The Rival Desk – Part 1
Workplace·EN·8 min read·Published 2026-10-29, updated 2026-10-29·Part 1 of 2
“You stole my source.”
Chloe Bennett dropped a printout on James Hartley’s desk so hard that his coffee jumped.
James didn’t look up from his screen. “Good morning to you too.”
“Mark Delaney. Harbour Council. I’ve been working him for three months, James. Three months of terrible coffee and listening to him talk about his boat. And this morning he tells me he’s already talking to you.”
“He called me.”
“Why would he call you?”
James finally looked up. He had the kind of face that made people trust him, which Chloe found deeply suspicious. Sandy hair that needed a cut, blue eyes, a jaw that hadn’t been shaved since Thursday. His tie was loose. His sleeves were rolled up. He was, annoyingly, the best reporter at the Sydney Herald who wasn’t her.
“Maybe,” he said, “he likes my boat stories better.”
“You don’t have a boat.”
“I have a very good imagination.”
Chloe opened her mouth to tell him exactly where he could put his imagination, and the editor’s door opened.
“Bennett. Hartley,” said Ruth Kaplan, sixty-two years old and terrifying. “My office. Now.”
“The Delaney story,” Ruth said, “is the biggest thing this paper has had in five years. If it’s true, a city councillor has been taking money from developers to approve towers on the harbour. Half the government will go down with him.”
Chloe and James sat in two chairs in front of her desk, as far apart as two chairs could physically be.
“So here’s what’s going to happen,” Ruth continued. “You’re going to work on it together.”
“No,” said Chloe.
“Absolutely not,” said James, at exactly the same moment.
Ruth didn’t blink. “Joint byline. One desk. You have seventy-two hours before Delaney’s lawyers find out we’re onto him and shut everything down.” She pointed at the door. “Use the investigations room. Don’t kill each other. I don’t have the budget to replace you.”
The investigations room was a glass box at the end of the newsroom with one long desk, two chairs, a whiteboard and a window looking out over Darling Harbour.
Chloe took the left side. James took the right. She drew a line down the middle of the whiteboard with a red marker.
“My half,” she said. “Your half.”
“Very mature.”
“I learned from the best.”
He smiled slightly, and to her irritation, it was a nice smile.
They worked. Separately at first, in furious silence, the only sounds the clicking of keyboards and the hum of the air conditioning. Then, slowly, by necessity, together. Her documents filled in the gaps in his. His source knew the names hers didn’t. By four in the afternoon, the line down the middle of the whiteboard had disappeared under arrows and dates and company names connecting both sides.
“You’re good,” James said suddenly, looking at the board.
Chloe looked up, surprised. “What?”
“You’re good. At this.” He nodded at her half. “That connection between the shell company in Singapore and Delaney’s brother-in-law. I missed that. I’ve been looking at this for two months and I missed it.”
She didn’t know what to say. Nobody at the Herald gave compliments. It wasn’t that kind of place.
“You’re not bad either,” she said finally.
“High praise.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
By the second night, the newsroom was empty.
It was almost midnight. The cleaners had come and gone. Outside the glass walls, the harbour glittered black and gold, the ferries crossing slowly under the lights of the bridge. The investigations room smelled of cold coffee and Thai takeaway, which James had ordered for both of them without asking. He had remembered she didn’t eat coriander, which she had mentioned exactly once, in a staff meeting, two years ago.
She hadn’t said anything about it. She had thought about it for an hour.
“Why do you hate me?” James asked out of nowhere.
Chloe looked up from her laptop. He was leaning back in his chair, a pen behind his ear, watching her.
“I don’t hate you.”
“You told Priya in features that I was ‘an arrogant golden retriever in a cheap tie.’”
Chloe winced. “Priya has a big mouth.”
“It’s a good tie.”
“It’s a terrible tie.”
“My mum bought it for me.”
“Oh.” Chloe put her hand over her face. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”
“I’m joking. I bought it at Kmart.” He grinned as she threw a pen at him. He caught it. “Seriously, though. Why?”
She was quiet for a long moment.
“Because you make it look easy,” she said finally. “Everyone likes you. Sources call you. Ruth smiles at you. I work twice as hard and I’m still the difficult one.” She shrugged. “It’s not fair. That’s all.”
James put the pen down. His face had gone serious.
“Chloe,” he said. “I’ve read every single story you’ve written for three years.”
She stared at him.
“The aged-care investigation. The hospital waiting lists. The one about the kid in Mount Druitt who got deported.” He leaned forward. “I’ve read all of them twice. I’m competing with you because you’re the best reporter in this building. Possibly the country. It’s exhausting.”
The harbour glittered outside. The air conditioning hummed. Chloe found she had absolutely no idea what to do with her hands.
“You’ve read all of them?” she said.
