Story: Somebody Else's Page
Chapter: Outside the Office
Description: Rory/Logan. Slightly AU. What if Logan managed to take a little less time off during his college career and made it through without overlapping Rory's years at Yale? She's about to start her first internship at the Stamford Gazette, just as it's being taken over by the Huntzbergers.
Disclaimer: I write fan fiction. I own none of these characters. None of this happened on the show, which is the whole point of fan fiction. You get the idea.
The term 'supply closet' was a bit of a misnomer, at least it was upon first survey. It was achingly full, not to mention in an utter state of chaos, and a simple trip to grab more staples and anything else might have caught her eye turned into an event of monumental proportions. In an attempt to keep the hallway clear, even in the back of the offices where no one ever went, other than to shove extra supplies behind the closed door and run away, she had taken over the smallest conference room that never seemed to be used as far as she'd seen in her two weeks.
Not that she'd seen much in the way of action at her very first newspaper internship in the last two weeks. Morale continued to downslide. Harry was emptying half a bottle of antacids at a single go, and the last document he'd asked her to proofread was his resume. Whereas she'd hoped to be fact checking or offering filler articles when needed, she was still making coffee and doing menial tasks for various paid employees that were too busy trying to tend to the sinking ship she'd stowed away on to be bothered with such dalliances.
She was also yet to set sights on their fearless new leader, one Logan Huntzberger, since she'd sat in on that departmental meeting at which he got a full dose of his new reality. Harry hadn't mentioned him; at least not while using his real name or anything remotely complimentary. No one else really spoke to her directly about the state of affairs at her first real taste of her dream job—though she mostly found Harry's openness on the far end of the scale as far as candor went.
There was a moment that came any time she took on a large organizational project, where the tangled mass of confusion broke and gave way to like items grouped together and peace washed over her. It was at that instant, as she gazed at the long table holding neatly stacked reams of such items as paper, staples, ink cartridges, pens, and paper clips that she was frightened nearly out of her skin.
"What are you doing?"
After nearly jumping out of her shoes, she turned to see the boss, freshly shaven and clear-eyed, with his blonde hair tousled to mimic having just rolled out of bed instead of the mashed true-to-life version he'd shown off on his first day, staring at her reason for pride.
"Um. I was looking for staples," she offered sheepishly as she eyed her slightly obsessive handiwork.
He raised his eyebrows at her, his mild amusement hanging in the recycled office air between them. "Well, it seems you came to the right place. Unless you're running an office supply business out of our conference room."
She pointed her index finger at the mostly empty closet. "They were, I mean, the whole thing was in a complete state of disarray. There were about a hundred boxes of pens shoved in the front and everything else was hidden and it just seemed prudent to make things easier to access."
A small wrinkle ran the length of his forehead as he considered her. "You think your time here is best spent reorganizing the supply closet?"
She shifted her weight from one high-heeled shoe to the other. Her choice in footwear was one concession she'd not made from Harry's first chain of suggestions. Her shoes were comfortable enough, as long as she didn't have to start doing sprint races at the office picnic. Assuming, that was, that there was an office picnic during her tenure. She had difficulty seeing all the people she was growing accustomed to interacting with behind their desks in their suits, instead eating hamburgers and hot dogs in polo shirts and picking partners for a three-legged race.
"Rory?"
She snapped out of her thoughts. "Sorry. I just thought that since I got done with the proofreading Harry gave me, I'd keep myself busy."
"You're fast at proofing copy?" he asked with great interest.
She nodded. "My old editor at the News, he used to filter all his overflow to me before print, because he never had to change more than two percent of anything I turned in."
There was a flash of recognition in his brown eyes. "Where do you go to school?"
She tossed her hair subconsciously over her shoulder. "Yale."
"Doyle 'two-percent margin of error' McMaster doesn't trust anyone as his second set of eyes," he said shrewdly.
His shared knowledge startled her almost as much as his sneaking up behind her had. "You know Doyle?"
He smiled with a languid ease. "He put up with me during his first semester as editor. He was tasked with trying to pull printable copy out of me during my last semester, which involved regular correspondence with my father. I think I owe him a fruit basket or something for the trouble."
