tippingthescales_GEN

by Michelle Hoppe

  Well, that was just too bad. Peony Publishing had contracted Image Solutions—the business Libby had started with her friend Miranda Eastwood just over a year ago—to spruce up their latest debut author’s image before his upcoming book launch. A corporate client like Peony could generate the kind of word-of-mouth she and Miranda had been desperately hoping for. If they didn’t get more clients soon, the business might not make it. Given that they’d started the venture after they’d both been laid off from their salary-paying jobs due to economic circumstances, neither Libby nor Miranda relished the idea of putting themselves back on the job market.

  Consulting the map she had open on her iPhone, Libby saw the street she was looking for and executed a swift right turn that elicited a honk from an oncoming sedan. Libby sent the driver an apologetic wave before returning her attention to the road ahead. The sign for Saul’s Automotive came into view and she found a parking space right out front.

  A quick assessment in the rearview mirror told her the peach lip gloss she’d applied still sparkled and her blonde ponytail remained firmly in place, a miracle given the forty-minute drive to the outskirts of Brisbane in her sporty red convertible. Thank heaven for maximum-hold hair products.

  Libby got out of the car and strode into the garage’s front office. No electronic beep went off when she opened the door. “Hello,” she called out. No one came. Glancing at her watch, Libby saw it was a little after five. Maybe the crew had already knocked off for the day. Not to be deterred that easily, Libby followed the muffled sound of male voices filtering into the office through a side door.

  A round of raucous laughter drifted out from the bowels of the garage, covering the sound of Libby’s heels clicking on the grease-stained cement floor. She caught the tail end of a sentence, delivered with utterly masculine conceit. “Took a week for the scratches on my back to heal. So, Rodney, I wouldn’t knock a librarian until you’ve tried one.”

  Another round of guffaws drowned out Libby’s harrumph of displeasure. Charming. Apparently, she’d walked in on an exaggerated tale of some man’s prowess in bed. In her experience, a woman was very unlikely to be whipped into such a frenzy by a man’s abilities that her ardor would cause him physical injury. Libby rolled her eyes. Men and their stories.

  “I’d take his advice if I were you, Rod,” one of the men said. “He is the love doctor, dating guru to the masses, a legend in his own time.”

  “You mean in his own mind,” another man snickered. He let out an anguished yowl as his comment earned him a hard punch on the shoulder.

  Libby’s focus zeroed in on the man who’d delivered that punch, the librarian-loving dating guru. So this was the man she’d come looking for. Her initial assessment—based on her view of the back of his head—was that he badly needed a haircut. Fashionably styled long hair on a man was one thing. Recalcitrant curls that had been allowed to grow scruffy purely from inattention was quite another. From the back, Jake McCallum reminded her of a stray dog that hadn’t been properly clipped since pup-hood.

  “Aw, don’t knock him. Somehow this chump hit the jackpot. Fame and fortune and lust-crazed women throwing themselves at him. That’s what Jake can look forward to. I wouldn’t mind being in his position at all.”

  “Are you nuts? More likely the feminists are going to put a price on his head when they get a load of the chapter called—what is it, Jake? How to Keep Your Man from Straying Without Leashing Him?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Someone else laughed. “I think the crux of it is a blowjob is worth a hundred cooked dinners. No word of a lie, Jake. A guy can always order pizza, but he can’t always dial a—”

  “Enough already,” Jake growled at the other men. “I don’t want to hear another word about that stupid book. I wish I’d never agreed to have the thing published.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. McCallum.”

  Libby’s casual announcement had all four men swiveling toward her in surprise. The man to whom she’d directed her remark regarded her over one wide shoulder, his eyebrows raised.

  He looked her up and down, a sweeping assessment that told her nothing about what he thought. At length, he drawled, “Honey, if you’re looking for your car, office hours are over for the day. Everything we’ve got left is up on a hoist or in pieces, so you’re all out of luck.”

