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Chapter 1
I wasn’t sure what I hated more, Friday morning meetings or Nicky Scarborough. Nicky was the son of the founder of Scarborough Publishing and barely twenty-six, just one year older than me. He was smug, brash, and gorgeous, with his slicked-back sandy blonde hair, square jaw, and flame blue eyes.
Nicky had been head of the editor’s department for Scarborough all of five minutes but yet he felt that he needed to exert his dominance over us, lowly assistant editors and proofreaders. His father, Robert Scarborough, recently appointed Nicky to his position of power because he was taking a leave of absence to travel on his honeymoon with his bride, who was half his age.
The apple didn’t fall very far from the tree because Nicky had a penchant for younger women, too. The rumor was that he screwed two of the summer interns who were barely eighteen. I disliked him the moment I met him. He called me into his office to announce his supremeness. I remember it as if it was yesterday, even though it had been two months ago.
“Your name is Emmy Stanford?”
“Emma,” I corrected.
Nicky adjusted his square black hipster glasses and glanced at my paperwork. “Emma. Sorry. I have a lot of people working under me, so it will take time for me to learn everyone’s name.”
Besides the fact that you have my fucking folder in front of you with my full name. Dickhead. I smiled and nodded my head. My mother taught me if I couldn’t say anything nice, then not to say it at all.
“I’m developing a new protocol for manuscript edits. It will be ready in a matter of days. I expect all my editors to follow the rules. I don’t wish to reprimand anyone this early in my tenure.”
How nice of you. “I understand.”
He smirked. “That is all. You can go back to your desk.”
I thanked him and headed to the door.
“Uh, Emmy, I see you’re working on Ryman Delahomme’s follow up to his bestseller, Firewalker. See that you’re careful with the margin notes. I want to get this right.”
I didn’t need a guy who wasn’t trained as an editor to tell me how to do my job. I worked on Ryman’s first novel, and the second, Rainmaker, was assigned to me because of my meticulous editing on the first one. It was my most significant achievement so far at Scarborough.
“I plan on it. It should be completed by the end of the week.”
“Thanks.”
I wanted to scream when I left his office. I worked in a shitty cubicle with my coworker, Angelica Garza. We had little space to move with all the paperwork stacked here and there, but we made due. Nicky had a spacious office with a personal bathroom just for having the name Scarborough.
I took my seat at the conference table next to Angelica, smoothing my black pencil skirt as I sat down. Nicky, with all his smugness, stood at the head of the table with a large cup of coffee, his glasses perched on his head, and a three-day growth of beard on his face. He chatted with the head editors like they were old friends, but I knew better.
Nicky was disliked by most of the office. He had imposed ridiculous rules, such as no personal effects on the desks. I had family pictures of my nephews and niece which sat in my drawer because of him. We weren’t allowed to drink near our computers lest we spill something on them, yet Nicky always seemed to sit near his with an ever-present cup of coffee.
“What a moron he is. Ten dollars says those glasses aren’t even prescription,” Angelica whispered.
I shooed her away from my ear because just at that moment, Nicky looked up at me and narrowed his flame blue eyes in my direction. I doubt he heard what Angelica said but just to be on the safe side. He cleared his throat at exactly 9:00 AM and asked everyone to take their seats.
Nicky loved to drone on about this or that. It was trivial information he was pouring out to us, but it made him feel good to gather the troops for a team-building meeting for the upcoming week. Ugh!
I counted the minutes, and the times he said “uh.” You would think a guy working for a publisher would have a better command of the English language or at least pretend he did. He just loved to hear himself talk. And of course, while he droned on, my purse buzzed several times as my cell went off. Dammit, I forgot to put it on silent.
Fortunately, it silenced at the same time Nicky did. The meeting was over, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I just wanted to work the day out and enjoy my weekend. Nathaniel, my roommate, who was an in-demand DJ, was supposed to be working the stage at Haze, a hot new club owned by the actors, Dino Persky and Vinnie Labotta. I wanted to go, and Nathaniel was my ticket inside.
As we filed out of the conference room, Nicky scowled at me, and I gave him a curt smile. I smoothed my long blonde hair as I walked by. I didn’t care what he had to say, screw him. He was clueless.
When I got back to my desk, Angelica was pretending to page through a manuscript as she turned to me.
“I heard your phone buzzing, was it Nathaniel?”
“I haven’t checked yet. Nate said he would text me if we were on the list.”
Angelica secretly had a crush on my handsome roommate. He was tall with a lean muscular build and always was without a shirt when he was at home in our apartment. His emerald eyes were almost the same shade of green as mine. He liked to keep his thick brown hair spiky, and I often ended up assisting him before one of his shows.
I had told my parents Nathaniel was gay, and he was anything but. He was straight as an arrow with several “regulars” he shared his bed with, sometimes two. On weekends, our dining table almost always had guests for breakfast, which was usually at noontime.
