Jingle This! (3 page)

Roger finished his pushups, then hopped to his feet, sporting yet another brand new designer suit. Were the funds for that coming from the company coffers? Kyle grimaced and decided he needed to take another look at Roger's expense account.

"What's up?" Roger asked.

"I just got a call from Swift Department Stores." Kyle wasn't in the mood for preamble, or for comparing his faded jeans and old sweatshirt to the thousand dollar suit that his partner was wearing. Kyle was putting all his funds back into New Age Marketing. Roger clearly wasn't.

Roger stared at him blankly. "Swift?"

"Our new client."

"Oh...the jewelry one?"

Kyle ground his teeth. "Yes." How in the hell did Roger pay so little attention to their business? "It's a department store. We're doing a campaign for their jewelry department."

"Okay, sure. I remember." Roger grabbed his wallet off his desk and shoved it in his jacket pocket. "Well, what's the deal? And talk fast. I have to go buy flowers."

"Flowers?" Kyle couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. How was Roger able to so blithely run around without dealing with the state of their company? "Why? Is Angie feeling blue?" Kyle had never bought a woman flowers in his life. He felt it was too insincere. His first obligation was to his company, and he wasn't about to make promises to a woman that he couldn't keep.

"Nah. I have a hot date tonight." Roger shot him a secretive look. "My new woman. I've been waiting for weeks to make it official and tonight we're finally going public."

Kyle held up his hand. "Whoa. Wait a sec. New woman? What about Angie?" Was it possible? Had Roger finally seen the light?

Roger shrugged. "I broke it off. She was cramping my style."

"Wow." Kyle had to sit down for that one. Hot damn. This was great news for the company. He needed Roger back and in a major way. "You and Angie are over? For good?"

"Yep."

Hallelujah. It was about damn time. "So, let's go to dinner tonight. I have a lot of things I need to fill you in on about New Age. I have some ideas on how to pull us out of this free fall, and—"

"Tonight? No way. I said I have a new woman, and I mean it." Roger grinned. "She's too hot to leave alone. I gotta be there to keep her cool, if you know what I mean."

Kyle swore and ground his jaw. "So, you went from Mr. Married Guy to dating a sex fiend?"

"Yep. I never realized what I was missing. I had one hell of a weekend after I dumped Angie." He wiggled his brows as he picked up his coat. "I gotta hit the road. I need to spruce up the pad for some hot lovin' tonight."

"Wait a sec!" Sex talk or not, Roger wasn't going anywhere until they came up with a plan to deal with Swift's call. "We have a serious situation right now. You can't go home and do interior decorating."

"What's the crisis?" Roger shrugged on his coat and threw his monogrammed silk scarf around his neck.

On the plus side, if Roger was no longer drooling over Angie, it certainly made Kyle's bad news less dicey. "Angie messed up."

Roger ran a comb through his hair and checked his mirror. "What'd she do?"

"She screwed up the first story for Swift. They want to pull out." Merely voicing the words was enough to make Kyle break out in a sweat. If they failed to land Swift as a client, the chance of avoiding closing up shop was infinitesimal, especially without commitment from Roger.

Roger frowned. "Do we care if they pull out?"

"Yes, we care!" Kyle paused to regain control and lowered his voice to a more reasonable level. "We really need Swift for a client. This daily serial project is a small test, and if we fail, we don't get 'em. If they love it, they'll give us more business. And we need them. Big time." He narrowed his eyes at Roger, who was now inspecting his suit for stains or stray threads or something. "Roger. Pay attention. The company isn't doing very well. We need this client."

"Then get the client." Roger fingered his tie. "Does this tie match? I want to make a good impression. Should I go buy another one, you think? I'm no good with ties. Angie always picked my ties."

"Forget the tie, Roger." Kyle ground his jaw in frustration. "You need to take Angie off the client and replace her with one of the other folks from Creative. We need someone who can write about love, not hate…" Oh. He suddenly understood why Angie had written such a hellacious story yesterday. It was Roger's fault. He'd dumped her and then left her to write about love and romance?
Shit.
That wasn't going to work. "Apparently, with her state of mind after the breakup, she's not in the mood to write about love."

