Love. Local. Latebreaking.: Book 1 in the newsroom romance series Read online

  The storm door in front was frosted with the condensation from the steamy breath of many conversations behind the open red wooden door. The hubbub of talking and laughter reached plainly through to the outside, but Karli’s knocking apparently didn’t reach in, as nobody came to open the door and clear the view. After her third try at knocking and sick of juggling flowers and wine, Karli decided she’d waited long enough and opened the door for herself. Warm humidity washed over her as she stepped through the spacious, coat-draped entryway and into a crowded room where a greasily pony-tailed and goateed young man was juggling oranges in small clear space in the middle. As he transitioned from a cascade to moving the oranges in a circular pattern, he dropped one. The audience caught its breath in unison as the orange bounced on the floor. The juggler’s mouth opened in exaggerated astonishment and his eyes flicked toward Karli, who was trying to wriggle her way through the crowd to find someone—anyone—she knew. The juggler moved both of the oranges he still had to one hand, raised a quivering hand to point straight at Karli, and yelled, “Look at those beautiful flowers!”

  The entire room of about 20 strangers swiveled their heads to look at Karli, who flushed with embarrassment at being suddenly the focal point of everyone’s attention. She scanned the faces and found none that offered an escape from the sudden attention.

  Several pairs of eyes seemed to be looking at her chest, which made her wonder if she was having some kind of wardrobe malfunction. Glancing down to check, she saw the bunch of flowers covering her, then raised them to the room with a shrugging gesture that she hoped would communicate that these were the flowers the juggler had pointed at and that she had to get out of the room to find a place to put them.

  As she did this, she saw the juggler bent quickly over, pick up the errant orange, and begin juggling again. “Hey, folks,” he called, “this act is picking up.” And he went into a series of trick throws, tossing with alternating hands swinging behind his back so the oranges popped up over his shoulders and on into their pattern. “Don’t think I’m trying to keep any secrets behind my back,” he said with the insinuating kind of grin and waggling eyebrows that usually accompany dreadful puns.

  Karli managed to cross through the small open space and on toward the next room. The juggler added a fourth orange from a nearby fruit bowl and told Karli in an exaggerated stage whisper that she would likely find a vase in next room, and if that didn’t work, just ask Jane.

  Wondering who Jane was and shaking her head at the strange beginning to the afternoon, Karli wound her way through a crowded doorway and into another crowded room, this time full of music and muted conversation. Against the other side of the wall in common with the juggler’s room, a boy of about 10 years old was earnestly playing an upright piano, his tongue sticking out from the corner of his mouth and deep breaths filling the spaces where he paused to find the next sequence. Groups of kids of various ages clustered around tables laden with chips and candy. Parental-looking adults hovered in groups nearby holding drinks and talking in good-humored tones that tried but failed to be quiet enough for the piano to carry clearly. Karli saw no familiar faces and saw nothing that looked like a vase or a place for keeping vases. This isn’t an intimate family dinner. It’s a three-ring circus. It looks like Jake invited half the neighborhood.

  As she looked around for vases, Karli noticed the unusual framed art displayed on the walls. Original single-panel editorial cartoons hung side-by-side. Photos, mostly black-and-white glossies that looked like they dated back to the late ‘50s and up to recent times, showed photographers training lenses on speakers with upraised fists rallying intent crowds or reporters taking pencilled notes next to busy police officers and bloodied prostrate citizens or walking on dusty tracks with farmers who grabbed the bills of seed caps in their permanent frustration with the weather. These were photos of journalists in action, right at the action, absorbing its smells and sounds and sights yet somehow not part of it. Karli saw herself in those photos, in the struggle pictured in each one, the struggle to pull the real and true significance out of the insignificant obviousness of every story’s surface.

  She headed for the plastered archway that led further back into the house. Karli felt a great relief at seeing Jake’s familiar shiny brown curls bobbing over the crowd and heading toward her. She saw him handing a plate and glass to a woman who appeared to be in her late 60s. Rather than bending his tall figure, Jake knelt on one knee to make eye contact along with the delivery. He smiled broadly at whatever the woman said when he handed her the food and drink. Karli watched as he gave the woman his complete attention, as though she were the only other person in the world and not just one of the least mobile of his dozens of guests.