  “I’m not here about a car. I’m Libby Allison, from Image Solutions. I’ve been contracted by Peony Publishing to work with you. We’ve spoken on the phone. Several times.”

  Taking a step forward, Libby stuck out her hand. Jake glanced at it. He took his time getting to his feet, unfurling his toned body inch by inch and turning to face her. Libby’s breath faltered, something about the way he moved making her picture what was underneath the old jeans and grubby grey T-shirt. There were muscles in that body, hard-worked ones. He gave the impression of vitality tightly leashed by a deceptively casual demeanor.

  Her pulse gave a leap of awareness. Wow. He was kind of…magnetic might be the word. Scruffy as hell with an air of insolence that was bound to grate on her nerves in no time. All the same, he wasn’t bad to look at. Not at all.

  “Miss Allison.” Jake McCallum lifted his hand to show her the grease-marked state of it, and Libby dropped her arm back to her side. “You look a lot different than I pictured.”

  Libby forced herself to breathe normally, although the notion that he’d imagined her at all did odd things to her heart rate. “What did you expect?”

  He smiled. “Someone bigger.”

  Being barely five feet two, Libby had heard every short joke known to womankind. She didn’t feel like suffering through any today. “I’ve come to set up an appointment for you to meet with me and my partner at our office in Toowong.”

  “You drove all the way out here to bug me about that again?”

  Where did he get the nerve to act like the injured party here? “I wouldn’t have had to go to these lengths if you’d agreed to make an appointment over the phone.”

  “I already told you, you’re wasting your time.”

  “I’ll decide what’s a waste of my time or not. Your publisher wants you to have an image overhaul in time for your book launch and the host of interviews and public appearances they’ve set up. It seems clear to me you’re in dire need of one, Mr. McCallum. So, no, I don’t think this is a misuse of my time.”

  “Well, frankly, I think it’s a waste of mine.” His voice now carried the thread of exasperation Libby recognized from their few fruitless telephone conversations. “I have no intention of having a makeover just to live up to some fabricated standard of what I’m supposed to wear or how I’m supposed to act. With me, you get what you see.”

  “If people don’t like what they see, they won’t bother to move beyond appearances and get to know you—or in this case, your book.”

  Jake folded his arms across his chest and regarded her with a curious tilt of his head. “Well, if that isn’t some of the most twisted logic I’ve ever heard.”

  Fists moving to her hips, Libby retorted, “This from the man who wrote ‘Ladies, if want to reel in a fish, you have to use the right bait’.”

  “Marlin,” Jake corrected, the turn of his lips hinting at chagrin. If it weren’t for the dim lighting in the garage, Libby might have believed the dark tinge in his cheeks was a blush. “I said reel in a marlin. Men are the fish in that analogy.”

  “Oh, I got that. Men as fish,” Libby gave a delicate sniff, filling her nostrils with the scent of grease, old sweat and the salty pungency of prawn heads left to bake on the nearby boat ramp.

  “What’s your point, Miss Allison?”

  “My point is you seem perfectly happy to tell women how to dress, how to talk, heck, how to think in order to please a man. But you aren’t willing to come with me to buy one little suit, perhaps get a haircut—” she let her opinion about his shaggy, too-long-to-be-fashionable style be known with a sweep of her gaze, “—in order to promote your work in the best light possible.�
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  “Look, lady.” His expression softened a little with something she easily interpreted as condescension. “I’m sure you think you’ve done the right thing in coming here. I get it. Peony Publishing wants you to whip me into shape, make some kind of metrosexual out of me. Tell me, do I look like I could pass for a metrosexual to you?”

  Libby smiled despite her irritation at his tone. “Not yet. But when I’m through with you, you won’t know yourself.”

  “And that is exactly what I don’t want. So I think the best thing for you to do is head on back to your office and chalk me up as a lost cause.” Libby couldn’t contain a little squeal of outrage when he reached out and tapped her on the nose with his dirty, callused index finger. “Thanks for stopping by, chickadee.”

