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So she assigned it instead to a cool blast from the air conditioner.
Even though it was so muggy in the office that she couldn’t be sure the air conditioner was even on.
“Well, I intend to make sure that working with me is a pleasure.” Kit fumbled, hearing—probably at the same time he did—the clumsiness of her sentiment. “I mean, I think we’ll work well together.”
“There you go with that persuasion again,” he said, with a smile that lit his pale blue eyes.
The air conditioner had to be on and she must be standing directly in front of a previously undetected vent, because she was positively getting chills. “Does that mean you’re willing to give me a try?” she asked.
He gave a short laugh. “It’s certainly tempting.”
“I’m talking about the job.”
He nodded for a long moment, then smiled and said, “Okay, you’ve got two months to prove yourself. If I can live without you by then, you’re outta here. Period.”
“Fine.” She turned on her heel to leave when she remembered the call from the bank.
Oh, this wasn’t going to be easy.
She turned back to Cal. “There’s just one more thing,” she said.
He looked at her wearily and let out a breath. “Don’t tell me you want a raise.”
She shook her head. “Just a letter to the bank assuring them that I’m gainfully employed.” She gave a small shrug. “And if you could leave out the part about it being for two months, that would be great.”
Cal watched the feisty redhead leave the room and shook his head. The girl was trouble, every nerve in his body told him so. The way she raised that chin and leveled those Kelly-green eyes at him—she was like a kitten, irrationally brave in the face of the wolf who could eat her alive.
Then she’d flounced out of the place, after having the nerve to ask him to put in writing that he employed her, with her long tangle of hair swinging behind her like spun copper. He had to admire her nerve, as crazy at it was. Hell, he was tempted to tell the bank he was paying her four times what she earned just because she’d taken the chance on asking him.
She was a nervy little thing.
And he could eat her alive all right.
For the time being, though, he’d resist that. She could flit around the office and pull files and make calls. He could use that. Maybe she’d even live up to her own advertising, though in Cal’s experience it was rare that a woman that pretty had the smarts to back it up.
His only real concern about keeping her was that she might prove to be too much of a distraction to him. He had a lot to do and almost no time to do it. In the past he’d had the leisure to flirt and enjoy the chase. He’d also had the security of a large number of personnel, so when the flirting was done and the chase was over, he could disappear back into the excuse of business and that would be that.
But at the moment Kit Macy was his only employee, and given the modest—no, meager—budget Breck Monahan had allowed, he wasn’t going to be able to hire more than fifteen or twenty more.
Hardly the sort of numbers that would allow him to back off gracefully at the end of a fling.
So there would be no fling.
He could live with that.
He got up and went to the back room where Ebbit Markham had pointed out a hundred-odd years’ worth of back issues of the magazine. It was musty and dark, and it occurred to Cal that he might be better off just lighting the whole lot on fire or locking the door and throwing away the key.
The unpleasantness of the room—of the whole damned chaotic and failing office, actually—was the perfect metaphor for the present state of his career.
How the hell had he let this happen? All his life Cal had succeeded wherever he’d tried. A psychologist could have a field day with his motivation— Cal’s father had died when Cal was just seven, leaving him alone to be the man of the house for his mother and sister—but whatever the reason, he’d always felt really good about his success. He’d enjoyed winning, whether it was class valedictorian or the Presidential Young Entrepreneur Award or a full scholarship to Stanford.
Winning was who he was. Who he’d always been.
And all the stuff that went with it now—the nice coop, a good car, thirty-year-old scotch in the cupboard—was proof of his achievements. The stuff itself wasn’t his goal, it was just the certificate on the wall.
He’d grown to appreciate it for that.
Now not only were his finances on the line—he could always make money again—but it was also his reputation. The reputation he’d spent a lifetime building, polishing.
If that went down in flames with Home Life he might never recover it.
So what was he doing in this crummy old building downtown trying to resurrect a business that had been terminally ill for half a century? Sure, he’d made a mistake—and it was just that, a mistake— but did he really deserve this kind of punishment?
If he’d had any time at all, he might have really felt ticked off about it. But as it was, he had to just step up to the plate and knock one out of the park.
So he’d do what he could, beginning with the one employee he had so far.
He’d gone to the archives with Kit Macy in mind. Now that she was gone and he wasn’t diverted by her obvious physical…assets, he could look at her work and try and determine if in fact there was any promise there.
