Chapter 12

C. J.

“Terry, honey, breakfast is ready!” C. J. called. She removed the two multigrain slices that had popped up from the toaster and tossed them onto his plate, wincing and blowing on her singed fingertips.

“Terry!” she called out again before taking a sip of orange juice from one of the glasses on the kitchen island. “You’re going to be late if you don’t grab something to eat and head out soon. Terry?”

C. J. waited for his voice or the sound of his approaching footsteps but heard neither—just the drone of the flat-screen television in their living room. She grumbled and walked down the hall toward their bedroom in search of her fiancé.

Terrence usually made breakfast, but she was treating him today. It would be his first day as spokesperson for Murdoch Conglomerated, his first stint at a real job in years. To say C. J. was proud of him was putting it lightly. Terrence was making such a bold move. He was willing to take on a role he had never considered before, simply because his brother had asked him to do it. It was awe inspiring.

For the past two weeks, C. J. had been giving Terrence a crash course in media relations, showing him how to interact with reporters and how to answer questions. Terrence had also been tutored about the company that had funded his livelihood for decades, but one that he knew virtually nothing about. Evan and a few of the other executives and assistants had explained how the company operated, what its subsidiaries were, the products it sold, and who were its major competitors. She could tell that Terrence was overwhelmed with the deluge of information, but, to his credit, he had hidden it well.

Often, she would wake up in the middle of the night to find his spot on the bed beside her empty, only to wander into the living room to discover him sitting on the couch, scanning through binders filled with documents, taking notes. He had fully dedicated himself to preparing for this, which was probably why she was more excited than he was to see him start his new job today. Her stomach was in knots with nervousness, but she couldn’t keep from smiling.

“Terry,” she called out as she stepped through the bedroom doorway, “I hope you’re not changing your tie again because the last one was fi—”

Her words and smile faded when she found Terrence not preening in front of their free-standing mirror, examining his reflection, but sitting on the edge of their bed with his head bowed. The tie she had mentioned was now discarded on the wrinkled sheets. His shoes were beside his bare feet. When she entered the room, he didn’t look up at her.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you dressed?”

She watched as his shoulders rose then fell as he took a heavy breath. He slowly raised his head then shook it. What she saw in his caramel-colored eyes made her uneasy. It was that empty look that he sometimes got when he was in one of his darker moods, when he seemed on the verge of drowning in despair.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered.

“Can’t do what?”

“I can’t do this, babe. I never should’ve agreed to do this shit! I told Ev I was probably going to fall flat on my face. Now I’m sure of it! Who the fuck am I to hold a press conference or talk on CNN? Who the fuck am I kidding?”

“Stop, baby,” she urged before sitting on the bed beside him. She wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “Just stop! Don’t talk about yourself like that. You deserve to be there!”

“C. J., come on!” He sucked his teeth and raised his head so that they were face to face, eye to eye. “Be honest. I’m gonna look like a complete fool!”

“You won’t look like a fool. You didn’t look like a fool the last time you were on camera!”

Terrence closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “I keep telling y’all that has nothing to do with—”

“You’ve been preparing for this like crazy! You’re ready. I know you are. You’re just . . . just nervous, and you’re letting the nerves take over, but don’t. Evan wouldn’t have done this if he didn’t believe you could do it. He wouldn’t have recruited you if he wasn’t—”

“Desperate? Delusional? Because that’s what he is if he really thinks I can do this job! And obviously it’s affecting his judgment. He made a bad decision. Just admit it!”

“Baby, listen to me! Don’t—”

“No!” He turned his head away from her and furiously shook it again. “No, C. J., I’m not doing this. I’m not messing up the company any more than it already is. And no amount of bullshit pep talk is going to get me out the door. I’ll just call Ev and . . . and tell him I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. It’s just not me. I’m not Ev, and I sure as hell ain’t my dad.”

“And no one is asking you to be!”

“I’m the wrong man for this! That’s it. I’m done,” he said, slicing his hand through the air. “We’re not talking about this anymore!”

C. J. gnawed her bottom lip as she gazed at Terrence, scanning the stubborn set of his jaw and the steely look in his eyes. He really was going to quit before he officially started his job. If she was going to get him to change his mind, it was obvious that sweet words and encouragement weren’t going to work. She had to change her tactic.

She removed her arm from around him. “Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes, please.”

He groused impatiently. “Why do you want me to close my eyes?”

“Just humor me, okay?” She raised her hand to cover his eyelids. “Now close . . . them!”

He closed his eyes, but not before rolling them to the ceiling in exasperation. She lowered her hand and placed it on top of his.

