I looked at him in surprise. Maybe because I hadn’t known—I’d certainly never bothered to ask—where his daughter was going to school. Maybe because I never would have suspected that a simple thing like the name of my alma mater would stabilize me and give me something to grab on to. “I went to USC.” My voice sounded deceptively normal once again.
“I know.” He chuckled. “And believe me, Lizzie certainly knows.”
My eyebrow quirked. “Why’s that?”
“She wants to be you. The only thing that has made me cool to her over the course of the past couple years is the fact that I work with you.”
“Are you saying she’s going to USC because I went there?”
He shrugged. “Let’s just say it gave her one more in a compelling list of reasons to move to the complete other side of the country rather than go to NYU or Columbia, as her mother and I would have preferred.” He grinned, and I was surprised to discover I didn’t detect any sadness in it. “She wants to be in television news, God help her. Paige and I couldn’t argue with the quality of the broadcast journalism program there, even if we wanted to.”
He crossed to the small refrigerator behind his desk and walked back with two bottles of water. He leaned forward and pushed one toward me on the table as he sat back down. I grabbed the bottle and began greedily gulping as I stared at the photo of Colton’s family. Lizzie Passik, whom I’d never met in my life, wanted to emulate my career path. Or at least she had, as of when her dad left for work that morning. Hoda Kotb had gone to Virginia Tech. Maybe they were still accepting enrollments there.
“What do I do now, Colton?”
He sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m not exactly sure. I think I’ve got Bob convinced, at least for now, that we can’t fire you.”
My eyes widened. “Bob wanted to fire me?”
He tilted his head and released a humorless chuckle. “Did you seriously not realize that would have to be an option on the table?”
Droplets clung to my lashes as I lowered my gaze and focused my eyes on my clenched hands, squeezing my knees. “I guess I hadn’t gotten that far yet.”
Fired. I’d never been fired in my life. In fact, I’d never left a single job I’d ever had for any reason other than to move onward and upward to a better opportunity. But there wasn’t a better opportunity in the entire industry for someone who got fired for cause from Sunup.
I sniffed. “Thanks for talking him out of it.”
“Trust me, it would be easier if we did fire you.” He released a heavy sigh. “But we’ve got too much invested.”
He didn’t have to explain what he meant by that. The last two months had been an endless barrage of photo shoots, interviews, appearances, and hype. Hype, hype, hype. The stars of every show on the network had recorded promos welcoming me to Sunup. Fashion designers from all over the world sent original creations in my size, vying to get me to wear their clothes on-air. And Ben & Jerry’s had launched Sunup Sundae just the day before. My face was on a gazillion pints of ice cream. Yeah . . . a lot had been invested.
I implored him again. “Tell me what to do.”
“Bob recommended I get Hayley to fill in for you for a while. Until we sort it all out.”
I liked Hayley Oswell. She had certainly always been nicer to me than Elena had been. Hayley was smart and personable and terrifically charismatic on-screen, and from what I had seen, she’d never used the fact that her daddy was the network president to get her out of the hard work. I had no doubt her day on the main couch would come. I’d imagined she’d sit there with me someday, once I replaced Mark in the top seat, and she and I would make up the first all-female seven o’clock couch in Sunup history. But it wasn’t her turn yet. And I couldn’t take a chance of getting lost in the fray during a particularly intense game of morning television leapfrog.
I cleared my throat and sat up straight. I didn’t even take time to wipe away any stray tears on my face. There was no more time to be wasted on any of that stuff.
“I’ll make it right, Colton. I’ll apologize. We’ll explain that the prompter was malfunctioning. That we were short-staffed and the wrong cue got piped into 2-A.” I nodded and took a final swig of my water before setting it on the table and standing up. Energy was suddenly coursing through my veins. Hope-fueled energy. “I mean, I know it was bad, but that was a lot to go wrong all at once. People will understand. Don’t you think?”
I nodded again, answering my own question as I lifted my thumb to my mouth and began chewing on my fingernail for the first time in twenty years or so. “Yeah. They’ll understand. I’m only human, after all. Who hasn’t said something they shouldn’t? Sure, I did it on a much grander scale, but—”
“They won’t trust you. Don’t you see? That’s the problem. Now, whatever you say, they’ll just think it’s an act.”
I shook my head. “No, they won’t.”
“They will, Brynn. Because you just told them it was.”
Tears sprang to my eyes again, but I refused to let them fall this time. I blinked rapidly and turned away from him so I could fan my face with my hands. He was right, of course. He was absolutely right. No matter how insincere viewers now believed me to be, it was going to be nearly impossible to convince them that I had been anything less than completely truthful in that accidental moment. That moment when I told them I didn’t have the natural personality, warmth, and glow of a thousand suns (and that they were all stupid for ever believing that I did).
“Okay, then . . .” I turned back to face him. “There’s a way to make lemonade out of this situation. We can talk about the pressures placed on successful women of my generation. On all women. Of any generation. Maybe I go away for a little while. Get some rest . . . do some work on myself . . .”
“What are you suggesting? That we send you to rehab?”
“Sure! I’m good with rehab!”
Colton chuckled again, and this time there did actually seem to be a bit of humor behind it. Yeah. This was all hilarious.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and quickly clicked around before reading aloud. “‘Does anyone else feel like they woke up this morning to discover what big teeth their granny has? At least the wolf was already in Granny’s house when Little Red Riding Hood got there. I guess we viewers are pathetic, like she said. We invited the wolf in. #firebrynncornell. There are thousands upon thousands of posts just like that. Or worse.” He sighed. “Brynn, if there’s a quick and easy fix here, I’m not seeing it. And I’m sure you understand that I can’t let you sit on that couch until this dies down. If this dies down.”
I looked down at my toes and muttered under my breath as the sting of tears and the pressure of keeping them from falling began to shoot bursts of pain through my head.
Colton leaned forward. “I’m sorry, what?”
I cleared my throat and tried to ignore the single tear that had just landed on my canary-yellow Saint Laurent pumps. “I never said the viewers were pathetic.”
Just my hometown.
And there it was. The problem. The solution. All wrapped up in 0.925 square miles of beautiful middle-of-nowhere. Adelaide Springs, Colorado—0.925 square miles I hadn’t stepped foot into for nearly twenty years; 0.925 square miles I’d sworn to never return to.