"Roberts, Nora - Private Scandals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

her chair and sat on the edge of her desk. "You're cold." He handed her a towel. "Knock it back. Dry your hair. We've
got work to do."
"That's what I'm doing." But she took the towel. And after a moment's hesitation, the whiskey. It might have been
only a swallow, but he was right, it put a nice cozy fire in her stomach.
"We've got thirty minutes for copy. Benny's already editing the tape." Finn craned his head around to scan her
screen. "That's good stuff," he commented.
"It'll be better if you'd get out of my



way."
He was used to hostility, but he liked to know its source. "You're ticked because I kissed you? No offense, Deanna,
but it wasn't personal. It was more like primal instinct."
"I'm not ticked because you kissed me." She spoke between her teeth and began to type again. "I'm ticked because
you stole my story."
Hooking his hands around his knee, Finn thought about it and decided she had a small, if not particularly salient
point. "Let me ask you a question. Which makes better film? You doing a stand-up, or me giving a play-by-play of the
flight minutes after evacuation?"
She spared him one heated glance, and said nothing. "Okay, while you're thinking it over, we'll print out my copy and
see how it reads with yours."
She stopped. "What do you mean, your copy?" "I wrote it on the plane. Got a quick interview with my seatmate, too."
The reckless amusement was back in his eyes. "Should be good for human interest."
Despite her annoyance, she nearly laughed. "You wrote copy while your plane was going down?"
"Those portable computers will work anywhere. You've got about five minutes before Benny comes along and starts
tearing his hair out."
Deanna stared after him when Finn walked off to commandeer a desk.
The man was obviously a lunatic.

And a damned talented one, she decided thirty minutes later.
The edited tape was completed, the graphics set less than three minutes before airtime. The copy, reworked,
rewritten and timed, was plugged into the TelePrompTer. And Finn Riley, still in his sweater and jeans, was seated
behind the anchor desk, going national with his report.
"Good evening. This is a special report on flight 1129. I'm Finn Riley."
Deanna knew he was reading the news, since she had written the first thirty seconds herself. Yet it felt as though he
were telling a story. He knew exactly which word to punch, when to pause. He knew exactly how to go through the
camera and into the home.
It wasn't an intimacy, she mused, worrying her earring. He wasn't settling in for a



cozy chat. He was ... bringing tidings, she decided. Carrying the message. And somehow staying aloof from it.
Neat trick, she thought, since he had been on the very plane he was describing.
Even when he read his own words, words he had written while plunging through the sky in a crippled plane with its
port engine smoking, he was removed. The storyteller, not the story.
Admiration snuck past her defenses. She turned to the monitor when they switched to film, and saw herself. Hair
dripping, eyes huge, face pale as the water that rained over her. Her voice was steady. Yes, she had that, Deanna
thought. But she wasn't detached. The fear and terror were there, transmitted as clearly as her words.
And when the camera shifted to capture the plane skidding on the runway, she heard her own whispered prayer.
Too involved, she realized, and sighed. It was worse when she saw Finn on the monitor, taking over the story
minutes after escaping the damaged plane. He had the look of a warrior fresh from battle--a veteran warrior who could