“Shut up.” She brushed her hand down her skirt where the skin still tingled and pushed the memory aside so she could focus on the rest of her day.
Two
“Enjoying the radio business so far?”
Jake Carey looked up from the spreadsheet he’d been studying and glared at Brandon’s feet, which were kicked up on the desk and perilously close to his file stack. “The coffee’s lousy, the books are a mess, and this janky chair’s trying to kill me.”
“Yep, it’s nonstop glamour,” Brandon said cheerfully, lacing his hands behind his head.
Jake stood to stretch out his spine, sparing a thought for his expensive ergonomic chair sitting unused behind his desk three hours north in Chicago. But no sense in dwelling; after half a week in Beaucoeur, he was resigned to his fate. For the next few months, he’d be surrounded, not by the glass, chrome, and leather of his high-rise accounting office but by the low ceilings, wood paneling, and lingering scent of cigarette smoke at WNCB. Was someone at the station in the habit of ignoring theNo Smokingsign on the wall, or was the smell baked into the ancient carpet from the hedonistic years before the practice was banned? Either way, the scent reminded him of visiting his grandma in her South Side apartment as a kid, when she’d ply him with cookies and smoky hugs.
Frankly, he’d kill for either of those creature comforts at the moment; three days removed from his normal gym-office-home routine in Chicago left him feeling tense and twitchy. Of course, Brandon wasn’t helping things.
“So, why haven’t you made partner yet, Jakehammer? We all thought you’d manage that before you were twenty-five.”
His onetime college roommate flashed a grin that set Jake’s teeth on edge. They might not have seen each other much in the nine years since graduation, but Brandon still knew how to jab a thumb right into Jake’s vulnerable spots, starting with that idiotic nickname he’d been using nonstop since Jake had arrived in Beaucoeur on Wednesday.
Good thing he’d retained the lessons from his years as a scholarship student at the University of Chicago. Fake-it-till-you-make-it generally worked with his wealthier classmates, and since heir-to-the-Lowell-media-empire Brandon had been the leader of the privileged brigade, Jake responded with a smirk of his own.
“Don’t worry. I’m planning to dazzle you with my work on this sale and convince you to bring all the accounting activities for Lowell Consolidated to Black, Phelps, and Suarez. You’re my golden ticket, man.”
Brandon just nodded as if he’d predicted what Jake would say. “That’s exactly why I hired your firm. Nobody in our class worked harder than you. And hey, you could be my golden ticket too. This transition goes smoothly, and my old man might finally retire and let me take over the company. If that happens, I’ll make up new accounts just for you to audit.”
“Deal.” Jake dropped back in his chair, imagining the next few months. Straighten out the books, get a handle on Lowell’s accounting needs, and head home with a fat new contract for a major media conglomerate. That had to be enough to win the partnership he’d been vying for since joining BPS straight out of college. It was the only future he’d ever envisioned for himself, and he wanted it so badly his bones ached with it.
Dave Chilton’s voice crackled through the speaker near the office ceiling and intruded on his thoughts. “We got an email this morning, Mae,” the man said over the final notes of the boppy rock song the morning show had been playing.
“Oh yeah?” Mabel’s disembodied voice had Jake sitting up straight, the last of his partnership daydreams popping like a soap bubble.
Dave continued, “It’s the question we most often get asked, which makes me wonder: why arepeople so interested in our relationship?”
“Oh, our relaaaaaaaationship,” Mabel replied, the purr in her voice sliding along Jake’s skin like the softest velvet.
“Mmmm. That woman has afineradio voice,” Brandon murmured.
“Shhh.” Jake didn’t want Brandon’s voice intruding as he listened to the blonde he’d met on Wednesday.
Said blonde briskly replied, “You’d think that two people who spend as much time together as Dave and I do have some kind of wild history. But the boring truth is, Dave and I are friends who met in college. We’re not married. We’re not dating. Weneverdated—”
“I mean, have you seen Mae?” Dave’s voice interrupted. “She’s hella scary in that tall Valkyrie way. I was never attracted to her.Yuck.”
“Dave needs his eyes examined,” Brandon muttered.
“Dude.” Jake sent him an irritated glare and tilted his head toward the speaker where the deejays’ back-and-forth spilled forth. Brandon widened his eyes and held up his hands in a silent apology.
“Yuck?” Mabel scoffed. “You were unattractive first! I wanted tonotdate you first! Folks, did you know that Dave dresses as a werewolf for Halloween every year just by wearing shorts and a tank top? Do you need the number of a good waxer, Wolfie?”
Dave bellowed out a Chewbacca roar, then said, “You’re one to talk. Mae once sent a date to the ER with a rash when he got too close to that prickly ’stache of hers.”
“My lady ’stache ismagnificent,” she shot back, and Jake tilted his head to revisit his memory of their first meeting. No upper-lip hair, only a wide, expressive mouth and miles of tanned skin.
“What you listeners need to know,” she said, “is that when Dave sweats, it’s slightly radioactive. I once saw a droplet roll off Dave’s nose and land on a spider. Friends, that spider then bit a passerby, who immediately shot webs out of his wrists and crawled up the side of a building.”
Jake chuckled softly as Dave countered, “Good thing I have a lovely wife who doesn’t mind my jokes—”
“—or his radioactive sweat—”
“—and Mae, while also lovely, hasn’t found that special someone. That someone who won’t mind that she doesn’t know that Spider-Man’s web shooters are mechanical, not biological.”
