Page 3 of Prime Time

“No interviews with my father,” he said in a low, tense voice. “He’s an old man. He doesn’t feel well. Others, bigger and better than you, Ms. Malone, have come asking. The answer remains irrevocably no.”

He pushed himself off the stool, and she realized when she found herself looking at his collarbone that he was very tall. She took a step back and watched with fascination as his hand dug into the pocket of his tight jeans to extract a five-dollar bill. The intrusion of his hand, pulling tighter the already taut denim, sent hot color rushing to her cheeks. He laid the bill down next to his plate. According to the grimy menu, it was more than twice what a cheeseburger basket cost.

“Thanks, Gabe. See ya.”

“See ya, Lyon.”

Andy couldn’t believe she was being so blithely dismissed when he sidestepped her on his way to the front door. “Mr. Ratliff,” she said on a grating note, following him.

He stopped and turned around with slow deliberation, much more menacing than if he’d whipped around quickly. She felt that she was being lacerated by tiny rapiers as his eyes sliced down her body from the top of her head to the toes of her shiny new boots.

“I don’t like pushy broads, Ms. Malone. You impress me as such. I will not permit my father to be interviewed by anyone, especially by you. So why don’t you pack up your new clothes and get your cute little butt back to Nashville where it belongs?”

She flung her purse on the bed and collapsed into the uncomfortable chair in the small, stuffy motel room. Eight fingers were pressed against her forehead while her thumbs rotated over her pounding temples. She didn’t know if it was the heat, or the arid climate, or the man, but something had given her a whale of a headache. The man. No doubt it had been the man.

Standing up after a few minutes of rest, she pulled off her boots and kicked them aside. “Thanks for nothing.” She went into the bathroom to swallow two aspirins with lukewarm water out of the cold-water tap.

“Why didn’t you slap his smug face?” she asked her image in the mirror. “Why did you just stand there like a big dummy and take that abuse?” She released her hair from its clasp and shook it loose, a motion which did her headache no good. “Because you want that interview, that’s why.”

She dreaded calling Les. What would she tell him? He didn’t take disappointment well, and that was putting it mildly. Possibilities of what she would say were still bouncing around in her mind when she dialed the longdistance number. She called collect and person-to-person, and after being channeled through the switchboard operator at Telex to Les’s office, she heard his querulous growl. “Yeah?”

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Well, well, I was beginning to think you’d been taken hostage by cattle rustlers or something. It was nice of you to take the time to call.”

Sarcasm. Today’s mood was sarcasm. Andy accepted it with resignation, as she accepted all Les’s moods. “I’m sorry, Les, but I didn’t have anything to report, so I didn’t call. Remember your memo last month about unnecessary long-distance calls?”

“But that doesn’t apply to you, Andy baby,” he said more cordially. “How’s it going down there in cow country?”

She rubbed her forehead as she answered. “Not too well. I got nowhere for the first few days. All I found out for certain was that there was some landscaping being done at the ranch house. That’s it. That, and where Lyon Ratliff, the son, sometimes eats lunch when he comes into town. Today I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman.”

She stared at her nylon-covered toes, remembering not the hateful way he had spoken to her before he stalked out the door, but the way he’d looked at her the first time their eyes had met. She hadn’t felt that way in the presence of a man since … she’d never felt that way in the presence of a man.

“And?” Les prodded impatiently.

“Oh … and … uh … it’s going to be tough, Les. He’s as hardheaded as a mule. Impossible to talk to. Stubborn, rude, insulting.”

“Sounds like a real nice guy.” Les laughed.

“He was bloody awful.” She toyed with a string on the Spanish-red and black bedspread. “I don’t feel right about this anymore, Les. Maybe we shouldn’t be forcing the issue. What if the old general really is too ill to be interviewed? The reports on his health may be inaccurate. It’s possible he’s incapable of withstanding the strain of a series of interviews. He may not even be able to talk. What would you say to my giving up this one and coming home?”

“Andy baby, what’s happening to you out there? That Texas sun baking your brain?”

She could just see Les now. He’d lower his Hush Puppy-shod feet from the desk and bring his chair forward to prop his elbows on the littered desk in his “earnest” pose. The horn-rimmed glasses would either be shoved to the top of his head to perch on his red hair or would be taken off altogether and set down amidst the overflowing ashtrays and empty candy wrappers and week-old scripts. If she were there rather than a thousand miles away, she would become the victim of startling cold blue eyes. Even through the telephone wire she could feel those eyes boring into her.

“You aren’t going to let a bad-tempered bully stand in your way, are you? Baby, you’ve come up against worse. Much worse. Remember those union goons in that picket line? They threatened our photographer with billy clubs, yet you had them eating out of your hand in ten minutes. Course, they were all hot for your body. But then so is any man with—”

“Les,” she said tiredly. “Please.”

“Please what? I’d like to hear you say, ‘Please, Les.’ Anytime.”

She and Les Trapper and Robert Malone had begun their careers together at a small television station. Les had produced news shows. Robert had been a reporter. Andy had co-anchored the evening news broadcasts with a myopic dolt who had been with the television station since its inception and whom the management didn’t have the heart to fire.

Even after she and Robert had gotten married, the friendship among the

three of them remained inviolate. When Robert was hired as a correspondent for the network, he was away from home much of the time. Les had helped relieve the lonely hours, but always as a friend only.

She remembered vividly the night Les came to her house and told her that Robert had been killed in Guatemala, where he had been covering an earthquake. Les had cushioned her for weeks, taking over responsibilities that were too grim for her to handle. For months after Robert’s death she had used him as a shield between her and the rest of the world. He relished the role of protector.

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