Priced to Move (6 page)

Something tells me I’m soon going to know those TV shoppers pretty darn well. My on-screen debut isn’t too far off.

Heaven help me.

5
⁰⁰

It’s D-day. Debut day.

So here I finish hair and makeup, my palms sweat, and I can’t force down more than two sips of java, no matter how delish the fumes. It’s not Starbucks, but when a woman’s desperate, she copes.

But today there’s just no coping going on,
capisce
?

As I walk from the green room—Hey! I know what that is now. It’s the room where stars and lesser beings like me wait for our cue.

Where was I? Oh yeah. As I walk from the green room to the set, the list of product I’m scheduled to offer in hand, I try to tame the buzzards crash-landing in my gut. But they’re so into their own thing that they pay me no attention. And a woman who talks to imaginary, carrion-eating raptors is certifiable, which I must be, since I agreed to this TV host gig in the first place.

What was I thinking?

“There you are!” Miss Mona says in a loud whisper.

I hurry toward her, but shoot a glance at the set. Danni is still on, a pair of puce silk panties in her hand. “Is something wrong? Did I miss something? And why are you here? I thought you were interviewing someone for a camerawoman position.”

“She called to tell me her flight from New York was delayed, so I came instead of sending Carla after you. I didn’t want you to be late for your launch show.”

The deep breath I take is none too steady, but I’m not about to ’fess up to my nerves. Somehow, this whole TV gemologist thing has grown on me in the last few weeks, and I’m as excited as I am nervous. I figure I’m either as loony as Miss Mona and Aunt Weeby, or else their brand of madness spreads like athlete’s foot in high school locker rooms.

“No way was I going to be late. Does Sally have everything ready for the show?”

Miss Mona points to a stainless steel cart stacked high with tray upon tray of gorgeous gemstones. “She’s as excited as you are about the launch. You should’ve seen her. She looked like a little girl at the candy counter.”

“I don’t know a woman who can honestly say she really, really doesn’t like jewelry. And gemstones are what jewelry’s all about.”

The network’s theme song starts to play, and my excitement ditches my bad case of nerves. Oh, I’m psyched, all right. All the gemstones I could ever want, and a TV audience full of potential gem collectors. What more could a true-blue gem geek want?

A rustle of activity breaks out behind me, and Miss Mona’s face lights up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. “Oh, Andie! Do I have a surprise for you.”

Uh-oh.
Something about her excitement scares the pants off me—figuratively speaking, you know. “Can it wait until after my show? I don’t want to let anything distract me.”

“Your surprise
is
the show, or part of it, anyway.”

I clutch my lists to my green-silk-covered chest. My rose-polished nails dig into the pages for dear life. I take a breath and pray for strength. “Go for it. What’s my surprise?”

Miss Mona unfurls her hand in the most dramatic, most Aunt Weeby–like gesture. My gaze follows that hand, and my jaw drops.

During the last three weeks, it’s become more than obvious that the Shop-Til-U-Drop Network’s feminine atmosphere is part of Miss Mona’s genius. So imagine my reaction when what to my wandering eyes doth appear but a blond West Coast surfer and two comfy armchairs.

He smiles.

I shiver.

Wow!

The tall, Barbie-doll counterpart, towhead blond, silver silk-suited, tanned, blue-eyed surfer boy in Carla’s clutches heads toward me, hand held out. I gape like a goldfish. Then I start to hyperventilate.

Carla grabs the armchairs and brings them to the edge of the set, clearly ready to wheel them into place once Danni and her panties are done. I’m so not ready for this.

Finally, when he’s inches away, I get a grip. “Who’re you?”

“Andie, honey,” Miss Mona says.

I glance at her and catch sight of her canary-feathered grin. Why, why, why, why, why did I ever agree to do this?

Oblivious to my condition, she says, “I’d like you to meet Max Matthews, your brand-new cohost.”

“My who?” Okay, so I’m not proud of the squeaky voice. But what’s a girl to do when she gets a bombshell dropped on her head?

“You heard me. Max will be at your side for all your shows.”

“B-but this is all about us. We’re cable TV’s estrogen pack!”

“Sure, honey, that’s what we’ve been so far, and I know we’ve been very successful. But have you taken a good look at the network’s name? There’s something not quite right about the way we’ve been doing things around here. And then I had me a brainstorm. I figured out how to fix things. Max is my fix.”

