L.A. Caveman (23 page)

She breathed in a heavy sigh of relief
and turned, resigned, to face the next challenge of her miserable
day.

A drop-dead gorgeous "Fred with Tires"
poster boy look-alike strode toward her confidently, a serious
expression on his slightly grease-smudged face. Her heart dropped
to the pavement and bounced up again, thudding wildly.
It's
him,
she thought. Her heart and body, in full agreement, homed
in on him.
That one. That’s the one I want
.

He cocked his head then, almost as if
he'd heard her. Then he smiled.

The scent of ocean spray followed Jake
into his office later that morning. He smelled it on his coat as he
turned to hang it and felt grateful that he lived and worked so
close to something as refreshing as the Pacific. It certainly
calmed him when he needed it.

He’d needed it badly that
morning.

Damn her, she'd had that effect on him
from the very beginning.

His eyes fell on the accordion folders
she'd left on his desk. They looked familiar. Mentally snapping his
fingers, he finally remembered where he seen them
before.

They were the same folders he'd seen
in Stanna's arms as she snuck out of his office the day before. So
she thought she could just casually return his stolen papers
whenever she felt like it? He didn't think so!

Marching the few steps to his desk, he
snatched up the folders. Aside from Stanna carting them out of his
office, he couldn't recall seeing them before.

Strange.

Attached to the uppermost one he
noticed a yellow sticky note. Stanna's writing, he saw. Her
delicate script only covered a small part of the paper:

"This was Ian's. He kept it in a
secret compartment in your desk. Thought you should know.
Stanna."

An hour later, he let both folders
drop heavily to the floor. Ian had been embezzling such obscene
amounts of money that the old owners should have clued in -- but
they hadn't. They'd just thought the magazine wasn't
successful.

Jake started to laugh. It was all
starting to make sense. It was successful. Hugely.

Ian had obviously called Stanna to
manipulate her. The petty vandalism to his house, the suicidal
woman's phone call to Stanna, all of it was Ian's attempt to make
the magazine do poorly enough to buy it back from Jake for a
song.

Which meant that Stanna was innocent
of it all.

He sobered instantly. She hadn't
knowingly betrayed him. It was his paranoid doubting that made him
think to distrust her. His emotions did a wild flip-flop inside him
as he realized the extent of his error.

He’d royally screwed things
up.

He could only hope she'd forgive him.
He didn't think there was enough numbing balm in the world to heal
his heart if she didn't.

Stanna straightened her legs out,
grimacing as her knees complained with a funny grinding sound.
She'd spent the entire morning of her spontaneous vacation day
online, perusing advertisements for jobs.

Spread around her in a loose
semi-circle, all the articles she’d ever written for
Men’s
Weekly
poised in neat stacks, ready to be placed into the
portfolio and resume package she was preparing.

The printed out online classifieds
seemed to mock her. Squares and rectangles of bright yellow
highlights marked all the jobs that Stanna considered decent enough
to notice. Two light blue pen strokes circled two highlighted
squares: Magazine companies. Those were the two best possibilities.
As she looked more closely, though, one was located in Oxnard. Too
far.

"Damn," she muttered, scratching it
out.

She was not in a good mood.

Jake's voice on his work answering
machine had made her heart do crazy acrobatics. It was the first
full day off she'd taken for any reason since she'd been at
Men's Weekly
. She didn't tell his machine that. She just
said she was sick. She wanted to get off the phone as soon as
possible to start the long, hard process of severing her life from
his and healing her heart. Getting past the whole messy business
and on with life.

She looked gloomily at the ads. The
other blue-penned winner was right nearby in West Hollywood. A "hot
new start-up 'zine looking for bright team player for
leader-in-training position."

Leader-in-training. She used to be a
leader-in-training before Ian was fired and Jake turned her world
upside down.

She dialed the number.

"Kittens 'n Kitchens, how can I help
you?" a perky female voice chirped though the phone
line.

"Human resources department,
please?"

"Just one moment, please," the voice
sang sweetly.

The transfer rang, and a woman with a
sourly curt businesslike tone greeted her. "Cathleen here." The
abrupt shift from diabetes to frostbite struck Stanna as surreal,
and she took more than the required half a second to
respond.

"Hello!" the voice barked.

"Yes," Stanna told her, "I'm calling
about the leader-in-training position at your magazine. I have
experience--"

"Name, please." The curt voice
interrupted her. Pushing down her irritation, Stanna told
her.

"Educational background." Stanna
didn't like the assembly-line treatment, but stayed friendly.
"Bachelor's degree in English, graduated two years ago
from--"

"You may be overqualified."

A bright wave of dislike washed over
Stanna. "I have a little magazine experience. I was wondering if
you could tell me about the position?"

The woman was silent long enough for
Stanna to wonder if they'd been disconnected. Then, "It's a
wonderful internship opportunity for the right person. The selected
candidate will have the chance to taste all aspects of publishing
Kittens 'n Kitchens, from the ground up. After six months, we may
consider them for a full-time paid position."

"Six months? An internship? As in
non-paid?"

The woman chuckled. "I have thirty-two
names on my list of interested parties from the local college," she
told Stanna. Her voice warmed a little. "I’m afraid publishing is
considered a glamour job, and we generally promote from within. But
it’s quite enjoyable here. Do you like kittens? Are you
artsy-craftsy? It’s a highly desired position for the right
candidate, and one can advance quickly after the internship
training phase.”

No pay for six months? Larcenous. “I
have magazine experience,” Stanna repeated.

