Love. Local. Latebreaking.: Book 1 in the newsroom romance series Page 14

  “Whatever the reason, Jake, I’m really glad you decided to come back,” Karli said, her flattened hand moving in circles over Jake’s muscled back. “But you’ve never said why. Do you mind if I ask?”

  Karli felt a surprising hand on her shoulder just as she finished her question, then a familiar gravelly smoker’s voice spoke. “He came back because we need him. That’s all we really need to know, kid. He’s the best shooter in the shop.” Karli turned to see Vince’s warm eyes and gentle smile taking in both her and Jake. “And now that we’re going to be working on the entire, inspirational, visual presentation of the station, we need the vision man more than ever.” Wondering if he was merely deflecting the question or if he was sincere, Karli raised questioning eyebrows and looked at Jake.

  A light flickered somewhere behind Jake’s eyes and vanished before Karli could find its meaning.

  “I suppose I’m coming back partly just to prove to myself that I can,” he said at length. “They say that a man isn’t measured when he has fallen. It’s when he gets back up that you learn his worth.”

  “But you were never fallen, were you?” Karli asked, looking earnestly into his face, then glancing at Vince for some kind of confirmation. “I mean, it was hard to cover that boy’s story, but you shot the best video of the year that day. Even before you knew who it was, your pictures were the most emotional, memorable images I’d ever seen.”

  “Karli, I’m still trying to get back up,” Jake said, his voice so calm and soft that she barely heard him.

  “Of course that was the best video you’ve ever seen,” Vince interjected, now gripping Jake’s shoulder with nicotine-stained fingers. “Jake here is one of the best ever to shoulder a camera. The bigs are always telling us he needs to make a big move, like to a Sunday-morning network magazine show or something.”

  Jake looked gratefully up at Vince. “You’re a good brand manager, Vince. But you of all people know that I couldn’t ever fit in at those big shops. This is home, not New York or wherever. I like to be part of the entire, you know, inspirational story-telling process.” He smirked at his use of the consultant’s term and winked at Vince to make sure he was in on the snarky comment.

  “Sure, kid. It’s home, and you can’t leave, right?” Vince teased. Then he made a show of shooing both of them out of the newsroom. “Go cover a story already, okay? I’m going out to smoke, and I can’t be in here to make sure you don’t trip over a suit on your way out.”

  Karli and Jake grabbed their gear, walked outside past Vince’s smoking station, and piled into a news car where Karli picked up the conversation’s thread.

  “Apparently you’re not into being part of the entire inspirational process when it’s a story I’m reporting,” Karli started, bitterness flowing from each syllable. “I get that you’re good, Jake, but I don’t get what I did to piss you off so badly. I get that covering that boy’s story was hard on you—though I would’ve been grateful if you’d said something that day instead of just leaving without a word before the story was even ready to edit. I truly do understand that it must’ve been terrible to take all those pictures and then find out that it was your kid who’d been killed.” Having run out of breath, Karli had to pause just long enough to inhale.

  “But then you came back, and the same thing happened all over again,” she continued. “You went out with me to the bust, shot some of the best spot news video of the year, and then ditched me before I’d even started writing.” Karli’s tone and furrowed brow showed her confusion and hurt. “So it must be me.”

  Jake had been stealing glances from the road to look into Karli’s eyes during her entire speech. As she finished, he looked down the road briefly and then back to meet her with a steady, pained gaze. “The only thing about you that made me want to be away was fear of falling short in your eyes,” he said, reaching out tentatively and touching her hand lightly before drawing it back. “But I can tell you that being back and working with you makes me hope that I’ll make it back to upright.”

  Karli’s eyes filled with mixed astonishment and confusion.

  After a long silence during which her mouth opened and closed soundlessly several times, she blurted, “What?”

  “Bielfeldt talks about inspiration like it’s something new, Karli, but it isn’t. Working with a reporter who is as interested in people and their stories as you are is an inspiration to me. In the field, when we’re working on a story, you’re over yourself the instant you start an interview, every time. You care about people’s stories. And you tell their stories with a commitment to understanding. That’s what I’ve always tried to do with my camera. Working with you challenges me to capture images with that same depth of understanding.”

  “So you aren’t pissed at me for being bitchy about the vest?”

  “Of course not!” It was Jake’s turn to be astonished. “I was angry at Will for not giving you a vest and scared that you hadn’t thought to get one for yourself. How could I be pissed at you? All I wanted to do was to keep you safe.”

  “Well I still feel terrible about not knowing what was going on with that boy...” Karli’s voice trailed off into silence.

  Jake’s eyes filled with fresh pain. “I failed him,” he said in tones of finality.

  “That asshole who was texting is the one who failed,” Karli replied fiercely. “There was no way you could’ve known that some moron would do something that stupid. And you certainly didn’t do like the municipal engineer and design that street to be deadly.”

  Jake’s face was as unresponsive as granite. Karli could have addressed her comments to the faces in Mount Rushmore and gotten a bigger reaction. She could tell she’d gotten as far as this line would get her. It was time to change her tack.

