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I can get behind this.
I can understand it.
Sometimes you have to play the long game to reach your goals, and it makes sense to temporarily set aside certain targets in the interests of being able to pursue them in the future.
Maybe this whole boss Osprey thing won’t be a cataclysm after all.
Maybe he’s just a businessman with an attitude problem, but deep down he’s in the business of making companies profitable. Not sinking them for his own trashy amusement.
I’m scribbling notes like mad, adding a few thoughts on what we can do for creative direction that I’ll want to discuss with Matilda. Let her take it up with Osprey.
Oh, and maybe I add a little doodle in the margins of his perfectly sharp jaw with its black sand dusting of stubble, that swoop of hair crowned by devil horns. They fit him like a glove.
I’m trying not to smirk when his palms slap the table.
Hard enough to make my notepad jump.
My pencil leaps to one side as I choke back a gasp and I grab it.
I lift my head sharply, glaring, while everyone stares at him with uncomfortable silence.
But he’s still looking right at me.
That carnivorous glint is in his eyes, making his white, too-perfect teeth seem sharper at the edges when his lips part.
“I’ll be giving you mostly free rein to implement these strategies, Miss Landry,” he says slowly. “On one condition.”
Oh, no.
I have a feeling this condition is going to be awful.
And he proves me right when he says, “As my new subsidiary and sister company, Just Vibing will be fully expected to contribute to Osprey Media’s ad revenues by driving traffic to The Chicago Tea.”
The Tea? That Tea?
Revulsion slugs me so hard in the belly I can taste blood.
Oh. My. God.
So I knew he was a tabloid sleaze.
I just hadn’t known how dirty. No one thinks of the parent company behind the gossip rags they read. They know the name of the paper, but not the name of the publisher.
I know the name of that paper, though.
Everyone knows the name of that gossip mill with its spinning knives.
They’re less paparazzi and more character assassins. There’s no story too brazen or too personal for them, no privacy they won’t invade, no one too exalted for them to humiliate and drag off their ivory pedestal into the mud.
Just shoot me right now.
I deserve it for ever giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Sure, I tried to make peace with what he did in the airport. That was easy when I didn’t know who he was. I know I tried to be objective about how tabloids make careers as much as they break them.
Yeah. That was before I knew how appalling it could get.
That was before this man wrapped his filthy fingers around my career’s throat. My magazine. My future.
I don’t realize I’m squeezing my pencil hard enough to snap the plastic tube in half until the tip breaks and slams the back of it up, biting my palm.
The tip of the lead snaps off and tears the page underneath.
You obnoxious slime!
You disgusting, rude, predictable pile of male ego and pure sleaze.
He only holds my eyes...and with them, my everything.
He smiles like the viper he is, the devil incarnate, a damned asshole of the highest order.
And that’s when I realize everyone is transfixed, trying to decipher this bizarre little staring contest with our eyes taking the place of pistols at sunset.
Matilda breaks the silence, clearing her throat loudly with a bright smile that says she’s not nearly as appalled by Roland Osprey as I am.
Standing, she smooths over the awkwardness with a hand wave toward me.
“Mr. Osprey, this is our new Chief Editor, Caroline Landry. But it sounds like you’ve met? She’s excited at the prospect of working with you.”
“Is she, now?” Osprey purrs, watching me with a cocked eyebrow. “I wish she’d told me that when we met.”
Matilda falters.
“Oh, yes,” she says faintly, glancing between Osprey and me. “How did you two meet?”
“A chance encounter at the airport. Miss Landry was quite passionate about the publishing industry. Admirable, really.” He’s oozing charm, but I’m grinding my teeth—especially when he gives me a pointed look and asks, “It is ‘Miss’ Landry, isn’t it? I don’t see a ring.”
Bury me now.
What might be flirting coming from any other man sounds like an insult from him.
And I suppose it is. What maniac would ever want to make a missus out of the self-righteous church mouse, right?
Lifting my chin, I put on my frostiest smile.
His gaze arrows to my mouth like a bull sighting the bright, vivid red of my matte lipstick.
“Miss or Mrs. has no relevance to my job,” I say coolly. “Would you like to get back to your presentation, bigshot? We’re all a little breathless to hear the rest.”
Even if it’s just a polite deflection back on topic, it feels like a thrown dagger.
