Jennifer Crusie Bundle

  She clutched at him until even the tiny aftershocks inside her were gone, and when they were both breathing again, Allie whispered, “I don’t want you to move to the couch,” and Charlie held her tightly and said, “I’m not going to.”

  “BILL WANTS to see you,” Karen called to Charlie when he strolled in late the next afternoon.

  “I bet he does.” Charlie stopped at the counter and grinned at her. “Did you bake cookies?”

  “No, that’s Mrs. Wexman. She brings them in for Grady and he shares.”

  Charlie bit into the cookie. Chocolate chip with pecans. “Good for Mrs. Wexman. What does Grady do to deserve this?”

  “Drives her to chemotherapy.” Karen blinked up at him. “Grady does that a lot for the people his mom met while she was going through it. We get a lot of stuff in here because of it. You should taste Mrs. Winthrop’s almond cookies.”

  “He drives Mrs. Winthrop, too?”

  Karen nodded. “He helps out with other stuff, too. Mrs. Winthrop came in one day all upset about her grandson yelling at her, and I called Grady, and he told her not to worry, that he’d take care of it. The next day, she brought in a devil’s food cake.”

  “That’s what I like, grateful women who bake.” Charlie peered over the counter. “Where’s Sam?”

  Karen brought the basket up on the desk, and Charlie turned back the blanket to see Sam’s little black head. “How’s he doing?” He rubbed the puppy gently behind the ears, his broad index finger covering the back of Sam’s head by itself, and Sam moaned a little.

  “I’m scared for him.” Karen sniffed. “He’s so little, and he’s not eating much, and—”

  “I’ll pour the stuff down him tonight.” Charlie pulled the blanket back over Sam’s head. “He’s just getting the hang of it, that’s all.”

  Karen caught his hand. “Charlie, this is so sweet of you.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Charlie retrieved his hand and picked up another cookie. “You’d have to have a heart of stone to refuse to feed Sam.” He glanced at the clock behind her. “Which reminds me, I’ve got to go see Bill. Am I getting fired?”

  “I doubt it.” Karen put Sam’s basket back under her desk. “But you’re gonna have to listen to some yelling.”

  Charlie turned and almost fell over a stack of boxes next to the desk. “What’s this?”

  “Bumper stickers,” Karen said. “Mark’s idea. They’re really popular. The college kids from Riverbend love them.”

  Charlie frowned. “College kids listen to Mark?”

  “No,” Karen said. “They just like the stickers.”

  Charlie put his cookie down and pried open the top of the first box and pulled out a sticker. It was neon blue with a slash of orange lettering that said WBBB: Turn Us ON! He turned back to Karen. “You’re kidding.”

  She shrugged. “Who knows from kids?”

  Charlie started to laugh. She couldn’t be much older than twenty-five herself. “Well put, old lady,” he told her and she grinned back at him.

  “At least I’m not going nuts for a dumb bumper sticker,” she said.

  “Good point.” He folded the sticker and shoved it in his pocket as he turned for the hallway. “Now for the yelling. Wish me luck.”

  “You won’t need it,” she called after him. “I heard your show. You were great.”

  Terrific. Just what he needed. A fan. He was really going to have to get a grip on things or Allie would make him a star.

  “COME IN,” Bill yelled when Charlie tapped on his door. “Oh, it’s you.”

  Charlie folded himself into the chair opposite the old man’s desk, ready to listen to a litany of his faults. It would be like old home week, his dad all over again.

  Bill looked out at Charlie under bushy white eyebrows. “The papers are calling about that mess last night. Don’t talk to ’em.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. Believe me, if I’d had any idea—”

  Bill flapped a hand at him. “I’m not blaming you. Alice already told me it was her fault.”

  “Well, I was there, too,” Charlie said mildly. “The city building was my idea.”

  “Yeah, but she called the mayor.”

  Charlie blinked. This was news. He and Allie were going to have to have a much longer talk than they’d managed the night before. He thought about the night before and stirred in his chair. A much longer talk out of bed where she couldn’t distract him. He frowned at Bill, trying to bring his mind back to the problem. “She called the mayor?”

