by Sara Whitney
Excitement colored Shannon’s voice, but Mabel wasn’t about to crash the Carey Christmas without a longer discussion with Jake. “Oh, um, we hadn’t really talked about—”
“If I can talk her into it, yes,” he said firmly.
She turned her head to whisper, “Really?” He looked back at her like that was the most ridiculous question about a foregone conclusion he’d ever heard, and she melted. “Okay, it looks like I’m joining you for Christmas.”
“Well, that’s…” His mother drew a deep breath and placed a hand over her heart. “That’s just wonderful.”
Shannon looked to be on the verge of tearing up again, but Jake steered the conversation toward practicalities. “I bought the turkey, so that’ll be delivered along with a couple of pies on Christmas Eve.”
“I keep telling you, you don’t have to take care of that every year.” Shannon’s exasperated voice made Mabel think this wasn’t their first conversation about the topic.
“You know I want to.” Topic closed, based on Jake’s tone. “Oh, and I just had a conference call with my BPS bosses, and they’re thrilled with the work I’m doing down here. Things are looking great.”
“That’s nice, sweetie. I know that’s important to you,” Shannon said before turning to Mabel again. “But I want to know all about the beautiful girl who makes my son smile like that. Where are you from? Do you want kids?”
“Mom!” Jake groaned, but Mabel lightly flicked his ear.
“Hush. Your mother and I are talking.”
As she answered all Shannon’s questions, Jake’s comment burrowed into the back of her brain. “Things are looking good.” Was he referring to the partnership? And what did that mean for the two of them? As Shannon peppered her with questions, Mabel glanced at Jake, who watched their exchange with such contentment that it eased the tension in her chest. He was in this, just as much as she was, and she trusted him to let her know if there were any bumps on the horizon. If he wasn’t worried about their future, then she wouldn’t worry either.
Thirty-Four
“We’re going to be late!”
“We are not!” Mabel’s voice floated from the bedroom, which she’d booted Jake out of half an hour earlier after upending the entirety of her closet onto every available surface. One raised eyebrow as she held up every pair of shoes she owned next to every scrap of fabric she owned, and he’d been exiled to the living room.
In truth, he was content to laze on her couch while she spun like a top, getting ready for the Brick’s New Year’s Eve party. Then again, he hated being less than punctual. Maybe he should check on her progress.
He dropped his feet from their perch on the coffee table, and Tybalt, who’d fallen asleep on his lap, gave a mrrpt of irritation at being jostled. The orange cat grumpily resettled himself on the adjacent cushion and allowed Jake to give him an under-the-chin apology scritch. The cat appeased, Jake headed down the hall to brave the feminine prep zone. When he stuck his head around the doorframe, he was again reminded that he was the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth. His woman stood in front of the mirror, flushed, adorable, and draped in a tiny black dress.
“What do you think? Too basic?” She smoothed her hands down her sides and pivoted, giving him a good look at the plunging neckline. Then she turned around and leaned over to put on her shoes, letting him ogle her long, bare legs.
He swallowed. Swallowed again. Cleared his throat. Shifted to accommodate his suddenly interested dick where it pressed against the zipper of his pants.
“Nothing basic about any of that,” he managed.
She straightened with a pleased smile and fluffed her hair, which she’d styled in a mass of curls for the night. “Thanks. I’m worried I’ll freeze outside, but—”
“I’ll keep you warm.” He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her hard, and she didn’t even bat his hands away when they slid into her hair. If anything, she pressed herself even more tightly against him and returned his kiss ferociously.
When his hands crept to the hem of her skirt, she pulled away with a laugh. “Now who’s going to make us late?”
“Worth it,” he murmured, pulling her back to him. “Some things are so worth it.”
