balcony. Her gaze drifted above the harbor, where
the Palais Princier glimmered like a pastel fortress from the peak
of ancient Monaco-Ville.

Natalie hugged her waist, the robe's sash
thick around her middle.
Odd. When have I been in such a
beautiful place? Scored such a professional triumph?
Yet still
she felt vaguely unsatisfied.

For a second, there on the balcony, she
worried that she had done her life all wrong. Maybe she'd been
misguided to be so career-obsessed, so dominated by desire to get
into TV news, succeed in TV news, hold on to her TV-news job. But
you had to be obsessed to play that game, didn't you? Wasn't it so
competitive that even minuscule lapses in fervor were enough to
knock you out of the race?

And she loved the game, always had. How could
she not play it? And really, what else did she have going on?

She shook her head, banishing the image of
the tall, hazel-eyed man that all at once rose in her mind. How
pointless, harboring romantic fantasies about a man who'd made it
abundantly clear that he wasn't interested. And even worse, how
naive to think that a man could satisfy every desire. She had too
much common sense to believe that fairy-tale mush. No, much better
to focus on work—work that she loved, work that was always
there.

Natalie forced herself back inside and shut
the doors to close out the heavy moisture-laden air.
Relax
,
she ordered herself.
You'll rally. You always do
. And at the
moment she had to, because she and Ruth had three hours of
videotape to log, one script to write, and a two-minute package to
edit. To be fed by satellite to Los Angeles by four AM Monaco time
for air not only on
The KXLA Primetime News
but on most
other television stations in the country. She was staring at an
all-nighter.

She sighed. She was exhausted already. But in
career terms this might well be the most important night of her
life. Resolutely, she tightened the robe's sash and opened her
bedroom door to rejoin Ruth at their makeshift edit bay.

*

"Goddammit, would you lie still? I'm trying
to get some sleep here!" Kelly shivered and tugged the duvet higher
around her naked shoulders. Staying overnight in Malibu reminded
her of the downside of beach living: it was too damn cold at night,
even in July. She was smart to want to buy in Bel Air.

Well, if she played her cards right, she'd be
able to.

"Sorry, baby." Miles sighed heavily and Kelly
rolled her eyes. She'd been back with him only one night and
already she was sick of his angst. "But now that we're in
production, I can't get
Forget Maui
out of my mind."

These Hollywood types!
"Fine. But
don't keep me awake."

"You sure?" he muttered huskily, and started
nibbling on her shoulder, lingering wet kisses meant to arouse
her.

She twisted away, cutting off his access to
her bare skin. "Not again!" Finally she rolled out of the king-size
bed and grabbed Miles's abandoned dress shirt from a heap of
clothes on the floor, pulling it on. "I'm getting some air. No, you
stay here." She left him wearing a stupid disappointed expression
and padded across the whitewashed pine floor.

She was drawn across the big, high-ceilinged
living room toward the huge window that faced the ocean. All that
lay between her and the Pacific Ocean was fifty yards of clean
white sand. The moon was big and everything was nice and quiet.

She laid her cheek against the cool glass.
This was the kind of spread rich people had. This was the kind of
spread
she
should have. After all, she couldn't be a real
news celebrity and live in a smarmy apartment, could she?

But there was that gnarly problem of a down
payment. And on a major house, like one in Bel Air, it was
humungous. Miles might be a pain in the ass, but how was she going
to get a down payment without him? Plus, she'd been so pissed off
when Natalie had suddenly risen from the dead and gone off in glory
to Monaco. So she'd called Miles, out of the blue. Why not? She'd
read all about him in the trades: how all of a sudden he was a big
muckety-muck with a new sitcom about to go on the air. It struck
her: why not kill two birds with one stone? Get a down payment.
And
get back at Natalie. Sleeping with Natalie's husband was
getting back at her for sure, even if Natalie didn't know about
it.

And of course Miles had accepted her dinner
invitation. He was the kind of guy who took what he could get.
She'd figured that out long ago.

Kelly remembered when she'd first met Miles.
He'd been good for laughs back then. They'd conducted their affair
behind Natalie's back, while she'd interned at KXLA and lived in
Natalie and Miles's house. Natalie had been so completely clueless,
it was hilarious. But Kelly had gotten sick of it fast. Miles was
old and seemed like kind of a loser.

But not anymore. Not judging from his house,
anyway.

Kelly sighed. She should go back to bed. It
was four o'clock in the morning. Slowly she made her way back to
the bedroom, where Miles seemed to be asleep. But no such luck. As
soon as she crawled into bed, he rolled over and kissed her
shoulder. She could barely keep herself from cringing.

"Go to sleep," he murmured. "Isn't it great
we're back together?"

Kelly rolled her eyes and snuggled deeper
into the pillow. Miles was as delusional as his future ex-wife.

*

Geoff stood in his room in London's
Claridge's Hotel, sipping tepid afternoon tea and staring at the
fax that his secretary had forwarded from Los Angeles. He set his
jaw. What a bastard Scoppio was. What a sniveling wally. Cowering
behind bureaucratic procedure, delivering the blow in
black-and-white type, while Natalie was in Monaco no less, all to
protect himself from the awkwardness of a face-to-face
confrontation.

Too messy, that. Coward.

Geoff skimmed the document a third time.
Given its life-changing contents, it was surprisingly brief. He
wanted to tear it to smithereens but instead tossed it on the
bedside table and began to pace the small area of beige carpet
between the window and the four-poster bed, his mind ricocheting
among the options before him.

His meetings would be over the next morning
and his flight immediately followed. His IN box at Dewey, Climer
was piled high with must-dos, most of them urgent.

Still . . . Natalie was in Monaco for another
24 hours. She was an important client and this was shattering news.
She should hear it sooner rather than later and she should hear it
from him.

He grimaced. Perhaps with ingenious phrasing
he could soften the blow. Not that she was positively inclined
toward him or anything he had to say at the moment. Still . . . He
halted at the window. If she found out in Monaco, she could get her
thoughts in order before she returned to LA. And if she wouldn't
open up to him, she had Ruth with her to commiserate.