"I could give it to him, if you decide to go that route," she offered, not as selflessly as the suggestion sounded to him.
"I'm sure I can find his address," he waved off her politeness.
"He's usually at my place," she said without missing a beat.
"Oh," he said, drawing out the single utterance to several syllables of air from his mouth.
She stiffened at his inference. "I mean, he's there a lot with my roommate. Technically he spends a lot of time in my roommate's room. I have a whole separate, other room. Across the common area. I sleep with ear plugs and sometimes those noise-cancelling earmuffs."
His smile returned. "And you'd still bring him fruit?"
Desperate to change the topic now that she felt foolish, she jerked her thumb at her piles and stacks. "I should put this stuff back."
He nodded. "Try to do it without pocketing any of it for home use. I'd hate to have to lay off another person because of a sudden carbon paper deficit."
Her mouth dropped open at the way he so cavalierly shared the news. "You're laying people off?"
He looked around the small room. "Yep. That's why I'm back here. You're using the bad news room for your little project."
She pointed down to the floor. "This room is used to fire people?"
He shrugged. "People tend to get upset when they're fired. Things get broken occasionally, and while I'm not too attached to anything in my office, it's better to use a neutral area with less ammunition," he advised.
"You're firing people today?" she asked, clutching a box of white-out to her stomach.
He nodded without showing much emotion. "As soon as you're done reorganizing the place. Did you shadow Martha Stewart last semester or something?" he asked as he noticed her careful handiwork of subsections and determination of most-used items in easiest reach.
"I'll hurry," she said quickly, starting to transfer items to emptied shelves.
"I'll give you a hand," he offered amicably.
She turned quick to him as he stepped in closer to grab reams of paper, one of the heavier items she'd had to deal with. He halted as they stood nearly nose-to-nose. "Don't you have better uses of your time than to reorganize the supply closet?"
His eyes lit up, signaling pleasure at her having turned the tables back on him. "Touché. I'll be back in ten minutes. Will that kill your feng shui mojo?"
She managed to shake her head. "I'll be out of your way by then."
He made a clicking noise with his tongue. "Your words, not mine."
He replaced the stacks of paper down where she'd had them carefully placed and left her to finish her self-appointed task and wonder if her newfound opportunity would get slashed along with the other cuts he was about to make.
-X-
It was late by the time Rory had left the newsroom, ran back to the Yale Daily News to make sure all her edits were in on time, and then walked all the way back in the dark and cold winter evening to the dorm room she shared with her roommate and, more often than not, her former editor. No one had ever said it was the ideal living situation—Paris, her one-time frenemy turned something usually less hostile was a bear to deal with on her best day, and living with a man who she wasn't either related to or dating was always slightly awkward. The fact that Doyle had a tendency to walk in his sleep and had no shame when it came to his body in various states of undress completely didn't help.
"Did you walk alone?" Paris asked from the couch as Rory shut the door behind her with her foot, seeing as her arms were loaded with a quart of milk, her shoulder bag, and a stack of research for articles she was writing.
"Of course I walked alone," Rory said as she heaved the contents of her arms onto the coffee table. She was often impressed that it took the abuse they doled out on it. "So what?"
"Sunset is at four forty-five in the afternoon. The street light at our building is conveniently busted out, and when I called the maintenance office to explain about how my tuition dollars necessitated them getting off their excessively plump duffs and making the campus safer during the darker months, they told me that it was on their list and the request would be processed in due time, which apparently is after every co-ed in a two-block radius has been mugged."
"Get to the point faster, Paris, I have six hours of work to do and three hours to get it all done," Rory said, winding her hand out in the air to indicate her desire for speed.
"I'm compiling potential lawsuits for the school, if they fail to comply with their regulated duties," Paris said, pulling out a legal pad for Rory to view. "Are you at least carrying your whistle and mace I gave you?"
