Never Keeping Secrets (7 page)

“T
hank you again for joining my cohost Danielle Johnson and I during our first week. We'll see you Monday night for a new edition of
The A-List
.”

“Good night everyone,” Danielle said, looking into the camera with her million-dollar smile and easy-breezy stance that was anything but.

“We're clear,” someone yelled out in the studio.

The smile faded and Danielle playfully pinched the hand of her cohost, Kent Yarborough, as her assistant made her way over to her. “Have a good one,” she said.

He starting loosening his leather tie and reached up to muss his slicked back blond hair until it stood up in funky spikes. “You too,” he said with a wink.

They shared a little look as they both stood still while their mic packs were removed. Danielle wondered if he too was fighting the urge to hug her. This was huge for both of them. Major league. They both had just begun as the co-anchors of the nightly entertainment show after a nationwide eight-month search. He had been a current events reporter on a small station out of Little Rock and she had been working at a local cable station in New York. Danielle had to fight not to twerk her ass because she was so happy about the new gig. Today marked the end of the first full week on camera but in the months since she first snagged the job she had already done one-on-one interviews with Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington, tried on three racks of clothes and dozens of shoes for the show wardrobe, and did the red carpet for the movie premiere of a new, sexy Michael Ealy flick.

This was a long way from her days on WNYP, a twenty-four-hour local cable station out of New York. A long way.

“What else do I have to get done today, Ming?” Danielle asked her assistant, accepting her cell phone from the young woman as they strode out of the studio and toward the elevators.

“That's actually it for today. You've gotten some more flowers and welcome gifts that I left in your office. Also, invites came in for dinner parties that you'll need to go through and decide which ones to attend. Lastly, I wanted to show you I updated both your website and your Wikipedia page,” she said, handing over her iPad.

“I'll check it on my computer upstairs . . . in my office,” Danielle said with satisfaction. Her mind was stuck on
“. . . you'll need to go through and decide which ones to attend.”

She bit back a smile, completely amazed at her life.

It was everything she ever dreamt of and more.
Well, almost everything . . .

They rode the elevator upstairs in silence and Danielle pulled out and unlocked her cell phone and quickly updated her Twitter and Facebook accounts:

In just the days since her announcement as one of the new co-anchors her follower counts had almost tripled.

“Do you want to order lunch or are you leaving for the day?” Ming asked, her thumb poised and ready over the touch screen of her phone.

Danielle stepped off the elevator onto the fifth floor, which housed the wardrobe and makeup department. She kept the doors from closing by holding her hand out to fool the sensors. “You go on up ahead of me and order me some tempura. Please,” she added, not wanting to come off with a bad attitude.

“No problem.”

Danielle removed her hand and smiled as the doors closed her part-time assistant off from her. She walked down the narrow hall to the oversized room housing the wardrobe for all of the female correspondents for the network. She smiled and spoke to anyone who crossed her path.

Danielle had gone through too much to make it this far and she was determined not to mess it up with a bad attitude. “Thanks again, Justin,” she said to the slender-hipped stylist.

He and his team of four wardrobe assistants were cataloging the racks of clothing. “You're welcome,” he said, his short and spiky hair dyed a deep shade of purple. It perfectly matched his own quirky style that was a mix of '80s punk and some futuristic vibe that scared the shit out of Danielle when they were first introduced. “We got in some really cute dresses for the Teen Choice Awards but we can worry about all of that Monday.”

“Perfect,” she said, walking over to one of the small dressing rooms designated just for her use.

Danielle rushed out of the bright yellow-and-white striped sleeveless dress she wore. She left it over the back of the makeup chair and sat the pair of five-inch straw-and-gold stilettos in the seat. Her bold pieces of gold jewelry were next. All of it was designer and expensive and not hers.

But Danielle was used to nice things of her own. She had always worked—and took on wealthy sponsors—to make sure she could purchase the very best. That was back when material things mattered over love. BM and then AB (Before Mohammed and After the Breakup with Mohammed). He was the defining point in her personal history.

She paused for a moment and got
so
lost in the memory of him. He had never moved back from Jamaica and she had never accepted his calls . . . or e-mails . . . or texts. The last time against the wall had been the last time....

Danielle's eyes glazed over and she bit her lip at the memory before pushing it away. Mohammed was her past. Her career was her future. She wanted more for her life and she went after it.

Her eyes locked on her reflection in the mirror.

She quickly got dressed in the linen pencil skirt and silk tank she wore that morning with her five-inch cork heels. Being sure to grab her phone she left the dressing room. Her steps paused as she looked at the rack holding nearly a dozen garment bags. She made her way toward it, feeling more boldness to explore since the long and wide room without walls was now empty.

“Amazing,” she whispered, reaching out to touch each of the garment bags and trace her manicured finger over each of the designer names. “Thank you God for my blessings.”

Danielle wasn't religious. She wasn't even that spiritual. But in that moment she closed her eyes and released a long stream of air that was a tactic to beat off the emotions that flooded her. The past that continued to shadow her.

Being poor, without parents, and shuttled from foster home to foster home with a few trips to group homes in between was a lot for any child to bear. A lot. It had a way of stripping a child of hopes and dreams.

For the first time ever she believed dreams were possible.

