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“Asher’s really not the kind of guy to be coupled up. Are you his secret girlfriend?” The other one asks.
“No, I’m not,” I answer honestly. “We only met recently.”
“If you could bag him, you’d be set for life. You wouldn’t need to work at City Scan, that’s for sure,” the other one says wistfully.
“It’s one hell of a way to start your career off,” the other one adds. “I had to prove myself for a long time before Zan trusted me with any great stories.”
Peyton rolls her eyes. “Unless you really don’t need the money, you’ll have to get in good with Zan if you really do want get hired on with City Scan. If you can pull off an interview with Asher Kingston, that’s the way to do it. If you can manage to swing a great interviewandwrite a killer story, she’ll help you out in your career. Don’t screw it up. Then there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Oh, yeah,” the others all agree in unison. “Now that you’ve got the assignment, I don’t know what Zan would do if you messed it up,” one adds with a shake of her head.
“Don’t find out,” Peyton warns me. “Really. Do it right or Zan can make sure you never work in this industry again.”
I grin but no one else does. “Are you serious?” I ask Peyton.
“Absolutely. I’ve seen it happen before,” she says. “Zan’s worked for half the magazines in this city and she knows practically everyone who’s anyone in publishing.”
I sip at my drink while the subject changes into someone’s date last night. I’m glad I’m no longer the focus of their scrutiny anymore. I figured that Asher was some kind of a big deal after our night out but I don’t know anything about his work. I got so caught up in the idea of being with a nice guy who’s into me, I never even thought to Google him. I didn’t care about anything else.
At least I like to think that he might be into me. Who knows. Riley always says there’s no point to assume one date means another one until you’re actually on it and I’m trying so hard to keep that in mind.
Would Asher even agree to do an interview with me?
You can’t be involved with the subject of an interview in any way. As much as I want to go out with Asher again, I really want this job to work out.
There’s no way I can pass up this chance. My career could be off to an incredible start. Asher seems like a nice guy. Maybe he’ll agree, even though we didn’t talk about much more than surface stuff when we went out. He never even mentioned his job like a regular guy would. Interviewing him could be a real challenge.
For now I can’t wait to research him and find out why my boss is so excited. While the others are busy talking to each other, I get my phone out as discreetly as I can. The moment I enter Asher’s name, my eyes widen at what pops up.
Chapter 7
Elena
I stare at my laptop’s screen. I have no idea what to write on my blog. Way back when I started it, I wrote random everyday things mixed in with news stories I investigated. That didn’t attract a lot of readers. When someone wants in-depth news, they go to a real news site or online magazine. Not a blog that no one’s heard of.
My only choice is to go with what Riley suggested and not focus on news. Now that I’m living in Central Park South, my life’s already getting more interesting. I’ve got my new neighborhood to talk about. That makes it a lot easier. Everything about my apartment is great. All I have to do is show the view off and that alone should get me tons of clicks.
Luckily it’s sunny out and the pretty blue sky’s quite clear. Roaming around the apartment, I take photos from all the windows at every possible angle. I get a few really good ones and post the best three.
Feeling good south of the Park
Done. Now I can get back to obsessing about what I learned about Asher. Once I got home from the bar, I dove fully down the rabbit hole and ended up spending hours clicking through his life. Just his professional life. I get why Zan’s salivating so hard over the chance to get a deeper, human interest angle on him.
Every single article out there is all about his company and even then, the details are fairly minimal. The focus is always on how Vivojen was able to attract some major investors. Biotech’s considered risky at best and on top of that, there aren’t a lot of details about what the company’s all about. In spite of all the secrecy, Asher’s become the new soaring star of the business world. There’s definitely a story behind it all. I’ve got to be the one to break it.
Not that Asher’s company isn’t fascinating enough on its own. Everything I’ve read says that Vivojen’s on track to become one of the biggest game-changers the medical field has ever seen. There’s a lot of speculation but no one knows how he got Vivojen to the level it’s at as fast as he did. Everyone wants to know more about who the man behind it all is. Myself included.
I found only two profiles written up about Asher, the new King of the business world. Reading between the lines, I can tell the writers tried to dig into his personal life. From Asher’s generic answers, he was pretty skilled at dodging most of their questions. His tactic is to let something very vaguely personal slip out, then he immediately redirects back into talking about his company. He still keeps the conversation very superficial. He’ll be a tricky one to interview. I wonder why he does like that?
I scan through one of my open tabs for what must be the tenth time. I enjoy a challenge, but the situation I’m in here is something they didn’t exactly cover in journalism school. We all learn that you’re supposed to keep yourself out of the way of the subject and never get personally involved. Objectivity is the key.
I always figured that would be easy-peasy. Who’d even want to get involved with the subject of a story? Of course I never thought I’d be in the position of being assigned to interview someone I’ve already gone out with. I expected to be pitching my own ideas for stories to the editor.
Having slept with Asher already makes the whole thing even more complicated.
I check out Page Six again and there we are. It’s a candid shot which I didn’t even know got taken. I know they only snapped him because he’s hot and I got included because I was with him. There are a few other images of Asher by himself or with me cropped out. There’s nothing including my name or who I am.
I found some older pictures of Asher out at other events and every single time, he’s with a different woman. According to the captions, they’re also high-profile and highly successful in their fields.
