After thanking Tre profusely, the guard loped off. He yelled over his shoulder, “You’re the man. Call the office if you need me, and I’ll be here on the double.”
Meanwhile Camille had parked her truck in the underground garage. She was undulating toward the building. Tre propped his feet on the console and prepared for a fight.
Ten minutes later, his attractive neighbor waltzed out. She had the grace to look embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t expect you’d come back so soon,” she said, the moment he depressed the button and the window slid down. “I expected to be gone just a short time but then my phone rang.”
He wanted to say, “You are so full of it.” Angry as she’d made him, Tre couldn’t help noticing the way the pencil-thin skirt with the slit cut high on the thigh hugged her hips, and those marvelous honey-colored thighs.
Sliding out of his vehicle, he rested his butt against the driver’s door, crossed his arms, and gave Jen a steely-eyed look.
“You are probably one of the nerviest people I know. You called the leasing company on me, yet you have the gall to pull into a spot that costs money and isn’t your own.”
“It was close,” Jen said disarmingly. “Was that your music keeping me up all night or was that my imagination?”
Tre glared at her, ignoring the delicious smell of her perfume wafting his way. “What did you hope to accomplish by calling the leasing office?”
“I needed leverage to get through to you. I’d already tried appealing to your sense of decency.”
He wanted to shake her. The truth was that he was actually enjoying the banter. His adrenaline flowed when a woman could keep up with him. And she wasn’t starstruck. Maybe she didn’t know who he was or simply didn’t care. And even if she did, he had the feeling that his near celebrity status would not have made a difference.
“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