The Weather Girl (7 page)

Conner began to laugh and both women stopped arguing. He patted Travis on the back. “Some things never change, do they, little brother?” Turning to leave, he gave Summer and Shannon a wave. “Nice to meet you ladies.”

The look on Summer’s face said she was about to spout off every high temperature ever recorded. Her discomfort made Travis feel worse. It was obvious to him that she’d only offered because Conner was asking, not because she was interested in Travis. Shannon, on the other hand, was one of the women still enamored with who he had been. “I’m sure I can grab a ride with the guys in the van,” he suggested.

“Had I known driving you home was going to be such an issue—” Summer began.

“I’ll go with you,” he jumped in. At this point, not accepting her offer would be more offensive than anything else he could do. “Thank you.”

When the signing finally came to an end, Travis and Summer wished Shannon and the crew a good evening. Clouds had moved in and the wind picked up, sending discarded fliers and garbage tumbling across the field. The energy in the air felt different, heavier, and Travis’s skin tingled. He smiled at his observation. The Weather Girl was rubbing off on him.

She was too busy to notice.

Summer held her closed red umbrella in one hand and dug through her big bag of tricks with the other.

“So you know when it’s going to rain and you like to throw yourself out of hot-air balloons. What else do you do?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said, her mouth twisting in frustration as her keys continued to elude her. She shook the bag in an attempt to locate them by their jingle.

“I really would like to know,” he said, perhaps too curious for his own good. Summer shook her head and continued hunting for the elusive car keys. “Have you always been like this?”

“Like what? Completely incapable of finding my stupid keys?”

He liked the way she could be so self-deprecating. Brooke had never wanted to admit she was anything but flawless. “Fearless,” he said, taking the umbrella from her so she could use both hands to rummage through her bag. He wished he could get that feeling back. The one that made him believe he could do anything he set his mind to. Lately, that other f-word—failure—was haunting him.

Summer laughed. “If you bungee-jump and have no fear, there’s something wrong with you. It’s that little bit of fear that makes it fun.” She found the keys and unlocked her car.

Travis opened his door and moved the passenger seat back to accommodate his long legs. “That’s probably true. Being afraid is what makes overcoming something that much more rewarding, right?”

“Exactly.” She started up the car and switched on the wipers. Travis was about to question that decision when big, fat raindrops began hitting the windshield. She was freakishly good at her job.

“So maybe the real question is, what else are you afraid of, Weather Girl?”

Summer squeezed her lips together before stealing a glance in his direction. “I’m
afraid
you broke Shannon’s heart by not choosing her to drive you home. I’ve never seen someone so disappointed.”

“Nice deflection.” That probably wasn’t the first thing that had popped into her head, but he was sure it was all he was going to get. “Shannon’s a good kid.”

“Good kid, huh? She’s not that much younger than you are.”

“Maybe. She just reminds me of the girls I knew in college.”

Summer’s eyes were glued to the road. “Did you know Texas averages a hundred and twenty-six tornadoes a year?”

Travis rubbed his neck and looked out his window at the suddenly ominous gray sky. He wondered if she knew something she wasn’t telling him. “Wow, is that the most?”

“Yeah, we have more than twice as many as Oklahoma.” She sped up the wipers and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “But we’re also the second biggest state, so the data is a little skewed.”

“I’ve lived in Texas all my life and never seen one.”

“Well, your life is far from over.”

“This is true. Something to look forward to, I guess.” He paused for a beat. Looking forward to something would be nice. He wasn’t so sure he should be hoping for a tornado, though. “I think that’s what I’m the most afraid of,” he said. “I don’t want my life to be over. There’s still got to be something out there for me. I don’t want to miss it, you know?”

Her eyes slid to his. “Then you have to use that fear to push yourself to take risks you normally wouldn’t. You never know what could happen.”

He could fail. He could fail and fail again. The fear of it nearly paralyzed him. He was so used to living in a world where the only decisions he had to make were the ones on the football field. His path was always brightly lit and filled with one way signs. Now the world was filled with endless possibilities, and he didn’t have a clue what signs he should be looking for. Except the one pointing home. He came back to West Central Texas because it was the least scary place to start.

Travis directed Summer to his cottage but didn’t jump out right away when they arrived. The rain had picked up and it pounded on the car so loudly it didn’t feel awkward to sit in silence for a minute. “Thanks for the lift. I owe you one.”

“No trouble, really.” Summer shrugged. She reached back and grabbed her umbrella. “Here, use this. You can give it back to me on Monday.”