An hour later, they arrived at one of Beaucoeur’s posh riverfront hotels where the station-sponsored New Year’s Eve bash was in full swing in the ballroom. All the deejays were expected to give a few short live broadcasts throughout the night, and Mabel must’ve been feeling anxious, because she tapped her way across the parking lot as quickly as her heels would carry her. Jake’s longer legs allowed him to keep up, and when they finally made it inside, the first person they bumped into was Brandon, without a date on his arm, surprisingly.
He eyed them with a smirk. “You’re late. Wonder why.”
Just like that, Mabel’s happy, I’ve-been-sexed-up glow vanished, and Jake bit back a curse. She might have adapted to her new work situation, but her interactions with Brandon usually left her a little snarly. He rested his hand briefly on the small of her back before pulling it away, aware that she was still uncomfortable with PDA and not wanting to push his luck. She flicked a smile up at him before returning her glare to Brandon, but it just bounced off the man’s Teflon skin.
He pointed a thumb over his left shoulder. “We’ve got the live remote booth set up in the far corner. Skip’s already done two cut-ins, so go let him know you’re here. I’m sure he’ll want you to take a turn making the unwashed masses feel bad that they’re not here hanging with the slightly more-washed masses tonight.”
She rolled her eyes, nodded curtly, and stalked across the room toward Skip, who was no doubt about to get an earful about their nightmare boss.
Jake sighed. “Why do you get off on antagonizing my girlfriend?”
“Nothing I said was antagonistic, was it?” Brandon asked innocently. “Other than implying that she just had good sex—in the most HR-friendly way possible, of course.”
“Nothing about you is HR friendly.”
Brandon plucked a glass of champagne off a circling waiter’s tray and saluted Jake with it. “You’re damn right. But let’s jump back for a second. The delectable Mabel’s officially your girlfriend now?”
“If we’re doing this, I need something stronger than that,” Jake muttered, gesturing to Brandon’s champagne flute. The other man shrugged, drained his glass, and followed Jake to the bar.
Once they each had a tumbler of scotch in their hands, Jake felt capable of venturing into this conversation. “To answer your question: yes. Things are going well between us.”
The information pulled a wolfish grin out of Brandon. “So a woman finally got you to look up from your precious spreadsheets.”
Jake’s hackles rose at the amusement in Brandon’s tone. “What’s so funny about that?”
Brandon pointed at him with his glass. “You, dude. We had hot-and-cold-running sorority girls in college, all of them dying to have sex with you. ‘Oh, Brandon, fix me up with your friend Jake.’ ‘Oh, Brandon, why doesn’t Jake ever come to these parties or hook up with any girls?’” He grimaced at the memories and took a sip of the amber liquid in his glass. “But no, no, the scholarship student had no time for women. Then you get out of college and start making some money, and all you can see is that partnership.”
Jake stiffened. “There’s nothing wrong with ambition.”
“Of course not,” Brandon said impatiently. “What’s hilarious to me is that you relocated down here for a temporary assignment, your last one before making partner, and what happened?”
“Wait, are you complaining about my work? I’ve been laser focused on the Lowell accounts.” It took a little more juggling of his time, but he was making it work, and he was damn proud of the balance he’d achieved. But if Brandon was sending negative reports to his superior at BPS… The thought made the blood pound in his ears.
Brandon dismissed his fears with a lazy wave of his hand. “You worry too much. Y
our work is good. In fact, my old man just played a round of golf with one of your bosses at Augusta and sang your praises for the first five holes.”
His relief at that unexpected news vanished with Brandon’s next words.
“I’m just commenting on the irony of it all.”
Jake raised his brows. “Irony?”
Brandon saluted him with his glass. “Of you, stopping to roll in the hay when you’re only five feet from the finish line you’ve been running toward for twenty years.”
“I’m not sure that’s how irony works,” Jake said distractedly as his stomach twisted into a knot. He was working fewer hours than he ever had in his life, yet he seemed to be closer to his goal than he’d ever been. A year ago, he’d have laughed off the idea that becoming less of a workaholic would win him a partnership, but he was still on course, even if he answered his emails a little more slowly these days. He was still in it for the career, the partnership, the financial stability he’d craved his whole life. He’d just made a little room for Mabel alongside it all.