  “Of course she called the mayor.” Bill scowled at him. “You think Rollie Whitcomb was up listening to your show that late? She called him.”

  “It was only eleven,” Charlie said. “I thought he might stay up that late.”

  “Only on poker nights.” Bill’s scowl deepened. “Which I won’t be going back to if you don’t stop stirring up trouble on the air. He wanted me to fire you, but I told him I couldn’t. Unbreakable contract.”

  “We don’t have a contract.”

  “Well, Rollie Whitcomb doesn’t know that. But you are going to shut your trap about the city building. I didn’t get you here to investigate political corruption. I got you here—”

  “Wait a minute.” Charlie sat up slowly. “You’re going to pull the plug on this thing so you can play poker?”

  “It’s politics, boy.” Bill leaned back in his chair. “You don’t understand—”

  “Sure I do.” Charlie shook his head. “You and my dad. The get-along gang.”

  Bill’s face turned dark. “Listen, boy”

  “No.” Charlie stood up. “I’m not going to shut up about corruption so you can play poker with the good old boys. I’m not going to bring it up, but if somebody calls in, I’m going to talk about it. Now, you can deal with that or you can fire me.”

  “Sit down,” Bill roared and Charlie sighed and sat down and listened to Bill’s tirade, impervious from long practice of listening to his father. It was, in its volume and contempt, the same speech his father had given to him after Charlie had left business school—“I didn’t raise my sons to be losers”—after he’d left the Air Force—“Damn good connections in the military, but you just piss ’em all away”—after he’d sold the computer-consulting firm that had become too fast-track for him—“You coulda been the Bill Gates of Lawrenceville, but no, you don’t like the work”—and after any of the half-dozen odd careers he’d wandered into and out of on the road since he’d left Lawrenceville four years before—“Bum.” Bill’s theme was more along the lines of “Too damn dumb to know your ass from your elbow,” but it was his father, all right.

  This was what he got for doing favors for his father. His Father, Part Two. Blow Hard and Blow Harder.

  “You understand me, boy?” Bill finished, his big white mustache quivering.

  “Completely,” Charlie said. “Now, are you going to fire me or are you going to let me talk to people about this tonight?”

  Bill sat back into his chair. “This is not what I brought you here for.”

  “No,” Charlie agreed. “This is a freebie. And I’m not interested in being Tuttle’s favorite son, so it won’t happen again. But I’m not walking away from this, Bill.”

  Bill stared off into space and tapped his fingers on the desk. “All right,” he said finally.

  Charlie relaxed an iota. “Now, about what you brought me here for. I found out Waldo isn’t coming back. You didn’t mention he’d shot up the booth.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Waldo.” Bill scowled. “I want to know that that letter was bull.”

  Charlie sighed. “It’s going to take a little while. I’m starting at ground zero since you didn’t save the letter. I can imagine Allie doing damn near anything if she put her mind to it, but I can’t imagine her as a crook. And Joe—” He broke off. “Joe’s gay. Could that have been it?”

  Bill waved the idea away. “Whole town knows Joe’s gay. That all you’ve come up with?”

 
“Well, Mark doesn’t seem to have the brains to break any law and get away with it, and Marcia’s more likely to spit in somebody’s face than sneak around, and Stewart doesn’t have the focus. Karen’s not the master-criminal type, although I suppose she’d make a nice dupe. You and Beattie have too much to lose. Unless Grady’s been faith healing or Harry’s been stealing car parts, I don’t see many potential criminals here. ’Course, I haven’t met everybody yet. I’ve only been here a day.”

  “Well, keep working on it.”

  Charlie sighed. “You know, it would have been a great help if you’d kept that letter.”

  “It didn’t say that much.” Bill looked away. “Just that something was going on here that I didn’t know about. Some smart-ass, stirring up trouble. Couldn’t even spell.”