“You sure?”

“I can park in my garage. You need it more than me. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you getting sick, now, would I?”

“The way things have been going, I might need a reason to call in sick.”

Summer shook her head. “You have to stop trying so hard. When you overthink things, the words get all jumbled. Try pretending you’re telling the crew what happened in the world of sports instead of reporting it to all of Big Country. It’s as simple as having a conversation with some guys at the bar.”

“That’s some good advice. Thank you.”

“Who knows, ESPN could come calling, and I’d get my thirty seconds back.”

Travis’s laugh felt good coming out. “Well, we all know how much you want those thirty seconds.” Wishing her good-night, he popped open the umbrella and stepped into the rain. Summer lingered until he got his front door open, then backed out of his driveway after he waved. He shook off the excess water from the umbrella and set it by the door to dry. Flicking on some lights, he made his way to the couch and lay down, throwing an arm over his eyes.

Summer was beautiful and interesting, but being around her made Travis feel mighty inferior. ESPN would never knock on his door, but he’d give her suggestion a go. Travis was used to carrying the team, not being the weakest link. Not that Summer intended to make him feel that way. She was who she was. She was excellent at her job. She bungee-jumped out of hot-air balloons. She believed in taking risks. Her only weakness was her inability to find her keys to save her life.

Travis wanted to take some risks, too. He wanted to face fear and beat it. If only he could decide what risk to take.

CHAPTER SEVEN

R
ICHARD
 
WAS
 
IN
 
a particularly bad mood when Summer arrived at the station on a cloudless Tuesday. He had his fan on high even though the air-conditioning was set at a comfortable sixty-eight degrees. His thinning brown hair, peppered with gray, was damp at his temples.

Richard didn’t get into broadcasting meteorology because of his looks. It was his knowledge that had won him his job some twenty-plus years ago. He loved to talk about things like jet streams and isobars, which tended to do nothing but confuse people. Summer thought part of his dislike for her stemmed from the fact that she knew more about weather than he did. It was his “thing” to know the science of meteorology. Summer came in and knew more, remembered more without having to look it up and presented it in a way that didn’t make people feel stupid.

Today, he hated her because Ken had some big ideas. Ideas that made Summer the head and face of the Channel 6 Weather Team. Ideas that made Richard attack Ken in the middle of the newsroom.

“I’ve been chief meteorologist for ten years! This is a demotion!” Richard raged.

“First of all, you were never given that title by the station,” Ken argued. “Second, nothing has changed. You still do weekday mornings. I could put you on weekends. That would be a demotion.”

Richard’s fist pounded on the desktop. “She’s a joke, Ken! She thinks she can feel the rain coming and tells the viewers that. They think she’s crazy. I’ve had people tell me so at appearances.”

Summer chose not to share what people said about him at
her
appearances. None of it was flattering. She decided it was best to rise above it and keep her mouth shut. This was Ken’s battle anyway.

“Then they must love crazy because our ratings are the highest they’ve been in years. Summer and Travis are going to be the stars of our new marketing campaign, like it or not.”

“Do Rachel and Brian know that?” Richard continued, the vein in his forehead bulging. “I thought they were the faces of Channel 6. You really know how to stab your veterans in the back, Ken. Good work.”

“Rachel and Brian are team players. Team players get to stay. You don’t want to be a team player? There’s the door.” Ken pointed to the elevators, trying not to lose his cool. Nobody challenged Ken out in the open. He could handle a confrontation in his office, but in front of his staff he was much less tolerant.

Summer wasn’t going to hold her breath for Richard to quit. He knew KLVA was the end of the road for him. There wasn’t a station in all of Texas that was going to pick him up at his age. Fresh-faced newbies were joining the workforce every day. Richard was old-school.
Old
being the key word.

“I’m not going anywhere until you fire me. And I dare you to fire me.” His false bravado was not impressive. He had a family to take care of—two boys in college and a daughter getting married next summer. Being out of work wasn’t something Richard could afford.

“Don’t tempt me!” Ken shouted as he headed back to his office, finished with this pointless argument.

Summer stood next to the fan, shaking her head. “It’s just a title and some stupid billboards. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Richard scowled at her. “Get the hell away from my desk, you stupid witch.”

“Whoa, that’s no way to talk to a lady.” Travis magically appeared at Summer’s side. He spoke calmly, but the twitch in his jaw gave away his mounting anger. “Maybe you should go outside and get some air. You’re looking a little caged-in.”

