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  I closed my eyes and flattened my palms on the cool glass top of the desk, inhaling and exhaling purposefully. In my earpiece, the director’s smooth voice teased me. “Thirty seconds to open. Prepare for takeoff. And remember, Heidi, in case of emergency, your anchor chair seat cushion can be used as a flotation device.”

  I let out a quick, high-pitched laugh. I couldn’t see him, of course, but I pointed at him through the camera. I pictured him, the audio tech, and the character generator operator in the director’s booth, smiling back at my image on their monitors. The opening music came up. My belly gave one last fish-on-a-line flop. Doug cued me by pointing around the side of the huge floor-camera, and the newscast began.

  “Good evening. I’m Heidi Haynes, and this is THE ten o’clock news.” It was our station’s little dig at the two other affiliates serving the local viewing area. They also had ten o’clock newscasts, but ours killed theirs in the ratings. If you didn’t emphasize the “THE” every time you said it, you’d get a call from Mr. Aubrey, who apparently did nothing but watch every minute of every newscast produced by his station, making sure his employees followed the rules.

  By the first commercial break, my nerves had dissipated. I laughed and chatted with Doug and Allison. Live TV could be nerve-wracking, but it was also fun.

  At 10:25, Aric walked onto the set and slid into his chair during the final commercial break. And wow. He wore a charcoal gray suit, crisp white dress shirt, and a beautiful tie containing threads of turquoise that transformed his eyes into the most amazing shade of Greek Island seawater.

  “So how’s it going out here? Are we informing the masses and increasing viewership?” He gave me a smile that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and stole my breath as he clipped on his microphone.

  I looked down to re-shuffle my scripts, stalling for a few seconds to recover. “You bet. Ratings are going up as we speak. Want me to introduce you?”

  “Sure. They want us to chat a minute off the top anyway. What are you going to say?”

  “I don’t know. How about—this is our new sports guy, he sleeps all day, swims in a Speedo, and discos like Michael?”

  Aric laughed and put a hand to his forehead, covering his eyes. “God, no. Please don’t mention the Speedo. Or the dancing. I may never be forgiven by the camouflage-wearing, cowbell-waving contingent of our audience. I may even get beat up.” He put his hands together in a prayer position. “I’m at your mercy.”

  “Hmmm…” I grinned. “I’ll think about it. It is live TV, though. You never know what damning words might come out of my mouth.” I arched an eyebrow at him.

  “In three…” The director let us know we were coming back from commercial, and then Aric and I were live on a two-shot.

  “Welcome back. We’ve got a new member of the WPLM family we’d like you to meet—Aric Serrano is joining us from Minnesota. But you’re originally from California, right?”

  Aric gave me a grateful smile before turning to dazzle the people watching at home in their pj’s. No doubt the ratings would go up, but it would have more to do with those perfect teeth than anything I did. He did a nice job with the sportscast, especially for his first night, and he didn’t seem nervous at all. Damn him and his never-ending confidence.

  After the newscast, the crew congratulated Aric and me on getting through our first show together. Allison told us goodnight and scooted out to try to salvage at least a partial Saturday night. Entering the newsroom, I saw the back of Mara’s head in an edit bay. A day of doing grunt work shooting in the field will motivate you to work on your reel for sure. Only Aric and I were left in the newsroom, packing up our things.

  He walked over to my desk, draping his suit bag over my chair. “So, you feeling better?” he asked, no doubt alluding to our pre-show collision.

  “Yeah, I’m fine now. I just get a little keyed up beforehand. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Nah—you shouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s common. My problem is I’m so hyped when I finish. Like right now—I won’t be able to sleep for hours.” He paused. “Want to go get a drink or something?”

  “Oh.” Caught off-guard again. He had a gift for doing that to me. “I’m gonna just go home. I’m pretty wiped out.”

  “Okay. Well, maybe tomorrow before work you could show me around town or something? Maybe we could go get some lunch. I gotta try this famous Southern food—”

  “I don’t think so.” I didn’t know what to say. I felt bad for the guy—he was lonely in a new town—but I could not be alone with him. “I can’t—sorry.”