  “That’s not much help.” Bill refused to meet his eyes and Charlie gave up. “All right, but I’m not making any guarantees. It’s probably nothing. And in the meantime, I have to learn radio.”

  “That’s why I gave you Alice.” Bill finally looked back at him. “After I told everybody you were Ten, I had to, or you’d have died on the air and everybody would have known something was up.” He scowled at Charlie. “You owe me for that. I had to promise Mark a raise just to get him to give her up.”

  Charlie blinked. “Mark didn’t fire her?”

  Bill snorted. “Of course not. He’s not stupid. She’s the best damn producer in the business. But Lisa’s going to work out fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  Great. Allie had lost her prime-time spot because of him. Somehow, he wasn’t anxious to share that with her.

  Bill went on talking. “Just do what Alice tells you to do. And stop whining about the city building.”

  “Why don’t you just give me a list of all the graft your friends are involved in,” Charlie suggested. “It’ll help me steer clear of those topics.”

  “Very funny.” Bill leaned forward, and the power in his eyes was no joke. “You leave politics alone, you hear?”

  Charlie met his eyes. “And tonight?”

  Bill sighed. “Don’t bring it up. If somebody wants to talk, let ’em.” He swung his head from side to side like a grumpy bear. “It would look real bad if we shut down on it now, anyway. Like we were covering up.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought.” Charlie stood up.

  Bill snorted.

  “Right,” Charlie said.

  ALLIE STOOD OUTSIDE the office and waited for Charlie, afraid the city building was dead in the water as a show topic. Bill hated controversy—page six in the handbook—and Charlie wanted a nice, quiet little call-in show that nobody listened to. After last night, her general inclination was to give Charlie anything he wanted, but this was her career on the line. Maybe she could seduce him into talking about it on the air…

  She gave the idea careful consideration and discarded it. Charlie would cheerfully cooperate with being seduced, but then he’d still refuse to talk about it. He was as stubborn as…well, as she was.

  Then she heard Bill’s voice go up, and she put her ear to the door to try to make out the words. He was calling Charlie a lot of names for somebody who was agreeing with him.

  Harry went by as she listened. “Getting anything good?”

  “Shut up,” she said. “I can’t hear.”

  Harry went on and so did Bill, but in a minute Harry was back with his Lion King glass from the break room. “Try this.”

  The glass helped significantly. “He’s yelling at Charlie about the city building,” she told Harry as a payback for the glass.

  Harry snorted. “Oh, that’s a surprise. What’s Charlie saying?”

  Allie frowned. “Nothing. Bill’s just raving.”

  “Charlie must be stonewalling. Let me hear.”

  Allie passed the glass over to Harry and leaned against the wall to think. Charlie wasn’t telling Bill he was going to bury the story. So he was either doing it to twist Bill’s tail, which would be dumb but entirely in character for Charlie, or he’d decided to keep pursuing the scandal. She sighed and pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. That was really too much to hope for.

  Karen came up behind them, basket in hand. “I thought you were in the booth,” she said to Harry, and he shushed her.

  “Beattie’s doing the news,” he said. “She wanted to.” Then he went back to listening.

  “Charlie still in there?” Karen asked Allie and she nodded, trying to press her ear to the sliver of door not blocked by Harry’s bulk. Maybe Charlie really was defending the city building; maybe they could run with it tonight.

  Imagine the people who would call in.

  Imagine the ratings.

  “This about the city building?” Stewart said from behind Karen.

  “Shh,” Karen said as she leaned around Allie. “What did he call Charlie?”

  “A shit-for-brains moron,” Harry reported. “He called me that once. It means he’s winding down. Damn, he’s stopped yelling. I can’t hear.”

  “Is he fired?” Stewart asked and all three of them turned to him and said, “No!” and then they all turned back to the door.

  Allie pressed her ear to the door. “What’s going on?” She tugged on Harry’s sleeve. “They’re too quiet.”

  Harry shook his head. “Something about Waldo. I missed it.” He listened for a couple of minutes. “They’re talking too low.”

