Читать книгу Going For It - Jo Leigh - Страница 11

JAMIE GOT to the station a little after five-thirty. Determined not to dig herself in deeper, she had spent the day trying to figure out a way to extricate herself from this mess without ending up fired. Unfortunately, all the ideas she’d come up with so far required either some form of magic or breaking several major laws.

She stopped at the reception desk, where the night guy, Geoffrey, smiled broadly as he gathered her mail. Over six foot five and thin as a rail, the twenty-year-old had neon-orange hair and more piercings than her aunt Emma’s pin cushion. The pierced body parts were offset, of course, by tattoos ranging from the sublime (a perfect, tiny red heart at the base of his neck) to the ridiculous (Bart Simpson, bent over, pants down, eyes drawn on the buttocks).

She shifted her briefcase to her left hand as she took the unusually large stack of mail. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

His tone made her pause. So did his grin, which had widened dangerously, exposing the braces on his molars.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He arched his right brow. “Except that the switchboard has been lit up all day. I swear, girlfriend, Mr. Holt has a major woody over this little stunt of yours. Brilliant.” He crossed his arms over his Amazon. com T-shirt and idly fingered his nipple ring through the material. “And excuse the hell out of me, but could Chase Newman be more divine? I don’t think so.”

“Why don’t you go out with him?”

He sighed. “If only.”

She shook her head as she headed toward her office. File cabinets on both walls made the hallway narrow, and if someone had to find a file, all traffic came to a halt. Oddly enough, in her time here she’d only seen a file drawer open once or twice. She imagined they were filled with old ad logs and personnel files.

It wasn’t until she neared her door that she heard her name from across the way. Elliot Wolf, the program manager, waved at her while he talked on the phone. Jamie sighed. Like the Energizer bunny, this nightmare kept on going and going and going….

“Sit,” Elliot said, then to whomever was on the phone he added, “Tonight at the Palm II. Ciao.”

She didn’t want to sit. She didn’t want to talk. She was cranky and getting crankier by the minute.

“So,” he said, running a hand through his Brad Pitt hair, complete with dark roots. However, the likeness ended there. From the forehead down, Elliot looked eerily like a young Vincent Price, mustache and all. On the gaunt side, with a voice a little too high, he devoured scary movies like Raisinets, and his hobby, like Vincent’s, was gourmet cooking.

“Elliot, I have work to do.”

“I know. This’ll just take a minute. Sit.”

She obeyed, giving him a pained sigh in protest. She hated the chairs in his office. Leather and chrome, they tilted back, making it hard to get out of them again. But they looked chic, and Elliot loved chic. He’d decorated modern, with a very expensive, very ugly Chuck Close print dominating the room. He never had anything on his desk but his notebook computer, as clutter was one of his pet peeves. He had no such qualms about his secretary’s desk.

“Here’s the scoop.” Elliot perched on the edge of the credenza. “We’re running highlights of your shows for the next two weeks. Sound bites the other DJs will play before commercials. I’m working with Cujo on the reels. We’ve set up a separate phone line for people to call in their comments and suggestions. Holt is planning a major ad campaign, which means we need you and Newman for photos. Greg Gorman is going to do the shoot, but he only has two hours on Tuesday available, so if you have something scheduled at eleven, cancel it.”