And that was putting it kindly. The "love story" she'd written was a tragic tale about adulterous spouses, emotional devastation and psychological terror. Not exactly the kind of touchy-feely sentiment that would lure men into buying diamonds for their beloveds.

Roger was already shaking his head. "No way. I can't interfere."

Kyle felt like he was going to explode with the effort of not shouting at his partner. "Why the hell not?"

"Sexual harassment. Angie was sleeping with the boss, and then I dump her and take away the best assignment in the company? Nope. Too risky. We should actually give her a raise, and we sure as hell can't take her off that project. You'll have to figure out how to get her to write better."

A sexual harassment claim? Sweet Jesus. This was getting worse by the minute. Kyle grabbed his arm as Roger tried to shove past him. "Hey! Would you focus for a second? This is the company's future we're talking about here. Angie has to get it together by the time she submits her story for tonight. You're the head of Creative. Edit her stuff, or better yet, write it yourself. You can't go run off and buy ties while the company crashes and burns."

Roger grinned and slugged Kyle on the shoulder. "Sure I can. That's why you're my partner. I pay the bills, you save the day. It's worked so far, right?"

"But it's not working now."

"Then you're not doing your job, are you?"

Kyle swore under his breath. "Listen, Roger. It's your decision if you don't want to help run this company, but if that's the case, you need to get out."

Roger rolled his eyes. "Not this crap again. I'm not selling my half of the company to you, so forget it."

"If you don't, you might find yourself with a valueless asset in six weeks."

"You won't let that happen."

Son of a bitch. They both knew Roger was right. This company had been Kyle's dream, his vision. The only reason he'd brought Roger in was for the funding, and he wasn't going to give up on it. Roger knew him too well. Kyle would run himself into the ground before he'd give up on it, and they both knew it. "Fine. I'll talk to Angie."

"Good luck. She nearly stabbed me with the turkey fork when I broke up with her. She's a bit volatile."

Great. That's all he needed, to have to deal with some broken-hearted woman with violent tendencies. He wasn't the touchy feely type who could sweet-talk her into happiness. "Thanks for the warning. I'll wear my bulletproof vest when I meet with her."

"Good plan. I'll see ya." Roger socked Kyle in the arm again, then ducked out the door in search of a tie, whistling cheerfully.

For a split second, Kyle felt a twinge of envy. When was the last time he'd whistled? All he did was work and lie awake at night, sweating about every nickel leaving the company's coffers. He almost envied Roger, and his ability to simply not worry about things. What would it be like to be so into a woman that the world could crash down around him and he wouldn't care?

Hell. As if the day would ever come when he'd cut out of work to buy a damn tie to impress a woman. Roger had gone soft, and he was heading the company toward certain doom.

Unless Kyle could stop it. And the task started with Angie Miller.

The larger the diamond you buy for your true love, the more useful it will be for grinding into their forehead when they announce they are leaving you.

–Angie Miller

Angie stared at the computer screen.

It was only December second.

She still had twenty-four stories to go.

She'd never make it.

For the twentieth time in the last hour, she growled at herself for such negative thoughts. She
was
going to make it. She was a brilliant writer. No broken heart was going to stop her from writing fantastic and compelling prose.

"Um, Angie?" Heidi stuck her head in the door, wearing a Santa hat and a fake beard. Her auburn hair was tumbling down past the white brim, making her look adorable instead of like a crazy bearded woman. "Got a sec?"

"Sure, unless you're going to wax poetic about the great elfin sex you and Quinn had last night. I'm really not in the mood for that." Not that she was ever really in the mood for that conversation. Heidi and Quinn's sex life far eclipsed any interesting stories she'd ever had to tell about her and Roger. And now that she had no sex life at all to compare? Even worse.

"Actually, Quinn had to work late last night. He didn't even see my elf outfit." Heidi walked in and stood, her arms folded loosely across her chest, then hanging by her side, then across her chest again.

