Dear Cupid

by Julie Ortolon

  “W-what are you talking about?” Kate asked even though she knew. She pressed a finger to her lips to keep them from trembling.

  “I’m saying that at our last staff meeting, we all decided that the page needed a little revamping, something fresher. You know, younger, trendier, The whole cupid concept is becoming passé.”

  “We? What do you mean ‘we’?” Gwen was the sole owner of the magazine. While she might, on rare occasions, ask her staff for their opinion, all decisions were ultimately hers.

  “It’s nothing personal, Kate. In fact, your site seems to be gaining hits again.”

  “I don’t understand. Is this because of what happened last Monday with the animation?”

  “No, of course not. Even though I am still angry about that.”

  “Then what? You said if I eased off the male-bashing, you’d keep my site going.”

  “I know. And you’ve done an excellent job this past week. In fact, I really loved your last column on role-playing.”

  “Then why did you take it down?” she demanded as anger swirled with disbelief.

  “Kate,” Gwen sighed. “The truth is, even though your number of hits are up, your site isn’t generating sales for our advertisers. People are signing directly on and off your page, without even browsing the rest of the site.”

  “And that’s my fault?”

  “In a way, yes. You’ve known from the beginning that the purpose of your column was to draw new people to the site and encourage them to splurge on some romantic notion. It was never intended to be something people took seriously, and certainly nothing that could stand on its own. Plus, our analytics show your demographics are all wrong. You attract too many older married women and men when our catalog is geared toward a young singles crowd.”

  “So, you’re dumping me. Just like that.”

  “I’m sorry. Really. But I don’t have a choice.”

  “No choice? How can you say that?” The trembling settled into Kate’s bones, shaking her whole body. “You hold all the choices and all I hold is the short end of the stick.”

  “Kate, don’t do this. It’s business, all right? That’s all it is—simple business.”

  “Fine, Gwen,” she snapped, on the verge of tears. “Whatever you say. If it salves your conscience to say this isn’t personal, then you do that. But the truth is you can’t stand knowing my site is more popular than yours. You never could stand to be one-upped. This isn’t business. It’s you and your inflated ego.”

  “My ego?” Gwen sputtered. “What about yours? You’re the one who had to go and take herself seriously when all your articles were supposed to be was a little fluff to help sell lingerie and bubble bath. If you’d kept it light and fun, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “If that’s what you want to believe, I guess that’s your choice too. I’m not going to argue about it. I’ll just find someone else to sponsor my site.”

  “Kate, wait!” Gwen called, then sighed in frustration. “I don’t want to end things this way. We’ve been friends too long.”

  Kate closed her eyes, trying to push the pain away. Gwen was right. They had been friends a long time. Which made this slap in the face even worse.

  “Kate?” Gwen asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m perfect, Gwen. How else would I be? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.” She disconnected and dropped her face into her hands. Oh, God! She’d lost her column. Even though she’d seen it coming, she felt as if Gwen had reached inside her chest and ripped out something vital.

  Lifting her head, she swiped the tears from her cheeks. She refused to sit here and indulge in a crying jag. That wouldn’t solve anything. She still had one job left, one that would last a while longer since Mike kept adding to his list of things he wanted her to do.

  The thought of going over there suddenly held infinite appeal. Not that she wanted to go running into Mike’s arms like some wounded child needing comfort, she assured herself. She just, well ... needed something to do. Jim had told her the drawer pulls she’d picked out had come in yesterday and that he meant to install them today. She wanted to see how they looked, that was all. Anything to get out of the house.

  ~ ~ ~

  Mike stumbled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and nearly tripped over Jim.

  “Jesus!” Jim exclaimed, jumping up from his crouching position before the cabinets. “I didn’t think you were here. You didn’t answer when I rang the bell.”

  “No problem,” Mike assured him, as his heart settled back into his chest. Even though he’d given the contractor a key, he couldn’t quite get used to construction workers coming and going on their own. He’d be glad when this phase of Kate’s project ended and she got down to picking out living and dining room furniture. “I probably slept right through the bell.”

  “Long night, eh?” Jim asked, moving aside an assortment of doorknobs and drawer pulls so Mike could get to the coffeepot.

  “Yeah,” Mike sighed, thinking with satisfaction of the work he had accomplished as he scooped grounds into the filter. The robot was shaping up into a horrific bit of work—frighteningly fluid and lifelike. When finished, it world scare the pants off the audience. “You working alone today?”

  “It’s Saturday,” Jim grumbled, obviously in a surly mood.

  “Already?” Mike mentally counted the days since he and Kate had made love. “So it is,” he said, amazed at how quickly the week had flown by. “I take it your crew doesn’t work on the weekend.”

  “Most of them have families, so I give them the weekends off.” Jim shrugged and moved on to the next drawer.

  Since he needed to wait for his coffee to brew, Mike took a seat on one of the stools Kate had picked out for his new breakfast bar. He had to admit, now that the kitchen project was almost over, she’d been right about knocking out part of the wall. The open look made the kitchen seem larger and brighter. For countertops, she’d selected a light colored granite that went great with the oak cabinet fronts. For drawer pulls, she’d found copper knobs in a Texas star motif.

