Falling Star (2 page)

To Geoff Marner, that was a foreign concept.
His workaholism put paid to the stereotype of Australians as lazy,
beach-loving party animals. Oh, he loved the beach, and parties,
putting in at least one appearance at each in any given week. But
those weren't the arenas in which he passed the lion's share of his
time, not since he'd turned 21 and bid farewell to Sydney, the city
he still considered the most beautiful in the world.

He spun around to face the television across
his mammoth office, his attention arrested by a pompous-sounding
male announcer. "This is a
KXLA News
Special Report. Natalie
Daniels reporting." Geoff hoisted his long legs atop his mahogany
desk and clasped his hands behind his head to watch.

Suddenly she appeared, his A-l client, in
front of what looked to be a buckled freeway.
Good for you,
Nats. Terrific backdrop
. His face cracked the kind of smile
typically induced by high surf and free time. But then his grin
faded. She looked a tad the worse for wear. He spied dust on her
black suit and tendrils sprung loose from her hairdo. Not to
mention a bruise on her neck, which apparently she hadn't even
tried to hide with makeup.

But then again, he realized, this was Natalie
Daniels. Her appearance was no doubt deliberate. She was
heightening the drama, as desirable in TV news as it was in
entertainment.

He raked a hand through his light brown hair
and listened to her voice over the live pictures. There was a great
rawness to it, what with the camera handheld and the word LIVE
superimposed on the screen in can't-miss red letters. But not one
word she spoke was out of place, not even as she guided viewers
around the debris. He grinned, relieved he'd thought to tape the
segment. An agent never knew when he'd need fresh material for a
client's resume reel.

Minutes passed. Natalie conducted a few
man-on-the-street interviews.
She's a great ad-libber
, he
thought for the umpteenth time.
Hell, she's great reading from
TelePrompTer
. Agents died for clients like her. He grinned
again.
That's my girl
.

*

"If you're just joining us, at 2:25 PM
seismologists registered a magnitude 6 point 2 earthquake, the
epicenter in Paramount, twelve miles south of downtown Los
Angeles."

Natalie repeated what she knew, which wasn't
much. She was about five minutes into her live shot and so far had
run through what basics she'd gleaned from the wire-service reports
and done a few quick-and-dirty interviews with petrified commuters
who'd been on the freeway when it plummeted to earth.

But it was good. Nothing in TV news was
grabbier than strong emotion and good pictures, and she had
both.

"The collapse here appears to be the only
substantial damage suffered in the Southland," she reported. Out of
the corner of her eye she could see the monitor Julio had set up,
tuned to KXLA. The screen was filled with a graphic map of the area
instead of with her, which meant she had the luxury of reading from
her notes.

"Go to Kelly in Santa Monica," the director's
voice suddenly demanded in her earpiece. "Tony wants you to go to
Kelly. Now," he added.

Her mouth kept moving but her mind raced.
To Kelly in Santa Monica?
Why would Scoppio want to go
there? Was there damage there she hadn't heard about?

She finished her thought, then segued
smoothly into a toss, "For another perspective we go now to
reporter Kelly Devlin in Santa Monica. Kelly, what do you see from
your vantage point?"

On the monitor she watched Kelly appear—Kelly
in all of her fresh-faced glory, dressed in an aviator jacket that
managed to look at once battle-scarred and fashionable. Kelly began
to talk and gesture animatedly, then pulled someone next to her to
interview, standing so close to him that she remained fully
on-screen.

Natalie rolled her eyes.
It's the
interview they want to see, not you
, she thought, then forced
herself to review her notes, scrawled in a slim, spiral-bound
reporter's notebook. A minute later she again raised her eyes to
the monitor. Kelly was waxing on, dark-eyed, full-lipped Kelly,
standing in front of a grocery store. But what damage? Some Ragu
jars fell off the shelves?

Natalie frowned and laid a precautionary hand
over her mike, though she knew it wasn't hot. "There's nothing
going on there," she hissed at Julio. "Do we have a line to Cal
Tech?"

