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I decide to back down. Cameron looks like he’s about to have a coronary anyway, and I don’t want to be responsible for killing the man. Although maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
I throw him a bone. “How about I give this another pass, Cam? Maybe I can sex it up a bit?”
His shoulders drop back down to their natural position and I’m pretty sure I’ve won this round. Or at least haven’t lost my job yet. “Yes, Amalia, that’s exactly what I want you to do. And take ‘cheesiness’ out of the last sentence. Are you kidding me? You want to tell romance readers the book they’re considering is ‘cheesy?’ I thought you were the pro in this genre. That you’ve been reading romance day and night since you learned to read.”
Okay, I might have oversold that a bit.
“Iama romance lover, Cam. It’s true. I read them all the time.”
That part is accurate, that I read them a lot these days, which is probably why I have no boyfriend. Romance novels have ruined my love life by raising my expectations. And the sex… well, I know I’ll never have sex like they do in the books.
Which is why I read them, I suppose.
Note to self, get new batteries for my vibe on the way home tonight.
Cameron’s fingers unclench and the red drains from his face, leaving him looking only slightly evil, like a mean Christmas elf. “I want to remind you, Amalia, of what we discussed in Monday’s meeting. We’re all skating on thin ice here. The publishing house hasn’t had a hit in a while, and the romance division in particular is really hurting. Should layoffs ensue, it’s last in, first out.”
Last in, first out. That means since I’m the newest hire, I’ll be the first to get canned. Lovely.
I lower my voice and lean closer to him, which I hate to do because he wears Jo Malone, and that stuff is way too strong for my taste. “Does that mean I should be looking for a new job right now, Cam?”
I don’t mean to tip him off, but if he’s being honest, I will be too.
His eyes widen. “No! Don’t do anything yet. All I’m saying is that we need to work doubly hard until the company gets out of this slump. You know, it’s not helping us that the romance genre is losing steam. Readers are leaving for other sorts of books, like mystery and crime.”
Ugh. If I’ve heard him say this once, I’ve heard it a hundred times. “Cam, that’s total BS. Romance readership is soaring like it always has. Our problem here at Empire is that we haven’t acquired any good titles in a while.”
His lips pucker like an angry butthole. I hit a nerve. The man is so vain he can’t possibly accept thathe’sthe reason our romance division is suffering. He’s got to convince himself it’s the readers. Or the position of the moon in the sky. Or global fucking warming.
But I have proof to the contrary. And I won’t back down on this. If there’s one thing I know, it’s romance.
He surprises me by raising his hands as if in surrender. “Fine. Fine, Amalia. I’m not going to argue this with you again. What else are you working on? Do you have leads on any new books?”
I was afraid he might ask this. But I raise my chin with all the confidence I can muster.
“Um, well. I do have a couple,” I say.
Please don’t ask. Please.
But when his face brightens, I realize I’m shit out of luck. “Tell me. Tell me the good news.”
I look down at my desk, circling a coffee stain on the chipped Ikea laminate with my pinkie finger, and pretend to be thinking. “Well, let me see,” I say.
I rifle through some papers on my desk and dig my notebook out of a pile. Without letting him see, I page through as though it’s full of very important notes. “Oh yes. Here we are,” I say, looking at a doodle of myself hanging from a noose, the way I felt in our last team meeting.
“Okay, first one isSpin Class Sweetie. And… we also haveThe Charmer of the Cheese Counter.”
Three, two, one…
The crazed expression he wore only five minutes before makes its way back to his face and once again, I inch away out of self-preservation.
He taps a finger on my cubicle wall. “I see. Amalia, I thought we were getting rid of the turds. I thought we were going to raise the bar. Acquire somegoodromance novels. You know, the kind peopleread? The kind that makemoney?”
“I’m still looking, Cam. I always am. There’s lots of good stuff out there, just waiting to be discovered. Don’t worry. I have all kinds of irons in the fire.”
Big lie. Huge lie.
He looks me up and down like he’s some sort of goddamn lie detector. “Okay then. Back to work.”