  “Oh, the boyfriend, right? He the jealous type?”

  “He might be, if I’d ever given him reason to be.” I never had. After fleeing Brown University in the middle of first semester freshman year, I’d come home with my tail tucked between my legs, enrolled at Mississippi State, and met Hale Gentry, adorable sophomore, a few days later. We’d been exclusive ever since.

  “So… that means you’re the faithful type. Lucky guy,” he said.

  Or the dishonest type. The jealous boyfriend was a convenient excuse, but it was also a lie, and I was starting to get uncomfortable taking it this far. “Listen Aric, I—”

  “Hey girlfriend—” Mara came charging out of the edit bay, her face gleaming with excitement. As she rounded the partition and realized I wasn’t alone, she stopped, looked from me to Aric, back to me again. “Sorry. Did I interrupt something?”

  “No. Not at all. We were just saying goodnight,” I said quickly, darting my eyes at him.

  One corner of Aric’s mouth turned up. He raised his hands in the surrender position. “Hey, I can sense girl-talk coming a mile away. I’m out of here. See you tomorrow, Mara. Heidi…” He dipped his chin and nodded to me. “Tell your boyfriend I look forward to meeting him.” He grabbed his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for the door.

  When he was gone, Mara looked at me. “What was that about?”

  “What was what?”

  “Um, the pheremonal meteor shower I just walked into?” She waved her hands around her head like twin pinwheels. “And are you still telling him you have a boyfriend? What is the matter with you? What’s a break for, if not to explore other options?”

  “Aric’s not an option. I can’t handle him, Mare. I know you’re all maneater and everything, but I’m not you. I’m just not.”

  “I don’t want you to be me. I want you to be you, having a good time with the world’s cutest sports anchor, who’s obviously dying to get to know you better.” After taking in my obstinate expression, she gave up. “Whatever. What I wanted to tell you is I signed up with a headhunter tonight. You wouldn’t believe the jobs they have available. I’m sending for this reporter job in Baltimore—reporting only, no shooting your own stuff. And—I saw some sweet anchor openings for you on their website.”

  I scrunched up my face, shaking my head. “That’s great for you, but I don’t know if I’m ready. I threw up before the show tonight. Again. How can I apply for bigger market jobs? And my reel is lame. I only have a couple of live shots and hardly any good stand-ups.”

  “Your reel is fine. Yes, you could use a few more good stand-ups for the montage, but the reporting is solid, and they understand—you’re one-man-banding in a tiny-toe market in the middle of nowhere. They’re looking for potential, and you’ve totally got that.”

  “I don’t know. I only have four months left to look for something. If I don’t get a good reel put together by then… I’m thinking I might sign on for another year here.”

  “What?” Mara’s hands went to her hips, her expressive face the portrait of horror. “Why? So you can keep shooting your own video in a hundred effing degrees, and keep dreading weekly dinners with your parents, and not go out with Aric? Or anyone else you might actually be attracted to?”

  I blinked and took a step back. “I’m attracted to Hale. He’s really nice-looking. And sweet.”

  She shook her head. “Nice. Sweet. That relationship is o
ver, girlfriend. You’re just afraid to admit it, so you’re starving it to death slowly instead of having some mercy and cutting its head off.” She put out a hand to stop me from interrupting. “I’m probably wasting my breath, but I’m going to say this anyway because I love you—your reel is fine. That’s not the problem. The problem is you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You’re scared to go after what you really want. And it’s not another contract at this place, and it’s not Farmer Hale. Yes, you’ve got a nervous regurgitation problem. So do some of the world’s top athletes and musicians. You’ll get over it. And yes, what happened with Josh was godawful. I mean I get why it would take you a while to recover from humiliation of that magnitude. But not every guy is an ass-hat. Just ‘cause that was a fail, doesn’t mean everything will be. You’re never going to be happy until you admit you want more and start going for it, start putting yourself back out there, start saying a few more ‘yes’s’ and not so many ‘no’s.’”