"What's wrong with you?" Angie leaned back in her chair, watching her friend's restless movements with growing trepidation. "What's wrong?" Fear rippled through her. "There's nothing wrong with you and Quinn, is there?" As hard as it was to hear about hot elf sex, Angie loved how happy Quinn and Heidi were. "You guys are okay, right? I'm sure he was really disappointed he had to work late—"

"It's not about Quinn. It's about your story."

"My story?" Angie echoed, confused. "What about it?"

"Well, you know how you finished it so late that we skipped the copy editing stage and you just went ahead and posted it without me reading it?"

"Yeah." Yesterday had been such a nightmare. Angie hadn't realized how truly difficult it was going to be to write about holiday love until she'd sat down to do it. She'd meditated. She'd gone to the gym. She'd even chugged an iced coffee to get a caffeine hit. Each time she'd sat down and tried to type, her mind had just shut down and she'd wanted to cry.

The only thing that had finally gotten the words flowing had been the looming deadline. Finally at five o'clock, she'd started typing, and still barely made the midnight deadline, partially due to the three hour nap she'd taken on her floor from seven to ten o'clock. She'd even ruined her silk blouse with all the drool.

Total stress.

From now on, she was pretending the deadline was five o'clock, not midnight. How was she supposed to find joy in the holiday season again if she was stuck at work every night and had to miss all the holiday parties and everything fun? She had to get out of the office and find her way back to the woman she used to be.

"Did you even read it when you finished?"

"Read what?" At Heidi's raised eyebrow, Angie turned on her brain and focused on work. "Oh, right. My story. Of course I read it. Why? Were there typos?" That would be appalling if she'd posted a story that had typos. She prided herself on turning out only the highest quality work. If the breakup had made her so depressed she couldn't even catch some lousy typos...that would be unforgivable. The one thing she still had was her writing talent. If she let some guy interfere with that...

Heidi rolled her eyes and tossed a printout on Angie's desk. "Read it again, sweetie. From the point of view of the client, looking for a tale of love so touching that it would inspire even the most tight-fisted man to buy diamonds for his woman."

A firm rap sounded from the door before Angie could pick up the document. She looked up to find Kyle Black standing in her door, his forehead a mere two inches below the mistletoe she'd forgotten to take down.

There he was. In her doorway. Kyle Black.

He was wearing faded jeans that hit his hips just right, a ragged sweatshirt that hung off his broad shoulders in just the right way and a pair of old basketball sneakers. She'd seen him in a suit plenty of times, but there was something about his casual look that simply took her breath away. He looked so ruggedly masculine, but his piercing blue eyes showcased his brilliant mind and quick wit. It had been almost three years since she'd first met him, and he still made her stomach do all sorts of weird jigs and sent her pulse into overdrive.

Dammit. She couldn’t afford to get all hot and bothered about
"Kyle
. Wasn't she over him? It had to be the mistletoe. Damn plant, stirring up decadent thoughts about Kyle that she was much too smart to entertain.

Heidi cleared her throat, and Angie realized she'd been gaping at him. She quickly snapped her mouth shut and picked up the article Heidi had dropped on her desk, though she couldn't begin to concentrate on the words. Damn Kyle. Why did he still affect her like that? She was so going to find weed killer tonight. She hadn't found any at the grocery store, but there had to be some for sale somewhere in this city.

"Oh, hello, Kyle," Heidi purred cheerfully.

Oh, great. Could Heidi sound more amused? With that lilt to Heidi's voice, Kyle would have to be an idiot not to realize that Angie had spent hours extolling Kyle's virtues to Heidi. Note that those hours were in the past, before he'd started shacking up with her sister. Once that had happened? Forget it. He'd been wiped from her heart. No one would be allowed to break her heart twice. "Looking dapper as usual," Heidi said.

Kyle raised an eyebrow in Heidi's direction, and Angie couldn't help but sneak a peek to see if he checked out Heidi's ample bosom peeking out from under her bushy, white Santa beard.

Heidi was truly the only woman Angie knew who could wear anything on the planet, including a Santa outfit, and look so hot that even the most proper, old or asexual men couldn't help but check her out.

Except Kyle, apparently. He was looking at the beard, not the boobs.