Jennifer Crusie Bundle Read online

  “Well, stop it. It’s none of your damn business.”

  Charlie took a deep breath. “Well, it’s the taxpayers’ business, since they’re going to be paying for it.”

  “Screw the taxpayers. You shut up about that building or I’ll have your job. I can do it, too, don’t think I can’t. Bill’s a good friend of mine. You just shut up, boy.”

  Five seconds. Charlie knew he was going to regret it, but laying low had been a lost cause as soon as the Mayor had started yelling. “We’re going to be on the air now, mayor, so whatever you say is broadcast. Might want to ease up on that ‘screw the taxpayers’ bit since most of them are voters, too.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “And welcome back, Tuttle,” Charlie said into the mike. “We’ve got a real treat tonight. Mayor Rollie Whitcomb has called in to talk about the city building. You’re on, Mayor.”

  “I’m what?”

  “You’re on the air.”

  “Oh. Well—”

  “Now, you want to explain again how you feel about the taxpayers and the city building?”

  Through the window he saw Allie put her head down on the producer’s console. Rollie must have been right about Bill. Oh, well, win some, lose some. He went back to listening to the mayor tie himself in knots. Public speaking was evidently not what had gotten him into office. His sentences didn’t seem to have any verbs, which was par for a politician. All nouns, no action.

  When the mayor wound down, buried under his compound subjects, Charlie stepped in. “So what exactly was the rationale behind the new city building, Mayor? I understand the new building actually has less space than the old one.”

  That set Rollie off again, babbling about heating bills, big windows, all that marble, and the stairs. Rollie didn’t seem to have a grasp as to why the last three were a problem, he just knew they were factors.

  “Anything you want to say about your brother, the contractor?” Charlie asked him when he’d sputtered to a close.

  “Fine businessman. Pillar of the community. Mason. Knights of Pythias. Proud to be in the family.”

  Rollie meandered on, while Charlie waited for a verb. “Does he have the contract for the city building?” Charlie asked when Rollie trailed off again.

  “Of course not. I don’t know. I don’t award contracts. Building committee. Stalwart citizens. Pillars of the community.”

  Charlie gave up. “Well, thanks for calling, Mayor. I’m sure Tuttle is reassured now.”

  “Proud to do my duty,” Rollie said.

  Charlie punched the cassette button and shoved the slide up and music came through his headphones. Unfortunately, it was Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years.”

  He was screwed, as usual. He thought about it and began to laugh.

  Allie sat stunned in the producer’s chair, not sure whom she was in the most trouble with—the mayor, Bill or Charlie. She’d thought that maybe talking with the mayor would boost Charlie’s credentials. The mayor could give his side of the situation and Charlie could discuss it with him. Serious talk radio. Maybe a nice mention in the Tuttle Tribune tomorrow since the mayor pretty much owned the paper.

  And then Charlie turned out to be a hell-raiser. Asking about the mayor’s brother. Sheesh.

  “You still there, Tenniel?”

  She adjusted her headphones. “Uh, no, he’s not, Mayor Whitcomb. This is Alice McGuffey, the pro—”

  “Well, you’re fired. And so is he.”

  Then all she heard was a dial tone.

  She sat back and tried to figure out the probable outcome of the mess she’d created. Bill wouldn’t fire her, she was pretty sure. He wasn’t that dumb, and if he was, Beattie wouldn’t let him.

  Charlie could be vulnerable, though. And it was her fault.

  All right, she’d just go in first thing in the morning and tell Bill she’d called the mayor.

  Then the phone rang and she got back to work.

  At one, Allie shut down the phone lines at Charlie’s request. By then he’d talked to eleven callers about the building, all of them telling him he was right and one asking if the mayor was drunk. “No, I think he always talks like that,” Charlie said, and the caller said, “And we voted for him?” There were a few nonpolitical calls: one male caller wanted to know what he’d said to the lady in the bar, and four female callers offered to show him the city and let him insult them all he wanted. “Get me out of this,” Charlie said to Allie from the booth, and she shut down the lines for the night.

  “Go home,” he told her through the mike. “Stewart’s here if I need anything technical. I’m just going to play music from now on. I don’t ever want to hear about the city building again.”

  Allie had been working since four, Charlie’s show was off to a better than great start, and besides, guilt was making her groggy. She’d done her job and then some. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll take you up on that.”

  She gave Samson to Charlie and told him how to feed him and then watched while he gave the puppy a bottle to the rhythm of Gloria Estefan. Samson was almost lost in Charlie’s big hand, and Allie forgot her career entirely as she watched him try to drip the formula into the puppy’s mouth. Sam tried to drink a little and then gave up, but Charlie kept on coaxing, his blond-brown hair shining in the booth light like brass as he bent over the little body, massaging Sam’s tummy with his thumb. “C’mon, Sam,” he coaxed softly, and Allie shut her eyes and prayed the puppy would make it.

  She really didn’t need any more trauma. She was due for a success here, and Sam might as well share it. “He’s going to make it,” she said out loud, and Charlie looked up at her and said, “Well, we’ll give it our best shot. Go on. You’re beat.” And she nodded and left the booth.

  Charlie sounded even better at home when she was in bed, wrapped in her quilt. His voice was sexy and soothing, and he played a lot of different music including one triple play of Lou Reed, Patsy Cline, and The Bangles, always leading so smoothly into the songs as part of his patter that it seemed like the music was part of what Charlie was saying.

  She was almost disappointed when he wrapped up the show at two.

  “Well, that’s it for tonight, folks. Grady Bonner’s coming up next with some background on crystals and healing and your sun sign’s lucky numbers for tomorrow, and he tells me he’s also going to be playing some whale songs a little later. Now, for those of you who haven’t heard whale songs, that probably sounds like a joke, but keep an open mind and you’ll hear music that is truly unearthly. And to get you over to Grady, here’s Judy Collins doing her duet with a whale in “Farewell to Tarwathie.” Listen closely out there, this is the music of the deep.”

  Collins’s “Hunting the Whale” began and Allie closed her eyes and listened. The song was so lovely that the last notes seemed to hang in the air next to her.

  Then she heard Grady’s reedy voice saying, “This is Grady Bonner taking you into the hours when the city sleeps. If you missed Charlie Tenniel’s show just before this, you missed what he said about our beautiful city building. There are so many old voices echoing through the old city building. Tearing it down would be ripping those voices apart. Go to the old building tomorrow, feel the power in it, and then go to the mayor and tell him that destroying that structure is destroying the spirit of public service in this city. And now, before I begin tonight’s discussion on the healing power of the crystal, let’s listen to a recording of some North Atlantic whales. This one’s for you, Charlie.”

  Good for Charlie, Allie thought. He’s got Grady on his side. She felt comforted by that. Grady might be a little strange, but his people instincts were excellent. If he liked Charlie, Charlie was good people.

  She turned off her light and listened in the dark to the whale songs, and she drifted off in a dreamless sleep.

  She hadn’t been asleep more than half an hour when Charlie nudged her in the back.

  Five

  “Hey.” Charlie sat next to her on t