He nodded. He looked in pain. The gash in his
forehead had darkened from red to purple.

Another thirty seconds ticked off. Natalie
glanced again at the monitor. Kelly was on a tight shot, still
chattering.
It's my own damn fault
, she thought, irritated.
I'm the one who taught her it's all about airtime.

That was the name of the game, no question.
The more airtime a talent got, the more recognizable she became.
The higher her star rose. The more money she made. All of which in
turn translated into still more airtime, and the happy continuation
of the cycle.

Another half minute. Kelly's brow was
furrowed with concern, her chocolate-brown hair blowing lightly
back from her forehead. Who was it who said Kelly had the best
TV-news hair? Miles.

Miles. Natalie hadn't let herself think about
him, but now his image resurfaced in her brain like a life
preserver on water.
I wonder if he's watching
.

She snapped to attention.
If he is, he's
seeing Kelly
. Knowing the director could see her from the
control booth she stared meaningfully into the lens and motioned
for her audio to be brought up.

Nothing.

She frowned and motioned again. But it wasn't
the hum of her own mike she heard next, but the director's voice.
"Tony wants to stay with Kelly."

Natalie shook her head vigorously, mouthing
the word no. They should be going to Cal Tech! This was ridiculous!
Why should viewers be held hostage to a report from a site with no
damage?

Half a minute later she detected a slight hum
and knew that finally her mike was hot. "Thank you, Kelly," she
interjected in a commanding tone, not bothering to wait for a pause
in the blather. She noted with satisfaction the uplift of Kelly's
perfectly arched brows as, surprised, she stopped speaking
midsentence. A moment later Natalie could see in the monitor that
she'd replaced Kelly full screen.

Good
. She did a quick recap, ready to
toss to seismologists standing by at Cal Tech.

"Wrap," the director ordered in her ear.
"Tony wants you off. All the latest at ten, blah blah—you know the
drill."

What?
Natalie struggled not to lose
her train of thought.

"Now," the director snapped. "Ten
seconds."

She felt a surge of frustration. But there
was no way to fight the edict, so she shifted gears into good-bye
mode. "Please join Ken Oro and me tonight at ten on
The KXLA
Primetime News
"—Julio had five fingers up— "with all the latest
on the quake and the other news." Three fingers. "Thank you for
joining us."

She stared into the lens until the director's
voice, now returned to some semblance of calm, filled her ear.
"Stellar as always, Natalie. But get back ASAP. Tony wants you in
his office."

Julio grinned. He'd heard the same directive
via headset. "He probably wants to be first in line to offer
congrats."

Natalie pulled out her earpiece. Right.

*

Kelly Devlin stared at her gray-haired
cameraman, her lower lip curling with distaste. Why did the Desk
always send her out with a geriatric shooter? This one was so
ancient it was a wonder she got even one decent frame of video out
of him.

"For the last time, Harry," she spat the
name, "we are going to use the dashboard in the next live shot."
She pointed at the Honda Civic still wrapped around a light pole,
its driver just spirited away by ambulance. "It's a goddamn coup
that I found this. It's the only thing in Santa Monica that's got
any blood on it. What are you afraid of?" she taunted. "You'd
rather stay at the grocery store and shoot broken bottles?"

Harry just stared at the ground and shook his
head. He looked fed up. Well, so was she.

Kelly abandoned her cameraman and stalked
across Pico Boulevard toward the ENG truck, its mast high in the
air.
Forget Harry
, she ordered herself.
Worry about
something important. Like checking your makeup before the next live
shot.

She had to look perfect. What everybody said
about TV news was true: If it bleeds, it leads. And she would lead
The KXLA Primetime News
tonight! She was damn smart to have
found an idiot who'd slammed into a light pole when the quake
hit.