"Sure, Paris, but they're in the bottom of my bag. It'd be way more effective for me to club an attacker with the bag—it weighs about fifty pounds by the end of the day," Rory said, rubbing her own sore shoulder. She stepped down out of her high heels. She was willing to admit, by the end of the day not only her shoulder was sore—her feet were usually also ready to give up the ghost. Luckily, her shoes were still just as cute to her the next morning, and she pushed through another day.
"Anything can be used as a weapon. It's nice to know you listen to me, at least. Listen, I'm thinking about putting together a protest to force attention to the matter. Can I count you in?"
"Paris, I'm hardly here as it is. When am I going to have time to hold signs and sit in the quad?"
"This is serious. Do you want to be mugged or worse because Doyle can't put an empty milk carton in the trash can and we don't realize we're out of milk until three hours after the sun's set?" she asked, indicating the small ration of milk the girls kept on hand for emergency cereal meals in their room.
"This sounds like a couple issue, and I thankfully am currently free of such troubles. I have school and the paper and my fledgling future at my internship to keep me busy."
"Fledgling? What, did pretty boy Huntzberger sink it that fast? Doyle has contacts at other papers nearby, if you need a quick reference."
"You know Logan Huntzberger?" Rory asked with piqued interest.
"I know of him. Sometimes Doyle used to cry out his name in the middle of the night. I had to make sure he didn't need to have a same-sex exploration that is common to our generation," she said matter-of-factly.
"Aw, man," Rory said, squeezing her eyes shut in disgust. "Remember how we keep having the discussion about boundaries? We might need a refresher," Rory groaned.
"Relax, Doyle wasn't having homoerotic dreams about him. He was having nightmares. Huntzberger is a rich, spoiled playboy piece of work. He's the reason Doyle started swilling Pepto Bismol."
Rory eyed Paris with newfound respect. "I'm really glad the two of you found each other."
Paris smiled smugly. "Thanks. Now, where are we on the protest?"
Rory gave a heavy sigh and grabbed the milk to put it away in the refrigerator. "Listen, Paris, it's great that you're taking an interest in your community and all, but maybe you should give the school a few days to replace the bulb. It might even be a CFL," Rory said with mock enthusiasm, trying to raise her roommate's spirits.
Paris was glowering and about to utter a retort when there was a knock at the door. Instead of engaging in further arguments about the need for the people to force those in power into action, she picked up a cricket bat and stood in front of the door. "Who is it?"
"Paris, get a grip. The muggers aren't going door-to-door," Rory said as she walked over to call off her own personal armed guard. "Stand down. I'll get it."
She unlocked the door and cracked it open as Paris retreated to her room. In the breezeway that led to her room stood her impeccably dressed boss, holding a giant basket of fruit. She rested the bat she'd eased from Paris' grip against the wall behind the door.
Her eyes widened at the reality. Her mind touched on their earlier conversation, before he began the layoffs and she spent the rest of the day listening to Harry breathe into a paper bag while she filed. "You have fruit."
"I do. There are surprisingly few places that offer passion fruit in their arrangements. It's my favorite, and I spent all this time on the phone asking people if they had passion fruit, and then they asked me if I wanted to have it delivered to my girlfriend, and I started thinking about the delivery guy handing Doyle fruit that he might assume was from another girl, and you said he had a girlfriend, and suddenly I was here, with fruit."
"Passion fruit," she said, still staring at him across the threshold.
"Can I come in?" he asked, holding up the large basket to show her that he was carrying quite a weight.
"Sure, you can, um, put that on the table, I guess. Tonight is Doyle's man night. He's knitting at a tea shop downtown."
Logan eyed her to detect just how serious she was. "There's a card."
"You thought of everything," she said politely, feeling more than a little self-conscious about her boss standing in her dorm room. The very thought of him walking through campus to locate her room unnerved her slightly.
"So this is your place," he said, not making an excuse to leave once his task was complete. He'd put the fruit down next to her towering stack of research she'd brought home to work on after her classwork was complete.
"Until the end of the term. We're discussing our options after that."
"Maybe something that requires less protective headgear for you," he quipped.
"One can hope. I don't want to keep you. I'm sure you had a really long day."