Brainstorm? Try monsoon. And just as dangerous. In that scary, red-blooded American woman’s dream-man way. “How so?”

“Sugarplum—” Aunt Weeby’s voice comes from behind me—“how can the S.T.U.D. Network be the S.T.U.D. Network when we’ve got us no stud?”

Gulp.
No way was I going to try to answer that sneaky little rat’s question. She was supposed to be home, watching me on her brand-new, flat-panel, hi-def TV. And I had no answer. Other than another question.

“The Stud Network?”

Miss Mona grins. “Isn’t that so cute? That’s what our customers call us. You know, S for Shop, T for Til, U for . . . well, for you, of course, and D for Drop. S-T-U-D. The S.T.U.D. Network.”

I smack the palm of my hand on my forehead right between my brows. I’ve been had. Hornswoggled. Bushwhacked. I knew this job was a bad idea. From the very start.

What do I know about TV? For that matter, what do I know about studs? And I’m so not talking horse. Trust me, I know nothing of horses, networks, brass tacks, or human studs. Especially not the dream-man kind of stud. My track record with the other half of the human race isn’t exactly stellar, as Aunt Weeby will be happy to tell you in mortifying detail.

That’s why I haven’t gone on a date in years.

When I agreed to this, no one said I’d have to take turns talking about jewels with a guy who’s prettier than me
and
the gems. How am I going to squeak out a sound, much less pretend coherence?

“The best thing,” Miss Mona says, “is that Max will take care of all your worries about on-camera experience—your inexperience. He’s been doing TV weather for years.”

“Really?” I croak.

“Really,” the S.T.U.D. Network’s token stud says in a really nice baritone. “I’ve worked for WZZP in Willandell, Missouri, for the last five years. It’s good to finally meet you, Andie. I’m sure we’re going to be great.”

Carla drools.

Aunt Weeby swoons.

Miss Mona rapturizes.

Missouri . . . Who-Knows-Where, Missouri. Groan. And he says we’re going to be great. He’s sure of that how?

I hold out my hand. His long, tanned, sinewy fingers nearly swallow it up. And that’s when I get the shock of my life— literally. A current sizzles up my fingers, arm, stomach, and rushes straight to my head.

Do I have to tell you I’m in trouble? Or did you figure it out?

“Uh . . . yeah. Great.”

Eloquent, I am not. And great we are.
Not.
On camera.

You see, Max the Magnificent, stud or otherwise, knows nothing,
nothing
about gemstones. Which ignorance he proceeds to demonstrate to our customers. And which ignorance lights up my redhead’s temper in fifty seconds or less.

How bad is he?

Let me count the ways.

Lights, camera, action!
Here we go.

“Good afternoon, ladies. My name is Andrea Adams. I’m so thrilled to join the Shop-Til-U-Drop Network”—no way am I calling it that
other
name—“as your new jewelry and gemstone host. And here to my right is . . .”

“I’m Max Matthews, new to the lovely state of Kentucky . . .”

How does he do it? I can’t take my eyes off him. He looks great and sounds even better, with that chocolate-rich baritone voice. Something warm swirls in my middle, and my tongue thickens to the consistency of a cotton ball. How am I supposed to do a show with him sitting so close?

I feel for the women of America, dropping like flies.

Then I realize he’s staring at me, Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona are waving like windmills, and Hannah, the camerawoman, is smacking her four fingers against her thumb like a beak in the universal gesture for “Talk.”

So I do. And for a while, we take turns giving the viewers our bios. Mine is short and sweet. Hometown girl goes Big Apple, but returns home wiser and happier to sell gemstones on TV. Then Max takes his turn. I tune out. He goes on and on and on.

When I notice Hannah doing her duck imitation again, I realize the show’s dying, and I’d better do something. Like sell the gems I’m supposed to sell.

Fortunately for all of us, Sally, the show’s merchandiser, had clamped a set of adjustable jeweler’s tweezers around a magnificent solitaire stone and left it ready for me to launch the show. I pick up the tweezers to bring the stone in front of the white velvet drape we chose as a backdrop for the product. It trembles a little—just like I do.

“To start us off for real,” I say, that nervous southern thick in my voice, “and so that y’all will get to know me quickly, I want you to know I’m a GIA certified master gemologist, and I’m about to introduce you to my favorite gemstone. Anybody know what this is?”

