“I don’t want to hurt you. I just?—”
“I should have seen this one coming,” she said with an even voice. She was good that when she didn’t want to lose her shit. "You don't have to build a speech around it."
"It's not a speech."
“I’ve seen you do this with the women you dated before me.” She set her glass down, gracefully moved across the room, and lifted her bag, tugging the strap over her shoulder. “You have different speeches for different breakups. My work is my life, and it’s not fair to anyone. I can’t commit right now. I’m not a relationship kind of guy. I guess mine is a combo of your serial killer dad and the fact that we work together.”
“Oh, come on, that’s not fair. And don’t tell me that you don’t already look at me differently now that you know my secret, because I can see it all over your face.”
“You’re still Noah to me.” She held his gaze without flinching.
“Right.”
“You’re so good at hiding in your work, and now this. Or maybe you’ve always hidden behind it, and you just were never able to say it before.” She inched closer and pressed her hand to his chest. “Who your father is doesn’t make up who you are, and I know you. I see you. But if you want to push me away and use us working together as your excuse, I’m not going to beg for your attention.”
“I’m sorry, I really am,” he said. “But I am going to beg you to stay on as producer. You're the best I've ever worked with, and we are magic together.”
“I’m not going to quit my job because ourflingcame to an end.” She held up her hand before he could argue that they hadn’t ever been a fling. Truthfully, he was glad he hadn’t gotten the chance to, because leaving it like this was probably best. “Tomorrow, we’ll go in and handle the story.”
"You don't have to. I can do that myself.”
“We’re a team.” She turned and headed for the door. Pausing, she glanced over her shoulder. "For the record? The boy in that photograph?" She glanced at the coffee table, then back at him. "That's not who I see."
She was out the door a few seconds later.
He stood in the middle of the unpacked house and listened to the Audi back down the drive, and then the silence that settled in behind it. Below the bluff, the Sound did what it always did—flowed, patient and cold, keeping everything it was given.
He picked up the papers on the coffee table. They would go back into his safe.
Some things, no matter how long he carried them, never got lighter. He'd just gotten better at pretending they did.
1
Ziggy Bowie leaned forward and pressed her hands on the console, careful not to touch any of the actual controls. She stared at Noah Chase and his guest through the glass, rather than via the screens. Sometimes, it was better to see the final segment without all the camera angles and tight zoom shots.
Tonight was about the best damn broadcast a producer could ever dream of from her anchor. Noah was on fire. One rapid, precise question after the other, not giving his guest a chance to breathe.
And that was the point.
Her pulse thumped in her chest. Every person watching at home was sitting on the edge of their seat, waiting for the moment this guest broke. It didn't always happen in big ways, but the truth would always seep over the airwaves, no matter how well hidden a person believed they'd kept it.
On the center monitor, the businessman's hand drifted to his collar. He tugged once and kept talking, digging himself deeper without realizing it. For forty minutes, Noah had been walking him toward this moment—one reasonable question at a time,building the kind of corner that looked like open road until they crashed into a wall.
"Change to camera three," Andrew Morgan, the director of the show, said.
The shot tightened, and the atmosphere in the control room shifted—that specific charge when a live broadcast was about to break open, and everyone felt it simultaneously.
Noah leaned forward with a warm smile and asked the question. The hard one. The one the businessman never thought he'd ask, much less knew how to ask.
It never ceased to amaze Ziggy that people with something to hide came on this show. The irony was never lost on her—or Noah.
Four seconds of silence.
The guest's mouth opened, closed, opened again. Nothing came out. He sat staring at Noah, anger and confusion etched across his face in equal measure.
"That's the clip," Kylie Davidson said. "Push it on social. That's pay dirt."
"That's why Noah gets the big bucks." Ziggy picked up her tablet—numbers still climbing with four minutes left in the broadcast. She made a note, moved to the graphics station, and checked the close sequence. She ran a tight ship—anticipated problems before they happened. Accounted for every detail, so all Noah had to do was sit in that chair and do what he did best.