L.A. Caveman (12 page)

How could it be? Not Jolene! Maybe it
was a sister, a twin! Forgetting he'd followed her, forgetting
everything but the desperate relief of his solution, he stepped
closer. Of course she had a twin. It had to be a lookalike. His
Jolene loved him, only him, and they would have a good laugh over
this misunderstanding together.

Then her dark eyes met his, and
widened. Her hand let go of the man's immediately. Jake saw, and
understood. It was the moment ice began to coat his heart in
numbness. He couldn't deny what he saw.

He dropped her wallet where he stood,
taking one last look at the tableau of her creation. The strange
man just looked impatient and yelled something at him he didn't
hear. But Jolene. He saw a callous, hard look encase her face, an
expression he'd never seen before on anyone. Her game was over, her
plan to trap him in a cushy marriage thwarted, so her pretense
disappeared. He saw a cold man-hater whose only lust was for
playing him. And who knew who else.

She regarded Jake without even the
tribute of regret. He was only a lost opportunity to her, worthless
now.

Nothing more for me here.
Numb
detachment gave Jake the ability to turn his back and walk
away.

The numbness never really went away.
That creature had managed to crawl too far into his heart for it
not to affect him, especially at such a vulnerable time in his life
on the heels of his parent's death. From that point forward, men
were his only confidants. He dropped his few female friends when he
found he couldn't look at them without wondering what nasty secrets
they hid. Men could be trusted.

Women couldn't.

It was that simple.

Sometimes he met women he respected
and admired. Sometimes he'd even had casual relationships with
them. Nothing serious on his end. He preferred it that way. When
the women inevitably manipulated him with varying degrees of
subtlety, creating serious issues where none existed, he ended
it.

He'd never seen Jolene again. He was
better off for the lesson, he told himself. Too many of his male
readers could benefit from his experience. Even if he could impart
just a little healthy male skepticism in them about women, he'd be
doing them a huge service.

He had
Men's Weekly,
and it
would be his voice in addition to his single biggest
investment.

Stanna, as desirable and intriguing as
she was, had better not mess with that.

Every time they met, she messed with
it, Jake thought in bemusement more than a month later.

It was at another of their
now-established weekly lunches that they faced off across a square
table at the local Italian spot.

"My latest column talks about the
issue of men's freedom from women, otherwise known as the cold-foot
conundrum. I mean, guys want all the benefits of a relationship.
Sex, ego-stroking, a date on Saturday nights, etc. But too often
guys don't stick around when the woman wants to get more serious
than casual dating. I want to ask them, 'What are you afraid of?
Think the grass will be greener later on, when you’re older?'
That's a shabby way to treat a faithful, loving woman!"

Stanna's musical voice was soft but it
resonated clearly in the small restaurant. Her ivory skin seemed to
glow rosily with vigorous emotion, and Jake looked at her with
admiration even as he shot down her idea: "Every week with you it's
the same. Guys are the insensitive jerks and women are their
innocent victims. Get real. Sorry, but that doesn't fly with me or
my readers. You're just lucky that I kept your basic idea: the
issue of men's freedom from women. It's a necessity for a man to be
free to have space and quiet for introspection. It needful to see
the truth about their woman, so he can make the decision to stay or
leave on his own. Otherwise he shouldn't settle down. That's what I
think."

"Your readers will take that as
license to keep their feet cold forever. Sometimes one has to just
go for it, have faith and leap into it. Adopting your attitude, the
guys’ll refuse to commit until they're eighty years
old."

"Maybe that's how long they need to be
sure." Seeing her frustration, Jake relented enough to explain
gently, "I think it's in their best interests. But I was fair when
I edited the column. You know I was." It was too watered-down and
toothless for his taste, the defanged blend of her ideas and his.
Compromises were so boring.

The column really needed to be
completely pro-men, to be extreme and exciting. He revised enough
each week to satisfy himself that his readers would approve, and
enough to piss Stanna off, but he knew a compromise when he saw
one. He wondered why he went to the trouble every week when he
could just hire a ghostwriter to doctor her column to his
specifications and wash his hands of the whole affair.

It wasn’t completely about the money.
Stanna was good. He supposed he'd grown to like her enough to want
to train her to be a proper
Men's Weekly
columnist. Though
he could tell it would take longer than originally anticipated,
with those feminist ideals of hers.

He smiled, winking at her as he
grabbed for the bill and dug in his wallet. Stanna quickly threw in
her half of the tab. Just as he had the last five times, Jake
immediately tossed it back at her. Something about the way he did
it, as if the bills were worthless little Frisbees, appealed to
her.

She grumbled still. "You could just
leave me alone to write my own column, the way Ian did."

Jake snorted. "Leave you unsupervised?
No ma'am." He rose sinuously from his chair, the strong fingers of
his left hand resting on the cheerfully red-and-white checkered
tablecloth. Jake radiated a calm confidence that drew respectful
glances from men, and covetous ones from women. "Besides, I don't
want to leave you alone." His deep, teasing voice went straight
through her, the way it always did.

They locked eyes for a long, heated
moment.

Jake's broadcast a flirtatious
challenge. She knew her own cool gray eyes were leveled on him with
undisguised interest. She couldn’t help it. She felt flushed, and
her heartbeat was speeding again. He made her feel so utterly
present and accounted for.

He just reminded her of the kinds of
bad-news guys she knew how to handle. She sensed the danger. That
was why she always felt so fully alert with him, she told herself.
That's why her very hair follicles seemed to sense his presence.
Alpha-male chauvinists had that unfortunate effect on her. And Jake
was the alpha-est alpha-male of the bunch, and fun, too, which made
him immeasurably more appealing. When they were casual and joking
together, she had to forcibly remind herself that it was just
business.

