“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.”
Shock coursed through her. “Jace Foster? Forget it. I’d rather be fired.”
“All righty, then. You’re fired. Clean out your desk and get out of here.”
Okay. Not a bluff.
Melanie inhaled a breath, counted to ten and then pushed it back out. The only way she handled her absurd attraction to Jace was by keeping him at a distance. This new scenario would force them together way too often for her liking. “You’re serious? You’re really going to fire me unless I let that egotistical playboy babysit me? I promise I won’t make this mistake again.”
“That’s what you said when you instructed one woman to replace the man in her life with a dog for companionship and a vibrator for pleasure.” Kurt pounded one fist against the surface of his desk, causing another stack of papers to topple. “No dice, Mel.”
She’d forgotten about that one. She still felt it was good advice. “I mean it this time.”
“What about when you blithely told a reader that if her husband was staying late at work every night, then he was most certainly cheating, and she should go talk to a good divorce attorney and take him for everything he had?”
“That could have been true! That husband hadn’t been home on time in over a year!”
Kurt’s mouth straightened into a taut line. “The problem,” he said in a monotone voice, “is that you’re giving advice based on your issues with love and your distrust of men. It can’t continue. Simple as that.”
She coughed to cover her surprise at her boss’s words. At the truth of them. “I don’t distrust all men. But come on, Kurt—Jace? Stick me with someone else. Anyone else.”
“Really, Mel? You think you’re in a position to make demands?” Kurt swept his beefy fingers through his curly mop of hair. “Besides which, it isn’t all bad. You’ve been begging me for an assignment, and I have one for you and Jace to work on together. If you decide to stay.”
She was all set to argue her case—weak as it was—when she realized what Kurt had said. “An assignment? As in an actual, honest-to-God, my-name-on-the-byline assignment?”
“I thought that would interest you.”
Yeah, well, loathe as she was to admit it, she was interested. The Portland Gazette was small, but Jace had a wide readership. Wide enough that he’d been offered positions with larger papers. But for whatever reason, he continued to stick it out here. So an assignment with him might give her a platform to build on.
“What’s the assignment?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“A Valentine’s Day feature.” Kurt grinned at her. “You might actually learn something about love that you can apply to the advice column. A win-win situation, if you ask me.”
“Are you kidding? You want me to write a fluff piece with Jace?”
“I do, and you get to keep your job to boot. You might not like the terms, but I’d say they’re worth considering. Of course, it’s your choice.” Kurt’s chin was set, his gaze firmly planted on hers. He was not going to change his mind.
She should be grabbing on to this with both hands. This was a chance to prove herself. She should feel excited. Instead, every part