7 Days and 7 Nights (2 page)

2

Olivia made the drive to Figaro, Atlanta's trendiest new Italian restaurant, in record time. Screeching into valet parking, tossing her keys to the attendant, and hurrying around the car toward the canopied entrance, she arrived for her appointment out of breath and totally out of sorts. She hated being late or unprepared, and at the moment she was both. She also hated being interviewed—which left her zero for three. And that was without T.J.'s bombshell thrown in for good measure.

The reporter from
Atlanta Leisure
stood as the maitre d' ushered Olivia to the table. He was young and self-consciously hip in a black T-shirt under a black unstructured jacket. A noticeable amount of gel forced the hair above his forehead up in little spikes, and although he looked relatively harmless, the red warning light in Olivia's head flashed just the same.

She'd acquired the red light and other survival techniques when the media decided a radio therapist whose own marriage had crashed and burned made great headlines.

Keeping her current motto, “Never forget the potential for disaster,” firmly in mind, she chatted amiably with the twenty-something reporter. When he pulled out a small tape recorder, turned it on, and placed it on the table between them, she didn't bat an eyelash, but the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

“Do you mind?”

“No, no, of course not,” she said as the flashing red light in her head strobed brighter.

For the first fifteen minutes or so, he stuck to the safe and predictable. Yes, she loved Atlanta. Yes, she was thrilled at the buzz about her show's syndication potential. No, she didn't think being divorced disqualified her from advising others. A Gen X Dr. Laura? No, she hadn't thought of herself in quite that way. After all, she wasn't preaching morality, but trying to help women stand up for themselves.

More like a Dear Abby, then, with Gloria Steinem tendencies? Though that description came a lot closer to the mark, Olivia didn't come out and say so. Between bites, she bobbed and weaved, trying to duck both the pigeonholes and pitfalls. And all the time, she thought about the decision T.J. would be making.

She was waiting for the question about how Tampa, the city where
Liv Live
had been born, compared to Atlanta, when the tone of the interview began to change.

They'd just finished their Caesar salads, and she was in the middle of dipping a hunk of crusty Italian bread in seasoned olive oil, when her companion brought up the one name guaranteed to kill her appetite.

“
Atlanta Leisure
named your colleague, Matt Ransom, Bachelor of the Year again this morning. As a therapist, what do you think makes him so appealing to women?”

He stared at her expectantly, his sheep's clothing beginning to slip, but Olivia was busy sorting through her real feelings for a socially acceptable response.

“Well,” she hedged, “if there's one thing I've learned from my listeners, it's that there's no accounting for what women find attractive in men.”

“So, you don't find the host of
Guy Talk
attractive?”

Unfortunately, only a blind woman could get away with calling Matt Ransom unattractive. Olivia tried not to squirm as her brain reached into its memory banks to replay her first glimpse of Matt years ago at WZNA. Then, as now, he was movie star handsome. In fact, he bore an uncanny resemblance to the actor George Clooney. Though taller and broader, Ransom possessed the same close-cropped dark hair going gray at the temples, the same brown eyes under thick dark brows, and the same sort of perfectly chiseled features over a square-cut jaw.

Personally, Olivia found him too good-looking, too argumentative, too egotistical . . . too . . . everything. Eight years ago in Chicago he'd ground every one of her romantic illusions into dust, but this hardly seemed the time or place to say so. “I didn't say that.”

“Do you think he deserves the title ‘Bachelor of the Year'?”

Olivia took a sip of water and swallowed. Matt Ransom was thirty-six going on twenty and wouldn't recognize a committed relationship if it bit him on the . . .

Olivia looked up, caught the feral gleam in the reporter's eye, and knew how Little Red Riding Hood must have felt.

“I honestly can't think of anyone who deserves the title more. Mr. Ransom brings a whole new meaning to the definition of bachelorhood.”

“And the sniping on air and in interviews? What's the problem with you two?”

