Jake couldn't for the life of him figure out why she was suddenly looking at him with those blue-tinted silver eyes glinting shrewdly, amused. But that wouldn't stop him from trying to bridge the chasm gaping between them since the beginning of their professional relationship. Being stuck with her didn't have to be a bad thing.
Her face glowed with health, he noticed. She was so young, so full of vitality. Her delicate brows were knitted slightly and those stunning eyes that he'd seen in extreme close-up not three hours ago now steadily watched him, a coolly assessing gaze. Very different from their melting heat when he'd kissed her. The memory of their fiery embrace nudged him, reminding him how much more his sexy columnist had to offer than her writing skills.
He needed her cooperation with the column, though. Her other qualities were nothing but mind-candy. And that's where they would stay. In his mind.
It would be much too distracting any other way.
"Stanna, the magazine is the main issue here. Its success and its satisfied readership. Can we agree on that, at least?"
"Yes. Yes, absolutely." He watched the idea spread its animation across her porcelain face before her lips parted to speak. "You know, Jake, the magazine could do well exactly as it is, with your idea about building up marketing and circulation. That's just what I've thought it needed all along, only Ian never quite had the budget to begin."
The hopeful look in her eyes tugged at him. It was her innocence and youth, he decided. That's what made him react so guiltily when she made those "save my magazine" hopeful comments. The vulnerable look in her eyes, which he knew she wasn't aware of, made him feel like a bully stealing Halloween candy.
But it wouldn't make him change his mind.
"Ian's gone, and I'm here now," he replied.
"And you're the boss," she appended, her tone carefully neutral.
"I'm glad we see eye-to-eye." He liked the way her lips twitched slightly before regaining their normal aloof shape. He was a good half-foot taller than she, just the right kind of eye-to-eye with a woman, as far as he was concerned.
She remained stubbornly silent, watching and waiting.
"Stanna..." His manners caught up to him then, and he gestured at the spare chair even as he rose to fetch it himself. "Please, sit down." She did, with another distrustful glance and a ballet-graceful bend of her slender body.
The afternoon was fading quickly, he noticed. Already the light from his window was a thick yellow-orange that only Los Angeles smog could produce. He knew if he looked outside he'd see long metal arteries of early commuters sluggishly moving along surface streets in the vain hope that they'd be faster than the freeways.
His rented home in Manhattan Beach would be a good forty-five minute drive, but the ocean-adjacent abode was worth it. Old friends of the family charged him such a low rental price that he wouldn't dream of telling anyone just how little he paid for the prime-location home. It would only make them feel bad that the same money they doubtless used to secure a single apartment in a modest Los Angeles neighborhood could keep him in a three-bedroom, two-bath house only two blocks from the beach.
Maybe he could tie this up and take off early so he'd have an hour or two to relax and prepare for his business dinner with the ad agency later.
He leaned against his desk again, feeling the wood edge against his thigh. He'd make his point with the direct approach.
"Stanna, your column is offensive to men."
Opening the packet, he read: "'...testosterone-soaked brains.... a certain Me-Tarzan corner-office tyrant whose sack gets in the way of sound business decisions... men using their penis as a divining rod in the time-honored tradition of the old-boys-club'...I don't think I need to go on.
"Men's Weekly was a hodgepodge of articles on boats, features on celebrities, how-tos for home stereo systems. And of course your 'get civilized' woman's perspective column. That was the extent of Ian's game plan, I assume, if he even had one.
"Mine is different. Worse, some might say. But mine has a structure, a narrow target audience, and a theme, and I plan to go forward with it.
"Therefore, your column, as it is, is unacceptable. I have every faith that you can do better than this."
"Nope. That's the best I can do." Her flippant rebuttal and challenging stare were expected, but Jake experienced a twinge of irritation.
"Then I'll have to do it for you. To show you how it's done." He watched as Stanna's confident facade showed a few cracks.
"Ian never rewrote me. He never bothered, and there’s no time. You have more important responsibilities. You don’t have to do this too."