Still, his expression must’ve betrayed some of that inner turmoil, because Brandon clapped him on the back. “Not fucking with you here. I’m genuinely trying to pay you a compliment. You found your person and fell in love, and you didn’t worry about your self-imposed life schedule. That’s brave. Now”—he drained his drink—“if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can find a woman or two to not fall in love with tonight, if you know what I mean.”
With one more hearty back slap, Brandon disappeared into the crowd, leaving Jake frowning into his glass. Something about their conversation itched along the edges of his brain, probably to do with Mabel and his partnership. God, if he could just jump ahead to their Jamaica trip, where he wouldn’t have to think about work or the future or anything he couldn’t control. It’d be just him on a beach with the woman he—
In a flash, he realized what was needling him. He ditched his glass on a vacant high-top table and set out across the room to find her at the WNCB table next to Skip, holding a mic, ready to do her live spot.
“Hi!” She waved him over. “Give me two minutes.”
She slipped the headphone on and raised her voice to be heard over the buzz of the crowd. “Hey there, Beaucoeur! This is Mae Bell, coming to you live from the ballroom at the Samuel Clemens Hotel. I’m here with a couple hundred of my closest friends, ringing in this glorious New Year, and good news, there’s still time for you to join us before we do our final countdown to midnight.” She paused and shot Jake a quick wink before turning her attention back to the mic. “This year I’ve got my somebody special picked out to kiss when the ball drops. And maybe you’ve got somebody picked out too, or maybe you don’t. Either way, get on down here and join us! We’re having a blast.”
He was hit with a surge of joy. Hats-in-public, no-PDA Mabel had mentioned their relationship on air. That was important. That let him know that he was doing the right thing.
Skip signaled her that they were out, and she dropped her equipment on the table. “Thanks, kiddo,” he said. “I’ll pull in Dave for the next one.”
She shot him a thumbs-up, then spun to Jake, who rested his hands on her waist and backed her into the corner behind the station table until they were as alone as they could be in a packed ballroom.
“Did you just announce to the world that you’re a taken woman?”
She laughed breathlessly and pressed a hand to her chest. “Did I?”
“You did.” He tugged her closer. “And I need you to know something too.”
The teasing expression dropped off her face when she noticed how seriously he was studying her. “Oh God. What did Brandon do this time?”
She glared over his shoulder, angry gaze scanning the room until he caught her chin and turned her attention back to him.
“Nothing bad, actually.” He released her and smoothed his hand down her neck. “He said something to me just now, about how brave I am to have…”
She looked up at him expectantly, and he swallowed hard and tried again.
“How brave I am to have fallen in love with you.” He watched her expression, searching for any hint of panic or rejection, but her face only registered surprise. “And the thing is, as soon as he said the words, every part of me knew it was true. And then I got pissed at him.”
She gave a shaky laugh. “Join the club. But why over that?”
He moved his hands down to rest on her hips. “For saying it out loud to me before I could say it to you.”
“Then you’d better officially say it to me,” she whispered, eyes bright.
“I love you.” It felt so good to say that he repeated it, louder this time. “I love you, Mabel.”
Then, thank God, she said it right back. “I love you too. I love you so much that I’m only slightly annoyed that Brandon was involved in this.”
Jake laughed and pressed his forehead to hers. “Does that mean I’m allowed to lay my unworthy hands on you in public now?”
“Oh, absolutely.” She reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. “And you should probably kiss me a couple of times too, just so everybody here knows we’re together.”
Who could resist? He kissed her soundly and offered a silent thank-you to the universe that he’d looked up from his spreadsheets and found her. Now if only the universe could show him the formula for landing his partnership and keeping his girl.
Thirty-Five
Mabel walked into the greenroom and found Dave slumped on the couch with his guitar on his lap.
“It’s Monday,” he said when she dropped on the couch next to him. “The third week in January.”