Hell, maybe she could help him rescue this dog of a magazine. She probably couldn’t hurt.
Unless he let her.
His libido had gotten him into trouble before, God knew, and even today he’d tried to stop himself from letting Kit stick around and make his life harder. But in the end he just hadn’t been able to do it. There was something about her—he really couldn’t even say exactly what it was. It didn’t even matter now because he’d already said he’d give her a chance.
So maybe, just maybe, he’d find something in her work that would make him feel as if for once his head and his libido were both right about the same woman.
Chapter Four
“As we sit with our toes in the hot sand, it occurs to me that our lives are reflected perfectly in nature. The ebb and flow of the ocean mirrors our lives in the most straightforward way possible. There is good and there is bad, there is high and there is low. The only thing you can truly count on is you will face both. Over and over again.” Cal stopped reading and set last month’s issue of the magazine down on his desk before looking Kit in the eye. “This is what you’ve been doing these past five years?”
“No. Two and a half. When Edith died, I took over the job until we could find someone new, but then—” she shrugged “—I just kept doing it. We decided to just keep her byline on it.”
“Did you have any writing experience prior to that?”
“I majored in English in college,” she offered, knowing instantly that he thought that was feeble. “And of course I’ve done a lot of editing on the magazine.”
“So this woman died and you inserted yourself— someone with no writing experience—in her place? No interviews? No trying to get the best person for the job?”
“Well, having been her most recent editor, I knew her style,” Kit said, caught off guard by his judgment that she’d done something potentially unethical. “Ebbit felt I was the best person to replace her and I was glad to do it. Writing is one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about working here. It really helps me understand both sides of the job.”
“But that is exactly what’s wrong here. Home Life is an outdated publication, written at least in part by dead people because it’s more convenient than getting new talent.”
Kit worked to keep her temper in check. “But we were doing what our readers wanted.”
“What makes you think so?”
“We’ve gotten letters. They’ve been reading that column for years.” She brought out what she thought was a good point. “Since before you were born.”
“Exactly.” He jabbed a finger in the air toward her. “Exactly. Your demographics stink. Your audience is literally dying.”
Kit protested despite the knowledge that Cal had definitely scored with that remark. “That’s not fair—”
“Anyone who’s been reading Home Life since before I was born is way too old to attract lucrative advertising. That’s why sales are down. Home Life just isn’t relevant anymore. If it ever was.”
“We have two million subscribers who feel otherwise,” Kit said heatedly.
“And there are at least five or six million potential subscribers who agree with me.” He shook his head. “You’ve been writing and publishing this June Cleaver, Christmas in Connecticut stuff without regard to the fact that we’ve started a new millennium.” He gestured at the article. “No one lives like that anymore. Hell, I don’t think they ever did.”
How could he have missed her point so completely? “That was sort of the idea. To create an escape, a fantasy for my readers. A haven from this crazy world.”
“But that isn’t the fantasy anymore. It hasn’t been for thirty or forty years. The whole ‘happy homemaker’ idea is outdated, irrelevant.” He stopped and leveled a cool blue gaze on her. “And worst of all, it’s boring. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t sound sorry at all.
She could have punched him for his tone, even while part of her knew he was right. Her writing had appealed to her own fantasies but she knew most people weren’t as old-fashioned as she. She’d always been a bit of a throwback. “So what is it you think our readers want?”
“Oprah. Tina Brown. Nigella Lawson.” He fired them off rapidly. “Women today have it all and wield their power from the bedroom to the boardroom. They want their success validated, their hard work rewarded. And in their downtime, they want some fast-food modern spirituality and good old raunchy gossip.”
“Gossip?”
“Sure. The bare naked truth about all those supposed style icons out there.” He stopped and jotted something down on the paper in front of him. “Women today aren’t as naive as their 1950s counterparts. That homey ideal might be nice, but it just doesn’t have a genuine place in their lives.”
It was as if he was shooting teeny tiny arrows at her with every word. She liked her homey ideal. She’d considered it timeless, not outdated. Yet she knew that in reality she was in the minority. The public didn’t share her mind-set, for the most part. She’d known that for a while now, even while she’d told herself she was providing something valuable.
Listening to Cal, she realized it was just…quaint.
And quaint wouldn’t cut it.
Now if she wanted to keep her job—and there was no if about it, she had to keep her job—she was going to have to do everything she could around there to make herself valuable. She’d do a column, be the managing editor, be the janitor if she had to.
