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“Truce?” Jen said, sticking out her hand. “Let me buy you lunch?”
He looked at her, frowning. This was one chick with lightning-quick moods. Just when he thought he’d figured her out.
“Fine and on one condition. No yogurt, rabbit food or cottage cheese for me. I’m not on a diet.”
Tre allowed his eyes to travel the length of her body. His intent was to unnerve her. She didn’t flinch.
Jen placed a hand on her hip as he continued to gawk. “Who said anything about being on a diet? Can you move your car so that I can get out? I’ll check in with you—maybe we can do that lunch later this week. Now I have to go. I’m already late getting back to work.”
Move his car? She was in his spot.
“What is it you do that requires such dedication?”
She smiled. “Nothing important. Office work. There’s the usual hour for lunch and right now that hour is up.”
Tre sensed something missing. He didn’t think she was a clerk. She seemed too take-charge. She was used to managing people. He got back in his car, and slowly put the Porsche in Reverse.
Jen scooted into her vehicle and shouted from the open window, “I’ll be in touch.” Burning rubber, she zoomed from the parking lot.
Tre heard laughter drift from up above. Camille was hanging out of her window, her cell phone to her ear, watching as he maneuvered his car into the vacant spot.
Jen St. George was a pain in the butt, and a fine-looking pain at that. It would be his mission to get to know her a whole lot better. She would be his challenge, a project to keep his adrenaline flowing.
Jen raced into her office waving a manila envelope at Chere. “Got it!”
Flopping into her seat, she shoved the disk into the computer’s drive and began banging away at the keyboard. So much to do and so little time.
“Glad you found it,” Chere said, looking up. “I wouldn’t want to be around if you had to retype that whole thing.”
Chere was actually attacking the stack in Jen’s in-box. Visions of a cruise must be dancing in her head. Jen had raced home because she thought she’d misplaced the column she’d been working on practically all night.
“I worked on this thing, tweaking it until I was bleary-eyed. I didn’t want to have to start again from scratch.”
“Luis is looking for you,” Chere muttered, a pen held between her clenched teeth. “Says it’s important.”
“Do you know what he wants?”
Since Jen started work at The Chronicle, Luis Gomez, her boss, had been too busy to do more than grunt in her direction. A compliment from him had been out of the question.
Jen reluctantly slid her chair out. She glanced at the sentences that Chere was highlighting.
Advice columnists are supposed to be open-minded.
Yet another reader ticked off at Dear Jenna. “
Who knows what Luis wants,” Chere snorted. “My girls think something heavy’s brewing. Maybe he’s under pressure from the publisher because of all that squawking about you using the word queer.”
Jen groaned. “This is getting old. I’ll go see what Luis wants.”
Jen wended her way through a maze of cubicles, passing other staff members absorbed in various stages of production. Heads shot up as she went by but things seemed quiet, too quiet. She’d learned to pay attention to her instincts and something was definitely brewing. She had the unsettling feeling everyone knew she had an audience with Luis.
Luis Gomez was sprawled behind the cluttered desk of his enormous corner office. A huge glass wall provided him with an unobstructed view of the newsroom. The room was poorly lit. Luis depended on his desk lamp to read. He was huddled over, squinting at some piece of copy and she couldn’t make out his expression. His office was called The Dungeon, and for good reason.
“You wanted to see me?” she asked from the doorway.
Luis had an unlit cigar clamped between his yellowing teeth. The half-moon glasses perched on the end of the nose gave him a mad scientist look. Totally ignoring the smoke-free environment, he’d clearly had a few drags. Jen had never seen Luis light up, but his office smelled like an ashtray and the odor lingered around him. He waved a meaty paw, gesturing for her to come in.
“Grab a seat,” he said, poking a stubby finger at a chair filled with newspapers.
Jen scooped the papers up but kept standing. There was no place to put them, at least no place she saw.
“Lay the lot over here.” Luis made room for the pile by sweeping another stack of newspapers to the floor. “Take a load off.”
Jen finally slid into the chair directly facing him.
“We got problems. We need to fix them,” Luis barked.
“What kinds of problems?” Jen asked carefully.
“Flamingo Beach is all stirred up. The gay alliance is bitching up a storm, claiming you’re homophobic.”
