Page 4 of 7 Days and 7 Nights

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 spend so much money on their hair?

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. “Oh, that’s just on-air antics. Mr. Ransom’s show draws a largely 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 of 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.”

“But you’re not upset that the host ofGuy Talknamed you Killjoy of the Year? Or that a good twenty minutes of his show last night featured his listeners calling you a raging feminist and a man-hater?”

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.

"Do 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 woman’s greatest obstacle to happiness in five words or less, and she’d made headlines by doing it in one. “Men,” she’d said.

Then she’d paused and added “and sex.” Those two subjects, and her willingness to tackle them on the air, had sent her ratings soaring.

Olivia had no intention of being cornered into making a remark she’d regret. Nor did she intend to let Matt Ransom destroy her again—personally or professionally. If she kept her head, she could come out of this interview with her dignity intact and maybe even an advantage in the coming battle.

“No comment, Dr. Moore?”

Olivia set her napkin on the table and pushed her plate gently away. She met the wolf's eyes and raised a regal brow in return, speaking clearly and calmly for the benefit of the voice recording app.

“While I have great respect for Mr. Ransom’s show—what little I’ve heard of it—if he ever decides to tackle weightier subjects like real life and relationships, I might be able to help him out.”

The wolf's fangs disappeared into a pleased smile. He stopped eating, picked up his notepad, and started scribbling.

Olivia knew when to make an exit. Slipping her purse over her shoulder, she thanked her host for lunch, slid her chair back from the table, and stood. Pausing with her hands on the back of the chair, she nodded toward his notebook and iPhone and flashed her best smile. “I do hope you’ll feel free to quote me on that.”

???

“This isGuy Talk, where a guy can be a guy. And it's 11 PM on a Freefall Friday, which means no topic and no rules. Give me a call at 1-555-GUY-TALK or post a question on our social media @GuyTalkATL. I always have an opinion. It’s a guy thing.”

Switching his microphone off, Matt Ransom leaned back in his chair, put his long legs up on the table in front of him, and clasped his hands behind his head to wait out

the five-minute commercial break. With just an hour to go before midnight, the station was close to empty, which made it just the way he liked it.

Two minutes later, he tossed a Nerf ball at the basketball hoop duct-taped to the wall and smiled when it swished through. He shot the next one left-handed, the one after that with his eyes closed.

Satisfied, he reached for the mug of lukewarm coffee more from force of habit than from a need for caffeine. He was a night owl, always had been, and preferred working late, when things were looser and less structured. At one minute until air, he made a few notes about a topic for next Monday’s show and let his thoughts wander to the previous night’s program. He’d begun by posing the question, “What’s so bad about leaving the toilet seat up?” and was planning to segue into a discussion of the elemental differences between males and females, a topic custom-made for his particular brand of humor.

Instead, the show had digressed into a trashing of couples’ counseling, which had led to another caller’s caustic evaluation of therapy in general, which had ultimately led to the topic of WTLK’s very own Dr. Olivia Moore. Even he, who normally had no problem following the flow, had been a little surprised at how quickly her name had come up and how strongly his callers, mostly male, felt about her. In loud voices, they objected to her pro-female stance and the perceived male-bashing that often accompanied it, and no matter what he said, they couldn’t seem to stop talking about her.

He was fairly certain he wasn’t the one responsible for bringing up Olivia’s views on men. But once the subject was raised, he’d had a hell of a time getting off it. He winced as he remembered the jokes and insults. Almost as bad as his callers’ fixation with the earnest Dr. Moore was the way they kept trying to get him to rehash and counter her advice. Hell, even if he had the least bit of respect for or belief in counseling, he had no interest in providing it to his listeners. He was in the entertainment business, and his show was designed for mental stimulation—not rehabilitation.

At ten seconds to air, he hunkered deeper into his seat and took one last shot at the hoop. The coffee had grown stale, and his aim was faulty. The digital clock on the wall provided his countdown, and on cue, he said, “This isGuy Talk, where a guy can be a guy. I’m Matt Ransom.”

“Hey, Matt.”

Matt recognized the deep drawl of one of his regular callers, a long-haul trucker who’d picked up his lifelong nickname as a linebacker for the University of Georgia Bulldogs. “Hi, Dawg. How ya doin’?”

“Not so great. My girlfriend, JoBeth, wants to get married.”

“Aw, hell, Dawg. This is not Relationships Anonymous.”

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