Charlie All Night Read online

  Charlie sat back and watched Allie work over the puppy, tickling its throat to get it to swallow. Well, if anyone could save an embryo dog, Allie could. He’d only known her twenty-four hours, but he already had a healthy respect for her determination.

  “We may have to do this every half hour,” Allie told him. “He’s not getting enough this way. He’s got to learn to suck.”

  So now he was a dog nurse, too. Well, he liked dogs. And if this was what Allie wanted… “All right.”

  Allie covered the basket again. “He’s going to make it. I know he is.”

  At least when the dog died, he’d be there to comfort her.

  Platonically.

  * * *

  Charlie spent the next two hours checking out the tape library and meeting Stewart, the night engineer. Stewart looked like a peeled egg and was not a ball of fire when it came to engineering, but he was something that Charlie found a lot more useful: a talker. After a half hour with Stewart, Charlie knew more about the station than Bill probably did. And the one incontrovertible fact he gleaned was that Allie was universally admired. Mark wasn’t.

  “Allie’s good people,” Stewart told him. “She gets things done. Mark is just a…”

  “Yuppie scum dweeb?”

  “That would cover it,” Stewart agreed.

  Cheered by the knowledge that not everyone at WBBB was certifiable, Charlie went back out into the city to find something to say about Tuttle on his first show. Nothing too controversial, he told himself. No waves.

  Allie was standing in the lobby with her hands on her hips when he walked in an hour before his show. “Bill was looking for you earlier. You were supposed to meet him at five. Mark apologized for whatever it was he said. Bill says that you are never to strike another employee here again. Also, don’t play liberal garbage on the air. Where have you been?”

  Charlie grinned at her. She looked like an aggressive cocker spaniel, her hair swinging like a bright bell around her face, her eyes warm and challenging behind her glasses, which had slipped down her nose, as usual. He resisted the impulse to push them up for her. They weren’t that close. They weren’t ever going to be that close. “I missed you, too,” he told her. “And I didn’t hit Mark. He fell over. What do you know about the city building here?”

  Allie turned and went down the hall to her office, and he trailed after her, trying not to admire the swing of her hips in her brown jersey dress.

  “It’s one of the oldest buildings in the city,” she told him over her shoulder. “The marble is Italian. My mother and father were married there. The mayor wants to build a new one. That’s about it. What do you want me to find out about it?”

  “Nothing.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his head and followed her into her office. “The tape library here isn’t too bad. I can fake it for a while.”

  “Good.” Allie looked at him. “Close the door and sit down.”

  “Why?” Charlie looked wary as he closed the door.

  “I just need to talk to you for a minute.” Allie swallowed nervously. “This is about us. I’ve been thinking all afternoon-”

  Oh, Lord, he should have said something earlier before she started making plans for their future. “Listen, before you say anything, I think you’re a terrific lady, but I’m not ready for a steady relationship, so if you’re planning-”

  “Great.” Allie sank into her chair. “Don’t think I didn’t enjoy last night. I did. But I don’t think it should happen again.” She beamed up at him. “I’m so relieved you feel the same way.”

  “Well…” Charlie stopped, confused.

  “Not that we can’t still be friends,” Allie went on. “And even roommates. I talked to Joe while you were in the bathroom this morning, and if you’d like to stay with us on the couch for the time you’ll be here, it’s all right.”

  “Oh, well…” Charlie nodded four or five times, his head wobbling a little as he tried to gather his thoughts. “Uh, sure. Good.”

  “Great.” Allie picked up some papers from her desk, clearly eager to get back to work. “I’ll tell Joe when I get home tonight.”

  “Good.” Charlie stood up. “Well, I’m glad that’s settled. Uh, I think I’ll go watch Harry for a while.”

  Allie waved her hand at him as he left, already working on those papers. Efficient at all times, that was Allie.

  It was really irritating of her.

  Why don’t I feel better about this? Charlie thought as he headed for the booth. This was what he wanted. She’d just taken care of it for him. Just the way she took care of everything. He shook his head at the acidity in the thought. This was probably just stupid male pride. He wanted to be the one to break things off. Oh, well. Her loss.

  He walked off down the hall, wondering why he felt so empty if it was her loss.

  * * *

  Inside the office, Allie threw the papers down on the desk beside Samson’s basket, and sat back. She was really glad. Glad, glad, glad. At last she’d made a mature adult decision about a man, and now she could concentrate on the important stuff like making Charlie’s show a hit.

  Boy, was she glad.

  Really.

  * * *

  Charlie watched Harry through the window into the booth. He was talking animatedly into the mike, his hands moving up and down the console like a maniac’s. Howlin’ Harry.

  Great. First he got kicked out of Allie’s bed and now he was following an insane person.

  When Harry stopped talking and leaned back, Charlie knocked on the window and Harry motioned him in.

  “Nice job on Mark in the break room today.” Harry grinned at him as he came in. “Look, Ma, no hands.”

  Charlie grinned back. It would be impossible not to grin at Harry. He radiated goodwill. “I should have known better,” Charlie told him.

  “Why? Mark didn’t.” Harry gestured to the console. “Anything you need to know about here?”

  “Why don’t you give me a fast refresher?” Charlie said, and Harry looked at him strangely and then explained how the noise level on the cassette and CD players were controlled by the red plastic sliding tabs on the console. Charlie did fine until Harry told him that if more than one slide was up at the same time, they’d all be heard, and then began to discuss the three thousand ways the slides could be combined for effect. “Great,” Charlie said when Harry was finished and Charlie was lost. “I think I’ll just stick with one at a time.”

  Harry shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Can I sit in here and watch the rest of your show?” Charlie asked him, hoping that he’d learn by watching what he hadn’t gotten by listening.

  “Hey, you’re welcome anytime,” Harry told him and then went back to the mike to announce that Tuttle had just heard a Howlin’ Harry triple play.

  His howl was actually worse in the booth than it was on the radio.

  * * *

  At nine fifty-eight, Allie took her seat at the production console and watched through the window as Charlie leaned on the wall of the booth and Harry hunched over the mike. Charlie’s loose-limbed body relaxed against the white acoustic tile, and she followed the lines of his arms with her eyes, focusing finally on his long, large-knuckled fingers. He had big hands, but they were agile, she remembered. Lovely, long fingers.

  She wrenched her mind back to the show. Fingers didn’t count in radio. Just in bed. And from now on, they were just in radio, not in bed. Tonight was the first night of the rest of her career. If she was going to make Charlie a star-and she was-tonight was the night she studied him to see how he worked. Then she’d know how to shape the show, how to publicize it, how to make Charlie the Tuttle flavor of the month. She felt her heart beat faster and grinned at herself. She’d be back on top in no time. She turned her attention back to the booth, keeping her mind firmly off Charlie’s body and strictly on his potential. For radio.

  Harry was shrieking, “And that’s it for tonight for all you wild and crazy Howlers out there. Next up is the n