And if she was going to do a column for this new incarnation of the magazine, she was going to have to change her whole personality to fit Cal Panagos’s corporate image of the modern woman. She was going to have to turn from innocent Sandy in the beginning of Grease to sexy, savvy Sandy at the end without even enough time for the wardrobe change.
“I can give you what you want,” Kit said evenly.
“Not in the office,” he said pointedly.
A lesser person would have shot right back with a comment about sexual harassment.
And a better person might have resisted the little thrill of pleasure at what his meaning might have been.
And a different person would have known how to tell the difference between an innocent comment and a not-so-innocent comment and would have been absolutely clear on how she should feel about both.
“Yes, I can,” she said, meeting his gaze evenly. Let him try and figure out what she meant for once. “In the office or at home, I can do my job.” Though in truth, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of that. Sometime over the past few days the world had changed without letting her know. She wasn’t sure what her place in it was anymore or what she could do with what she had.
Cal leaned back in his chair. “If you can be half as determined to keep up with the times as you are to prove I’m wrong, you might succeed here.”
“Really?”
“Sure. If you can stop being Donna Reed, I think you might have something to say to the women in our demographic.”
She had to smile. He wasn’t quite as icy as she’d thought at first. Behind the slick veneer there was a thinking man who wanted to succeed.
Of course, she knew that from the moment she first saw him. And she confirmed it when she went home that night and looked him up on the Internet. Henry Carl Panagos had been the youngest editor in chief ever on Sports Life magazine and he had lifted sagging sales by changing the format to shorter, punchier pieces and adding quick-reference charts of the professional sports seasons past and present. He’d also taken the innovative step of having some of the sports greats themselves do profiles of up-and-comers, including New York Giants great linebacker Lawrence Taylor on Ray Lewis.
In fact, in four years on the job Cal hadn’t appeared to make a false step.
So what was he doing at Home Life of all places?
Kit could only surmise that Breck Monahan had sent the boy wonder over to perform a miracle.
Well, she was going to be an integral part of that miracle. “Who exactly do you see as the women of our demographic?” she asked him.
He leaned forward, as if ready to launch into a favorite subject. “Women like you. Your age. Your situation.”
“Meaning…?”
“Working mom. Someone said you have a kid.”
“I do. I have a son.”
“And—” he hesitated for just a fraction of a second “—no husband, right?”
She hesitated, as well.
She wasn’t sure what either of their hesitations meant.
“Not anymore.”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “There are ten million single mothers in the U.S.”
“At least.”
“To say nothing of fourteen million working mothers with partners and five million stay-at-home moms.” He’d done his research, that much was obvious. And it was impressive. “That’s thirty million readers to whom our magazine could and should be completely relevant.”
He was right. Thirty million potential readers under the age of sixty trumped twenty-one million potential geriatric readers. “You’re right.”
“So find out what interests them and do it,” he said. “Entertainment, sex—I don’t care what, just make it relevant. Find the writers who will make it relevant.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, gathering her nerve. “With that in mind, I want to keep writing my column.”
The word no showed up immediately on his face, and she hastened to add, “What I mean is, a new column. New slant. But I want to keep writing.”
He lifted the copy of her column that he’d just set down. “I don’t think you’ve got the tone I’m looking for.”
“No, Edith didn’t have the tone you were looking for. You have no idea what I can do.”
He took a short breath and looked her over. “Tell me about it.”
“I know what you want now,” Kit told him confidently. She’d been in the business world long enough to know how to play businesswoman. “And I can deliver.”
“Can you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why do you want to?”
That threw her off. “I beg your pardon?”
“Why do you want to do this?” he repeated.
“Do what exactly? Write the column?”
He nodded. “If you’re already working as the managing editor, why do you want to add more work to your load?”
“Well…” She was unsure whether or not she should tip her hand but decided she had nothing to lose. “That part of my job accounts for a third of my income.”
“You realize that’s not a particularly compelling reason for me to keep you on in that area.”
“Yes.” She wasn’t good at this business of constantly selling herself. “But in turn I’m sure you realize that you have a particularly motivated worker here. One you should recognize as a serious bargain.”
He looked amused. “How do you figure that?”
“It’s to my advantage to make myself as difficult to replace as possible. If I can do two jobs for one price, then why would you want to sack me and hire two people to replace me?” Not to mention that those columns, under her own name, would make a nice portfolio if/when she really did have to leave this place.
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