He was her boss. And he still didn't
like her column. That made him a dangerous foe, someone to feel
very alert around. He was a smart man but a misguided one who
embraced the wrong philosophy regarding men and women. He was her
noble opposition.

She was on the side of good, while he
was on the side of... evil?

Come to the dark side,
Luke...

Just managing to stifle her giggles at
the image of Jake in Vader's black cape, Stanna let her eyes
broadcast her humor.

"Share the joke?" His warm insinuating
voice immediately dissolved the Star Wars image. Darth Vader could
never sound so disturbingly sexy.

"I was just thinking that you're a bad
badguy."

"A bad, bad guy?"

"Completely."

"And this is good?" Jake's quizzical
response made her laugh.

"Of course." Pushing back her chair
and standing, she reached for her wallet on the table. On impulse,
she touched his hand. It was firm and warm. "Thanks for lunch.” He
didn't move, but radiated a strong stillness. She had the sudden
impression that she'd just put her hand on a lion's back. A wild
lion.

Playing it out, she merely patted him
irreverently and took her hand back to herself. She felt
lightheaded.

He didn't move. He gazed at her,
evaluating. One corner of his mouth pulled into a slight smile. She
couldn't move, couldn’t make the everyday gestures of turning,
walking toward the door, heading back to work. She couldn't move
until he let her.

His piercing look seemed to delve into
her soul. She wondered what he saw there. And if it pleased him. He
was making her self-conscious. But she waited for him to say
whatever it was he was waiting to say. She raised her head
slightly, and matched him stare-for-stare.

He nodded slightly, as if to himself.
Abruptly, his eyes left hers and he casually moved towards the
exit. Mystified but intrigued, she followed.

What was on his mind? Did it have
anything to do with the last five week's unspoken agreement to
treat each other with a cordial respect? He hadn't once tried to
kiss her, and she didn't lose her temper when he butchered her
columns. Well, not too much.

Her own restraint surprised her. Each
week she went to lunch with him, guns blazing to defend the week's
brainchild and discuss the already-published column. And each week
he performed a vivisection on her ideas, leaving mere remnants of
the original punch, and he justified the latest published
vivisection. But he did it fairly, explaining his reasoning and
all.

She wished she didn’t respect the man.
She knew he was still very much wrong about two essential things:
his view of the intrinsically evil/burdensome nature of women in
general, and the new content of
Men's Weekly.
Including its
new covers. If she saw one more scantily clad bimbo in a one-use
pose, she would puke right onto Jake's lap.

Which meant he'd better carry a few
changes of clothes, Stanna thought wryly. The next eight issues,
since they prepared two months in advance, were showered with
bimbos. Jake's "giving men what they want" meant lots of
women.

What was worse, the magazine was
garnering good reviews. It was extreme, un-PC, and in-your-face.
The audience loved it. The circulation numbers backed it up. Jake
was right about that.

Some other people out there in
reader-land didn't like it. There was that women's group she saw on
the news last week. And one or two PTA members who trashed
Men's
Weekly
for lowbrow "pig slop." But they weren't creating the
kind of commotion that made for magazine boycotting.

Not yet, anyway. Just yesterday Ian
called and told her about some huge feminist group in West
Hollywood making
Men's Weekly
their whipping boy. He saw one
of their representatives on the local news condemning it. Their
protest march, over a freelancer’s article listing ways to score on
a first date, closed down a part of Santa Monica Boulevard for over
an hour.

And Ian's own reaction to "Stan's"
latest published column "Freedom from Women" told her all she
needed to know about his opinion of it: he laughed. Sobering
instantly, he gave her his condolences about the alterations Jake
imposed. But that impulsive laugh of his had irritated her. He
could have at least shown some sympathy.

So,
Men's Weekly
had foes as
well as fans.

Jake wouldn't care, though. All he
cared about was the magazine growing according to his master
plan.

And it was, whether she approved or
not.

So what did that serious,
contemplative look on his face mean?

He held the door open for her to
precede him into the afternoon sunshine. Sun glinted on the metal
and glass in the tiny strip-mall parking lot, and she pulled her
shades down from atop her head. Cutting through the lot to the wide
sidewalk on Wilshire Boulevard, they strolled in silence. Three
more buildings and they'd be back at work. She paced him quietly,
waiting impatiently. Two more buildings.

"What are you thinking?" she finally
queried.

He looked at her. "I was just
wondering," he drawled out casually, "if you'd like to go hiking
this weekend."

Curiouser and curiouser. The big bad
magazine owner actually asked her out on a real date? She turned
the question on him. "Are you asking me out?" Immediately she
regretted her bluntness when he frowned slightly and spit out,
"Never mind."

A few more paces in
silence.

"Never mind?"

"Yes. Forget it." He walked a little
faster. She had to exert herself to keep abreast. "Sorry. For a
second I thought it'd be fun to go hiking in the Santa Monica
mountains, but then I remembered who I was talking to. You wouldn't
be interested."

"I wouldn't be? What, do you think
that because I'm female that I'd break out in hives at the thought
of exertion? I hardly even wear high heels. I happen to
love
hiking," Stanna asserted.

"Great. Noon Saturday? I know a great
trail. It’s a bit rough, but you look like you might be able to
handle a rocky path that climbs up to Sandpiper Peak. Quite a
view," he remarked offhandedly, as if she weren't obviously
simmering from that "might be able to handle it"
comment.

He just didn't take women seriously
enough, Stanna decided. He would after Saturday though. She smiled.
She'd been making use of the Santa Monica National Park Service
land since she'd moved to Los Angeles. The hundreds of acres of
barely touched wilderness so close to the city's freeways and mini
malls and endless concrete buildings soothed her immeasurably.
She'd never been on the Sandpiper Peak trail, but how hard could it
be? She could handle anything he could.