  I was stunned speechless. Mara was breathtakingly wrong. She’d said those things out of concern, but she had no idea what I really wanted. How could she, when I didn’t know myself? I was lucky to have a family close by who loved and supported me, and a nice guy who cared enough to wait for me while I got my head on straight. Wasn’t I? And I was lucky to have a job in TV news, even if it wasn’t always perfect. A lot of people probably wished they had my life. And I did say “yes”… sometimes.

  “So, I can’t tell.” Mara tilted her head to get a look at my downturned face. “Are you going to hug me or slug me?”

  I reached out and embraced her. “I think you’re totally insane and you have a big mouth, but I do love you for trying to encourage me to reach for my dreams and all that. It’s just—maybe those aren’t my dreams. Not everybody’s cut out for a life of adventure and risk-taking. There are some people who are perfectly happy to live in the same zip code their whole lives and marry their college sweethearts.”

  “I totally agree,” she said. “But you’re not one of them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Let me ask you a question. Why did you decide to go to college in New England in the first place? I mean, I think my hometown is the bomb, but why would a born-and-raised Mississippi girl venture up there to ‘Yankee territory’? Why not go to Ole Miss or State?”

  “Because Brown gave me the best scholarship offer. And it’s a great school.”

  “Yes. A great school thirteen hundred miles away from home. And then you chose a career field that’s basically impossible to succeed in unless you’re willing to move anywhere in the country, over and over again. Knowing the way you research everything to death, you were aware of that going into it. Think about the girl who made those choices. Figure out what she really wants. Then you’ll know what to do about the headhunter. And Aric.”

  I drove home, walked across the lifeless parking lot, and let myself into my empty, silent studio apartment, feeling more alone than I had in a long time. With my crazy work hours, I was afraid to even have a goldfish depending on me.

  I couldn’t get Mara’s words out of my mind. I had actually chosen Brown because it was so far from home. I’d also applied to UCLA and Syracuse, against my parents’ objections and warnings. They wanted me close by. But as long as I could remember, I’d longed to get away, to travel and meet new people, see new things. It was probably why I’d decided in seventh grade I wanted to be a reporter. That, and I’d loved writing.

  But Brown had turned out to be a huge mistake. And Mara had nailed it—I felt like a failure returning to my hometown, attending college only thirty-eight miles away.

  Though I’d gotten an on-air job right out of school, that felt kind of like failing, too. I’d been offered two other jobs, for better starting salaries, at stations further away. One in Arizona and one in Florida. When it came time to decide, I had chosen the easiest path—nineteen miles down the road in Pineland.

  Hale had been thrilled, of course. His lifelong ambition was to run his family’s farm and cattle ranching operation. He’d be living in North Mississippi the rest of his life. And my parents—the only way they could be any happier was if I was still sleeping in my frilly pale pink bedroom in their house. It had been a major step for me just to move into this apartment alone.

  Could I take an even bigger step and accept a job in some far-off city? Was Mara right? Was I really ready to start saying yes? And was that ambitious seventh grader, that adventurous college freshman still in me somewhere?

  Chapter Five

  Unwanted Invitation

  I arrived early before my shift on Sunday with a new eagerness to work on my reel. Maybe Mara had been right—maybe it wasn’t so bad, maybe it just needed some tweaking and then I could send it out to a headhunter or to a new station. And then I watched it. Ugh.

  Even with my fresh eyes, it sucked. It needed a more attention-grabbing beginning, some creative stand-ups for the montage. Unfortunately, I could wake up with a new attitude about applying for jobs, but I couldn’t magically produce better stand-ups as long as I was shooting stories alone.

  Just to torture myself, I watched my reel to the end. As I reached for the stop button, I heard rustling behind me. I spun my chair around to find Aric standing in the doorway of the tiny edit bay. He’d been watching, too. Mortification slid down my spine and pooled in my stomach.

