L.A. Caveman

L.A. Caveman

Christina Crooks

L.A. Caveman

Copyright © 2010 by Christina
Crooks.

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This novel is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

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Smashwords Edition: June
2010

"This is difficult for me. Please know
that."

He bowed his head slightly, which
alarmed her more than anything else. But she listened. What else
could she do?

"I believe your work is intelligent
and humorous, and could even be very popular, at the right
magazine. I'm sure you will have the other editors in this town all
begging for your editorial services. But unfortunately,
Men's
Weekly
is no longer suitable for your particular slant. I
admire feminists. But your approach isn’t appropriate here any
longer."

Jake Tremere gave Stanna what she
supposed was meant to be a reassuring and sympathetic smile. It
came across a bit stiff.

Stanna's gut instinct had vibrated
with tension when the much talked-about, mysterious new owner of
Men's Weekly
called her to his large but cluttered corner
office. The oversized windows offered a panoramic view of the
Hollywood Hills, but her eyes were locked with dawning
comprehension on the man who'd singled her out of the
Men's
Weekly
gang and who was now tapping his red pencil on the
hardened leather covering his mahogany desk. He made her
nervous.

It wasn't his shaggy golden-brown
hair, too ruggedly unkempt for the white dress shirt he had on. And
it wasn't his powerful frame. As the well-built, proud new magazine
investor pinned her with an uncompromising stare, a moment of
intuition told her exactly what she was about to hear.

"I want you to know there's nothing
personal in this. I'm sorry, but I find it necessary to let you
go."

Let you go
. The words
reverberated in Stanna's mind and kept her from concentrating on
the rest of the speech being given by the new boss:
Let you go
let you go let you go
. His voice was background noise as she
considered those very important words.

Strangely, she felt a keen
disappointment that this particular man wanted to be rid of her.
Had to be the shock.

He actually thought he could waltz in
here, fire the old editor Ian, then fire her, all before unpacking
his luggage.

He’d gotten away with axing Ian, which
was a crying shame. Everybody missed him and was busy speculating
about what kind of boss would make firing the editor his first
order of business. Ian was a decent enough man, even if he hadn't
exactly turned the magazine into a pot of gold. He certainly didn't
have a problem with so-called feminists. She owed him for hiring
her as a columnist at the Los Angeles-based
Men's Weekly
when all she’d had to offer was barrels full of enthusiasm and a
great column idea. He’d been more than a boss. He’d been her
mentor.

Gone now, fired by this pencil-tapping
autocratic man in front of her because there wasn't enough of a
profit. And he thought he was going to "let her go" as well.
Perhaps he actually believed exorcising the feminist would improve
the format.

She looked up to discover that Jake
had stopped talking and was staring at her. She supposed he was
waiting for some kind of response. Tears, perhaps. He would be
disappointed. She raised a brow and let her gaze drift to the
surface of his desk.

The flat expanse was still piled with
full cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked, and his upper chest
and head were framed between two of them. He was handsome, she
couldn't deny that. With his broad shoulders and longish
shadow-gold hair, he'd make any woman look twice. And his eyes! The
almond-shaped aqua-greenish jewels were set in an outdoorsman's
face. Though they weren't slanted in any way, they gave a
falcon-like impression of cruelty. They were beautiful, and she
felt herself flushing slightly in reaction to their steady
regard.

Especially when those eyes traveled
the length of her body, slowly and arrogantly. Her rose cardigan
sweater fit somewhat snugly, offering no protection from his
measuring gaze, which insolently roved over her relaxed gray slacks
with a practiced look. He did it so casually that she wondered for
a moment if he were just taking note of her business-casual attire.
No, there was a very masculine approval in his eyes.

And she was pretty sure it wasn't
because he liked her outfit.

She couldn't believe it: he'd just
told her she was out of a job, and yet he had the nerve to peruse
her physical attributes. Her body tingled unsettlingly while her
mind registered the violation to propriety. He was exactly the type
of guy she was trying to reach in her column.

It was going to be a pleasure to
inform mister boss-man he couldn't "let her go."

His eyes finally fell to a stack of
papers on his desk and he evened them out in a gesture of finality.
His tone was almost gentle. "I take it from your silence that you
have a full understanding of my reasoning and no objections to this
purely business decision? Fine. In that case, I'll have your final
paycheck mailed--"

"Excuse me," Stanna broke in. "You
can't fire me."

The empathy disappeared from his face.
Jake's look of displeasure pleased her. The look was quickly masked
and a bureaucratic robot responded in a rehearsed-sounding
monotone, “I understand how you feel. It's difficult and traumatic
for these things to occur in one's life but if you can rise above
this minor setback and persevere—"

"No. You don’t understand," Stanna
interrupted softly, noting how the displeasure immediately
reappeared on his face. His forehead creased into fierce lines. So,
he didn't like being interrupted.

She smiled. "You can't fire me.
Legally. Unless you want to buy off my contract, which I hope you
don't do because I enjoy working here. Also, it would be very
expensive for you. Really expensive."