  “Jake!” Karli called, too loudly for the too-loud piano room, as she felt more than one pair of shushing parental eyes glare at her. Jake’s head snapped toward the sound of her voice, he leaned to the woman to say something that looked like an excuse-me, then he stood and moved quickly toward her, a smile broadening over his face. He looked radiantly happy in his usual jeans and an unusually formal and crisp blue-striped Oxford cloth button-down. The unexpected starchiness was compromised by cuffs that were folded casually halfway up his strong forearms. This was not the image of any photographer she’d ever seen before.

  “Karli, I’m so glad you made it,” he said, wrapping her in a sudden and unexpected hug. She barely managed to twitch the flowers out of the way to keep them from being crushed in the hug. As he pulled her close to his chest, she smelled his distinctive, spicy scent—overlaid with a distinct whiff of turkey—and felt him encircle her completely in his arms. Yet as soon as she turned her head to lay her cheek against his chest, she remembered that he was the filthy asshole who had slept with Sophia right after kissing her. She pushed away from him like she’d touched a hot stove. Jake looked down at her in mild surprise. “What’s up?” he asked

  Torn between savoring his delicious smell and kicking him in the crotch, Karli looked down and saw her flowers. They were going to save her for the second time in a few minutes.

  “Um, I need to find a vase,” she said, holding the flowers up to show Jake why she needed a vase. Jake looked back at her, a single eyebrow raised and a puzzled grin quirking his mouth. “Well, the juggler said I should get a vase. I brought these flowers for you,” she stammered, then thought that didn’t sound right at all. “Or, no, I mean, I brought them as a hostess gift. And they should probably be put in some water.” Her voice trailed off indistinctly and she lowered her eyes in frustration at Jake’s apparent good will and silence. Why, she wondered, am I even talking to him?

  “Let’s go meet Jane, and we’ll find you a vase and get you a glass of wine, okay?” Jake said, his hand going to Karli’s elbow to steer her through the archway and into what looked to usually be a dining room. The table was missing, though, and the buffets against each wall were heaped with mounds of cloth napkins, small plates, cutlery, and chafing dishes full of wonderful-smelling appetizers. Each dish was described with its own calligraphy card. Karli read and smelled shrimp and Andouille sausage in garlic butter with toast points for dipping, beef tenderloin sliders, mushrooms in red wine reduction, glazed baby back ribs, smoked salmon, bruschetta on homemade crostini, assorted cheeses with fruit, and several more that her eye wasn’t quick enough to catch.

  A sudden group of about half a dozen servers—each in black slacks, pleated tuxedo shirts, and black bow ties—emerged from what Karli assumed was the kitchen, bearing trays laden with stacked glasses and bottles. Jake stopped one just a couple of steps into the dining room. “What have you got there, Michelle?” he asked, eyeing the bottles in the center of the server’s massive tray.

  “This is the Beaujolais service,” the server answered, reaching for one of her bottles and proceeding to pour a glass. “Would you like to try some?” she asked with a coquettish tilt of her head. “Or should I have one of the others come over?”

  “Let’s get one of thes
e for Karli here first,” he said, indicating with his head and neatly deflecting the server’s flirtation. He steered Karli with a gentle touch on her elbow to a window seat along the least-trafficked side of the room. The server followed as Jake explained, “I promised her a variety of wines tonight, and I’d like her to start with one of my favorites.”

  He turned to Karli as the server nodded and began to pour and lowered his voice as though sharing a secret with her. “It isn’t just inexpensive, it’s downright cheap—even by diet Dew standards. But I can’t taste the price of a wine very well. The flavors, on the other hand ... well, let me tell you what it tastes like to me: This wine tastes like it’s made from baby grapes. It isn’t some big, pompous, adult-tasting red wine, with all that tannic acid that makes your mouth as dry as a desert. It has an odd bit of powdery feeling on the tongue that I’ve always enjoyed and never understood very well. It tastes like how I imagine the frosty-looking yeast you see on grapes would, wrapped in a kind of yummy apple and pear and grape flavor, with maybe just a hint of tobacco. But you’ll come to your own opinion.”