“
It’s our way or the
highway, I’m afraid.”

Stanna heard the smile in the woman’s
voice and considered hanging up on her. Women who smiled while
delivering rude zingers to needy strangers were some of the more
horrible examples of the species. They gave other women a bad
name.

Stanna slowly smiled. "And the lucky
intern gets to taste everything?" she asked innocently.

"Yes," the woman assured
her.

"Will I get to taste the finished
kittens?"

"Pardon?"

"Kittens in kitchens. I'm interested
in trying them chopped into stir-fry, I've never tried them that
way before. Or baked in potpies, either. Broiled is good, though,"
she confided.

Silence.

"Hello? If you hire me, I'll even
share some of my own recipes. My personal favorite is 'Puffed and
Stuffed Pussycat.' It's my mom's creation," Stanna added
modestly.

"You're joking of course," the brusque
business tone was back, but shaken.

"About as much as you are, with that
non-paid internship of yours."

Then Stanna did hang up, feeling much
better.

For a while. She still was unemployed,
with no real prospects. Time to get online and do some thinking
outside of the box.

Hours later, she had half a dozen
interviews lined up for the next week. Relieved she'd avoided any
other mean ladies like Ms. Kitten 'n Kitchens, she mused that it
was a huge weight off her shoulders to have other options. To be
seriously considered for other positions.

None were ideal. None of them were
magazines. But they’d be gainful employment away from
Jake.

She supposed she'd be taking all of
her vacation time at once for the interviews. Jake would just have
to find someone else to answer phones and churn out unwanted
columns.

Unwanted. He didn't want
her.

Against her fiercely commanding will,
a lump rose and stuck in her throat.
Go away,
she snarled at
it.

Don't believe I will
, it
answered.
Think I'll just hang out here 'til you sob like a
baby.

And damn it, she was about to. She
felt the hot wet sting of tears beginning to rise in her
eyes.

Suddenly a knock on her front door
broke her concentration on not-crying.

She stayed still and quiet, waiting
for whoever it was to go away. Perversely, knowing that someone
waited outside the door and she had to stay quiet took her mind off
wanting to cry. Enough for the lump to begin to recede and for her
tears to halt their rise.

Another knock.

And then, shockingly, "Stanna, I know
you're in there. Your car's outside."

His voice. What was he doing at her
apartment?

She leapt to her feet, cursing as her
feet trampled the printouts and made a godawful racket.

"I hear you," he said. Did he sound
nervous? Why would he sound nervous? "Please. I have something I'd
like to say to you."

She froze. He
was
nervous,
which was odd. Jake Tremere, nervous?

Suddenly she got it. He was coming to
fire her! Contract or no, he was going to give her the boot once
and for all. He was here to pink her in person so she didn't make a
scene at work. Maybe he'd pay her off so she wouldn't sue for
wrongful termination.

A pure fury like she'd never felt
before cascaded all through her. She welcomed it as relief from the
ache of her pain.

He wouldn't be rid of her quite that
easily. Her breathing calmed as she marched slowly to the door. By
the time she opened it, she'd schooled her features to a polite
mask.

Jake feasted his eyes on Stanna when
she opened the door. Blond hair tousled, and wearing cut-off gray
sweat shorts that contrasted enticingly against the smooth feminine
curves of her slender legs. He couldn't read her expression. She
turned her back on him, leaving the door open as she moved into the
living room and began gathering up a pile of papers.

She was angry, he surmised. And she
had every right to be. He'd been an amazing jerk, not believing in
her, talking to her so cruelly, and all the rest he'd rather not
think of.

But he'd make everything better, if
she’d let him.

Watching her move gracefully across
the room to deposit the papers in an out-of-the way corner, he was
thrown back to all the other times he'd watched her move, admiring
the ballet-sinuous way she carried herself. Especially that time in
their little magical mountain house, when she'd strut about in the
buff.

But it wasn't even her surpassing
beauty that made his heart thump painfully in his chest as he
watched her. It was everything about her. Her wit, her courage, her
integrity, her compassion. He was hooked right through the heart,
he realized.

He had to make it better.

He fingered the small envelope he'd
brought with him.

She returned to the living room, faced
him with arms folded. She didn't ask him to sit down. She glanced
at the envelope, then back up to his face. Her gray eyes gave away
a flicker of some turbocharged emotion, but he couldn't tell what
it was. He watched her carefully. She was impenetrable
again.

He ploughed ahead. "Stanna. I came
here to do something I've wanted to do for a some time, now. The
situation sort of prevented it, and... oh, hell, I suppose I was
afraid to do it before. I have here an official document, on
Men's Weekly
letterhead..." he paused to chuckle as he
handed it to her, "which… um… officially…" Jake trailed off in
consternation as Stanna slowly, methodically ripped the unopened
envelope into tiny squares, then let the confetti drift to the
beige carpet.

She folded her arms, again the ice
queen.

What the.
..?

Jake was immobilized with bewilderment
as he stared into her fathomless darkened eyes. He saw anger, and a
deep sadness. He saw more, but then she turned her back on him
again.

"Please leave," she stated in a low,
trembling voice.

He looked at the small shredded
squares resting on the carpet by her bare heels.

So that was it, then.

He felt the old numbness trying to
enfold his heart again, and knew for a fact the organ had no hope
of relief ever again. There wasn't enough anesthetizing medicine in
the world to take the pain out of it. The pain made Jolene look
like a weekend romp in the park.