L.A. Caveman (7 page)

"What's done is done, for the time
being. I'm perturbed that an irresponsible playboy like Jake
Tremere has succeeded me, but who knows what can happen in the
future."

Jake, irresponsible? Playboy, maybe.
Ignorant chauvinist, definitely. But even she had to admit he was a
hardworking guy. Working hard in the absolute wrong direction, of
course, but working hard.

"The future is as yet unwritten, and
this story is not yet at an end. I do have a few tricks left up
these sleeves."

Stanna was politely quiet. The
pirate-like bravado in his voice made her raise her eyebrows. What
was he thinking, that he'd come back someday and replace Jake? Jake
wouldn't take too kindly to that.

But... wouldn't that be the very best
of all possible situations for her?

Ian was civilly taking his leave.
"Dear, I hope you keep me apprised, and look after the ship in my
absence. She’s a promising vessel, but of course you’ve always
appreciated her. Its one of the many reasons I hired
you."

After she hung up the phone, Stanna
stared at the corkboard-lined partition in front of her. It was
strange, but she suspected that Ian viewed his "absence" as
temporary. The possibility of having her old secure life back made
her giddy with hope, but caused a niggling feeling of
regret.

Regret?

Yes, regret, she told herself with
brutal honesty. But only because she felt piqued by the challenge
of reforming Jake Tremere, not because of anything stupid and weak,
like a crush.

She was smarter than that.

She stood and peered into her black in
box. Rifling through it, she saw at a glance that her column wasn't
inside. She sat back down. There would be no way she could
concentrate on menial drudgery until she found out if her column
was mangled beyond recognition.

Maybe that was why Ian sounded so
bitter. He had impossible hopes, doomed to failure, yet he hoped
anyway. Foolish, really.

Maybe she was being foolish too, for
hoping Jake would respect her column and for thinking she’d be able
to reform him.

She sat, drumming her short nails
against her wood-grained desktop. He would’ve read it by now. Was
he angry? More likely he’d contemptuously tossed it in the trash.
The thought caused a hurtful twinge to vibrate briefly through
her.

He didn't know any better, she told
herself.

She squared her shoulders. Jake had no
idea what it meant to pour oneself on paper and write what you
believed in to help others. If he were so insensitive that he could
just throw a perfectly good column away without a thought, then she
would have to find somewhere else to work. The receptionist
demotion, the phones, the extra work, she'd deal gracefully with
all of it if she could only keep her weekly column.

She didn’t want to end up hopeful but
deluded, like Ian.

Saddened by the possibility of having
to leave, Stanna rose from her chair. She didn't see the beige
partitions on her left or the plain wall on the right as she paced
determinedly toward Jake's office. She would ask him to his face
what he thought of the column.

If he viewed her work as a waste of
paper, if all she had to look forward to was week after week of
red-penciled replacement copy and Jake’s smug face gloating, she
would rip her contract into pieces under his nose herself and be
done with it.

She desperately hoped it wouldn't come
to that.

His door was shut, she saw
immediately. There was no light under the door, but that didn't
guarantee he wasn't there. Ian usually had liked to concentrate by
shutting and locking the door and working by the light from the
window and the glow of the computer monitor. Sometimes the door
stayed shut all afternoon. She’d wondered if her old boss snuck
afternoon naps.

But Jake wouldn't be inside napping.
Nor hiding. Being open and available to his employees -- having his
meddling fingers stuck in everything -- was more his style. She
paused in front of the door and just looked at it. It wasn't his
style to lock doors, either, if her hunch was correct.

She reached out and touched the
L-shaped handle.

"Stanna!"

She leaped halfway up the door before
recognizing the voice as Corrinna's.

Stanna glared. "What!"

"Exxcuuuuuse me. I just though you'd
like to know that your hero’s gone for the afternoon. He told a
couple people in Art that he needed to take care of some things."
Her ultra-thin brows twitched up and down. "You're a bit jumpy,
girl."

She minced away, whistling. Stanna let
her breath hiss out through her teeth and forced her pulse to slow
its hummingbird tattoo.

No jumpy girls around here, no
ma'am.
Stanna waited for Corrinna to turn the corner, then
whirled to open the door. As she expected, it turned
easily.

She had to find out about her
column.

Breathing shallowly, she opened the
door. The faded masculine scent that greeted her brought back
distracting memories. Determined, she overrode them in her mind.
Stay focused.
Her little act of spying was making her
unreasonably nervous. She flipped the light switch, adding stark
florescent brightness to the gentle yellow afternoon glow from the
one window.

She looked about, her eyes touching on
all the likely spots: trash can (empty), cardboard boxes (full, but
with his own things), desk (who knew with all that paperwork piled
so high?), and floor (the only neat thing about the office). The
spot in front of his desk where they'd embraced looked somehow
different from the rest of the office, as if ghosts of their
entwined bodies still filled the space.

Avoiding the spot and forcibly shoving
the memory from her mind, she dashed to the desk and scanned the
surface documents. She hated to rifle his paperwork, not because
she was afraid of messing it up -- it couldn't
be
messier --
but because it made her feel like a nosy obnoxious thief. She knew
she'd hate it if someone went through her things. It was an
inexcusable invasion.

But she had to know about her column.
She wouldn't even look at anything else. With a speedy efficiency
born of distaste for her actions, she shuffled the surface paper,
turning up corners and flipping over anything that looked like the
little white binder-clipped packet she'd turned in just hours ago.
She'd left the door almost completely shut, but she knew she had to
hurry before any of her coworkers walked by and peeked
in.

