“So I can’t change your mind?”
She shook her head. The one thing a ladies’ man could never resist, Emma had learned from her father, was a woman who said no. Somehow, she’d have to get Oliver to accept her at her word.
She reached for the door and closed it. Hard.
Oliver stepped back.
After she’d started the ignition and pulled away, he smiled at her—a mysterious smile—as if he knew something she didn’t.
As far as Emma was concerned, she’d made a lucky escape.
Her irritation had just begun to fade when she returned to the office and walked down to her cubicle in the basement, shared with half a dozen other staff. The area was affectionately—and sometimes not so affectionately—termed The Dungeon. Phoebe Wilkinson, who sat opposite her, glanced up when Emma tossed her purse onto her desk.
“That bad?” Phoebe asked, rolling her chair across the narrow aisle. She was one of the other reporters, a few years older than Emma. She was short where Emma was tall, with dark hair worn in a pixie cut while Emma’s was long and blond. Most of the time, anyway. Occasionally Emma was a redhead or a brunette.
“You wouldn’t believe my afternoon.”
“Did you sell any ads?” Phoebe asked. It’d been her turn the day before and she’d come back with three brand-new accounts.
Emma nodded. She’d managed to get the local pizza parlor to place an ad in the Wednesday edition with a dollar-off coupon for any large pizza. That way, the restaurant could figure out how well the advertising had worked. Emma just hoped everyone in town would go racing into the parlor with that coupon. Badda Bing, Badda Boom Pizza had been her only sale.
“That’s great,” Phoebe said with real enthusiasm.
“Yes, at least our payroll checks won’t bounce.” She couldn’t restrain her sarcasm.
Phoebe frowned, shaking her head. “Walt would never let that happen.”
Her friend and co-worker had a crush on the owner. Phoebe was the strongest personality she knew, yet when it came to Walt, she seemed downright timid—far from her usual assertive self.
Emma sighed. Her own feelings about men had grown cynical. Her father was mostly responsible for that. Her one serious college romance hadn’t helped, either; it ended when her mother became ill. Emma hadn’t been around to help Neal with his assignments, so he’d dropped her for another journalism student. Pulling out her chair, Emma sat down. She hadn’t worked so hard to get her college degree for this. Her feet hurt, she had a run in her panty hose and no one was going to give her a Pulitzer prize when she spent half her time pounding the pavement and the other half writing obituaries.
Yes, obituaries. Walt’s big coup had been getting a contract to write obituaries for the large Tacoma newspaper, and that had been her job and Phoebe’s for the past eight months. Emma had gotten quite good at summarizing someone else’s life—but that hardly made a smudge on the page of her own.
She hadn’t obtained a journalism degree in order to persuade the local department store to place mattress sale ads in the Sunday paper, either. She was a reporter! A darn good one…if only someone would give her a chance to prove herself. Emma longed to write a piece worthy of her education and her skills, and frankly, preparing obituaries wasn’t it.
“I don’t think I can do this much longer,” she confessed sadly. “Either Walt lets me write a real story or…” She didn’t know what.
Phoebe gasped. “You aren’t thinking of quitting, are you?”
Emma looked at her friend. She’d been hired the same week as Phoebe. The difference was, Phoebe seemed content to do whatever was asked of her. She loved writing obituaries and set the perfect tone with each one. Not Emma. She hated it, struggling with them all. The result was always adequate or better because Emma took pride in her work, but it just wasn’t what she wanted to be doing. She had ambition and dreamed that one day she’d write feature articles. Eventually, she hoped to have her own column.
“I don’t want to quit. I’ve been waiting six months for Walt to offer me something more than funeral home notices.”
“Sleep on it,” Phoebe advised. “You’ve had a rough day. Everything will seem better in the morning.”
“You’re right,” she murmured. An ultimatum shouldn’t be made on the spur of the moment. Besides, it wasn’t the obituaries or even drumming up advertising dollars that depressed her the most.
It was Christmas.
Everywhere she went, there was holiday cheer. But not everyone in the world loved Christmas. She, for example, didn’t enjoy it at all. Christmas was for families and she didn’t have one. Yes, her father was alive, but that was of little comfort. Since her mother’s death, he always invited Emma to his house in California and she always took a certain grim satisfaction in refusing him.
Almost everyone she knew had family and shared the holidays with them. Emma was alone. But she’d rather be by herself than spend it with her father and his new wife. Last year she’d ignored the season entirely. On Christmas Day she’d gone to a movie and had buttered popcorn for dinner and that had suited her perfectly.
“You don’t want to quit just before Christmas,” Phoebe told her.
Emma sighed again. “No, you’re right. I don’t.” But she said it mostly to avoid upsetting Phoebe.
“You’re actually going to confront Walt?” Phoebe peered at Emma across The Dungeon aisle the next morning.
“Yes,” Emma murmured. She’d decided that after almost a year, she wasn’t any closer to writing feature articles than the day she was hired. It was time to face reality. She’d reached her limit; she was finished with working in the bowels of the drafty building, tired of spending half her week traipsing around Bonny Lake, Sumner and Puyallup searching for advertising dollars.
“What are you going to say to him?” Phoebe’s brown eyes regarded her carefully.
She didn’t know what she could say that she hadn’t already said a hundred times. If Walt refused to listen, she would simply hand in her notice. She wouldn’t leave until after Christmas; that was for strictly financial reasons. Where she’d apply next, however, was the question.
“Walt won’t want to lose you,” Phoebe said confidently.
“You mean when he isn’t yelling?”
“He has a lot on his mind.”
Emma narrowed her eyes. Phoebe’s infatuation with Walt blinded her to the truth.
It was now or never. Emma stood, squaring her shoulders. “Okay, I’m going to talk to Walt.” She motioned at the stairwell. “Do I have the look?” The one that said she was serious.
“Oh, yes!” Phoebe was nothing if not encouraging.
“You’ll be stuck writing all the obituaries,” Emma cautioned.
“I don’t mind,” her friend said.
“Okay, here goes.”
Emma marched up the stairs and toward the back of the first floor, where Walt’s luxurious office was situated. Well, perhaps it wasn’t as luxurious as all that, except when compared to the dank basement where Emma and Phoebe were relegated.
Walt glanced up, frowning, as she planted herself in the threshold to his office.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked politely.
His frown slowly transformed itself into a smile, and for the first time Emma noticed her employer had company. She opened her mouth