Sunny Says (16 page)

*    *    *

When Sunny didn’t answer after
the sixth ring, Kale disconnected his call to Sunny and hit the steering wheel
with his fist. “Damn!”

“Problem?” Foster asked.

“I was hoping that I could catch
Sunny before she left. I have to break the news to her about switching her back
to weather before she finds out from someone else. And call me chicken, but I’d
rather do it in a public place. I was going to suggest that we stop by the
Lighthouse for a drink.”

“You think she’s going to be
upset?”

Kale laughed wryly. “That’s the
understatement of the year. She’s going to raise holy hell. I’ve put off
discussing the problem with her while we’ve tried to come up with some other
solution, but since we didn’t find one, now I have no other choice.” He pulled
into Foster’s driveway and said to his cousin, “I don’t suppose I could
persuade you to tell her, could I?”

Foster laughed. “Not me. You
know how I hate that sort of thing. I break out in hives. Why do you think I
put out an
SOS
for you to come to Corpus and straighten out the KRIP
mess? Your type makes a better hatchet man.”

Kale groaned. “Thanks, cuz.
Thanks a hell of a lot.”

When Foster got out of the car, Kale
 Was about to call Sunny’s cell when he noticed that he had a couple of text
messages. The second message was from Sunny—a garbled bit of information about
Carlos and her checking out gang activity at
Old
Bayview
Cemetery
on
West Broadway at
eleven o’clock
. An icy finger of fear slithered down his backbone.
It was a
quarter to eleven
, and he was twenty minutes away. Cursing, he peeled
out of Foster’s driveway, tires squealing and laying a black line of rubber in
their wake.

*    *    *

At five of eleven, Sunny and
Carlos, along with their equipment and her cell phone, crouched in the shadows
behind a tall, weathered tombstone with a cherub on top. The cherub’s nose was
missing and one wing tip was gone.

“Do you see anyone?” Sunny
whispered, peering over the cherub’s foot into the eerie expanse. The
streetlights, which turned Carlos’s skin a sickly mauve, made a feeble attempt
to push back the darkness, but they only created creepy shadows and dim
puddles.

“Not a living soul—pardon the
pun. This place is spooky.”

Only the traffic from the
interstate and the distant sounds of a cat fight interrupted the quiet.

“Is the camera ready?” she
asked.

“I told you that it was the last
time you asked. Are you sure we shouldn’t call the cops?”

“And tell them what? Have you
seen anything to report?”

“If that was Rico who called
you, playing a prank, I’ll have his hide.”

Car doors slammed.

Sunny stuck her nose over the
edge of the tombstone. “Shhhh. Someone’s coming.”

She could see about a dozen boys
quietly enter the cemetery and congregate about twenty-five yards away. Carlos
nudged her and pointed to their right, where another group approached. When she
saw the flash of a knife in one hand, she sucked in a gasp and dragged Carlos
to the ground.

“We have to call the police,”
she whispered quietly in his ear.

He put his finger over his lips
and shook his head.

A shot rang out, and pandemonium
broke loose.

Hunkered behind the tombstone,
Sunny tried to call 911, but her fingers were shaking so badly that she kept
hitting the wrong buttons. She finally reached the emergency number and
explained the situation. The moment she hung up, she could hear the loud
screams of sirens approaching.

“That was fast,” she said,
watching CCPD cars converging from every direction.

With spotlights illuminating the
area, police officers waded into the fray, and Carlos started filming. A white
Cadillac convertible screeched to a stop, and Kale was out and running toward
them.

He grabbed Sunny by the
shoulders, and, his eyes wild, scanned her face. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” she said cheerfully. “We’re
getting some dynamite stuff for the special.”

He made an extremely profane and
uncomplimentary remark about the special. “I ought to take you home and beat
your butt.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You and
what army?” She shook off his grip and turned back to the ruckus, which was
dying down now that the police had control of the red- and gold-shirted gang
members.

“Oh look, Kale,” she said,
tugging his sleeve. “That looks like Meathook. And I believe that’s B.J. who’s
spread-eagled against the patrol car. Come on, let’s get some shots of this.”

*    *    *

Sunny sat curled up on the couch
with her fingers cupping a snifter of brandy. Kale, glowering as ferociously as
a Saturday night wrestler, sat on the edge of a chair across from her, holding
an empty glass that had contained a double shot of Scotch only moments before.

“Whatever possessed you to pull
a dumb stunt like that?” he growled. “If I hadn’t called the police, you’d have
been in a hell of a mess.”

“Ohhhh, that’s why they were so
quick,” she said. “You needn’t have been concerned. I’d just called them
myself. Kale, you’re such a worrywart. You’re going to have to get it through
your head that I am a very bright and capable woman. I can take care of myself.”

“Like hell you can!”

“Oh, stop making those bear
noises,” she said, dismissing his roaring with a wave of her hand. “We really
did get some fantastic film for the special. I wonder who called me? I could
have sworn it was Rico, but his gang wasn’t involved. Carlos sure was relieved.”

Kale shook his head and looked
at her as if she were a simpleton. “You don’t get it, do you, Miss Sunshine?”

“Get what?”

“Of course it was Rico. He 
wouldn’t have squealed on his own gang, but he knew you’d call the cops on his
rivals.”

“Why, that sly little devil.”

He looked exasperated. “I don’t
know what I’m going to do with you. You march blindly into trouble like a
lemming over a cliff.”

She smiled smugly. “Reporter’s
instinct.”

He made a rude comment. “Finished
with your brandy?”

“Why?”

“I just thought of something I
can do with you.” His smile turned licentious. “All night.”

“Don’t you have something to
tell me first?”

He looked puzzled. “About what?”