  “Give me the glass.” Allie tugged again. The suspense was too great to bear. “Is Charlie saying he wants the city building on the show?”

  Harry waved her away. “I told you, I can’t hear ’em. They’re talking low.”

  The door opened suddenly, and Harry’s glass dropped like a stone in front of a surprised Charlie.

  “Juice,” Harry told him, hefting the glass. “Juice break. The news is on and…” He backed away. “Juice.”

  Karen smiled brightly. “The basket.” She held it up in front of Charlie. “I was just going to give Harry the basket.”

  Allie met Charlie’s eyes and smiled brightly. “I was just leaving,” she said and turned back to her office.

  “I was listening at the door,” she heard Stewart tell Charlie. “You gotta talk louder next time.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Charlie said, and then she heard him coming after her. “You can run but you can’t hide, McGuffey. We have things to discuss.”

  Allie took a quick left turn to head for the booth and safety. “I have to talk to Harry,” she began, and then he caught her by the arm and dragged her back toward her office.

  “Harry’s drinking juice,” he told her as he pulled her along. “You have to talk to me.”

  “YOU CALLED THE MAYOR,” Charlie said when they were alone in her office. He really was annoyed at her, but she was so obviously figuring out all the angles while he talked that he wanted to laugh instead. When Allie thought, he could see the wheels go round, she put so much energy into it. He pulled his mind back to the problem at hand. “You punched your ambitious little finger on the buttons and you called the mayor.”

  Allie pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Well, I thought it was only right that he have a chance to respond to the allegations.”

  “Bull.” Charlie leaned closer. “I do not want to be a star.”

  “But you do want to save the city building,” Allie told him helpfully.

  “As Bill would say, I don’t give a rat’s ass about the city building.” Charlie did his damnedest to look stern, hampered by the suspicion that he looked a lot like Bill and his dad. “Don’t do that again.”

  Allie nodded, the picture of obedience, and he knew he was losing. “So you won’t talk about it tonight on the air, I guess.”

  “Unless somebody calls in and mentions it.” Charlie narrowed his eyes at her. “They call us. We don’t call them.”

  Allie nodded again. “No problem.”

  “Fine.” Charlie looked at her suspiciously but she smiled back, innocent. He gave up and pulled t
he bumper sticker out of his pocket. “Now that that’s settled, what is this?” He held the sticker up for her to see.

  “A bumper sticker.” Allie sat down and began to shuffle papers.

  “No, I mean what does it mean?” Charlie leaned on the desk. “Karen said these are really popular.”

  Allie stopped shuffling and looked at him with palpable patience. “They are. Mark thought up the slogan—you know, turn on the radio—and everybody thought it was stupid, and then after we’d had them about a month, the high school and college kids started collecting them.” Allie shrugged. “As long as it keeps WBBB in front of the community, who cares what it means?”

  Charlie folded the sticker up again and put it back in his pocket. “How long ago was this? That they got popular?”

  Allie shrugged. “I don’t know. About a month maybe. A couple of weeks. Why?”

  “It has occurred to you that they might be using it to refer to drugs.”

  Allie looked at him with exasperation. “No, Charlie, that never occurred to me. Gee, what an idea. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got things to do before you go on tonight.”

  “All right.” Charlie gave up and turned to go. “I mean it about those calls. You don’t call anybody. Ever again.”

  “I’ll take care of everything.” Allie smiled at him again, and Charlie closed his eyes.

  “Somehow, that does not reassure me,” he told her and then retreated back into the hall before he let her talk him into something he’d regret.

  She was developing a real knack for that.

  THE CALLS STARTED coming in before Harry went off the air, and Allie listened as Harry handled them with an intelligence that was eye-opening. Then right before the news, he said, “Well, I want to thank all of you who called in on the city building and remind you that Charlie Tenniel is up next, right after the news, and he’s the man to talk to about this mess. If anybody can save the city building, Charlie can, even if he has to work all night. Which, actually, he does. The news is next, folks, and then…Charlie All Night!”