7 Days and 7 Nights Read Free

through her real feelings for a socially acceptable response.
    â€œWell,” she hedged, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my listeners, it’s that there’s no accounting for what women find attractive in men.”
    â€œSo, you don’t find the host of
Guy Talk
attractive?”
    Unfortunately, only a blind woman could get away with calling Matt Ransom unattractive. Olivia tried not to squirm as her brain reached into its memory banks to replay her first glimpse of Matt years ago at WZNA. Then, as now, he was movie star handsome. In fact, he bore an uncanny resemblance to the actor George Clooney. Though taller and broader, Ransom possessed the same close-cropped dark hair going gray at the temples, the same brown eyes under thick dark brows, and the same sort of perfectly chiseled features over a square-cut jaw.
    Personally, Olivia found him too good-looking, too argumentative, too egotistical . . . too . . . everything. Eight years ago in Chicago he’d ground every one of her romantic illusions into dust, but this hardly seemed the time or place to say so. “I didn’t say that.”
    â€œDo you think he deserves the title ‘Bachelor of the Year’?”
    Olivia took a sip of water and swallowed. Matt Ransom was thirty-six going on twenty and wouldn’t recognize a committed relationship if it bit him on the . . .
    Olivia looked up, caught the feral gleam in the reporter’s eye, and knew how Little Red Riding Hood must have felt.
    â€œI honestly can’t think of anyone who deserves the title more. Mr. Ransom brings a whole new meaning to the definition of bachelorhood.”
    â€œAnd the sniping on air and in interviews? What’s the problem with you two?”
    She cocked her head and squinted at the reporter.
You
mean, besides the fact that I’m a trained therapist dealing with interpersonal issues that impact my listeners’ lives, and he’s a seat-of-the-pants rabble-rouser who explores burning issues like why
women can’t fathom football?
    Or how about the fact that working with him again dredges up
memories I’ve spent eight years trying to bury, and today I found
out that one of us is about to knock the other off WTLK?
    Olivia managed a smile. “Just a little on-air hijinks. Mr. Ransom’s show draws a large male audience; mine is predominantly female. Sometimes there’s some . . . banter. It doesn’t mean anything.”
    The reporter grinned and gleefully shed the last stitch of sheep’s clothing. “So you weren’t bothered by the article in which he referred to you as”—the wolf actually looked down to check his notes—“ ‘an insurgent in the war between the sexes’?”
    Olivia slipped a last crust of bread into her mouth and tried not to choke on it. She chewed carefully for a moment before speaking. “Well, I was somewhat surprised that Ransom acknowledged there was a war on when his side is losing so badly. I’m even more surprised that a man who admits to frequenting bars named after female body parts knows what the word ‘insurgent’ means.”
    â€œBut you’re not upset that the host of
Guy Talk
named you Killjoy of the Year? Or that a good twenty minutes of his show last night featured callers laying odds on how long it’s been since you last had sex?”
    Olivia felt her jaw drop at this latest affront. She covered by dabbing at the corner of her mouth with her napkin and reminding herself that some questions didn’t deserve answers. Since signing on at WTLK ten months ago, she’d been very careful to keep her interaction with Matt purely professional, but the Bachelor of the Year obviously felt no such compunction.
    â€œDo you have a rebuttal for Mr. Ransom or his listeners?”
    Olivia continued chewing her food carefully and forced herself to think. Not too long ago, a reporter had asked her to sum up a