He nodded, but if he got her offer for a graceful exit, he didn't bite. "It was. I was thinking about heading over to a place I used to go all the time for a beer. I haven't gotten back to New Haven much since graduation."
"I doubt much has changed," she offered lightly.
He shrugged off her comment. She was still in college, waiting for her life to begin. He was outside looking in, wishing for even a little of the carefree years he'd tried to cling to. "Do you want to come grab a drink with me?"
It wasn't an offer she'd been expecting. "Oh. Well, it's pretty late, and I have an exam in the morning," she began, her excuses real even though she was very aware that they felt like excuses. It seemed to be plain common sense that having a drink late at night with her boss was a bad idea. She couldn't imagine what good could come of it, even if he did have a very famous last name in her chosen field of career.
He waved away her need to continue. "Right. It is getting late. I guess I should get back anyway. I have more meetings tomorrow and a full day of trying to get what's left of the staff to believe that things will start looking up soon."
She moved to open the front door, to open the door for his departure. He caught sight of the bat against the wall with a concerned interest. She paused as she held the door open a crack and swiveled to face him as he stood behind her, still in his winter coat and a scarf open around his neck. "Was it awful? Firing people, I mean?"
He considered her question. "Not as bad as putting everyone out of work later on."
His candor touched her and she pried the door open slowly. "I'll see you next week?"
He nodded, and started to head out into the hall. His hand caught the plane of the door on his way through. "Have a good night, Rory."
"Thanks. You too," she said, hesitating without saying his name. Calling him by his surname felt so formal, even though he was her boss. She had trouble reconciling this man who was barely older than she was being in a position of utmost power over her at the moment.
With one last tight smile, he was gone, wrapping his scarf around his neck as he started to head out of her building and back through campus. She shut and locked the door behind him, and turned to stare at the giant array of wrapped fruit he'd brought.
Paris emerged from her door. "That is a lot of fruit."
"Yes, it is," Rory agreed as she stared at it.
"I thought you said you weren't in a relationship," Paris said, sure she had caught her friend in a mistruth.
Rory smiled as she plucked out the card. "Oh, it's not for me. They're for your boyfriend." She gathered up her study materials to take to her room. "Goodnight, Paris."
-X-
He didn't mind people that he didn't know hating him. He was used to a certain diverging opinion on the nature of his very existence, let alone his own choices. It was how it had been with his own father, people either lauding him with too much enthusiasm at every turn, or the naysayers that hated all he stood for—the rich, white, educated upper class that was unfairly given everything. Logan knew that everything included a lot of responsibility and at most points of his life he would have gladly handed over any of his socioeconomic monikers to ease the burden he was set to inherit.
It was unclear at what point he'd started to care about his work environment and getting those around him on a daily basis to trust him. He liked to think it was all the information he'd had to take in, specific to circulation and payroll and each individual's contribution and what departments were fiscally heavy—it was hard to remain detached after taking in all that and matching faces to go along with it.
As to what had motivated him to head to New Haven with a basket full of fruit for someone he hadn't given a thought to in a year—he tried not to give that too much thought. After all, everything he did off the clock wasn't required to have a reason. He spent most of his four years at Yale doing whatever amused him the most in the moment. Truth be told, it's how he'd spent most of the year since graduating as well. There was the slightest whisper in the back of his mind that had suggested perhaps he hadn't taken the apologetic fruit for his old editor so much as he had hoped to get a chance to see the one person who didn't seem to outright hate him at work in her natural habitat. It had seemed to backfire, however, as she'd seemed too stunned at his odd offering to act naturally during the brief encounter.
Luckily he had too much keeping him busy during and past normal working hours to give her more thought until he came back after lunch a few days later to see her typing at the speed of light on the keyboard in her cubicle. Aside from the freshly reorganized supply closet, it was the neatest workspace in the whole office. She'd even brought a plant and a mug that had her school and future graduation year on it. He stopped on his way to make what had been an urgent phone call and instead leaned on the upper edge of her workspace, watching her fingers fly without glancing away from the screen once.
