When I rounded the corner, Ellie was waiting, standing at the table with her hands on her hips, her jaw clenched tight. She pointed at a chair. “Sit, please.”
I sat.
“The agreement when I hired you full time was that you would keep up your Indie Girl gig. If you don’t fulfill your end of the deal, then we no longer have one. Let me ask you again. What did you just send me?”
“It’s exactly what it looks like. I’m quitting Indie Girl, but before you fire me, I think you should know that I’m pretty sure you’re going to like the Plan B I’ve worked up.” I set my papers on the desk and pushed the top one toward her, hoping she didn’t notice the slight hand tremor as I did so.
She hesitated for a moment before snatching it up.
“What is it?” she asked, skimming it.
“It’s a 2,500-word exclusive with Landon Scott.”
She shot me a startled gaze. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
She reread the page and then held her hand out. “I need the rest of it.”
I placed both palms on top of my little stack. “I can’t give it to you.”
Her eyebrow shot up. “You work for us. You can’t publish this anywhere else.”
That was the opening I’d hoped for. “No, you’re right. I can’t publish this anywhere else. But I also don’t have to publish it here if I don’t work here either.”
She leaned across the table. “You are a schemer.”
I didn’t flinch. “I’m learning from the best.”
She didn’t react, but when she realized I wouldn’t either, she took the seat opposite me. “So your terms are that I either let you out of ‘Single in the City’ or I lose the exclusive?”
I nodded. “That’s the upshot.”
She watched me, calculating how serious I was. “I’m not sure that the right to this exclusive offsets losing the column.”
I slid the two bottom sheets from my pile and pushed them toward her. “You won’t lose it. This is who I think should replace me. Do you remember the date with Bachelor Reject?”
Her lips twitched. That had been a pretty funny recap. “Yes.”
“I’ve kept in touch with Abby, the other girl. She should take over, and she’ll do a way better job because she’s into it. You’ll get the added bonus that in all probability, she’ll fall in love and readers will follow her on that journey. I asked her to write up the last date she went on like it was a ‘Single in the City’ column. She’s a great blogger, but I didn’t know if she could write for the magazine. I think when you read through it, you’ll see she nailed it.”
Ellie took the pages and read through them. A minute or two later, she looked back up. “She can write,” she acknowledged.
“She’ll be great,” I said.
“I’m not sure her finding a relationship will make good column fodder.”
I shrugged. “Readers would have gotten tired of my schtick soon anyway. Do you really want to read about someone for a whole year that’s such a loser she can never get a second date? I think it was already starting to wear thin. Abby will inject it with new life.”
She considered that. “I’d have to pay her, plus your salary, instead of getting a two-fer.”
I nodded. There was no way around that. “True, but this Landon Scott piece is going to drive major traffic to the magazine. You’ll get thousands of readers who have never clicked through to us before, and you’ll have the chance to convert them into subscribers. And as for me, I’m still willing to do the grunt work and pay my dues. I’m not going to go all diva and demand special assignments.”
She snorted. “Not now anyway. I have no doubt you’ll be trotting in soon with a new scheme to get yourself off of the grunt stories too.”
I grinned. “Probably. But haven’t I offered added value every time we’ve bargained?”
She drummed her fingers on the first page of the Landon article. “Yes,” she conceded. “You have.”
I figured it was now or never. “So . . . do we have a deal?”
She picked up the Landon article and glanced over it. “If the rest of the story is good, then yes. It’s a deal.”
I sat back and exhaled. “It’s good. I promise.”
“I’ll see,” she said and gestured for the rest of it. “I’ll take that now. I have a few minutes between appointments this morning, and I’ll look at it then.”
“Thank you, Ellie.”
She shook her head and then got up and walked out. “I’ll tell Denny to run your last Indie Girl piece,” she called over her shoulder.
Battling her exhausted me, but it was the only shot I had at making a relationship with Tanner work. I’d done everything I could, and I believed Tanner cared for me enough that it was going to pay off. Now I just had to sit back and wait to see if I knew him as well as I hoped.
When I walked back to my desk, Chantelle shot me a look that demanded to know if I was still okay. Ellie was rustling her stuff up and preparing to leave to do Ellie Stuff, so I flashed a subtle thumbs up at Chantelle. She nodded and went back to whatever she was working on.
“The column is live,” Denny said, eyes glued to the screen.
Chantelle and Janie scrambled to click on it.
Ellie shook her head again and headed out with a terse, “See you after lunch.”
I sat down and texted my parents to let them know that Indie Girl had checked in for her last hurrah. I noted the time on my monitor. Almost ten. When would Tanner see it? I was banking on his curiosity luring him to it in spite of our argument. I’d have read it if our roles were reversed.
Denny finished first. He swiveled to face me and sat back. “Whoa.”
A moment later, Janie chimed in. “Yeah. Whoa.”
Chantelle turned away from her computer. “You did it.”
“I had to roll the dice,” I said. “I hope this works.”
Excitement glowed in Janie’s face. “This is so cool! Did you send this to Tanner? What did he say?”
Denny and Chantelle both looked expectant.
