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Huh. Not alone. It was the woman he’d taken for an intern. “You’re Derelie?” This was the woman who thought he was gay, who should’ve fought harder for Artie.
“I’m Derelie.”
“You work here?” She didn’t look old enough to drive a car let alone work in a newsroom.
“Seems that way.”
“You’re not...” Not quite glossy enough around the hair and lips and the shoes to be one of the women who wrote for the fashion pages and read books with Girl in the title in the breakroom, that’s what’d thrown him off. “Never mind.”
“Wow, and you’re not Artie Chan.”
Swipe left, baby. “You thought I was gay. It’s the suits, right?” They were easier, he didn’t have to think about getting dressed in the morning or get changed if he had
to make a sudden appearance on TV.
“It’s not the suits.”
“Then what? Heck, forget it.” Enough time wasted on this. “Show me the goddamn questions.”
Chapter Three
Jackson Haley sucked. Like big time, sour lemon, jaw aching sucked. And it wasn’t the suits, it was the ego. You could probably see it from space. It’d be this great glowing balloon of overinflated male confidence and starched master of the universe entitlement—with pinstripes.
Derelie liked him better when he was a headline, a dinkus and a legend she could speculate freely about, not the real thing standing in front of her, mating his eyebrows with annoyance.
He hadn’t even registered she was in the room, and then that crack about whether she worked here. What did he think she was doing at the editorial meeting, haircuts and shoeshines?
Derelie didn’t want to be part of this either. Being the story was different than writing them. A byline, maybe a thumbnail of her face, her own dinkus or digital avatar, was all the fame she was looking for, but Shona hadn’t exactly given her a choice, and despite what Phil had said at the staff meeting about cutbacks meaning cheaper crapper paper, an email had come in talking about buyouts and voluntary layoffs.
It was better to be volunteered to endure the human headline than to be involuntarily polishing her resume. She tried an ocean breath and lifting her weight from the earth with her armpit chest open to see if that helped. It didn’t.
“I don’t have the questionnaire.” The world’s least likely romantic lead took his eyes off his cell long enough to blink at the ceiling. “Shona will email us the first part when we’re together.”
“We’re together now.”
If she let him intimidate her, she’d fail to get this story. If she failed to get the story, she’d fail to make the rent. If she thought about him in his underwear, he’d be less intimidating. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
“Good observation, cadet. You were listening in journalism school.”
Neck to knee underwear made from something ugly and scratchy, like a burlap sugar sack. “I have a name and it’s Derelie.” Ocean breath. Jackson Haley, you are going down; you are not going to frighten me out of my job. “Are you being a jerk because of the gay thing or are you always this way?”
His expression didn’t change. “I’m always this way. What’s the rest of your name?”
“Honeywell.”
“Derelie-verily-sounds-like-merrily Honeywell.” He stuck his hand out. “I’m Jackson Haley and we got off on the wrong foot. Call me Haley.”
She looked at his outstretched hand suspiciously, took it reluctantly and didn’t wince when he squeezed harder than necessary. He was just a man wearing hideous underwear who smelled like cinnamon. “I’m going to call you Jackson, because that’s friendlier.”
That got a grimace out of him and his eyes went to his cell screen. “Jack, if you must. Only my mother calls me Jackson about once a year, which is quite enough. You’re right about Chan making better copy. Go tell Potter I’m a mutinous asshole and we’d be a car crash, tell her I’m not cooperating, and ten to one, Chan will be your man.”
He’d rolled with it when she’d called him a jerk, so she went with “You are a mutinous asshole.” How was it the world housed so many of them? What sin had she committed that meant she had to get experimentally intimate with one? All the yoga calm she stored up was nothing in the face of this man. Her peaceful warrior was bristling, but better to be infuriated than terrified.
“Start the way you mean to go on, Honeywell,” he said with a wry half smile that indicated his burlap sack underwear was lead-lined and nothing she said would get to him. Good to know.
“My name is Derelie. I mean to hold on to my job, so I’m big on doing what Shona and Phil say.”
“Look, they want a solid story, full of pathos and emotion, that feel-good, human connective tissue stuff. They want two colleagues who become friends. They want great lines they can turn into promo. They’ll want photography. They’d marry us off for readership if they could. We all know I want out of this. But Chan—young, pretty, intelligent, witty, knows how to give a heart massage. Chan will make good copy.”