"Are you double jointed?" he asked, causing her to bounce a little as she started from the unexpected intrusion.
"Excuse me?" she turned and hit him with surprised blue eyes. She'd pulled her long brown hair back into a prim bun at the nape of her neck, making her look like a librarian who'd misplaced her glasses.
He pointed at the keyboard. "You type really fast. You have very dexterous fingers, so I thought maybe you were double jointed."
"Not to my knowledge, but I've never really tested that theory," she said with full, if confused, disclosure.
"I'm glad I ran into you," he said, trying to tamp down all the unnecessary flow of words she seemed to draw out of him. Unless his veins were filled copiously with alcohol, it was rare that he lose his track of thoughts so easily. Everything about the last couple of weeks had been sobering for him.
"This is the best place to do so," she said slowly. "Unless you have more fruit to deliver."
He smiled, bracing himself for the effect she seemed to have on him. "Did Doyle enjoy it?"
Rory shook her head, causing a few stray locks that she'd tucked behind her ear to come loose and graze her cheek. "No. Paris wouldn't let him eat it after he had a panic attack from seeing your note."
"My note gave him a panic attack?" he asked. Again, he knew that there were people that didn't like him, but it seemed a very visceral response to just a few words he'd scrawled on a small card.
"I don't think it was your note so much as the flashbacks that your name caused him. He started muttering about Mitchum and above the fold and pulling it out of his ass. I'm pretty sure he was referring to you, but he wasn't using a lot of nouns and verbs in a functional way at that point. Paris made him some oolong tea and put on a white noise machine of whales that she's trained him to sleep to. That seemed to calm him."
It was a whole other world she lived in, he realized, with these people that she surrounded herself with. He doubted she was ever bored or had to go out to drink in order to make her evenings enjoyable or to gather material for a great story. He all of a sudden felt as if he'd become an ominous boogeyman, capable of bringing grown men down with just the mention of his name. In other words, he was right on track with becoming his father, in more ways than he'd ever thought possible. It was enough to shake him to his core.
"Can we grab some coffee and talk?" he asked suddenly.
He'd startled her again. It was almost cute, the way she froze momentarily before recovering her professionalism in order to address him. He watched her as she shifted in slight discomfort at the offer.
"I have a lot of typing to do. This all has to get reformatted," she began.
"Just a cup of coffee, down the street, to talk about work. And if you think Harry can't spare you, I can clear it for you," he offered with a pointed nudge at his position.
She bit her lip. "You want to talk about work? We can do that here," she offered.
"We could, but everyone here looks at me like they're about to have a panic attack. Everyone but you, that is. And no one knows me as anything but the guy that leaves a good tip at the coffee shop down the street."
She made her decision, her defenses weakening from the professional air that she carried around her. "Sure. Let's go get some coffee."
-X-
It was a post-lunch lull that allowed them their choice of seats in the mid-sized café. He ordered two coffees and joined her at a small bistro table, with two chairs and not much space for anything other than coffee mugs. He hung his jacket over the back of his chair as she'd done, though she'd kept her colorful scarf around her neck. Winter wouldn't break in their part of the country for many more weeks, and the chill in the air often sunk into one's bones by the time a destination was reached, even with proper winter wear. Coffee was one antidote that cut right to the source of the chill. Once their drinks arrived in front of them, he also noticed that her first sip brought a bright sparkle to her eyes. He wrapped his hands around the warmed ceramic mug, displacing much needed heat so he wouldn't burn his tongue out of impatience.
"Good coffee," she said after her second sip.
"Not quite as good as yours, but yes. It's good," he said from experience rather than the current liquid before him.
She glanced shyly down at her mug at the compliment. "If you have to tell me something bad, you really don't need to compliment me first. I'm a big girl, I can take it."
He was perplexed at her assumption. Though, on quick review, she was aware that he was cutting back on staff and pulling people privately aside to avoid a scene. He reached out and lightly bumped his hand to hers. "I don't have anything bad to say to you. I was actually hoping you'd do me a favor."
