Mr. December

by Macallister, Heather

  Lawrence Jordan their best shot? To Lexi, it looked like he was their only shot. And mainly because she could no longer stand Biersanger’s hopeful basset hound expression, she’d already decided to approach her father before the end of the year—but the time, and his mood, had to be right.

  “Okay,” she told Francesca. “I’m going to ask him.”

  Francesca raised her fist. “Yes!”

  “But you can’t tell anybody!”

  “Lips sealed.” Francesca mimed locking her lips. “But in the meantime my chamber music class has been canceled unless it’s all right with you if they rehearse here.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I’ll call the office back and have them put up a sign, then. Do we have any soft drinks?”

  Lexi gave her an innocent look. “Not since we discovered that sodium and bubbles make us bloat.”

  “I was referring to your secret stash.”

  Lexi started to deny that she kept an emergency six-pack in her laundry hamper, then admitted, “I drank the last can Monday night while I was grading freshman theory papers.”

  Francesca grimaced. “I would have cheated then, too,” she said as she left.

  Lexi stared down at the magazine. Seven available men just a few miles away. And she only needed one. Just one man to please her mother, therefore pleasing her father. One man to reassure Gretchen’s therapist. One man to answer Aunt Carolyn’s nosy questions. One man to shade her from the brightness of Emily’s success.

  And maybe one man for her.

  Taking the magazine with her, Lexi jumped up and found Francesca arranging chairs around the piano. “Hey, Frankie, do I look okay?” She had on a sweater, in case the heat wasn’t working in her studio, a blouse and a long skirt, so she could skip wearing panty hose.

  “For what?”

  Lexi drew a deep breath and held up Texas Men. “I’m going over there—to the research building.”

  “Now?”

  She nodded. “I’ve got two hours until my next class.”

  Francesca’s mouth opened and closed. “That’s what I like about you. When you decide to do somethings, you go for it. Want to wear my cat suit? I can use the hair dryer on it.”

  Lexi shook her head. “I’m not wearing that thing. It’ll make me uncomfortable.”

  Francesca gave her a look and spoke in a sultry voice. “It’ll keep you on edge.”

  “I’m feeling edgy already.”

  “It’ll change your body language.”

  “That’s not the language I want to speak.”

  Francesca rolled her eyes. “If you did, you’d probably get every guy in the calendar to go to Christmas dinner.” Eyeing her friend critically, she walked forward and unbuttoned the top two buttons on Lexi’s blouse. “Ditch the sweater.”

  Lexi looked down to where her cleavage would be—if she had cleavage.

  “You need a whisper of lace peeking through.”

  “I don’t want my underwear talking for me.” Lexi rebuttoned one button and removed her sweater.

  Francesca shrugged and finished arranging the chairs for her ensemble class. “There have been occasions when I’ve been grateful for its...eloquence.”

  Lexi preferred the more direct approach. Besides, she wasn’t fluent in underwear-speak. “Do you always use underwear to get what you want?”

  “No. Sometimes I don’t wear underwear at all.”

  “What?” Lexi squeaked.

  Francesca laughed as she unfolded the music stands they kept stored in the front closet. “It’s usually when I’m playing a concert and the conductor has been a little repressed at rehearsal. Just before we walk on stage for the performance, I whisper in his ear that I’m not wearing underwear. He always gives just a touch extra to the concert. Usually speeds up the tempo, too.”

  “What if the conductor is a woman?”

  “Then I make her wear one of my cat suits.” Francesca’s deep dimples showed. “One size fits all.”

  Lexi stared at her roommate. “You’re making this up.”

  “Uh-uh.” Francesca nodded to a crystal cello figurine on the mantel of the fireplace they never lit because Lexi’s grand piano was too close to it. “That’s from Martina Golavaskov. In gratitude.”

  “The Russian?”

  Francesca arched an eyebrow. “Her reviews got markedly better after the concert we played together.”

  “And you think it’s because of your underwear?”

