Read Online The Reporter by Kelly Lange - Free Book Online Page A

either going to pass out cold, or confess on the air that she
killed
the guy. Good thing the bosses didn’t listen at this time of night.
    Everyone at the station knew that Zahna Cole had been having an affair with Jack Nathanson, an on-again, off-again, one-way
     kind of thing—it was on when he wanted it on, it was off when he didn’t call her, and it was all one way,
his
way. Zahna was transparent, and her coworkers couldn’t miss the signs—when he was around, Zahna was euphoric, and when he
     wasn’t, Zahna was obsessed. Now he was dead, and she seemed dangerously close to the edge.
    She’d met Jack Nathanson when she was cast for a small part in one of his movies, a voice-over disc jockey bit. The location
     was a brokerage company in a high-rise building on the Wilshire corridor. She’d never expected to see the star, but while
     she was recording her sequences, Nathanson actually came over to the microphone, bent down, and whispered in her ear that
     he’d heard her on the radio and had wondered if she was as sexy as she sounded. “When you’re done here, come watch us shoot,”
     he’d tossed back at her as he left the booth.
    His hot breath in her ear melted her, and she was not an easy melt. This was Jack Nathanson—famous, glamorous, rich, dynamic,
     handsome movie star Jack Nathanson—wondering how sexy she was. She’d love to show him, she thought, and in fact he didn’t
     make her wait.
    Watching the shoot, it felt as if Jack was playing right to her. He made eye contact, he smiled, he winked, once he gave her
     a little finger wave. On the dinner break he came off the set, took her arm, and walked her to the chow wagon outside, where
     cast and crew were lining up. “We definitely don’t want to eat this shit,” he’d whispered with that impish grin, as they perused
     the assortment of hot casseroles, cold salads, baskets of rolls, and slices of fruit pie on paper plates. “When we’re finished
     shooting, I’ll take you to dinner.”
    “I have to do my radio show,” she said.
    “How about after your show?”
    “At midnight?”
    “Something wrong with midnight?” He laughed, and he asked for her address.
    After work that night, when she pulled up at her small rented house in Sherman Oaks, his Ferrari was parked by the gate and
     he was sitting on her front steps, holding a bottle of champagne.
    “Hi…How did you get in the gate?” she asked.
    “An old army trick,” he said with a wink.
    Inside, he opened the champagne. He took her to bed. “Oh God,” he’d groaned, “I’ve wanted to eat you since the second I saw
     you. Give it to me, give it to me, put it in my face, yes,
yesssss
…” Zahna couldn’t believe she was rolling around on her king-size bed with this ravenous, insatiable man, this glutton for
     her body whom she’d just met that afternoon.
    “Wait—what about condoms?” she’d breathed.
    “What about them?” he’d slurred, burying his head deeper between her legs. She was too stoned to make an issue of it. She’d
     brought out cocaine. “Great combination,” he’d moaned. “Champagne and toot—and sex.”
    She’d found herself drifting into one of her fantasies. He was a Roman soldier who had stumbled upon this beauty huddled in
     fear in the back room of a greathouse that his soldiers were pillaging. He pulled back his toga, revealing his bronzed, muscledbody. His troops would have the jewels, he would have the woman. She was just settling into the scenario in her mind and the
     rhythm in her loins when he climaxed, big, fast, and he was up, and dressing. She rolled over on her stomach and reached for
     her robe.
    “You’re fabulous, Jack…. I’ll make some coffee.”
    “No coffee, babe—gotta go.” He was scrambling for his Nikes. “Early shoot tomorrow. I’ll call you.” And he was gone. She heard
     his car turn over and peel off before she got her robe around her. Home to the wife, she supposed—he was married to that