  Libby stood, shock rooting her to the spot, and watched him return to the group. The three other men seated on upturned crates all darted their gazes away, pretending they hadn’t watched everything that had just unfolded.

  How dare he tweak her nose and send her on her way, like some Girl Scout selling cookies he didn’t want to buy? Did he think she would run out of here like a scared rabbit?

  Apparently, he did. Jake McCallum parked his butt and lifted his abandoned beer to his mouth as though she no longer mattered, while Libby remained where she was, fuming and ineffectual.

  Well, ineffectual wasn’t good enough. Libby didn’t do ineffectual. Miranda was counting on her to get this right, to secure the future of Image Solutions. Libby was hardly going to let some boorish oaf of a man like Jake McCallum ruin everything because he didn’t feel like shopping, when it was obvious nobody needed the help of a fully stocked department store more than he did.

  Her heels were clacking on the cement floor before words had formulated in her mind. But when she reached the group of men and opened her mouth, she found she had a lot to say.

  *

  “You, Jake McCallum, are an arrogant, supercilious, bald-faced hypocrite.”

  Jake had been called worse things by women over the years, but he’d never been reamed out with quite as much conviction.

  He turned back to stare at Libby Allison. She was dressed in red and white from the polka dot silk scarf in her hair to the red suede ankle boots on her feet. Her polka dot blouse looked silky and too delicate for the interior of an auto shop, her narrow red skirt like something out of a 50’s sitcom. Her hair was a golden fountain sprouting from the top of her head and her face was…no denying it, pretty. Taut lines of frustration and anger narrowed her big blue eyes and thinned her shiny lips, but she was attractive all the same.

  His Dad, Saul, would say Libby Allison was as cute as a button. Jake didn’t let the outrageous adorability of her exterior fool him. She might look like a pixie-faced movie starlet on the outside, but something told him the inside was all steamroller with a full tank of gas, ready to roll right over him.

  A lot of maintenance, a girl like her. The highest kind. And in Jake’s opinion, upkeep was supposed to be for cars, not for women.

  “Well, I guess you pegged me, chickadee.” Jake delivered the words with the laconic drawl that seemed to irk every woman he’d ever come across, taking some juvenile relish in the teasing rhyme. Anyone would think he was still in the school yard. With a sigh of resignation, he stood once more to face her. “You get paid for character assassinations too?”

  “Assassinate? I wouldn’t need to touch your character to do it damage. Its wounds are self-inflicted. You’re not even willing to give this a chance, even though your publisher clearly instructed you to do so. Isn’t that disrespectful to the investment they’ve made in you?

  Not for the first time, Jake rued the day he’d let his sister Angela talk him in to taking Peony Publishing up on their contract offer. This writing gig was not a new career he was launching. It’s Not Him—It’s You had been little more than a lark, a blog he’d started to blow off steam about his trials in the dating world. The blog had caused a minor online stir that had turned into a loyal following, and Jake had gone along for the ride, making each post more entertaining than the last. Sometimes he’d embellished his dating disasters for maximum effect. Sometimes, unfortunately, he hadn’t needed to. Angela had even shown him how to make money from advertising, and when Peony had come sniffing around, offering to compile his posts into a dating advice book, it had been Angela who’d insisted he do it.

  So where was Angela now that the scary pixie lady wanted to go over him with a fine-tooth style comb? Jake would have loved to chew her out about the mess this book deal was starting to make of his previously uncomplicated life.

  “Don’t you care if your book is a success?”

  Jake took a thoughtful swig of his beer, pretending to mull over Libby’s question. Then he shrugged. “Nope.”

  The pint-sized blonde appeared stunned. “That’s just crazy.”

  Jake tilted his beer bottle at her. “In your opinion.”

  “In everyone’s opinion.”

  “Listen, I already have a job.” Jake gestured around the garage with his beer bottle. “I don’t really give a crap if the book makes a hundred bucks or a hundred thousand.”