She cocked her head and squinted at the reporter.
You
mean, besides the fact that I'm a trained therapist dealing with interpersonal issues that impact my listeners' lives, and he's a seat-of-the-pants rabble-rouser who explores burning issues like why
women can't fathom football?

Or how about the fact that working with him again dredges up
memories I've spent eight years trying to bury, and today I found
out that one of us is about to knock the other off WTLK?

Olivia managed a smile. “Just a little on-air hijinks. Mr. Ransom's show draws a large male audience; mine is predominantly female. Sometimes there's some . . . banter. It doesn't mean anything.”

The reporter grinned and gleefully shed the last stitch of sheep's clothing. “So you weren't bothered by the article in which he referred to you as”—the wolf actually looked down to check his notes—“ ‘an insurgent in the war between the sexes'?”

Olivia slipped a last crust of bread into her mouth and tried not to choke on it. She chewed carefully for a moment before speaking. “Well, I was somewhat surprised that Ransom acknowledged there was a war on when his side is losing so badly. I'm even more surprised that a man who admits to frequenting bars named after female body parts knows what the word ‘insurgent' means.”

“But you're not upset that the host of
Guy Talk
named you Killjoy of the Year? Or that a good twenty minutes of his show last night featured callers laying odds on how long it's been since you last had sex?”

Olivia felt her jaw drop at this latest affront. She covered by dabbing at the corner of her mouth with her napkin and reminding herself that some questions didn't deserve answers. Since signing on at WTLK ten months ago, she'd been very careful to keep her interaction with Matt purely professional, but the Bachelor of the Year obviously felt no such compunction.

“Do you have a rebuttal for Mr. Ransom or his listeners?”

Olivia continued chewing her food carefully and forced herself to think. Not too long ago, a reporter had asked her to sum up a woman's greatest obstacle to happiness in five words or less, and she'd made headlines by doing it in one. “Men,” she'd said.

Then she'd rethought her answer and added the word “sex.” Those two subjects, and her willingness to tackle them on the air, had sent her ratings soaring.

Olivia had no intention of being railroaded into making a remark she'd regret. Nor did she intend to let Matt Ransom destroy her again—personally or professionally. If she kept her head, she could come out of this interview with her dignity intact and maybe even an advantage in the coming battle.

“No comment, Dr. Moore?”

Olivia set her napkin on the table and pushed her plate gently away. She met the wolf's eyes and raised a queenly eyebrow in return, speaking clearly and calmly for the benefit of the small tape recorder sitting on the table between them.

“While I have great respect for Mr. Ransom's show— what little I've heard of it—if he ever decides to tackle weightier subjects like real life and relationships, I might be able to help him out.”

The wolf's fangs disappeared into a pleased smile. He stopped eating, picked up his notepad, and started scribbling.

Olivia knew when to make an exit. Slipping her purse over her shoulder, she thanked her host for lunch, slid her chair back from the table, and stood. Pausing with her hands on the back of the chair, she nodded toward the notebook and tape recorder and flashed her best smile. “I do hope you'll feel free to quote me on that.”

“This is
Guy Talk
, where a guy can be a guy. And it's 11 P.M. on a Freefall Friday, which means no topic and no rules. Give me a call at 1-555-GUY-TALK. I
always
have an opinion. It's a guy thing.”

Switching his microphone off, Matt Ransom leaned back in his chair, put his long legs up on the table in front of him, and clasped his hands behind his head to wait out the five-minute commercial break. With just an hour to go before midnight, the station was close to empty, which made it just the way he liked it.

Two minutes later, he tossed a Nerf ball at the basketball hoop duct-taped to the wall and smiled when it swished through. He shot the next one left-handed, the one after that with his eyes closed.

Satisfied, he reached for the mug of lukewarm coffee more from force of habit than from a need for caffeine. He was a night owl, always had been, and preferred working late, when things were looser and less structured.

At one minute until air, he made a few notes about a topic for next Monday's show and let his thoughts wander to the previous night's program. He'd begun by posing the question, “Why can't men and women share a TV remote?” planning to segue into a discussion of the elemental differences between males and females, a topic custom-made for his particular brand of humor.

