Sex, Lies and Her Impossible Boss

THREE

Sydney looked different at six a.m. Quiet. Coiled, like a spring waiting to be let go and bounce crazily all over the place. When Faith had moved here two years ago it had seemed so foreign and strange. Everything was bright and sunny and sparkling. The people smiled too much. People in Australia worked to live rather than lived to work. It took a lot of getting used to. Sometimes it irritated her. She sometimes wished people would be a little more serious—a bit more ambitious, more like her. But as the sun bounced from the waves of the water onto the ferries that took people from work to the bars and restaurants and clubs that surrounded the harbour, she could admit that Sydney was growing on her.

What she loved the most was that it was a place where anything went. Where nothing was taboo. Where you could see a man dressed as a woman kissing a man passionately on the street at nine a.m. It was so different from the small country village she grew up in and literally a world away from the stuffy boarding school where she’d lived for ten long years. Here, she seemed to blend in a little bit more. With all the other crazies.

Faith stopped her car. There were no spare spots so she double parked and got out, hitting Send on the text she’d written to Cash.

I’m here.

She could only see the back of his building. Apparently he lived at the very top. His view would be magnificent. It would reach out so far he’d be able to see where the world curved. Of course a man like Cash Anderson would live at the top. He’d probably spent his life looking down at people like her. Small-town nobodies with only a sliver of talent but a truckload of determination. He was one of those people who determined the fate of people like her. And, frankly, she was getting a little sick of being beholden to the whims of people like Cash Anderson.

She’d finally started to feel different. No longer the nobody she’d always been at home. Or worse—the wacko everyone laughed at. Her mother had actually laughed when she’d told her she was going to be a journalist. Her father had given one of his lectures and her brothers had just had another angle from which to make fun of her.

She had always been an outsider—at home, at school, at every job she’d had since leaving college four years ago. But here, in this strange place, her fascination with love and relationships and sex had found a home. She had fans in Australia. Actual fans. And not just weirdo men with worn-out rewind buttons on their remote controls. She’d received letters from women who thanked her for showing them how to revive their marriages. From young girls who said she was the reason they learned to respect their bodies and themselves and from men who were happy she was able to teach them how to please their girlfriends in ways they wouldn’t have thought of themselves. Real people with real problems.

She was helping. She was important. For the first time in her life, she mattered. Which was why this show was so important to her. She needed to make it a success. She had to make sure it stayed on air. With this show—she was somebody and with this show, she’d never have to go back to being nobody.

Her phone beeped.

What are you wearing?

What was she wearing? Faith’s cheeks heated. Perhaps he thought she was someone else. One of his harem of twenty women he’d apparently bedded. Just for sex. She decided Cash Anderson was a pig. A sexy pig, but a pig nonetheless. She texted back.

It’s black and hot and covered in leather straps.

Triumph made her lips curl into a smile. He’d be disappointed when he got down here and it was just her in her T-shirt and jeans.

Your car is covered in leather straps? Who are you—Batman?

Faith paused. What? Her phone rang and she pushed the green button.

‘I asked, “What are you driving?” Are you the yellow bug or the red clunker?’

‘The red clunker. I thought you said what was I wearing...’

As it always did when Cash was involved, her skin turned a bright shade of beetroot. Lately, she’d found herself trying so hard to impress him in order to keep her job—she more often embarrassed herself in front of him.

‘You’re wearing something black, hot and leather? Now who’s doing the harassing?’ She heard his laugh as he approached. His hair was short on the sides but a little longer on top—thick and dark and shining in the sun. And his long legs were striding towards her. The wind blew his white button-up shirt back, emphasising the muscles in his chest. He looked more casual today. His shirt was untucked. He looked suntanned and relaxed and ever so slightly sexy.

Faith pushed her bottom lip between her teeth. She didn’t want to think of him as sexy. Not when he was the man intent on destroying any dream she’d ever had. Not when he was her boss. Definitely not when she hadn’t had sex in too many years to remember and was so desperate she was almost considering jumping the homeless man that slept on the beach near her flat.

Sex was something Faith reported on, not something she practised regularly. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been intimate with anything that wasn’t metallic or attached to her own hand. Actually—she could. But she didn’t want to think about that right now.