She stared down at his hand, which was still resting next to hers, until he removed it and put it safely back on his own mug. The back of her hand had still been chilled and in need of warmth, but it was clear he had no business as her boss in providing that service. "Favor? From me?"
"I keep thinking about what you said last week in the conference room."
She seemed reticent to accept any favor he might have in mind. "What did I say?"
"About Doyle letting you proof his copy. Here's the thing, I know you're an intern, and that entails a lot of grunt work that has nothing to do with the reason why you wanted the gig, other than it allowed you a visual representation of the job you're interested in. But the reality of my situation is I have more work than people we have money to pay for to accomplish said work. And if you want to keep on reorganizing closets and making coffee and refilling Harry's antacids, that's fine. I can't blame you for not wanting to take on a more active role, but if I have an intern with the kind of promise you seem to have, I'd be stupid not to try to get you more involved."
Rory considered his conveyed mindset. "So, you aren't letting me go?"
"You're free labor. And you make the good coffee. I might not know everything about the newspaper business, but I know a good thing when I see it."
"Wow. If you're sure you want me to do more, I'm game."
His expression turned serious. "My methods might be considered a little unorthodox. I'm going against my father's specific instructions for what do to with this publication, but I believe in giving it my all, my own way. It's going to be a lot of hard work and long hours, but all I expect from you is your regularly scheduled time. I know you're in school and have other obligations to fulfill. It's just I know the organization you're a part of and the background that comes with that, and I need all the help I can get."
If she'd doubted him before, his honesty had sealed her decision. "I'm happy to help in whatever ways I can."
His reaction was equally genuine, and as he smiled at her with true enthusiasm for the work they had in front of them, he wondered if she always drew people out like she did him. He'd never been anything short of exposed emotionally to her, this near stranger. The only things they had in common was a short man with a nervous disorder and the same bad luck that his father had seen fit to throw them into the same arena on the same day. Their attitudes about which, he didn't need to be reminded, had been strikingly opposed. It was wholly possible that they had nothing else in common, besides a strong work ethic, and even then his kicked in when it suited him and hers seemed to be something she carried with her at all times, as if she might find herself lost without it.
"That's the best news I've had in weeks," he said effusively.
She took a longer sip of her coffee, a sign that she was enjoying it rather than simply in need of the jolt. "Can I ask you a question?"
The expression on her face reminded him once again that he was her superior. He was someone she would ask permission from and do her best to please. She would refer to him as people spoke to his father, and he felt his skin crawl at the connotations. He did his best to smile warmly despite the discomfort it caused him. "Anything you like."
She glanced at him with a quick double-take—her nonverbal way of conveying that she knew it was just an expression and by no means would she ever ask him about certain topics, even if she were curious about him in ways more than was work-appropriate. She parted her lips before she spoke and he was momentarily transfixed at her simple beauty. There was nothing artificial about her, from her polite hesitation to her modest attire. "What were your father's instructions?"
"To salvage what I could in the next six months, so when we dismantled the publication, we could send our best resources to bigger, more stable papers and reinvest in better options."
Her eyebrows shot up. "Why would he buy the paper if he was just going to shut it down?"
He eyed her warily. "Have you met my father?"
She shook her head, her hands firmly around her mug again. "No. I got a letter from his office, congratulating me on my internship. He's a legend—everyone wants to work for him."
He tilted his head and eased back in his chair off his elbows. "Not everyone. And not all legendary figures are all they're cracked up to be. For most people, meeting my dad is like finding out that the real Santa is just some overweight guy from Jersey who gets paid peanuts to sit in a mall in a fake beard and listen to kids, while he waits for his next smoke break."
"Sounds like you have a love-hate relationship with him," she offered optimistically.
"Yeah, if you drop the love part," he corrected quickly, without any emotion other than bitterness behind his words. "I don't mean to shatter any illusions you might be operating under, but Mitchum Huntzberger deals for whatever will make him the most money. And if buying some small circulation paper that's hemorrhaging money but has enough talent to salvage once he's purchased their loyalty, it's no skin off his nose what happens to the rest of the parts that he has no use for."