  “Underwear sets my mood,” Francesca said. “I love going to those stuffy receptions we have for the symphony donors and wearing lime-green underwear that says Tuesday.”

  “Aren’t you worried that someone will hear it?”

  “So what if they do? You need to loosen up, Lexi.”

  “I’m loose when it counts,” she protested. “I just save my emotions for my music instead of wasting them on underwear. Besides, one of us has to stay tight and focused.”

  “You shouldn’t hoard your emotions. Enjoy them. They’ll stretch.” Francesca smiled slyly. “Just like the cat suit.”

  Lexi went to hang up her sweater. “I appreciate the offer, but let me try this my way first. What coat should I wear?” she called from the front hall closet.

  “Borrow my leather one, but only if you promise to let your hair down.”

  Lexi grinned. She was already shoving her arms into Francesca’s jacket and had every intention of letting her hair down. Standing in front of the hall mirror, she released the tortoiseshell banana clip and shook her head, freeing her waist-length black hair.

  Lexi’s hair was her one vanity and she coddled it every bit as much as Francesca coddled her lingerie. She was putting on lipstick just as her roommate passed by to get more folding chairs out of the closet.

  “If I had hair like that, I could get by with white cotton underwear, too,” Francesca said with a sigh, then smiled. “If you see Mr. December, ask him if he got my picture.”

  Lexi capped her lipstick. “If I see Mr. December, I’m nabbing him for myself.”

  2

  “BUT SHE’S MAD this time.”

  “Yeah, well, she wasn’t exactly cooing in my ear yesterday, either.”

  “I mean she’s really mad.”

  There was a brief silence, then, “Okay. Leave her on hold until I talk to him first.”

  Spencer Price pretended he couldn’t hear the conversation among his research team in the lab outside the walled-off corner generously referred to as his office. He didn’t want to hear. the conversation. He was working on the year-end budget reconciliation, which always put him in a rare bad mood. Everyone on the team knew this, and generally avoided him during budget time.

  “You’re not going to tell him about the—!” The rest of the panicked sentence was garbled as the speaker was silenced.

  “Let me handle this.”

  Against his will, Spence wondered what “this” was. He contemplated shutting his door, except that he never shut his door, so an assortment of electronic prototype carcasses now propped it open. They were too much trouble to move. Besides, where else would he put them?

  Footsteps approached his door. “Hey, Doc?”

  Spence glanced up from the computer monitor. “This better be important, Gordon.”

  His senior research assistant wasn’t wearing his customary smile. Not good. “The lady from Texas Men magazine is calling. Wait,” Gordon warned as Spencer reached for the phone. “There’s some... background you should know before you talk to her.”

  Background? Spencer’s mood worsened as he noticed the rest of the team crowding behind Gordon. “What have you done?”

  “Told you this was a bad time,” muttered someone.

  Gordon held up a hand. “You’ve no doubt noticed the increase in the volume of mail the lab has received since our calendar was featured in Texas Men.”

  An understatement. They both glanced at the canvas mailbag in the corner of Spence’s office. “What about it?”

 
“Some of us—actually, all of us, except you—have been reading the letters, and we’ve dated a few of the women.”

  “I know this. The six of you have talked about nothing else for the past three months. You’re stalling, Gordon.”

  “I was hoping she’d hang up.”

  Everyone looked at the red blinking light on Spencer’s phone. “Why?”

  Gordon puffed out his cheeks and spread his hands. “She could stand to cool off before she talks to you. When people get themselves all worked up, they tend to say things they regret later.”

  Spencer eyed him. “Am I going to say something I’ll regret later?”

  “Probably.” Gordon grimaced. “There’ve been some complaints, okay?”

  “Who’s been complaining about what?”

  “Some of the women we’ve dated apparently felt we didn’t look enough like our calendar pictures and they let Texas Men know.”

  Spencer took a moment to absorb this. Just how many complaints had there been? “Satisfied women don’t complain. What did you all do to them?”

  A chorus of “Nothing!” answered him.