Cash was smiling that annoyingly happy smile again. The one that made him look like an American college boy. All red-cheeked and arrogant and fresh from the football field...and the memories of just how long it had been kept knocking on her brain—like an insistent salesman.

‘That’s not leather,’ he scolded. ‘Or black.’ His eyes travelled from her head to her toes and her body heated from his look. Knock-knock.

‘I thought you sent that text to someone else.’

‘Why would I send a text meant for someone else to your phone number?’ He smiled and chuckled at her before opening the passenger-side door with a creak. ‘Get in, Harris. We have work to do.’

She slid into the driver’s seat, a little mortified that her joke had backfired. This wasn’t how the day was supposed to go. She had a plan. A plan to show him that what she did was important and why sex was about more than just sex. But in order to do that, she was planning on exuding utter professionalism.

‘You look nice.’ His eyes flicked to hers before he looked out of the window. His comment made her eyebrows raise. She gunned the engine of her ‘clunker’, as he’d called it. She’d purchased the red 1975 Kingswood a few weeks after she’d arrived. Everyone in Australia had a car. The general population seemed to all start driving around the age of eight and seemed so familiar with their vehicles they all named their cars. Matty Harbinger’s BMW was named Bruce. Although everyone called it Sebastian behind his back. Her red clunker was called Red. Obviously. She wasn’t great with coming up with witty nicknames.

‘What do you mean...nice?’

‘Nice. Pleasant. Lovely.’ She felt his eyes on her. ‘Do you need a dictionary?’

‘What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?’

Cash sighed. ‘Nothing. I said you looked nice. Why do you get so defensive with me, Harris? Why do you argue with everything I say?’

‘I don’t do that.’

‘You’re doing it now.’

Did she do that? She hadn’t noticed. It was just that everything he said was usually wrong.

‘When you said I looked nice I just thought you meant...something else.’

‘What else could I possibly mean?’

‘When you asked me what was I wearing you meant what was I driving.’

‘That was an autocorrect mistake on my phone. You’re just being difficult.’

She wasn’t being difficult; she was trying to be professional. She needed to calm down and start again.

‘I’m sorry, Cash. I just wasn’t expecting you to say something...nice.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you never say anything nice.’

Cash stilled and Faith swore under her breath. Offending him wasn’t professional either. If only she were better at being professional. Faith remembered a report she’d done the other week on getting what you want in the bedroom. Speak softly. Be frank. Look your partner in the eye and ask them their fantasies. If it worked for sex, maybe it would work in this situation. Faith cleared her throat.

‘Cash, I’d like to know what you want. How I can help you understand what it is I do.’

She felt his eyes on her and gripped the steering wheel. She remembered the way he often looked at her. Unblinking. Intent; as if he was reading her mind through her eyes. He had a way of throwing her off balance when he looked at her like that, but she was safe as long as she didn’t look at him. And at the way he cocked his eyebrow at her.

‘What I want?’

‘Yes. I want to know what I can do to change your impression that what I do has no value.’

‘No value?’ He paused and Faith felt a trickle of sweat slide from the back of her neck into her shirt. Red had no air conditioning and it was close to forty degrees outside. ‘I never said your show didn’t have value. Some of the things you report on are obviously stories that need to be told. Your problem is you get too close. You want everyone to believe what you do—that love is the answer.’

She turned to him then, her cheeks heating again and her palms slipping from the steering wheel in response to his annoyingly patronising tone.

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes, it is. You invest too much emotionally. Journalists have to put distance between themselves and the issues they’re reporting on. That’s what creates objectivity.’

Faith bristled. She didn’t need a lecture on objectivity. If only he knew how distant she was from the topics she reported on.

‘Sometimes you have to get close. That’s the only way you can get the truth.’

‘Advertisers don’t like close. They like light and fun.’

‘But that’s not what my viewers want. They want me to get close, to get involved. They want to know more.’

He paused, then let out a sigh. Not a huge sigh but a little exasperated puff. ‘People are not interested in love and relationships and everything else you report on.’

She stole a glance at him then. Of course people were interested in that—hadn’t he heard? Love made the world go round.

‘What about my report on online dating? That show got more hits on our website than any other. I talked to dozens of people who found love online and another dozen who found nothing but perverts and deviants. The public needs to know about this stuff. And what about the report I did on body image and the way women were perceived differently depending on their body shape?’

