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
CHAPTER ONE
"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 l
ike 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--
"Didn't like the shape of your file?" asked Michael. The stocky, pony-tailed art director was in his early thirties, the same age as Jake. No one would’ve guessed. There was something of the eternal youth attached to Michael, in a flamboyant, suspiciously "arty" way. He paused in his stroll down the hallway to flash his white teeth at Jake's confusion.
"What? Oh." Jake looked down to see the forest-green hanging file folder with the dirt on Stanna, now crumpled almost to a ball. He smoothed it out, ruefully grinning back at Michael. "I was just thinking about something."
"Just hope it wasn't me," Michael tossed over his shoulder, along with a wink, and sauntered down the hall. His untucked vibrant Hawaiian print shirt swayed gaily with the movements of his hips. Jake stared after him for a moment or two in mild suspicion, then shrugged his shoulders, amused. His new employees were a varied bunch. But as long as they could do their jobs the way he directed, he didn't care.
Which brought his thoughts back to Stanna: What was he going to do with a feminist columnist on a men’s magazine, when his program for success called for male-bonding writing?
Fire her, of course, like he had the previous editor. Like excising a tumor, he would cut out the bad and also cut down on overhead. Beautiful simplicity. But it wasn't to be that simple, he thought as he glared at the offending green file, putting it back in the gray cabinet before he could maim it further.
The 'Woman's Word' advice column would have to stay. Stanna herself would have to stay. And he had nothing to say about it -- yes, he did. Jake narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. He couldn't fire her, it was true, but he did have control over her. Over her writing, anyway. The editorial content in his own magazine belonged to him. Stanna would just have to write in a Men's Weekly way. Goodbye "Woman's Word," hello..."Stan Says." That had a nice ring to it.
The idea might be so repugnant to her sensibilities. she might voluntarily give up the column in favor of more appropriate duties. Maybe she'd even leave.
Jake realized that he was psyching himself up as it were a ball game, justifying what he was about to do. Which, if he were honest with himself, was to haunt her out of the house. He had a moment's twinge of guilt, thinking of the slender young girl in her cute pink sweater, waiting in his office.
Then he remembered why she was waiting. He shrugged the guilt off. He strode back down the hall purposefully. Business was war.
Stanna looked up at her new boss leaning against the cluttered desk and wanted to spit into his aqua eyes. "You're telling me," she paused to get her breath because her voice was hitching with fury, "I have to have a guy name? That my column has to reflect your Neanderthal point of view? Forget what's best for them, and just--"
"As the owner of the company, I decide what's best for my readers. The column should not be Neanderthal, though I'm not surprised to hear a feminist call it that." He said the word as if it were vulgar. His mouth was a thin contemptuous line, all traces of empathy gone. A purely ruthless businessman. "I think, if you decide to continue as Stan the columnist..." he paused, seeming to enjoy her discomfort, “you’ll need more education on the subject of men's interest columns. Specifically, what men are interested in. You might want to pick up a copy of Robert Bly's Iron John. It's a book about--"
"I know what that book's about," Stanna interrupted, barely holding onto her temper. She felt her own lips compressed into a thin barrier against profanity. "It's about a bunch of guys who wish they were born in a century where it was still cool to carry a club and drag a woman by the hair." She could see he wasn't going to respond to her words. In fact, this time the interruption barely made him blink, though she could tell it bugged him. He sat down leisurely, looking dangerously expectant. She lowered her voice, trying to sound reasonable. She had to convince him.
"Men don't want that sort of old-fashioned philosophy anymore. They want to know about modern men and women, modern solutions, how to deal with the latest relationship issues of today. I've been educating them in the column, giving them the tools they need to be sensitive people."
"Have
you?" His hooded eyes sank over her figure, deliberately roaming the front of her rose-shaded sweater, then flicking back to her face. Heat mounted to her cheeks, probably staining them the same color, she thought furiously. She opened her mouth to really slam him. But he spoke again in the same measured tone. "And is it your vast experience with men that makes you such an expert?"
Her head fell forward slightly, her eyes still locked on his. Had she heard him correctly? There really was no way of misinterpreting that knowing gaze.
He was absolutely still, head tilted slightly to one side as if in anticipation of her answer. She didn't answer right away, offended into immobility and yet finding it difficult to unlock her gaze from his. His tropical-ocean eyes simmered with a strange heat as he added quietly, unsmiling, “You’re an innocent, aren’t you? I should show you just how wrong your assumptions are."
Her body's immediate reflex-reaction to his soft words was to tingle warmly. His powerful, mesmerizing eyes; his superbly conditioned body costumed in banker business-wear; his shaggy hair; the controlled edges of his thin, wide lips. The softly delivered sentence. She didn't blame her body for responding the way it did. She only wished, in that moment, it had selected any other man but the one in front of her who looked so… ready.
First she tore her own eyes from his, as they were no doubt telegraphing her inappropriate, ill-timed desire. Inappropriate, she emphasized to herself. Bad timing, she added. Calming down from her electric reaction, she wondered for the second time in an hour if her imagination was playing tricks with her.
She had to play it cooler than she felt.
She tried to appear to seriously consider his "show you” comment, raising her eyes to meet his. She tried to look cool. Cold, even. No, she couldn’t sustain cold. Instead, she promised him, "I'll show you a swift kick where it hurts if you hit on me again."
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