My cohost—
aaack!
—leans closer to get a look at the stone. The scent of his spicy masculine cologne surrounds me, ties my tongue in knots, and makes me hanker for those simpler days of rat-race stress and gnawing ulcer pain in New York.

Oh my.

The camera zooms in on the brilliant orange gem and off me. I’m so in trouble. But so is the ditzy duo when I get done here.

Does the word “setup” ring a bell?

Thanks to the zillion rehearsals, I stutter out my spiel. “This . . . uh . . . this is one of . . . ah . . . the earth’s rarest stones.”

Get a grip, woman.
“It was first discovered in the Spessart Forest in Germany in the 1800s, and since that time, pockets have been found in Nigeria, Namibia, and even California and Brazil. The finest stones, though, have come from Namibia. The color can range from a bright yellow, through a citrusy orange, to a burning-embers shade of red. The most valuable—and desirable—hue is the exact mandarin orange I’m offering you today.”

My heart rate decides to settle down when Max leans back into his chair. Phew! I can get to my job again.

“Since there’s never been enough supply for this stone to go fully commercial”—my voice is still embarrassingly breathy—“I’m sure most of you are wondering what it is.”

Miss Mona makes like a traffic cop. I humor her and stop to create dramatic effect. Something clatters to my right, but I refuse to let Max distract me any more than he already has. “You may be surprised to learn that this intense, yummy color belongs to a . . . garnet!”

For some inexplicable reason all his own, Max finds my statement hilarious. I shoot him what I hope is a stern glare. But before I can gather my wits and go on with my presentation, he oh-so-generously shares the reason for his humor.

“Everyone knows garnets are red,” he says. “Come on, tell us. What is it? For real.”

A gemstone host who doesn’t know garnets? I’m so in trouble.

“You’re such a kidder,” I say through gritted teeth.

“I’m not kidding.
You
are. Garnets are red.”

“Not
just
red.”

“Red.”

“And green and orange and yellow and purple—even color-change, like alexandrite. They come in every color but blue.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Red.”

What am I doing? My job’s to sell gems, not to argue with a dud. A hunk of a dud, but a dud to the—oh yeah—max.

Get with the program, Andie.
“Max’s response shows the common misconception about garnets. I can guarantee that this gorgeous jewel
is
a garnet, a spessartite garnet. The difference between this one and an almondine—that’s the red kind—is the absence of iron and presence of manganese in the chemical composition. Iron turns the material red, or worse, brown.”

“Huh?”

Did I say we’re doomed? No? Well, I’ll say it now: We’re doomed.

I turn my face so the viewers don’t think I’m totally rude, but I stare at the way-less-distracting stone. “That small difference, Max, makes the manganese-colored stones rare— and pricey.” Back to the camera. “But our wonderful vendors have negotiated for us an incredible price. And when we get a good deal, we give you a great deal. This internally clean, two-carat stone is priced at only four hundred and seventy-five—”

“
That
little thing?” Max roars. “Four hundred bucks?”

If I had a weapon, and if I was the violent kind, and if I wasn’t a Christian . . . well, you get the idea. I consider ducking under the desk. But I’m not that big a coward.

Yet.

“I think we can safely assume that Max has no experience with gems. A fine spessartite garnet like this”—I turn the tweezers to better show off the stone—“internally clean and beautifully cut, can go for up to twelve hundred dollars per carat. And this one is two full carats. Quite a bargain—for a mandarin orange garnet.”

“That’s insane!”

“That’s an investment.”

He snorts. “An investment’s stock in that . . . that Jimmy Buffet—no, not Jimmy,
Warren
—that Warren Buffet guy’s investment company.”

I ignore his blather. “Ladies and gentlemen, I can report that statistics show gemstone collecting as the fastest growing hobby in our country, and as an up-and-coming favorite investment too. So at only four hundred seventy-five dollars? How can you pass up such a great deal?”

Max wriggles in his chair. Out the corner of my eye, I see a flash of silver. Good. He’s picked up the tweezers that hold the gemstone I’m scheduled to feature after the garnets on this nightmare of a launch show. Maybe he’ll learn to use them and do something constructive.

“Here.” I angle my hand in front of the white velvet drape, then hold the tweezers so the garnet lines up with my ring finger. “See how fabulous the mandarin orange garnet looks on the hand? It’s so gorgeous that many women are choosing colored stones like this one for engagement and wedding rings. Now what girl wouldn’t want to wear a beautiful bit of captured, fiery sunshine on her finger?”