“Twice.”
“That’s a bit stalker-ish.”
“It’s a bit stalker-ish,” he agreed.
On the third night, they found it.
It was 2 a.m. They were both sitting on the same side of the desk now, their chairs pushed together in front of her laptop, shoulders touching. A bank transfer. Eight hundred thousand dollars, from a developer’s offshore account to a company registered to Delaney’s wife, the day before the council vote.
The proof.
Chloe stared at the screen. Then she turned to James, her eyes wide.
“That’s it,” she whispered. “That’s the story.”
“That’s the story,” he said.
She didn’t think. She grabbed his face in both hands and kissed him.
It lasted about two seconds before she realised what she was doing and pulled back, horrified, her hand over her mouth.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I’m sorry. That was, I was just excited, that was completely unprofessional, I,”
James was staring at her. His eyes had gone very dark.
“Chloe,” he said. “Stop talking.”
And he kissed her back.
It wasn’t two seconds this time. It was long and slow and absolutely nothing like a colleague. His hand slid into her hair, and she grabbed a fistful of his terrible tie and pulled him closer, and her laptop slid dangerously close to the edge of the desk and neither of them cared. Three years of rivalry, three days of seventy-two hours, all of it rushing out at once.
When they broke apart, both of them were breathing hard.
“We should,” James said, and stopped.
“File the story?”
“File the story,” he agreed. He didn’t move. Neither did she. “Or.”
“Or?”
He glanced through the glass at the empty, dark newsroom. Then back at her.
“My flat is ten minutes away,” he said. “The story isn’t going anywhere until Ruth gets in at seven. And I have,” he cleared his throat, “never in my life wanted to stop working so badly.”
Chloe looked at him. At the loose tie. At the stubble. At the way he was looking at her, as if she were the biggest story he’d ever found.
She saved the file. Twice. Then she emailed it to herself, and to him, and to a backup address, because she was Chloe Bennett and she was always careful.
Then she closed the laptop.
“Ten minutes,” she said. “I’m timing you.”
His flat was on the top floor of an old building in Pyrmont, with bare brick walls and too many books and a balcony looking straight out over the harbour bridge, lit up gold against the night.
He didn’t turn the lights on. He didn’t need to. The city lit everything.
Chloe stood in the middle of his living room, suddenly nervous for the first time in three days.
“I don’t usually do this,” she said. “With colleagues.”
“I’ve never done this with a colleague.” James crossed the room toward her. “I’ve never wanted to.”
“And now?”
He stopped in front of her and very slowly loosened the terrible tie and pulled it over his head and dropped it on the floor.
“Now,” he said, “I think I’ve wanted to for about three years.”
She laughed, and he kissed the laugh right off her mouth.
The rest of that night belonged to them: to the gold lights of the bridge through the balcony doors and the distant sound of a late ferry on the water, to the rivalry finally burning itself out into something warmer and better and impossible to compete over. For once in her life, Chloe didn’t try to win. She didn’t have to.
At 6:45 a.m., they walked into the newsroom together, in yesterday’s clothes, carrying two coffees.
Ruth Kaplan was already at her desk. She looked up as they came in, looked at the coffees, looked at James’s missing tie and Chloe’s crumpled shirt, and raised one eyebrow by approximately one millimetre.
“Well?” she said.
Chloe put the printout on her desk. The bank transfer. The date. Delaney’s wife’s company name.
Ruth read it. She read it again. Then she leaned back in her chair and, for the first time in Chloe’s three years at the paper, she smiled.
“Front page,” she said. “Joint byline. Get it written by ten.”
“Yes, Ruth.”
They turned to go. Ruth cleared her throat.
“Hartley.”
“Yes?”
“You’ve lost your tie.”
James didn’t miss a beat. “It was a terrible tie, Ruth.”
“It was,” Ruth agreed. “Bennett?”
“Yes?”
“Close the blinds in the investigations room,” Ruth said, going back to her screen. “People talk.”
The story ran the next morning. Harbour Councillor’s $800,000 Secret. By Chloe Bennett and James Hartley. Delaney resigned by lunchtime. By evening, two ministers were under investigation.
That night, Chloe found a small box on her desk. Inside was a new tie. Navy blue silk, very expensive, very tasteful.
The card said: For your next rival. I’m retiring. — J.
She looked across the newsroom. James was at his desk, pretending very hard not to watch her.
She walked over, put the tie around his neck, and tied it in a perfect knot.
“You’re not retiring,” she said. “You’re just changing sides.”
And in front of the entire Sydney Herald newsroom, she kissed him.
Somewhere, someone started clapping. Priya from features, probably. She had a big mouth.
Next: Part 2, Off the Record. A lawsuit, a missing source, and a job offer that could split them up.
More from Workplace
More stories in this category are coming soon.