“Nothing. Yet,” I added when Janie’s face fell. “I didn’t send it to him, and since it just went up, I don’t know if he’s read it yet.”
Denny shrugged. “He’s an idiot if he doesn’t come running.”
I reddened. “Thanks.”
Chantelle switched off her monitor and grabbed her purse. “I have to review the new exhibit at the Anders Gallery, but I expect to hear all the juicy details when I get back later.”
“This is going to be awesome!” Janie said. “I’ll be gone all afternoon, so I hope Tanner does something soon.”
“Me too, Janie,” I said. “Me too.”
* * *
Janie was destined to leave disappointed. By noon, there had been no word from Tanner. Not an e-mail, call, or text. Nothing. The column itself generated a ton of feedback from readers. Dozens mourned my leaving. Even more people congratulated me on finding love. A handful wished me luck, realizing that I hadn’t quit “Single in the City” for a sure thing. In fact, my romantic future looked less certain by the second.
Denny left to get a sandwich and offered to grab me one, but even if I weren’t burnt out for the rest of my life on that particular food, I couldn’t have eaten. The cold, hard knot in my stomach left no room for anything else. If it got any bigger it would push on my lungs and make breathing hard too. I refreshed the column’s web page and scoured the comment trail. There was nothing there from Tanner either. No “I hear you” by TG. Nothing.
Courtney had texted an hour before. It was another “Whoohoo,” which I took to mean she approved. But beyond begging me to tell Tanner about Indie Girl, she had made a point of staying out of our relationship. I didn’t want to put her in the middle of it now by asking if she had heard from him.
I needed something else to do before I lost my mind obsessing over this. It was only my love life at stake. Certainly, I had more pressing things to get to, like Mooli.
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br /> I tried to immerse myself in the world of designer vegetables but gave up within a half hour, sure that I had never hated vegetables more than I did at that moment. Denny wandered back in and raised an eyebrow. I shook my head. No Tanner. I spent another hour aimlessly clicking through some of the local news feeds, trying to find inspiration for a new article. Despite my stern self-talk not to, I clicked through to the Bee. No articles from Tanner had posted that day. Slow news day, maybe?
By midafternoon, both Ellie and Chantelle, plus two of the ad reps, had made it back in. Chantelle didn’t even wait for the door to close behind her before demanding, “Well?”
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
She looked disappointed and dropped her stuff on her desk. “At least half your plan worked,” she said.
I shot her a pointed glance not to bring that half of the plan up in front of Ellie. She nodded and turned to her monitor. I stared blankly at mine, trying to cheer myself with all the “Single in the City” comments bemoaning my departure, but it didn’t help. If I didn’t hear from Tanner, then the half of the plan that worked didn’t really matter anyway.
In the comment trail, one troll had left a truly lovely gem. “Good luck to the loser who dates you. He must not know about all your flame outs here, or else he’s too dumb to run the other way.”
Nice. Tanner might be dumb enough to stick with me, even when I wasn’t smart enough to see what I had when I had it, but at least he understood the function of the caps lock key.
Then again, maybe troll boy had it exactly right. Maybe Tanner had wised up and run as far away as possible.
The office stayed quiet, even though it was a fuller house than usual. My little black rain cloud must have expanded to include the rest of the staff. How nice of me to dampen the mood for everyone. What started as a day of promise and possible new beginnings had become a sad, sorry footnote in the wreck of my love life. I checked the time again. Two hours before everyone cleared out and I could quit pretending I was being productive. Two hours until I could drive home and collapse.
Two hours had never felt so long.
Ellie left first, off to a “meeting” with one of the magazine’s “investors.” Chantelle and I had decided that these meetings probably translated into shopping with a girlfriend or eating with a young, eligible male power broker at one of the downtown venture capital firms or law offices.
An IM alert popped up from Chantelle at the bottom of my screen. Investment meeting with a shadowy Russian?
It normally entertained me to trade IM guesses with Chantelle about what Ellie was really up to but not today. Today I struggled to wade through even the simplest tasks, and they grew harder as the day wore on without a word from Tanner. I got nothing, I typed back.
Chantelle left an hour later with a murmur of encouragement and a squeeze on my shoulder. The ad girls left by five, and Denny and I had the office to ourselves. Usually, it was the most productive time of the day for me, but I knew it was hopeless. I stood and looked down at my blouse, a gauzy lavender confection I had paired with a denim pencil skirt this morning when I woke up deluded that I would reunite with Tanner.
“I’m out,” I said to Denny. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sorry,” he said, and I knew he was apologizing that my roll of the dice had come up snake eyes.
I shuffled my laptop and a few loose papers into my bag and slung my purse over my shoulder. For the first time in a while, I found myself wishing again that I didn’t share a room with Rosemary. I badly needed to burrow and ignore the world for the rest of the night, and then maybe, just maybe, I would find the energy to hatch a new plan to make things right with Tanner. The thought left me desolate though. Today’s major plays had been the biggest and boldest new plan I could think of. I had hoped that by publicly quitting the column, I could say in words and actions that I was sorry and I was ready. There was no way to mistake the message. That left only one option.
He had rejected it.