  Jake freed her hands of the bottle of wine she’d brought along and considered the label. He exchanged it for a full glass from the server and passed it to Karli with a look of happy expectation on his face. He then took another for himself and raised it to Karli, nodding to her in a silent toast and with a sexy half-smile.

  As Karli lifted her glass to her lips, Jake handed the bottle she had brought to the server with a whispered direction.

  Karli looked to the server for some escape from the obligation to taste, but she found only more encouragement there. Jake’s long description of the wine’s flavors had left her a bit befuddled. To her, wine had always been simply good, bad, or so-so. All of the flowery language about a beverage sounded a lot like overkill and affectation. With a quick roll of her eyes and a gusty sigh of exasperation, she raised her glass, caught her breath through her nose, and took more than a sip.

  And her eyes closed suddenly as the many sensations Jake had primed her to experience played through her head. The tart fruit scents and flavors were obvious, and they rode through her nose and across her tongue on the frosty, powdery texture he’d described. The tobacco wasn’t the horrible taste of cigarette Karli had experienced only once as an undergraduate. Instead, it was the delicious taste that the smell of fresh, unlit tobacco promised.

  After the tastes had passed through her mouth, leaving a surprisingly clean feeling on her tongue, Karli opened her eyes wide with a look of startled appreciation. Jake was looking right at her, those brown eyes dancing in anticipation of her reaction. And he was rewarded with Karli’s obvious appreciation. Karli had drunk wine before—many times. Yet this experience was heady like wine had never been before—not at all in a drunken way—this was the first time that she’d been cued to anticipate, then enjoy, the sensations.

  “So you like it, then?” Jake asked softly. “Let’s go find a vase while you finish that up, and you can meet—”

  “Karli, it’s so nice to meet you in person,” Jake was interrupted by a short, energetic, bespectacled woman in her early 50s who was walking up to their semi-private nook, her hands outstretched in greeting.

  “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me,” Karli responded, reluctantly taking the woman’s hand and permitting her own hand to be shaken.

  “This is Jane,” Jake said, with the tone of someone stating the obvious. Karli looked uncomprehendingly from Jake down to Jane, knowing she was missing something.

  “I’m Jake’s mother,” the woman named Jane said, with an indecipherable look at Jake. “And it’s very nice to meet you. Jake talks about you more than anyone else in the newsroom—and it’s all good, too!” The woman’s kindness was evident in her enthusiasm.

  When Karli failed to fill the conversational gap with a response of any kind, Jane stepped right into the pause. “Jake’s a critical thinker, you know. He doesn’t compliment reporters unless he has reasoned his way to the conclusion that they’ve done something exceptionally well.” Karli’s inability to respond continued. The woman’s warmth was an unexpected and pleasant surprise.

  Karli looked in surprise from Jane’s open face to Jake’s. “I didn’t know that about him,” she faltered. Then she reached for the evening’s fail-safe: “I, um, brought these flowers, and they probably need a vase and some water.” She stuck the flowers out toward Jane, as much to erect a barrier to more conversation as to hand them over.

  Jane exchanged another mysterious look with a shrugging Jake as she took the flowers.

  “I’m sure there’s something in one of these cupboards. Thanks very much for bringing them. Our table always groans with food, but there’s never enough in the way of centerpieces or decoration. They’re perfect.” As she said these things, Jane moved away from Karli and toward a set of built-in cupboards that looked big enough to store just about anything.

  “We’ll see you when we sit down, okay?” Jake called to her back, then again he gently guided Karli, this time out a side door and back into the cold. “Would you mind keeping me company while I check on these turkeys?” he asked as he moved toward a pair of tall, sizzling metal cylinders connected to a pair of propane tanks. Karli had never seen turkey fryers before, but it was easy enough to figure out what they were. The smell was amazing, and set Karli’s mouth watering.

  “It looks like they’re done now,” Jake said, inspecting the frying birds. “Would you like to help me get them out of the fryers and on a cart for the caterers?” Jake picked up a pair of oven mitts, pulled them on and grabbed another pair to hold out to Karli.