Cash breathed in through his nose, flaring his nostrils slightly. Faith watched him, then watched the road, then turned back to him, determined to get an answer from him.

‘Was that the one where you were naked?’

‘Where I...? What?’ Faith turned just in time to veer away from a woman crossing the street with her massive Alsatian. ‘Yes. But that wasn’t the point.’

She didn’t turn back to him. She could feel him grinning at her.

‘I got naked to show women they had nothing to be ashamed of about their bodies. And I wasn’t completely naked—my intimate parts were covered in leaves.’

‘Your “intimate parts”?’

‘Yes. My intimate parts. You know—the ones you don’t show people.’

‘I enjoy showing my intimate parts to people.’

Faith pushed the mental image of Cash’s ‘intimate parts’ out of her mind. Professional. Sparkling. Insightful. That was what she was supposed to be.

‘I’m sure you do, but I like to keep my intimate parts private. I only show them to a selected few.’

‘Really?’ Faith still wasn’t watching Cash, but had her eyes intent on the twisting turns of the narrow Sydney streets. But she could feel him prop his elbow up on the console and move a little closer. He smelled of the beach and of something she somehow knew was just him. ‘How many “selected few” have been privy to a viewing of your “intimate parts”, Faith?’

‘How many?’

‘Yes. How many?’

‘As in...as in...a number?’ she stuttered. This conversation was definitely not professional.

‘Yes. A number.’

His breath was warm against her shoulder. She could feel it through the thin T-shirt she was wearing. Her skin prickled at the feel of it. His lips must be close to her skin if she could feel his breath. His tongue would only have to reach out a little to lick her skin...

Faith’s body throbbed. Her pulse hummed. Her foot slid a little further down on the accelerator. Professional.

‘I don’t think my number is relevant.’

‘I think it’s very relevant. You are the self-confessed sexpert around here. I’d like to know how much of an expert you are. I’d like to know about your personal experience with sex.’

Faith’s tongue lay dry in her mouth. Her personal experience?

‘I’ve had enough to know what I’m doing.’

‘Is that right?’

The air was now stifling. Faith lifted a hand off the steering wheel to pump the old rolling handle of the window to get it down. She needed air. Fast.

‘That’s interesting. Because I’d like to know how much is “enough”? Was it just the one partner? Or are we talking double figures?’

Faith stayed silent as the air finally rushed in the window. It was humid and sticky but it was air and the blood rushing through her head eased. A little.

‘Triple figures?’

‘No!’ Faith’s emphatic answer surprised even her. ‘No. And I’d rather not discuss that with you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re my boss and it’s not...professional.’

‘Forget about that.’ He waved a hand out of the window. ‘The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day and right now I’m not your boss. We’re just two people going for a drive. Enjoying each other’s company. Just talking.’

The vinyl seats were sticking. Red was a big car but still Cash seemed too close to her. He took up too much space and too much air with his questions and his deep voice with its gravelly assurances. But she knew what he was doing—trying to get something out of her. Trying to get her to reveal something she didn’t want to. She had been working as a journalist long enough to know those tricks when she heard them.

‘My sex life is none of your business.’

‘I disagree. Your sex life is everyone’s business. Especially when you’ve made a career out of it. Which is what I find so interesting. Why are you so willing to talk about sex on camera but unwilling to discuss it in private? What’s happened to you in the past that makes you think sex is more than just sex? And why do you get so fired up every time I talk about getting rid of your show?’

Definitely too close. ‘I get fired up because the Australian people need my show.’

‘No. No one is that honourable. People are only motivated by one of three things, Faith—fear, greed or lust. So what are you motivated by? Why is this show so important to you?’

Faith felt as if she were snagged on a thorny bush. Cash was asking her questions she didn’t want to answer. He was saying things she didn’t want to talk about but she couldn’t sit there and say nothing.

‘If I had to choose from one of those, I’d have to say greed. I want to be successful. I want to be an award-winning journalist. I want people to know who I am.’

Cash remained silent for a moment and she felt him studying her. She flicked her hair off her shoulder and tilted her chin. She didn’t care what he thought of her.

‘All right. I’ll pretend that’s your real answer. But why sex? Why love? Why relationships? Why not choose current affairs? Politics? Sports? They’re the flashy subjects that win the awards.’

‘I don’t care about sports or politics.’

‘But you care about sex and relationships.’

‘Yes.’