"I can. I have to, evidently." He pushed up from the desk, looking at his watch. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get going."
"Wait! Wait. Hold on, cowboy." She rose from the chair with energetic gusto and a look that dared him to move one more step. Her eyes revealed the turmoil of her thoughts. "What if... Jake," she sighed exasperatedly, "you won't be getting woman-bashing columns from me."
"Did I say they had to bash women?"
"Yes! Not in so many words, but that's your so-called theme." She said the word with bafflement, as if he were nuts to do such a thing.
"Stanna, that's not what I'm saying. Not exactly." He searched for the right words. "It isn't bashing to look at women from a man's perspective. You know, their bodies, their desires, their frustrating little games..."
"Frustrating games?" Her eyes sparked dangerously.
"Games, like Hard-To-Get, or Playing Dumb, or Let's Pretend I'm Something I'm Not," Jake replied, Jolene's image in his head.
"Ahhh," she drawled, an enlightened smile spreading across her face. "You've had a bad experience with a woman. I should have guessed." She added sweetly, "But you have to realize, Jake, we aren't all evil."
Thoroughly perturbed, Jake grumbled, "Of course not. But that's not the point--"
"No, your point is you think most men would be more sympathetic to a gang-up-on-women column rather than trying to understand us."
"Why should they even try?" Jake replied, chilliness creeping back into his voice. "What's to understand? Who'd want to get tangled up in all your illogic and hormones?"
"I flatter myself I'm being logical now," Stanna replied logically. "Not all women play games, by the way. And men are so much worse."
"Worse?" Jake found himself beginning to smile. This was such a ridiculous conversation.
"You've heard of men's games, if you haven't played them yourself: Thrill-Of-The-Chase, Tell-Them-What-They-Want-To-Hear, Morning-After-Disappearing-Act. Sound familiar?"
"'We aren't all evil,'" Jake threw her words back at her. He found himself enjoying their verbal sparring. He liked the way her eyes sparkled as she argued, and the small nod of concession she gave him when he scored a point.
Her lips curved upward, a somewhat contemptuous battle-mask that he knew was due to her basically contentious nature. Her body was tense and angled in a way that suggested a cat's just before it leaped at its prey. He had her full attention.
He wanted to pull her into his arms again and help her get rid of that intensity of hers in the best possible way. Imagining her wiggling against him, her wild lips responding to him, he knew his own expression was that of a predator, too. He turned it on her, waiting for its message to impact.
It didn't take long. She cocked her head slightly, emphasizing her catlike appeal. Her eyes blazed back at him, all challenge.
"Some of us are more evil than others," he conceded, grinning wickedly.
"Evil enough to keep men in the dark? If you stick with your 'theme,' you're showing your readers only the worst part of women." She remained firmly by her guns, he noticed in admiration.
"So you admit that women can be morally vacant? Good. Your feminist inclinations don't blind to you to the facts."
"Some! Only some women are morally vacant. Some men are, too. My perspective as a woman is valid. Don't you think your readers could learn something coming from me, from the w
oman's perspective?"
He thought about it. He needed an exciting, man-friendly column. Stanna wanted to burn bras. Maybe a compromise could be a 'balanced picture' column. He tapped his fingers on the flimsy white column, thinking about it while regarding her steadily.
She returned the gaze, waiting for his answer. She felt invigorated as she watched him, sensing that his resolution to mangle her column was becoming less than rock-solid. The rest of him still fit that description, though, she thought as she surreptitiously scraped her eyes down his superb male form.
There was something about men in jeans and cowboy boots, especially when they could hold their own in an intelligent debate, she decided.
She filed away the information for future reference. She certainly wouldn't be applying the newfound knowledge to the hunk in front of her, even if he was managing to play her libido-strings with a maestro's touch -- without a single touch.
He was still silent, his golden-brown hair falling unruly to his shoulders as he angled his head down. She remembered the thick, silky feel of it under her hands when she'd touched him.
