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Australian Nights
By Miranda Lee Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Copyright © 2003 Harlequin Enterprises Limited
All right reserved. ISBN: 0373230095
Chapter One
"We've been accused of doing too many heavy stories lately," Mervyn announced to his underlings seated around the oval table. "From now on, one of the four segments we tape for each week's show is going to be in a lighter vein."
Vivien looked up from where she was doodling on her note-pad, a sinking feeling in her stomach. As the last reporter to join the Across Australia team - not to mention the only woman - she just knew who would be assigned these "lighter-veined" stories.
She hadn't long come off a Candid Camera style programme, and while it had been a huge success, she'd been relieved to finally have the chance to work on a television show that was more intellectually stimulating. At twenty-five going on twenty-six, she felt she was old enough to be taken seriously.
Ah, well, she sighed. One step forward and two steps backwards ...
"And what constitutes lighter-veined?" demanded a male voice from across the table.
Vivien glanced over at Bob, widely known as Robert J. Overhill, their hard-hitting political reporter who wouldn't know "lighter-veined" if it hit him in the left eye. Thirtyish, but already going bald and running to fat, he conducted every interview as a personal war out of which he had to emerge the victor. He had a sharp, incisive mind, but the personality of a spoilt little boy.
"I'm not sure myself yet," Mervyn returned. "This directive has just come down from the great white chief himself. I've only had time to think up a try-out idea to be screened on Sunday week. Ever heard of Wallaby Creek?" he queried with a wry grin on his intelligent face.
They all shook their heads.
"It's a small town out in north-western New South Wales just this side of Bourke, but off the main highway. Once a year, in the middle of November, it's where the Outback Shearers' Association hold their Bachelors' and Spinsters' Ball."
Everyone rolled their eyes as the penny dropped. There'd been a current affairs programme done on a similar B & S Ball a couple of years before, which had depicted the event as a drunken orgy filled with loutish yobbos and female desperadoes. The only claim to dubious fame the event seemed to have was that no girl went home a virgin.
Vivien chuckled to herself at the thought that, from what she had seen, not too many virgins had gone to that particular ball in the first place.
"I'm so glad you find the idea an amusing one, Viv," her producer directed straight at her, "since you'll be handling it. The ball's this Saturday night. That gives you three days to get yourself organised and out there. Now I'm not interested in any serious message in this story. Just a fun piece. Froth and bubble. Right?"
Vivien diplomatically kept her chagrin to herself. "Right," she said, and threw a bright smile around the table at all the smug male faces smirking at her.
It never ceased to amaze her, the pleasure men got from seeing women supposedly put in their places in the workplace, but she had always found the best line of defence was to be agreeable, rather than militant.
She defused any antagonism with feminine charm, then counter-attacked by always giving her very best, doing such a damn good job - even with froth and bubble - that her male colleagues had to give her some credit.
"I hear they drink pretty heavily at those balls," Bob said in a mocking tone. "We might have to send out a search party of trackers to find Viv the next day. You know what she's like after a couple of glasses. Whew ..." He whistled and waved his hand in front of his face, as though he was suddenly very hot.
Vivien sighed while the others laughed. Would she never live down the channel's Christmas party last year? How was she to know that someone had spiked the supposedly non-alcoholic fruit punch with vodka? She was always so careful when it came to drinking, ever since she'd discovered several years before at her first university party that anything more than two glasses of the mildest concoction turned her from a quietly spoken, serious-minded girl into a flamboyant exhibitionist, not to mention a rather outrageous flirt.
Luckily for Vivien on that first occasion, her girlfriend had dragged her home before she got herself into any serious trouble. But her hangover the next morning, plus the stark memory of her silly and potentially dangerous behaviour, had made her very careful with alcohol from that moment on.
The incident at last year's Christmas party had hardly been her fault. Vivien groaned silently as she recalled how, once the alcohol took effect, she'd actually climbed up on this very table and danced a wild tango, complete with a rose in her mouth.
Earl had been furious with her, dragging her down and taking her home post-haste. He'd hardly spoken to her for a week. It had taken much longer for the people at work to stop making pointed remarks over the incident. Now, her acid-tongued colleague had brought it up again. Still, Vivien knew the worst thing she could do would be to react visibly.
"Worried you might miss out on something, Bob?" she countered with a light laugh.
"Hardly," he scowled. "I like my women a touch less aggressive."
"Cut it out, Bob," Mervyn intervened before the situation flared out of hand. "Oh, and Viv, I can only let you have a single-man crew. You like working that way anyway, don't you?"
"I'll get Irving," she said. Irving was a peach to work with, a whiz with camera and sound. A witty companion, too.
But the best part about Irving was that he wasn't a womaniser and never tried to chat her up. In his late twenties, he had a steady girlfriend who adored him and whom he adored back. Fidelity was his middle name. Definitely Vivien's type of man.
"It goes without saying that you'll both have to drive out. And in the same car," Mervyn went on. "You know how tight things have been since they cut our budget again. I rang the one and only hotel in Wallaby Creek to see if they had any vacancies and, luckily enough, they did. Seems the proprietor is refusing to house any revellers for the ball after a couple of his rooms were almost wrecked last year. Might I suggest you don't leave any valuable equipment in the car that night after you've retired? OK?"
"Sure thing, boss," Vivien agreed. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, she decided philosophically. She'd always wanted to drive out west for a look-see, having never been beyond the Blue Mountains. Not that she secretly hankered for a country lifestyle. Vivien was a Sydney girl. Born and bred. She couldn't see herself giving up the vibrant hustle and bustle of city life for wide-open spaces, dust and flies.
Not only that, but it would give her something to do this weekend, since Earl didn't want her to fly down to visit him. Once again, she reminded herself with a jab of dismay.
"Well, off you go, madam," her boss announced before depression could take hold. "Grab Irving before he's booked up elsewhere. That man's in high demand."
"Right." She smiled, and stood up.
"Phone call for you, Vivien," the main receptionist called out to her as she passed through the foyer area on her way back to her office. "I'll switch it back to your desk now. That is where you're heading, isn't it? It's STD, by the way. Your boyfriend."
Vivien's heart skipped a beat. Earl? Ringing her during working hours? That wasn't like him at all ...
She hurried along the corridor towards the office she shared with her three fellow Across Australia reporters, her heart pounding with sudden nerves.
Somehow she just knew this phone call didn't mean what she so desperately hoped it meant, that Earl wanted to say sorry for the way he'd been behaving, that he was missing her as much as she was missing him. Perhaps he'd finally given up trying to make her suffer for not dropping her career and following him to Melbourne the second he got his promotion and transfer six weeks ago.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Australian Nights by Miranda Lee Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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