“Now,” she said, “I want you to relax. Breathe in through the nose. Breathe out through the mouth.”

“ C. J.—”

“In through the nose. Out through the mouth. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Now keep doing that.”

She watched as he inhaled and exhaled. Finally, after a minute or two, the stiff muscles in his back and shoulders began to uncoil. He looked like he was starting to relax a bit—to her surprise.

“Now . . . I want you to visualize an office . . . a big office with big windows.”

He opened one of his eyes. “Are you serious?”

“Shsssh!” she ordered, raising her finger and pressing it to his lips. “Close your eyes and just trust me, dammit.”

He did as she ordered and she cleared her throat before speaking again.

“Now visualize an office with big windows with beautiful views. It’s one of the offices at Murdoch Conglomerated headquarters. You designed it yourself. Added all your special touches—comfy leather furniture, metal shelves, those ugly, weird knickknacks you like.”

Despite himself, he released a rumbling chuckle.

“You’re relaxing with your feet up on your desk,” C. J. continued. “You’ve just finished having lunch. You’re scanning through your email, and your assistant suddenly calls you to tell you that a group of reporters is waiting for you . . . one from the New York Times, another from Forbes magazine, and one from Fast Company. They want to talk about Murdoch Conglomerated and the problems the company is having.”

Terrence’s eyes stayed closed, but he tensed ever so slightly, and she squeezed his hand to soothe him.

“You weren’t expecting them to come today, but you’re prepared anyway. This is what you’ve trained for. You tell your assistant to let them in. They’re pushing and shoving their way through your office door,” she said as she released his hand and began to undo the top buttons of his shirt. “They’re firing questions at you—asking about how some board members are calling for Evan to be let go as CEO.” She lightly placed a kiss on his cheek, then his neck. “Others ask for the company’s response to stock prices dropping by as much as forty percent. They want to know if the company will survive.”

She rose from the bed, stood in front of him, and slowly dropped to her knees at his bare feet, making him frown. She eased his legs open and knelt between them, gazing up at him. She ran her hands up and down his chest. She kissed him and tugged his bottom lip between her teeth. He reached out for her—wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her close, and started to kiss her back, but she made a tsk, tsk and pulled his hands from around her and lowered them back to his sides.

“Focus, Terry.”

She could tell from his facial expression that he was becoming more confused.

“They’re firing questions at you one after another,” she continued as she reached for his belt and undid the buckle. “You’re trying to answer all of them the best you can, but you’re starting to feel overwhelmed.”

“Babe,” he said, cocking an eyebrow as she lowered his pants zipper, “what are you—”

“Stop asking questions and focus.”

“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands and fighting back a smile. “I’m focusing.”

“You’re wondering if you can do it. If you can pull this off without saying the wrong thing,” she whispered before pulling back the elastic waistband of his boxer briefs. “But then you think back to this moment. You think about us alone in our bedroom.”

She reached inside, wrapped her hand around his manhood, and began to stroke him. Terrence’s facial expression instantly changed. The arched eyebrow fell. His mouth went slack, and his breathing deepened even more.

“You’ll remember how good this felt—and you won’t care what questions they ask or what quotes they use. You’ll be impenetrable, baby,” she whispered, “because you won’t be there . . . you’ll be here. And you’ll . . . be feeling . . . this.”

She then lowered her head and took him into her mouth as he groaned.

* * *

A little more than an hour later, C. J. arrived in the Washington Daily’s chaotic newsroom late but feeling triumphant.

“Hey!” she called to one of the other reporters over the sound of voices and clicking computer keys. She sipped espresso from her insulated coffee mug. “Morning!” she said with a wave as she passed another cubicle.

It may have been a bit manipulative to use sex to get Terrence to finally pull himself together so he could start his first day as director of public affairs at Murdoch Conglomerated, but she didn’t regret it. It had worked, hadn’t it?

She hoped that he made it through the day with no more crises of confidence. She planned to text him later just to do a friendly check-in with him, though she was wary to come off as a brooding mother hen.

He’s a big boy, she reminded herself as she walked through the maze of cubicles toward her desk. He just flipped out a little this morning, but he can handle it.

“Morning, Ally!” she said before setting her mug on her desk and removing her satchel from her shoulder. She tossed it into her chair, still grinning. “How are you today?”

“Ralph is looking for you,” Allison said grimly, blowing her blond bangs out of her eyes.

C. J.’s smile disappeared. “Looking for me? Why? Did he say what it was about?”

Allison shook her head. “No, but he looked pissed. I told him you were running a little late. I told him he could just text you if he had a question on a story. He said he had to talk to you in person.”

And just like that, C. J.’s good mood soured. Her stomach twisted into knots. Her editor was pissed and had to speak to her “in person.”