"Damn it, it's not here," she
muttered. Stumped, she surveyed the papers on his desk. Her eyes
fell on the inconspicuous black file cabinet in the corner behind
his desk. Could he have filed it away? If he had, she supposed she
was out of luck. She drew the line at digging through his personal
files.

She would just have to wait until he
returned to ask him about her column.

Disappointed, she whirled to exit. A
couple steps with her head down were all she took before her
internal collision-warning system jerked her head up. She
froze.

Blocking her path, Jake had his arms
folded. His silent, cool appraisal suggested he'd been there for
some time.

Too close to him, she reflexively
jumped back with an involuntary "oh!" of surprise.

Slowly, he unfolded his arms.
Deliberately, his body turned and he closed the office door behind
him before re-folding his arms.

"Hi," she offered weakly.

He just stood there, a life-size,
expressionless woodcarving.

"I wasn't snooping," she tried next.
She cleared her throat. "I was just looking for my column so I
could move it along to production. That's what I always did with
Ian." That was mostly true. Ian let her give her column directly to
the Production department -- he just never bothered reading it
until after it was published.

"I'm not Ian." His quiet voice rolled
out at he. He took a step closer.

She backed up one step, then caught
herself, irritated. "Listen. I wasn't doing anything
wrong."

He took another step, but then he
maneuvered around her, agile. He put his briefcase on his chair,
and she heard it click open as he leaned over it for a moment. He
pulled out her column.

When he turned to face her, she
watched the familiar white packet tensely. "There it is," she said
unnecessarily. Would he demonstrate his big-shot power now and
destroy it? His expression wasn't hostile, at least. In fact,
unless she were mistaken...

His aqua eyes fixed on her gray ones,
and she read undercurrents of... humor! He was amused at
her!

He waved the packet slowly, back and
forth. His eyes glittered with assurance and silent
laughter.

Great, so she’d given him his
afternoon chuckles. She supposed it could be seen as amusing, her
being caught with her hand in the cookie jar and all.

At least he wasn't angry. Was
he?

"You aren't angry?" She had to be
sure.

"Not about your being in my office,
no. Though a closed door generally indicates a desire for privacy."
He frowned. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't assume that Ian's
way of doing business is my way. That won't help either of
us."

"Fair enough," Stanna responded too
quickly, finding herself impressed with him again, totally against
her will. But the column business would be the real
test.

Tentatively feeling her way through
the foreign experience of participating in a civil conversation
with him, Stanna asked, "So... since you brought it up... what
will
help us?" She felt the ball of anxiety in her gut swell
a bit larger.

“
Communication.”

She stared, suspicious. Then offered
him a tentative smile. “Communication’s my specialty.”

With his unexpected humor and the
civilized banter, the tense atmosphere between them diffused
slightly. Still alert for landmines, she continued, "Since we're
more or less stuck with each other, we could learn to help each
other. What do you think?"
And what do you think of my column,
by the way?

"I think I'd like to learn more about
you."

Part of her stirred in response to his
simple words. It was hard not to be with six feet of prime male
leveling his mesmerizing aqua eyes on hers, reminding her of their
kiss. It didn’t help knowing that any moment the knee-liquefying
experience could easily be repeated. His steady gaze told her
volumes more than his words. He was thinking of it too.

But he kept his distance.

And she kept her head, controlling
such inappropriate thoughts by an effort of will. The sobering idea
of her column in his clutches helped bring her back to
business.

So he wanted to learn more about
her.

"Know your enemy, huh?" she quipped.
He'd turned away, toward the window. The lean muscles rippling
under his shirt quickened her pulse.

"I'd like to learn about your skills,
and how I can best use you on my magazine."

His magazine. He'd run
his
magazine into the ground if he weren't careful. Stanna sighed.
Enough was enough. A gesture was needed.

She'd be the bigger person. She spoke
to his back.

"Jake, I'd like to come to terms with
your being here and the changes you're making. I guess I need to
understand more about what you're trying to accomplish so I can
accommodate it, up to the limit of my nausea threshold."

He slowly pivoted back towards her and
gave a sardonic grin. "You? Accommodating? I'm agog." He raised his
brows at her. He glanced down at the packet he held. "This first
taste of your accommodation leaves some room for doubt, you
understand." He referred to her column by running his thumb over
its edges, rifling the few papers. He stood by the window with easy
grace, watching her with a rueful little smile.

She wished the sight of that
slow-moving thumb didn't zap right through her spine and directly
into her nervous system. His smile was cute. Too sexy for her own
good. He was taking her bashing of him in her column extremely
well.

He could afford to, she reminded
herself. With one flick of his tanned, strong wrist, her column
would sail into the trash. Then where would she be?
Careful
.

"Jake. I, uh..." Hmm, this diplomacy
thing was hard. Reaching to see it from his point of view felt like
spanning an abyss. Slowly, she spoke.

"I think I understand you want to make
a bigger success of what has been a middle-of-the-road, modern
men’s magazine. And you believe that since the audience is men they
want stereotypically male subject matter."

She had his complete interest. His
eyes were alert on her. Those eyes wouldn't miss the tiniest thing.
And she couldn't miss the excitement igniting in them. If she
hadn't already known, she was enlightened anew about just how much
the magazine meant to Jake Tremere.

He nodded, slapping the windowsill
emphatically. "Yes, that's what guys want. I've read the back
issues and they don't speak to the demographics. What we have here
are smart young-adult and adult guys who pick up
Men's
Weekly
to stay smart and informed. And the studies say their
main priorities are women, women, women. If we don't give them what
they want now, someone else will." His deep voice held absolute
conviction.