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shoulders.
    And now I was distracted, thank you very much. Wasn’t he trying to make deadline? Why didn’t he get back to work? Wait—did I already put on blush? Sugar .
    At ten till ten, I finished my makeup, and grabbing my scripts from the printer, headed for the studio. “See you in there,” I said to Aric, who’d finally (thank God) turned back around.
    “Good luck,” he called to my back.
    “Have a great show.” Mara gave me a cheerful thumbs-up as I passed her desk. “See you afterward. I’m going to hang around and work on my reel.”
    “Okay—thanks for all you did today,” I said, rushing toward the door. “Really. I’d kiss you, but the industrial-strength lipstick might be hard to explain to Mike tonight.”
    “Are you kidding? He’d love it.” She laughed.
    I walked down the corridor from the newsroom to the studio, nerves spiking. Large, framed promotional photos of the current and former news teams lined the wall. Their perfect anchor hair, power suits, and whitened teeth seemed to challenge me. Are you ready for this?
    “I’m ready,” I said aloud, meaning it. But as I put my hand on the studio door to push it open, I stopped. My stomach was rolling and bouncing like a basketball down a sloped driveway. “Dammit.” I spun around and ran, bumping into Aric in the hallway.
    His concerned call followed me as I burst through the ladies’ room door. “Heidi?”
    Five minutes later, I slid into my chair on the set, still shaking, but now that my gut was completely empty, feeling better. I neatened my stack of scripts in front of me. They were my lifeline should the teleprompter stall or fail.
    I said hello to Doug, the studio cameraman, and gave a silly, tongue-out nervous face to Allison, who’d come in to run prompter for me. The rest of the freezing, darkened studio was empty. Just me and the camera and studio lights so bright they threatened to erase my memory.
    I closed my eyes and flattened my palms on the cool glass top of the desk, inhaling and exhaling purposefully. In my earpiece, the director’s smooth voice teased me. “Thirty seconds to open. Prepare for takeoff. And remember, Heidi, in case of emergency, your anchor chair seat cushion can be used as a flotation device.”
    I let out a quick, high-pitched laugh. I couldn’t see him, of course, but I pointed at him through the camera. I pictured him, the audio tech, and the character generator operator in the director’s booth, smiling back at my image on their monitors. The opening music came up. My belly gave one last fish-on-a-line flop. Doug cued me by pointing around the side of the huge floor-camera, and the newscast began.
    “Good evening. I’m Heidi Haynes, and this is THE ten o’clock news.” It was our station’s little dig at the two other affiliates serving the local viewing area. They also had ten o’clock newscasts, but ours killed theirs in the ratings. If you didn’t emphasize the “THE” every time you said it, you’d get a call from Mr. Aubrey, who apparently did nothing but watch every minute of every newscast produced by his station, making sure his employees followed the rules .
    By the first commercial break, my nerves had dissipated. I laughed and chatted with Doug and Allison. Live TV could be nerve-wracking, but it was also fun.
    At 10:25, Aric walked onto the set and slid into his chair during the final commercial break. And wow . He wore a charcoal gray suit, crisp white dress shirt, and a beautiful tie containing threads of turquoise that transformed his eyes into the most amazing shade of Greek Island seawater.
    “So how’s it going out here? Are we informing the masses and increasing viewership?” He gave me a smile that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and stole my breath as he clipped on his microphone.
    I looked down to re-shuffle my scripts, stalling for a few seconds to recover. “You bet. Ratings are going up as we speak. Want me to introduce you?”
    “Sure. They want us