“Why?”
Let me spell it out,” Luis said, enunciating his words. “There is a very vocal leader who wants your hide. They’re ticked off and feel that you’re prejudiced against gays.”
Jen was out the chair like a shot. “That’s ridiculous. ‘Queer’ is a current-day expression.”
“Our readership is diverse,” Luis said patiently. “This is a conservative town, but our gay alliance is powerful. We need to stay on their good side.”
“I see.”
Luis Gomez just reinforced everything she’d suspected. He was a wuss.
“I want you to use the Sunday column to publish a retraction.”
“You want me to placate the group?”
Do what you need to do. But when you write this Sunday’s column make sure to stress you’re in favor of alternative lifestyles. You may even want to state that your bachelor’s mother needs to encourage open and honest communication with her son. Make sure to mention America is about freedom of choice.”
“Will you be writing my column for me?” Jen inquired coolly. Why all of a sudden was Luis pandering to a group he’d never openly supported? She’d privately thought him to be homophobic.
“Not writing, just suggesting. I’ve lived in this town long enough to know the gay alliance can make things damn uncomfortable.”
Luis crooked a finger, beckoning Jen closer.
Jen reluctantly took a couple of steps toward him then stopped. She thought she would gag from the smell of stale tobacco.
“The mayor’s son, Chet, is gay,” Luis confided. “Now you don’t want to tick off such an influential person. Solomon Rabinowitz may not be happy about his son’s sexual preference, but blood rules in the long run. He’ll support him and back the alliance one hundred percent.”
Jen took a deep breath. Should she tell Luis? No it would be her ace card. She’d learned one thing during her years as an advice columnist though: once you started waffling, you cut your own throat. From then on anything you said would be challenged. Her instincts told her to stick to her guns. But common sense reminded her she was the newbie in town and still unproven.
“I’ll compromise,” Jen promised. “How about I publish letters with contradictory opinions from mine.”
“Think about what I said,” Luis said, picking up the phone and punching in numbers. “The paper’s been flooded with calls. That disk jockey from WARP is all over you. He’s even challenging you to come on his station.”
“And maybe I will.”
Luis’s glasses slipped a notch. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“Think ratings, Luis. Think of the papers we’d sell.”
“Hmmmmm. I’ll reserve commentary until I see this week’s numbers.”
“By the way, Luis,” Jen said, preparing to leave. “My brother Ellis is queer.”
Luis’s lower lip flapped open. He quickly composed himself. “I want readers to love Dear Jenna,” he said gruffly. “They should be hanging on to her every word. I’m grooming you to be the next Abby.”
His phone rang. “Luis Gomez. Sure, I’ll hold for the mayor.”
Jen had thought Luis Gomez was a wuss. Now she knew he was just playing the political game.
Chapter 4
Tre held the receiver away from his ear. For the last three minutes the station’s manager and owner had been yakking on and on, acting as if Tre was the best thing since pumpernickel.
Boris was an ex-army brat of bi-racial descent. He was the product of an African-American mother and a German father. The Germanic genes overrode the African. Boris was usually not this effusive. Something most definitely was up.
“Ratings are soaring. You’ve got Flamingo Beach hooked on WARP,” Boris gushed.
Perhaps it was time to hit him up for a raise. No, he’d wait to do it face-to-face. Eyeball-to-eyeball.
“How about I come in a half an hour early before the show. We’ll talk then.”
“Wait! Wait!” Boris shouted. “We need more than a half an hour to formulate a plan. We need to keep this momentum going. Do what you need to do to get that columnist on the show. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Tre hung up thinking that any hope of getting some shut-eye before his show was impossible now. What did Boris mean by he would make it worth his while? Did it mean that he would finally get the coveted prime-time slot and would have his own syndicated show? Or did it mean that there would be some money coming his way?
Either way, the conversation had left Tre wound up and wired. He paced the spacious living room, circled around the sectional couch and crossed over to the French doors that led out to a balcony with an unfettered view of the ocean. This was what living in Florida was all about. This was what he had worked for.