  He gave me an encouraging smile. “Pretty good. You need to vary your stand-ups, though.”

  I stood abruptly. “Thanks for your opinion, Matt Lauer. I’ll get to work on that.” I moved toward the door, making it clear I wanted to get out of the cramped space. He was filling up entirely too much of it for my comfort.

  Aric didn’t move. “You know, your accent is really cute when you’re annoyed.”

  “I don’t have an accent. Excuse me, please.”

  That drew a laugh from him. “You definitely do. Every word is at least two syllables. Even ‘have’—you say it like ‘hay-av.’ It’s adorable.”

  He finally stepped aside, and I pushed past him, heading for my desk. “Well, my voice coach is totally fired.” I slammed my things down on my desktop a little too hard and started sorting through the notes left there for me by the morning crew. “Apparently I’ve been wasting money I don’t have to waste.”

  “Hey. Heidi.” Aric had followed me and stood beside my desk, waiting for me to look at him. “I’m sorry if I offended you. I didn’t mean you sounded bad or anything. I actually think you have a great voice, and most people love Southern accents. Yours is a pretty one, anyway, not a redneck one. Don’t even worry about it.”

  I exhaled loudly. “No, it’s all right. I overreacted. I mean, I’ve lived here my whole life, except for a few months, years ago, so I shouldn’t be shocked to hear I sound like it.” I sighed. “But it’s going to be so limiting for me as far as where I can get hired. No one outside of the South wants to hear a news anchor with a Southern drawl.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. But, if you’re really concerned, I could give you the vocal exercises my voice coach gave me. They work.”

  I stopped fiddling with the notes and looked up at him. “You went to a voice coach?”

  “Oh yeah. My mom’s from Sweden, you know?” He pronounced it with an over-the-top accent, like Svee-den. “And my dad’s from New Yawk City. And I lived all over the place, so I was this weird mish-mash of accents. But I think the exercises did help.”

  “They must have. You have no accent at all.”

  “I’d be happy to share them. But I’d have to kind of show them to you, you know, say them for you? To show you how to do it? We might be able to do it at work if we have time, or… if your boyfriend wouldn’t mind, maybe we could go get coffee sometime and—”

  “No—let’s try to do it here, okay? That would be great.”

  I’d just said “no” again. Sugar. Mara was right. I glanced back at my schedule for the day. “Well, I’ve got a shoot in Starkville in fort
y minutes. I’d better get going.”

  “I have to go to Starkville today, too, to cover tennis and soccer. You know, we could ride together and shoot for each other. We’d each have a photog and maybe get some better interviews and stand-ups out of it.”

  “Yeah, we’ll do that sometime,” I said briskly. As in never, ever getting into a tiny news car alone with you. “My thing there today is really short, though, and then I’ve got to go straight to a couple other events in other towns. So, I’d better go alone. This time.” Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a “no,” but the look on Aric’s face told me he knew it wasn’t a “yes” either.

  His mouth twisted in a smirk. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He started walking away, but turned around and came back after a couple of steps. “You know what? I think I need to apologize. I don’t know what my problem is. It seems like I’m always asking you to do something you don’t want to do. I’m not normally such a pest. But I’m done now—promise. That’s the last invitation you’ll get from me, okay?” He smiled, but it was hard, not happy. He looked rather annoyed, in fact.

  “Okay,” I said. As Aric walked away, I was instantly more at ease. So why did I also feel kind of disappointed? “Have a good day,” I called to his back.

  “Yep. You, too. See you on the anchor desk, Heidi.”

  Of course after he’d withdrawn it, I thought about Aric’s suggestion all day as I struggled to lug my bags and equipment from shoot to shoot and get the interviews and video I needed, trying to somehow not look haggard in the process. He was absolutely right. If we combined our efforts, our weekend shoots would go twice as fast. More importantly, having a photographer would allow each of us to come up with and execute creative stand-ups for our packages, and as a result, have better escape tapes. It was what I’d said I wanted. It was the fastest route out of this place. But it was also scary as hell.