‘And love.’

Finally she turned to him and held his eyes with hers. ‘Yes. Love. I care about love.’ She wasn’t ashamed. She did care about love. She cared about it; she thought about it—she wondered why she could never find it. Something caught hard in her throat. She twisted her bottom lip between her teeth and turned back to the road, enjoying the glare of the sun as it bounced off the bitumen.

‘Love doesn’t exist, Faith.’

He said it so quietly Faith wondered if she’d misheard him.

‘Of course it does. Everyone falls in love at one time or another in their life.’

‘That’s lust. Love is different.’

‘You’ve just disproven your own argument, Cash. If you know lust is different from love you obviously acknowledge that love exists.’

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘For some people. But it never lasts, which is why I prefer lust.’ A heavy ball formed in Faith’s stomach. This was not going well. He was going to fire her if he only believed in lust. Her show was based around the fact that everyone at some point in their lives would fall in love. Silence settled thickly around them. Cash was looking out the window and Faith could feel her career and the only thing that mattered in her life slipping away as the seconds ticked past.

‘We’re meeting with a tantric sex consultant this morning.’ Faith forced a smile onto her face, trying to dissipate the awkward atmosphere that had settled over them. She glanced at Cash. He was silent as he hung one arm on the car window.

‘Tantric sex?’ he said absently, glancing her way with a slight grimace. ‘Sounds fascinating.’

She wanted to tell him it was. She wanted to explain how she’d been reading about how tantric sex could make sex a more intimate and intense experience. She wanted to give him the statistics on the rise of BSDM and she wanted to explain the benefits of the Jessica Rabbit vibrator over the previous year’s model, The Rampant Rocket. But she didn’t. He seemed distracted and she could feel herself losing him with every speed bump they went over in the road.

‘Is something wrong, Cash? Do you have something against tantric sex?’

She heard the smile in his voice. ‘No. Just thinking.’

‘About?’ She shifted the old car into third and it jumped a little as she rounded the corner.

‘About you and your show. And about...’ She felt it when his eyes left her face and he turned away. ‘Never mind. Not your problem.’

He sounded distracted, and a little bit sad. Which made her pay attention. Cash never sounded sad. Mad? Yes. Cross? Absolutely. Frustrated, impatient, angry? Yes, yes, yes. Sad? Never.

‘I’m sorry if I argued with you.’

He turned back to her then and she felt his intense look. ‘You don’t have to apologise for disagreeing with me. I like that you disagree with me. I like that you ask questions and don’t let anyone walk all over you.’

‘Then what’s wrong?’

‘You know why they sent me out here, don’t you?’

‘To manage the station?’

‘To save the station. Things are not going well, Faith. I’ve been sent here to make cuts, to find ways to save money and increase revenue. I’m not here to be the big bad bully who ruins everyone’s fun and squashes everyone’s dreams.’

Faith knew the station hadn’t done as well this year, but she hadn’t realised it was that bad. ‘My show is good, Cash. Moving it into prime time will attract more advertisers.’

‘Your show will never go to prime time, Faith. Last week you had someone use a vibrator on herself. That’s not prime-time TV. That would turn off our family viewers, not to mention our family advertisers.’

‘You couldn’t see anything. It was just the noise and the point was—’

‘It doesn’t matter what the point was. Sex isn’t acceptable on mainstream TV. Sport is. It’s not personal, Faith. It’s business.’

Not personal? Losing her job was personal. Calling what she did unacceptable was personal. Making everything she’d achieved in the last two years out to be worthless was personal.

‘You have no intention of keeping my show on, do you? This is a waste of time, isn’t it?’ Faith pulled the car up with a screech. ‘Because if that’s it, then you should get out now.’

His eyes met hers and she felt them. Hot. Challenging.

‘I made a promise to you, and I’m going to keep it. If you can convince me that sex is more than just sex—I’ll keep your show on. I’ll back you a hundred per cent. I’ll work with you to make this into something we can take prime time. But if I walk away at the end of the week thinking sex is just sex, then you have to admit it’s not going to work. You have to give up.’

Faith turned back to the road. She revved up the idling engine. The stakes were now higher than ever before. No more Miss Nice Guy. He wanted to know about sex? By the end of today Cash would be dripping in sex. Not literally, of course. But today was about teaching this man what it meant to want something so bad you’d kill for it.