Best Laid Plans(133)

“Then order.”

She laughed and leaned back as Ben looked over the menu.

“What?” he said.

“No small talk, no how have you been?”

“You hate small talk.”

“That never stopped you before when you want something.”

The waiter came over and they ordered. Max added a glass of pinot grigio and Ben stuck with iced tea.

“I have a fantastic opportunity for you.” He ran a hand through his dark blond hair, which fell immediately back into place across his forehead. His dark eyes were bright with excitement. “Your own television show.”

Max stared at him. “A television show,” she said flatly.

“Your television show.”

“No.”

“You didn’t listen to my pitch.”

“I don’t need to listen to your pitch.”

“Yes, you do. I don’t think you understand what an amazing idea this is. It’ll be like a news magazine, but better. We’ll be integrating all communications media—television, a Web site, podcasts, social media, print. It’s cable, more flexibility, more edge. Multiple venues will get your reports out to more people.”

The excitement in Ben’s voice grew as he spoke. Max was grateful her wine arrived.

“I like my job,” she said after sipping her drink.

“You don’t have a job.”

She snapped her fingers. “Exactly. I investigate the cases I want, write the articles I want, do what I want. Do you sense the theme?”

“You do what you want because you’re rich.”

“You make being rich sound like it’s a bad thing.” She sipped her wine and assessed Ben over the rim of her stemware. “You’re not exactly collecting welfare, Mr. Lawson, grandson of Tobias Lawson the Third, the self-made and successful businessman who owns half of Boston.”

Her attempt at getting under his skin failed. He said, “You’re scared.”

She laughed again. “Ben, you know me well enough to know I don’t scare easily.”

“Not by anything out there—” He waved his hand loosely toward the quaint cobblestone intersection. “—but by change. You’re not even thirty, but you’re an old stick-in-the-mud, as my grandmother would say.”

“Then let me stick in the mud here and leave me alone. I don’t want a television show.”

“Your books are doing fine, but you only write one every two or three years. Newspaper readership is way down, and they’re still scrambling to get their online component growing. You pay for your own research, your trips, your investigations. If you had a television show, production would pay all that.”

“Because, like you said, I’m rich. If I want to spend my money investigating a cold case in Small Town, USA, I can. If I sell the article, great. If not, I don’t care.” Except she did. She cared because if she couldn’t find anyone interested, the story wouldn’t get the exposure it deserved. But that had nothing to do with television.

As if she hadn’t spoken, he continued. “Cable television is not the crazy aunt in the attic anymore.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Is that even a saying?”

“We’ll have an entire team working for you. I would be your producer—”

“Hell no—”

“And you would have a say in what cases we cover.”

“Say? I would have a say? My answer was no at the beginning, and now it’s ‘over my dead body.’”

“I don’t accept that.”

Their food arrived but neither of them picked up a fork. Usually, Ben amused or annoyed her; today he was pissing her off. “Ben, we’ve known each other for ten years. Have you ever in your wildest dreams imagined me taking orders from anybody?”

“You wouldn’t. You’d be the boss.”

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

He sighed, played with his food. “Max, without you, there is no show. You are the show.”

“I don’t want to be the show.”

“You’re blunt, you’re beautiful, you have an uncanny ability to see through people’s bullshit and get them to spill their secrets. In two years, I can make Maximum Exposure the top news show on the network and the top investigative show on cable television.” He held up his fingers in a V. “Two years!”

“You’re calling it Maximum Exposure?” Unbelievable. “That’s a play off my name, isn’t it?”

“It’s perfect. You expose the truth. The good and the bad. You’re honest. You’re driven. You already have a name because of your books, you have a platform. Not just a platform, but stage presence. I’ve watched every interview you’ve ever done on television, and—”

“What?” she interrupted. “Why would you do that?”

“I’m a news junkie. You know that. And because of Karen…” For a second, he hesitated, and she saw the young college boy that he’d once been. Then the producer Ben Lawson was back. “I follow crime. You’re a natural. The camera loves you, even if you’re in the middle of a swamp with gnats swarming your head.”

“You saw that?” She hadn’t thought that feed, when she found three boys dead in a Louisiana swamp, was picked up by any station other than the local Baton Rouge affiliate.