  “Did you ever think that could be the problem?” Spencer turned off his monitor.

  “None of them stuck around long enough for us to do anything, but I’ve got the chemistry lab working on—”

  “Quiet, Murray.” Gordon elbowed him and cleared his throat. “So we got a little carried away with the computer enhancements on the calendar pictures. We’re still basically the same people with the same personalities. Right?” He looked around him for agreement.

  “Women don’t buy those calendars to look at your personality,” grumbled the barrel-shaped man in the back.

  “But that’s all some of us have got.”

  “News flash. You don’t have a personality, Bob.”

  “Hey!”

  “Okay, okay. I’ve grasped the general problem.” Spencer exhaled. “I knew letting a personals magazine run the calendar was a bad idea.”

  “Just remember how quickly we unloaded the rest of the calendars after they featured us in their fall issue,” Gordon pointed out. “Remember the money.”

  Since securing funds for his robotic hand project occupied most of Spencer’s time, it wasn’t something he was going to forget. His finger paused over the hold button. “Name and stats.”

  “Tonya. Blond. Available.”

  “Thank you.” Spencer punched the button and leaned back in his chair. “Tawn-ya,” he drawled into the phone, visualizing a blonde at the other end. He wished he could recall a face. “Spencer Price. How have you been?”

  “Well, if it isn’t Mr. December, himself. I was beginning to think you didn’t exist, either.”

  “Either?”

  “First, I get reports that the men in the calendar aren’t the same men who show up for dates, and then you won’t return my calls or answer my fax.”

  “What calls?” As he spoke, Spencer watched Gordon sneak over to the stack of papers on the corner of the desk and remove the top third to reveal a nest of pink messages. Spencer snatched at them, fanning them out like a hand of cards. He glared at Gordon, who pointed to the paper beneath the pink slips, which turned out to be the fax.

  Gordon and the rest of them scuttled backward out of the room, while Spencer let Tonya blow off steam.

  She had every right to be angry that her messages hadn’t been acknowledged. What could have been a few minutes of unpleasantness had now become a time-consuming problem.

  It was his fault, he silently acknowledged. Since taking on the research manager’s position, he’d spent less time researching and more time working on the administrative end. What little time he did find for actually working on the robotic hand project was constantly interrupted. And now he had to turn in the budget.... He remembered insisting that nothing short of disaster should be brought to his attention.

  Looks like his team had taken him at his word.

  He swiveled his chair toward the wall and the narrow vertical rectangle that passed for a window. Smoothing over the situation was going to require his utmost concentration and all his charm. “Tonya, my assistant just dug your messages out of my in-box. It’s a communication problem on this end. He’d been instructed not to interrupt me. My sincere apologies. What can I say?” He smiled, knowing it would sound in his voice. “I’ve been swamped.”

  “So have I—with complaints,” she snapped, but to Spencer’s practiced ears, she didn’t sound as angry as before. “Don’t any of the rest of them look like their pictures?”

  He chuckled lightly—a deliberate move designed to diffuse tension. “It’s the centerfold effect. You know these calendars. They’re all airbrushing and attitude.”

  “Dr. Price, let me quote from just a small sampling of the complaints. ‘Overweight geek... His ears turned red and he kept staring at my breasts....’” Spencer instantly visualized Bob. He closed his eyes and rubbed the area between his eyebrows.

  “‘Pasty-white nerd... This egghead had no muscles and obviously has never been in a gym in his entire life.... Creepy... I expected a great-looking tanned guy, with lots of hair who was into parasailing and the hair was supposed to be on his head, not on his back.”’

  Spencer interrupted. “Maybe your happy subscribers haven’t written in.”

  “We’ve been contacting women who’ve responded to our 900 number. No one is happy. They’re requesting refunds. You’re costing us money and damaging Texas Men’s reputation.”

  Spencer’s financial antenna detected a request for restitution in the offing.

  Not a chance.

  “It works both ways, Tonya.” Her name was Tonya, wasn’t it? He’d been working too hard. “There haven’t been any love matches on this end, either. You should tighten your screening procedures to keep out the women with unrealistic expectations.”