“Yup.” A tiny spark of hope flickered in her belly. The Nielsen ratings were due out any day, which meant they’d soon know about any listenership changes that happened in October, November, and December—in other words, the months following the morning-show split. No amount of stern internal commands had been able to quash her foolish optimism. Because what if? What if the station’s audience numbers dropped? What if Brandon changed his mind?
Dave moved his fingers through silent chord progressions, his favorite activity to channel excess energy, as Mabel watched Skip through the glass going through the motions of his show. “My numbers’ll be down. It’s inevitable.”
“But that’s good, Eeyore,” she said. “If you improved, then That Arrogant Asshole was right all along.”
“But if I haven’t improved, it means I’m a shitty deejay.”
“Right, but we already knew that.”
His small pained noise was a tiny rebuke.
“Oof, sorry.” A closer look revealed the strain around his eyes. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”
The strings squealed as Dave slid his fingers over them. “We both know the show isn’t as good without us working together. I just hope that doesn’t mean I’ll be out of a job if the book really is that bad.” He kept his eyes on his guitar.
“Please, they’d never fire you. You’re Mr. Beaucoeur Radio.” She leaped off the couch and started pacing. “I just want the wait over with already! Who the hell knows what the ratings will be? Plus there’s Jake’s focus group research, and God only knows what Brandon’ll do with that. Gah!”
She flung herself back down, and this time Dave actually strummed his guitar, plucking out an ominous riff suitable for the drama of the situation, at which point Skip whipped the studio door open.
“Take it somewhere else, you two. Your palpable anxiety’s seeping under the door.”
Their wait ended at noon on Wednesday when Robbie stuck his pompadoured head into the secondary studio where Mabel was working on commercials. “Ratings are out. Brandon wants to see you and Dave in his office in two hours. Book’s in the greenroom.”
He hadn’t even finished speaking before she ripped the cans off her ears and bolted out the door. Dave was already holding the book and scanning the results, so she stood on her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder.
&nbs
p; “Hooooooleeeeey shiiiiiiit,” he said.
He wasn’t wrong. The spring numbers had placed the Brick at number three in the Beaucoeur market, with their morning show as the second-most listened to. Not so in the fall results Dave was holding. Ratings for the past three months now had them trailing the Top 40 station and the country station like usual, but the all-talk station had bumped the Brick down to number four by a fairly large margin.
“We went from an 8.7 percent audience share to a 5.1?” Mabel asked, horrified. “How did that happen?”
“My fault,” Dave said flatly. “Look.”
She inhaled hard at the morning-show numbers. The spring ratings had Dave and Mae in the Mornings at a 9.3 audience share. The new numbers had the Mae-less show sitting at a 4.0. She’d never seen a drop that big before.
“Not your fault.” Her voice was harsher than she intended it to be, but she hated the shell-shocked look on Dave’s face. “You were struggling to keep all the oars working in the right direction with a new copilot at the helm every week. Of course the numbers are rocky.”
Dave shoved the report at her and collapsed onto the couch, running his fingers through his hair.
“Not good, not good, not good,” he muttered, then looked up at her. “Well, you’re good.”
She flipped to the afternoon-drive numbers. Sure enough, she was pulling in more of an audience than Roman had been at the same time in the spring, up from 5.6 to 6.7. Surprising, since she’d been intentionally sucking for two of those three months. Not that she’d say that in front of a panicking Dave.
“I told you you’d be fine without me,” he said. “You make me funny, and you’re great on your own. I’m the train wreck.”
She dropped the papers on the desk and stalked over to him, leaning down to put both her hands on his shoulders. “David Winnebago Chilton—”
“Winston,” he muttered.
“David Winnebago Chilton,” she said, raising her voice, “if you don’t shut your pity hole, I will shut it for you. You hosted what should be a two-person show solo for a month, and then you had to parade a group of ill-prepared, marginally talented party girls though on-air auditions. Of course your numbers are wonky.”