“Oh,” she said innocently,
pausing to pick a piece of lint from her skirt, rolling it between her fingers,
then depositing it in a potted plant, “something about complaints to the
station about the weather. Some minor detail like breaking my heart by moving
me out of the anchor position.”

He paled. “Oh, my God, I’d
forgotten about that.”

“Forgotten about it?” Her eyes
widened. She fluttered her lashes dramatically, relishing watching him squirm
for a change. “Forgotten about destroying my dream, bursting my balloon,
raining on my parade?
Forgotten
about it?”

He raked his fingers through his
hair. “Honey, I meant to explain—”

“And when, pray tell,” she asked
in a syrupy-sweet tone, “were you going to explain that you were planning to
put my head on the chopping block? While you were nibbling my belly button or
after we made love?” She affected a wounded-maiden pose and milked the moment
for all it was worth.

“Aw hell, Sunny, I . . .” He
looked at her helplessly.

“Why, Ah do believe, Mistah Hoaglin,
that foah once in yoah life, yoah at a loss foah words. Ah’ll just sit heah as
quiet as a li’l ole mouse until you think of some.”

“Dammit, Sunny—”

“Mistah Hoaglin! Yoah vocabulary
seems seriously limited to profanity. Ah’m shocked.” If she’d had a fan, she
would have fluttered it furiously. “Ah would think that a renowned
correspondent with the network would have a better command of the language.”

His eyes narrowed. “What’s going
on here? Why aren’t you in my face yelling?”

“Me? Yell?” She splayed her hand
across her chest and tried to appear affronted. “Why, Mistah Hoaglin, Ah never
yell.”

“Like hell you don’t. And what’s
with the simpering Southern belle business? What are you up to?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re
talking about.” She put her snifter down and stood. “I think I’ll go for a
swim.” She unbuckled her belt and let it drop. On her way to the pool, she left
a trail of clothes behind her. From the hopping and thumping noises she
suspected that Kale was imitating her actions.

By the time she’d reached the
apron of the pool, she was nude. Kale, still wearing one sock and trying to
unzip his pants, caught up with her.

“Are you going to tell me what’s
going on?” he asked. “I’ve sweated bullets trying to avoid switching you back
to doing the weather. It’s been frustrating as hell. I figured that you would
give me a hard time.”

She smiled. “Oh, I plan to give
you a hard time.” She touched him intimately.

“I’m all for that, love,” he
said, reaching for her, his lips already descending.

“You jerk!” She shoved him in
the pool.

Laughing at the shocked look on
his face, she dived in and swam underwater to the far side. When she came up
for air, Kale’s head popped up beside her.

“What was that all about?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about
all the complaints the station had received about the weather report? Why didn’t
you tell me there was a problem? It’s not as if we haven’t been together
eighteen or twenty hours a day every day for the past two weeks.”

“Sweetheart, I didn’t want to
upset you.”

“Upset me?” She rolled her eyes
and looked heavenward. “Kale Hoaglin, are you ever going to learn to stop
underestimating me?” She put both hands on his head and shoved him underwater,
putting her whole weight behind her action, then took off with a fast crawl to
the ladder.

He grabbed her ankle while her
foot was on the first rung. “Dammit, Sunny, come back here. You’re acting
crazy. Are you mad at me?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

He trapped her against the
ladder. “Honey, let’s talk.”

“So now you want to talk.”

“Love, if there was any other
way to straighten things out so that you wouldn’t have been disappointed, I
would have done it. Don’t you know that? You’re a victim of your own popularity.
There is simply no other solution.”

“Oh, but there is.” She told him
about the experiment that she and Roland had tried on the
ten o’clock
news.

She kept her fingers crossed
while he seemed to mull over the concept. Finally he nodded. “Creative idea. I
think it’ll work. This way everybody will be happy.”

“Of course. If you’d only
explained the situation to me a week ago, you could have saved everyone a lot
of grief. You don’t trust me, do you?”

“It’s not that I don’t trust
you.” He rubbed his cheek against hers. “It’s that I love you so damned much
that I want to shield you from unpleasantness.”

Her heart flew to her throat. Of
the words he’d said, only “I love you” had registered. She drew back and looked
at him, blinking rapidly to keep tears from forming. “You love me?”

“Sure I love you. Why else do
you think I’d keep making a damned fool of myself?”

“I just thought it came
naturally.”

He laughed and kissed her. Her
arms tightened around his neck and her tongue met the warmth of his. As always,
his smoldering kisses, the aura of his nearness charged her blood, made her
want to lose herself in him.

She arched her back and rubbed
her breasts against his chest, loving the feel of bare skin and gently lapping
water.

“God, you feel good,” he said.

“My thoughts exactly.”

He kissed her nose, her chin,
her ear. “We’re going to have to move to the shallow end,” he murmured. “I can’t
do what I want to and hold on to this ladder. If I let go, we’ll drown.”

She laughed. “And you’d better
take off your pants.”

He nipped her earlobe. “That
too.”

*    *    *

Just before dawn, Sunny
awakened. For a moment she lay still in the warm solace of Kale’s arms,
listening to him breathe, registering the subtle male scent that was his alone,
feeling his steady heartbeat beneath her hand. After so few hours in bed, she
should have snuggled back down in her comfortable nest and gone to sleep again.

But sleep eluded her.

Moving slowly and trying not to
disturb Kale, she slipped from the bed, walked through the connecting bath, and
picked up a robe in her bedroom.

When the robe was belted, she
drew back the curtains of the front window and looked out over the bay. The
first rays of the rising sun painted the wave tips gold as they rippled toward
the bulkhead across
Ocean Drive
. It was an exquisite site, a placid scene, reminding
her of the surety and continuity of life. Ordinarily, watching the sun rise and
the waves roll in exhilarated her as she captured the rejuvenating spirit. But
now she felt only a vague sadness.