  “So you’re saying it’s unrealistic to expect the other men in the calendar to look on par with you?”

  Spencer was trying hard not to say that. He was aware that women found him attractive. But since he owed his good looks to fortunate genes rather than any personal effort on his part, he felt no pride. “You flatter me.”

  “That wasn’t my intention, I assure you.”

  No, her intention was to hold the Rocky Falls-Littletree Electronics Research Facility liable for any financial losses suffered by her magazine. Spencer guessed her publisher had yelled at her, so now she was yelling at him, and he was going to have to figure out a way to appease everybody. Nothing he hadn’t done before.

  When this whole calendar thing started, it had been a joke—a spoof on the hunk calendar genre and another crazy moneymaking scheme from Dr. Price’s lab. Sure, the guys had enhanced their photos, but they’d never expected anyone to take them seriously until Texas Men had called, wanting to feature the calendar.

  Obviously, the Texas Men readers didn’t have a sense of humor.

  The truth was, due to the Texas Men exposure, so to speak, the calendar had become their largest moneymaker and had funded six months of all-out research on the robotic hand, the project near and dear to Spence’s heart. He’d do anything—and pretty much had—to ensure funding for the hand.

  If it was the last thing he did, he wanted a working prototype to wave in front of Dr. “Moldy” Oldstein. He wanted to hook the thing up to those arthritic hands and make the guy acknowledge that Spencer Price, the kid he’d said was wasting scholarship money, had been the one to give him back his motility.

  At school, Moldy had made his life miserable with his constant insistence that Spencer wasn’t doing his best and making him redo designs and projects. Spencer’s anger had fueled his determination. Even when he was no longer Moldy’s student, the echoes of the man’s taunts stayed with him, driving him to succeed.

  He’d nearly quit three years ago. He was out of money and out of a job, unless he could get another grant. And who was on the federal grant committee? Moldy Oldstein.

  Spencer’s
eyes sought the framed letter on his wall, as they frequently did when he hit a low point. He’d memorized the words—they were few enough. “Congratulations. Here’s more money for you to waste.” The grant had been huge—enough to assemble the crack team here—but the ten-thousand-dollar personal check Moldy had enclosed meant more.

  Moldy believed in him—and Spencer realized he always had.

  And Tonya thought he’d let her threaten everything he’d ever worked for?

  “We need positive feedback to counter the complaints,” she was saying.

  “The problem could be that the guys don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so they’re dating everyone who responds. I’ll see to it that they’re more discriminating in the women they choose to contact.”

  “That’s a start. But I need something tangible to show my publisher,” Tonya said, confirming Spencer’s guess about the situation.

  “That’s easily solved.” He hoped. “We’ll ask future dates to send you glowing testimonials. We’ll send you engagement announcements. Invite you to the weddings. You’ll be godmother to firstborn—”

  “I get the picture, Dr. Price.” She paused and her voice changed. “By the way...there haven’t been any complaints about you.”

  Involuntarily, Spence’s eyes cut to the gray lump filled with unopened letters addressed to him. “I do try.” To avoid desperate women.

  “If you’re ever up in Dallas again—”

  “I’ll give you a call,” Spence completed easily, prepared to hang up.

  “You do that.” Tonya sounded like a woman who’d heard the “I’ll call you” line once too often. “In the meantime, I’ll expect some favorable date reports. Nothing terribly detailed—just something to put in our letters column and convince the publisher to hold off on the fraud charges for another month.”

  The chair squeaked as Spencer sat straight up, eyes wide open. “Fraud charges?”

  “Yes, an element in our screening procedures—the ones you think need tightening—is the misrepresentation clause in the agreement you and the men in the calendar signed before we agreed to publish your profiles. We rarely have to enforce it, but when we have...” She laughed as though reluctant to reveal the rest. “I’m sure you understand when I tell you it isn’t profitable to pursue cases we’re likely to lose.”