Just a Girl - Becky Monson Page 0,39

his desk and kiss me senseless. Which is something I’ve never imagined.

News flash: I imagine it way too often.

“Anyone have anything?” Henry asks the room. He’s leaning back in his chair, his arms folded. The buttons on his shirt look to be struggling to stay closed over his broad chest, and I can’t stop staring.

Jerry nudges me. I look over, and he gives me raised eyebrows as if to convey something with his eyes. Jerry sucks at nonverbal communication. Unless he’s giving me the middle finger, which happens fairly often. But everyone knows what that means. He nudges me again, eyebrows raised.

“What?” I whisper to him.

“Jump in there,” he says in a low whisper.

What’s he talking about? I have no ideas to offer, and I can’t just come up with something on the fly. Besides, my best one was already used, and it worked perfectly for what I needed it for—to get the station off my back over my big faux pas.

“Quinn has something,” Jerry says to the room.

“What? No,” I say quietly to Jerry.

“Come on,” he says, nudging me with his elbow.

“What ya got for us, Quinn?” Dwayne says with his booming voice, his dark eyes staring at me.

“I . . . well, I was thinking,” I stumble over my words, trying to come up with something. Stupid Jerry, what was he doing just throwing me under the bus like that?

“Did you forget?” Moriarty asks, her voice full of fake-sounding sympathy. I want to punch her stupid smug face.

“I didn’t forget,” I say, not meaning to sound as punchy as I do. “I just . . . am trying to think of all the pieces.”

I sound like a moron. I need an idea. Come on, brain. Give me something. I look over to my left to see Marco the intern standing there with his gorgeous tanned skin, perfectly coiffed black hair, and dark chocolate eyes, and the conversation I had with Holly comes back in an instant.

“Date our intern,” I say out loud, the words rushing out of my mouth.

“How’s that?” Henry asks, his face scrunched.

I purse my lips. “Well, I was thinking we could do a feature with one of our interns—like maybe Marco.” I lift my chin toward the door where he’s standing. Marco gives me a weird look. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be Marco, but I think our viewers would love him.”

I smile at Marco, and he looks down at the floor, his cheeks turning a tiny bit pink.

“We’d do a weekly feature. People could submit applications, and we’d let the viewers vote. And then we’d narrow it down to two or maybe three women. Marco would go on a date with each, and we’d have a crew follow them and do some fun interviews, and then in the end Marco would pick one for a second date. It would be like our own little Orlando Bachelor show.”

I sit back in my chair, feeling quite proud of myself. I came up with all that on my own, on the fly. Well, Holly had put the original idea in my head, but all the logistics—those were things I just made up. Right now.

“That’s my girl,” Jerry says quietly in my ear, tapping a finger on my shoulder.

I look around the table; the room seems to be alight with the idea. Dwayne is even nodding his head at the possibility. Moriarty doesn’t look thrilled, but it’s probably because she didn’t think of it first.

My eyes travel to Henry, and I catch him looking at me, his gaze intense. I wonder what he’s thinking. That I’m a genius? That he was stupid to let me go? That he misses me? That he wants me to have his babies?

There I go again with my fanciful brain. It tends to run off with fantastic ideas since reality is much more boring. The truth is that I’m not enough for Henry, and he’s probably staring at me because I have a poppy seed in my teeth from the salad I ate earlier. I open my phone on camera mode to check, but there’s nothing there.

“I like it,” Dwayne says. “Let’s roll with it.”

“Or,” Moriarty says, piping in, a bright-red-polished index finger pointing to the ceiling. “Why settle for an intern?” she says, a devious smile on her lips. “I mean no offense to the interns, of course. But why don’t we do ‘Date Our Executive Producer’ instead?” She swivels her chair toward Henry, whose eyes have suddenly gone wide.

“No,” Henry