Stop that, she told herself sternly.
"Stanna." His voice, decisive. His next words, curious, shocked her. "What made you distrust men the way you do?" Seeming to realize what a nosy question it was, he reluctantly added, "Never mind, you don't have to answer. Right now, anyway." But he waited another moment before gruffly addressing her original question.
"I think the idea of a 'balanced picture' column is interesting, but it probably wouldn't work because of your extreme feminism," he continued, blunt. He held his hands out, palms up in a shrugging What Can I Do pose. "Unless you make it entertaining to my readers," he emphasized the word possessively, "it won't fly. But, I'll give you this much: I'll give you back this week's column for you to change to show me what you can manage in the way of 'balanced.' If I like it, I'll publish it. If I don't," he gave her a grim smile, "you won't recognize the column that gets published, even though 'Stan's' name'll be on it."
He extended his arm stiffly and formally offered her the white packet. She knew it was the offering of a new "contract" between the two of them, an informal but nonetheless binding agreement to work together in a new way.
She thought about it for long enough to cause Jake's eyes to flicker with impatience. She made him wait another few moments just because she could.
She lifted her arm to accept her column from Jake, sealing the contract.
She gave his grim little smile back to him, her fingers tightening on her unacceptable column. Maybe she’d gone a bit over the top. She could fix it. She had to try and reform this man along with all his misguided readers for the sake of the magazine and, well, for all womankind.
"I'll have it back to you first thing Tuesday," she told him, turning to leave.
"By Monday morning, please," he corrected uncompromisingly.
"Yes, boss," she grumbled, taking care to sound appropriately disgruntled as she wheeled about. He couldn't see her smile secretively down at her column. She wrote quickly, and needed mere hours, not days. She wasn't about to let him know that though, or how much she was growing to look forward to debating with him.
The early evening light turned the brown carpeting an orange-gold in front of the large window by the elevators. Stanna waited alone for one of the sluggish lifts to arrive, as everyone else had already trickled out. She leaned tiredly against the wall, fatigued from the day's unexpected new workload. It had taken her hours to tackle everything in her in box.
Usually she was the one waving goodbye to everyone. When Ian was here she'd certainly had it easier, she realized.
The stainless steel doors finally parted and she had to step aside as the vaguely unkempt blue-uniformed cleaning people wheeled their equipment out of the car.
For some reason she remembered what Jake said about her not trusting men. It resonated in her mind the way only the truth did. How interesting that Jake, a man she barely knew, would call her on it.
But she had to modify his statement for accuracy. She didn't trust men in relationships. Outside of the man/woman love-bond, she trusted them fine. In fact, when she'd rebelled as a child against her stepfather's overbearing, narrow-minded chauvinism, the word 'tomboy' best described her. At age eight, she didn't know she was different from other girls, she just knew she liked climbing trees, building forts, and playing war with the neighbor boys. At sixteen she’d had more guy friends than girl friends. Her emerging grace and improving looks created some awkward moments when many of the guys developed crushes on her. She’d never dated any of them, and her impartial sisterliness salved their egos. They even remained friends. As a benefit of those friendships, Stanna got the inside scoop on men's behaviors regarding women.
She knew the schemes and devious, selfish goals that made up the typical man's mind regarding women. To an extent, they couldn't help it. It was just the way they were.
When a relationship surpassed friendship, men couldn't be trusted. If she didn't already know that from her supremely typical stepfather dominating her meekly acquiescing mother, then she'd discovered it in later years firsthand.
Jake knew she didn't trust men, but he didn't know the biggest reason why.
She wondered what Jake would say if he knew. If she told him about the dream that haunted her in words whispered from her mother’s deathbed: “Chase your dreams, and never slow down for any man. He’ll catch you and keep you, and you might be content from time to time but you’ll never be happy. I know.”