  He couldn’t wait to see what she did with the rest of the place. With luck, he’d be able to come up with enough projects to keep her around until she finally admitted they had something more important going on between them than physical attraction. How any woman could look at him as she did at times, with those hungry, admiring eyes, then insist she wasn’t interested in a relationship boggled his mind. Time, he reminded himself. Give her time.

  He turned back to watch Jim. “Speaking of families, why aren’t you home with yours?”

  “I don’t have a family,” Jim grumbled as he tightened the screw on a drawer pull. “What I have is a pregnant wife.”

  “Doesn’t that qualify?”

  Jim looked up from his work. “You ever had a pregnant wife?”

  “No, I, uh, can’t say that I have.” Mike chuckled. He did, however, remember some of the tales his brothers-in-law had told when Kim and Kelly were pregnant. There had been days when they, too, had fled from the house to preserve their sanity. Although, he noticed as he reached around to pour his first cup of coffee, Jim looked a bit more uptight than Bryan or Larse ever had. “So,” he ventured, “what is it today? The crying tizzy about being too fat, or the hundred-and-one projects she wants you to do before the baby comes?”

  “If only it were that easy.” Jim gave the screw another twist, coming dangerously close to stripping the threads. “Linda’s never looked better than she does right now, and as for projects, I’d build her a whole damned house if it would make her happy.” Sitting back on the heels of his work boots, Jim let out a heavy sigh. “This, however, I have no idea how to fix.”

  “And what is ‘this’?”

  Jim rummaged through the pile of hardware for another drawer pull. “She thinks I don’t want the baby.”

  “Ah,” Mike said, sounding far sager than he felt. “I assume you’ve told her that you do?”

  “Well, of course I�
��ve told her.” Wielding the screwdriver, he tightened the next drawer pull into place. “I’m making her the baby crib, aren’t I? Every night, I spend hours out in the shop working on the thing. And what does she do? Breaks out bawling and accuses me of avoiding her.”

  “Hmm.” Mike mulled that over as he sipped the scalding coffee. The situation was clearly more complicated than he’d thought. “How about getting her to talk about, you know, how she’s feeling and everything? My sisters’ husbands seem to think listening to them go on about their bodies and the baby and making a big deal over all that confusing stuff they get at baby showers helps. Women are big on talking about things.”

  “I don’t know.” Shaking his head, Jim grabbed another drawer pull. “Right now, I don’t think anything will help. I might as well just stay out of her way until this whole thing is over.”

  Mike frowned, thinking something sounded wrong with Jim’s logic, but damned if he knew what it was. When it came to women, logic rarely applied. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “So.” Jim eyed him. “You got any more rooms you want me to tear apart and put back together?”

  Mike started to laugh, but realized the man wasn’t joking. In fact, Jim looked frustrated enough to tear apart a whole house with his teeth. “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Kate on that one.”

  As if on cue, the front door opened. “Jim?” someone called. Mike straightened as he recognized Kate’s voice. “Are you in here?”

  “Speak of the devil,” Jim muttered to Mike before raising his voice. “In here, Kate.”

  The minute she rounded the corner, Mike noticed her pale complexion. He tried to catch her eye, to give her a smile before he said hello, but she didn’t even look at him.

  “I, uh.” She bit her lip. “I thought I’d come by and see how those handles look.”

  “I’m putting them on now,” Jim said. “Want to see?”

  Mike frowned when she stepped around him as if he weren’t there. “Oh. Yes. They look fine. Just f-fine.” Her voice broke over the last word.

  “Kate?” Mike came off the bar stool. “Are you crying?”

  “N-no,” she sniffed. “Of c-course not.”

  “Hey ...” He settled his hands on her bare arms and turned her toward him. “What’s this? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I—” She coveted her mouth with one hand.

  Mike looked to Jim, but the man held up his hands as if to say “Leave me out of it.” Not knowing what else to do, Mike led Kate to the living room and urged her to sit on the sofa. “Here, sit down.” His hands fluttered about her shoulders as he perched awkwardly beside her. “You, um, want to tell me what happened?”

  “No.” She sniffed as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

  “Okay,” he assured her. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

  “I lost my job!” she wailed.

  “Your job? What do you mean? With Linda?”

  “Nooo! With Gwen. I’m not Dear Cupid anymore.”

  From the corner of his eye, Mike saw Jim head for the door, apparently choosing to take the high road and abandon him to deal with this on his own. He felt panicked at the thought. His usual way of dealing with a crying woman was to find another woman to figure out what was wrong, then make himself scarce.

  “I can’t believe she’d do this to me,” Kate managed through sniffles. “After all the years we’ve been friends. I even helped her get started by writing most of the copy for her first magazine. And she didn’t even pay me.” She ran the back of one hand over her cheeks.

  “Kate?” he asked, dreading the answer. “Is this because of the animation I loaded on your site?”

  “No. At least she said it wasn’t.” She took a breath that seemed to settle her nerves. “Do you know what I think? I think she canceled me because she’s jealous. She as much as said my site was getting too popular.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. If your site was so popular, why would she cancel it?”

