Without fully realizing it, she watched him as he walked off, his long-legged gait one of lazy sexuality. How many women had been lulled into his bed by the look of those legs in tightly fitted denim? By the crazy, heart-pumping want of unbuttoning his jeans and stripping them off of him, one leg at a time? Far too many, she was sure. And all of them had likely believed in happily-ever-afters and all too easily had visualized Jace as their knight in shining armor. Well, not her. She would never become a notch on Jace Foster’s belt.
Battling the annoyance rising up, she inhaled a mouthful of air. The sound of a throat clearing caught her off guard.
“You want to have this discussion out here, or shall we go to my office?” asked Kurt, now standing in front of her desk. “Either works for me, but you might appreciate some privacy for this conversation.”
Yep. She was going to be fired. “Your office. I was just on my way,” Melanie replied, nervous all over again. “Just let me grab my notebook—”
“Don’t need it.” He turned on his heel with the confidence of a man in charge, knowing she’d fall in behind. Not that Kurt Winslow was a bad guy, because he wasn’t. But he was most certainly the boss, and the people who worked for him respected and feared him in equal measures.
Well, except for Jace. He respected Kurt well enough but seemed to fear nothing.
She waited two beats before following, trepidation existing in every step. She’d learned within her first week of employment that the best way to deal with Kurt was to stand behind her work. He didn’t like simpering. He despised wishy-washiness. She took a careful step into his office and sent a silent prayer upward that this would be quick and relatively painless.
Kurt glowered at her from behind his desk. His too-small-for-his-face blue eyes narrowed when he saw her hovering. “Close the door behind you.”
“Can we do this later? I have to—”
“Now, Melanie. You’ve gone too far this time.”
With a sigh, she stepped farther into his office and shut the door. “I’m almost done with next week’s column,” she said, hoping if she started with the positive, she could derail the negative. The advice column was due each Friday, to appear in the following Tuesday’s edition of the Gazette. Of course, she knew her boss was ticked about today’s edition, not next week’s.
“Can’t wait to see it,” he said with more than a note of sarcasm. “But, Mel—”
“I know why you’re mad,” she interrupted. “If you’ll just let me explain.”
“What’s there to explain? You’re supposed to be giving good advice. If you can’t, then you tell them to get advice from a professional. Stating that love doesn’t exist, and women who believe in love are deluding themselves, is not the type of advice we hired you to give.”
“I didn’t say love doesn’t exist! Not exactly, anyway.”
Kurt grabbed the newspaper sitting to his right. Leafing it open to the correct page, he read, “I’ve been with my fiancé for over six years. He keeps stalling on setting a date for our wedding but says he still wants to get married. I’m getting tired of waiting around. What can I do to get him to set a date once and for all? From, Never a Bride.”
“I know what it says,” Melanie hedged. “You don’t need to read it back to me.”
Kurt continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Dear Never a Bride, If your fiancé has waited this long and still refuses to set a date, then I’m sorry to tell you, a wedding will never happen. Wake up from your delusions and take a good hard look at your relationship. You’re better off becoming a nun than waiting around for this loser to seal the deal. Throw him away like yesterday’s trash and go it alone. You’ll be happier.” Kurt slapped the newspaper on top of an already toppling stack.
“See? Told you I didn’t say love doesn’t exist. And come on, that man obviously doesn’t want to get married.” Even to her own ears, the argument sounded weak. “I’m not going to lie!”
Kurt leaned back in his chair and glowered some more. His bushy eyebrows scrunched together, looking very much like a caterpillar had taken residence on his forehead. “Then you tell her to talk to him, you suggest counseling, you express how important communication is.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I explained to you what we want from this column. We want sound advice, Melanie. Advice that will perhaps actually help your readers, not make them feel like crap.”
“You said to go for humor,” Melanie pointed out, trying to grasp on to something.
“Gentle humor. But this—” he swiped at the paper, causing it and two others to fall to the ground “—isn’t funny. We’re not out for sarcasm or snappy one-liners.”
“Well…there are a lot of people who enjoy edgy sarcasm. And that style is certainly valid.” She huffed out a breath. “Jace uses it in his columns! So, maybe—”
“There is no maybe here.” Kurt shook his head in frustration. “Your audience isn’t Jace’s. The majority of your readers are women who are looking for relationship advice.”
“Okay, but—”
“Melanie! Stop trying to cover the real issue here.” He ran his hands over his eyes. “Do you think you’re particularly good at this job?” He waited a second, and then, “Because I don’t.”
She winced. “Ouch, Kurt. Maybe I’ve made a few mistakes, but—”
“I like you, Mel. You are capable of doing a good job.”
A tiny amount of optimism fizzled in. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I promise—”
“But I’ve given you a long rope, and you’ve gone and hung yourself with it. I don’t want to babysit you, and I shouldn’t have to. I need to be able to trust you.”
“I get that.”
“I told you last time I was going to fire you if this happened again.”
She mentally added the twenty-two dollars in her wallet with the less than one hundred in her bank account and somehow managed not to groan. “But…um…you’re not going to, right?”
The resounding silence was deafening. After what seemed an eternity, Kurt did sort of a half shrug. “That’s up to you. I’m willing to give you one more chance. But that chance comes with stipulations.”
“I can do stipulations! What are they?”
He gave her a hard stare. “From now on, everything you write is to be reviewed by someone else. If that someone says you change it, you change it. No questions asked. Got it?”
“Whatever you want,” she blurted, happy to still be employed. But then a sudden whisper of intuition made her stomach cramp. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—do that to her, could he? “Well, wait a minute. Who is the ‘someone else’ you’re referring to?”
“Jace.”