But it still hurt she had absolutely no one to share it with. No one.

Stiffening her back and swallowing a sigh she left the wardrobe room and made her way back to the elevators. She was glad to make it back to her office on the floor housing the offices for the various correspondents of the shows produced by Network New. Around the perimeter were the small offices with windows for the TV personalities and in the center clustered in cubicles were the non-production personnel.

Ming was on the phone in her cubicle right across from Danielle's corner office—which was the same size as the rest of the offices, but with an additional window. Danielle loved it like it was more than that.

“Your lunch is on your desk,” Ming told her, covering the mouthpiece of the handset.

“Thank you,” she mouthed before walking into her office.

She closed the door and leaned back against it, her eyes taking in the beauty of Los Angeles. Everything about it was so different from the East Coast but she was learning to like it and once she truly learned to maneuver the congested traffic she would love it.

Kicking off her shoes she sat down in the chair before her desk, and pushed into the corner directly under each of the windows on both walls. She tucked her bare feet underneath her as she clutched the edge of her desk and rolled the chair forward to grab a disinfecting hand wipe from the tube on the corner of her desk to cleanse her hands. Her stomach growled at the thought of her food.

“Come in, Ming,” she called before she filled her mouth with a bite of chicken tempura that was sinful.

The door opened but the beautiful and sizable floral arrangement Ming carried completely covered everything but her lower body. Danielle's mouth opened in surprise and pleasure as she moved aside her lunch to make room for her to sit it on her desk.

“I did a squat to pick it up to protect my back,” Ming said dryly, pushing her spectacles up on her nose with her index finger.

Danielle laughed as she dug the tiny envelope out from the colorful variety of roses, lilies, orchids, and sunflowers. She pulled the card out and her eyes went from curious and pleased to hesitant. As she leaned to take in the sweet scent of the flowers her thumb moved back and forth softly over the slashing signature of Omari Knight.

She thought of the handsome man she met earlier that year in the elevator of the apartment she kept in New Jersey. He was a computer software engineer and way sexier than the sound of his career choice. Still, no matter how bangable, Danielle was not looking for what he was looking for, which was a relationship. She didn't have the time for it.

The daily phone calls.

The checking in.

The mind games.

The expectations.

The disappointments.

And on top of that, long distance drama as well?

“No, hell no,” she said, leaning forward to drop the envelope and card in her wire trash can.

Still as she ate her lunch her eyes kept drifting back to the arrangement.
He really is one fine motherfucker and he always . . . always smells so damn good.

Danielle cut her eyes down at the card and envelope sitting propped against the inside wall of the can. She used her tongue to pull a piece of meat from in between her teeth as she wiped her fingers on a napkin. While arching a well-shaped brow she reached down and picked up the card, sitting it on the edge of her desk. And then in the corner pocket of the blotter on her desk. And then down into the side pocket of her tote sitting on the floor.

She loosened her hair from the chignon and ran her fingers through it with one hand as she pulled up her website on the touch screen all-in-one computer.

She did a little dance at the Network New logo at the bottom of the screen as she read over her updated bio. She also checked her updated Wikipedia page. Both accurately reflected her meteoric rise in the industry.

Although it mentioned that she pursued her associate's degree in journalism while working full-time at WNYP for four years and how she auditioned and snagged the anchor position, there was a lot between the lines and behind the scenes that she would never divulge . . . and never forget.

The friends she stepped away from to focus on herself.

The many hours upon hours she put in to being the very best in her job, going above and beyond, to dispel that she was just the girl with the pretty face and the connections.

She squeezed her eyes shut and visibly shivered in disgust.

Although the words were once spoken by the wife of one of her ex-employers it felt more like the spider drawing in the fly. A tempting trap.

Danielle had crawled right onto the spider's web.

Fuck the devil. She signed, sealed, and delivered her soul to Carolyn Ingram in exchange for an on-air position at the cable station owned by one of her business associates.

Every moment she spent covering local entertainment stories, and working along with people with more education and experience, she wondered if they all knew just how she snagged the position. And if they didn't, she knew. And that was enough.

She had wanted to prove herself and it was her idea alone to pursue the journalism degree and to put in more time and effort than anyone else. She was trying to outrun her ties to Carolyn.

Securing
The A-List
had been some declaration for herself that this time she fought hard and worked hard to actually feel like she earned the position on her own.

Again Danielle shivered and forced her past back where it belonged: not darkening her present or slowing down her future. She just prayed it stayed that way. She hated waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Danielle scratched at her neck, feeling her anxiety rise. She needed something to relieve her stress and help her cap off one helluva good week. Champagne just wasn't going to do it.

But she knew just what—or rather who—could.

She picked up her cell phone from her desk and unlocked the screen with a swipe of her thumb.

She paused for just another second more before she dialed the number she was ashamed to admit she knew by heart.
Hell with it.

“I thought you would have changed your number since you hit the big time.”

Danielle smiled a little. “I would have thought you forgot all about me among the masses,” she countered, leaning back and kicking up her bare feet to prop up on her desk.

“You're hard to forget.”

“I'm not paying for you to blow air up my ass.”

“You could.”

Danielle laughed. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes . . . but I don't know why you called.”

“Business first, huh?”