It was a well-meaning chauvinist who kept her mother from achieving her potential. Her own stepfather. He'd suppressed her mother’s desire to sing in a country band, something she'd done while married to her real father when Stanna was a young child. After his disappearance, her mother seemed to almost revert to childhood herself in her grief and helplessness, and old Ray, her stepfather, stepped into the picture.
Ray wasn't even a bad man. Just a typical one. He was a good stepfather, paying for her college education and providing for them both. He was kind, in a distant way. But he had no concept of how a good woman could have ambition to match a man’s. She remembered his comment once when she'd visited them on a school break: "Any luck on that MRS degree?" The crazy thing was, he'd asked in the same tone as one would ask about any noble cause, with full seriousness and interest in her answer. When she'd launched into a tirade about equality and chauvinistic attitudes, he'd just laughed.
Her mother was gone now, and her dream with her. Stanna vowed she would never let a man do the same to her.
Her history wasn't exactly flooding over with boyfriends, but that was by choice. The few she'd consented to dating didn't inspire too many romantic thoughts. The men who interested her now had one thing in common. They were convenient, safe, and predictable. They didn't challenge her or get in her way.
Only once had she danced with a devil who’d challenged her, and the resulting scars on her heart cured her for once and for all against such folly.
What really annoyed her, though, Stanna thought as she exited the elevator car and strode towards her battered station wagon, was that the "good" kind of man, the sweetly sensitive, fun, understanding guy, was so often insipid. Or gay.
She was obviously meant to remain single.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jake concluded his night meeting with the ad agency representing one of Men's Weekly's biggest advertisers.
It had gone extremely well.
He felt his blood pounding quickly through his veins as the mirrored elevator closed and began sinking slowly to ground floor, and managed to restrain his shout of triumph until he was well out of earshot of the ad executives. Then he let her rip: "Whoooo-hooooo!" He did a two-second silly dance, wiggling his butt, until the elevator bumped ground and the mirrored doors parted to reveal the decadently appointed lobby. He grinned at the desk-bound security guard and strode out into the warm Los Angeles night.
"They like me, they really really like
me!" Jake couldn't remember the Hollywood actress who first uttered those plaintive words, but for him it would be, "They like my magazine, they really really like my magazine!"
The agency had agreed to buy ad space in Men's Weekly based on his pitch tonight! Anyone in publishing knew the meaning of such a coup: ad agencies represented dozens of businesses, and were the strategists who decided where to invest their clients' money. And they liked his new magazine focus. They were excited about the niche market of red-blooded men wanting the straight dope in plain language. They thought it had great advertising potential.
Well, most of them liked it. He remembered a few women in the meeting expressed discomfort with the blatant macho-flavor of some of his planned articles. But even they admitted there was probably a market for such things.
The circulation numbers and the revenue would prove the bottom-line truth about the popularity of the new Men's Weekly. He wouldn't have those numbers in for a couple more months. But ad agencies had their fingers on the pulse of pop culture. They could smell a winner. They had to, to stay in business.
His magazine smelled good to them.
He suddenly had the strong urge to tell Stanna about it. The memory of her snapping gray eyes made him want to rub the ad agency victory in her face.
Then he wondered what she was doing, after business hours, and who she was doing it with. A beautiful young blond on a Friday night pretty much had her pick of all sorts of men. The thought bothered him a little, enough to dim his satisfaction about the night's meeting. Stanna's chiseled pink mouth pressed to another man's mouth. Just like Jolene’s.
She could kiss whoever she wanted, he didn't care. He was annoyed that he'd even thought of it. He supposed it was a guy territorial thing. They'd tongued each other, so now she was part of his mental harem. It didn't mean a thing.
He climbed into his Jeep and enjoyed the bass rumble of the souped-up engine roaring to life. As he drove down Santa Monica Boulevard, he wondered if Stanna would go out with him sometime. Her sweet body and hot-tempered mind guaranteed an interesting evening. She probably wouldn't. She was the type who preferred the tame, easily controlled, effeminate type. The sort of guy who ate paste in third grade.
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