Page 83 of 7 Days and 7 Nights

“Today I’ll take my comfort any way I can get it. How about you, Di? Are you ready for whatever comes?”

“I think so. I fielded some pretty hostile calls yesterday. You have a lot of listeners who aren’t at all happy about what happened with Matt.”

“I can’t say that I blame them.” Dread pooled in the pit of Olivia’s stomach. “I’m not too happy about it myself.”

Diane studied her. “Did you hear what happened after you left the meeting yesterday?”

Olivia bit into her donut and tried to appear disinterested.

“Matt punched Crankower and knocked him right out. He accused him of framing up that final shot and telling the press you and Matt had a thing for each other in Chicago.”

“He knocked him out?”

“Oh, yeah. Charles made one last snide comment, and Matt coldcocked him. And he told T.J. off, too.”

“Well, what do you know?” Olivia marveled. “Maybe Matt has a few heroic bones in his body after all.” She tucked the thought away for future consideration and turned to the business at hand. “All right, Diane. Stash the donuts and let’s do radio. You find me a good first caller to set the tone, and I’ll take it from there, okay?”

“Okay."

Olivia tuned out the bustle around her as she sat down in front of the microphone.

In the wee hours of the morning, she’d finally decided that for this show she’d have to go with the flow; not exactly her forte, and something that would have been out of the question a week ago. She wondered if Matt would tune in as he had during the last week, and the mental picture of Crankower crumpled on the floor brought a reluctant smile to her lips.

Her theme music played itself out, but when she checked the monitor to see how many callers were waiting, the screen was blank. Her smile disappeared, and her heart plummeted as she looked through the plate glass at Diane. Her producer grimaced and shrugged in apology. Taking a deep breath, Olivia went on the air alone.

“This is theLiv LiveThank-God-we’re-back-in-the-studio edition. And I’m waiting to hear from you. For those of you who may have forgotten, the number is 1-555-LIV-LIVE. While you’re dialing, I’d like to take a minute to try to explain what happened during my week of captivity.

“The bottom line here is, I’m only human.” She paused to let that sink in. "I’m a trained therapist, and I think as an uninvolved third party, I bring new insight to your problems and issues.” She caught Diane’s eye and shrugged as her tone turned wry. “It’s not always so easy to do the same for myself.”

Olivia wanted desperately to stand and pace the small space, but she was tied to the microphone and through it to her audience. As she spoke to her listeners, certain basic truths that she had avoided facing during the long, grueling week became clear. She doubted anyone was more surprised than she was at the words that came out of her mouth.

“I have feelings for Matt Ransom that are not easily defined. I first knew him when I was way too young, and it ended badly. The only feelings I could admit to before this week were hurt and anger. But there’s more than that.”

Olivia saw Diane take a call, and as she talked, additional phone calls came in.

“It occurs to me that I keep urging you, my listeners, to be honest and follow your hearts even when it’s difficult.” She laughed ruefully. “Especiallywhen it’s difficult.”

She folded her hands on the table in front of her as she continued. “I haven’t cut you one inch of slack. But when it came to myself, well, I took a lot of rope and hung myself with it. I couldn’t admit that what I felt for Matt could be anything more than righteous anger and disdain. And ultimately lust.”

She saw Diane go still in the control room and imagined a hush falling over the station. She wondered where Matt was and wondered, again, if he was listening.

“What you saw Sunday night was my totally misguided attempt to force Matt Ransom to own up to his feelings for me. You see, I wanted and expected him to do something I couldn’t even do myself. Denial is an incredible thing. I focused on his shortcomings, his walls, his methods of coping, and I found them unsatisfactory. But I refused to take a look at my own.”

All the phone lines were lit up now. Diane typed frantically on her keyboard, but Olivia couldn’t stop talking. She had to come clean.

“So you see, I’m a fraud. Not because I couldn’t resist Matt Ransom, but because I couldn’t follow my own advice.”

The truth hit her then like the proverbial ton of bricks. She was in love with Matt Ransom. Still. Always. Her mouth snapped shut as the realization sank in. All the anger, all the jealousy, all the mind-numbing sexual tension were obvious indications of the intensity of her feelings for the man, and she had managed to deny or rationalize every single reaction.

Stooping to his level, and in the most inept way possible, she had tried to force him to admit that she was more important to him than the other women who’d wandered in and out of his life.

“Matt Ransom is juvenile and completely annoying.” She paused, and when she continued, she could hear the horror in her voice. “And I seem to be in love with him."

Olivia fell silent as the ramifications of what she’d said began to sink in. She was in love with Matt Ransom. She was in love with a man who treated women as conveniences, a man who had erected walls around his heart that were all but unscalable and then topped them with twists of barbed wire to discourage even the most foolhardy.

Was she really that foolhardy? Olivia scanned the list of waiting callers, hoping against hope that Matt’s name would be among them. In her little fantasy world, he would hear her admission of love and, zing, he too would realize that they were destined to be together. Right. And then he’d propose to her on the air. And carry her off to Never Land to play with the other lost boys. She’d have to change her name to Wendy. And move to London.

“So." She finally noticed Diane’s frantic hand signals.

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