  “Vince needs me to advance the grand opening of the Winterset community theater’s new space tomorrow,” Karli said, checking her iPhone for notes and directions. “Why don’t you drive out there with me and take some pretty pictures?”

  Jake looked hard at Karli, his eyes giving nothing away. He slowly nodded and started the news car, pulling out of the parking spot in silence, the light snow that had fallen overnight dusting around the edges of the lot. Jake squinted at the grey sky’s smooth ceiling and looked out to check for any kind of shadow at all. “I’m glad it’ll be interiors. There isn’t much to work with outside today.”

  Karli didn’t press the conversation as they drove west through the truck-heavy traffic of Interstate 80 and then south along the much quieter US 169. After she read the latest text from her father and dismissed it unanswered, Karli passed the time looking for Iowa’s strangest landmarks, dilapidated barns that slouched here and there, adding unusual texture to a countryside that farmers prided themselves on keeping meticulously groomed and regular. The old barns were often a collection of steadily increasing slants, the strongly vertical right angles of their early days gradually returning toward the earth of the farmsteads they had served.

  After about 40 minutes of silence, they reached the downtown, and Karli mumbled, “405 E. Madison.” Jake drove to the new theater space, they got out, collected gear, and went in to interview the performers and get video of the new facility.

  They completed the easy shoot and piled everything back into the car, and Jake headed out of town, this time east on Route 92. “Are you going to take us back on I-35?” Karli asked.

  “That’s kind of a longer drive, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Jake said slowly, stretching out the word. “But we’re going to make a quick stop first. There’s a place out here I want you to see.” As he said this, he turned south off of 92 onto a country road.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rural Madison County, Iowa

  Friday, November 22

  Karli looked out the car’s windows at the stubbled fields with their light covering of snow, and couldn’t imagine what out here in the middle of nowhere would stand out as something worth seeing.

  “Reach in the back and grab my
Canon, would you please?” Jake asked, pointing out the personal camera bag that always seemed to be near him. Karli did as he requested, then turned back to face forward in the car just as Jake began to slow down and pull off the edge of the road.

  Though Karli could tell he was waiting for some kind of response, she wasn’t sure what he’d been saying. She was still staring out the windshield at a gloriously red wooden covered bridge just ahead, arching over the road as though extending an invitation to its dark shelter. “It’s from the movie, isn’t it?” she whispered.

  “Well, it’s one of them,” Jake replied. “There are six covered bridges here in Madison County. Remember in the book where his ashes were scattered and where he stuck the note up for her? That one’s about 20 minutes in the other direction. But this one is also in the movie.”

  Finally hearing what Jake was on about, Karli’s head snapped to meet his twinkling eyes. Without a word, she slipped out of the car, walking briskly in her excitement toward the bridge and glancing back at Jake over her shoulder. Just as her eyes reached him, she heard the shutter of his camera.

  Jake dropped the viewfinder from his face and beamed at her. “That’s it. Go ahead and check it out.”

  Karli had never seen a genuine covered bridge in person before, much less one of the covered bridges. And she felt a newfound joy at discovering she could be comfortable with Jake. She spread her arms wide and spun in place, looking from the sky to the bridge, the camera’s exposures chattering just at the edge of her hearing. Karli’s breath was taken away at the desolate beauty: On this windy grey day, in this cold season, in this part of the heart of the midwest, the bridge’s dusty red glory stood over the nearly colorless surroundings, under the steel-grey sky, across the grey-brown flatness of the river.

  The bridge’s roof, dark walls, and wooden deck thrust a dark tunnel over the small cleft cut by the river. Dark shelter beckoned, a space apart from the landscape, secure from the wind that searched out the thinner parts of Karli’s clothes and from the steep, slippery, snow-dusted and brushy river banks.

  Jake came along in fits and starts, pausing to raise his camera’s huge lens toward her, then jogging lightly to another spot on his zig-zag path. As Karli entered the bridge’s chamber and began examining the huge arching timbers that spread along and inside the bridge’s length, Jake caught up and began flipping open a thin black light stand with a small radio-controlled flash mounted to its top.

  “I want to try to catch you inside, with the daylight behind and the opening framing you,” he said, his hands busy with equipment and his head tipping awkwardly to indicate where he wanted her to stand. Karli saw his earnest attention to his craft and smiled to herself as he tested the flash transmitter and knelt, then laid down on the wooden deck to put his camera at the right angle. “Try some different angles,” he called from the floor. “Look sideways, then 45 degrees toward me, and on around, okay?”

  His studied focus on her and her alone was deeply flattering. Warmth greater than anything explained by the bridge’s shelter from wind and cold swelled through Karli’s body and cheeks and pulled her face into a broad, involuntary smile. Jake’s shutter whizzed and snapped again and again as she basked in the obsessive attention he paid her with each movement and glance at her, at the camera’s display, at the shapes the bridge formed around her. This is amazing, she thought to herself. And he is so intense about these pictures, like it’s a real magazine shoot or something. I didn’t know he was so into still photography.