Richard had obviously lost his mind. He got up in Travis’s face. “You’re no better than her, Lockwood! All you are is a pretty-faced...loser!”

Before Summer could tell them both to keep their testosterone in check, Travis tackled Richard. The two men began to scuffle on the newsroom floor. Appalled, Summer grabbed Travis’s arm and tried to pry him off Richard, who had absolutely no chance in a fight against a man half his age and in better shape than he’d ever been in his entire life.

Travis got up and pointed a finger at the big man on the floor. “Talk to me or her like that again and...” He stopped as if a switch had flipped inside him and he realized what he was doing. Everyone in the newsroom was staring. Then the whispers began. Travis looked around at all the shocked and frightened faces, stopping on Summer’s. His eyes were so dark and sad. The storm inside him blew over, but the damage had been done. After a second or two, he took off. Summer followed.

“Are you crazy?” she asked, grabbing the back of his jacket and pulling him to a stop. This wasn’t the easygoing Travis she had spent the afternoon with last weekend, the one who Mimi would marry her off to if she had any real say in who Summer married. This Travis had clenched fists and his chest heaved with labored breaths.

He spun around to face her as his anger bubbled to the surface. “That guy needs an attitude adjustment,” he said gruffly.

Summer stood her ground even though she could feel her whole body shaking. “I don’t know how they do things in the NFL, but here, we don’t settle disputes by tackling people in the newsroom.”

“He shouldn’t talk to you like that.”

“I don’t need defending.” She wasn’t the damsel-in-distress type. Trouble with Richard was nothing new. She’d been handling it way before Travis got here, and she’d be dealing with it long after he was gone. “Richard hates me. He’ll always hate me. Beating him up isn’t going to change that.”

“Well, he should watch who he calls a loser.” His fist hit the wall and rattled the pictures that hung in the narrow hallway. This time when he took off, Summer let him go. Evidently, the fight wasn’t about her after all.

* * *

T
HE
 
FIVE
 
O
’
CLOCK
newscast began like any other. Summer put on her mic. She checked the monitor to make sure her hair looked all right. She picked up her clicker for the green screen. Nothing too exciting to report tonight. West Central Texas was experiencing normal weather patterns. She planned to talk a little bit about the unseasonably cooler temps up North, just to spice things up.

Travis took his spot to Rachel’s right. Thankfully, his baby-blue tie helped make his eyes more blue than gray under the studio lights, but the tension in his shoulders and the frown on his face made it clear he was still bothered.

The studio director counted down and Rachel introduced the weather segment. Summer wished her viewership a good evening. She clicked the button so people at home would see the national map with the current temps in various big cities. Another click and the map of West Central Texas popped up. She clicked it again, expecting the screen to change to a broader view with weather-in-motion radar. Instead, the graphic with the high temperatures for the day appeared on the monitor.

She played it off, carrying on as if there was nothing wrong. Until she clicked again and the five-day outlook appeared. Her heart rate sped up. She tried to go back, she skipped ahead, she apologized for the technical difficulties. She tried to deliver her report without the visuals, giving up on the screen behind her altogether.

“We’ll hope you get everything worked out by ten,” Rachel said as Summer’s segment came to an end. “You should be better prepared by then, right?”

Somehow Summer kept smiling even as she imagined poking Rachel in the eye. “I’m sure the technical team will figure out what the glitch is.”

Summer stormed into the control room, looking for Ken. “I’m going to give you one guess as to who messed with my graphics.” Someone had most definitely messed with her graphics. And she was ready to shove his fan right down his throat.

“You don’t know that.”

Summer put her hands on her hips. “Someone had to go in and switch them around. Who else would want to disrupt my forecast besides Richard?”

Ken tried to appease her. “I’ll look into it.”

“You’ll look into it?”

“We’ve had enough drama around here for one day, don’t you think? I will look into it. Maybe it was a computer glitch.”

“It wasn’t a glitch. Someone had to go in and—”

“I’ll look into it, Summer. What more do you want me to say?” Ken asked, losing his patience. She was going to have to accept that was all he could do. Not that Richard was going to admit to his deceit. Or maybe he would. Maybe he’d get off on gloating. Ken would have to take some sort of action then.

Travis found her a couple hours later in the Stormwatch Room, guarding her graphics. From the look of him, the softer, gentler Travis was back. He dropped a bag from the deli across the street on the desk. “Someone said you didn’t get dinner. I brought this as a peace offering. I feel like maybe this was all my fault. Like fighting with him pushed poor Richard over the edge.”