Good Lord, what did I do?

Her mind flipped to the stories she had filed yesterday and the day before that. Had she made some grave mistake on one of them? Did she misquote one of the council members? Maybe she had misspelled a source’s name entirely.

“Shit,” she whispered with a sigh before turning away from her desk.

“Good luck!” Allison called after her as C. J. continued across the newsroom to Ralph Haynes’s office, all the while feeling like weights were strapped around her ankles. Maybe she should have done her own “visualization exercise” this morning with Terrence before heading to work.

When she reached the entrance to Ralph’s office, she took a deep breath, pushed back her shoulders, and knocked on the metal doorframe.

“Ralph? Hey, I . . . I heard you were looking for me.”

He glanced from his laptop and wordlessly waved her inside his office before returning his attention to his screen. She stepped inside, not knowing whether to remain standing or to take a seat—since he hadn’t offered her one of the leather chairs facing his desk. She chose to stand. C. J. watched as he typed for another minute or so, then suddenly whipped around from his laptop and faced her. He looked as pissed as Allison had described.

“Did you see the Washington Post this morning?” he asked.

C. J. shook her head.

I was a little busy giving my fiancé a motivational blow job so he wouldn’t have an anxiety attack, she thought flippantly.

“No, sorry, I . . . I haven’t had the chance yet,” she said instead.

“Front page of the metro section, below the fold.” He tossed the broadsheet onto his desk, motioning for her to read it. “Late breaking version appeared on the web last night. The council voted on that controversial Whitaker bill. It barely squeaked by, but it passed. I want to know why a story about it wasn’t in our paper, considering you attended the meeting.”

C. J. picked up the newspaper and stared at the headline in disbelief. She had been following the bill for weeks, checking the hearings calendar religiously to see when the council was finally going to vote on it.

“It must have happened after I left the meeting,” C. J. murmured, disappointed and humiliated. “I’m so sorry!”

She had been eager to leave city hall soon after they finished the first half of the legislative agenda, which was all she had needed for the stories she was supposed to file that day. She had raced out of the council room, down the stone steps, and to the nearby metro station soon after, wanting to rush home to help Terrence prep for his first day at Murdoch Conglomerated.

“This was a big goddamn story—and you missed it, C. J.,” Ralph said sternly, peering at her over the rim of his glasses.

“I know but . . . but how could I have known they were going to vote on something that wasn’t even listed on the agenda? I couldn’t predict something like—”

“And this isn’t the first time they’ve beat you—beat us—on a story,” he continued. “It happened twice last week! I don’t like to get scooped, C. J. I don’t like it at all.”

“Ralph,”—she lowered the broadsheet to her side—“I just started here barely a couple of months ago. I’m still feeling out the beat and making contacts. It’s going to take some time to get . . . to get familiar with everything. Give me a chance! I swear to you. It’ll happen.”

She watched as Ralph grumbled, tore off his glasses, and roughly tossed them onto his desk. Removing the glasses didn’t make his face any softer or more human. His beady gray eyes grew smaller as he squinted at her, and the dark circles and wrinkles on his pale face made him look like Ebenezer Scrooge come to life.

“Look, C. J., someone who works at this paper has to be a go-getter. They have to hustle. I told you in the beginning that’s what we needed. At some point there’s a question all reporters have to ask themselves. That question is, ‘Am I really cut out for this job? Am I the right fit?’”

Her heart sank. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. Was she about to get fired?

“Not everyone is cut out for the metro desk,” he continued. “Not everyone is cut out to work at a daily. Maybe it’s—”

“Ralph,”—she took a step toward him—“I am cut out for this job. Believe me! I’m a damn good reporter. I’m just going through a rough period. Today, it comes to an end, though. I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

C. J. thought frantically for a way to assure Ralph that she had just as much right to work at the Washington Daily as any of the other reporters outside his door. Even now, he was giving her that incredulous look that he gave whenever he thought a source was lying.

“I’ll . . . I’ll find a scoop. A . . . a big scoop that will put the Washington Post to shame.” She tossed the newspaper aside and held up her hands. “I promise.”

C. J. watched as Ralph slowly leaned back in the chair and interlocked his fingers over his chest. He stared at her a long time, not saying anything. He stared at her so long that when he finally opened his mouth she was prepared to head back to her desk and start packing up her things.

“All right,” he said, catching her by surprise and making her release the breath that had been on the verge of bursting from her chest. “Show me what you got.”

“I will,” she said with a firm nod. “You’ll see.”

She then scampered out of his office, relieved that she would live to see another day at the Daily, but now worried about what her big scoop would be.