There was a certain tranquility that came with living on the water. He even loved the briny ocean smell. Maybe a run would loosen him up. No, he didn’t have time to cover his usual five miles today. He would just have to stand here taking everything in, breathe and enjoy it.
Several industrious souls were taking advantage of the cooler temperatures. The boardwalk was busy for that time of day, probably because the sunset promised to be a beauty. Teenagers whizzed by on skateboards and Rollerblades, almost knocking the pedestrians over. A few senior citizens, those who’d stood their ground refusing to move when gentrification rolled around, carried groceries in the baskets of their three-wheel bikes. Much as Tre sometimes groused about Flamingo Beach’s lack of sophistication, he had to admit he had it made.
He thought about earlier today when he’d allowed Jen St. George to push his buttons. He’d worked damn hard on controlling a temper that had often gotten him in trouble and he wasn’t going to let the ballsy woman undo all of his hard work.
He ran a hand over the closely cropped hair that his fans, mostly female, said made him look sexy and mysterious. They compared him to supermodel Ty Beckford. Must be the dark, shiny skin. Lines like that had once fed his ego. But his days of quick hits and meaningless sex were over with. He was looking for something more substantial now. Maybe even marriage, but something longer lasting than the occasional fling.
Thoughts of sex made Jen St. George come to mind. Now she would be a woman he wouldn’t mind breaking his forced celibacy for. She intrigued him because she was not impressed or intimidated by him. He’d have to make sure he took her up on her lunch invitation and soon.
Right now he had a bigger challenge; how to get that Dear Jenna woman on his show. Ratings were everything. Ratings were what Boris understood. If he could persuade her to have a live debate he’d have it made. He’d get her on the air and make mincemeat of her. Dear Jenna could help get him where he needed to go.
He definitely had big plans for himself. One of them was moving up to an urban city where his hip way of talking and crass irreverence would be applauded and not misunderstood, where he would reach a bigger audience that was not necessarily white or black. He needed a major radio station that would recognize his talent and reward it accordingly.
Tre planned on holding his own with the likes of Howard Stern. A Northeast audience would get him. They were usually sophisticated and more worldly. His voice could reach millions and not just the thousands it did today.
He imagined the rush of walking down the street and having people stop him to shake hands or maybe they’d just reach out to touch him. He would be an inspiration to his people, especially little black boys who’d strayed. He’d been kind of wayward himself growing up. Yes, New York City would be part of the plan. It was not an impossible goal if he played his cards right.
As Tre continued to fantasize about New York City and a growing fan base his eyelids grew heavy. He jolted awake at the sound of the alarm clock that luckily he’d remembered to set earlier on.
Jen had just gotten out of the shower and was wrapping her body in a fluffy towel when the doorbell rang. It played one of her favorite tunes. Jen groaned. Hopefully security would have called before letting Chere up.
The bell rang again. It sounded like her visitor had put an index finger to the spot and forgotten it. Fine, she wasn’t going to be given much of a choice. Her robe, the one she hadn’t worn in years, was still in a box in her closet. Whoever it was would have to deal with her the way she was.
She took her time getting to the front door, and took another second pressing her eye to the peephole. She assessed the distorted image, trying to determine whether it was male or female.
Trestin Noisemaker had come to her. She hadn’t had to make that phone call to invite him to lunch. Jen made sure the bath towel was tightly tucked around her before opening the door a crack.
“Yes?”
“Can I come in?”
“No you may not. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I came with a peace offering.”
“I invited you to lunch,” she tossed back. “That was my peace offering for parking in your spot.”
An arm thrust through the opening, holding something in a tissue wrapper.
“Uh-uh!” Jen said, closing the door an inch on that arm.
“It’s wine. Try it, you’ll like it,” Trestin sang.
“I can’t accept it.”
“Why not?”
She thought for a moment, her front teeth clamped down on her bottom lip. “Because, well because, I don’t accept gifts from men.”
“I’m not just any man. I’m your neighbor. I’ve kept you up at night. This is my way of saying I’m sorry.”
Camille Lewis probably had an eye to the peephole. Most likely so did Ida. The entire building could be listening to her business.
“Can’t I come in for a minute?” Tre whined.
“I’m not dressed.” One hand gripped the top of the towel even as she stood aside, allowing him to enter.