“Well, Ken doesn’t think Richard had anything to do with it. But part of me wishes I hadn’t broken up that fight earlier today.” Summer took a peek in the bag. Inside, there was a sandwich and a bag of chips. Her stomach growled.

“I have to say, you handled yourself on the air better than I would have. You were a total pro.”

His compliment didn’t soothe her injured ego as much as she would have liked. “I almost tackled Rachel after she insinuated I was unprepared.”

Travis laughed until she turned her glare on him. “I’m sorry. I was picturing you tackling Rachel. I shouldn’t laugh. I know it had to be horrifying.’

Summer sighed. “I don’t understand what Richard’s so mad about. It’s a couple billboards and some promos.”

“Yeah, it’s not like you were given thirty seconds of his reporting time. I mean, that would be a legitimate reason to hate someone,” he said.

Touché.

“Hate’s a waste of time, remember?” she said, pulling the sandwich out of the bag. “How can I hate someone who bought me dinner without being asked?”

Travis stood with his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t wearing his suit coat and his tie was loosened just a bit. Even though he looked good, it was clear he wasn’t a suit-and-tie kind of guy. “Like I said, I fueled the fire, I’m sure. And if I scared you earlier when I lost my temper, I’m sorry about that, too.”

Carefully unwrapping the sandwich, Summer took a second to consider how his outburst made her feel. It had been somewhat scary to see him lose control like that. At the same time, it made her curious. Why would the opinion of someone like Richard matter so much to someone like Travis? “Apology accepted. Thanks for the sandwich.”

Travis shrugged and started backing out the door. “Gotta make up for being the bad guy somehow.”

* * *

T
HE
 
TEN
 
O
’
CLOCK
report went off without a hitch. Summer was vigilant and took no chances. She checked and double-checked seconds before she went on. She didn’t have high hopes that Ken would get Richard to confess. It flabbergasted her that he would be so petty. Did he really think that tampering with her graphics would make her quit? There were much better reasons to quit than this trouble.

Ryan’s name stood out in her inbox as she checked her email one more time before heading out for the night. He was trying much harder than Richard was to get her to change jobs.

Imagine staring up at a million points of light in the sky from the comfort of your bed, or watching the mesmerizing northern lights dance above you before you fall asleep. Come work for me and there’s a glass igloo in the Finnish Lapland with your name on it. They don’t have those in Texas, do they?

Summer rubbed her tired eyes and closed the message. She couldn’t deal with this now. Not when she was coming off a bad day at work. Leaning back in her chair, she glanced over her shoulder at Travis and Rachel. The flirtatious news anchor sat in Travis’s chair and twirled a strand of hair around her finger. Did women really think stuff like that worked? From across the dimly lit newsroom, it was hard to tell if Travis was falling for it or not. He stood beside his desk and loosened his tie, politely nodding at whatever she was saying.

Rachel was irksome. Rachel and her perfectly plucked eyebrows. Her sparkling white teeth and generous...assets. She was a thirty-something ex-cheerleader who wanted nothing more than to sink her claws into someone like Travis. Young, handsome, virile. The last guy she dated had probably been collecting Social Security for a couple years. Rachel was obviously looking for fresher meat.

Summer tried to ignore them, but Rachel was speaking so loudly about how much she loved the idea of Travis starring in ads for the station. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t mention anything about Summer, who went back to her computer and looked up information on glass igloos in Finland. Ryan’s bait was too tempting, given the circumstances. Brian walked past her desk a few minutes later and wished her good-night.

“Have a good one,” she replied with a weary smile. She shut down her desktop and grabbed her stuff. Rachel and Travis were laughing together, giving her a much-needed push out the door. “Good night, y’all,” she said, getting Travis’s attention.

“Summer, wait. Let me walk you to your car.” Travis pulled his jacket out from behind Rachel.

She didn’t need to be escorted to her car. It wasn’t like Richard was going to be waiting in the parking lot to take her out. She was about to refuse when Rachel chimed in. “Pete can walk her to her car. Right, Pete?” Summer hadn’t even noticed the tech engineer lurking in the shadows. Pete didn’t look too keen on walking anywhere with Summer.

“I got it,” Travis said. “Have a nice evening.” He scurried to catch up to Summer.

The elevator arrived and Travis held it open so she could walk in first. The doors closed, and even though there were only two of them, the space felt smaller than usual.

“Did you know that in the winter months in the northernmost parts of Finland, the sun doesn’t rise for fifty-one days?”

“I’m making you nervous, aren’t I?” Travis asked, almost apologetic.