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d take the hundred thousand if it landed in his lap. Inject some cash flow into the garage, send his mum and dad on a nice long holiday. Not that Jake thought for a minute a print version of a bunch of blog posts was going to race out the door of every bookshop in the country.

  “Your publisher obviously cares how the book does,” Libby pointed out. “Or they wouldn’t have sent me to make sure you’re capable of selling it.”

  “Aw, Jeez,” Jake muttered testily. “What difference does it make what people think of me? It’s the product that matters, isn’t it?”

  “You are the product, knucklehead.”

  Her insult caused laughter to ripple through the guys. Even Rodney, the apprentice who always acted shit-scared of him, was laughing. This girl was doing a verbal takedown of him, and the guys who’d always respected him were getting their afternoon entertainment while she was at it. Enough was enough.

  Jake took a step forward. To her credit, Libby didn’t even flinch. Jake pushed the moment of admiration aside and scowled. “You always insult your potential clients, Libby?”

  Her lips curved triumphantly. “So you admit you’re my client.”

  “I said potential. I still don’t see the necessity for all this. I own a suit. What if I promise to get it out of storage and dust it off for the book launch?”

  “Dust it off!” She clucked her tongue in a thoroughly irritating manner. “I should think not. You need a complete re-style if you’re going to create the buzz you need to sell copies of your book.”

  He heard the air quotes around the word book and didn’t like it one bit. It was all right for him to call his own work a joke, but for some jumped-up shop assistant with an attitude to look down her nose—that was another situation altogether. “You don’t like the book.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve only had time to skim the first few chapters of the advance copy Peony sent me,” she informed him while checking out her French manicure.

  In other words, she’d paid only enough attention to support her already concrete opinions about what a jerk he was. She’d probably hated him the instant she read the book’s title. He could tell her he hadn’t picked it, that he’d never intended to tell women how they should behave in relationships and that fancy editing could put a whole different slant on things, but what was the point? She’d already formed her view, and from the stubborn set of her pointy little chin, he didn’t see it changing anytime soon.

  This was yet another reason why he should never have taken his sister’s advice and accepted the book deal. He may not be the nicest bloke in the world, but he didn’t relish the possibility of being the most hated guy on the southern continent. For one thing, the notoriety was going to kill his social life.

  Not that he’d had much of one lately.

  What a
lecture Libby Allison would give him if she knew that. A dating guru who was so sick of the game he’d voluntarily spent the season on the bench. He was relieved, at least for now, to be out of the cauldron of coffee dates, away from the potential minefield of casual sex. Lately, he’d stuck to work, beer and poker with the guys and spending nights alone in his apartment above the garage, listening to classic Radiohead until he fell asleep on the couch.

  Shit. When put like that, his life sounded pathetic.

  “Okay, you win.” Nothing like a little harsh self-reflection to make a guy get off his high horse. “I can try and do something this weekend.” He’d put in an appearance, let the girl pick out a couple of shirts and get it over with. He could manage that.

  She pursed her lips. “I think we need more time.”

  “I’m working. I can’t just leave.”

  “Sure you can.”

  Jake groaned at the familiar voice and the certain knowledge that Saul McCallum was going to take the side of the bouncy blonde. His father was always telling him to get out more, to get away from the garage. If Saul had had his way, Jake would never have left his other life in Sydney two and a half years ago to help him run the business in the first place.

  Back then Saul had suffered a heart attack. As they both well knew, if Jake hadn’t come back when he did, his dad would have had to sell the business. Everything the old man had worked for gone in a puff of smoke, all because Jake wasn’t here to pick up the slack.

  Jake had been determined not to let that happen, and Saul had never quite forgiven Jake for giving up his high-flying job in Sydney to come back here. Neither had he forgiven himself for needing Jake too.

  “I’m Saul McCallum,” Jake heard his father tell Libby. “I own this place.”

  “McCallum. You two are related?”

  “Jakey’s my son.”

  Jake winced at the childhood nickname.