  “Because more people are signing on to read my column than to buy her advertisers’ lingerie. So, of course she has to eliminate the competition. She’s such a bitch.” Kate’s eyes widened at her own words. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “That’s okay.” As far as Mike was concerned, any woman who made Kate cry was a bitch.

  “I’m sorry.” She brushed at her cheeks, then frowned at her wet fingertips. “I can’t believe I’m being this way. Friend or not, Gwen has a right to cancel my column if she wants. Besides, she’s right about what she said.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That I take the column too seriously.”

  “What’s wrong with taking it seriously?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head, looking broken and defeated. “I can’t think straight right now.”

  “Okay.” Patting her shoulder, he glanced around for something that would magically make her feel better. “Hey, I have an idea.”

  “What?” She rummaged through her purse and came up with a tissue to dab at her eyes.

  “I’ve been working like a dog around here all week. What do you say I take the day off so you and I can go sailing?”

  “Sailing?” She frowned. “Mike, no, I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”

  “Hey, it’s the weekend, isn’t it? Surely I’m entitled to a weekend off every now and then.” A ridiculous statement, since he rarely took any time off in the middle of a project. “We can even take Dylan with us. What do you say?”

  “Dylan’s spending the weekend with his father.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He tried not to look too happy about that. “Well, in that case, how about an overnight sail?”

  “Overnight?” Her eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

  “Sure. I do it all the time. In fact, there’s this great cove a few miles up the lake. We’ll drop anchor, do a little swimming, grill hot dogs, watch the sun set. It’s the perfect cure for anything that ails you.”

  “I don’t know.” She bit her lip. “It’s already nearly noon, and we’d need to pack food, and I’d have to go home to get a swimsuit.”

  “Not to fear. We’ll stop at the marina and get everything we need, including a swimsuit for you.”

  “I can’t afford a new swimming suit!” She looked horrified at the expense.

  “I’ll pay for it.”

  “You will not!”

  “All right.” He held up his hands. “We’ll skinny-dip.”

  She smirked at that suggestion, even though he thought it a perfectly reasonable solution.

  “Come on,” he coaxed, deciding to play on her soft heart. “I could really use some downtime. You’d be doing me a favor.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He gave her a wicked grin. “Do I look like a man who isn’t sure of what he wants?”

  “All right, then.” She put a hand on his chest before he could stand. “Just don’t get any ideas, though, that this changes things. We’re still not dating.”

  “Absolutely not.” He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “You just want me for my body. I understand completely?”

  She managed a teasing smile. “Well, it is a very nice body.”

  “Same goes, sweetheart.” He dried her cheeks with his thumbs. “Same goes.”

  Chapter 16

  HERE, Kate, take the wheel while I untangle those mooring lines.”

  Kate glanced over from the cushion in the cockpit of the thirty-four-foot Catalina where she’d been enjoying the sun on her face. Before she could tell Mike she didn’t know how to sail, he stepped away from the giant chrome wheel, leaving her no choice but to grab it.

  “What do I do?” she asked, sliding into the space he’d vacated at the very back of the boat.

  “Just hold her steady.” He pointed straight ahead, as he nimbly stepped over all the contraptions that cluttered the deck. “Keep the bow aimed to the left of that point there, where the shore juts out.”

  T
hat sounded easy enough, she decided, until she felt how the wind tried to turn the wheel to the right, which would send them crashing straight into the rocky shore. Gripping the wheel with both hands, she aimed for the point Mike had indicated.

  The sun beat down on her back, exposed by the sapphire-blue one-piece swimsuit she’d found on sale at the marina’s store. The suit came with a colorful scarf that tied about her hips and went a long way toward slimming her generous figure.

  From somewhere off to the left, a Jet Ski raced toward them, looking as if the rider meant to run right into the back of the sailboat. Instead, the Jet Ski veered off to hit the small wake left by Mike’s boat. It leapt into the air, landed with a splash and spun about to do it again.

  Kate turned back to watch Mike. He possessed a sureness to his movements she couldn’t help but admire. The same wind that fed the sails buffeted his Hawaiian shirt, which he wore open over a pair of dark blue swim trunks. His hair had already grown a bit from its recent trimming, and she felt sure that by the end of the day, the blond sun-streaks would have returned full force. At least now, after watching him work the sails and unfathomable other things onboard, she knew he came by his tan naturally.

  With his legs spread for balance, he bent forward to untangle some lines. The sight distracted her for a moment, long enough that when she glanced up, a large motorboat had appeared directly in their path.

  “Mike?” she called nervously, but the high-pitched whine of the Jet Ski drowned her out. “Mike,” she called louder. “There’s a boat up ahead. What do I do?”

  He continued messing with the lines at the front of the boat, completely oblivious to the danger. “Mike!” she tried again with rising anxiety as the motorboat came closer, taking on the proportions of the Titanic. If she turned right, she’d crash straight into the shore. But turning left would take her even more into the motorboat’s path. Still, that seemed a better choice than smashing into the rocks, since she’d hopefully clear their path before they collided.