Instead, the show had digressed into a trashing of couples' counseling, which had led to another caller's caustic evaluation of therapy in general, which had ultimately led to the topic of WTLK's very own Dr. Olivia Moore.

Even he, who normally had no problem following the flow, had been a little surprised at how quickly her name had come up and how strongly his callers, mostly male, felt about her. In loud voices they objected to her pro-female stance and the male bashing that often accompanied it, but they couldn't seem to stop talking about her.

He was fairly certain he wasn't the one responsible for bringing up Olivia's sex life, or the imagined lack of one. But once the subject was raised, he'd had a devil of a time getting off it. He winced as he remembered the jokes and innuendo.

Almost as bad as his callers' fixation with the earnest Dr. Moore was the way they kept trying to get him to rehash and counter her advice. Hell, even if he had the least bit of respect for or belief in counseling, he had no interest in providing it to his listeners. He was in the entertainment business, and his show was designed for mental stimulation—not rehabilitation.

At ten seconds to air, he hunkered deeper into his seat and took one last shot at the hoop. The coffee had grown stale, and his aim was faulty. The digital clock on the wall provided his countdown, and on cue, he said, “This is
Guy
Talk,
where a guy can be a guy. I'm Matt Ransom.”

“Hey, Matt.”

Matt recognized the deep drawl of one of his regular callers, a long-haul trucker who'd picked up his lifelong nickname as a linebacker for the University of Georgia Bulldogs. “Hi, Dawg. How ya doin'?”

“Not so great. My girlfriend, JoBeth, wants to get married.”

“Aw, hell, Dawg. This is not Relationships Anonymous.”

“I'm sorry, man, but I've got to talk to somebody.”

“Can't we talk about football? Or maybe the relative merits of owning versus leasing a vehicle?”

“I need some help here, Matt. JoBeth's been listening to that Dr. Olivia. I need somebody on my side.”

Matt looked to his producer, Ben, for assistance, but the coward refused to look him in the eye. A check of his monitor showed only one caller waiting. There wasn't a commercial break in sight.

“All right, all right. What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, I don't think there is a problem. But JoBeth keeps going on about her biological clock. Says it's time to settle down and start a family.”

“Why don't you just tell her you need some time? I'm sure she doesn't want to rush into anything. How long have you been dating?”

“Three years.”

“Three years? Good Lord. How long does it take to figure out whether you want to be with somebody?”

“That's what
she
said. And aren't you the one to talk? How many times have you been named Bachelor of the Year, now, Ransom?”

“A few.”

Dawg snorted. “Not exactly settling down and making any life-altering commitments yourself, are you?”

“Nope.”

“How come your girlfriends aren't calling in on that show to complain?”

“Because I don't give them anything to complain about. I'm honest. I tell them right up front what they can expect, namely a good time, but I don't pretend I'm offering anything more than that.”

“And that works for you?”

“Always has. Let me put it this way, Dawg: Real guys need to be real clear. Then there's no problem.”

“Well, it's a little late for that now. JoBeth's a fine woman and all, but I'm just not ready to do the marriage thing again.”

“I hear you, Dawg. But I'll tell you, it's a whole lot easier to say that up front instead of later in self-defense. You've put yourself in the middle of a classic no-win situation. Whatever you do now, you're pretty much screwed.”

Matt terminated the call and glanced at the clock, relieved to discover it was almost time for a commercial break. He took one of the holding calls, listened to some more less-than-macho whimpering, and dumped the rest, signaling Ben he was ready to move on.

This was what came of telling men they were supposed to have a sensitive side; it made them wimpy. He didn't like it one bit.

At long last Matt heard the strains of his theme music. He needed this break, and when he came back on the air he wasn't going to allow any more whining. Matt looked through the small plate-glass window, glared at Ben on general principle, and then leaned in to the microphone. “This is
Guy Talk
. . . not Dear Abby. If you've got something manly to say, give me a call. It's a Freefall Friday.”