Tugging at her eighteen inches of black lycra
skirt, Kelly climbed through the truck's open sliding door and
perched on one of the Naugahyde swivel chairs that faced the wall
of knobs and monitors. She pulled her makeup bag out of her satchel
and dumped the contents onto the other swivel chair. Swiftly she
went through her routine, which in her two years as a reporter
she'd honed to perfection: concealer for any imperfections (rare),
base to even out her skin tone (olive), powder to keep the shine
down (her one beauty cross to bear), three shades of brown shadow
(the darkest at the outer corners to add drama), eyeliner (thick),
mascara (thicker), lip liner and lipstick (dark and matte), and
blush to highlight her cheekbones (high).

Now for hair. Kelly spread her knees and
threw her head down between them, brushing from the nape the thick
brunette mane she had cut every four weeks at seventy bucks a pop.
Every other week she trimmed the bangs herself to keep them at
their sexiest (just above her brows). At least that was what the
photog told her when she posed for
Playboy
's "California
Collegiate" issue, and he must've been right because she was the
only girl to get a full-page spread. Kelly pumped the hair spray,
then jerked her head back. When her last boyfriend had seen that
maneuver he'd told her she looked like a girl in a commercial.

Commercial, my ass.
Kelly snorted and
held her compact's mirror close up to her face. What she looked
like was a prime-time anchorwoman.

*

"Why did you cut Kelly off?" Tony
demanded.

Trying hard not to let her jaw drop, Natalie
stood in front of her news director's desk and listened to him hurl
the question like an accusation. She'd just hauled ass to anchor a
brilliant interrupt and what did Tony Scoppio do? Demand to know
why she'd cut off a cub reporter?

"Kelly was in Santa Monica." Natalie kept her
tone level, sensible. "Miles away from the action. We, on the other
hand, were in front of a freeway collapse. We—"

"There was a helluva lot going on in Santa
Monica."

"Broken windows and jars off grocery store
shelves."

"Car accidents," Tony shot back. "Collapsed
walls."

"One car accident. One collapsed wall."

"I don't know who you worked for before but
let me tell you how
I
run my shop." Tony jabbed his thumb at
his chest. "
I
decide who goes on the air, and for how long.
I
decide. Not producers, not directors." He paused. "And
certainly not talent."

Natalie narrowed her eyes at Tony, enthroned
behind his desk like a news director buddha. Anybody else would
applaud her but he was attacking, using a pretext as thin as script
paper. "May I remind you that thanks to me we were the first
station to air pictures of—"

"We were the last station on the air!"

"That is a function of technical problems
that you haven't fixed." More than any other news director she'd
ever had, this guy made her blood boil. "I honestly do not
understand this. This is not how this newsroom used to be run.
You—"

He cut her off. "You got that right,
Daniels."

She stared at him, momentarily silenced.

"The way this newsroom used to be run," he
went on, "it lost money. And ratings were heading south. Well, no
more. It's a whole new world and you better get with the program.
Or I'll tell you what."

He stopped and she waited, for what she
couldn't imagine.

"You'll be off the program."

"Oh, come on." She scoffed at him. "Kelly was
doing a monologue on a nonevent. I made a judgment that it was time
to—"

"That's not your judgment to make."

"As an anchor it is my job to make editorial
decisions—"

"No. It is your job to listen to
my
editorial decisions."

Her arms flew up in exasperation. "Tony, I am
not some brainless mouthpiece out there! Of course I have to make
judgments about what's news and what isn't, particularly in a
breaking—"

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe your
judgment isn't what it used to be?" He arched his brows. "Maybe
you're out of touch. Maybe you've gotten soft from all those years
behind the anchor desk."

"That is the most asinine thing I ever
heard." Natalie spoke with as much dismissiveness as she could
muster but felt as if the earth beneath her feet were again
shifting. She tried to maintain control by focusing on the weave in
the industrial-strength carpet. It was the color of television
static.

"Now is as good a time as any to tell you."
Tony paused and something changed in the stale office air. "As of
right now I'm not planning to pick up the option on your
contract."

Natalie felt as if a truck had careened into
her lane of traffic and hit her head-on.
He wants to get rid of
me?
She had to force herself not to reach for a seat.

"The ratings aren't what they should be," he
went on, his tone now so conversational they might have been
discussing the weather. "You've seen the numbers for the May
sweep?"