I trudged downstairs to my car in the small strip mall parking lot and stopped short. A box sat on The Zuke. It was the size of a shoebox and wrapped in newspaper comics. I glanced around the parking lot, and then I saw him, leaning on his Honda at the other end of the lot.
“Open it,” Tanner called.
Inside was a copy of the Bee, folded in half to fit the box and bound with a red ribbon tied in a slightly squashed bow. I lifted it out and untied it then opened the paper and spread it flat on The Zuke’s hood. A huge block headline screamed “Tanner Graham Finds Love.” Underneath it was a full color picture that Courtney had snapped on our trampoline double date. The rest of the paper was blank, but this had definitely been done on the Bee’s printing press. I jerked up in surprise and stared at him, eyes wide with shock. Tanner smiled and pushed himself away from his car, in no hurry as he strolled toward me, hands in his pockets.
“Wha . . . how . . .” I stammered, trying to process everything.
“I know people,” he said, reaching me and stopping a few feet away.
“But . . . you didn’t call me.” I was bewildered. Two minutes before, I had walked out of my office convinced that our relationship was on life support. Now Tanner stood there smiling like nothing was wrong. Which was great, except . . . “You made me wait all day!”
He laughed. “I had to wait until my buddy came on shift this afternoon to pull this together. Besides, you made me wait. For months.”
“But we’ve only been dating for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks is all it took me to fall in love with you,” he said softly. “I’ve been feeling this way for months.”
My jaw dropped. I stared at him for nearly a minute, attempting to form a response a few times and failing miserably. He reached over and, with the lightest touch of his index finger, pushed my jaw back up. Then he took a step closer and kissed me, his hand sliding through my hair and cupping the back of my head like he was making sure I wouldn’t slip away.
I’d sampled a lot of kisses from Tanner over the last month. Hello kisses, good-bye kisses, just-because kisses, you-look-cute kisses, the-Jazz-just-scored kisses, I-hate-that-it’s-time-to-go kisses. But this kiss . . .
It wasn’t even on the same planet as those kisses.
This kiss staked his claim. And I returned it because I fiercely wanted him to be mine.
“You were saying?” he asked, taking a step back. I heard the hitch in his breathing.
“When did you know?”
He smiled. “I figured there might be potential when I figured out that you had left that thank you note for Courtney. I’d seen the feisty side of Pepper Spicer, and then, in that note to her, I realized what was underneath.”
“What’s that?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the hum of passing traffic.
“A woman with the biggest heart I’d ever seen, hiding behind jokes and insults.”
I swallowed. “Was I really insulting?”
“I deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t!” I said. “You deserve so much better than what I’ve dished out over the last month.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Forget it,” he said. “I triple forgive you. But there’s one thing that’s killing me.”
“What is it?”
He reached out and pulled me into his arms. “Please tell me you didn’t quit the magazine for me,” he said, his breath tickling my hair. “Please? Because I might kind of hate myself if you did.”
There would be time enough later to explain that getting out of the column owed a lot to Landon. I had a feeling Tanner might write a thank you note of his own to Landon since the interview freed me from a stream of dates with strangers.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I know that’s never what you wanted.”
“No,” he said, leaning back to take my face in his hands and dropping another soft kiss on my lips. “All I’ve wanted since you limped out of my life the first day I met you was to have you back in it. Does that
scare you?”
I stood on tiptoe to return his kiss. “Not even a little bit. Thank you, Tanner Graham.”
He smiled. “For what?”
“For being patient. I’ll make it worth it.”
“You’ve always been worth it,” he said, punctuating his opinion with another kiss. He broke it off when a hoot from the balcony sounded, and we looked up to find Denny standing there, grinning and waving. He disappeared back into the office.
Tanner smiled down at me, tightening his hold. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being you. I love you, Pepper.”
I squeezed back. “You’ll do.”
He leaned back to look at me, his eyes twinkling. “I’ll do? I read your column this morning. You don’t have any secrets anymore.”
I wound my arms around his neck and pulled his lips down to meet mine again.
“I love when you go all investigative journalist on me,” I said.
He captured me with another kiss that overloaded my senses so completely that I knew Tanner had just single-handedly rewired my central nervous system. I broke away to draw a breath and stare into the eyes that captured me like nothing had before.
“Here’s an exclusive, Tanner Graham. I love you like crazy.”
“My favorite kind of story,” he said. “I already know how this one ends.”
“How?”
“Happily ever after.”
Dear Mom and Dad,
Thank you seems inadequate, but it’s the only way I know how to tell you what’s in my heart. There are a million things I could thank you for, like all your help with the wedding. Mom, the bridesmaid dresses came out beautifully. When Ginger wants to keep hers, you know it’s true! And Dad, the chest you made is going to have a permanent place of honor in our new home. We’ll keep our most precious things inside.
But thanking you for the gifts and the help is the easy part. Finding words for what you’ve given me beyond that . . . that’s the impossible part. Thank you for loving me enough to challenge me to become better, grow bigger, and be more. Thank you for teaching me the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learned: the power of gratitude. You were right, Dad. A thankful heart has let me witness daily all the blessings in my life.
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