The way she looked at him in that moment, it was as if she saw him not for what he was, but for who he wanted to be. Her shrewd but kind eyes focused on him with hope that he'd answer her next question a certain way. "But you aren't going to do that?"
He smiled. "I have a few ideas. Some have called them radical, and that's the nicest way they've phrased it. But if it works, then the only layoffs I'll have to do are the ones I've done, and maybe we can do some hiring in a year or so."
She bit her bottom lip in an irresistibly cute manner, as if she were trying to hold back a contagious smile. She wasn't one to be easily swayed by good looks, charm, or even unabashed optimism from a direct superior. "You sound inspired."
"I am. And having an editorial intern that is worth her weight in gold seems like the kind of good luck I'm going to need to pull this off. When we get back, I have a couple of calls to make, and then this afternoon I'm going to have a meeting where I roll out my initial changes. I'd like you to sit in on as many of these meetings as you can. I want everyone on board, from my senior editors to the guy that bring sandwiches around at lunch."
Now her amusement was clear. "Jordan?"
He nodded. "Yes, Jordan the sandwich guy. If they work under my roof, I need them on board. I want an office where people to work together collaboratively, with me especially, instead of hiding under their desks because the boss is around."
Rory shook her head at his visual. "They hide in the mail room. Joaquin, the mail guy, he runs the office lottery pool."
"You sure know a lot about the office happenings for an intern."
She shrugged a shoulder. "People don't care what they say in front of an intern."
He smiled. "Then I was right. You definitely are my most valuable asset."
The implications of their conversation hit her, causing her discomfort and she made eyes for the door. "I'm not really comfortable spying on people," she said, backing down from what he'd sold as a collaborative effort.
He shook his head and held up a hand, trying to stop her from taking her leave without him. "I'm not asking you to enter into corporate espionage on my account—unless that's the kind of thing you're into," he said by way of making a joke. Her frown was enough to convince him she wasn't in the mood for comic relief.
"Mr. Huntzberger," she began.
He'd had enough. His upbringing that demanded proper behavior and subdued emotions in the company of other people failed in that instance. He leaned in and put his hand on her forearm, causing her to attempt to shirk away, but he held her firmly enough to keep her in place. "Please stop calling me that. Every time you say that, I'm looking over my shoulder for my father and that is the last thing I need."
"What should I call you then, Boss?" she asked, tongue in cheek at his ruffled irritation.
He let go of her. "Sorry. It's a pet peeve of mine, and it's all I hear these days."
"If you're serious about wanting to salvage the paper," she began slowly.
"I am. My thought was that you'll better be able to get a feel for who is really on board and who is just lying to my face to prolong their paid job search," he explained.
"So, you mainly want me for my proofing abilities but the fact that I hear all the office scuttlebutt is also desirable?" she inquired.
"Did you just say scuttlebutt?" he asked, thoroughly distracted by her verbiage.
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Is my vocabulary not an asset as well?"
"It is. You're brimming with assets. Assets as far as the eye can see," he said, leaving the land of propriety and delving straight into being at a small table set with warm drinks and a pretty girl.
She straightened her back and squared her shoulders. "I'm not interested in anything outside of a working relationship."
He cringed again at the way he was coming across to her. It was as if his whole past was conspiring against him and the glimmer of hope he had for his near future. "I really am interested in your talents, and nothing more. I will try my hardest to cultivate my professionalism while going against all my father's wishes."
Her attempt to suppress her smile failed again. He thanked the universe for all the boyish charm he'd been blessed with. It didn't work so well with stuffy businessmen in suits that were obsessed with projection charts and data graphs. But with women, more often than not it worked to his advantage. Even with women such as the one sitting next to him, who for all intents and purposes appeared to know better than to get involved with the likes of him.
"So, no more fruit delivered to my door?" she inquired, proving she had suspected he had ulterior motives for making amends with their editor.
"We have a deal."
She gave a brief nod, pleased with their verbal agreement. "I think we do, Boss." She offered him her hand, her palm warm from the mug's transferred heat. Just like that, he had one person on his side.