AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My heart rebelled at the thought. There wasn’t anyone else–there wouldn’t be. Not like Ella. Whatever she had been thinking last night, whatever had made her run… I would make it better. “I think she just needs time to get used to the idea of us,” I told Natalie, picking my words carefully for once. “She just needs a little space. I’m sure of it.”
Natalie rolled her eyes. “‘Needs space’ my ass. Whatever you did, fix it. I don’t like to see you moping. It reminds me too much of you in college.”
“Hey!”
She pointed at me with one finger across the desk. “Fix it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, hoping the forced lightness in my voice covered the sinking in my heart. I took another bite of my sandwich.
“Anyway, it’s not like she needs more trouble. You know Noughton is buying the CityStyle? She’s a good reporter, but that won’t matter once he’s got his hands on her employer.”
My sandwich was halfway to my mouth, forgotten.
“What?” My stomach dropped. I set the sandwich down, no longer hungry. I knew what he had done to his other acquisitions: he was a vampire, draining companies of capital, moving assets around in just-this-side-of-legal ways, before either selling them for scrap or filing for bankruptcy. And now he had moved on the CityStyle.
On Ella’s magazine.
On Ella.
And therefore:
Onme.I clenched my fists.
“Oh, did you not know?” she asked, her smile now a twisted, sarcastic one. “Yeah, he’s buying out the CityStyle. If I had to guess, I would expect he’s buying a bunch of little glossies like that one, consolidating them into one skeleton-staff newsroom. He can have that crew do the big pieces and ditch the local interest. Then, when readership goes down, he’ll blame declining interest in local news, as if it weren’t him who caused the so-called decline. That’s what I would do.”
“You would never,” I snarled. Her eyes widened, and I took a deep breath to slow the wild beating of my heart.
“Of course not,” she said, “I have more important things to do with my time. Michael Noughton, though, does not. And neither, apparently, do you.” She pushed away the remainder of her sandwich and pivoted back to her computer. “So if you don’t want to end up like him, a sad, soulless capitalist with no one to mourn you when your shriveled heart finally quits, I suggest you take this afternoon off from your burgeoning video game career and get busy applying that famousPrince brothers charmto a certain reporter we both know.”
Ella
“I didn’t expectfor this to be aprofessionalmeeting.”
The expression on Margaret’s face was one of polite interest: neither eager to hear what I had to say, nor bored by me. We were at a coffee shop between her office and mine, the afternoon sun streaming through the plate glass windows, casting slanting shadows across our for-here cups. The space was light and airy, with high ceilings and pale concrete countertops. My coffee had cost $6, but at this point, it didn’t matter: I was unlikely to have a job in a few months, so what was $6 spent or saved? I hadn’t wanted to contact Margaret, or any of the Princes, after making a fool of myself at dinner, after being so tempted by Charlie’s promises, after learning what I had from Editor Stevens.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I wasn’t sure who else to turn to,” I apologized, for about the dozenth time since she had arrived.Sorry, sorry, sorry.
She lifted one perfect eyebrow. “No?”
“I couldn’t ask Charlie, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Oh?”
She was good. I recognized her technique from interviews I had done: keep quiet and wait to see what the other person had to say.
“That’s right. For one, we…”We had a hard time sticking to talking when our bodies kept colliding like two magnets.I blushed. “We don’t have that kind of relationship.” We didn’t have any kind of relationship, not now.
“No, perhaps not,” she agreed, her face unreadable.
“But also, this doesn’t concern him. It’s about, well,” I wasn’t sure how to phrase it. “It’s about Natalie. Or, rather,” I continued, “something she mentioned to me.”
“Is this about Michael Noughton buying CityStyle?” she asked, confirming my worst fears: they had known. They all knew. My hand shook as I took a sip of my latte and set my cup back down in its saucer.
“I understand if this puts you in an uncomfortable position, as I think your husband is friends with him, but–”
“They’re not.” She said, with a finality that made me blink, startled.
“Okay. Then maybe this is easier,” I tried to smile through my discomfort. “Natalie mentioned to me during our interview–for CityStyle–that he has something of a… reputation. Among omegas.”