  She hadn’t noticed before how sexual and attractive intensity of purpose could be. The way Jake wriggled on the bridge’s deck, changing position constantly to capture different shots, was fascinating to her, as fascinating as he apparently found her right now. And he had chosen this romantic spot, a spot where just about every American woman alive in the last 20 years would feel deeply moved by a second-hand kind of nostalgia for a love she’d never actually had or lost. Her borrowed longing was reflected in a passion she saw all over this special place and all over Jake’s powerful concentration on taking her image.

  And as she wondered and watched Jake’s decisive, strong movements, she had to take a steadying breath.

  Karli’s knees felt just a little wobbly as she realized that she was deciding to go with the passion Jake continually showed her and that this place stirred in her. And just as she came to the realization that Jake could indeed become more than just the photographer who propelled her into her next career move, he stood, gathered his gear and walked toward her with a smile that was all warmth and excitement.

  “You really live in some of these pictures,” he said, swinging his camera around so she could see the small color display on its back. He clicked swiftly through a bunch of exposures, and stopped on one where she stood framed by the bridge’s opening. The light outside the bridge struck the snow-dusted road and tall grasses alongside it, right up to the edge of the bridge’s opening. Inside, the interior bridge space near the opening slipped quickly into darkness. The angled flash popped Karli into the foreground, her smile much warmer than the usual on-set, fully made-up photo of herself she normally saw.

  In another, Karli saw herself looking more joyful than she could remember being in a long time as she twisted back toward the camera with an excited smile, the bridge in the background being her obvious destination.

  The images that Jake had captured showed Karli a side of herself that was never on camera. She was not telling stories of disaster or danger here. She wasn’t telling any story at all. He was telling her story instead.

  She looked up at Jake as he paused on yet another picture. A smile lit his face as he looked at the image of her. Then she saw him notice that she wasn’t looking at the little display.

  He glanced at her quickly, then turned his head from the camera to look her squarely in the eyes. And even though she had kind of braced herself for it, she felt a disconcerting quiver as she met his consuming gaze. He bent down to her, slowly, and she raised her face to his, her eyes flicking between his lips and his own eyes. He reached behind her with one arm while the other hand moved the camera away.

  And just as they were about to kiss, he breathed a sudden, low laugh. Karli pulled her face back from his to see his smirk and sparkling eyes. “What?” she asked. Her voice came out more of a throaty whisper than she had expected or intended.

  Jake didn’t answer except to seize her gaze and chuckle low in his throat. His smile grew wider, and just as Karli was beginning to reply, she felt him bring her close with the hand pressed on her back. And he kissed her.

  The kiss was gentle and careful at first. Karli felt Jake’s lips asking whether he could seek more from her, whether she would match the heat that she could feel pouring from him. She answered the question with a small, slow bite on his lower lip and a rough sound deep in her throat.

  Before the kiss could grow into more, Karli flinched at the sound of car doors opening and shutting just outside the bridge. Her eyes moved to the sound, and she saw a middle-aged couple walking into the bridge, reaching toward one another to hold hands. In spite of the crazily changing light, Karli saw them grinning together at the sight of her and Jake kissing inside.

  The man—apparently the husband, since their cold-weather coats matched—raised his free hand and waved gently to them.

  “It’s good to know that young people know how romantic these bridges are,” he called. “Heck, Oprah hasn’t been here since that book club thing, has she?” This question was addressed to his wife, who shook her head and laughed quietly.

  Flustered by the interruption and at being seen kissing Jake, Karli pulled away from Jake’s strong arm and mumbled something about needing to pack up the gear. Jake put out a restraining hand as she began to fold up the light stand. “Folks, I’d be grateful if you’d let me take your picture here,” he said. “And I’d like to hear what brings you here, too, if you don’t mind.”

  Karli watched as Jake introduced himself to the couple a
nd listened to the story of how they’d learned about the covered bridges from Oprah’s show when she had actually moved the entire production to Madison County because she was such a big fan of the book. The couple was from Ames, north of Des Moines, and they’d never known about the bridges until that show. They’d gone on to read the book and watch the movie, and today they had both had the day off and decided to drive down for a visit because they hadn’t been in 15 years or so.

  Jake was looking hard at the couple and how they told their story by process of mutual, repeated interruption. Karli could see the moment when he decided he’d gotten enough of an understanding. He nodded one last time at some detail the wife had interjected, then quickly checked the settings on his camera as he raised it to his eye. “So you had kind of a long drive today, didn’t you?” As the couple looked at one another to decide on an answer, Jake’s shutter snapped and whizzed.

  Karli shook her head as she watched him continue to engage the husband and wife, their relationship, and their relationship to the bridge. After he’d captured their images, he asked for their snail-mail and e-mail addresses, shook hands with them both, and nodded to Karli. She began folding the light stand for the second time as he walked over.

  “They were beautiful, weren’t they?” Jake asked her. “They’ve been married almost 30 years, and they still hold hands like teenagers.”

  “Thanks for the save, Jake,” Karli said. “I was kind of surprised when they showed up, and you covered really well, taking all those pictures of them.”

  “Save?” Jake asked. “I was surprised, too. But they were awesome. Just wait till you see their pictures.” Karli saw Jake’s brow furrow as he contemplated her face. “You’re going to freeze to death. Let’s get back in the car and get going.”