"Contract. You're saying you have a
contract?" For the first time, Jake seemed slightly
uncertain.

"If you'll consult the company
records, you'll find my three-year contract, of which I still have
two more years as the exclusive writer of our 'Woman's Word' advice
column. Of course, I also work as copy editor and assist with my
share of the administrative stuff, too..." Stanna tapered off into
silence as the expression on Jake's face alchemized slowly into a
controlled dislike: first the wide and finely-shaped lips dipped
almost imperceptibly at the corners, then that forehead furrowed
once more.

He stood. "Please excuse me for a
moment." Reflexively, her eyes skimmed over the hard-muscled figure
that revealed itself when he stood. She jerked her eyes away
immediately, peeking only when he turned his back. He circled his
desk and strode quickly and deliberately toward the door. His
movements were taut with suppressed energy, and as smoothly
confident as any creature in its natural habitat. His khaki dress
slacks and the tucked-in white shirt fit so perfectly that the
designer might have used Jake's muscled body type to design them,
but Stanna thought he'd probably be just as comfortable in an
animal pelt. For some reason, the odd thought intensified her
tingling reaction to him.

And directly on the heels of that
thought, red danger signals began blinking in her mind. She needed
to ditch thoughts like those, pronto.

She called after him sweetly as he
walked out of the office, "The records are located in the northeast
corner of the floor, in the gray cabinets." He shut the door firmly
behind him -- a not-slam that really wanted to be a slam. Stanna
grinned.

Why had he bothered to soft-pedal the
termination, Jake wondered to himself as he rested the damned file
on one khaki-slacked knee. He had been so professional about it, to
the point of having a slimy taste in his mouth due to some of the
corporate-smoothster language he had used. Not his usual style. Not
that any style would have done any good, according to the evidence
perched on his knee.

Of course Ian hadn’t told him about
this. Oh, no. Ian had pulled a fast one on Jake, telling him Stanna
was a permanent employee. Permanent his ass. She was contracted,
though. Legally contracted. He couldn’t get rid of her as easily as
a firing.

And damn it, after she butted in,
interrupting him twice, he'd especially wanted her the hell off his
magazine. If there was one thing that bugged him about women, aside
from their manipulations, games, cattiness, and general
untrustworthiness, it was when they cut him off. That kind of
aggression, as far as he was concerned, defined too many modern
females: disrespectful and intruding where they weren’t
wanted.

He mused that his careful termination
speech might have had something to do with the young blonde's
delicate good looks. She'd seemed so deceptively fragile at first,
he hadn't wanted to hurt her. Rather, he'd wanted to make it
easy
on her.

Ha.

The only fragile thing about her was
her tempting little body. He'd never had a weakness for
ballet-bodied blondes, but her slender figure and shiny helmet of
straight, just-past-shoulder-length hair were elegant. Pretty. Very
different from Jolene.

The memory of his last girlfriend rose
like an unwelcome guest in Jake's head. Dark, curly hair, sparkly
brown eyes and voluptuous curves that she’d used to best advantage.
Just as she’d used him.

Jake shook his head to rid it of her
image.

He'd like nothing more than to warn
the poor slobs out there who didn't know the dangers of
twenty-first-century women. He rose to his feet, slapping the file
a couple times onto his left palm. The damning file telling him
that Stanna's contentious presence -- he remembered the smug way
she’d called after him with the cabinet's location -- would be
around for another two years, unless he had a tidy bundle of cash
to buy her off. Which he didn't, of course. His life's savings,
including the small sum that came to him when his parents passed
away, were sunk beyond sight in this dark horse of a
magazine.

Despite himself, he started feeling
the familiar twinge of excitement as he thought of how he was going
to turn
Men’s Weekly
around. Ian had been doing it all
wrong, letting the men's magazine degenerate into a wimpy
politically correct rag that hurt nobody's feelings and bored
everybody with be-nice advice and tepid stories.

The previous absentee owner-investors
had treated the magazine like their other hands-off investments.
From what he'd heard, they rarely even came in the building, so
long as the investment dollars trickled in. Luckily for Jake, when
the profits started looking unreasonably poor to them, they were
more than willing to listen to Jake's offer to take the dying
magazine off their hands. It had cost him nearly his entire
sizeable fortune, but he
knew
that
Men's Weekly
was a
winner.

All it needed was a change in how it
talked to the men who read it. A firming-up of editorial slant. It
was so simple, really, he was surprised that Ian hadn't thought of
it:

Men wanted to read about men things,
from a man's perspective, and get masculine-type advice. Men want
to be real men, they want to understand women, they want to get
sex, and they want magazines to show them how. Jake planned to give
them that, and Stanna stood in the way with her inappropriate
'Woman's Word' advice column. It wouldn't do. It was his magazine
now, and Stanna, along with the modern world’s popular new
political correctness regarding women, could go take a
flying--