  “Um, I’m not really the cooking type, Jake,” Karli said, leaving the mitts untouched. “How about I just watch or go get another glass of wine or something?” The gallons of vigorously boiling oil triggered her internal caution alarms, and the pause to recognize the danger gave her a moment to remember that she was angry with Jake and not eager to smooth that over. She looked at her glass and realized that she had emptied it. “I’ll go find one of the servers.”

  “Well, then, I’ll leave you in the best hands, okay?” Jake was gesturing through the glass of the storm door to someone inside.

  Karli looked in the direction Jake waved and spotted the man as he started to move toward them. He was in his middle age, with grey hairs frosting his temples. His face had a faint look of bloodhound, with slightly drooping cheeks furrowed by the creases of laughter and age. Warmth fairly radiated from the brown eyes slanted down toward his cheekbones as they peered out from behind oversized glasses. A somewhat haphazardly formal shirt, tie, and sweater vest hung well on his lean frame. He walked toward them with the strength and twinge of an athlete whose lifetime of miscellaneous injuries had fixed their main emphasis onto long-suffering knees. As he approached, he extended a hand and asked in a voice as warm and comforting as his kind face, “Karli Lewis, right?” And then, as Karli nodded in uncomfortable acknowledgement, “I’ve used some of your reporting in my classes. I’m Gabe Evans; I teach journalism at Drake University.”

  “Very nice to meet you Professor Evans,” Karli responded, shaking his hand a little more firmly. She was used to being approached pretty much anywhere by perfect strangers who expected her to greet them as old friends. Especially in WalMart. So often that she’d stopped going to WalMart. But meeting a journalism professor brought a broad smile to her face. She’d have common ground with him.

  “So now you’re in the best hands here—well, aside from mine.” Jake smiled at Karli and gave Gabe a quick wink. “Ask for the white burgundy, if you can find the right server. You’ll be impressed at how full and complex that flavor is, even for a white following a red.” With that, Jake turned and began pulling on huge insulated gloves and reaching for tools. His attention was fully shifted onto the turkeys and away from Gabe and her.

  Karli sneaked a peek at her iPhone to see if it was time to go home yet. She nearly dropped her wine glass when she saw that she’d
only been at the party for twelve minutes so far. So many oddly uncomfortable things had already happened to her. It was definitely time for another glass of wine—whatever the variety.

  Gabe gently guided her back into the dining room, where he caught a server’s eye. As Karli secured and sipped a glass of the white burgundy Jake had suggested, she gave it all of her attention. The taste was so lovely—tart and chill, like an apple picked from a late-autumn orchard—that she closed her eyes to shut out distractions and savor it. After she had allowed it to roll through her mouth, she noticed that her stomach felt pleasantly and distinctly warm from the wine she’d already had. I’ll need some food if I’m going to have any chance at staying sober, she thought to herself.

  Opening her eyes, she met Gabe’s smiling face. “I’m sorry, Professor Evans. Jake has gotten me so focused on tasting these wines that I got a little lost there.”

  “Just Gabe, please,” he said. “Jane just told me that it’s about time for us to head for our seats. And I’m pretty sure we both have assigned seats. We could head over there together if you like.”

  “Assigned seats?” Karli asked. “I thought this was an informal, family thing?”

  “Oh, it’s family all right,” Gabe chuckled. “But you’ll find that Jane and Jake have an expansive definition of family.”

  “So these people are not relatives, then?”

  “Many of them are. Jane is the middle of seven, so her brothers and sisters are all here with their own kids and some grandkids.

  And Jake’s grandparents are here, too. They have brothers and sisters, and those all have offspring and so on,” Gabe continued.

  And as he explained that roughly 40 of the guests were related by blood or marriage, he guided her out the house’s back door and into an enormous white tent, like the kind used for outdoor weddings. In summer. Here, it was a frigid Iowa fall day, but the grass had been covered with rolls of clean, fake turf, and Karli’s quick eye caught a stalwart row of propane-fueled outdoor heaters spaced along the edges of the tent. And they worked well, as the temperature was comfortable—at least it began to be warm a foot or so above the ground.